Space exploration is the ultimate plan B. Here’s why.

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Space exploration is more than just the ultimate adventure, our study and investigation of space yields great scientific rewards, says astronaut Garrett Reisman.

Earth is wonderful, but it won't last forever, so it's important that we maintain a big picture view to ensure the survival of the human species.

Exploring space is our ticket to ""the ultimate plan B,"" according to Reisman. If there were to occur a mass extinction event on Earth, the humans that inhabit another planet in our solar system will be the only hope of human survival.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GARRETT REISMAN:

Dr. Reisman was selected by NASA in 1998. His first mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, in 2008, with a 95 day mission aboard the International Space Station. His second mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, in 2010. During these missions, Dr. Reisman performed 3 spacewalks, operated the Space Station Robot Arm and was a flight engineer aboard the Space Shuttle. He served as a technical consultant for the film Ad Astra and is currently a technical advisor for the TV Show For All Mankind. At present he is a Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC, Motivational Speaker and Senior Advisor at SpaceX. Learn more at garrettreisman.com.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

GARRETT REISMAN: There's a tremendous amount of science that comes out of space exploration.

One is the scientific benefit that we get from understanding our solar system, understanding the composition and the makeup of all the other planets and the other bodies in our solar system. Our sun. We learn a lot about the Earth. We look back at the Earth with space assets. We learn about how the earth is changing, what's happening with climate change, all that kind of stuff. Then there are all the spinoffs and your Velcro, which wasn't actually invented for the space program. I don't think Tang was either but there's plenty of other things like smoke alarms, MRIs, cordless drills, all kinds of those wonderful things that we like to brag about.

To me that's actually not a very good justification for space exploration, and I'll tell you why because we could do those things by having targeted R&D research for industrial and commercial applications probably more cost effectively.

So it is true that we get lots of spinoffs, but I think the science return that we get from space exploration is actually much more important than any kind of spinoff. But there's yet another reason I think trumps all those, which is the fact that, I'll put it to you very flippantly. There's an old joke about why did the dinosaurs go extinct, and it's because they didn't have a space program, okay. So if you take the very, very big picture view, the very, very long view of this kind of on geological time, it's about survival of the species. The earth is fantastic and we need to do a much better job of taking care of it because I could tell you there's no other place that we know of in the entire universe that is as well suited for human life as this planet. That's why we evolved here and we have been evolving for eons to get to this point. And we've evolved in this environment, so this is our home. This is what we are made for. We're not going to find something better for us out there. We need to take care this place. However, again if you look at the very, very big picture, this place as wonderful as it is is not going to last forever. I mean at a minimum eventually the Sun is going to basically explode and the solar system is going to change and it won't be a hospitable place for any of us.

Now if my kids are watching, do not be scared. Don't stay up all night and have nightmares about what I just said because we're talking about so far in the future that that's not something we have to worry about right now at all. There are other things. There have been many extinction events in the course of the earth's history. I think there have been about seven of them. The one everybody knows about is the extinction that took out all the dinosaurs. And there's a lot of different ways that can happen.

You can get hit by an...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/space-exploration-2645886509?draft=1

Kate the Chemist: Water is a freak substance. Here’s why. | Big Think

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

University of Texas professor and science entertainer Kate the Chemist joined Big Think to talk about water molecules and to answer two interesting and important questions: Why does boiling water make it safe to drink, and what happens to water when you boil or freeze it?

According to Kate, when water is heated to a certain temperature (100°C/ 212°F) the hydrogen bonds break, and it goes from a liquid to a gas state. Boiling for a minimum of 5 minutes kills any viruses and bacteria that were in the water.

"Water is a freak and so it is one of my favorite molecules ever," Kate says. "It has these unique properties and we are surrounded by it constantly. We also are made of water. We have to drink water to survive...It's a really, really fun molecule to investigate."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DR. KATE BIBERDORF:

Dr. Kate Biberdorf is a scientist, a science entertainer, and a professor at the University of Texas. Through her theatrical and hands-on approach to teaching, Dr. Biberdorf is breaking down the image of the stereotypical scientist, while reaching students who might otherwise be intimidated by science. Students' emotional responses, rather than rote memorization of facts, are key to Biberdorf's dynamic approach to her program, as well as science in general. Her exciting and engaging program leaves audiences with a positive, memorable impression of science—all while diminishing the stigma around women in science. She has appeared on The Today Show, Wendy Williams Show and Late Night with Stephen Colbert.

Check her latest book Kate the Chemist: The Big Book of Experiments at https://amzn.to/3bQX6Yh

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

DR. KATE BIBERDORF: When you boil water what you are doing is making sure that the temperature of your water is so hot, basically as hot as it possibly can be before all the hydrogen bonds break and the water itself goes from the liquid state to the gas state. And so when we're looking at water that happens at 100 degrees Celsius which is around 212 degrees Fahrenheit. When we do that we bring the thermal energy of the water up to a high temperature that any viruses or bacteria that are inside that water actually are killed if and only if you boil that water for at least five minutes. So the recommendation is five minutes. When I am boiling my water because we had an issue here in Austin about a year ago where we had to make sure we had very safe water. We had to protect it. When I boiled my water for that I boiled it for ten minutes just because I'm a little bit of a freak or I like to overkill things. But what you want to do is you're basically making sure that there's enough thermal energy inside that water that it makes sure that the viruses and the bacteria that are currently in there can no longer survive. And so it's about getting the temperature hot enough and keeping it there for a long enough period of time to make sure all those viruses and bacteria are killed.

Water is a freak and so it is one of my favorite molecules ever because it has these unique properties and we are surrounded by it constantly. We also are made of water. We have to drink water to survive. Some of us like to swim so we're always inside of water. So it's a really, really fun molecule to investigate. What's cool about water is it has these things called hydrogen bonds. And so what that means is it forms an intermolecular force between one water molecule and another water molecule. So the oxygen on one water molecule is partially negatively charged and so that oxygen is somewhat attracted to the partially positively charged hydrogens on another water molecule. So oxygen from this one, hydrogen from this one are attracted to each other. And so that certain thing is called a hydrogen bond and the distance or the length of the hydrogen bond or the distance between the molecules is what sets how much space those water molecules together occupy.

So a glass of water contains a ton of different water molecules and they all have different hydrogen bonds between them. So when you take a chunk of water like and put it in an ice cube tray and then you put it into your freezer we're going to see that the water actually expands. So water is super weird. This is not a normal thing but when it goes from the liquid state to the solid state the distance and the length of those hydrogen bonds actually increases. So water is actually more stable in the liquid state which his super rare. That's just uncommon. But it is what it is. That's what water does and we're around it all the time so there's your answer.

COVID-19 in Prison: The Crisis Behind Bars with Shaka Senghor

Moderated by Big Think co-founder and president Peter Hopkins

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Join Big Think Live for a discussion with human rights advocate and best-selling author Shaka Senghor. Learn how the COVID-19 outbreak is affecting the prison population and why it has been described as a “ticking time bomb.”

In an exclusive segment for Big Think Edge subscribers, Senghor will share 8 lessons learned during his own experience in solitary confinement, adapted for the isolation era.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SHAKA SENGHOR:

In 1991, Shaka Senghor pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and spent the next 19 years behind bars, seven of them in solitary confinement. Today, Senghor has become a vocal advocate for prison reform, and tackling the problem of mass incarceration, in all its complex ugliness, head on. Senghor’s memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison, was released in March 2016 and debuted on The New York Times Best Seller List as well as The Washington Post Best Seller List.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT BIG THINK:

Smarter Faster™

Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. S​ubscribe to learn from top minds like these daily. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. ​We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life.

Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Michio Kaku Playlist: https://bigth.ink/kaku

Bill Nye Playlist: https://bigth.ink/BillNye

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Playlist: https://bigth.ink/deGrasseTyson

Read more at Bigthink.com for a multitude of articles just as informative and satisfying as our videos. New articles posted daily on a range of intellectual topics.

Join Big Think Edge, to gain access to a world-class learning platform focused on building the soft skills essential to 21st century success. It features insight from many of the most celebrated and intelligent individuals in the world today. Topics on the platform are focused on: emotional intelligence, digital fluency, health and wellness, critical thinking, creativity, communication, career development, lifelong learning, management, problem solving & self-motivation.

BIG THINK EDGE: https://bigth.ink/Edge

If you're interested in licensing this or any other Big Think clip for commercial or private use, contact our licensing partner, Executive Interviews: https://bigth.ink/licensing

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Follow Big Think here:

📰BigThink.com: https://bigth.ink

🧔Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook

🐦Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter

📸Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instragram

📹YouTube: https://bigth.ink/youtube

✉ E-mail: [email protected]

Kids today are lacking these psychological nutrients

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When it comes to the rules and restrictions placed on children, author and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer Nir Eyal argues that they have a lot in common with another restricted population in society: prisoners. These restrictions have contributed to a generation that overuses and is distracted by technology.

Self-determination theory, a popular theory of human motivation, says that we all need three things for psychological well-being: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When we are denied these psychological nutrients, the needs displacement hypothesis says that we look for them elsewhere. For kids today, that means more video games and screen time.

In order to raise indistractable kids, Eyal says we must first address issues of overscheduling, de-emphasize standardized tests as indicators of competency, and provide them with ample free time so that they can be properly socialized in the real world and not look to technology to fill those voids.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NIR EYAL:

A graduate and instructor in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Nir Eyal has studied and taught behavioral design to industry-leading experts and scientists. He writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com and his writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Time, Inc., and Psychology Today.

Check Nir Eyal's latest book Indistractible: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life at https://amzn.to/2IrgKwY

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

NIR EYAL: There's only two places in society where we can tell people where to go, what to think, what to eat, who to be friends with, how to dress, and that's school and prison.

How do we raise indistractable kids? As the father of a tech-loving 11-year-old, I remember when my daughter was only two years old and some of her first words were ""iPad time, iPad time."" Well, we want to make sure that we are raising our kids in a way that they themselves can deal with distraction. I think this will be the skill of the century. So there's a few things that we need to realize following the indistractable model. When it comes to raising indistractable kids we need to find the root cause of why our kids are getting distracted and not be satisfied with just blaming the proximal cause. Parents have been blaming all sorts of things for their kids' bad behavior for generations. In my generation it was video games or television. Before that it was the radio. All the way back to the written word was blamed for causing distraction. And when it comes to kids these days, people find some reason why kids are behaving the way they are. But as opposed to being satisfied with just the proximal cause. let's dive deeper to understand why kids overuse technology.

A very widely accepted theory of human motivation says that all of us need three things for psychological well-being. According to self-determination theory we require a sense of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. And when we are denied those things the needs displacement hypothesis says that we look for them wherever we can get them. And when we look at kids' lives today they are deficient in these three psychological nutrients. Consider competence. With the rise of standardized testing a good number of kids these days are constantly told that they're not good enough. They're not competent in their school activities. And when they feel that way they look for competency elsewhere. Well, of course, the tech companies are more than happy to give them a feeling of competency when they play a game online.

Now consider kids' sense of autonomy. This is the most overscheduled generation in history. Between after school activities like Kumon and swimming lessons and Mandarin, kids have very little time for free play. And for those families who can't afford all those after school activities many parents are scared to death by the message we've heard in the media that our kids are somehow going to be abducted at any minute. It turns out that this is the safest generation in American history and those fears are unfounded. And yet many parents keep their kids at home where they have little choice but to look for a sense of agency and control through their devices. So when kids are constantly scheduled throughout their day and restrictions placed...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/psychology-of-distraction

Creative process: Are you in a period of ‘woodshedding’?

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Creative types can feel an overwhelming sense of pressure to be prolific, especially in times like these when, in theory, free time is abundant. Creativity is a resource that takes different forms and, like other resources, it has its limits.

According to Elizabeth Alexander, poet and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it's common for artists to have gaps in the chronology of their work. Familial commitments, depression, and health troubles are among the very valid reasons to not be producing creative works.

Borrowing a term from jazz musicians, Alexander explains that creatives can also go through a period of 'woodshedding,' a term that refers to the practice of working on one's craft and experimenting in a private place (like a wood shed) until it is ready to be shared with the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER:

Elizabeth Alexander – poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and arts activist – is president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the nation's largest funder in arts and culture, and humanities in higher education.Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for 15 years and chaired the African American Studies Department.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: When teaching I would often send especially writing students to look at a retrospective of an artist's work, to look at work across an entire lifetime and to really pay attention to dates when they are going through that exhibit. Because I think the thing that you learn is that there are fallow periods and there are incredibly generative periods. There are periods where you're trying to work an idea out so you're kind of stuck in a groove and there are periods when you have breakthroughs. If you look on the walls there will be years where there's nothing at all. And I think it's also really interesting when you learn about the lives of the artists and I think about this with women artists in particular. Where they, you know, had children in those years? What were the usually family forces or forces within the self. Were they in a depression? Were they struggling with their health? Or were they just, to use the fantastic expression that jazz musicians use, were they just woodshedding. Were they in the woodshed just working on their craft, biding their time, trying to work it out in private so that then they could come out shazam with something different and public?

That I think is a useful way of thinking. Once I got old enough to start realizing that for every day of my life I would not rise with the dawn and write into the light and do that every day and thus there would be a book every other year. It just doesn't work like that. Things happen in life. There are stages. There are eras in life.

What I've been thinking a lot about too is the chi of creativity can take different forms. Interestingly when I had children I thought with my first son that the chi of my creativity would all go into my mothering. But interestingly much to my surprise when I was nursing that first child in the middle of the night to use the French expression and Carolyn Forche has turned it into beautiful poems, the blue hour, right. In that blue hour when it's the middle of the night and you're nursing a child I would scribble down lines in that fugue state. And it felt to me as though my child was saying I've made you a mother but you're just a different kind of artist now. But you're still an artist. You haven't left that behind.

So creativity can go in a lot of different directions, so what I think about more now than I used to is what does it mean to be physically healthy. What does it mean to be spiritually healthy. What does it mean to be calm. What does it mean to be able to make decisions sharply and quickly so that time is liberated for both the creative and the writing but also the creative in the day job if you will. As well as being available to people to whom I am responsible. And that just accrues as you get older. So the children go away to school but they're still your responsibility. Parents, you know, create new responsibilities as they age. There are more human beings in one's lives. My students kind of come with me. Writers who I've mentored com with me. So I find more than ever I'm just thinking about how to be peaceful so that I can be like a laser and that I can make good use of the creativity I have because I know that it is not a limitless resource if you don't take care of your spirit and your body.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Updated for the 21st century

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When we imagine Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, we visualize a pyramid. This is all wrong, says humanistic psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman.

This is because life isn't a video game, where you unlock new levels until you reach the final prize of self-actualization. In fact, Maslow viewed human development as a two steps forward, one step back dynamic.

Kaufman rebuilt Maslow's hierarchy of needs, updating it for the 21st century with a solid scientific foundation. And a better metaphor for this is a sailboat.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SCOTT BARRY KAUFMAN:

Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he investigates the measurement and development of intelligence, imagination, and creativity. He has written or edited six previous books, including Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. He is also co-founder of The Creativity Post, host of The Psychology Podcast, and he writes the blog Beautiful Minds for Scientific American. Kaufman lives in Philadelphia and completed his doctorate in cognitive psychology from Yale University in 2009 and received his masters degree in experimental psychology from Cambridge University in 2005, where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

His latest book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization at https://amzn.to/2KyAL5t

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

SCOTT BARRY KAUFMAN: People get a lot of things wrong about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. First of all, Maslow never even drew a pyramid. A lot of people might not know that as you're probably very used to seeing a diagram on Facebook or in your introductory psychology class or management class. So you see this pyramid with self-actualization at the top and different needs. I looked through Maslow's writings, and he never actually drew a pyramid to represent his theory. He actually viewed human – it was very clear to Maslow that life is not a video game. It's not as though you reach some level in life like safety needs and then you reach the safety needs and you get a certain number of that and then some voice from above is like congrats, you've unlocked connection. And then you go do, do, do, do, do and you move up to connection. It's not how life works. And Maslow is very clear about that. In a lot of ways Maslow was a developmental psychologist at heart. He really believed that human development was constantly this two steps forward, one step back dynamic.

We're constantly choosing the growth option, and then we're failing in some way or we have some struggle which is an inevitable part of life. And then we continue forward. Life is not some trek up a mountain and then you reach self-actualization as though you've achieved self-actualization and the final credits come on. Again, continuing the video game metaphor. Life is not like that. Self-development is a process. It's constantly in a form of development and we are constantly becoming, our being in the world is constantly becoming. And Maslow is very clear about that.

Abraham Maslow made it very clear that self-actualization is not the same as achievement. A lot of people in fact may achieve quite a bit in their lives and may be on the cover of magazines, may have all the awards, the whole trophy shelf of their house that they show off and still feel deeply, deeply unfulfilled. We feel much more fulfilled when we actualize our potentialities, our deepest potentials, the things that make us unique, the things that we can uniquely contribute to the world in ways that have a positive impact on the world. Just realizing your talents without the context of the meaning behind it is a recipe for a lot of talented people to live a very unfulfilled life.

So, Maslow defines self-actualization as becoming everything that you're capable of becoming and that you're most uniquely capable of becoming. So we have a lot of things, a lot of potentials that we share with other humans. We have the need for safety. We have the need for connection. We have the need for respect and a certain level of feeling worthy or self-esteem. We share that with others, but Maslow thought of self-actualization as those potentialities within you that, if grown to full heights, will have the biggest impact on the world uniquely. What do you most uniquely have to contribute to this world? I think that's how Maslow really thought about self-actualization. That's how I tend to think about self-actualization...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/maslow-hierarchy-of-needs-updated?draft=1

Finding your purpose: A less intimidating approach

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you know your purpose in life? If not, London Business School professor Dan Cable says that's OK. It's normal, even.

Many people have trouble finding their purpose because the task itself is too demanding. One way to solve this problem is by connecting with the end-user of your work.

For example, Microsoft will take its teams on-site to interview clients and find solutions. Programmers understand who's using their products by hearing it straight from the source, and this gives more meaning to their work.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAN CABLE:

Dan Cable is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. Dan's research and teaching focus on employee engagement, change, organizational culture, leadership mindset, and the linkage between brands and employee behaviors. Dan was selected for the 2018 Thinkers50 Radar List, The Academy of Management has twice honored Dan with Best Article awards, and The Academy of Management Perspectives ranked Dan in the 'Top 25 most influential management scholars'.

Dan Cable's latest book Alive at Work: The Neuroscience of Helping Your People Love What They Do at https://amzn.to/3dd32Mj

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

DAN CABLE: I think that it's really typical for somebody to not know what their purpose is. I think that the idea of saying find your purpose is a very high challenge. And I think it's probably too demanding in many ways, especially if you're talking about a relatively young person that's just entering the workforce. And so I think that it's kind of interesting to remember that personalizing purpose doesn't mean that you have to find somebody that has a burning passion to serve. It also doesn't mean that the leader has to deliver purpose. Like handing it out like playing cards. I think that the middle ground is to foster interest and to help people experience firsthand the end user of their work.

Let me give you an example of this. I work a little bit with Microsoft and in Vienna there is a country manager there named Dorothy. And one of the things that she does that I find really compelling is when they start up a new project, they go on site with the client. And they don't just take the senior leaders. They take the whole team. They might take as many as 15 people including the programmer, the actual person that'll be doing some code, up to the client representative who's kind of running the whole relationship, and basically everybody in between – the logistics person, the person that'll run the scheduling. They all go on site. They might go on site, for example, to a hospital that's going paperless.

And they'll go on site and just interview and try to understand where would it be hard to go paperless. They'll go to Tesla and they'll talk not only to the engineers at Tesla, they'll talk to the people in finance. They'll talk to the people in production. They'll talk to the people in operations. Another example of this would be Xbox, where they'll go on site and they'll talk about what kind of shipment and delivery issues are you facing right now.

The way that Microsoft is approaching this is twofold. Number one is they're trying to move from a know-it-all culture where we sell software, to a learn-it-all culture where we sell solutions. And so that aligns really nicely with this idea that we need our teams to understand the customer's problems. What are the pinch points? What are the things that we can help with? And then what Dorothy is doing by taking her whole team, even some fairly low, what I would call typically low-level workers, you know, they're not the senior managers. They're the folks that have just been hired within the last year or two. They go on site and they get to hear who it is they're solving and what are those problems.

And I think that is one very small, inexpensive way to think about increasing the sense of purpose, the why of the work in a way that doesn't demand you to call it your dying passion. It's not like you go in there because if I don't do this I'll die. It's more saying listen, either way I'm a programmer and I just need some money. But I happen to work for an organization that really lets me understand why I'm doing the programming. I really understand who's going to use it. It allows me to understand that if I do a good job those people at Xbox will be able to get their shipments on time and that sort of connects me to the why of the work.

How do astronauts deal with isolation?

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While she has not personally been to space, NASA astronaut Michelle Thaller has heard from friends and colleagues what it is like to truly be isolated. Coping mechanisms for these extreme cases can also benefit people here on Earth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Setting and maintaining a schedule can help you and your body return to a more normal state, as can finding familiar sensory inputs. For astronauts, that includes Earthly scents like citrus.

Speaking personally and making a point about silver linings, Thaller shares a story about how COVID-19 has given her more time with her sick husband for what are likely his final days.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHELLE THALLER:

Dr. Michelle Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and the life cycles of stars. She is Assistant Director of Science Communication at NASA. She went to college at Harvard University, completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope. After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area. In her off-hours often puts on about 30lbs of Elizabethan garb and performs intricate Renaissance dances. For more information, visit https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/1040/michelle-thaller/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

MICHELLE THALLER: When it comes to how to deal with isolation and feeling like you're sort of helpless and cut off from everybody, it's hard to beat the experience of an astronaut, where they literally are cut off from Earth. And even if they wanted to, they couldn't just come to Earth very easily. It would be a lot of effort to do so. And they're going to be up there, say in the Space Station, for quite a long time. Six months or even longer. So, how do astronauts deal with isolation? Although I've never been to space myself, I have several friends who are astronauts and one of the things that I had heard about from them, psychologically, when you're trying to deal with that sort of withdrawing of stimulus, everything is much more constrained than you're used to.

One of the things they do is try to really maintain a schedule. Try to understand that you're going to get up at this time. Even though that's artificial. The Space Station goes around the Earth once every 90 minutes, so when you're on the Space Station you get a sunrise and a sunset every 90 minutes. And so, the idea is that internal to their world they create a routine, a time they get up, a time they all get together, a time to talk, a time to interact, a time to work, and they keep the schedule as consistently as they possibly can.

You may have heard that people who have trouble sleeping often will sleep better if they will go to bed at a set time every day and your body just knows to expect those same rhythms. That said, some of my friends who are astronauts have talked about the difficulties of dealing with, I said before sort of the lack of sensory input. And one of the things, surprisingly, I've heard them talk about is the sense of smell. That up on the Space Station, things are very clean and very sterile as you might expect, a very enclosed environment, the air is recirculated, all of the water is recirculated and they miss the smell of life, of food, of being outside, of the air and grass. There was one astronaut I was giving a presentation with that said there was a shipment of fresh fruit that came up during a resupply cargo mission and one of the things they brought were oranges, fresh oranges. And everybody was really enjoying this and people ate their oranges and he said that he actually hid his orange away in his private compartment and all he wanted to do was just smell it, just smell that really lovely orange smell, something that reminded him of life. And a lot of astronauts talk about that when they finally open the door of the Soyuz capsule after they have gone back to Earth and they smell the air, that's really wonderful. So, part of it is maybe also look for ways to give yourself some comfort, some stimulation that you find really enjoyable.

I know for me I've done a lot of just walking just outside my house. I live on a two acre lot so there aren't people around, enjoying the sunlight, enjoying the breeze, taking steps not to feel quite so cooped up if you do have that. On a personal note for me...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/astronaut-isolation

Ask an atheist: Does the universe have a purpose?

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer doesn't believe in God or any outside force that cares about us, he also doesn't believe that the existence of one would give our lives meaning.

Shermer argues that it is up to us to create purpose for ourselves in various ways, including through meaningful work, familial and romantic relationships, and a connection and respect for the wonder of nature.

"It doesn't matter what happens billions of years from now or whether there's a God or not, whether there's an afterlife or not," he says. "It's irrelevant. This is the life that matters."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHAEL SHERMER:

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.

Check Michael Shermer's latest book Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist at https://amzn.to/3e7fDkp

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

MICHAEL SHERMER: Does the universe have a purpose? Okay, this is the biggest question of all. I think in part it's not quite the right question because people are asking it as if there's something out there that knows we're here and cares about us. As a nonbeliever I don't think that's the case. I think it's up to us to care. But the scientific study of the universe shows what in the universe would care? I mean the space-time continuum, stars, galaxies... What is there to care about us other than us? And the answer is nothing. Now, of course the theists says no, God is out there and God knows about us and cares about us. But how would that give your life purpose? It's up to you to create purpose in your life, not for some external source. What people are looking for is somebody to tell them what the purpose of their life is and that's the wrong way to search. The search is to go inside and go what is the purpose of my life? Now, the scientific answer that I give in the book is it starts with the second law of thermodynamics which I call the first law of life. That is entropy, the running down of the universe is what happens if you do nothing.

So if you have your warm cup of coffee and you do nothing it just gets cold. If you don't clean your room it just stays cluttered. If you don't wash your car it stays dirty, and so on. So the first law of life is to fight back against entropy. Carve out a little niche of order. Wash our car, heat your coffee, clean your room, brush your teeth. and so on and so forth. Then you build from there. Like okay, we know from scientific research by social psychologists, personality psychologists, and there's even a branch of psychology now people that study purpose and meaning. And there's certain things you could do that give your life purpose and meaning. So meaningful work. A reason to get up in the morning, get out the door and go out and do something productive. Family, having some kind of group of people that care about you, that love you, that you care about them and you love them. Marriage or partnership or just one person that you love and that they love you and that acknowledges you as a worthwhile person. And then there's something called spirituality. Now I want to be careful here because that word is almost always associated with mainstream religions, but here I mean it in a much broader sense. A sense of awe and wonder at things that are bigger than us.

The universe, the cosmos or any kind of meditative state, prayer. Just kind of walking in nature and looking up at massive trees or the ocean. There's something about standing up on a high hill or cliff and looking out at an ocean, or a grassy field, or a forest that evokes awe and wonder in people. And that's kind of the spirituality that makes people feel like wow, my life I am so lucky to be alive. And if you think about all the trillions of people that could have been born that never were, the 7.5 billion of us alive now, the hundred billion of us that came before. We are the lucky ones. I mean most people that could have been born were never even born to be given this opportunity. And even if you're a theist and you believe there's an afterlife, but let's just ask the question. Where were you before you were born? When you ask the question where do you go after you die? The same place. You didn't exist, then you exist, then you don't exist. Even if I'm wrong and it turns out there's an afterlife, and I talk about this in the book, it doesn't matter because we don't live in...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/ask-an-atheist-purpose-of-the-universe

How the last two centuries led to today’s economy

Watch the newest video from Big Think: https://bigth.ink/NewVideo

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adam Davidson, co-founder of NPR's Planet Money, can trace a line through time from homemade clothing and baked goods to today's passion economy. Davidson argues that a combination of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are how we got to where we are.

We shifted from an intimate and localized economy of goods and services, to an economy of scale, and finally to what Davidson refers to as ""intimacy at scale.""

There are, of course, positive attributes to this hybrid economic system, but it also comes with some of the flaws of its predecessors.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADAM DAVIDSON:

ADAM DAVIDSON is the cofounder of NPR's Planet Money podcast and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers economics and business. Previously he was an economics writer for The New York Times Magazine. He has won many of journalism's most prestigious awards, including a Peabody for his coverage of the financial crisis.

His latest book The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century https://amzn.to/2X31pv5

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

ADAM DAVIDSON: I had this thought as I wrote the book that the best of the twenty-first century combines the best of the nineteenth and the best of the twentieth. And then my joke is the worst, combines the worst of those two centuries as well. What I mean by that is if you look at the nineteenth century and pretty much all human history before business was conducted almost entirely locally. You almost all physically made goods. They were made by someone who you didn't just know them your whole life, your great grandparents knew their great grandparents. And in many cases your clothes, your bed, your house were made by you or your family. And to the extent that there were services the equivalent of lawyers and accountants and doctors. Those would also have been produced locally. There's always been long distance trade but that was really just a very small number of luxury goods that had very little impact on the material lives of everyday people.

So you had profound intimacy to the point where if you lived in a certain neighborhood in Brooklyn or a certain village in France, the beer, the bread, the cheese—everything was how we do it here. It was fully intimate. And you go two villages over and they do it some other way that's totally different. And so you had this incredible enmeshment between producers and consumers.

Then you have the twentieth century which is about people in one place producing goods for people all over the world. So you have massive manufacturers in Atlanta or New Jersey or Chicago who are producing soda and candy bars and eventually furniture and cars and all of these goods. And they're made in one place, made in huge volume and then shipped everywhere in the world. And just the nature of that kind of transaction is scale. You can't know all that much about who's buying Coca Cola in some village in Vietnam or what things about a Ford car people in South Carolina like better than people in Alabama do or whatever. You just make, you know, with some variation you make the same set of products and ship them everywhere. And so that's scale and scale brings a lot of benefits that small intimacy doesn't. The benefit is an economy of scale. You can make more stuff more cheaply, spread it to more places.

But now that doesn't work very well. Big scale is in crisis. You look at the big scale consumer goods companies like Proctor & Gamble or Unilever and they're really struggling for growth. They're struggling to basically everyone who wants Tide soap and Oreo cookies already has Tide soap and Oreo cookies. And you sort of go by a candy aisle and you see the problem. Sure, we can have M&M's with pretzels and M&M's with caramel and M&M's with peanuts and M&M's with a million other things but you're not really transforming the experience of eating candy. And we live in a world where people are probably eating as much candy as you want. So you have these companies fighting over market share sort of unable to create really transformative value.

But then you have intimate products. You have products like let's use chocolate...

Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/intimacy-at-scale