At the end of the day, we all have the same home.
There are few things that I love more than listening to the Joe Rogan Experience during my daily walk.
I consider Joe Rogan to be the ultimate connecting dot to worlds of unnecessary information that I didn’t know I needed until I heard it.
His podcasts probably has the widest scope of topics of all podcasts out there, meaning he has the greatest variety in guests at this table too. Athletes, politicians, scientists, artists, musicians… and astronauts.
Some episodes just stand out to you more than others. Last night, I was listening to the one with Garrett Reisman, who is a former NASA Astronaut and is currently a Professor of Astronautical Engineering at USC and a Senior Advisor at SpaceX.
How people (organisms who technically have the same brain that I do) are somehow intelligent enough to build rockets and go to space is beyond me but this Garrett also just seems like a great guy to be around.
This conversation is all the proof I need and I’ll happily share it, just for the sake of it not fading into the pits of YouTube where I’ll never be able to find it again.
Joe: ‘’Now, on that first day — was that actually the first time ever you were in space?’’
Garrett: ‘’Yeah, that was my first mission.’’
Joe: ‘’So your first view of the Earth from above?’’
Garrett: ‘’Yeah.’’
Joe: ‘’Wow. What was that like?’’
Garrett: ‘’Well, I didn’t see it at first as I was down in the shuttle and there is only one window down there. It’s right in the corner, and it was like the size of a dinner plate. Well, you got a lot of work to do when you’re up there so I was working like crazy. After about 30 minutes, I see this big blue globe from the window. And I’m like …. ‘’that’s the Earth. I should probably look at that.’’ So I closed my eyes, meditated for a bit, do whatever you gotta do to get ready to see the Earth. When I felt ready, I floated up to the window, I opened up my eyes and just gazed at it.
What that moment felt like is really really hard to describe in words. But if I had to pick one word to describe what I was feeling in that moment? It’d be…
Meh.’’
Joe: ‘’What? Really? Just ‘meh’?!’’
Garrett: ‘’Just meh. I mean, of course it was pretty. It had a lot of those Earth colours, like blue and green. But I mean, we’ve all seen pictures of the Earth. We got HD video coming down and you can see stuff in those videos that you can’t even see with your own eyes, like the Aurora and all that. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful, but just a little underwhelming. I guess my expectations were too high.’’
Joe: ‘’Yeah. Most people that have done this talk about this realization that we’re all on this thing together and all these boundaries of cultures and countries are all nonsense.’’
Garrett: ‘’Yeah, they call that the ‘overview effect’. Lots of guys come down and talk about that a lot, about a world without borders. And it’s a beautiful sentiment and I don’t want to knock that down in any way, but that didn’t strike me as a sudden realization. I knew that before I went. You shouldn’t have to strap into a rocket and blast off into space to see we’re all human beings.
The things that unite us are so much more important than the things that divide us like race, sex and religion. At the end of the day, we all have the same home.’’
I just loved this conversation.
We all have the same home. It’ s a reminder that we need much more than we think we do.
You can listen to the podcast here.
