The John Batchelor Show

Friday 24 September 2021

Air Date: 
September 24, 2021

CBS EYE ON THE WORLD WITH JOHN BATCHELOR

FIRST HOUR

9-930 Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com
1.  Starliner delayed, 
2. The eerily strange cliffs of Mars Gall Crater

930-1000 @RichardAEpstein.
1, Environmental, Social and Governance is the new new on Wall Street.
https://www.hoover.org/research/creeping-coercion-under-stakeholder-banner
2,  Stephen Breyer is the Last Liberal.
 
 

SECOND HOUR

10-1015 Scott Mayman @CBSNew Brisbane, Queensland
The unexpected consequences of Australian wildfires.  Scott Mayman @CBSNew Brisbane, Queensland
https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/cassar/phytoplankton-blooms-triggered-by-2019-2020-australian-wildfires/

1015-1030 Dan Henninger.
President Biden refutes the trickle-down economics of Ronald Reagan 1981.  Dan Henninger, WSJ editorial board and Wonder Land columnist.  @DanHenninger, @WSJOpinion 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-socialist-reconiciliation-government-expansion-build-back-better-11632338922
 

1030--1100 @GENE MARKS
1/2.  #SmallBusinessAmerica: Back to the office is the trend @GeneMarks  @Guardian @PhillyInquirer
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/23/work-from-home-is-over-hyped/
 
2/2.  #SmallBusinessAmerica: Christmas prices already climbing @GeneMarks  @Guardian @PhillyInquirer
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/business/christmas-tree-prices-2021/index.html
 

THIRD HOUR

1100-1115 @JoshRogin WashingtonPost
The new new Cold War with China or not.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/23/bidens-strategy-stabilize-us-china-relations-isnt-working/

1115-1130 Lorenzo Fiori, Anslado Foundation
More Wild Boars than ever in the streets of Rome
https://www.thelocal.it/20210923/watch-videos-of-wild-boar-invading-rome-streets-go-viral-in-italy/
 

1130-1145 Vendeline von Bredow @TheEconomist
The German Election is neck and neck for Red vs Merkel's merkeln.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/24/german-election-too-close-to-call-as-spd-lead-evaporates

1145-1200 @JeffBliss #PacificWatch: @JCBliss
General Sherman saved, Colorado River not saved.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/us/california-wildfires-heat-updates.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/new-estimates-show-colorado-river-levels-falling-faster-than-expected/ar-AAOMXpY

FOURTH HOUR

12-100 AM
1/4   The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, by Christopher E. Mason.  Hardcover – April 20, 2021
2/4   The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, by Christopher E. Mason.  Hardcover – April 20, 2021
3/4   The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, by Christopher E. Mason.  Hardcover – April 20, 2021
4/4   The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, by Christopher E. Mason.  Hardcover – April 20, 2021
https://www.amazon.com/Next-500-Years-Engineering-Worlds/dp/0262044404
 
An argument that we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems—because human life on Earth has an expiration date.

Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, cataclysmic war, or the death of the sun in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, we will have to find a new home planet, perhaps even a new solar system, to inhabit. In this provocative and fascinating book, Christopher Mason argues that we have a moral duty to do just that. As the only species aware that life on Earth has an expiration date, we have a responsibility to act as the shepherd of life-forms—not only for our species but for all species on which we depend and for those still to come (by accidental or designed evolution). Mason argues that the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets can be applied to redesigning biology so that we can sustainably inhabit those planets. And he lays out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life on other worlds. 

As they are today, our frail human bodies could never survive travel to another habitable planet. Mason describes the toll that long-term space travel took on the astronaut Scott Kelly, who returned from a year on the International Space Station with changes to his blood, bones, and genes. Mason proposes a ten-phase, 500-year program that would engineer the genome so that humans can tolerate the extreme environments of outer space—with the ultimate goal of achieving human settlement of new solar systems. He lays out a roadmap of which solar systems to visit first, and merges biotechnology, philosophy, and genetics to offer an unparalleled vision of the universe to come.