Moving to Mars with Marshall Brain

In 2017, Elon Musk laid out plans to build a permanent colony on Mars -- one with at least a million human inhabitants. What would this colony look like? How would it work? Most importantly, could we use a Martian colony as an opportunity to improve on the socioeconomic practices of Earth? To find these answers, Ben, Matt and Noel went to the smartest guy they know: Marshall Brain, the founder of HowStuffWorks and author of "Imagining Elon Musk's Million-Person Mars Colony."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers. Since government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome

(00:24):
back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel. They call me Ben. You are
you that makes this stuff they don't want you to know?
And as always, it feels great to be back in
the booth with you guys. And that is the sweetest
thing you said to me all week. That is the
only nice thing I think I've ever said in my life.
You do one nice thing a year. I tried to.

(00:44):
I tried to to make it count. And of course
shout out to our super producer Alex on the ones
and twos. What a time to be alive. Right as
we record this, this is uh, let's see towards the
end of June, and we are in a renaissance of technology,
you know what I mean, uh, innovation of bounds right

(01:07):
right now. It's so weird to think that nowadays we
are closer than ever before to the idea of not
only bringing the human species to Mars, but maybe actually
staying there. It's so cool, I mean in the same
way that you know, people are able to make movies
and records because the technology has gotten so much more

(01:30):
affordable and accessible. This is obviously on a higher level,
but now we have private companies like SpaceX that are
developing stuff that you know before could have only even
been conceived by government programs, and they're doing it with
such attention to detail, with such a kind of a
niche approach that they're making leaps and bounds strides in
this kind of technology that could do exactly what you

(01:52):
just described, Ben. And then last year Elon Musk, the
person who heads SpaceX, got up in front of a
crowd at the sixty seven International Astronautical Congress and he
made the announcement that he and SpaceX want to achieve
a million person Mars colony, and he outlined all of

(02:14):
the different rockets and the spacecraft that they are trying
to design and build to achieve this. And then someone
that we know personally wrote up a very long thought
experiment about what this colony might actually look like. I
would say, yeah, I would, I would say, uh thorough.

(02:35):
And it really makes you think, because look, this is
a huge and uh increasingly crucial step in the expansion
of the human species, and we didn't want it just
to be the three of us digging through stuff and
and telling you just our opinions. So we went directly

(02:56):
to one of the most intelligent men we have ever met,
and that is the man who literally founded how stuff works,
Marshall Brain, and we have him here today to help
us explore what a colony on Mars would actually look like.
Thank you so much for coming today, Marshall. Hey, it's
great to be here, and it's great to talk about

(03:17):
Mars because that is one of those things that, uh,
was just mind blowing when he announced it. You you
you were talking about technology and all this stuff that's happened,
and this is an example, and it's mind blowing that
we could even conceive of getting a million people onto
another planet. Now, I guess first things first, the big

(03:38):
question that a lot of people would have is we
know that, uh, scientific progress often gets exaggerated in the mainstream,
you know, when it becomes like a share able article
on social media. So we wanted to ask you, you know, um,
how like is this definitely a real thing? That's going

(03:59):
to be the first question A lot of our audience
members have so there are a lot of, um, the
problems that have kind of been swept under the rug.
And that is a little bit like Elon Musk sometimes
does that. He'll put something out there. It's seemingly just

(04:20):
to make us think or to imagine or to wonder, um,
you know, like he proposed this idea of digging tunnels
under Los Angeles. I don't know that that's practical, but
it definitely is a different way to think about the
traffic problem in Los Angeles. So with Mars, I think

(04:40):
the technology side of it, him making the rockets and
moving the people, that is all fathomable. The thing I
think people are unsure of is once they get there,
could they actually live on a planet that's bombarded with
radiation and that has much weaker gravity, Like we just

(05:00):
don't know if you have a kid on a planet
with gravity that's significantly different from Earth, Like can you
even have a pregnancy in that situation? And does it
work and does the kid come out normal? And you know,
there's a whole bunch of stuff like that that in
this discussion, we're just going to kind of leave under

(05:20):
the rug and assume that you know that it works
out now martial oft science fiction has taught me anything.
We would obviously be living in some sort of gravity
controlled biodome. Well, I don't know that we can control
gravity yet. Like I would assume that too, because that's
what Star Wars says. Right, then all this stuff is
easier and straightforward. But I I I'm not sure that

(05:47):
humans on Mars is even a possible thing from a
long term standpoint. We don't know. Well, let's talk about
some of the problems then. I mean, you address gravity
right up front. That's obviously a biggie, But what are
some of the other issues that you kind of tackled
in putting together this thought experiment about what it would
take to actually accomplish such a you know, seemingly insurmountable task. Well,

(06:12):
so Elon Musk has said, you know, and as and
as articulated pretty clearly that the transit problem, uh is solvable,
And he's implied that the money problem is solvable. So
we would have assumed that it would be so ridiculously

(06:33):
expensive to move a million people to Mars that you
could never consider it. But he's he's put down a
stake and said, I'm going to solve the money problem.
As well, I'm going to make it cheap to get
people to Mars. So now they land there. And we
don't know a lot about this planet. We you know,
we know some things, but a million people is a

(06:57):
lot of people. And uh, you have the gravity thing,
you have radiation, which you could probably solve by shoving
everybody underground. But then the question is a million people
living underground? Does that work? Like? Do people function okay
living underground for long periods of time? We don't, you know,

(07:19):
as sunlight important, I guess would be another way to
phrase that question. You have the whole climate thing, the
temperature problem, which means you've got to enclose this whole structure.
And as you start to think about that, um just
it becomes a materials problem. You have logistics. You know,

(07:40):
as we get into this conversation, one of the most
interesting things about it is how do you move all
the technology to make all the stuff that humans have
today to Mars. Like that doesn't have anything to do
with the geophysics of it or anything like that. It's
just when you when you think about all the stuff

(08:04):
that we consider normal today and that you know is
everything from scotch tape to microprocessors to move all that
manufacturing capability and knowledge to Mars. That's chapter thirt the book.
That that one problem alone, UH is just mind boggling

(08:27):
to think about. Yeah, when you started breaking that stuff
down in the book and just showing the list, I
think you put a list in there of how it's
made episodes where it just shows you all the different
factories and things you and different resources you would need
to make structure, right, I mean even get that in
place in such a way where you could have factories
that could produce that kind of stuff and the weight

(08:49):
of the stuff you need to build the factory. And
I think there's I think there's a a brilliant point here. Uh.
One of the one of the headings for that chapter
is how will we chips on Mars or pharmaceuticals medical devices? Uh?
In will Mars be able to be a viable backup
plan for humanity? It reminds me in a way of

(09:10):
that old time travel question where people say, you know,
I would love to travel back in time to you know,
the thirteen hundreds, and I would be like as this
um intellectual giant and this demi god. But the average
person does not have the knowledge, much less the means
to create so many of these common things, you know,

(09:32):
probably including to your early example Marshal scotch tape. So yeah,
so how would we how like, how would we, to
an old's point, uh, make this infrastructure? And it would
almost would it almost certainly have to be something where
we severely limit the kind of products that we would have.

(09:52):
Would this be like the the effect of living on
a remote island times of a billion. That's a great
Ushian And and that's one of the things that makes
it such a great thought experiment is, you know, Elon
Musk has said, Okay, I can get the people there,
and I can get them there cheap enough for us
to imagine it. But as soon as you open your

(10:15):
mind to well, what are they gonna do once they land?
And the desert island thing is really a funny way
to think about it, then the number of questions is gigantic,
thousands and thousands of questions you have to start going through.
So you mentioned this, this notion that Mars could be
a backup plan for humanity, meaning that we have a

(10:40):
second civilization that's on a different planet. So if planet
Earth gets struck by an asteroid, or it gets blown
up by nukes or some other catastrophe happens. There's a
whole another instantiation of humanity somewhere else that could carry
on without Earth anymore. And that makes you wonder, what

(11:02):
could you take everything that's happening on Earth today and
and actually bring it up like booted up on another planet.
And if you if you drill down into it, that
just it seems incredibly difficult. It's imaginable, but it definitely

(11:27):
would require a huge amount of thought and logistics and training.
I like I came up with a rough estimate that
you might have to have two d thousand people trained
in all these different disciplines to make Scotch tape and
to make aluminum oil, and to make chips and to

(11:48):
make tires, and like there's there's all these things we
make that are all so specialized. The amount of knowledge
you'd have to send there and skill and practice and stuff,
it's it's fascinating to think about it, especially when you
think that you can't, uh, you can't have a wood
making facility that just procures would or something like that.

(12:11):
It's something as simple as that, you know, you have
to manufacture a lot of these different elements essentially that
then go into the product. Yeah, we take carbon really
for granted that planet. Yeah, and wood is a great
example because you aren't gonna have any wood for like
thirty years if you want real wood, you know, because

(12:32):
it takes time for the tree to grow. Well, thankfully,
I Kea has those flat packs, which surely would uh.
And so one of these landers. Um no, but seriously, like,
who's gonna build this stuff? Like? Is it like this
is a volunteer situation. I mean, obviously this is part
of the thought experiment, is the fact that stuff hasn't
been discussed, and it's also amorphous at this point. But

(12:53):
you sort of lay out and make a case for
how will people contribute once they get there? Can you
talk a little bit about that? So if you're gonna
if you're going to create a complete backup of human
activity on Mars, if you're going to try to do that,
then uh, you mentioned chip making as an example. Chip

(13:15):
making is probably the most advanced thing humans are doing
right now. I guess we could argue there's other you know,
there's competitors, but chip making is really hard at the
at the scale we're doing it at and at the
precision we're doing it at. So if you wanted to
bring that whole industry up on Mars, you start you know,

(13:38):
you asked about what are the roles of different people, Well,
there is a crazy amount of really esoteric expertise that
would have to be trained into the passengers that go
to Mars so that they know how to land on
the planet, build the different parts of the chip making

(14:00):
you know, activity, get it all up running, uh like,
have it produced its first product, and then they would
have to start moving it forward on the research side
like we do on Earth as well, or they're going
to get behind very quickly. So yeah, when you think

(14:21):
about the roles people would have, um, you know, like
one of the one of the little riffs in chapter
thirteen is that there are people on this planet inside
of Apple and Intel and other chip making companies that
their whole specialty might be, you know, the floating point

(14:43):
multiplier of a CPU, or the branch prediction part of
the CPU, or you know these really esoteric memory features
of a CPU or something. There's like thousands of those
little specialties just to make CPUs And that doesn't have
to do with the manufacture of it. That just has

(15:05):
to do with a layout and design of it and
the improvement of it. So you're talking hundreds of thousands
of people who know such amazingly esoteric things so that
all this stuff can actually start working on Mars. And
then you can't just send one of them, right because
what if that guy gets hit by a meteor or

(15:27):
his ship crashes on landing, or you have to send
enough redundancy, and then you have to send an education
system so that you can train up new people so
when those people die, they're replaced. And just it's like
this huge rabbit hole if you actually start to think
about what Elon Musk is proposing. But are you incentivizing

(15:48):
these people to get the best in the brightest? Are
we talking about like only the super elite are even
going to be considered for this, Like like yeah, I
mean is it like Australia and a prison colony. Yeah,
maybe they're the first round to go and they do
all the work and then we ship them back to
the States. It's a great question, though, I just wonder.
I mean, there's us Like you said, it's like each
question begets like fifty other questions and that's that's why

(16:11):
it's so much fun to talk about, but no, but really, like,
I mean, who, how do you incentivize people that even
have these skill sets to go like on this dangerous,
you know, dicey expedition. I would say being part of
history is a huge argument, right, being on the the
backup planet that might be an incentive, I think if

(16:34):
we're just honest about it. And one of the things
that the book starts with is that there are like
pick a number, two billion, three billion, four billion people
on planet Earth who are living in misery. Like just
to put it succinctly, they are getting the raw end
of the economic deal on this planet. Like there's this

(16:55):
fun statistic of the people on planet Earth make less
than ten dollars a a that like, that's impossible to imagine,
but nonetheless that's a fact. And there are lots of people,
like billions who make less than five dollars a day,
and there's a billion that make less than two dollars
a day. There are plenty of people whose lives would

(17:15):
be radically like a hundred times better if they had
the opportunity to do something like this. They don't necessarily
have anything right now, but if they could be trained
and brought up to speed and then sent to a
place like Mars. The incentives for them are far different
from the incentives that you know, someone living in America

(17:39):
or Germany or Canada might have. That it's a whole
different world for them. So then it leads us to
a really big question. Um, for us, the three of
us in the studio, for many of you listening, not
all of you, we are familiar with a capitalist economic system,
especially if you live in the West, and one of

(18:02):
the huge questions asked are proposed by you, and here
is why not export the American economic system to Mars?
And we're going to get to that right after a
quick word from our sponsor, and we're back. We have

(18:23):
returned not from Mars, but from an ad break, not
from Mars. Yet we left on one of the biggest questions,
and a singular thing explored in the book, which is
not not just the technology, but beyond the technology. Um.
You know, you could argue that one of the most
intangible and important technologies that humanity has evolved are socioeconomic systems. Right,

(18:48):
So one of the questions is if we're making a
backup planet, not only what should we bring from Earth,
but are there improvements or are their superior approaches that
we would want to institute on this you know, Earth
two point oh, or do we just think about it
in a completely new light right and m The the

(19:12):
socio economic part of it is absolutely fascinating to think
about because there are a number of different systems that
are like in place on planet Earth. But if we
look across the whole planet at the effects those systems
are having on people, we have not figured out the

(19:35):
socioeconomic part to any degree on planet Earth yet. So
before the break, there was this fund statistic that of
the planet makes less than ten dollars a day, so
you know that would be less than a year, and

(19:56):
of the planet would be something like five five and
a half billion people, maybe billions and billions of people
are really getting shafted by the economic systems that we're
using today. So it forces us to ask, if we're
going to create this whole new colony, what kind of

(20:20):
economic system do we want to put there? And if
we're starting with a blank sheet of paper, which we are,
why not come up with something much much much better
for everyone who's going to live on that planet. Why
don't we come up with a set of goals for
the whole society and then figure out how to make
an economic system that delivers on those goals. And ay,

(20:43):
those goals are easy to figure out, like all we
have to do is think about what we want in
our own lives and be the the goals that we set,
we want them to apply to everyone. We like, when
we think about put bringing up this whole new thinging
on on Mars, we expect it to be cool and

(21:03):
shiny and new and wonderful, you know, kind of the
word utopia's way overused. We would like it to be
good for the people who go there. And we know
from looking at Earth that if we take what we're
doing on Earth now, it's gonna be just as bad
on Mars. So how do we conceive of a new

(21:25):
economic system? How do we think about that? And there's
a number of chapters in the book that tries to
lay out this whole new economic way of thinking that
benefits everyone and that delivers on all the goals we
would have for a Martian society. Things like everybody gets food,
and everybody gets clean water, and everybody gets housing, and

(21:46):
everybody gets health care. I mean, those are so obvious
that they don't even bear you know, thought really except
that on planet Earth, billions and billions of people don't
even have those essentials. It's like, it's crazy when you
think about Earth and then you think, well, what what
will we do to make it better on Mars? You know,
I had kind of a freudy and listening heretic a

(22:07):
second ago when you said a Martian society, I heard
Marxist society. And I can't help but think that that
plays into this a little bit. I mean, you know
what I mean, like just the idea of putting everyone
on equal playing field, making where everyone works together towards
a common goal. And this is a system that we've seen,
you know, fail time and again. How do you feel
like it would be I'm not saying this is straight

(22:28):
up communism, but it has the feel of that in
certain ways. How do you feel like that would work
from a you know, setting up a brand new society
when it hasn't worked, you know, in in the planet
we have. Well, so the first thing I think we
could ask is does the system we have now work?

(22:50):
Like we like to say that it works, but if
we were to really look at it and no things
like that there's a billion people living slums, and there's
billions of people who don't have any real access to
modern healthcare and are making less than ten dollars a day,

(23:12):
and you know, we look at that. Is that success?
Like I you could argue that it is radically successful
for some of us. Like if you happen to have
a good job in a developed country, you're doing great,
but you're like five percent of the planet or something.

(23:33):
So it's working great for five percent of the planet
and it's working less and less great for the other
Is that success? I agree completely? But aren't those people
that are successful in our economic system is the one
that would be more likely to want to escape and
live in a utopian you know, society and kind of
own everything well after everything's been built. That's kind of

(23:57):
what I'm hearing. Let's send to the poor people there
to build everything poisoning, right, and then like you know,
we go and live on our Martian villas. I don't
know that's maybe being negative, but that's one thing I'd
like to One thing I'd like to examine here, Marshall
is um. I think there's a really strong point to

(24:19):
the book's approach, where it is grounding the thought experiment
in current statistics from international institutions to current socio economic practices. Nol.
I'm really interested in what you brought up about, uh,
the idea of Marxism as we as we know, international
economists and people who study international affairs have routinely given backhanded,

(24:45):
uh like back handed compliments to the American system. They've
called it the least worst of all disasters. But I mean,
and uh, the thing that you said, like, why what
where would something like this succeed rather than fail? And first,
it seems like there's a smaller sample size if it's

(25:06):
a million people and they're going to be pre selected
to some sort of rubric or through some sort of rubric.
But the question I would ask you, Marshall, is how
would you see a I interacting in this or and
to what degree? If so? So, if we're gonna design
a society from scratch, we would be silly not to

(25:28):
take AI into account in designing that whole system. So
the problem we're facing in America right now, or a
problem economically, is that when AI comes along, it is
increasingly displacing people from their jobs, and then those people
really don't have anywhere to go and and a great

(25:51):
example of that that's that's coming in the near term
is is truck drivers. Like we can pretty much say
that in X years, where X might be ten or
it might be twenty, but it probably isn't more than twenty.
In X years, all the truck drivers are going to
get bounced out of their jobs by AI, by self

(26:14):
driving trucks. And that's one point six million jobs just
for truck drivers of eighteen wheeler kind of trucks. That
doesn't count all the FedEx trucks and the UPS trucks
and all the taxis and all the other jobs. Just
the big rig truck drivers is one point six million people.
They're gonna get bounced out of their jobs and then

(26:36):
they're gonna do what like that? That is the problem
our economy has with AI is that it displaces people
from jobs and then their destitute Like there, it's gonna
be very hard for them to find new jobs, and
that's going to get worse and worse and worse as
AI accelerate. So why don't we design an economy where
that where AI is a good thing rather than a

(26:59):
bad thing, And why don't we apply it everywhere we
can from healthcare to education to truck driving, to apply
it everywhere, and then as it frees up more and
more people, we take advantage of that and spread all
that automation, all the advantages and wealth from it out

(27:22):
to everyone, rather than letting it concentrate as it is
right now in an increasingly small slice of humanity. Like
they're sometimes called the one percent, they're sometimes called the elite,
whatever you want to call the the percent of humanity
that's taking all these gains right now, Why don't we

(27:44):
design an economy that spreads it out to everybody instead
of concentrating it. And that that's a big part of
the underpinning of the book's thought process is how do
we make this planet, this new planet, how do we
make it benefit everyone in instead of having most of
the people being destitute and then some being okay, in

(28:05):
this tiny group being you know, ultra wealthy, which is
what the Earth is Like. Yeah, we know we we
have in our society benevolent billionaires. They do exist. But
you wouldn't it require that, wouldn't it require wealthy people
to be willing to spread that out and like participate
in a system where everyone is benefited equally. As opposed

(28:29):
to being in the position they're used to being in,
which is kind of at the top of the mountain.
I think we have to create an economy that automatically
you like, that is structurally designed so that everyone benefits
from the economy, instead of an economy that is what

(28:49):
we're experiencing right now, which is a very small number
of winners takes pretty much everything. Was this really weird
statistic that came out at the beginning of the year
where eight human beings on Earth own as much wealth
as the whole bottom half of humanity, So eight own
as much wealth as three point seven billion people. And

(29:15):
that is happening because that's how today's economy on Earth
is structured, that's how the rules are written, that's how
it's all designed to work that way. Well, what if
you do it on Mars in a completely different way,
Like why not make a different set of rules that
have much much better outcomes? And the advantage of Mars

(29:35):
is that gives you a blank slate. You don't have
to force existing billionaires out of the way to make
it happen. You just make it happen organically by designing
it that way from the start. Yeah, in chapter fifteen
of the of the book, you examine the political system
or possibilities for a Martian political system, and of the

(30:00):
one of the first when the first proposals that you
explore is the concept of the direct vote. You know,
and just for all our listeners who are outside of
the US, the way the system would work here in
the US is that the average voter votes for a representative.
Still at this point human who or you know, I

(30:23):
don't know that, but yeah, yeah, I mean it's a
great point. But you know, the big difference here is that, um,
the average voter votes for a representative who then in theory,
pursues the interest of the forces they represent, which you know,
the big criticism is that in practice the forces they

(30:45):
represent tend not to be the voters who elected them. Yes,
that is one big problem. And we know this. That
the folks get elected, they go to Washington, then they
start receiving large amounts of money from rich people in
a wide variety of ways, and then they start doing

(31:06):
what the rich people want them to do. So the
voice of the people basically is meaningless now, uh, except
in those rare cases where the voice of the people
happens to intersect with what the rich want to happen.
And you know, if we want to make this topical
to today's news, we kind of see this with the

(31:28):
whole healthcare thing that's coming down, where tens of millions
of people are gonna lose access to healthcare coverage. Like,
I don't think normal rank and file folk, which is
us most everybody else, would want that to happen. But

(31:49):
for whatever reason, the wealthy people want that to happen.
And since they are pulling the strings there, they're ramming
that through the House and then the Senate. Uh. And
the president who we elected, who said he would never
do this, like he would never modify Medicare or Medicaid
and abandon all these working class people, has totally flipped

(32:14):
and is now on the side of really really hurting
working class people. So he promised one thing to get elected,
and he's not delivering on that promise at all. That
is that is the problem with electing human beings to
political positions. It really uh forces you to think about

(32:39):
how to get humans out of politics, representative humans like
like we're experiencing in the United States right now. So
I feel like we're really getting to the point we've
been beating around this whole time, is what's the government
going to be on Mars, Who's going to be running it? Well,
I just have to interview one of the things, Marshal,
that you propose in here, which isn't necessarily the government,

(33:00):
but I can or what would be a government, but
I can see it functioning somewhat in that way. I
think we're talking about the same. It's the software that
you talk about that will be constantly monitoring all of
the inhabitants of the colony, all the colonists, and it's
it will distribute work based on the needs of the
colony to these colonists. And it seems like this really

(33:22):
highly entirely government right. Well, in a way, yeah, in
a way, it is right. But at the same time,
it's also resource allocation because it's looking at what the
colony needs and here's all of the work. I need
to get that done at its best though, isn't that
what the government's kind of supposed to do? Kind of?
But so so, ultimately, Marshall, I just want to talk
to you about the way you would see that functioning

(33:43):
and mostly the problems that you see arising from that system.
So if you think about how this Mars colony could
be structured and how it could be organized, and how
you could uh spread the benefits of the economy around everyone. Uh.

(34:07):
In the book, it starts with the premise of food,
like how could the colony produce its own food? And
the way we do that in America today is a
real hodgepodge. Like a person randomly seemingly decides that he

(34:27):
or she wants to be a farmer and grows some food,
and then it goes into this very odd commodity marketplace
where prices can fluctuate wildly depending on this thing we
call supply and demand. And then it goes into a
you know, a whole giant corporate apparatus that distributes you know,

(34:50):
that turns raw food products into manufactured food products a
lot of the times, and then it gets distributed through
these other things, and and it's all hodgepodge. It's all uh,
completely random. There's a hundred, like a million places for
people to extract money out of that system and concentrate it.

(35:12):
And and so then you think, well, what is government
supposed to do, like how how is government supposed to
behave in that system or in a better system. And
if you think about food down at the bottom, you

(35:33):
you need people to do certain tasks to make the
food available so that we can consume it. And fifty
years from now that will all be done with robots.
But right now we don't have robots to do certain
parts of the problem, so we use human beings to

(35:53):
do those parts. And the system that's proposed in the
book is we just let and you know, a piece
of software help people to find the things that need
to get done based on their preferences of what they
would prefer to be doing, and it manages the whole

(36:14):
allocation of those tasks and the production of all the
things that the colony needs. That is not unlike the
system that you might use on well, like on the
International Space Station right now at a tiny scale, or
on an aircraft carrier at a bigger scale, or on

(36:34):
a you know, like an Antarctic base or anything else. Like,
we're just taking it up to the million person level
so that everybody gets the benefits of the work that
they input into the system. So that's the basic idea. Okay, yes,
So would this be a situation then where where for instance,

(36:57):
matt or null as Mars colonists have a profile of
some sort a database just about them that list their
their skills, their expertise, um, there are other concurrent projects
or past experience, and then based on the needs of
the of the overall system, uh, they're they're assigned a

(37:22):
particular role that would be fluid depending on the state
of those needs. Well, there's a lot of different aspects
to it. So what the stuff you're talking about that's important.
Then there's like, how do you guys prefer to work.
Do you prefer to work at night? Do you prefer
to work a little bit every day? Or would you

(37:44):
prefer to work for a month and then have a
month off? You know, there's like what kind of conditions
do you prefer working in? There's what are you really
good at? Um? And what really brings you joy when
you do it? Like like let's say you had a
system and you could talk to it and you could say, well,

(38:06):
you know, I like doing podcasts, but I also I
don't know, pick something I also like preparing engines, or
you pick something so I would say farming repairing engines. Okay,
So you know, if if we had a system that
that understood all of that, it could customize a set

(38:30):
of tasks for you that might be much better than
the mix of tasks you're having right now. And if
you're one of the classic millennials who went to college
but then couldn't find a job and now you're working
in a coffee shop and that seems like a totally
uh useless way to use your time, the system can

(38:53):
prevent that kind of just amazing waste from happening, because,
you know, the the problem that a lot of millennials
have right now is either they don't have a job
Millennial unemployment is way higher than average unemployment, or if
they do have a job, it is a job they

(39:14):
have no desire to be doing because it's unrelated to
anything they've been trained for. So again, and we look
at the American system and we think, well, this is okay,
But as soon as you look at it with any
kind of uh, you know, critical thinking, it really isn't
good at all. For probably a majority of the people

(39:38):
they're in. They're in positions that they would never choose
to be doing strictly because they have to do something
to make money, or they're unemployed. So the system can
just ring all of that inefficiency out and and give
everybody a much better mix of tasks that are matched

(39:59):
to their skill and their preferences and their dreams, their passions, whatever. Yeah,
and this is this point is perhaps one of the
points that would be uh controversial for some audience members.
It reminds me of the arguments people used to make
about autonomous vehicles, which you know candidly are going to

(40:21):
be the rule rather than the exception within our lifetimes
in many parts of the world. Uh. And and that
argument that some critics would make is they would say, well,
this is removing my own autonomy or my own personal freedom.
And I really appreciate how you know, how you took
steps to emphasize that this would be not a soulless

(40:45):
uh putting a person into a slot or a box
for a given amount of time, but it would it
would engage with their preferences too. So I guess for
our members of the audience who would say, you know,
well that I am making my own human and decisions. Uh,
you know, I'm not gonna let a piece of software
tell me what to do. How would you respond to

(41:07):
those members of the audience. Well, the flip it responses
don't go to Mars you don't want to live that way? Uh,
you know it, anything, no matter what we create, there's
gonna be people who don't like it, and they're going
to complain at whatever volume they choose to complain at.

(41:31):
The nice thing about Mars, uh, you know, if we
went back ten minutes, someone mentioned this is that there's
a very strong filter possible on who gets to go
to be in the Martian colony and you know, a
selection process, training, vetting, whatever you want to call it,
and everyone gets housing and food and clothing and healthcare,

(41:57):
then off you go. And if you're not down with that,
like if you think that half the people on Mars
shouldn't get healthcare, chances are we don't want you on Mars.
Like why would we want to create a society where
half the people don't get healthcare? That's that's insanity really,
But there are a lot of people who believe that, so,

(42:17):
I mean most of the Senate a representative seems to
believe it. Right now. It's as crazy as that is.
So we just choose people who are aligned with this
way of thinking. Uh, as we select the people who
go to to the Mars colony. Okay, so this brings

(42:37):
us to the most important, in my opinion, question that
you pose in this entire thought experiment, Marshal, and that
is what do we do with all the assholes on
mars And we're going to get to that right after
a quick word from our sponsor. Welcome back to the

(43:03):
show everyone. We are still here with Marshall brain talking
about colonizing Mars, right, and Matt raised a very interesting
question at the end of the break, what do we
do with all the assholes on mars um and which
which leads me to something I was thinking about bringing
up before the break, but I think it works perfectly
here Marshall. We're talking about this sort of software AI

(43:28):
kind of task master governing system I guess for lack
of a better term, and that then it needs to
be an acronym. By the way, it's an efficiency system.
Big fan of acronyms. But if it knows all of
this stuff about us, it assigns us these tasks, it
knows our strengths, it knows our weaknesses, does it not
also record black marks against us and potentially mark us

(43:50):
as undesirable elements over time as we interact and engage,
you know, with this new society, if you know, to
the point of what happens to all the jerks? Is
it the machine that filters them out and sends them
to work in the minds? Like what are we talking here?
So I don't know about you, but I personally, I'm
great with living with people who are nice, and I'm

(44:12):
great with people who are neutral, that is, they're just
trying to get on with their lives and and make
things happen. But then there's this group of people who
actively works to make other people miserable. Those I've I've
just applied the colloquial word assholes to them. And I
think society is much much better if we can control,

(44:38):
preferably eliminate asshole behavior, because it does make everybody miserable.
And and we could sit here and we could list
off a bunch of asshole things that we experience pretty
regularly today that we would like to eradicate. On Mars,
I'll just pick one simple one, like racism, Like, think,

(45:00):
what is the point of that? Why so why would
we want to have a group of people who are
actively trying to oppose or to make other people miserable?
Like why what benefit does that have for the society?
For you know all the people living in that society

(45:21):
when they're actively working to make the lives of others miserable.
I think a big part of the Mars colony of
any kind of perfected human society would be to recognize
those behaviors that make people miserable and then do everything
possible to eradicate them. That's one of my questions just

(45:42):
to jump in here, that I would I think a
lot of people would have on their mind. Is is
there a degree of uh? To put to a coin
of phrase, is there a degree of asshol ery here?
You know? Because there are people who are an inconvenience
or inconsiderate and daily life, and then there are people
who are clear and present dangers, perhaps like a chronic

(46:06):
a chronic drug abuser who operates heavy machinery. You know
what I mean. So what's what's the scale here? I
guess is the question? Man? Who gets to make the list? Right?
Both good questions. So there is a spectrum of asshol
eryn't want to say it that way, right? And you've

(46:27):
you mentioned one like people who are intoxicated who are
operating heavy machinery and are are endangering people's lives. We
can throw murderers and robbers and rapists. You know, they're
at one end of the scale. We all get that
there a problem, and we already have systems that try

(46:50):
to contain and deal with that end of the spectrum.
That's the police force, the court, the prison system. You
know that all UH is pretty well understood. Then there's
stuff in the middle UH. And then there's the really
lightweight stuff at the other end of the spectrum. So

(47:10):
if someone gets into the line at the grocery store
that clearly says ten items are less and they dropped
fifty items on the conveyor belt. Yo, that is a
level of Assholarry. It's far different from murdering someone, but
it is. There's said, we are getting very dangerously into

(47:41):
like Larry David. But I feel like I'm learning a
lot about you right now. Okay, looks sometimes I do twelve.
I try. Sometimes I look at my basket and likely
visually it looks like ten. But then as I'm placing them.
But you know what, they don't care. They don't care. Yeah,
well someone should. The science hast said, I'm sorry. I

(48:03):
could see. I could see, even in the microcosm of
our own society, how this is already how how there
are points of contention, and I think that's an excellent
point um that that you're making here, Marshall, is that
whether or not their degrees of um conflicts creating behaviors
or or or misery causing behaviors, they they still have

(48:29):
an appreciable impact over time. So this is the this
is the very light example, but humorously egregious. Someone goes
into they go to the local uh mars safe way
and they get uh they see the science as ten
things and then let's say they get uh fifty noodle
packs and they argue that it's one thing because they're

(48:50):
all the same noodles. Whatever. What if they rubber banded
together at a giant bundle and the nuts I mean,
if it's one upc anyway, yeah, yeah, sorry, we don't
mean to de ray. Also, so what happens in that situation. Well,
so one thing that's proposed uh in the book is
that everybody in the society has the ability to report

(49:14):
what they believe to be asshole behaviors. So the book
goes so far as to suggest, like what if everybody
wore a body camera and now we have this record
of stuff that's happening in society all the time. And
let's pick something a slightly less trivial than the ten items.

(49:36):
Let's um, let's you know, one of the videos I
linked to in the book is the one where the
woman walks around New York City. She's just walking around,
living her life. And the number of people who can't
call her or to reach out to her a toucher
or who follow one ft behind her and you know,

(49:59):
stalking her. Just the amount of harassment she receives just
walking around as a normal human being in New York.
It's on camera, and it's easy to see that it's
asshole behavior. And if all of that stuff can be
picked up, documented, and then everybody who's doing it gets
sanctioned for it, in the book, it proposes that we

(50:20):
call him out and retrain them in you know, in
that case, in uh, you know, some kind of literacy
about social etiquette. Then all of that behavior is gone,
and she and every other woman can walk around New
York City without that happening anymore. You know. That's the
kind of thing that the book is proposing, is that

(50:44):
we just create a system so that this crap that
happens to normal people as they're living their lives gets
documented and the people who are doing it gets shut
down and and we eliminate this huge amount of you know,
societal junk and misery from the Mars colony. So this

(51:07):
brings us to anonymity. Is we have discussed on this
show on several occasions about how personal privacy is increasingly
becoming a thing of the past or a privilege, you know,
for the elite, a new currency if you will. Yes,
Ben has the best ideas on this, and im that
don't mean to jump on those, but um in the

(51:29):
thought experiment, it goes into this same AI, which is
keeping track of the work you're doing and that you
need to do, is also tracking where you are at
all times, and coupled with the proposed body cameras, anything
that goes wrong can be proven immediately. This is where
person A is and where person B is. Person A

(51:49):
stopped breathing, person B is at fault, that that kind
of scenario. But I know that thought of being constantly
tracked and being constantly watched or watching UH is terrifying
to a lot of people listening and is not something
they would want to be a part of. Why could
it be a a really good thing. I'll take it

(52:11):
even not a less diplomatic route. I mean, to me,
when I first read some of this stuff, it struck
me as like the plot of like every dystopian sci
fi book I've read in high school. I mean, it
has that sense. But I'm wondering, like, how is this better?
How is this not that? And how would it not
be abused? Right? So, I think one thing to understand

(52:32):
is that we're going down this path already. You know,
if we went back to the seventeen hundreds, we had
an aonymity and there was no way for anybody really
to get rid of it. But today we're well past
the halfway point. You know, like every everything I charge

(52:55):
on my credit card is tracked, every camera I walked
past looks at me, my cell phone tracks every step
I take. Already, you know, like all this stuff is happening,
and it's just happening in degrees. So why don't we
just fast forward and take it to its limit, you
know where it's going to end up anyway, and then ask,

(53:18):
now that everyone has no anonymity, what are the advantages
of that? And the advantage is that you can radically
reduce crime, and any crime that does occur, you can
instantly know who did it. There's no more of this
detective that has to go around. And you know, it
takes a whole hour for the show to figure out

(53:40):
what the the murderer's identity was. You know, we watched
these cops shows on television. It takes days, weeks to
solve these crimes. Well, you now know the perpetrator instantly,
and you can get all those criminals out of society
so that again, the rest of us can live our

(54:00):
lives without the misery that they're causing. I don't I
don't think any of us has anonymity anymore. There's a
patina that makes us think, you know, and there are
places where we can gain it, but like, why not
just embrace it and take advantage of every benefit that

(54:24):
it has to offer. If we remove anonymity from the equation.
I think that's a really I think that's a really
fascinating point because you know, we're we're almost looking at
two different paths for um, you know, the removal of privacy. UH.
Currently in the in the system we've mentioned, the terrestrial system,

(54:47):
we have the removal of privacy largely for UH corporate
interest and largely for state control. There's not very much
compelling evidence that uh, illegal wire tapping activities have actually stopped,
for instance, the great boogeyman of our time terrorism. But

(55:09):
there's pretty compelling evidence rather that this information has been
sold at a profit right and the people generating the
information don't profit from it. Um. I would like that
just add on, uh, just the dovetail what you said marshall. Um.
We have to remember as well that this is not Earth.
People can't walk outside and live off the land by

(55:32):
a coast somewhere, you know. Uh. So, so anonymity I
think uh could be disadvantageous in a situation where disasters
are much more likely. And if one thing goes wrong
with this very delicate mobile ecosystem, uh, and we don't
know where people are, then we would just have to

(55:53):
assume they have died. Like so is it? Does anonymity
also provide um? We talked about crime for um or
excuse me? Does the lack of anonymity? Does constant surveillance
also provide benefits beyond just person on person crime? Right?

(56:14):
It has you know, a lot of advantages. And the
other thing about Mars is that we will know every
single person who's there. You know, they all cost a
million dollars each to get there or something. So it's
not like, uh, you know, the United States has this
weird problem right now where ten or eleven million people
are here illegally, like technically they don't exist in our

(56:39):
society because they aren't, uh, you know, registered citizens of
the society. That can't happen on Mars. That's sort of
the ultimate anonymity. If you think about it, you just
walk over a border and you're in the United States.
Is this kind of ghost doing things that you know

(57:00):
that are completely untracked. That's you know, that's not a
good situation for society to be in either. So on Mars,
you know every single person who's there. We already know
the location of everybody from their cell phones. So we
simply take advantage of that when crimes occur and and

(57:22):
know who was where when the crime happened. And suddenly
every crime, just about every crime is solvable in that
kind of scenario, which has an incredible reductive force on
the on the crime that's going to happen. And this,

(57:42):
since we're talking about population, I have a I have
a couple of different questions I wanted to explore, and
I'm gonna save one for the end if that's okay
with everybody. But right now, well, let's stay on society.
So one of the one of the things that I
think is implied, and it's it's explicitly stated in the book.

(58:07):
I think it's implied in the proposition of people living
on Mars is that the way as society grows and
the way generation cycle will have to be radically different. Right. Um,
so what would what would change about, say, reproduction on

(58:28):
Mars or you know, Um, it reminds me of Okay,
this is kind of a deep cut for for sci
fi nerds in the crowd. Um, but do you all
remember Logan's Run? Do you do you remember that one? Marshall,
I have not seen that movie and illiterate when it
claims the Logan's Run. Uh. In Logan's Run, there is

(58:51):
a there there is Uh. It's like an post apocalyptic
thing where in a lot of the members of a
society are given a specific amount of time during which
they live, you know, and after that timeline expires, they
are um, they you know, they are eliminated. Uh. One

(59:17):
thing that's interesting about that is, it focuses on the
end of human life. But in in your book, in
your exploration here we talk a little bit about reproduction,
about the beginning of human life, which is pretty much. Um.
You know, nowadays, nobody would have to pass the test

(59:37):
to have a child. Nobody would have to And when
I say tests, you know, you know, I mean like
no one would have to pass some sort of socioeconomic
litmus tests like can you afford a child? Uh, do
you have any health problems, etcetera. Um, would this change
on Mars? Well, first of all, I haven't written this

(59:58):
chapter yet, although it's coming. Second of all, it is
a great question because in the United States anyway, once
someone becomes fertile, they can have a child. And in addition,
anybody who's fertile can have as many children as she wants.

(01:00:20):
And uh, she can do that with absolutely no training
of any kind. Notes you know, training or you mentioned
background checks or uh, you know she's strung out on heroin.
You know, nothing stops someone from having a child in

(01:00:41):
today's society. And the question you would ask about Mars,
is that an appropriate way to be raising children? And
should it be rethought? The cool thing about the thought
experiment of Mars is that it is this blank sheet
of paper. So would you reath think how parenthood would

(01:01:02):
work in a situation like Mars where everybody's living under
a bubble and you can't necessarily just have the population
explode without some forethought and some adjustment. And the other
thing that's happening is that human lifespan is is stretching

(01:01:23):
out right now. So there's a number of different large
organizations working on making people immortal, and a lot of
speculation that our lifespans are about to get much much
longer in the near term future. So in in all,
you think about all those things, and and the question

(01:01:44):
for the Mars colony is can anybody just have a
kid whenever they feel like it? And if not, how
do you how do you organize the system that's going
to to make reproduction more rational in the Mars environment?
And it's like a lot of these questions. It really

(01:02:06):
makes you think, like deeply about how we run our
society today. Why should anybody, you know, like I have
four kids, I had no training when I had four children,
Like why not what a barber, for example, in these
fis of training just to cut a person's hair, like,
how is it possible that I'm a parent without any

(01:02:28):
training at all? It's it's weird, Marshall, is that when
it's my kids might have some interesting perspectives on this,
I'm not going to let them near the phone. So
the you know, it's it's very odd to run something
as important as reproduction as as loosely as we do

(01:02:54):
on planet Earth. And if you look over at Africa
and what's happening over there with reproduction right now, that's
a whole another dimension of it. But that is a
very sticky issue, very controversial. When you start trying to
intervene in people's reproductive systems the way they use their bodies.
People are repelled by that in general, can be but

(01:03:20):
the flip side of that should have should an untrained
human be able to create and then mold a new
human life? You know, both sides of it are fascinating
to look at and to think about. Uh, and I
it's something we should talk about as a society, like

(01:03:40):
it should be out there and getting discussed because the
idea that a fifteen year old can have a kid
with no training is weird that you know, we wouldn't
let someone drive a car with no training, and we wouldn't.
Let you know, thousands of other activities occur in our

(01:04:01):
society without training, but bringing up a whole new human life, uh,
and the ramifications of that are just startling to think about.
And and I think the Mars Colony is a great
place to explore the different options. So there's uh, there's

(01:04:23):
another thing here that that occurs to us when we
talk about options. Um. One thing that we we haven't
addressed yet is the interaction between what would be too
radically different systems or you know, in the case of
Earth uh and Mars, one radically different system being the

(01:04:45):
Mars Colony, and then this pastiche of these other systems.
Of to what degree, given the distance and the chasm
of space there, to what degree would the Martian colony
and the people of Earth interact? That's a great question.

(01:05:05):
And like they're there are ten different forms of interaction
that we might think about. So do they like just
a phone call between the two places That doesn't work,
But you can't have a phone call from Mars to
Earth because of the time delay. It's as short as
six minutes, it gets as long as forty minutes. I

(01:05:28):
think I'm doing that off memory. But you know, you
you just can't have a phone call. So now that's gone.
That means video calls are gone. You can do email.
They can interact that way. They can interact economically, like
through trade, but that's hard to imagine because of the
cost of moving freight around. Then there's trade of intellectual property. Uh.

(01:05:52):
You could develop things on Mars, you know, books, movies,
digital products, you can move those back in four can
communicate that way with Earth. Then there's travel like moving
actual physical bodies around. That's possible, but really hard and
really expensive, so unlikely to occur very many times. Uh.

(01:06:15):
And so you look at all those different forms of
of communication, the it's quite likely that Mars, the people
on Mars would spin up their own way of doing
things because of the isolation that the distance is gonna
uh force onto the two societies. It seems more plausible

(01:06:40):
that they would inevitably begin to drift apart than it
does that they would maintain very very close relations um.
You know, most one thing we know about a lot
of colonies in human history, just on the planet is
that they end up doing their own thing eventually. And
I'm gonna go uper rabbit hole with this over a

(01:07:01):
long enough timeline, would they evolve differently? Oh? I think
that's almost certain. Yeah, over even a relatively short timeline.
Because of there's so many uh weird things about Mars,
from the gravity to the radiation and the places and

(01:07:24):
ways they're going to live and so on. It it's
going to impose a lot of uh new pressures on
the human genome that will cause them to diverge. I
would expect sooner rather than later. So really fast, Marshal,
the timeline for this that Elon Musk played out, can
you just tell us about that really fast? Well, it

(01:07:46):
moves around a little bit, but the thought was that
it could start in thees and I think his architecture
moves a hundred people at a time, so that would
probably take decades, you know, a couple of decades, three
four to move a million people across. But as soon

(01:08:09):
as you move any people there, they're probably going to
start reproducing in some form, so you don't necessarily have
to import all one million folks uh into the colony.
But in his vision, it's starting in the twenties, and
it maybe is is taking to three or four decades

(01:08:29):
for the colony to ramp up to its full million
person scale. I'm just as I was reading through, I
was trying to imagine the innovations that will be occurring
with our current technology by the time the first you know,
series of ships leaves, and then what Earth, what planet
Earth is going to look like from maybe just a

(01:08:50):
climate perspective at that time, And uh, I don't know.
We just started making me a bit nervous for the future,
but also you know, hopeful in a way that we
are sending these flow tillas out to Mars. So overall,
I think the economic system that you have outlined here

(01:09:11):
and you you've kind of proposed in all the different situations,
it does seem like it would at least lift or
it would be possible to lift everyone up to footing
that is somewhat equal from a socioeconomic standpoint, yes, agreed,
less unequal, and would provide him with all the food

(01:09:31):
that they need, um and you know, clothes and everything
they need for a healthy and happy life. But in
trying to apply that to the Earth currently or maybe
even in that time frame in the twenties and the forties, um,
it seems like that won't be possible because of all
the powerful forces that currently control our system. There would

(01:09:55):
have to be some kind of very big and elaborate
con flict for that to occur. Right. Well, Chapter seventeen
came out yesterday, so this is a serialized book. I
had a chapter every week, and chapter seventeen looks at
this one interesting problem, which is the Syrian refugee problem.

(01:10:20):
So we have pick a number, you know, a couple
of million Syrian refugees living in pretty much absolute squalor
in refugee camps, and there's no good solution to that
problem on the table. So one of the things proposed
in chapter seventeen is, well, let's take these people and

(01:10:42):
let's apply the theories of the Mars Colony to them
today on Earth in order to improve their situation. They're
so bad off that anything we do is an improvement.
And the other thing is they're already costing money. The
u N and NGOs in the international community are spending

(01:11:05):
some amount of money, billions of dollars every year on
this pretty much intractable problem. So I understand what you're
saying about. You know, it's hard to imagine this happening
on Earth, but I think a situation like the Syrian
refugee situation, which is at a lot of people living

(01:11:27):
in abject poverty and misery. They're already consuming resources, but
it's never going to get them out of that misery.
If we do it the way we're doing it now,
it gives us a chance to think about trying something
different with them. And and that's what chapter seventeen is about.
Could we take these principles and bring them to life

(01:11:49):
on planet Earth, you know, starting six months that use
the money that's being used to support them already but
re allocated so that they get to build themselves a
modern city to live in that is really a great
place to live as opposed to a miserable, almost prison

(01:12:11):
like existence that they're having now. Yes, I think this
is This is a great point for anybody who hasn't
read uh Chapter seventeen. As as Marshall has said, this
is a serialized and ongoing work, Uh Marshall. As we
as we wrap up the episode today, we want to

(01:12:32):
thank you so much for your time, and most importantly,
we want to know if you have any closing statements
or thoughts that we have an addressed yet in the
podcast that would be um of particular interest or use
to our audience. Well, the first thing I would say
is I would love to get feedback, positive and negative

(01:12:57):
feedback on on the book as it's developing, and I
already get uh a lot of really interesting thoughts. Like
you guys brought up a lot of really interesting thoughts,
and they uh, they truly helped with the development of
the book. So my email address UH is online and

(01:13:18):
publicly visible. It's easy to find me on the internet,
so you can look at the book and send me email.
The other thing is, UH, you know, I I left
how stuff works and one of the things I want
to do with my life is solved some of the
big problems on Earth. And this Mars Colony thought experiment

(01:13:44):
is a way of exploring the poverty problem and the
concentration of wealth problem, and the inequality problem. And that
has been a really interesting UH experience and an interesting
x floration to try to think of a new economic
system that would radically improve the lives of billions of

(01:14:07):
people on the planet. So the more people who know
about it and are thinking about it and are discussing
ways to improve society for everyone, I think the better.
What what is the website? That you do all that
work for Marshall. It's called Marshall Brain dot com if
you come there. UH. The Mars Colony book is UH

(01:14:29):
at Mars dot htm on Marshall brain dot com or
you'll see links to it on the homepage. It's a
free book. It's UH available to anyone. Lots of people
reading it right now. So UH feedback is welcome and encouraged,
and we also welcome our listeners to send us feedback
about the interview and any questions you have, UM, any

(01:14:51):
thoughts you have about all of this stuff. We think
it's super fascinating and we really appreciate you talking with
us about it today. Marshall Brain. Thanks so much. Yeah,
thank thank you so much, because I do I do
want to mention as we close that this is only
the latest in a long line of books that you
have written, Marshall, including How God Works, the Engineering Book,

(01:15:15):
multiple How Stuff Works books, Manna UH Teenager's Guide to
the Real World. You can you can find all of
these uh if you search online. And as Nola Marshall said, UH,
this is this is ongoing. We want your feedback in
a very real way. What we like to say here

(01:15:35):
on the show is that you, the audience, are the
most important part of this whole of this whole crazy thing.
Uh so yes, Uh. Marshall Brain uh, founder of how
Stuff Works, the author of the ongoing serialized work imagining
Ellen Musk, million person Mars Colony. You can check it
out today at Marshall Brain dot com. And if you

(01:15:58):
want to send us feedback, you can find us on
Twitter where we're conspiracy Stuff Conspiracy Stuff Show. On Instagram, Facebook,
guess what, We're conspiracy stuff there too. And if you
don't want to do any of that social media, you
want to send us a line, or if you're on
Mars you know, because apparently that's the best way to
do it, send us an email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com.