Nice to see you. I'm here. I'm Mr. Man. We're Washington DC. That's right. We're a celebration of explorations. Exploration. So what does exploration mean to you? So I'm getting an award. What else an explorer? No, no, no. No, no. But I don't own an explorer. And then I realize, kind of, I do. Because the Earth's surface has been explored. Yes. And now we're in the realm of ideas in our own sense. So I think you're a poet. You know, you're a science communicator. So you explore through your love of language and your love of science. I love language. I mean, that's, language is an access into your soul and curiosity. And it allows you to think about the world in new ways. This is what a poet does. They say, here's something you've taken for granted your whole life. Now you are compelled to look at it and think about it in a whole new way. In fact, I don't need a poet to describe something that's already extraordinary. You don't need a poet? Not to describe to this order that's already extraordinary. What I want a poet to do is take something that I am taking for granted. Take something that I've forgotten how to be interested in and impressed by. I believe so. And then elevate it. There's a line by Charles Darwin, which talks about the importance of high-jacking our attention in order to awaken the minds of attention. Yes. There's a lethargy of custom and the film of familiarity. And what he says is- He said, order? He said, attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise. And this into astonishment. And this into stupified, amazing. I would say what transcends all of that? Yes. It's wonder. Yes. Well, Charles, say the point of term wonder junkie. Would you say you're wonder junkie? I'm a wonder junkie. And Anne. Me, Anne. It can only be a legit wonder junkie. If you can spill some of that wonderment into others. Oh, you have to. Otherwise, you can't wonder by yourself. I got wonder. Another one for you. Here comes the artist's back in the world. Oh, here comes the artist's back in the world. Here comes the artist's back in the world. Here comes the artist's back in the world. He said that the difference between the artist and the neurotic is the following. Both of them take in the world with incredible intensity. But the neurotic chokes on his introversion. He's overwhelmed, right? Oh. The artist takes in the world, reworks it, and outputs it as a work of art. So it's how we respond to kind of overwhelming universe that ultimately determines whether we can make peace with the terrifying, inconsolently, the incongruity of mortal beings who are aware that they are mortal. Exactly. Not only that, here. I agree with what he just said. So, here, this room is filled with explorers. Yes. I mean, we have James Cameron. Is back there somewhere? Somewhere. Yeah, he's back there. Yes. Find that little tough to gray hair there. He's here because, as you know, he's not just a movie maker. Right. The guy has been to the bottom of the ocean. Deepest recess. The deepest. And so, and we're forced to the National Geographic Society party now. And it's all they care about. And what we care about, think about is exploration. Without it, we might as well just move back to the cave. Because that's where we started before the some of us stepped out. Well, others were saying, no, don't go. You might die. Yes, some of them died. Well, that is a huge surprise. Some of them died. We didn't stay in the cave, so we haven't stayed in the cave. We won't stay with limitations in biology. And I can tell you this. Yes. Whatever we send out to explore, even if it's robots, I love me some robots. But nobody ever gave a ticker tape parade to a robot. No, nobody ever asked a robot to write their memoir after coming back from their trip. That's right. That's right. Well, one day the robot will write memoirs. No, I don't want that. No, no, no, no. You're right. Maybe an AI robot will have such inspiration. I mean, here's the thing. When we send a rover to the surface of Mars, it's in a way it's our technological exoskeleton. We're not there physically, but our mind is there. And we're there in a joystick. Yes. And we can reflect and contemplate the significance of crawling the surface of Mars because of this extension. I got you. However, here's something. Yeah. Because I'm all good in it. You are. Here's one I think you missed. And why is there? You might think you missed it. Tell me. There was a rover on the moon before humans landed there. There was a Russian rover. There were other landers and other robotic emissaries on the moon but no one gave a rat's ass because humans were going to the moon. And the humans had names that schoolteachers, they had loved ones, they had hometowns. And each of them had high schools named after them today. Fair enough. So, if you had the comparison, who you going to pay attention to, the rover or the human, it's the human. That's what I'm saying. Fair enough, fair enough. So maybe we should explore it. How do you explore it? Actually, we need to send ourselves in body to Mars. Yeah. And by the way, don't get in the wrong. The full poetic impact or the visceral impact of seeing a person there. Yes. Not only that, you're the... What did I say? Brain part. Where would it go? So, I forgot what I was going to say. No. Yeah. That's all good. That's why we're here. That's why we're here. Well, listen, it's beautiful to see you. Thank you for what you're doing in the world. Thank you for bringing wonder and curiosity to so many millions of people across the planet. Look, I got good and my heroes. I'm a rock star and I appreciate you. I got good material. What to do in the universe is good material, the work room. That is a lot of good material. You got to brain to work with that's even better material. Okay, so I'm going to leave you with more of that. At least we understand the universe. The braille we do. Here's the thing. How do we deal with existential panic? How do we deal with the unknown, unknown? How do we deal with the cosmic infinite? That for me is an issue. I'm overwhelmed by infinity. I'm overwhelmed by my own finit. How do you deal with that? We're not trained to think about infinities. We're trained as Richard Dawkins often says, our faculty, our sensory system, is tuned to just not get eaten by a lion. It's staring at it. So to contemplate infinity, the vastness of the universe, to contemplate reality as brought to us by the methods and tools of science, rather than by our own senses, can be mind blowing. It's a lot to take in. It's a lot to take in. I think I just do a little bit at a time. One day at a time, I didn't come into this world saying, yes, cosmic infinity, that's me. No, you learn about it. You learn how big is the universe. It's bigger than anything you've thought. Well, how big is that? And you analogize it. How deep is time? How we can even do that? At all. At all. At all. This is what blows my mind. Ross Anderson, he wrote an article about the Hubble Space Telescope. He said that the images from the Hubble Space Telescope allow us to mainline space and time through the optic nerves. Yes. And what I'm literally, like, we're mainlining space and time through our eyeballs. I think the Hubble, having turned the universe into our backyard. I just step out and say, yep, that's up there. That's me. That's us. Well, you're going to love this. So when we actually look at the deep field images of the universe, those images distill the complex abstractions of astrophysics into singular expressions of color and light. That's what they do. Indicating Keith's famous couplet, beauty is truth, truth is beauty. So in the end, the universe reveals us to ourselves. I love you, bro. Great to see you. Don't be stranger. No, I won't. Peace, guys. Hang out.