A Lifetime Pursuing the Overview Effect | Frank White

I feel like I'm being my true self. I feel like I've really always wanted to be an astronaut. And yet, unfortunately, in a way, or fortunately, I don't know, but the opportunity came late in life because it couldn't happen earlier. Welcome to A Heart for Space. I am your host, Dr. Eiman Jahangir. Join me as we uncover what it takes to reach beyond the limits of what we think is possible and turn the biggest dreams into tangible reality. Thank you so much, Frank, for joining me today. I'm pretty excited, not just because we're friends, not just because you were kind enough to write the forward to my book that's coming out in August, but also because I think you have a very fascinating story over the span of your life. So I'm excited to talk to you about that. So thank you for joining us. So I start out this podcast asking everyone, to describe themselves for someone who's never heard of you. Who are you? How would you introduce yourself at a party? Yeah, I'd say, well, what is probably most relevant right now is that I wrote a book called The Overview Effect, Space Exploration and Human Evolution, which was published in 1987. And other than my family, the dominant story of my life is the overview effect. It's a phenomenon that has been documented by astronauts as a shift in cognition and consciousness. And I think it's a new paradigm for the whole planet. And so for 40 years, I've been working on sharing the overview effect. And it's a message that the astronauts get which you will understand having flown, it's a message the astronauts want to share and I'm privileged to be helping them with that. That's how I feel. Pretty incredible, 40 years of spending the time. And you see a lot of people when they're young say, oh, I would like a life project, but I don't think many people actually come up with that project that sustains them throughout their life and career. Who were you as a kid and, like, did you ever imagine growing up that this would be, that you would end up finding something that really, one, was novel, I think, in its description and understanding, and then, two, that would sustain you all these years? That's a really good question. I think I actually did want to find something like that. Yeah. For me, the whole interest in space exploration started with a little book my mom gave me when I was 10 called stars. From that day on, I was hooked on the universe and wanting to know more about it. And that, that passion evolved from astronomy to rocket science, to astronaut, be an astronaut, wanting to be an astronaut and wanting to be deeply involved. However, I, my real talent is writing. My real talent is media and communications. And so rather than be a NASA astronaut, for example, for which I did not have the proper training, I, uh, I gravitated toward writing about space. And that led to interviewing people like you. And, uh, Yeah, as far as it being a life project, when I had the insight 40 years ago on an airplane, the epiphany, I call it, that led to this, I thought it would be a life project, honestly. However, I think it's important to emphasize for people it was not linear. It hasn't been linear. There have been long periods when it seemed not to be happening at all. Yeah. And I always like you in your book, Eiman, where you're very good at giving people advice how to cope with life's challenges. I do attempt to emphasize to people, you may have a life purpose and you're clear about it, but there will be zigs and zags and times when you feel like you're not doing it. Yeah. The advice is so simple, don't give up. What, I guess going back to your spaceflight history, what was the first NASA mission that you recall? Yeah. The first NASA mission. Do you remember what the first mission that you were like, holy smokes, there's humans going to space? Yeah. Well, it was certainly Alan Shepard as far as NASA goes. Okay. I think I started. You've been there since the beginning then. I mean, this is like. Yeah, I have. I mean, I started out with the book of stars. Yeah. That led to wanting to be a rocket scientist and realizing, no, that's not really my skill set. But when Sputnik went up, and this is an interesting story for people who are young, it's important to understand that I owe the Russians a great debt of gratitude. Yeah. Because what happened is what I call surface thinking. In the United States, we did not. celebrate Sputnik. We were terrified. Yes, yeah. Terrified. And the whole idea was, we're behind, we have to catch up. Well, the school I went to began to offer better courses and group the A students together in these advanced courses with my friends, we were actually attempting to build rockets in our front yard. Wow. Yeah. We had no idea what we were doing. And then that was followed by Yuri Gagarin, which was kind of piling on. That was the, oh, they're way ahead now. Yeah. And then Alan Shepard was the first NASA mission. And of course, that was exciting, even though it was a suborbital hop. I mean, it's pretty incredible that you've been here since the beginning of the space program. I mean, you've been here since before model rockets, probably, because we were kids weren't making model rockets when we didn't really have rockets to think about. My parents were terrified that I was going to blow my hand off. You know, I probably could have. Yeah, that's fair. There were no books about how to build a rocket. There were no model rockets. we were obsessed with it you know and we really we really wanted to be part of this whole space program and uh you know in quick succession the united states started catching up and yeah there was apollo which was an amazing experience i think it's if you really think about it it was from 1968 to 1972 that apollo went to the moon wow quick succession 68 69 all the way to 72 and those few years look at all the missions we mounted to go to the moon and i think it's interesting that jared isaacman keeps focusing back on apollo we're going to do things the way they used to do things we're going to have a rapid cadence we're going to do the near impossible and i think That was like Sputnik for me because at that point I was very, very far from being involved in the space program. I was in graduate school at Oxford and I was very far from space. But when I came back, you know, I started getting back into it. And Apollo 8 inspired me. It was such an amazing mission, kind of like Artemis 2. Yeah, I mean, I guess the other question I would have about that is someone who's lived and also like thought about space for decades. We all look at the old kind of program, which was like you said, the Apollo, Gemini, Mercury, but really Apollo was the feather on that cap. Do you feel like, there have been other periods in human spaceflight that are equivalent to that? Are we now in a period that's equivalent to that? Did 2021 with the opening of commercial space, is that like a similar part of our history or what's your take on that as someone who's been around? Yeah, I think there have been these milestone moments. Certainly 1957 with Sputnik. 1961 with Yuri Gagarin's flight, then 68 and 69, Apollo 8 and 11. And then from there, I think there was a lot happening. There was Apollo-Soyuz in 1975, you know, beginning of cooperation. And then from there, you know, we've had a period of, Being in outer space as a habitat, we've had more than 25 years on the ISS, which has been terrific. But I think more recently, 2021 was a huge year for you and me in the sense that for me, I always wanted to be an astronaut. I know that now. But I never wanted to be an engineer. I never wanted to be a doctor. Sorry about that. Fair enough. No, I understand. Actually, I'd love to be a doctor. I just don't want to go to medical school. Yeah. You know, but it's interesting that in 2021, I started talking about all of us are part of the new space, the new astronaut corps. Everyone I know could be an astronaut in theory. It's not a matter of having the credentials that NASA want. It's a matter of funding. And that's not minor. No, yeah, it's expensive. Yeah, it's still expensive, however, It's not what it used to be where I would look at the NASA application and I would say, I'm a social scientist. Yeah. I can't even apply. Yeah. So 2021. And then I really think Artemis II broke the dam over. It was pretty exciting. Yeah, especially around the overview effect. Yes. And it was so similar to 1968. 68 terrible things happening on the surface. Yeah. War, assassination, riots, polarization, and then all of a sudden, Earth rise. All right, yeah. All of that. And then this Artemis II, war. attempted assassinations. Yeah, a couple. Actually, assassinations again. And polarization. And then we had the astronauts who were incredibly relatable, and people started to connect with them. And we have so much more media than we did in 68. So you could really follow what they were doing, and I think we had a stark example of overview thinking and surface thinking, which is we're all in this together, we're on a spaceship in the universe, versus I want to invade your country, I want your oil. I'm kidding. Borders and boundaries are really important, whereas from above you can't even see them. And I think we're at a civilizational crossroads where space travel is giving us a new perspective that we need. Well, that has me curious because I know you studied politics, right? You were a Rhodes Scholar. So you probably didn't go in thinking you were going to be having a life talking about space. But how do you think being a political thinker ended up shaping your thoughts and theories on space and what we're doing in space, both in the past and currently, like you said? Well, I think actually the training, while it didn't prepare me to be an astronaut, it prepared me for writing about the overview effect, as I call it. And one of the aspects of it is learning about paradigms and worldviews and realizing in one of the presentations I give, I talk about the fact that The heliocentric model of the solar system was proposed by a Greek philosopher in the third century BC. Yeah, that was not looked upon too highly. It was not acceptable. And the geocentric view of the solar system dominated until Copernicus wrote a book about it, which kind of shifted the paradigm. Yeah. Copernicus did not publish his book until he was dying. He was on his deathbed. Why was that? He was afraid of the church. He was afraid of the church. And he had good reason because Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his heresies. Galileo was under house arrest. Yep. And... I think what I learned a lot about was political philosophy and how ideas eventually dominate politics. They dominate governance. Every political movement starts with a book. Yeah, that's fair. For good or ill, some of the books aren't positive. Yeah. But I studied Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, some of the great thinkers. And they went back to first principles and they talked about the social contract. Why do we establish government? What is its purpose? What does it do? And I believe we need a new social contract right now of understanding that what government does, and also what is the relationship between governments, and in what way can governments come from a position of the common good. And again, the overview effect presents us with an opportunity to think in a new way. And the challenge is, That for most people, the geocentric view of the solar system makes sense. Yeah. Everything does seem to revolve around us. Yeah. That's a very human concept. Yeah. We don't feel like we're on a spaceship. Yeah. Yeah. And you could argue our current geocentric view is a nationalistic view, right? American first or, you know, coming on the 250-year course of our country. But we are always centrally focused as humans. Yeah. And the heliocentric view becomes real to astronauts. But it's not real if you're always on the surface. So I don't know about you, but so many of the NASA astronauts have said to me, look, I knew that the globe that has these little pink and green and yellow countries on it, that's a construct. That's not real. Yeah. But when I got into orbit, I was still shocked. Yeah. I was still shocked to see the earth as one system. And I think that's the beginning of understanding that while borders and boundaries are useful for administration, I don't want a borderless world. I don't think that makes sense. But. But we have to just always understand that it's in our minds. It's not real. Yeah. Physically real. Yeah. And you can have different peoples and cultures and... communities within the borders. Part of the problem, if you look at the early 1900s, where a lot of peoples were massacred who had been living in those countries for thousands of years, or hundreds of years at least, and then this idea of nationalism comes into play and says, okay, we have to get rid of the other. And it led to, I mean, particularly if you're talking around the Mediterranean area, lots of people were killed and displaced, and we still do it in certain parts of the world today. That's one thing I learned as an undergraduate going back to how was I trained. Yeah. I first read a book that talked about nationalism as an idea and realizing that the nation state is a kind of new idea, a new political form. Empires. Empires were much more natural before. Yeah. Yeah. And what does that say? Well, it says, again, we have a choice to change how we govern ourselves. And we have choices. We're not stuck with what we have. And so my hope is that the writing I do and the speaking I do will give people an understanding that we have some freedom to make decisions about how we go forward. And it may not be today, but who knows in 50 years, you know, it's like 250 years ago, the people who founded this country made a choice that they would govern in a way that was different than anyone had done for a long time. Right. And... It's interesting, too, when Europeans came to North and South America, they had a choice that we don't think about very much. They could have come and said to the indigenous people, oh, it seems like you figured out how to live here. That's right. Teach us. Yeah. They didn't decide, oh, you should teach us. They decide we're going to teach you how to do it. We consistently have a choice. And I think right now we have a choice between overview perspective and a surface perspective. And it's not one against the other, but what is the synthesis of the two? How do you live on the surface, which most people will do, but have a broader perspective? And I call that the mind of the terranaut. So... It's a person with overview awareness who has never actually flown or had an opportunity to see the Earth from a distance. So we need more terranauts is one way of putting it. Yeah. Well, I do wonder if we go out to the moon and actually have a base. Because, you know, we're on the ISS and I'm sure that's affected some of our thinking, but I don't think it's shifted global thinking. I do wonder if the moon is far enough to shape global thinking. Well, I think you brought up a good point, and I attempt to share this with people. The original theory of the overview effect had nothing to do with astronauts. The original theory, when I was flying cross-country, looking down at the Earth, The idea of the overview was that it would be something that would happen to future permanent space people. Yeah. They would always see the Earth in the sky. They would take it for granted. Well, of course, the Earth is there. And they would, without going through a lot of thought and being shocked by it, they would know the Earth is a whole system. Everything is integrated. Everything is related. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a permanent moon base will be more like what I was thinking about in the first place, where if people are living there, working there for months or years, they will get used to seeing the earth in the sky. And they will come back and they will share this. broader perspective with the surface people who've never been. And the hope would be that this will begin the synthesis process, you know? And maybe allow us to govern in better ways. I hope so. Maybe. Well, we do govern in better ways than we did centuries ago. Yeah. I do believe that humanity evolves. I think we learn from mistakes. Sometimes there's regression. We move back and move forward. But it's easy to get caught up in the negativity of what humans do. And one of the wonderful things about space flight is to see what humans can do when they work together toward a goal. The International Space Station is an incredible monument to human ingenuity, persistence, capability. And it's just one example. And that's one great thing about the entire space effort. to do something unique in the four and a half billion years history of the earth. Yeah. I mean, and even shorter history of humankind. Yeah. I guess it started from a place of competition with Russia, but where, and you've written about this before, but what do you think the purpose of human space exploration is? You know, the initial purpose was, I think, to prove we could do it. But now, what's your answer after thinking about it for decades? Yeah. Well, I wrote a different book about that. It's called The Cosmo Hypothesis. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure I know the answer, but my hypothesis is that we are part of the universe and that as part of the universe, we are part of the universe. As we become more knowledgeable and self-aware and more conscious, the universe becomes more knowledgeable, self-aware and conscious. Yeah. And I've been struck by other people's theories that say really everything is conscious to some extent depending on its – well, I think maybe I added depending on its information processing capability. Okay. Yeah. Edgar Mitchell talked about that a little bit. So it really started with a question of why has the universe supported the evolution of the human species which can explore outer space? Yeah. Not only with rockets, but with telescopes. Yeah. We are becoming increasingly more aware of the cosmos and our place in the cosmos. And so as part of the cosmos, as we become more self-aware and intelligent, I think we can say that the universe is itself evolving. And I think it's hard for people to get their minds around that. But what it leads to is the realization that most justifications for space exploration and development are geocentric. It's all about what can it do for us. Yeah. How can it benefit us? And I believe the hypothesis leads us to ask, what can we do for the universe? Yeah. And although this might seem a little far-fetched, you know, years ago, we treated the earth like an inert thing that we could exploit. Indigenous people didn't, but a lot of dominant civilizations started looking at the earth as something to dominate and use. Yeah. And now, I think partly because of the overview perspective, we're beginning to look at a more symbiotic relationship with Earth. Yeah. Therefore, I believe with the right attitude, we could have the same symbiotic relationship first to the solar system and then to wherever we go beyond that. And... It's a stretch mentally. Yeah, I mean. We do have a choice of whether we're going to go outward in an exploitative manner or an exploratory manner. And I believe one of the reasons Star Trek is such a popular franchise is, is they were exploring more than exploiting. And they even had the prime directive of non-interference. Yeah. Other life forms, other civilizations. I do think that if we find other life forms, then that changes that balance. But if we don't find other life forms, we might be exploiting. I know. That's the problem. I believe it was Carl Sagan who said, if we find primitive life on Mars... That's it. We can't put settlements there. We can't mine there. And that's going to be an early test of the ethic that we take. Because I know there are people who want to live on Mars. And one of them is the wealthiest man on planet Earth. And has rockets. And he has rockets. And... And he is designing rockets to go to Mars. That's right. With that mindset, I don't think he'd be willing to just make it off limits. No. But he's here. Carl Sagan isn't. That's true. Yeah. What I want is a discussion. I want awareness. I want people to start thinking about these questions because otherwise we'll just follow our instincts from the past and we don't want there to be any regrets yeah we have a lot of regrets about the exploration that took took place in the 19th 18th century yeah oh yeah we have a lot of regrets about that so i hope we don't end up like that and in a couple of hundred years, you know. And you've talked about this idea of, you know, the overview effect and the interviewing of astronauts. Has the perception astronauts have had over the decades changed or has it been similar to the early astronauts when you talk to some of the ISS folks? I think there's been a consistency as far as I can tell. And One of the things that struck me as I look back at what Yuri Gagarin said, the first person to have the experience. He talked about the beauty of the earth and let's not destroy it. He talked about the earth being too small for conflict, large enough for cooperation. Yeah. And he didn't have a term for it. And for 25 years, nobody had a name for what they were experiencing. And then I think once my book came out and the three words, the overview effect, started to become more common, then the astronauts began to have more of an understanding of it. And now, as you well know, A lot of space tourism is about experiencing yoga view effect. Yeah, that is a lot. Yeah, I mean, that's the point for at least the suborbital fights. It is. And in some cases, it's used explicitly. In some ways, just implicit. That that's what you're going for. Even today, NASA astronauts don't go, and Roscosmos cosmonauts don't go, to experience the overview effect. They go to fulfill a mission that somebody else creates for them. But commercial astronauts are going mostly for the experience. And even if you didn't know the terminology, you ask a person why, they'd probably say, I want to see the Earth from space. That's right. Yeah. That's the thing. Because it's the only thing you can't do on Earth. I mean, VR is helping, but you can do microgravity on Earth if you do, you know, the parabolic fights. But, yeah. A lot of questions come up about, well, can you experience the overview effect without going into space? Yeah. The answer technically is no, not really. And to answer it, I've made the distinction between the overview and the effect. So if you want to really see the earth from a distance, you've got to get away from the earth. It's just that simple. And like know you're away mentally. You've got to know that you're away. VR can do a lot of it. But the effect can mimic other experiences. Other experiences can mimic the effect, that sense of oneness and unity and even of leaving your body and becoming one with the cosmos. Yeah. That does happen through meditation and other techniques. And the effect tends to be different for different people. the way they describe it. And most people say, well, it's beyond words. I can't really explain it. But of course, the reason they're talking to me is I'm writing a book. And so, like you, as you well know, we started an interview and we have to vintage it. Yes, one year later. Yeah, the point of it is even though it may be beyond words, you still want to attempt to describe it for people who've never been. Well, yeah, please, sorry. Well, no, I would say one last thing. When people report what happened to them, I do find a remarkable consistency between suborbital hops and orbital missions and even lunar missions. Yeah. Because I think there was a suspicion before commercial spaceflight started that you couldn't possibly experience the ovary effect. You were too close to the Earth. You weren't there long enough. And yet, in interviewing you and other people who've flown, it's clear that people do have the experience. come out of the spacecraft crying and being overwhelmed. And it's interesting, really, I think distance and time and all of those things have an impact, but openness to the experience appears to be the most important variable. Interesting. Yeah. And you're now, you know, just had this Send Frank to Space campaign through Moondao, which was the community that sent me to space. So they have a track record, you know, two people up. Hopefully you're going to be the third. Hopefully. What does it mean to have this goal at this stage in your life? I mean, how, and for anyone who's listening, I think Moondao is still taking donations, I think, so feel free to go on Moondao.com and look at the Send Frank to Space campaign. But for you personally, what is that goal at this stage and why at this stage? Yeah, well... It's been a big step for me to go public and to put myself out there and ask people to give money. Yeah. That's a big responsibility. What I would say is a couple of things. One is that I feel like I'm being my true self. I feel like I've really always wanted to be an astronaut. And yet. unfortunately in a way, or fortunately, I don't know, but the opportunity came late in life because it couldn't happen earlier. Or as we know, there are about five people who paid enormous amounts of money some years ago to go to the ISS with the Russians. But barring that, The time only became available five years ago for me. And your flight actually made a big difference because I was meeting with the Moondau team about something totally different. And I casually said, if you want to fly a third person, I'm your guy. That's awesome. And they said, oh, yeah, we've actually been thinking about that. We'd really like to do that. Yeah. Yeah. So Pablo and Ryan and I have been working together for well over a year now. And so I feel like I'm being my true self. I'm being open about what I want. Yeah. And for a long time, two things were going on. One was. I had assumed I would not fly and I was going to be an interviewer of astronauts. Yeah. And I was on a podcast with Christina Rasmussen who said, don't you want to go? And it was a simple question, but it really blew my mind. And in reflecting on it, I realized, yeah, of course I do. Yeah. Of course. The other thing is people kept saying to me, because of your work, nobody deserves to go more than you. Yeah. And I took the posture of, yes, well, that's really nice. Thank you very much. And I'm just waiting for the opportunity. And I guess the idea was, well, Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic or somebody will just see that I ought to get to go, but it was pretty passive. And now I feel better about it because I feel like, okay. You're doing something. I'm doing it. I'm taking full responsibility for it. And if I can put in a shameless plug for your book. Thank you. You make it really clear that if you want something, you need to declare it. And you talk about that in your book, where you declared to everyone you wanted to be an astronaut. You did it even when you were working in a cafe or a restaurant. And it's so simple. Well, of course, obviously, you need to do that. Yeah. However, not everybody does it. They wait to be discovered or they wait for the right moment. Or, I mean, if there's anybody out there who's watching and listening, that's what I would say is, You might be discovered. That might work. But it's not a proven modality. Yeah. It's less proven. And I guess that's the question of the relationship between having a big idea and actually taking action and trying to change things. I mean, it fits everywhere. I mean... I had to put myself out there and say, I think I've got a book worth publishing. Yeah. Before anyone had even heard of these concepts. Yeah. And I know so many people who say, I want to write a book. Yeah. Write a book. And the answer I give is, well, go write the book. Don't tell me you want to write a book. And, you know, well, I don't have time. And I say, write something every day. If you write something. A page a day, you'll have a book in a year. Yeah, that's true. And on and on. I mean, I could say this again and again. And I've told this story before. In the past, I taught in Harvard Extension School. Yeah. Great example of this is that for many years teaching there, I didn't think I needed a teaching assistant. I didn't look for a teaching assistant. Yeah. One day a student came to me and said, if you ever want a teaching assistant, I hope you'll consider me. Nice. Yeah. He became my teaching assistant for that reason only. Yeah, because he said something. Yeah, and he became my co-teacher. Yeah. He has actually become a pretty significant figure in the field because of that. It happened again in a different course. I had a student come to me and say, I'd like to be your TA. Yeah. And she became my teaching assistant. It seems so obvious when you think about it, but I really believe, Eiman, that what holds us back from putting ourselves out there is a fear of rejection. And I am not saying I don't have that fear. Yeah. We're still working on raising the money for my flight. Yeah. It's not a done deal. I'm I'm not there yet. Yeah. The story does not yet have that happy ending. And just because you declare it, just because you put yourself out there. Does not mean it's going to work out. I mean, yeah. I thought when I got my book published about the overview effect, that was it. The revolution would start. Yeah. 40 years later. 40 years later. I mean, you know, the book sold pretty well. Yeah. But I only had one plan, and that was for the book to be a bestseller, generate a lot of income. I didn't have a plan B. Bad idea. It's hard. It's hard to, when you're focused on one thing, it is hard to have a plan B, but you have to. And just to add on to that, it's funny. I met Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, at the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 at George Washington University, I believe it was. And we had lunch. I was sitting there. That's amazing. Yeah. Do you know what we talked about? No. Books. He was writing a book. He had written a book. Oh, gosh. It's a great book called Carrying the Fire. Oh, my gosh. What do I remember from my conversation? I remember him saying, well, as you know, it's one thing to write a book. It's another thing to sell a book. Yeah. Very difficult. You'll find out. Yeah, very difficult. But, yeah, I mean, what are we getting at here? What we're saying is whatever your dream, whatever your passion, you've got to put yourself out there, and you might get rejected. It's not to say you won't be. Yeah. If you really want to reach beyond yourself, you have to reach beyond the rejection because you probably will have it. And of course, in your book, you point out you came pretty darn close to being a NASA astronaut. Yeah. Really closer than most. Hard. Yeah, it's hard. It's not easy to be rejected by that. No, not that close. Yeah. And I was just with Cyan Proctor, who just premiered her film. Yes, up in Boston. Yeah. I was with her. Well, I said to some people, I said it to Cyan, I said, well, Cyan, you were famous before you flew on Inspiration4, Because you used to come to the overview roundtable and everybody said, that's Cyan Proctor. Yeah. She almost became a NASA astronaut. Yeah, for sure. That's how we saw her. Yeah, she was so close. Yeah. But what she saw was I almost became a NASA astronaut. I didn't make it. Yeah. she flew on inspiration for? I mean, she was a big inspiration to me because we've been friends since our finalist interviews in 2009. We've known each other since 2008. But when I was driving home, I'd spoken to her three months before on her birthday. And she was like, yeah, I think space is probably not going to work out. And then I think it was her 50th birthday. And then I was driving home with my wife. And on NPR, they announced her name as the... fourth astronaut. I was like, wait, what? So then I was like, okay, there's a way. Cyan's doing it. I can do it. Which leads me to a question about you, which is, who in your life do you think has shaped you the most deeply? I mean, I would say Cyan was definitely my inspiration in the last, like, five years, but for you in your life, in or outside of the space world? Yeah, well, I'm sure most people would say my parents shaped me. You know, my parents always felt that I could do anything. Yeah. And they didn't put limits on me. And I think it was not with a lot of planning, but my mother somehow knew I would like that book about astronomy. Yeah. And since we're coming close to Father's Day, I've recently shared that when I had my first job, which was working in a grocery store gas station, I was very nervous. And my dad said, well, my advice is always give the boss more than he expects. Good, yeah. Yeah. And those are the kinds of things that good parents do. Moving beyond that, in the space field, it was definitely Gerard K. O'Neill. Tell me more about him. Yeah, so when I came back from Oxford in 1969, I had watched Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 from another country, and I came back, and Apollo was still going on. And my interest in being part of the space industry was, or the space movement, was heightened once again. And I had finished my education, and my education did not qualify me to be part of the space business. And somehow I discovered O'Neill, who was writing The High Frontier, and I The secret there was that he went beyond missions to migration. He envisioned millions, if not billions, of people living and working off of the planet. Yeah. And he established the Space Studies Institute. And they were having meetings in Princeton. And all of a sudden, the field opened up because all of a sudden, oh, you want social scientists, you want philosophers, you want poets. And there were astronauts, too, and cosmonauts were there. Yeah, that's amazing. What a community. Yeah. O'Neill, incidentally, he was rejected by NASA. But he made it. He applied. He applied. He got pretty far. I mean, he was a physicist, so he got pretty far. And he didn't let it stop him from getting involved. And so being around Jerry was very, very influential, really. Another person was George Field, who was at Harvard at the Smithsonian, Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, I think it's called. Peter Diamandis introduced me to George. Interesting, yeah. Yeah, and this was like early 80s. I really didn't have the overview effect in mind at the time. I was into human systems and systems thinking. And I met with George, who was on the National Commission on Space that President Reagan had established. And I started talking to him about my ideas. And I was so surprised. Here is this high-level Harvard professor. And he just kept listening. We spent well over maybe two hours talking. So eventually, I became a bit of a volunteer to him on the National Space Commission. That had a big impact. So I kept finding ways in. Yeah. Beyond that, I would say all of the astronauts. Yeah. And all of the astronauts have affected me. And finally, in modern times, I would say Dylan Taylor. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. I mean, Dylan has supported me. He has supported my initiatives, my efforts. And all along, he has supported my desire to fly. Yeah. He's also supported other people's flights through his nonprofit, Space for Humanity, I think is what he started. Yeah. It's very inspirational. Yeah, I'm on the advisory board for Space for Humanity. Yeah. Yeah, Space for Humanity is all about the overview effect, and it's all about choosing people who otherwise probably couldn't fly. Yeah. but who will come back and do something good for the earth. That's amazing. Yeah. And you've influenced me. Well, you're very kind. I think you've influenced me. One more question. I think I know the answer just out of respect for your time. We ask everyone this on A Heart for Space, but what is the space inside of yourself for the world that you're still reaching for? I really hope. that we can see a shift in the mindset of planet Earth, that the overview perspective can become much more of a paradigm, if not the dominant paradigm, and that people can come to understand that this really crazy idea that we are in space. Yeah. Yeah. We've always been in space. Yeah, it's true. And we always will be. And I feel like Ron Garan, NASA astronaut, and Nicole Stott, NASA astronaut, have emphasized we're all crew members of Spaceship Earth. Yeah. And they've both emphasized there are no passengers. Just crew members. Yeah. So if there's somebody who thinks they're a passenger, I say, no, you're a crew member who's not doing your job. That's right. You're an active member. Get to it. That's my heart for space is that people will get those things. Sounds like we need overview ambassadors in every country. We do. That's what we need to do. Yeah. Yeah. And we need. We need people in every walk of life to bring the overview awareness to what we're doing here on earth. It's not all about leaving at all. It's all about being here and bringing this new awareness to life on our planet and realizing that this is a unique planet. And. As Don Lynn said to me when I interviewed him, there's no lifeboat. That's right. This is it. Yeah. Better treat it well. Well, let's, I think, perfect place to end it, Frank. Thank you so much for joining me today and joining our audience. And yeah, I look forward to talking to you more. If you don't know, Frank and I have been friends for over two years, but we have yet to see each other in person. So I'm hopeful. Well, I hope you'll come to my flight. Yes, 100%, without a doubt. All right, take care. Thank you, Eiman. Thank you for listening to A Heart for Space. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode and consider leaving us a review to let us know your thoughts. For more on my work in the pursuit of ambitious goals, visit AHeartForSpace.com and look out for my upcoming book, A Heart for Space. Until next time, I'm Dr. Eiman Jahangir. And remember, sometimes the only obstacle to achieving an impossible dream is the courage to keep going.