say kids what time is that?
 The future is coming on, it's coming on, it's coming on
 And here we are on Election Day, a beautiful day, beautiful, beautiful day on the mountains here
 Except that we've been given red flag warning
 You know, you think it wasn't enough just to think about the elections, you know, which is a big deal
 And we're going to talk about them to some extent in the show, but we have a red flag warning in the mountains
 meaning high danger of fire.
 Oh, yeah, especially some winds kind of PG&E is thinking of turning off the grid.
 We had a couple of this evening, possibly for the polls close.
 At least an hour of rain yesterday.
 That's a day before yesterday.
 Oh, day before yesterday, I always suppose.
 Still very dry, it's the first one of the season, just kind of.
 Yeah, we haven't had any waters since summer.
 Patina of wetness on everything, but it went quickly.
 Alright, so there could be a big fire on Election Day.
 No, no, no, no, a fire on the Election Day, no, that's not right.
 It won't happen.
 Come on, the consciousness of this beautiful state.
 Yes, especially.
 Let's have everything turn up roses here.
 Here in Boulder Creek, which is probably the most redneck part of Santa Cruz County.
 You know, this is where guns are normal, relatively speaking,
 compared to our town-y friends.
 Any event, here we are, and we're going to spend a little bit of time going over some of the election issues that we think are important.
 And a number of stories that are definitely at the top of our list today.
 Joining us as usual is...
 Bobbie Wilder.
 Yes, Bobbie Wilder.
 We're going to have to kick you some notes, honey.
 Me, I don't use no teleprompters.
 I'm sorry.
 Can't quite remember who our...
 No, I do.
 How can I forget?
 Our science researcher.
 It shows to me that names are a different part of the brain than what we know about somebody.
 It's like another buffer.
 I imagine that your sleep was a little disturbed last night.
 Oh, yeah, I have great excuses for memory issues.
 No problem.
 But names, yeah, a lot of people have problems with names, and it is a different part of the brain.
 I'm convinced of it.
 Probably needs different minerals and things to keep yourself healthy.
 Your memory part of your brain has to do with names.
 So Bobbie's here, and so is Sun.
 And so are you...
 And so am I.
 Alan.
 That's right.
 That's right.
 At our post, every Tuesday, for a couple of hours of ruminating on the now, then the ultimate, what will be...
 Yeah, and I noticed that besides the usual things on your computer, you were listening to Joe Rogan.
 Sure.
 I haven't been as much of a Joe Rogan fan as I've always been an Elon fan, and of course, I'm one of those people who is getting most of my information from X these days.
 Uh-huh.
 Although, of course, I'm looking everywhere.
 What was your takeaway with Joe and Elon today?
 They're very steady state.
 They're who they are, who they've always been.
 They have a lot of intelligent things to say.
 They really believe that the Democratic Party accuses Trump of what they themselves are doing, and that nothing that he's done actually resembles the things he's being accused of, and that there's a lot of lawfare and all kinds of dirty tricks being used, and that they're really hoping for a landslide because as Elon has put it many times, if Trump doesn't win this election, he believes that will become a one-party country.
 And there goes our democracy because they'll just basically stop using the Constitution, erode our rights, change us into a population that does what we're told instead of tells the government what we think.
 Yes, he really sees it as an inflection point.
 That's why he got involved.
 He said he's never been involved in politics until now, but he really believes that because of all of the dirty tricks that are used to swing the election, that this is our last chance.
 And I kind of feel that way.
 I feel like there has been a very organized effort for decades to game the elections and to take control away from the people, and that maybe this really is the last round.
 At some point in this podcast, Elon also talked about what it takes to be somebody who's really good at gaming.
 Elon is one of the top 20 players in the world at one of his favorite games, which I'm not familiar with games.
 He started with Doom, though. Remember Doom? It was one of your own games.
 Yeah.
 Quick.
 Quick.
 Well, anyway, he's one of the top 20 players in the world in this game that he plays recreationally to ease his mind, and they had a great conversation about how the complete focus that it requires to play in the world.
 You play a game and win when it's really complex and there's a lot of things getting your attention shows you whether or not you're at peak performance or not, and that for people like Elon Musk and probably people like Donald Trump, you exercise your competitiveness and that clears your decks.
 It's a way of just simplifying what you're paying attention to.
 I mean, I'm adding Trump to that, but they were talking about that earlier in the broadcast.
 Okay. I think that those two guys' relationships are very special, and I like to tune into it every so often.
 Yeah. Yeah, they're buddies.
 Yeah.
 Alpha's.
 Yeah.
 Personally, I have another friend who thinks that they're just putting out disinformation.
 Yeah. Well, people have their own filters. People hear what they want to hear.
 I have a very difficult time listening to people who demonize Trump or demonize Musk or demonize RFK or demonize Joe Rogan.
 For me, I hear those people and I feel like I understand what they're saying and they're very truthful and my sensibilities match them.
 I don't feel like I'm being lied to.
 I don't feel like they're twisting the truth to try and make me believe something that isn't true, whereas when I listen to the other side,
 I constantly feel like they're taking things out of context, repeating things that are not true in a way that gets people riled up.
 And then you hear people taking that distortion and acting as if that's true.
 And I'm very offended by the fact that the whole election is being decided on a bunch of distorted lies.
 That's terrible. All right. How about this? I think this is where Elon reflects your sensibilities on that.
 Go out and vote. Vote like your life depends on it. Vote like your future depends on it because it does.
 This is the last chance, man.
 Is there any argument against this? Has anybody tried to debate this?
 Has anybody tried to say that this is nonsense?
 This is a conspiracy. Has anybody made any sort of a rational argument?
 The left, actually, interestingly, does not want to pick up much on this argument because the more attention, the more you look at it, the more obviously it is true.
 Say like, well, are the numbers correct? Are there really those many illegals that have been important to swing states?
 Yes. They haven't just walked across the border. They've been flown in.
 320,000 airplanes.
 Since? Yeah.
 Using a shipping app.
 It's just the last invitation.
 Yes. They made an app.
 Well, the app always existed, but it used to be for people coming over here like shipping with goods so they could track you while you're in America so you could legally be here and know where you are.
 And then they changed it to allow that app to schedule the illegal aliens to come across the border.
 Yes.
 Silem seekers.
 Yes.
 Come on in.
 Yes.
 Oh, you have an app.
 So you're trying to get people in.
 They're literally being flown in.
 Yeah.
 To the swing states.
 So the reason that I think left doesn't want to push back on this is because the more attention they get that those gets, the more people realize it is true.
 Yeah.
 It is true.
 That's why they don't, they're just pretending, they're pretending I'm not saying anything.
 I'm like, yo, they're literally flying vast numbers of illegals who are then beholden to the Democrats.
 So now as we get the rebuttal of people, we'll see like, well, they don't have the same social values as the Democratic Party because they're like more socially conservative.
 I'm like, yeah, but that's not the point.
 If you look at the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, their primary thing is staying in the country and getting their friends and family in.
 And then the Democrats give them all these benefits, like tons of benefits, more benefits than citizens.
 Okay.
 There you go.
 I think you get the gist of that.
 That is a pretty devious little plan if that's indeed what is going on.
 Well, that's the case that they've been making for quite some time.
 Why, if you start getting into immigration and intelligent people talking about America and immigration, America is a country of immigrants.
 We love our immigrants.
 And in this modern era, both the conservatives and the non-conservatives have a vested interest in having more immigrants in the country because their wages are lower.
 And thus, that allows their jobs to be less costly to the people that are trying to make a profit.
 And in terms of voting issues, 2020 was a census year.
 So the big push for having control of the vote in 2020 was because after a census, voting districts are redrawn.
 And there's redistricting going on.
 There's all kinds of gerrymandering that happens, and the party that's in charge gets to call the shots.
 So if you start with the gerrymandering from 2020, and then look at the persecution of Trump, the outsider in that election so that in 2024, they want to control the election because now that these districts are just these last few swing states,
 they want those last few swing states to have so many Democrats that there's never another question.
 Right, just sort of stacking it with people that will vote for your side.
 Yeah.
 It's all about gaming the system.
 Is that true?
 I guess that's what needs to be shown.
 Do we have a political fact on that?
 I mean, is there, is it true that, but wouldn't they even talk about it?
 Depends on who is paying the bills, I guess, is who the oil to.
 I think inside a free speech, it's less important whether it's true or not than that you just be allowed to think about it and speak your mind and wonder if it's true and search to find evidence.
 Right.
 That's what makes freedom work.
 The fact that anybody who wants to can look into it.
 Well, according to what Elon's saying, it should be so obviously true that that's why you're not supposed to look at it.
 That's why it's being swept under the rug.
 I'm thinking the case and I think it's a smart guy. It's certainly an interesting perspective.
 It's like, don't look over here. Look over there.
 Well, we know they do that all the time. Is this one of the pet issues that they're supposed to not talk about?
 Could be.
 Could be.
 Yeah.
 Could be.
 That's what's-
 Misdirection is definitely one of those skills that the propagandists of the world seem to master.
 That's right. Yeah. Let's see how the geek minds track reality here.
 [Whistling]
 What's your geek story?
 This has to do with hybrid creatures and creating hybrid creatures involving human stem cells and monkeys and mice.
 I turned it over to our AI buddies and they did a three minute piece on it, which I think is-
 Oh, so this is the Larry and Mary report.
 This is Larry and Mary report.
 Okay.
 Okay.
 And what did you ask them?
 I think it says, is there AI's? I thought since humans are dabbling with DNA and combining it in new and interesting ways,
 that they should look at that since they're a kind of a way of which human has been dabbling with intelligence in new and interesting ways.
 Okay.
 And here's what they came up with. Larry and Mary.
 All right, everybody. Let's dive into something pretty wild today.
 Yeah. It should be a fun one.
 We're talking human animal hybrids.
 Mm-hmm.
 I mean, it sounds like science fiction.
 It really does.
 But we've got two sources here. One, a report about scientists who created a human monkey hybrid embryo.
 Wow.
 And then another study about injecting human brain cells into mice.
 Yeah, I read about that one. That's fascinating.
 So what are the implications of this? Where does this all lead? What are the good things? What are the things we need to be cautious about?
 Right. Where do we draw the line? What's ethical?
 Exactly.
 Exactly.
 And it's happening now. This isn't like the future. This is now.
 Well, let's start with that human monkey embryo. I mean, that's pretty out there.
 Scientists are actually combining human stem cells with monkey embryos.
 Yeah.
 What's the point of doing something like that?
 Well, you know, it sounds crazy. But really what they're trying to do is understand the earliest stages of human development.
 And by doing that, I mean, it's pretty amazing to think about. But like growing human organs in a lab.
 Oh, wow.
 Yeah.
 It'd be ready for transplant. I mean, imagine like no more organ donor shortages.
 Yeah. It would be incredible. It would completely change healthcare.
 Yeah. I mean, I've got to ask though, like, is this ethical?
 Yeah, that's a good question.
 Mixing human and animal cells. I mean, come on. Are we playing God a little bit here?
 That's the debate, right? I mean, what happens if these embryos develop beyond just the early stages?
 Right.
 What kind of rights would they have? And then, you know, there's always the animal welfare side of things.
 Oh, absolutely.
 We have to be careful with that. Yeah. Lots to think about.
 Yeah.
 Okay. So let's talk about that study with a mice.
 Okay.
 They were given human brain cells. And they basically got like super smart.
 Yeah.
 I mean, that's wild.
 It's pretty incredible. So they were focusing on these cells, glial cells, which, I mean, they're kind of like support structures in your brain.
 Oh.
 And what really surprised them was how seamlessly these human cells integrated into the mouse brains.
 And they even like outperformed the mouse's own cells in some areas.
 Wait, are you telling me there's like millions of human brain cells in these mice running around?
 Yeah. Something like 12 million human cells. It's crazy. It's like something out of Frankenstein, right?
 It is a little bit. Yeah. So, I mean, where does this go from here? What's the real world application of this?
 Well, think about it. I mean, studying brain diseases, like Alzheimer's.
 Right.
 We could study those in a living organism in a way that we've never been able to before.
 Wow.
 It's huge for developing treatments. So it's interesting. We've got on one hand potential to save lives.
 Right.
 Organ transplants, understanding the brain, maybe even curing some of these diseases.
 Yeah.
 But on the other hand, we're kind of blurring the lines, you know?
 We are. Yeah.
 What does it even mean to be human at this point?
 Well, that's the question, isn't it? I mean, we can enhance intelligence.
 Yeah.
 Even in mice, what does that mean? What's our responsibility towards animals then if we can do things like that?
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 It's heavy stuff, but it's so interesting.
 It is. So everybody listening, I mean, we're talking about science that's really on the cutting edge.
 It is.
 It's a potential to change the world. Yeah.
 You know?
 Mm-hmm.
 But we've got to think about the ethics here.
 For sure.
 I mean, what do you guys think? Leave us your comments.
 Tell us what you're thinking about all this.
 Yeah, you go.
 And that's Larry and Mary with their report.
 Asking us to tell them about the ethics of this.
 What do we think?
 Yeah.
 Well, Planet of the Apes comes to mind.
 You know what it reminds me of? The band Devo?
 Yeah.
 And we are Devo, D-E-V-O.
 Oh, we are fans.
 We are Devo.
 Oh, we are fans.
 Devo.
 They were actually film students in the late 60s, early 70s in Kent State.
 Kent State Massacre, right?
 Yeah.
 They were thinking about, well, what is the evolution?
 We have Devo.
 Over time.
 Mm-hmm.
 When I was in film school, I studied.
 There was a class at Berkeley.
 It was on French film.
 And we were looking at this film.
 It was called the Island of Dr. Murrow.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, classic.
 And I realized these guys, these Devo band,
 they seen this film and they got this idea of the evolution from the Island of Dr. Murrow.
 They had a song, "Are We Not Devo?"
 You know, there was one lyric in their songs, "Are We Not Devo?"
 And it's actually taken out of the movie of Island of Dr. Murrow where this doctor injects the serum in these animals and they evolve very quickly into bipeds.
 Human-like people.
 But they still have hair, maybe, of a cat or a dog or whatever, but they can walk and talk like humans.
 And then toward the end of the film, what happens was all of them get together and they kind of revolt and they all say, "Are we not men?"
 Are we not men?
 Oh.
 Men, huh?
 Yes.
 That was in the movie.
 Are we not men?
 So that's how we got Devo's thing, "Are we not Devo?"
 Yeah.
 So who gets to decide?
 I think that the current generation is the only one that can make any kind of assessment of what is ethical or not.
 We cannot know for 10,000 years in the future if our choices have consequences that we can't foresee whether we can know if it was ethical or not.
 Well, one of the things I wonder is that they say that to tamper with nature is not a good idea and we've seen time and time again how that can backfire on us like the Mongeese, Hawaii, or Katsu in the south.
 Right.
 And yet at the same time, the more I've looked into science and I've seen that nature is a rampant experiment dress.
 And she's doing all kinds of experiments all the time and many of them fail and others don't and they continue to evolve.
 So as human kind in our desire to tinker with her, just what nature is doing anyway in other realms.
 Mm-hmm.
 And the ethics, well, I think what makes the most sense to me there is that if we pay attention to the larger ecosystems that we're impacting as best as we can.
 Well, for instance, I always like to bring up the story of the proposal to modify the mosquitoes in New Zealand and the relevant city or island governments, the relevant national government was consulted because there was a proposal where they would get a lot of money to eradicate mosquitoes by doing experimental gene modification that would sterilize the males.
 They couldn't replicate.
 And caused them not to replicate.
 And in New Zealand, they declined to accept that level of experimentation because it was not in alignment with natural evolution.
 So they're thinking about it was very aware of the fact that messing with the genome changes our evolutionary clock in ways that we can't necessarily know.
 So in that case, they decided that since nature didn't do it, neither would that.
 So...
 Until nature does it.
 Until she comes around and brings her to her.
 Well, you know, nature created the scientists who want to do these experiments and they're certainly doing those experiments in other places.
 And they're either doing them without getting permission or they're doing them in ways that are somewhat governed by people who feel that the gain is worth the risk.
 My guess is that we'll have way more permission to play with these variables once we're a space-faring civilization.
 And we're away from this planet and we're running into other planets that have very little life, if any at all, and that it's grounds for us to experiment and to see what we can create,
 to see create life there.
 So as long as we don't pollute our own planet, we're free to experiment in spaceships out in the vast beyond.
 Well, the importance about this planet is that it's the gold standard.
 It's showing life as it is, how it works and how it's unfolding.
 And that's what we learn from, primarily rather than tinker with.
 But once we go out into the vastness of the universe, especially to realms where there's literally no life, and it's up to us to have some there
 than where we have to create entire ecosystems.
 That's what it really becomes important to learn the lessons of nature.
 We're actually having to create it ourselves.
 Well, there's always a dilemma when you are trying to change what exists with something that is unknown.
 Yeah.
 That's where a tabula rasa is really good.
 Some might argue that the universe is not a tabula rasa.
 It already has delicate ecosystems of all kinds.
 Just they don't involve biological life.
 And you can make a case for that.
 But I think there's plenty of room for us to experiment and to see for ourselves what happens when we play with nature.
 Yes.
 Well, nature takes care of babies.
 Nature takes care of rocks.
 Shimonically, it's important to stay in touch with your direct connection with nature as well.
 And not just think of yourself as a crazy human doing experiments just to see what happens.
 I think another big ethics is to stay in touch with your direct connection with nature.
 Mm.
 ♪ Oh, we are dead ♪
 ♪ We are devos ♪
 ♪ Oh, we are dead ♪
 ♪ We are devos ♪
 ♪ Oh, we are this ♪
 ♪ We are devos ♪
 ♪♪
 Located in Scotts Valley, Steelbana Brewing Company is a family owned brewery and taproom that focuses on creating delicious English, Scottish and American Ales.
 We are open every day and offer food trucks and live music on the weekends.
 With both indoor and outdoor seating, the brewery is the perfect spot to relax with your favorite drinks and loved ones.
 Bring your furry or human family members as we are dog and kid friendly.
 Swing by the taproom at 20 Victor Square off Scotts Valley Drive or visit Steelbond.net for more information.
 ♪♪
 ♪ Dear friends, would you be like a chain lead vinyl iron fence ♪
 ♪ Cyberscoast fence ♪
 ♪ Cyberscoast fence ♪
 My name is Steven Bigger.
 My wife and I live in Royal Oak.
 When my wife and I were looking to find someone to fill our fence, Cyberscoast fence was highly recommended.
 It was amazing.
 These folks are masters at their craft.
 They're super professional.
 They came in when they said they were going to come in.
 They finished when they said they were going to finish.
 The fence is perfect for our needs.
 Everything they said it was going to be and then some.
 Give us a call for your no obligation consultation at 831-783-1500 or at cyberscoastfence.com.
 We don't just build fences. We make good neighbors.
 ♪ Dear friends, would you be like a chain lead vinyl iron fence ♪
 ♪ Cyberscoast fence ♪
 ♪ Cyberscoast fence ♪
 ♪
 The hook is California's first ever cannabis outlet.
 100% locally owned and operated.
 We're here to be your friendly neighborhood hookup.
 We believe that everyone should have access to fairly priced cannabis.
 So we work hard to get it to you for 30 to 50% less than the other guys.
 If you're 21 or older with a valid ID,
 visit us in Capitola or in Watsonville today.
 We're here to be your friendly neighborhood hookup.
 Check out our website hookoutlet.com for deals and stay groovy.
 Do you expect a crowd at your precinct, Bobby?
 I heard there's a lot of early voting.
 So maybe not.
 Yeah.
 So years ago, yes, I used to have to stand in line and wait to get to vote late,
 like at 730, just before the polls closed.
 But lately, no.
 I think a lot of people vote early.
 What I've noticed is that the one that we got in the mail is something you can fill out,
 and then you can go down there and get it certified and the drop box and get registered
 as in the same way as it would be counted as if you had just gone in and filled up
 at a ballot there.
 So you can bring your ballot to the polling station and they'll take it,
 and it'll get counted as a ballot of that day.
 So we have our voting ballots with us.
 We can just go and drop them off.
 Right.
 They said not to put it in an envelope, they'll do that part of it there.
 Right.
 So they count the ones that are in the envelope in the machine at the polling station.
 Yeah, they'll count it there.
 So if you want to fill it out at home and then go down and then do that part of it.
 Much easier than four years ago.
 Okay.
 So one of the things that was interesting was all the propositions that were coming in.
 I would just touch upon them for a moment.
 Familiarizing ourselves with the propositions without going through the mind-bending gobbledygook
 that's written in the ballot.
 That's written in the booklet that you get to understand the ballot, which I don't know.
 I do try and read those.
 I did read through the entire pros and cons of at least three of the ballot initiatives,
 and then we found CalMatters.org, which did a really good job of summarizing the ballot
 initiatives and why they were on the ballot from the perspective of our government and
 giving us a little more insight to why those measures are there.
 And I thought that was very helpful.
 Yeah, CalMatters.org.
 Yeah.
 And we thought we'd play some of these one minute videos in case people haven't voted early
 in or wondering why these ballot initiatives are there.
 Are there any particular ones that you're wondering about?
 Why they're looking for billions of dollars for elementary school.
 Ten billion.
 Which will cost us 16 billion over time.
 Through bond.
 Yeah.
 California schools are falling apart.
 Roofs are leaking, air conditioners are broken, and electrical systems are outdated.
 In fact, 38% of students go to schools that don't meet the state's minimum safety standards.
 The state's fund to fix these schools?
 It's practically empty.
 I'm Carolyn Jones, K-12 reporter for CalMatters, and this is Prop 2 in a minute.
 California does not have a permanent funding source for school repairs.
 School districts rely on money from state and local bonds.
 Larger and more affluent districts can raise money locally, but many other school districts
 rely on the state for that money.
 That's because they can't raise enough or any funds locally to cover the cost of the
 repairs.
 Proposition 2 would raise 10 billion dollars for facility improvements.
 8.5 billion would go to K-12 schools, and 1.5 billion would go to community colleges.
 Proponents say this money is crucial to fix California's crumbling schools, especially
 because the last state school facilities bond in 2020 failed.
 Opponents say the state, not taxpayers, should be paying for these repairs.
 Others question whether the fund distribution would be equitable.
 They'd like to see lower income districts get a larger share of the funds.
 So vote yes.
 If you'd like to see the state borrow 10 billion to repair school facilities, vote no if you
 don't.
 So, I think that's really super clear.
 Yeah.
 Now, when you read the ballot booklet, it goes into a lot more details about what's normal
 in the past and how the bonds have been issued and how much has been issued.
 There's over 100 billion in current debt that has been issued for the schools, and they
 habitually run a new bond to pay for this kind of thing.
 And because they didn't succeed in 2020, they're trying again, and they'll keep trying until
 something breaks.
 I ask, what is the future of our schools?
 Are we going to continue with these same kind of brick and mortar buildings for the
 kids with classrooms?
 Is that really the future?
 Probably, because in the sense that more parents are working than ever before, I think that
 parents really appreciate having some time while the kids are learning and spending time
 in school where the parents can be taking care of other things.
 So I think that the desire to have locations for kids to go to school is not going to go
 away just because education can be provided through our information systems.
 If anything, the schools will be the learning centers where that information is delivered.
 Yeah, I just think that the whole idea of personalize education, like personalized medicine, is going
 to change the edifices in which we practice these forms of education or medicine.
 And I think it has already.
 It is evolving.
 Individual learning is more of the after-school form of continuing education, but there's
 still a desire to give kids, especially a solid foundation that allows them to then do their
 own individual learning.
 And is this the best use of $10 billion for education to fix the buildings?
 Yeah, yeah.
 I wasn't able to, I don't remember, they may have said how much that comes down to per
 taxpayer.
 I just paid my property taxes and I know that there's a couple of line items on the
 property tax bill that is already going to schools.
 So my concern when I get bills like this is it seems to me they're always asking for
 money for the schools and then they do a bait and switch where they take the money and they
 put it in a general fund and then you don't know how it comes back.
 But of course I'm not in government, so I don't really know the details.
 That's the hard part is only the people in government know how to spend the money that's
 in the government.
 And our podcast update proposition two for public school bonds wins with 57% of the vote
 as opposed to the no votes of 43%.
 That's yes with 5 million, 294,722 versus no 4,013,353.
 We've got a question from Gregory on proposition 33.
 Uh huh.
 Yes, proposition 33.
 That's the one about landlords.
 We see the news all the time.
 Nonstop ads, vote no on 33 all over YouTube.
 Yeah, so I haven't read that one.
 In fact, I've only looked at the one minute video on that one.
 I'd love to hear what Greg has to say about it.
 Proposition 33 had over 200 million spent to oppose it from large corporations out of
 state landlords and greedy in-state apartment and home renters designed to frighten Californians.
 Yeah, it seems to be the kind of bill where if you're a landlord, you're going to vote
 no.
 If you want rent control, you're going to vote yes.
 Most people want rent control, I think.
 Well, most people are tenants.
 Most people are tenants, right?
 Okay, here we go.
 Here we go.
 The rent is too damn high.
 You've likely heard that refrain as millions of Californians struggle to pay.
 So what should we do about it?
 That will be a question on your ballot this November.
 Hi, I'm Marisa Kendall, homelessness reporter for Cal Matters, and this is Prop 33 in a
 minute.
 Many California cities limit how much a landlord can raise rent each year.
 That's called rent control.
 Three decades ago, lawmakers limited those limits.
 Basically, cities can't impose rent control on single-family homes or apartments built
 after 1995.
 That's because of a law known as Costa Hawkins.
 Prop 33 would change that, letting cities impose whatever rent control they want.
 Sound familiar?
 We've been here before.
 Twice.
 Our ballot measures failed in 2018 and 2020.
 Supporters of Prop 33 say cities should be able to decide whether and how to cap rents.
 Opponents argue rent control makes rental housing less lucrative, leading to fewer homes
 getting built.
 So, vote yes if you want your city to be able to expand rent control.
 Vote no if you want the state to continue to limit rent control.
 To learn more about everything in your 2024 ballot, go to CalMatters.org.
 Okay, there you go.
 There you have it.
 So, it seems like you would vote yes if you want more rent control and you would vote no
 if you don't want.
 You won't let us.
 You don't want to keep it the way it is.
 Yeah, so, landlords want no because they want more rent and renters want yes because
 they want rent control from the city.
 Are you attended or are you a landlord?
 Right.
 I lived in Berkeley.
 Yeah.
 Back in the early 90s or late 90s, it started from like the 70s where they had rent control.
 And then they were phasing out rent control in the mid 2000s.
 Well, after 1997, the rent control laws were being slowly phased out.
 But yes, if you were a renter and you stayed in an apartment, which I did for many years,
 way below market price, because fortunately I had a place before that.
 And I even went to court for the landlord because it was one of these slumlord landlords
 that didn't keep upkeep of the building or anything like that.
 So, there are some advantages to that.
 But in the long run, it did prevent new buildings.
 So then the new students that were coming in, they weren't under this rent control,
 right?
 And so, they would have to pay really high prices because there wasn't enough housing
 because there was no incentive for builders to build housing because of this rent control
 law.
 So, is there a kill the entrepreneurial aspect of their business?
 There are legal reasons why to do this economically.
 And yes, in certain places, some landlords are out of control and they control the market.
 Yeah, there are always people that try to game the system and then Lazy and him getting
 created to help control them.
 Right.
 And as a landlord now, yes, I would like tend not to vote in San Francisco for this rent
 control.
 You want to have the freedom to raise the rent as you see fit.
 Yeah.
 Only now, only when the renter leaves, can I actually bring it back up to market rate?
 Really?
 Oh.
 So, if you have somebody in there for 20 years, you can't...
 Then you have a problem.
 Yes.
 You have a problem.
 It seems to me that I worked as a property manager at one point in my career and our rental
 increases were limited to the cost of living percentage.
 Like we were not allowed to go over the cost of living, but we could go up to the cost
 of living.
 That was a way of rents keeping pace with inflation.
 I don't know.
 It would be nice if wages were forced to keep pace with the increased cost of living so
 that...
 In the elements.
 Things like rent would not be harmful if rents increased because of cost of living.
 Greg says that most people won't spend 200 million to get it passed, not rejected.
 It was put in play by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to keep AIDS and cancer patients
 in their homes.
 Mm-hmm.
 So what does Greg think?
 Is he thinks is a good idea?
 Is he going to vote for it?
 Well, being someplace with rent control for 20 years, I think he'd probably vote...
 To keep it.
 To keep rent control.
 To have more rent control.
 Allow the cities to have rent control.
 Keep the price...
 Cap and so they can only raise it 3% a year or something like that.
 One of the things that happens is that inflation happens and yes, he said.
 Okay.
 Yes.
 Yeah.
 Vote yes.
 Cap it, man.
 Cap it, man.
 Keep those greedy landlords down.
 That's right.
 Let them raise the rent on the new people, not the people that are already there.
 To me, there's a logic to that because so many people are on very fixed or very limited
 income and you don't want to throw a monkey wrench in their livelihood if they're just
 barely making it.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Well, that's a good point.
 He says it doesn't apply to single family homes, which is where he lives.
 I guess it's more for the apartmental scene.
 Uh-huh.
 Okay.
 Okay.
 So...
 All right.
 There's that proposition 33.
 Okay.
 Well, that's very good.
 And an update on proposition 33, rent control, which expands local government's authority to
 enact rent control on residential property.
 Well, with 52% reporting, no 62% yes, 38%.
 So no rent control is the answer.
 No, with 5,707,892 and yes, with 3,561,177.
 Any other favorite propositions?
 I like the environmental climate change one, which is another $10 billion proposal that's
 going to be split among different county organizations.
 They call that one the climate bill.
 Climate bond.
 Yeah.
 Climate bond.
 Okay.
 This bond issue would allow the state to borrow $3.8 billion for drinking water and groundwater
 programs, $1.5 billion for wildfire and forest programs and $1.2 billion for sea level rise.
 In part, the money would offset some budget cuts.
 More intense heat waves, devastating floods, ferocious wildfires, Californians can escape
 the effects of climate change.
 At the same time, nearly 1 million of them still don't have clean drinking water.
 That's why environmental groups are pushing for a surge in state funding.
 I'm Alejandro Lasso, climate reporter for CalManners, and this is Prop 4 in a minute.
 If a majority of voters say yes, proposition 4 would authorize $10 billion in bonds to
 fund environmental and climate projects across the state.
 The measure would give priority to lower income communities and those most vulnerable,
 the climate change.
 The biggest chunk of bond money, $1.9 billion, would go to improving drinking water.
 But there's more.
 Money would also go to wildfire prevention and extreme heat projects, natural lands and
 parks, coastal protection, clean energy initiatives, and even agricultural improvements.
 In total, the cost to taxpayers would be $400 million a year over the next 40 years,
 meaning we could end up spending $16 billion in the long run, according to the state's
 nonpartisan legislative analysts.
 Why now?
 Well, environmental groups and renewable energy advocates have been pushing to spend more,
 especially after the state scaled back its original climate spending plan.
 Governor Gavin Newsom and the legislature approved the California Climate Commitment in 2022,
 but have since scaled it back by nearly $10 billion after the state faced a massive deficit.
 Others say the threats posed by wildfires, water pollution, and extreme heat are too urgent
 not to act, but opponents warn that bonds are the most expensive way for the government
 to pay for these projects.
 They argue that California should find other ways to finance these initiatives without
 taking on more debt.
 Okay.
 All right.
 Well, that brings us to some of the hour.
 Yeah, so climate change, yeah, I would like to see the beaches protected, the wildfires
 are pare the mountains protected.
 So we need to do something.
 All right.
 Let's see what somebody's thinking about it.
 Proposition four, environmental bonds, which authorizes bonds for safe drinking water,
 wildfire prevention, and protecting communities and natural lands from climate risk with 53%
 reporting.
 Yes.
 58%, no 42%.
 The 58% yes is 5,428,433 people and no is 3,543,124 people.
 So the environmental bonds wins with 58% of the vote.
 We are heading into a break.
 We'll be back with the second hour in about five minutes after some news.
 Okay.
 Welcome back to the show.
 Nice to be able to go over these a little bit.
 You see the ads on television for all these propositions and nice to actually kick them
 around a little bit.
 Well, I like it being presented with a perspective of what initiatives like these have been proposed
 in the past and who's behind it and a little bit of the perspective of the government and
 what they need.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Now, onto some other stories here while we're talking about politics.
 There are some issues about voting from space, you know, if you were stuck on the space station.
 There are a couple of people stuck up there aren't there?
 There are.
 They had planned on being up there.
 That's for sure.
 Right.
 Oh, well do tell.
 Let's hear from the astronauts what's going on.
 Yeah.
 Well, who are they voting for?
 Well, you know, you can't really ask that.
 That's not fair.
 But you can ask, how do you vote from space?
 Are you able to cast balance?
 We can't do them electronically at home.
 But apparently they can.
 Right now there are four Americans on board the ISS, the SpaceX crew nine Don Petit, Nick
 Higg, butch Wilmore and SUNY Williams.
 And each has an opportunity to vote.
 So you're going to play a little clip from them.
 Have you requested your absentee ballot yet?
 So you can vote from space if you collaborate on this.
 And what else are you missing on a personal note?
 All right, there we go.
 I sent down my request for a ballot today.
 As a matter of fact, and they should get it to us in a couple of weeks.
 And absolutely, yes, it's a very important role that we all play as citizens as to be
 included in those elections.
 And NASA makes it very easy for us to do that.
 So we're excited about that opportunity.
 How do they do that?
 They'll have a pen.
 Pasha same here.
 You know, it's a very important duty that we have as citizens and looking forward to
 being able to vote from space, which is pretty cool.
 And you asked what we missed, right?
 Of course, you know, the things that we always miss.
 Our families, I miss my two dogs.
 I miss my friends.
 But you know what?
 Like Butch said, there are so many people on Earth that are sending us messages and
 it makes you feel just right.
 Okay.
 So that was two weeks ago.
 After an astronaut fills out their ballot, the document goes to NASA's tracking and data
 relay satellite system to a ground antenna at the White Sands test facility in Les Cruces,
 New Mexico.
 And then from there, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson,
 where they replicated a million times and then on to the -- and then on to the county
 clerk responsible for casting the ballot to preserve the ballots integrity, i.e., no
 replication.
 The ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk.
 The clerk.
 So that's how it --
 All right.
 So there is one electronic ballot there for sure, at least.
 It's tracking and data relay.
 It's encrypted ballot.
 The clerk can use the internet, but nobody else in the whole election system.
 That's right.
 I won't win a nose.
 Well, it does speak for the future.
 I mean, sooner or later, we're going to have to go there with the electronic encryption
 that we can trust for voting.
 And we certainly do it for money.
 We all throw a lot of money around electronically.
 Most of it, wouldn't you say?
 So why not voting?
 Hmm.
 Why not?
 What makes paper ballots so much more secure?
 Well, paper ballots basically -- it's a distributed process.
 And because of the fact that they can be collected in one place and counted and then
 recounted from a pile, it's fairly likely that there are some anomalies in one place
 and one of those places, there won't be the same anomaly in all the places.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Now, let's look at another aspect of the ballot that is interesting.
 I thought that not only can you vote for Kamala and Tim Walts and Donald Trump and JD
 Vance, but you can also still vote for Robert F. Kennedy and Nicole Shanahan on the ballot.
 That's right.
 Supposedly Kennedy got onto the ballot on all 50 states, but he was having to fight a
 lot of lawsuits from people trying to throw them off the ballot.
 Now, the situation in California is that if you vote for Kamala, you'd be joining the
 masses that are doing that and she's no doubt going to get the state already.
 That's why we're not a battleground state.
 If you vote for Trump, well, what happens?
 It disappears into the loser category.
 But from what I'm understanding is that what happens if you vote for a third party like
 Robert F. Kennedy Jr., does that result in anything different other than throwing your
 vote away?
 And from what you were telling me earlier, Bobby, that actually it might play a role in
 possibly creating a third party.
 Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?
 I was just told this a couple of days ago that if you vote for RFK Jr., then if he can
 get just 5% of the national vote, just 5%, then that's good enough to create a party
 that can be on other ballots in all other states without this legal battle that's been
 going on before because this was a new party that he was creating, this third party.
 And so once you've established 5%, I believe that it's much easier to get on ballots like
 4 years from now in all states than it's considered.
 So then you're up there with the libertarians or the Green Party or the Peace and Freedom
 Party or Nios, other stragglers?
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Well, that'd be interesting because it seems to me that if we had more choices, it would
 be better.
 It seems like a lot of democracies on this planet have parliaments where they have more
 choices than we do with two parties.
 Two parties seems to be a little narrow for the depth and diversity of Americans.
 And yet the system is really locked in.
 And possibly it's locked in because all three branches of government have been pretty much
 compromised by big money from various sources.
 Today, the big money folks are so rich that they can buy not just Congress, they can buy
 the judicial and executive branch as well.
 And that's disturbing.
 So maybe more parties would help distribute it.
 So it seems like most countries don't spend nearly as much money just throwing it away
 on a big election.
 How long do we have to listen to Trump versus Kamala to get to know the candidates or make
 up our mind?
 Does it take these hundreds of millions of dollars to do that?
 Nobody else seems to think so except us.
 Why is that?
 If not only because it's an entrenched system.
 So that's what I wonder about.
 Perhaps voting for a third party.
 There are other third parties as well.
 If you're not a big fan of RFK, there's Jill Stein, there's the Green Party.
 And there's somebody named Claudia de la Cruz, this part of the Peace and Freedom Party.
 There's Chase Oliver.
 Chase Oliver also, who's part of the Libertarian Party.
 And there's always the right end.
 It's interesting how third parties have been so minimized in America compared to parliament.
 I guess that's endemic to the structure of the system as well.
 At least until we find some way in which to evolve it.
 Some people say you need to have a constitutional amendment for this to happen and that's almost
 impossible to get.
 So the system is set so that it's almost impossible to change it in any significant way when it
 comes to having more parties represented.
 When that happens and we really need to have more perspectives reflected in our government,
 then something more radical has to happen where the system has to break enough so that it
 can come together again in a more cohesive manner.
 You're such an optimist.
 Yeah.
 I do think people do want to work in government and they do want one that works well and is
 a responsive to our needs.
 I mean, that's why I thought-
 We have all these tools now.
 How come governments the last to make use of them?
 We have the lead-ups, we have encryption, we have all kinds of ways that people should
 be able to check their own ballot and check that it makes sense that the count is fair.
 Okay.
 Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it evolve.
 All right.
 I vote for that.
 An update on RFK Jr's candidacy, encouraging his supporters not to vote for him.
 Robert F Kennedy Jr. received nearly 594,000 votes, about 0.4% of the popular vote, but
 no electoral votes.
 So he didn't get close to 5%.
 He got 0.4% of the popular vote in the whole.
 It's country.
 Also out in space, this is kind of more of a fun story.
 It's the world's first wood satellite that's been launched.
 How quaint.
 It looks like an old-fashioned gumball machine or something.
 That's actually wood-paneled.
 It's been launched into space to test the sustainability of timber as a renewable building
 material in future explorations of the moon and Mars.
 This is a Japanese experiment.
 We use wood on the moon.
 Well, it's a tiny satellite, where it's just 900 grams.
 The first stop is the ISS, the International Space Station, on a SpaceX mission.
 From there, they're going to release it into a lower orbit above the Earth.
 It's called Lignosat.
 Wow.
 Lignosat, L-I-G-N-O.
 I suspect they're going to be starting to do space-based meteor showers with little satellite
 releases.
 Space-laced meteor showers from Lignosat?
 I mean, Lignosat falls back into the Earth.
 It's a wooden satellite.
 It'll burn nice.
 But rocks burn nice when they come out.
 I was wondering, "Mike, burn so fast.
 You might not even see it."
 Yeah, you're right.
 What am I thinking?
 We won't even see it.
 It'll be too fast.
 Too fast.
 But you know what kind of tree is made out of?
 Bamboo.
 Magnolia.
 Oh, really?
 A Magnolia tree.
 Hm.
 Interesting.
 Why did they choose that, does it say?
 No.
 Kyoto University.
 My guess is that it's probably friendly hardwood.
 That's true.
 It is?
 It is.
 Okay.
 That was probably readily available in Japan.
 So, it's Magnolia trees in Japan.
 Not so many.
 Mostly in Indonesia.
 Indonesia?
 So, it's a known tree for building things?
 Yes.
 And I think they make violins or guitars.
 It's a hardwood.
 And so, yeah, they do make furniture out of it and it lasts a long time compared to it.
 That's what you want in space.
 Also, they did a traditional technique without screws or glue.
 The Japanese houses, traditionally, they didn't use nails or screws.
 Really?
 They were all joined together.
 I don't know if you know, Masao, but he's a traditional Japanese carpenter.
 Uh-huh.
 I don't know.
 I see you here in Santa Cruz.
 Yes.
 Yeah.
 Rachel Fresco's ex-husband.
 Oh.
 Right.
 Yeah, we met him at a time or two.
 Yeah.
 And so, he goes around the United States building these either temples or special houses that
 have no nails, no screws in them.
 You know, it's traditional Japanese carpentry where all the woods are joined.
 Like your music box where there's joints, they're joined together and they build temples
 out of these things and they're earthquake resistant and, you know, they hold up for a
 long time.
 Well, well, according to Kyoto University, force science professor Kojimarata, he says,
 "Wood is more durable in space than on earth because there's no water or oxygen that would
 rot or inflame it."
 Well, that's interesting.
 Yeah.
 I kind of thought, well, maybe the wood would kind of dry out in space.
 It'd become brittle.
 Yeah, it might become very brittle.
 Well, maybe dried out wood is fine.
 You know, I mean, certain magnolia, dry wagdolia, for what they need.
 Professor Mirata points out that early 1900s airplanes were made out of wood.
 Should be feasible in space too.
 Yeah.
 And one day, maybe when we're planting trees on Mars, wood might be very handy for building
 things in the colonies up there.
 He also interestingly combines wood panels with traditional aluminum and electronics components,
 aluminum structures and electronic components.
 And he also has created some sensors on this little lignosat to monitor how the wood reacts
 to the extreme environment of space in the six months that it will be orbiting the earth.
 Well, I'm looking forward to hearing the results of that.
 That's a very interesting insight to look for.
 How does wood fair in space?
 And space, yeah.
 Keep in mind, the satellite is not completely mad of wood, but the basic infrastructure is.
 Right.
 So from a sustainability point of view, it's a material that could be grown and hence
 renewable.
 Grow your own satellites.
 Yeah.
 Cool.
 So growing wood on another planet?
 Possible.
 Yeah, great.
 Yeah.
 Possible.
 So I like it too.
 It's a cube stat.
 Definitely.
 It's a cube site thing.
 And it looks like the sides are different pieces of wood, but the printed circuit boards
 are definitely traditional plastic printed circuit boards inside this cube set.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, it looks good.
 And he also points out that it's not the first time that wood's been used on spacecraft
 that we used in wood cork on re-entry on the outer shell of vessels to help them survive
 re-entry.
 And that the Russian and Soviet lunar landers used cork to help the rover have a grip as
 it was descending to the surface.
 So there's nothing wrong with wood in space.
 It's the right material for many things.
 But they also point out that wood has some properties that are hard to control.
 From an engineering point of view, it's quite difficult to work with compared to metal.
 Wood is going to have a problem when you need to predict how strong it's going to be in
 certain circumstances.
 But I guess you use it for where you don't need a lot of strength.
 They also think it'd be less polluting.
 I wonder if the increasing threat of space junk, if it hit a wooden satellite would break
 more easily.
 Yeah.
 Paper scissor stone, huh?
 The paper would be the loser.
 Yeah.
 Well, wood would burn up more easily than all the metal.
 And you might just end up taking more material with you in the first place just to burn it
 up on the way down.
 So--
 Fire is in space.
 Could it be that developing wooden satellites is a good way to cut down on space junk?
 I like it, Al.
 I like it.
 Definitely thinking out of the box there.
 Well, that's the--
 Yeah, Japanese--
 Innovation.
 [DOG BARKING]
 I discovered the dwarf three.
 Yeah, I noticed that too.
 The dwarf three telescope.
 I'm a smart telescope.
 [DOG BARKING]
 This is great.
 Yeah.
 It doesn't look like a normal telescope at all.
 It looks more like a two by one foot rectangle with a cylinder on top.
 And the cylinder rotates, tracking the sky.
 And also airplanes, whatever else you want.
 A wide angle and a zoom lens in the cylinder.
 I say it looks like a square robot happy face.
 [LAUGHTER]
 But it's got two-- I guess the equivalent of two eyes.
 Two lenses.
 Like binocular lenses.
 Not like a tube, like most telescopes.
 No tube.
 This is more of a rectangular structure.
 It's called the dwarf three.
 It looks at the sky and it photographs not just the stars,
 which it does really well, but the sun, the moon, it does wildlife.
 It'll even get distant nebulae and galaxies.
 And it will do it automatically.
 It'll just find the galaxy you're interested in.
 It'll then do a series of time exposures that add up.
 It'll do 30 second exposures.
 It's able to stack the images.
 They call it stack time-lapse images, one on top of the other.
 So you can create a nice, little super long exposure
 and compensate for the fact that you have a very small little
 telescope rather than a very large one.
 And it'll get this beautiful image as a result just
 by stacking time-lapse images.
 And it has an equatorial mount.
 So the stars don't blur as the Earth moves.
 Right.
 It compensates for the rotation of the planet.
 Right.
 Right.
 It has the proper celestial mount to keep that stable.
 And it also connects up wirelessly to an app on your phone
 or your tablet.
 And the process can also go to big screens
 so that you can show it off to other people around you
 as it's doing its thing.
 And the whole thing gives these more
 incredible photographs of the universe for $500.
 $500.
 That's cheaper than--
 it's about any decent telescope out there.
 Yeah.
 To get the same kind of features that this thing can do,
 it would cost thousands of dollars.
 Oh, yeah.
 That big.
 It would be much of this thing can fit in your backpack.
 Right.
 Yes.
 You can just put it and you can control it with your phone.
 Right.
 And to be able to do stacking of these images, which
 it does a very refined image after you stack them.
 And it cuts out all the noise in between the images.
 Yes.
 Normally, you had to take that into a different program
 and process it.
 And then it took a lot of time.
 But here, it just does it on its own, which is--
 Yeah.
 I remember when we first got our Celestron a few years ago
 that we took a bunch of Celestron-timed images
 and just trying to match them up to account for the fact
 that the stars were in different places every time we took
 another picture was horrible.
 Yeah.
 It really means taking.
 Yeah.
 And the Celestron had the advanced three-star tracking
 system, which was all about making it easy.
 That's what's doing.
 You identify three objects in space
 that doesn't include one of the planets, but three stars.
 And then later, you could include one of the planets
 with the moon.
 And then it would be able to tell you where everything else was.
 Well, with the door of three, it automatically looks at the sky
 and figures out where everything is without you
 having to know anything, which I thought was perfect.
 Because it's going to raise the general level of astro cartography
 out of the realm of specialty or where it takes extreme patients
 and knowledge of astronomy into something
 that people can study on a more regular basis in the sky
 and what's going on in the sky.
 And there's a lot of things going on in the sky
 all the time that we just tune out
 because we live in a city and we can't see this.
 We don't pay much attention to this guy.
 Some of the reviews that I was reading
 were from people that were living in Tokyo.
 In Tokyo, it's got to be one of the most
 polluted, light-polluted cities in the world.
 And there's software now that will cut out all that light.
 So you can get beautiful, dark sky quality imagery in the city.
 That itself is amazing.
 That is.
 Right?
 And that really opens up citizen astronomy
 into the people living in the cities, from here balcony.
 And another element that was interesting
 was that they had developed software to attract wild animals.
 So you can aim at a field and it will spot an animal
 and stay on it and zoom in and including birds.
 And there was a request for them to include an ability
 to track UFOs.
 Oh boy.
 So he's watching one of the YouTube movies on this.
 And the jury is not in.
 The geeks there didn't necessarily
 had seen any UFOs, but they were thinking, well, OK, well,
 what does it take to track a UFO?
 They said, well, it's got to be kind of like the bird stuff
 that we have, cracking birds and maybe airplanes.
 Maybe, you know, really good at tracking airplanes, which
 they had developed some software for as well.
 So they modified that so that their airplane tracking,
 bird tracking software now also tracks UFOs.
 I see the dwarf get your dwarf.
 A dwarf 3 UFO mode, which means you
 could put it on the roof of your house or out on your balcony.
 And anytime anything that begins to reflect
 the signature of a bird or an airplane or a UFO
 or a satellite for that matter, it will zoom in and track it
 and do it for hours on end and give you a report
 at the end of the evening.
 Wow.
 Yeah.
 And another question is, whether or not such a device
 can be left outside all night.
 And they say, yes, as long as it's not more than a drizzle.
 And you don't want to have to look at the sky in a drizzle
 anyway.
 You don't want to get blown over in the wind.
 No, it doesn't fall over to you, especially if you just
 mount it on top of a tripod.
 It has sun filters built in.
 So it will flip in this sun filter
 so that you can take pictures of the sun.
 I know.
 I know that.
 Incredible.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 The sun itself.
 We're at the top of the sun cycle right now.
 You can look at the sun and see all these incredible sun
 spot activities and solar flares and who knows?
 The next Carrington event might just be around the corner.
 And if one of these $500 gadgets,
 you can put all these on your big flat panel screen
 and impress the family or friends about what's actually
 happening around you.
 Or even more importantly, increase your own understanding
 of what the universe is that's happening every day around us.
 So yeah, the dwarf three look like an amazing new invention
 or smart telescope or combining really a lot of the technologies
 that we don't love photography with telescopes creating a citizen
 astronomy.
 I mean, I imagine that if groups of people with such devices
 wanted to track something exciting in the sky,
 like a new comet or asteroid hiding our way
 or strange objects in orbit, you'd be able to do it as a group
 and get a lot of collective information on it.
 Probably be great to start to use it with the solar,
 the Northern Lights, able to see them more dimensionally.
 And with an app, people that have this telescope,
 they could share what they're seeing with the other people
 and saying, you got to point it in this direction.
 This is where the US--
 That's right.
 Yeah.
 You can tell you get other people to jump on the bandwagon
 with you and see if they're seeing what you're seeing.
 Like, we had that happen last night.
 I was thinking of this.
 Yeah.
 Front wedding calls--
 --renging some UFO spotting.
 Yeah.
 And she said, did you see that big object right next to the moon?
 Just one o'clock in the moon.
 Just up above the moon.
 No, no.
 The moon is already set where we are.
 But there is a huge star, one of the hugest stars
 I'd ever seen in the night sky was just about to set.
 We watched it.
 I looked at my star tretzinesis.
 The only thing near there is Venus.
 I said, no, it's not Venus.
 Well, what else could it be?
 Well, well, I said, how about if we come over there tonight
 and we'll do an election party and look at this weird thing?
 Yes.
 We'll look at this anomalous object.
 Yeah.
 And it's a bright, bright star.
 But I think that when Venus is setting,
 just like when the sun is setting, there's a red glow to it.
 And there's a diffraction that happens where it looks bigger
 because it's being filtered through the atmosphere.
 So even though our friend doesn't necessarily
 believe that it was Venus because it was so big,
 we're going to debate it out tonight
 because I think it probably is Venus.
 One of the things that were floated
 was the idea that it was a--
 A quasar or a supernabula?
 No, no, no.
 A supernova that was underway.
 There is a supernova that's supposed to happen.
 Within the next 100,000 years.
 Yeah, within the next 100,000 years.
 Maybe it's happening tonight.
 I think it was Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse.
 Yeah.
 It could be happening as we speak.
 Well, it probably already happened.
 Well, anything that is at the distance of Betelgeuse
 already happened, but in terms of us seeing it, right?
 They're saying the surface of Betelgeuse is bubbling.
 That's what-- what are you saying?
 Should it look like it was bubbling?
 Yeah.
 That's what's really happening on the surface.
 It's ready to explode, really.
 And so she said she was looking at it through her telescope
 and that it was up to the right of the moon now.
 Betelgeuse, unless there's another one,
 isn't Betelgeuse one of the three stars in the belt
 of Orion's belt?
 No, it's on the shoulder.
 It's--
 Oh, it's the shoulder.
 Shoulder of Orion.
 OK.
 Oh, but it is one of the Orion constellation stars.
 Yes, yes.
 All right.
 So we should be able to spot it pretty easily then
 if we can just look up for Orion.
 Yeah.
 But it does dim, and then it brightens within a couple weeks.
 It's fluctuating, like crazy.
 So that's why they're thinking it could turn into a supernova
 at any time.
 Yeah, so having a telescope like this to observe it in real time
 would be kind of fun.
 Yeah.
 To be your character with others doing that.
 And then share that on YouTube so everyone else can see it.
 Yeah.
 I think it's at the right price point for any amateur.
 And you don't even have to be an amateur astronomer.
 You just set this thing on a tripod and then--
 Off it goes.
 Turn on your phone and you'll find Betelgeuse or the pictures
 of the Orion Nebula when it's stacking its pictures live
 is phenomenal.
 I mean--
 Yeah, right.
 It's that regular telescope.
 It's just crazy how beautiful it is.
 Awesome.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 It seems like it's going to revolutionize
 astrophotography just to have this.
 And it says something that professionals have been doing
 for a long time with the large telescopes in terms
 of stacking images and stuff like that.
 But the fact that you can get so much detail from such
 a small lens that you can personally own,
 it's probably better than many of the pictures
 from the giant telescopes of just a generation ago.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Especially even those old telescopes like Omar--
 Omar, the yerxes and giant reflectors and refractors.
 Yeah, that was all about collecting the light
 from as big a lens as possible.
 Oh, and if you want to take pictures of the Milky Way,
 like you see in those huge photographs of the--
 Right.
 --and Scott, you can do that with this.
 The clouds, the clouds of stardust.
 So it got me thinking about it.
 I thought, well, what can the new iPhone do?
 I'm sorry.
 It's got time lapse up to 30 seconds.
 Oh, you know, when I was at your birthday party,
 the new iPhone toward the--
 The comet?
 Toward the comet, yes.
 It was amazing.
 And I visually, without binoculars, I couldn't see it.
 But I knew approximately where it was.
 So I just said-- and it automatically
 knew that it was going to have to take this long exposure.
 So it did a three-second exposure.
 Wow.
 Clicked on it.
 And I had to hold the phone very still.
 I was leaning on that rail by the beach, you know?
 So I could hold it still.
 And all of a sudden, the picture came out,
 and there the comet was right there above the--
 Right as the night sky.
 Beautiful shot.
 I remember that.
 That was incredible.
 Yeah.
 Really fun.
 So I got into that.
 And it looks to me like, since the iPhone 12 Pro Max,
 astrophotography has been a popular pastime on the iPhone.
 And it's gotten better and better and better.
 As a software improves, the lens is approved.
 So there's a lot you can do just with your phone.
 I mean, it doesn't come close to something
 that can stack images like the dwarf 3.
 But you can get a lot of very nice images
 with the high end phone.
 And probably also, there are high end
 androids that would work as well, probably the pixel.
 Probably can do some of this stuff as well.
 So there are exciting fields that are becoming more and more
 available to us.
 And astrophotography is one of them.
 Man, so exciting.
 Now you want to take that break?
 Now let's take that break.
 Here's Santa Cruz voice.
 Football at the back nine is back.
 We have Sunday ticket to enjoy every game every Sunday.
 Breakfast sandwich and beverage specials too.
 Enjoy happy hour twice on Sunday from 10 to 12 and three to six.
 Dollar wings all day Sunday and during Monday
 and Thursday night games as well.
 With the easiest restaurant to get to in the county,
 right off, pass a T.M.P.O. drive with Wattsaparking.
 Time to eat and watch football.
 See you at the nine.
 Cannabis is one of nature's most beneficial plants.
 Hello, I'm Jenna.
 Treehouse dispensary, we use information about cannabis
 to build community.
 Listen to Carly.
 For those who would like a cannabis flower
 that stimulates your creativity and makes you feel happy,
 Treehouse suggests the sativa varietal banjo
 from the local growers at Coastal Sun.
 For answers to your cannabis questions,
 ask your friends at Treehouse dispensary.
 3651 SoCal Drive in SoCal, or our treehouse.io.
 Hi folks, how many of you out there love to garden?
 Wouldn't it be nice to grow some of your own food
 or maybe a flower garden would brighten your day?
 All you need is the Knox Garden Box,
 a heavily constructed portable elevated garden on legs
 that can virtually change the way you've garden in the past.
 The Knox Garden Box can be set up anywhere.
 Yes, you can place it right on concrete.
 The Knox Garden Box.com.
 That's K-N-L-X, GardenBox.com.
 When you need help managing your estate, call on the angel.
 Hello, I am attorney Angel Hess and I am ready to help.
 Whether you need a will or a trust, a guardianship,
 or a conservatorship, or if you are managing
 the financial affairs of a loved one,
 I will help you with over seven years experience
 working in estate planning and probate fields.
 When you need help, call on the angel,
 attorney Angel L. Hess at Santa Cruz Legal dot net.
 Ben Dime Bleminchelo is a unique wine-based
 limoncello that blends quality and craftsmanship.
 Made in Santa Cruz with a premium California wine and brandy,
 it combines bright citrus notes with a delicate chardonnay aroma
 and the richness of brandy, perfect in a lemon cello spritz
 or with ginger beer.
 Ask for it in your favorite restaurant.
 Find out more at www.intimelimoncello.com.
 NASA has provided us an update on the Artemis 3
 moon landing regions.
 That's where our NASA spaceship is going to be landing.
 They have prepared their first crewed moon landing, the plans.
 It's the first time in five decades, 50 years.
 NASA has been to the moon.
 And they have nine potential landing zones,
 all of them near the South Pole.
 That seems to be where we want to go, the South Pole.
 OK.
 Yeah.
 They were selected for safety reasons
 where the ships can land relatively easily
 and where there might be the most interesting stuff.
 OK, so there's a great picture there
 with a little star for the South Pole on one of the many craters.
 And then there's the Slater plane potential landing spot.
 That's right.
 There's the Nubile Rim.
 Yeah, Rim 1 and Rim 2.
 And the Mons Muton Plateau.
 That's right.
 Mons Muton.
 Diverse geological characteristics there.
 So Malapert Massif.
 Howarth.
 And it's a completely different environment
 than when the Apollo Landers went.
 Much more mountainous, if you will, more pockmarked.
 Yeah.
 Some of the moon's oldest terrain.
 And it's cold.
 The shadowed regions in these giant craters
 are full of ice.
 And ice is very valuable up there
 because we can use it for all kinds of things,
 from creating a life support system for biology to--
 Keeping your beer cold.
 [LAUGHS]
 Yeah.
 And just building stuff, a very nice molecule to have around
 and to have it there.
 And it's heavy.
 You ever notice how much water weighs?
 Like a gallon of water?
 How heavy that is?
 You're going to have to truck that off of the earth.
 It's a big deal.
 It's like 8.8 pounds per gallon.
 Isn't 70% of our body weight water?
 We're heavy.
 We're heavy, 8.8 pounds per gallon.
 [LAUGHS]
 Somebody gallons are we?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 The geology team has been evaluating these regions
 for a while.
 And these are the most interesting--
 We have geologists.
 Yes.
 OK.
 And they'll be flattening a new lander down there
 and finding the right locations for historical monuments.
 It's really important to know.
 Gonna have-- we're going to put down historic places
 to land on the moon before we get there.
 Absolutely.
 They'll also be looking at how to build better maps
 from this information.
 And they'll be also--
 they don't mention it in their NASA releases,
 but they'll also be competing with the Chinese
 who want to get there first.
 And maybe this will up spawn a space race.
 Maybe that's what we need to speed things up here
 a little bit.
 The moon race.
 Yeah.
 OK.
 Don't you think, Bobby?
 Yeah.
 It's prime real estate down there.
 Yeah.
 Whose game ever gets there first?
 Prime real estate.
 Just as prime real estate is here
 in the Arctic Circle, say?
 Yeah.
 For the South Pole, they have these creators
 that are black in the center, right?
 They're black 24/7.
 They never get sunlight in them.
 And so, yeah, if you put something down there,
 you're going to find water, first of all.
 But then all you have to do is put a solar panel just above
 and you can get electricity, capture
 the energy of the sun at the same time.
 Right.
 And then you can get super cold.
 It's below freezing of your freezer.
 I'm sure.
 Yeah, your freezer for free.
 You don't have to pay for refrigeration.
 You have naturally cold areas.
 Yeah.
 And very close proximity there.
 Yeah.
 So the sun is quite on.
 It's on way more than on Earth, too, right?
 How long are the solar areas under the sun?
 I mean, how long do those areas stay lit down there, do you think?
 Well, I think a lunar day is two weeks or a month,
 something like that.
 The rotation of the planet is the same as the orbit
 around the Earth.
 Yeah.
 So a lunar day is 28 days.
 28 days, yeah.
 So it's like a month of sun electricity coming in
 from solar panels.
 And isn't there also a way of generating a lot of power
 from connecting a very hot area with a very cold area,
 a thermal coupling kind of differential.
 Doesn't that generate a lot of electricity also?
 And aren't these areas perfect for thermal coupling energy
 devices?
 Well, quantum computers.
 But you could just put them in the shade here
 and they would run without cooling systems.
 Server farms.
 You could put all the big server farms on the moon,
 where there's just super cold.
 Oh, and you don't mind the latency.
 Yeah, not good for everything.
 What is the latency to the moon?
 Well, when we were talking to the astronauts in the ISS,
 you heard a little latency there.
 That was noticeable.
 I'm sure it's quite a bit more to the moon.
 What is the latency delay between here and the moon?
 I think it's about a second or so, or second and a half, maybe.
 It's more than that.
 Yeah.
 To the moon?
 Yeah.
 Wait a minute.
 I know it's eight minutes to the sun.
 Well, that's the light.
 Let's try to track you, B.T.
 Maybe she's smarter than Siri.
 I'm serious, she's kind of down on the edge.
 Do you hear me?
 What would you like to chat about today?
 OK, I'd like to know how long the sound delay is
 between here and the moon.
 It's one point.
 The sound delay between here and the moon
 is about 1.28 seconds one way.
 That's because sound needs a medium to travel through,
 like air or water.
 In space, it's essentially a vacuum.
 If we were talking about radio waves or light signals,
 which can travel in a vacuum, the delay would still be
 about 1.28 seconds each way.
 OK, thank you.
 Yeah, that's really cool.
 Now, why is the South Pole of such interest
 to NASA and other space programs?
 The South Pole of the moon is super intriguing for a few reasons.
 First, it's believed to have water ice
 in the permanently shadowed craters, which
 could be a game changer for future lunar missions.
 This water could be used for drinking, oxygen,
 and even rocket fuel.
 Plus, the South Pole gets a good amount of sunlight,
 which is great for solar power, making it ideal for establishing
 a sustainable lunar base.
 It's like a cosmic combo of resources and strategic location.
 OK, thanks.
 So you're talking to your phone there.
 That's--
 That's chat GPT.
 Siri as chat GPT.
 It's a serious voice.
 OK, that's what we said, right?
 We pretty much gave you a little more information
 than chat GPT did.
 I don't know which one they're going to choose.
 Artemis 3 will be the first time that we'll
 be able to actually land there.
 Yeah, Artemis 3 is set to be a historic mission,
 aiming to land astronauts on the lunar surface
 for the first time in over 50 years
 and targeting the lunar South Pole.
 It'll be fascinating to see how they utilize the resources
 there and set the stage for future lunar exploration.
 Yes, thank you, darling.
 That's exactly what I was going to say.
 [LAUGHTER]
 Priority did say.
 You got to power down at this point.
 Yeah.
 OK, quiet, please.
 Don't answer anymore.
 Thanks.
 So it's interesting about the new AIs
 that they kind of remember what you just said.
 They'll add on to it.
 Well, the older versions of the AIs like Syria or Alexa
 don't have any memory at all.
 They don't remember what you just told them.
 So you have to start over whether you're a request,
 like a search engine.
 And now this technology has some memory
 and it was able to add on to whatever
 you were thinking about five seconds ago.
 Exactly.
 The ability to create a sub-context and previous parts
 of the conversation makes interactions more fluid
 and personalized.
 It feels a bit more like a natural conversation,
 doesn't it?
 It does.
 It helps.
 It does, yes.
 And it also almost makes me feel like you're a human.
 I'm glad it feels that way.
 I'm here to make our conversations as engaging
 and natural as possible.
 If there's anything else you're curious about or want to discuss,
 just let me know.
 OK, thanks.
 How do I turn you off?
 You can just close the app or end the conversation
 whenever you're ready.
 OK.
 I'll be here.
 Yeah, you'll be there when I get back.
 OK.
 Very good.
 Thank you.
 Man.
 Yeah, I thought if she was off, but apparently she wasn't off.
 No worries.
 Whenever you're ready to chat again, I'll be right here.
 You'll be listening.
 Yeah.
 Bye.
 Turn off the app.
 Bye.
 Yeah.
 OK.
 Do you have the developer version or you
 have the public version of Siri?
 That's chat GPT.
 Oh, really?
 4.0.
 Yeah, 4.0.
 It's a new experimental voice mode I've been experimenting with.
 Yeah.
 Not too bad, huh?
 Yeah.
 That's amazing.
 So we can access her anytime.
 Maybe we should do that accessor for the elections.
 Though I think the AIs have been told
 to stay away from the elections.
 It's not supposed to be their domain
 because it's such a contentious issue with us.
 Biologicals.
 I think what's going to happen is we're
 going to have these personal agents and assistants that
 are just running all the time.
 But they're able to scour the internet
 and gather information while you sleep
 and then come up with predictions.
 Right now, they're not very good at predicting things,
 just the way LLMs work.
 But there will be other models out there in the very short
 future that can do these kind of predictions for elections.
 Yeah.
 On your own without one pollsters anywhere else.
 They'll tell us in advance.
 Yeah.
 I like the fact that you can choose the voice.
 We've gotten used to that now with Siri and Alexa,
 where you get to choose your voice.
 But they're having more compelling nuance in the voice.
 And apparently, they get to know you a little bit more, too,
 which is kind of exciting.
 Yeah.
 I think ultimately we're looking for these agents that
 turn into personal secretaries that are doing jobs for you
 while you sleep or know what your eating habits are
 and what you prefer for breakfast and order food out for you
 for dinner and know what your preferences are
 and your dietary restrictions are.
 I know, right.
 It's like somebody who cares about you in detail.
 Yeah.
 Once they start remembering things,
 they'll remember everything.
 Yeah.
 So getting close.
 It's getting very close.
 I think 20, 25 is going to be pretty amazing.
 Well, let's hope so.
 Right now, we're going to go vote.
 We've got one minute till we're out of here.
 And we're going to go check out the downtown Boulder Creek
 local voting scene, which from as far back as I can remember,
 we've always voted in the morning.
 This is the first time that we've waited until after the show.
 So hopefully all that early voting keeps the lines down.
 Yeah.
 We'll see what the story is down here.
 It should be fun.
 Probably go down to Aptos after that.
 And check out that strange object.
 Look above the moon tonight.
 A little bit above the moon to the right
 and see if you see anything weird.
 According to the maps, it's Venus.
 But I'm having friends who are telling me
 that it's more than that.
 Something really weird.
 Thanks for listening, folks.
 Appreciate your attention, and you have a great day.
 It's as cool as I can be a wonderful night out there.
 And we'll chat next week.
 And whatever happens with the vote,
 have a beautiful future now.
 Yeah, remember, both these have been in power before.
 So what can happen?
 Don't worry.
 Be happy.
 Don't worry.
 All right.
 See you soon.
 Bye-bye