366: Bill Nye | Radical Curiosity Saves the World

Transcript for Bill Nye | Radical Curiosity Saves the World (Episode 366)

Bill Nye: [00:00:00] Hey, if you're a flat earther or if you're out there, go to the edge and take a picture and send it to us. "Well, they won't let you see the edge." "Who's they?" If you think you'll find that you're living on a big ball and you can travel in any direction and never leave. "Whoa, dude, that's impossible. How could there be something that you could go anywhere and never get off?" Because it's a ball.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:27] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's sharpest minds and most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice you can use to impact your own life and those around you. I want to help you see the Matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker, so you can get a much deeper understanding of how the world works and make sense of what's really happening, even inside your own brain. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes of the spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for skills like negotiation, body language, persuasion, and more. So if you're smart and you'd like to learn and improve, you're going to be right at home here with us. And for a selection of featured episodes to get you started with some of our favorite guests and popular topics, go to jordanharbinger.com and we'll hook you right up. 

[00:01:17] Today, one from the vault with Bill Nye science guy. We actually met a few years ago at a party. We were washing dishes after dinner and we hadn't introduced ourselves to one another. That was part of the dinner party, the rules. You can't introduce yourself, you're just supposed to interact. And then like later on, people do it and you're mind blown. Like you found out you made brownies with the guy from Public Enemy or something like that, or like made guacamole with Regina Spektor was something that happened to me at this party.

[00:01:42] Anyway, this guy, of course, I didn't know who he was, but of course, he looks familiar. He starts explaining how the soap works, which is so Bill Nye somehow, right? Talking about ions and the bonding of the soap molecule on the stuff on the pan. Now, he's pushing against the mountain of ignorance present in today's anti-science culture. And today on the show, we discuss reinventing yourself, both in your identity as well as in your career. And how Bill went from Boeing engineer to the Science Guy we all know today. We'll also explore the idea of looking at the world with a radical curiosity and why that's important and a whole lot more, including some bowtie talk here with Bill Nye, the Science Guy, right here on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:02:19] And if you want to know how I managed to get all these folks on the show, it's always about the network and I'm teaching you how to create your own network, whether it's just keeping in touch with family and friends or networking for your own business or in your professional career. Check out our Six-Minute Networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show actually subscribed to the course in the newsletter. So come join us, you'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here we go with Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

[00:02:47] So we met first at John Levy's party.

Bill Nye: [00:02:50] The influencers.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:52] That's right. And we weren't allowed to say who we were. And I thought, "This guy looks really familiar, but I don't know where I would have met this person before. I have no idea." And then we were washing dishes because the whole thing is you cook dinner for everyone else. And we were doing that. We were washing dishes and you said, "You know how soap gets grease off of a pan? It's the hydrophilic and hydrophobic ends of the soap molecule," or something like that.

Bill Nye: [00:03:13] Yes, yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:14] And I went, "All right, now I know who you are." But before that I had, it was just -- it burns, it grates at the end of your consciousness because you don't know --

Bill Nye: [00:03:21] Grates at the end of your consciousness.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:24] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:03:24] That's very troublesome.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:26] It's a little dramatized, but yeah. But that's the whole point is you're supposed to kind of figure out who the person is on your own or not care or something like that.

Bill Nye: [00:03:34] Because we're just so cool.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:35] Yeah. We're all influencing. That's all we're doing at that dinner. Seven honorary doctoral degrees -- so does that mean I have to call you doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor Nye.

Bill Nye: [00:03:44] No, no. If I'm on the phone and somebody calls me a doctor and we're in a hurry, I don't correct them. That's what it means.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:50] Okay. Yeah. It's not worth your breath.

Bill Nye: [00:03:52] But if they want to write doctor on some documents, I have to correct them. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:57] Because it's not a legal title or because it's just a little bit like, "Okay, I can't let that one fly.

Bill Nye: [00:04:01] Well, I mean, I don't have a PhD.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:03] Actually a lot of people have brought that up lately. "Well, you don't have to have a PhD, why should I listen to you?"

Bill Nye: [00:04:08] Well, what do you want to know about heat transfer or fluid mechanics?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:11] Only a doctor is qualified to tell me about that apparently.

Bill Nye: [00:04:14] Or metallurgy or mechanical components. I mean, who doesn't love mechanical components? That's something you do in mechanical engineering school. There are million-plus fasteners on a typical airplane. You better count on them.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:27] Yeah. I would hope that they're all in good shape.

Bill Nye: [00:04:30] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:31] You're an advocate for science literacy. Is that a fair statement?

Bill Nye: [00:04:33] That's a fair statement. That is my life's mission.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:36] Yes. It doesn't require a PhD. It mostly requires what? A lot of people are like, "Oh, why not just interview a real scientist?" And I thought, "Well, because I'm not looking for the latest in quantum, whatever." 

Bill Nye: [00:04:49] Which we love. We do love quantum mechanics. The double-slit experiment remains a great mystery. I took a lot of physics and our climate change is a great concern to me.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:00] That was what your talk was about after the dinner.

Bill Nye: [00:05:02] Still concerned.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:03] Yeah. Since then it hasn't really changed for the better. I don't think --

Bill Nye: [00:05:07] It's gotten worse for humankind, for sure. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:09] Why do you think so many people are obsessed with kind of shooting the messenger? "Oh, he doesn't have a PhD. This is a fraud. He's not a real scientist." What's going on there?

Bill Nye: [00:05:16] Keep in mind, it is fascinating. I mean, you're a podcaster -- it is fascinating the energy people have -- the haters have to hate. Once in a while, I'll look at the comment section on almost any page. Wow. People have time to complain.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:31] Oh, yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:05:32] But meanwhile, the climate is changing. Even if you hate me, there are 7.3 billion people in the world, going on 7.4, going on 9 billion people by 2050. And everybody wants to live the way we live in a developed world. And this takes a lot of energy. Right now, our electricity is mostly produced from burning stuff, coal and oil and gas. We can't keep doing that anymore. Shoot the messenger if you like, we still can't keep doing it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:02] So you mean my anger towards the things that you say is not positively affecting the climate?

Bill Nye: [00:06:06] No, it's weird.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:08] Geez, I've got to change strategies, man.

Bill Nye: [00:06:10] I just think that the pendulum's going to swing back pretty quickly. And by that, I mean, people will realize that it's in nobody's best interest to deny science, to not accept the facts discovered through the process of science. Climate change being among them, also the efficacy of vaccinations. You don't want people running around unvaccinated. And keep in mind out there, if you're out there and you're not vaccinated, the reason I want you to get vaccinated is really not that I care about you, it's me, me, me, me. Because when you are unvaccinated, you are an incubator for mutating viruses, mutating bacteria. You just don't want that. Your body is going to introduce diseases into our herd, into our species that we can't fight with conventional antibiotics. And the one that's emerging now, if you like to worry about things --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:08] I do, I love it.

Bill Nye: [00:07:08] -- about your lifestyle. But gonorrhea is the one -- it used to be penicillin just knocked it right out, but it has mutated because so many people have contracted it. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:18] Geez. If you don't really want to eat lunch, you can Google that and find out exactly what that involves.

Bill Nye: [00:07:23] It's not good.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:24] No.

Bill Nye: [00:07:24] It's not good. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:25] It's not good. Even the former cure when there was one, was not good. And now there isn't one, it's even worse.

Bill Nye: [00:07:30] But penicillin was amazing and it was a miracle drug, as they say. Now, it's not effective against gonorrhea. Wow.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:36] For me, it's a nightmare scenario.

Bill Nye: [00:07:38] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:39] I was in Australia and they'd recently just outlawed being anti-vax.

Bill Nye: [00:07:43] Probably required vaccinations.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:44] It was something like that. And there were a lot of protesters, a small number, relative to the population, thankfully, but vocal protestors. "You can't force me to do this. You shouldn't force me to do this. It's my choice. It's my choice for my kid." 

Bill Nye: [00:07:55] Nope, nope.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:56] But it's not right.

Bill Nye: [00:07:57] No.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:57] It's public safety. 

Bill Nye: [00:07:58] Nope. Not your choice. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:59] It's kind of like saying, "I can douse myself in gasoline. I'm the only one who's going to get hurt."

Bill Nye: [00:08:02] It depends where you're standing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:03] Right.

Bill Nye: [00:08:04] In Australia, there's probably plenty of room.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:05] That's true. 

Bill Nye: [00:08:05] Outwest in Australia.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:07] That's true.

Bill Nye: [00:08:08] But that's a special case. If you are a vaccine denier, think what you're denying. You're denying the discoveries made by diligence scientists over the last three centuries. You're objectively wrong about it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:21] Few things can be said that are going 100 percent chance that you're wrong about this.

Bill Nye: [00:08:24] That's right.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:25] Yeah. So we'll kind of enjoy that. 

Bill Nye: [00:08:26] Oh, it's great. What a great feeling. But I think the anti-vaxxers are losing sway. They're not as effective as they were 10 years ago.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:34] Well, especially some of their chief spokespeople, Jenny McCarthy, and things like that are saying, "Oh, you know, I was wrong about that.

Bill Nye: [00:08:40] Well, when I was on The View a couple of years ago, Ms. McCarthy would not look me in the eye. She was anxious.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:49] Really? 

Bill Nye: [00:08:50] Well things change.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:51] Yeah. You invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube.

Bill Nye: [00:08:55] Well I didn't invent it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:56] You didn't? 

Bill Nye: [00:08:57] I did the basic engineering on it. It's an old trick. That's all. It's not a new invention. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:01] Okay, I thought, "Wow, that's something that didn't exist before?"

Bill Nye: [00:09:03] No, no, no.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:04] It's incredible.

Bill Nye: [00:09:05] No, it's something that didn't exist. But the extra tubing on the 747 horizontal stabilizer system did not exist before. But the trick I used was not extraordinary.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:15] Oh, okay.

Bill Nye: [00:09:16] You make the pressure wave destructively interfere with itself. So there was a vibration in the yoke. It's called the steering wheel of 747. And most pilots, it didn't bother them. There are great many test pilots at Boeing. We made a tube of a certain length to have the pressure wave cancel itself out, to quiescent conditions. When you're putting in a big steering input, the vibration was overwhelmed. But anyway, this is the detail. It's what you do when you're an engineer, use science to solve problems.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:48] And then suddenly you shift to comedy and joke writing? What's going on there?

Bill Nye: [00:09:51] Well, the word sudden isn't maybe exactly right.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:54] Maybe not accurate? 

Bill Nye: [00:09:55] I started doing standup comedy after I won the Steve Martin look-alike contest in Seattle. I did not win the national one. First of all, he kind of looked like Steve Martin, which --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:05] Yeah, helps

Bill Nye: [00:10:04] Well, the other thing is he's from Nashville, he played the banjo. Anyway, I started doing stand-up comedy. I met these guys who were working on a comedy show called Almost Live. You'd meet them at open mic nights. I started writing jokes for that show. And then I met Jim McKennan and Erin Gottlieb. These producers who wanted to do educational videos about science, they started their own production company, and then it took us another four years to get anybody to believe it was really worth doing. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:35] Did you know right away this is something that's going to take off?

Bill Nye: [00:10:37] Well, the word right away -- I did one bit about liquid nitrogen because the household uses liquid nitrogen. We all have liquid nitrogen around. You'd make celery that was limp and turn rigid again. Then you smash onions and it sounds like breaking glass.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:55] Oh, cool.

Bill Nye: [00:10:55] Which is hilarious, but the payoff is chewing frozen marshmallows so steam comes out of your nose. That's hilarious. And so after that, as I was walking off the stage at the NBC affiliate in Seattle, I went, "This is it, man. I want to be the next Mr. Wizard." That worked out, but it took a long time. That was 1987 and we got funding to do the pilot of the show in 1992.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:22] 25 years to overnight success or something like that.

Bill Nye: [00:11:24] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:24] Well, you're proof that you can reinvent yourself. A lot of people think they can't do that.

Bill Nye: [00:11:29] Well, they're just wrong.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:30] Objectively wrong.

Bill Nye: [00:11:31] No, whatever. You think I've reinvented myself?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:33] Maybe. Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:11:34] Well, here's what happened, you guys. The first thing I wrote about climate change was in 1993. In a kid's book called Bill Nye's Big Blast of Science. Nothing's been done about it since 1993. It's you, guys, out there denying climate change that have made me political. I didn't want to be. You started it, man. If you weren't denying science, none of us would have this problem. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:01] What advice would you have for somebody who wants to make that shift and says, "I'm an engineer. I can't do the things I want to do. I'm so far away from the career that I really want from what I'm doing now. I got to pay the bills somehow." Because just do it is really easy to say, but harder I think for people to step into.

Bill Nye: [00:12:15] Well, I took the precaution of being single and young. I really did think on October 3rd, 1986, "If I don't do it now, I ain't never going to do it." I'm employing a double negative for comedic effect. So I took a chance and I realized even at that time, if I went away from engineering for six months, I would lose my currency. I wouldn't be able to compete with other guys. because computer software was taken over my branch of engineering really fast. There's a thing that's very common now called finite element analysis where you have a mechanical part, a physical object, and you mathematically break it into rectangles, into boxes. And then each vertex, each corner of the box is mathematically tied to the next corner of the next box. And then if you have enough computer power, you can simulate the bending flexing stresses of this object. Well, that software was just coming on and the company Catia is still around. And if I went away from it for a year, I would be out of date, but I figured if I didn't do it now and wasn't going to happen.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:24] Did he do all that by hand on graph paper before?

Bill Nye: [00:13:26] Don't mess with me. You know you have a copy of formulas for stress and strain.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:30] Of course, somewhere around here.

Bill Nye: [00:13:31] Yeah. So you used to have a textbook, there'd be mostly grad students who would solve a specific problem -- flat plates with a hole in the center, square plates, rectangular plates, circular plates, curved beams, curve, beams of square cross-section, curved beams of I-beam cross-section. If you could identify the thing that was flexing or being stressed, you could plug it into these formulae, but it was not trivial. You had to recognize what you were doing. Anyway, that was the good old days. And then finite element analysis does not always give you the right answer. When I quit, that's what was coming on really fast when I quit full time. I worked another 10 years, part-time. I had a niche. I was one of the last guys that I knew that worked on a drawing board with lead holders. We don't call them pencils. Lead holders on a drawing board, you know, with the drawing engine, the big right angle thing on the six-foot-long drawing board you'd have special tools or tooling. It's called making fixtures to spin things for testing and stuff, one of a kind objects.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:37] Wow.

Bill Nye: [00:14:37] I did that for 10 years. A young guy coming out of school now does MATLAB, this program that solves many equations at one time, multivariable equations at one time. Stuff that barely existed when I was in school. I started with a slide rule, man. That's how long ago it was.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:53] When we were in middle school in shop class, they gave us one of those things and you had to buy your --

Bill Nye: [00:14:56] They gave you a slide rule?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:57] Yeah and you had a T-square and a big desk that was big.

Bill Nye: [00:15:00] You had a big slide rule?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:01] Yeah. I can't remember what it was for, but I remember having one. My dad was a mechanical engineer, so maybe he showed me how to use it finally.

Bill Nye: [00:15:06] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:07] Something like that. 

Bill Nye: [00:15:08] Well, it's not for everybody. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:09] No, definitely not. Used to speak to kids. Now, would you say you're speaking more to adults?

Bill Nye: [00:15:13] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:13] Yeah?

Bill Nye: [00:15:14] But kids still watch the old show.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:16] Oh yeah. 

Bill Nye: [00:15:17] You know, I was at a book signing last night here on Union Square in New York, New York. The town is so nice, they named it twice. And there's a lot of very young people who were watching the old shows either online or in school. Many teachers still use the shows, which are over 20 years old. And I'm very proud of that. When it comes to science, you want to make videos that are about fundamental ideas in science that will stand the test of time. Pluto was a planet in 1993.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:46] Yeah, whoops.

Bill Nye: [00:15:48] Oh, that's all right. There's a great lesson there. By the way, young people have no problem with that. And by young people, I mean, people in fifth grade can grasp that Pluto is smaller than the Earth's moon. Unknown in 1930 and the reason it was believed to be bigger is because it's so shiny because it's covered with ice, which is an amazing thing with nitrogen volcanoes and all the seven geologic regions. It's the coolest thing. We say eight traditional planets. If you want to call everything else a planet, knock yourself out. Is the Earth's moon a planet? Okay. Is Europa -- moon of Jupiter -- a planet? Okay. Did it have the misfortunate playing in a tough league --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:29] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:16:30] -- by having to orbit this enormous planet? I don't know, man, but I still have no problem with the word plutoid. So Pluto, instead of being the last of the traditional planets would now be the first of a new class of celestial objects. How cool would that be?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:47] It sounds like a promotion.

Bill Nye: [00:16:48] But if there's a couple of guys that want it to be a planet, I'll let the International Astronomical Union figure that out. I don't really have a dog in this fight.

Jen Harbinger: [00:17:00] This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Bill Nye. We'll be right back.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:05] This episode is sponsored in part by DesignCrowd. Crowdsourcing is how busy people get stuff done in the 21st century. Thanks to DesignCrowd. You can run your business and hand over the reins for a logo web design, t-shirt, you name it, to a pool of over 700,000 designers from around the world.

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Jen Harbinger: [00:19:36] And now back to Bill Nye on The Jordan Harbinger Show. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:42] I got to say, I admire you because you stand in front of this colossal mountain of ignorance and you're pushing hard. And that mountain does not like to be pushed. It pushes back. 

Bill Nye: [00:19:52] You're joining the climate change deniers.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:55] The deniers of a lot of things, specifically climate change nowadays, yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:19:58] Well, climate change is the biggest problem facing humankind, everybody. I mean, there's nothing bigger. What about healthcare? That's important, but climate change is the biggest deal. If we were talking about climate change, the way we talk about healthcare, or the racial issues that we have here in the US, we would be getting her done.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:16] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:20:17] So we're hoping to raise awareness.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:19] Yeah, the new show. You're not just sharing facts. You're sort of trying to rescue humanity from this anti-science.

Bill Nye: [00:20:25] Yes, trying to rescue all of humanity.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:28] Yeah. Big mission.

Bill Nye: [00:20:29] Show on Netflix.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:30] Big mission, definitely.

Bill Nye: [00:29:33] How hard can it be? No, but I mean, that is the goal is to change the world, to get people, to take a scientific view of many issues facing society. We're going to do a couple of fun ones as well as -- we have a couple ones about drugs this year. We have a couple about the environment and we have a couple that are just kind of cool.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:53] Yeah. It's so far at season one is highly entertaining, but where do you think the anti-science sentiment really comes from? I could just be missing this, but when I was a kid, you had science, you believed it. And a lot of people around you believed it. And if you found somebody who thought that a certain scientific principle was not true, like, oh, the earth is flat. Those people were insane. Now, it seems like, well, there's this little shred of validity they think even people will agree that they have and it's just crazy to me. 

Bill Nye: [00:21:20] Well, I think, social media has made that possible where. Anybody has a voice. Everybody can be an authority. So I think that'll blow over really -- if, hey, if you're a flat earther or if you're out there, go to the edge and take a picture and send it to us.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:35] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:21:36] Go out there to the edge. "Well, they won't let you see the edge." "Who's they?" If you think you'll find that you're living on a big ball and you can travel in any direction and never leave. "Whoa, dude. That's impossible. How could you be something that you could go anywhere and never get off?" Because it's a ball.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:56] It's a sphere, yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:21:57] It's a sphere. This goes way back. Ancient Greeks realized that the earth was a sphere because they saw the Earth's shadow cast on the moon during lunar eclipses, and they thought deeply about this. They didn't freak out. They just thought about it and realized that the earth had to be a sphere as the only shape that will always cast around shadow. And then medieval times they did not think that the world was flat. Columbus may have sold the queen on the earth being somewhat smaller than it is. The big thing is she brought it and here we are in North America. Check us out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:35] That's right.

Bill Nye: [00:22:36] If you're a First Nations person, here we are, man. We got to roll with it. We got to move forward.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:42] Yeah, no kidding. The new show is part Bill Nye: The Science Guy of our childhood, but for grown-ups, I would say part MythBusters, maybe.

Bill Nye: [00:22:49] Oh yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:50] Part Bill Maher.

Bill Nye: [00:22:51] Part Bill Maher. Sure. He is doing good work. I have to say because he's just getting people talking. People hate him. People love him, but he's getting people talking and that's his business and it's good. It's just a very important thing in our society that we're able to do that. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:07] I like the panels. I like Steve Aoki testing antacids.

Bill Nye: [00:23:11] He's a good guy. He had fun. We're going to do an album. We're going to do a song.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:15] Are you really?

Bill Nye: [00:23:16] Yeah, sure. He's really into it, but God, he's so successful right now. You think I'm busy? Man, oh, man. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:22] He's done a great job with branding. Like he's the DJ guy now. When you think of a DJ, there you go.

Bill Nye: [00:23:27] Yeah, yeah, and he's, by all accounts, very good.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:30] Speaking of branding, you got the bowtie still rocking. Those are like the Larry King suspenders of science.

Bill Nye: [00:23:34] Yeah, getting the Larry King suspenders is a big step. I'm not going there but the bowtie I recommend to all. It does not slip into the soup, does not flop into the flask, and dressed up. When you wear a tuxedo, once in a while, there'll be some H-wood guys, some Hollywood actor wearing a straight tie or just buttons or black with black, with black buttons on black, with a black Carnation -- okay. But when you're dressed up, you wear a tuxedo with a white shirt and a bowtie. That's what it is.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:05] It's part of your brand, but it also seems like it's part of your mindset, the bowtie.

Bill Nye: [00:24:08] Well, I guess, yeah, now I'm stuck with it. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:11] You devoted significant real estate to that in the book.

Bill Nye: [00:24:14] So here's the thing, when you tie your shoe, you want it to be a symmetrical bow because then it doesn't come untied. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:22] I did not know that.

Bill Nye: [00:24:23] Think of the loss of productivity in our societies. People have to bend down and re-tie their shoes, 10 seconds a day, 30 seconds a day, times 300 million. Oh my, the number of seconds a day, we lose to miss tied shoes. Oh, the humanity.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:39] Billions of dollars. 

Bill Nye: [00:24:40] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:41] Every decade or so.

Bill Nye: [00:24:42] Yes. You want the US to be competitive. We got to tie square bows on our shoelaces. Being a little ironic, everybody, if I'm going too fast for you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:51] No, of course. When I was in kindergarten way to learn how to tie our shoes, using the two bows method.

Bill Nye: [00:24:55] Two bows are good, rabbit ears.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:57] Yeah. But there was the easy way which required one bow or one loop. Sorry. 

Bill Nye: [00:25:02] Oh, well you wrap one loop with the other and poke through. Or do you make two loops and tie the bloops together?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:08] Ah, the first way is what I --

Bill Nye: [00:25: 09] You get the same answer.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:11] Yeah, this is something I'd love to solve right now. I got in trouble and I was the last kid to get the sticker that says I can tie my shoes because I wanted to do it the easy way and it was the original way with two loops. But my question was always, "If there's an easy way in a hard way, and they both yield the same result, why would you do it the hard way?" 

Bill Nye: [00:25:26] Of course, many people would reverse what you consider easy and hard. You had some intuition. That your teacher suppressed. The humanity, man, you're a mess.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:35] It all led to this too.

Bill Nye: [00:25:36] Yes, look at you now.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:37] I could have made something of myself. 

Bill Nye: [00:25:39] Well, hey, we're in downtown New York, everybody. We're in Manhattan. We're in Times Square. We got it going up.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:47] That's right. Well, the book, Everything All at Once, you mentioned, there are certain strategies that always get results. One of those was looking at the world with radical curiosity. What is that?

Bill Nye: [00:25:55] Well, here's the thing. It's very easy to not go to the trouble to investigate things, but no matter what, the thing is -- how to tie your shoe, how to best write a letter, how to best send an email, whatever it is. A lot of things we can tune out because we feel it's too much to take in. However, my claim is if you're always curious, the world's always exciting and every day you will learn something. Big idea behind that is everybody knows something you don't, and this is quite an insight.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:27] It is. I loved that idea as well. I want to stick with radical curiosity.

Bill Nye: [00:26:32] Radical curiosity.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:33] How do we develop that? How do you nurture that? What if we find where the type of person who just accepts things at face value or doesn't bother to investigate? how do we develop it in ourselves and nurture it if we don't necessarily have it? 

Bill Nye: [00:26:43] Well, the main thing is to get a copy of my book.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:46] Of course.

Bill Nye: [00:26:46] There's 20 in a carton. They make great gifts. The eclipse is coming up. I encourage everybody to get out and under the eclipse because you'll see something that you just probably will never see again. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:58] Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about keeping your natural childlike curiosity is radical curiosity, something else.

Bill Nye: [00:27:04] Oh no.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:05] It's really the same thing.

Bill Nye: [00:27:06] Yeah, there's an expression everybody throws around these days, "Thinking outside the box."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:10] Yes.

Bill Nye: [00:27:11] It's radical. So outside the box -- do you know the puzzle where you have nine dots? 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:19] Nine dots.

Bill Nye: [00:27:19] And then you have to draw four lines to connect all nine.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:23] I do know it and I can't think of the solution.

Bill Nye: [00:27:25] Well, the solution is you go beyond the box of dots. I think that's where the expression came from.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:31] It's like a giant open triangle on one side.

Bill Nye: [00:27:34] It looks like a Delta kite.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:35] Right.

Bill Nye: [00:27:35] Yeah. I think that's where the expression came from.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:37] Oh, really, okay.

Bill Nye: [00:27:38] But as I tell people, you don't always have to be outside the box about everything. I get these emails from NASA. And so many of them have, "Disruptive out of the box game-changing seminar." No, it isn't. We've got a better rivet. Which is important. I've mentioned fasteners earlier.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:56] Right.

Bill Nye: [00:27:26] You want better rivets, but they are probably not radically game-changing outside the box things. They're just a little better.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:05] It's a small gain.

Bill Nye: [00:28:06] Incremental improvements.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:07] It's a small game that's being changed by that game-changing invention, I think. They are the strategy that gets results, you mentioned, was being driven by a desire for a better future. But isn't everyone driven by this in some way?

Bill Nye: [00:28:18] I'm not sure. I meet a lot of people -- well, for example, an example of Pluto, you meet a lot of people that want Pluto to be a planet because it was

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:27] Right. That's true. It like affects their childhood, somehow. 

Bill Nye: [00:28:30] So you grew up with one thing. Now it's something else, so okay. Isn't that cool. Isn't that exciting? My grandfather rode a horse into World War I. You don't want to ride a horse into a modern battle.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:43] No, generally.

Bill Nye: [00:28:44] I'd prefer an up-armored vehicle, yeah. Things change. That's not a bad thing. It's a thing as the human population increases. You could argue that your quality of life is going to go down because there'll be less for everybody. But oh no, look at the modern mobile phone. This thing tells me which side of the street I'm on. I can watch the front porch of my house from your studio on the camera. We all talk about Wi-Fi like it's nothing like it's a day at the office. It's extraordinary. This all, by the way, comes from engineers.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:19] Yes.

Bill Nye: [00:29:20] It comes from electrical engineers, sitting there thinking deep thoughts. Having meetings agreeing on international standards that we all take for granted, this idea that regulations are bad, I just think is just absolutely wrong. It's like a machine. You want a machine to have all the parts it needs, but no extra parts you want all the regulations you need, but no extra ones.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:41] True. Yeah. I can see that. I think the trick is in the balance, of course.

Bill Nye: [00:29:45] We're going to eliminate one out of every two regulations. Where did you get that number?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:48] Yeah, that figures.

Bill Nye: [00:29:50] Where did you get one half? What? You drive either side of the street, you pay taxes on the whole road. You drive either side. That's fine, man. I think you have rights. Yeah, you go out there and drive on the left and the US. Party on!

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:05] Yeah. Yeah. What could go wrong?

Bill Nye: [00:30:06] Well, you'll see.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:07] How do we encourage people to be more willing to take the actions needed to make changes --? 

Bill Nye: [00:30:12] To listen to your podcast that's the key.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:14] There you go. 

Bill Nye: [00:30:15] I think that's really the key to the future is this podcast. I just want to get people excited about this process. I mean, we're living at a time. It is very reasonable that we will discover life on another world. We know we have spacecraft roving on the planet Mars right now, the Curiosity Rover and Opportunity -- this rover called Opportunity is still roving on Mars. It is reasonable that if not the next spacecraft, the one after that and the one after that will lead us to where there is liquid water. Everywhere on earth that we have even dampness. We have something alive, bacteria of some sort. Is there something alive on Mars? Does it have DNA? Is it like us or is it a whole other thing that discovery would change the course of human history? I'm not saying we would all start driving on the left in the US.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:08] No, let's not get crazy.

Bill Nye: [00:31:09] Yeah. But it would be profound like Copernicus, proving that if you want the right answer, you show that the earth goes around the sun, not the other way around. It changed everything. We have international commerce because we discovered that we live on a ball, orbiting another ball. It's fantastic. Just think what it could mean for medicine. If we found a new type of life.

Jen Harbinger: [00:31:32] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Bill Nye. We'll be right back.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:37] This episode is sponsored in part by Fiverr. I love this website. I use it for all these little random tasks where it's like, "Hey, can somebody run? Traffic to this page and see if it breaks when it all happens at the same time, or can someone do a quick voiceover for this little thing. And Peter, you're not available because you're building a swing set in the backyard with a wig on." 

Peter Oldring: [00:31:55] Exactly. I'm too busy, sinking a swing set into 1200 pounds of concrete, a real story.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:01] Yeah. That's a whole different thing. 

Peter Oldring: [00:32:03] Even the biggest of kids won't tip this set.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:05] That's right now. Huge, huge children.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:56] Stay tuned after the show. We've got a trailer of our interview with Molly Bloom who ran infamous underground poker games in Los Angeles and New York that were attended by A-listers mobsters and eventually landed her in hot water with the FBI. If you've seen the movie Molly's Game, you'll know she was a master of psychology and used a lot of the tactics and techniques that she taught us here on the show. That trailer is at the end of the episode coming right up.

[00:34:20] Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going and to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, so you can go check out those amazing sponsors for yourself. visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. The link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode here with Bill Nye. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:45] What about Elon colonizing Mars? What do you think about that?

Bill Nye: [00:34:48] All right, so couple things, first of all, we don't like the word colony. Let's go with settlement.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:54] Oh, yeah, well, as Americans, we're kind of averse.

Bill Nye: [00:34:56] Well, and also if you're an African, you know, there was a lot of trouble with colonialism and South America. These people who had extraordinary germs and weapons showed up from Europe, showed up in these places, and took over because when you have technology that foreign advance when you have rifles versus spears, rifles versus bow and arrows, things happen. It's the way humans are.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:18] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:35:19] We don't want to colonize. We want to settle but I don't think you want to settle on Mars. If you think you do go to Antarctica for a couple of years and don't go to the shore, the edge of the ice sheet, where there are penguins jumping around and krill and whales and big birds and stuff, penguins -- no, you go to the dry valley, that hasn't snowed or rained in over a century. There's no water and don't breathe. You have to take your own air. Just see what you think. Mars, there's no air. You will notice that immediately. What are you thinking? You're not thinking.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:55] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:35:56] And this romantic notion that we'll go settle on Mars and have a two-planet species. Dude, really? A scientific outpost akin to McMurdo Station, I get it, but --when I was in Greenland last summer on the ice sheet, there is nothing. It's not like, "I'm going to take my rifle. Live off the land up there on the ice sheet." No, there is nothing to shoot. It's just sunlight and ice, more than a mile thick. And in every direction you look, the horizon is more ice. However, having a science base on Mars would be very cool. That would be a whole another very cool thing. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:34] The Internet is going to be faster on Antarctica as well.

Bill Nye: [00:36:37] While you're worrying, our assets as they're called at Mars, the orbiting spacecraft we use to relay data from the surface to earth, goes up to martian orbit, then from there to earth. Those spacecraft are getting old. They're getting worn out. So we've got to replace them. And the cost of planetary science, you guys, it's nine percent of the NASA budget, which is in turn 0.4 percent of the federal budget. It's 0.036 percent of the federal budget. It's not very much money and with it, we make these extraordinary discoveries. So it's a worthy use of our intellect and treasure, my fellow citizens of the earth.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:17] A lot of what you've done, your whole life has been geared towards kids, but you don't have any kids of your own.

Bill Nye: [00:37:23] I think for two reasons, my parents stopped getting along. When your parents get separated, you think it's your fault as a kid. I didn't make this up. I'm not a professional psychiatrist. Then the other thing is my family has this genetic condition called ataxia. It contributed to my parents separating. My dad became very stubborn because you lose your balance. This is before there were ADA access ramps everywhere. This is back in the old days. So he would fall down and insist everything was fine. It was a way of dealing with this condition. Plus he had been a prisoner of war. There's some speculation that exacerbated the deterioration of his nerves, but I just equated being married with misery. The possibility of passing on this condition that led to misery seemed more than I could bear.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:16] You don't have that, or you do have that. And it's not that bad.

Bill Nye: [00:38:18] Well, as far as anybody can tell, I don't have it. And you know why I don't have it. Nope, nobody knows. So we're in a study by we, I mean my immediate family and my extended family cousins and everybody we're in a study at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, which is part of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. We are trying to sort this out. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:38] Tell us about cognitive dissonance. This was really interesting. You wrote, "When you have a worldview and you're confronted with evidence that contradicts it, you got to do something. You have dissonance, conflict in your mind. You either change your whole worldview, which is quite difficult the older you get, or you dismiss the evidence. Along with that, you dismiss the authority." That sounds pretty dangerous.

Bill Nye: [00:39:00] Right now. It's the best explanation I have for why people are doubling down on climate change denial. So here's the evidence. Here's the data, here's our gas samples – 2016, it will be the hottest year on record. 2010, 2020, it will be the hottest decade on record. This is consistent with our computer models. This is clearly a human-caused climate change. "No, it isn't. No, it isn't. No, it isn't." And the more evidence you present, the more the deniers doubled down and along with cognitive dissonance, there's an expression, the backfire effect. That seems to be what it is. Unfortunately, now we have climate deniers in positions of power in our government. I don't know how long that's going to last. For those of you listening, every day there's some new revelation about. The current administration. That's very troubling.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:49] I looked at, of course, reviews of the book, which came out this morning. Is that right?

Bill Nye: [00:39:52] Yes. Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:53] Out this morning.

Bill Nye: [00:39:53] Can you feel the excitement.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:54]  Of course, who can't. A lot of folks on the websites where people review books, Amazon and such wrote, now I feel even more insignificant about all the things going wrong. I think that's probably the opposite effect you were hoping for with the book.

Bill Nye: [00:40:06] Well, keep in mind. One review is not really the whole.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:11] I'm bringing this up to put needles into the conversation.

Bill Nye: [00:40:12] Well, thank you for your needling.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:13] You're welcome.

Bill Nye: [00:40:14] So one of the things about astronomy especially is it's humbling. The more you learn about the cosmos, the less significant you are. However, isn't it amazing that we can know that? How cool is that, that we can know that we are insignificant. I hope it gives everybody pause. Now, as far as being insignificant, as far as being helpless goes, keep in mind that humans now move more earth and rock than nature does. We're talking about the movement of tectonic plates and volcanoes and erosion is not as much of an effect as you and me. You and I are. That's a hell of a thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:56] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:40:57] With this comes responsibility. We are in charge of the planet. And if you have science fiction buffs out there, we now are running the show here. You know, in science fiction stories, they go, "That's the cold planet. That's the warm planet. That's the planet where they play the bagpipes or whatever they do." Well, it's like that now. We are running the whole planet for better or for worse. And so this is a responsibility that we have to take.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:27] Imposter syndrome is what we call this where people feel like, "Oh, I can't do this. They're going to figure out I'm a fraud." 

Bill Nye: [00:41:31] Which do you ever feel that? 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:33] Of course.

Bill Nye: [00:41:33] Yes, you're broadcasting on your potting of cast, you're an interviewer and you go to the influencer dinner and you go, "Who am I?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:41] Do the dishes with  Bill Nye.

Bill Nye: [00:41:43] Who am I?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:43] And I'm so insignificant. But I think it makes a lot of us afraid to even try to solve big problems. We just think --

Bill Nye: [00:41:48] No, you got to get out there. You got to believe you can do something that you have to be optimistic, or you won't do anything. If you don't think you can accomplish something, you will not accomplish it. That's my claim.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:01] That for sure is true. Does it help to learn about the fear, the authenticity, and that kind of thing? 

Bill Nye: [00:42:07] No, no, no, no. Stick your head in the sand, ignore it. No, of course. The more self-awareness you have the better. I encourage you all to just go out there and try it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:17] You wrote about internalizing fears with respect to this, and the example you gave was James Cameron building a submarine. So he can go and do some exploring on his own.

Bill Nye: [00:42:26] He's the real deal.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:26] Yeah.

Bill Nye: [00:42:27] He's a very successful movie maker because he, as far as I can tell, is an extraordinary storyteller. But along with that, he is deeply curious about the world, our world. I went with him to Barbara Mikulski's office. Barbara Mikulski was a Senator from Maryland. She just retired and she was a big supporter of New Horizons, the mission to Pluto. I went with James Cameron, Lou Friedman who is the head of the planetary society at that time -- a longtime colleague of Carl Sagan. The three of us went to Barbara Mikulski's office. We had 10,000 postcards from members of the planetary society who supported a mission to Pluto that was in the year 2000. He really wanted a mission to Pluto and he wanted to put a binocular camera, zoom camera, on the martian rover Curiosity. And the claim is it would add $600,000, 0.6 million to the budget. And they decided not to do it. I'm not sure that was the best decision, but he wanted to go to the bottom of the ocean again. You know, he got really into the Titanic and he made, I don't know, dozens of trips to the Titanic in a Russian submarine. That's made for that purpose really deep, deep. I mean, that's how he made that movie. He went down there and looked at the whole thing and studied it inside out. But on the same token, he wanted to go to the deepest part of the ocean, which had only been visited once in 1960 by these Navy officers, US Naval officers who were assigned to go there and see what was down there. And they had so much turbulence created by their little motors, their little propellers.

[00:43:59] They really didn't discover much, but Cameron spent his own money. In my recollection, it's $23 million, which doesn't go as far as it used to. I don't have to tell you -- to go to the bottom of the ocean to a very, very deepest part. And he made a whole bunch of remarkable discoveries. One of them that really fascinated me is just a kilometer away, a mile away from the very, very, very deepest part, there's a whole bunch of living things, these crazy tunicates and these weird rattail fish swimming around, but then you go to the very deepest part and there's nothing, it's a dead zone by human standards. I'm sure there are all sorts of bacteria and viruses that he brought samples back, but it indicates something about ocean currents that is really fundamental. You know, it's easier to explore the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean. If you've got a pair of binoculars, you can look at the moon.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:51] That's true.

Bill Nye: [00:44:52] Bottom of the ocean. No. The three Cs, it's cold, crushing, and corrosive. It's hard to get down there. Everything rust when you're on a ship and you go down even a little ways, it's freaking cold. And you go down a little bit more and it'll crush you like an empty soda can.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:09] That's terrifying, but not for James Cameron apparently.

Bill Nye: [00:45:12] Well, he was, I'm sure he was very respectful of the dangers and he pulled it off. I mean, he did it. It's very cool.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:19] Everybody knows something you don't. You mentioned that earlier. We're all in silos. Why is this important? How do we break the habit? 

Bill Nye: [00:45:25] I just try to be aware of it all the time. I mean, there are people that know things. I don't. Everybody listening knows something I don't. And I got to appreciate that I was in a car this morning with a guy driving. He knows Manhattan traffic better than I do. I guarantee you, he knows the tricks to getting around that. I'll never know that stuff. It's okay. That's his business. It's good. It's cool. We're wearing textiles. What do we know about textile weaving hardly anything --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:53] Not much.

Bill Nye: [0045:53] But there are experts. Thank goodness.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:56] What do you think is the top bias that keeps people from thinking critically? What can we teach people to help them become better thinkers?

Bill Nye: [00:46:03] You got to be open-minded. I fight it. We all fight it. There's a term right now, mansplaining.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:08] Yes.

Bill Nye: [00:46:09] Where you just presume that you know stuff that you really don't and it's annoying. With that said, we're constantly making judgments, constantly deciding what's good or bad or what the best course of action is continually all day, we're doing that, but we want to be open-minded. We want to look for new ways of doing things, not just because of the danger of being set in your ways, but because of the experience of new things. You're going to make a discovery. Every time you explore two things are going to happen -- no matter what it is, your backyard or Mars, you're going to make discoveries about the traffic in New York, but you're also going to have an adventure. You're going to have an adventure. And that's what drives us is that love of adventure, of novel experiences.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:59] By the way, I meant to tell you, guys, when we recorded this show, this episode, Bill and I had met a few years prior, but I didn't expect him to remember that -- of course, washing dishes with some random guy in New York City. And I went back to New York City. We did this, rented a studio in Times Square, the entire recording studio, Jen and I walked in there with our camera crew. We walk in the studio and the whole thing just reeks of marijuana. Someone had just gotten done. I mean, within the hour, smoking a whole lot of joints, at least two, and just left him in the ashtray. And when I got there, I was like, oh great. I've got Bill Nye, the Science Guy, coming in here who spent his entire life, trying to teach kids to become these upstanding educated citizens when they get older. And he's going to come in here and think that we burned a joint, Jen and I at 6:30 in the freaking morning on a Tuesday right before an interview. And at this point, I want to say Jen was pregnant when we did this. Like, you know, it, wasn't a good look. It was not a good look. And of course, we had to immediately explain to Bill Nye, like, "Just so you know, that's not our marijuana smell that you're smelling." No, if there's anything wrong with that, but you know, she's three months pregnant or four months pregnant.

[00:48:10] Great. Big thank you to Bill Nye, the Science Guy for coming on the show here, we'll link to his show and his stuff in the show notes on the website. Please do use our website links if you buy any books from any guests on the show, it does help support us here. I had to create and do good work. Worksheets for this episode to review what you've learned from Bill Nye. That's in the show notes. Transcript of this episode, also in the show notes. And there's going to be a video of this interview on our YouTube channel. It's not up yet, but it will be soon over at jordanharbinger.com/youtube.

[00:48:37] I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships, using systems and tiny habits. So that it's all about consistency. That's over at our Six-Minute Networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com/course. Don't do it later. Do it now. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Build your network before you need it, even if you feel like it's starting from scratch the drills, just take a few minutes per day. I wish I knew this stuff decades ago. This has been game-changing for me. Find it all for free at jordanharbinger.com/course. By the way, most of the guests on the show actually subscribed to the course and the newsletter. So come join us, you'll be in smart company. Speaking of building relationships, you can always reach out and/or follow me on social. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also add me on LinkedIn. I'm posting there all the time. 

[00:49:22] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. The episode is produced by Jen Harbinger, engineered by Jase Sanderson. The ads were fun because of Peter Oldring. Show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola, and I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions, and those of our guests are their own, and I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who is into science or just loves Bill Nye, please do share this with them. Hopefully, you find something great in every episode, so please share the show with those you love. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

Molly Bloom: [00:50:08] I went to LA and needed to get the first job that I could and got hired by this guy who was a pretty demanding boss. I was his personal assistant. He said, "I need you to serve drinks at my poker game." So I'm like, "Okay, great." And I bring my playlist and my cheese plate and I'm thinking, you know, the players are going to be these overgrown frat boys. But then, Ben Affleck walks in the room and Leo DiCaprio and a politician that was very well-recognized, and heads of studios, heads of banks, and all of a sudden I had this light bulb moment that poker is my Trojan horse. I just need the control and have power over this game because it has this incredible hold over these people. Why do these guys with their access to anyone and anything come to this dingy basement to play this game?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:57] What is the most money you've seen someone lose in one night?

Molly Bloom: [00:51:01] A hundred million dollars.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:02] How did the mob get involved?

Molly Bloom: [00:51:05] Around Christmas, a door open and this guy that I'd never seen before, pushed his way in and stuck a gun in my mouth, then he'd beat the hell out of me. And he kind of gave me this speech about how, if I told anyone about this, or if I didn't comply, then they would take a trip to Colorado to see my family. Then the Feds got involved and the first thing they did was they took all my money. I moved back to LA. I'd gotten a pretty decent job. 10 days later, I get a call in the middle of the night, "This is Agent so-and-so from the FBI, you need to come out with your hands up." I walked into my hallway when my eyes adjusted to the high beam flashlights, I saw 17 FBI agents, semi-automatic weapons pointed at me.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:44] If you want to learn more about building rapport and generating the type of trust that Molly Bloom needed to run her multi-million dollar operation and hear about how it all came to an end check out episode 120 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.