92. Moon to Mars. Daniel Krawchuk. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 08/31/22

Dave transcends time and space to talk with Daniel about his pandemy passion project, a Sci-fi novella that had been percolating in his consciousness for years, Moon to Mars. A tale of environmental destruction forcing humanity to flee to other inhospitable places for survival.  Initially the idea for a song, Dan used his pandemy free time to explore the themes of equality, justice, environmental stewardship. Dave compares Dan's work to Octavia Butler.  Shout out to Anna B. in Toronto for editing Dan's work. Also should out to ORBIT, Dan's psychedelic space rock band!

Dan Krawchuk on Twitter

ORBit

Morcel

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Transcript

0:25

Good day and welcome to the pandemic show stories of the pandemic for people living in the pandemic. No one is alone on the pen. Demi show Thanks for joining us. As we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemic, we are all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us. Thanks for taking a moment to like subscribe and follow the pandemic show on social media.

dave 0:56

Welcome back to the pan Demi show episode

Dan 0:59

92. Who are you? Hi, I'm Daniel. Crok

dave 1:05

I'm a big fan of Daniel Crouch's music. He's in orbits and he's been in some bands before that, that I've been a big fan. I was fortunate enough to see Dan and his band play at the end of June, beginning of July, sometime outside and afterwards, we got really talking about science fiction and all the recent developments in space during the pandemic. And he told me about one of his pandemic projects. And we're gonna talk about today. Dan's one of those guys that wrote a book during the pandemic. but before we get into your book and we're very lucky, Dan's gonna do a reading today on his book. Mars and moon it's, uh, the first in a trilogy that explores space, space, exploration, resource scarcity, overcoming inequality. So a fascinating book, but, Dan, thanks for joining us. how did that pandemic impact you? March, 2020, when it shut down the world?

Dan 2:00

like everyone else, a lot of things changed. being a musician, that whole aspect of my life kind of got, put on hold for quite a while. And then, you know, there were some starts and. So right when we were thinking we could, uh, get back to jamming again, things would flare up and we'd be, stuck, practicing alone. again, too. that was a big change. I work in an office, so I, uh, I switched to completely remote, working. So I was lucky. I didn't, didn't lose any work on that for my day job. and one really great thing that happened is that, me and my wonderful now fiance, Amanda, at the time girlfriend, uh, we moved in together in, uh, may of 2020. we'd been planning that already. And then the pandemic, absolutely. Made us think twice as like, should we do this or not? But we, you know, we thought let's just stick to the plan and, uh, we did, and I'm glad we did. Everything's been great there. I've definitely congrat. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I've, I feel like I've been very lucky. my life hasn't been too disrupted. but I did find myself with, quite a bit of time on my hands in the early hours of the morning, Amanda works in Toronto and, or she did at the time. And, we live in Hamilton, so, and she had to be at work at 6:30 AM and I would, I'd wake up with her and I didn't have to start work till eight 30. So I had about three or so hours in the morning just to do whatever. And that's kind of what led me to start writing the book in the first.

dave 3:24

Oh, wow. So, you felt the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns like everyone else, but you, you were safe economically in the sense that you didn't have any employment disruptions you were able to, to pivot online. Your, your music kind of got shut down a bit in the sense that you couldn't go out and perform and tour and, and rehearse as much, but, but you had a positive development in your personal life where you moved in with your partner, you got engaged and then your partner had to still go to work while you were working

Dan 3:53

remotely. Yeah, she was working, uh, on site at the time. She was at a, uh, a waste water treatment plant in, uh, Toronto. Oh,

dave 4:01

very important. Working on infrastructure so she was providing essential service.

Dan 4:07

Yeah, absolutely. She was, she was, an essential worker. And she still is, but she's, in a different department now,

dave 4:12

so you would get up with your partner in, during the pandemic, see her off to work, and then you'd have some free time before your job would start. And you used that time to express yourself through the written word.

Dan 4:28

Yeah. It kind of had been an idea I'd had in my head for quite a while. It actually, the, the story kind of started as an idea for music, where I, I thought of a, a big kind of general story, a science fiction story at the time. This is about 10 years ago. I had just, read the original six, dune novels by Frank Herbert and, uh, huge fan. And, some of that stuff, those ideas, they really inspired me and the science fiction thing definitely comes through an orbit as you probably saw and, uh, good time. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, so I kind of got this idea for a story and I thought I could pull little ideas from it and use that as inspiration for songs for, uh, the band, that I was in at the time toad house, which still plays occasionally big fan

dave 5:15

of to house. Shout, shout out toad house.

Dan 5:18

Thanks man. Yeah. but I had this big kind of general story in my head and then I love reading and, uh, my grandpa was a published author. I wrote, uh, young adult, uh, mystery novels. And, uh, my mom is a writer as well. My stepmom is as well, so there's. That kind of inspiration's been around. I had the time and I, you know, there's a lot of great resources on the internet for kind of figuring out how to get started on it, which is pro is the hardest part, really? just kind of, where do I start? Like, do I just write, or do I write it, write down the overall idea first or do it come up with characters and all this stuff like that. So I, took advantage of that and like, YouTube's a great resource for anything you wanna learn. gradually just started kind of doing it and yeah, that's here we

dave 6:02

are. Can you just give us a little bit of BA just a summary of your book for the listeners? And we're very lucky here today on the pandemic show stories of the pandemic for the people of the pandemic. No, one's alone on the pandemic show. Dan is going to do a reading from his book, but so much has happened during the pandemic in terms of space exploration. I wouldn't have been surprised if this idea was just something that was inspired from what's been going on in the last three years in space. Stuff's been happening on the moon. China's been doing some great stuff, exploring space. We've got the, uh, that roving, Rover on Mars. We're getting pictures from this latest telescope, like space is happening. It really is. just the last couple years has been an eruption and we're wait waiting right now. We're recording this on August 31st. We're waiting for the, I believe it's the Artis NASA ship. That's gonna go up to the, to the moon. And NASA's now working on having bigger rockets that can carry. More things into space as we prepare for the, for the Mars, the Mars invasion, excuse me, Mars exploration. But can you just give us a summary, Dan of your book, the first trilogy, Mars and moon?

Dan 7:18

Yeah. So the, uh, the idea, the kind of first initial idea I had for it was, you know, Maybe hundreds of years in the future, what would happen if the earth was uninhabitable and, you know, due to climate change and in this story, the, the kind of the pretext is that also there have been some nuclear wars that have made large chunks of the earth uninhabitable. And to the point where, you can't, it's impossible to live. And the idea of living on. Harsh environment like Mars or the moon where you literally can't go outside at all is actually preferable to living on earth. And what would happen also if humanity basically those of humanity who are lucky enough to get off the planet in time, what would happen if a small chunk went to the moon and a slightly bigger chunk went to Mars and their communication between each other was cut off or almost cut off. And how would those two chunks of humanity develop in different ways over the course of a few centuries? this first book is. Almost entirely focused on the civilization on Mars. You get, you get a hint of the moon near the end, it's it's, this is the Mars book. And then you you'll see more of the moon in the next one. but that, that kind of idea of humanity splitting and then developing in different ways. And then coming back together, I thought was kind of an interesting, idea, a

dave 8:43

Great storyline and, and it's so. Like we're in season three of the coronavirus pandemic. Eighth wave here in Ontario, even I've even, I've had, COVID now a confirmed case of COVID I'm backed to the max. but we see weather volatility increasing, uh, cyclones in India, more volatile Pakistan. A third of Pakistan currently is flooded. Almost the whole

Dan 9:12

population of Canada got affected by that, like, uh, the same number of. pardon me? The same number of, uh, the equivalent of the population of Canada almost was affected in Pakistan by the flooding.

dave 9:24

Yeah, by the flooding. So in so many different ways, it reminds me of modern day poet, chaos, and his one rhyme. Maybe the planet itself will terminate a MC murder. and yeah, is the planet seems to be responding to human. I don't wanna say overpopulation, but humans, human led to certification human led deforestation, human led, water pollution, human led plastic single use plastic everywhere. Like even in the atmosphere around the earth, we've started to now just leave all kinds of space junk and you know, space. Is my pet peeve. as scary as it is your concept that the earth becomes. So inhospitable, we move to these more marginalized planets, like Mars and the moon for humans to continue to evolve. it's really an important it's, it's really a, a catchy idea and it's very relevant and it's. Timely before we go any further, can you read us an excerpt from your book, Mars and moon here for us on the pan Demi show,

Dan 10:37

I would be honored to do that. Thank you. okay, so just to kind of set up this little chunk I'm gonna read it's from the second chapter the main character Maria, has just she's a, an emergency systems. Technologist is what her role is. They don't have jobs on the, on Myers. They have roles and, she has just, she's recovering from a head injury. That was caused by a mistake that she made in, in a resource extraction center. she knows she kind of messed up and she's, she's having some thoughts about that. And this is her kind of wandering through one of the Martian cities. Oceania was the Southern most city in the Hellis Plin colony. And by extension the Southern most city on Mars, its name came from the giant freshwater ocean that had been discovered beneath the surface in 30 8:00 AM or after Mars known one, simply as the ocean, that along with the discovery of the lake and other resources in the mountains near the Farsis colony had helped stabilize things for those early pioneers who had first made the journey from earth to Mar. That was over two centuries ago, Maria couldn't conceive of what it must have been like to live on a planet where giant bodies of water had existed on the surface. What would an above ground ocean even look like? How far could you see Oceania was probably the dirtiest city in the colony and she didn't much care for the people who live there. Extraction, mostly because of her role. She had seen all the cities in the colony and they were mostly the same, but their people gave them each a different, feel, a different smell. All Martians were equal survivors who drew their strengths from the group. But every role drew in a different type of person extraction were assholes. Their work was hard in the extreme with the most dangerous roles, serving as punishment for those who committed violence, all Martians had to be productive for the colonies to survive. She'd found a transportation center and boarded, a tube train heading west to Terranova the capital. As soon as she'd been able to The sub Morran tubes that connected to that city made for a much smoother ride than those that headed to the outer extraction sites. Although her head still thro with pain, these trains weren't designed with a rider's safety or comfort in mind, hardly anything on Mars was the seats had no cushions. The lighting was unreliable. Nothing was clean. It was all very utilitarian. Every decision made with the goal of conserving resources. In mind, Maria spent the four hour train ride trying to sleep. It wasn't crowded. So she was able to stretch out over a few seats. It seemed like she had just closed her eyes when she felt the sudden jolt of the train switching tracks and angling up towards the surface. She opened her eyes just in time to have them blasted with red light. The trains in the colony departed and arrived at their destinations above ground, where the tubes were transparent, giving the riders a glimpse of the real Hellis Planitia. she lived for these brief moments, red rock and canyon stretched out before her in the harsh jagged landscape.

dave 13:28

Dan, thanks so much. just from that brief excerpt of your story, Mars and moon, pandemic sci-fi. Passion project. I loved how Maria the main character was reflecting on what would it be to live in a world where there was open surface water. And it made me realize living here in Southern Ontario, just the abundance and how, how much we have and how grateful we should all be. For the easy access to clean, fresh water, and to think that somebody in the future. Could be wondering about the bounty that we have now. It makes me feel ashamed with how we treat our resources and we treat our planet and we treat our water, which is life in and of itself. some real big ideas there. And it makes me think it's one of those things like does life imitate art? Does art imitate life science fiction seems to be generated by very creative minds. It can help, it can help us reimagine the future. It can help us chart a different course. I also like the tube train and I would love to have high speed rail. I wanted to go down to Ottawa, but it's a, it's a five hour. But if we had a high speed train, it would be a different kettle of fish. so much to talk about just in that brief, excerpt from your book. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Mm-hmm

Dan 14:54

yeah. Thank you for, uh, letting me read a chunk. That's the first, any kind of public reading I've done of that.

dave 14:59

it just leads me to think about so many things like we're here now in the pandemic. There's the billionaire space race. Even captain Kirk went up, with one of the billionaires in the low flight or the low gravity, just kind of touching space, for profit. Private model of space travel now, but the billionaire space race, it concerns me also look, uh, a month ago, the Pope was in Canada, apologizing for, to the victims of residential schools. I should say, I am recording this interview on the traditional territory of the Hoho and ashy and neutral people on the upper Canada trading. yeah, it just really gets me thinking. When we go into space, will we have discovery doctrine? Will that allow us humans to just appropriate other people's territory and their wealth? Like we saw Christian Explorer is doing in north America from the late 14 hundreds onwards under the legal framework of discovery doctrine. So many big ideas to get reimagined, in this epic space exploration book. I like too, how you mentioned. There's no luxury there. There's no comfort. it's hard living. it's not like you get a day off to just go sit in the shade and, have that leisurely hunter gatherer kind of lifestyle. It is work or die. Extract, make sure there's resources for the future. did the billionaire space range or some of the more recent space exploration thinking, maybe even the Mars Rover, how did that influence your writing? Were you able to get a lot of research and inspiration from some of the images coming back from Mars and the work done by NASA?

Dan 16:38

Absolutely. so one of the first things I did when I, uh, started writing this is that, what I really wanted to, you know, I allowed myself a lot of freedom with, the way that technology might be in 300 years and how people would be able to survive and the idea that they live in these big dome cities. A lot of that, it kind of can veered towards the fantastical side. Although, I went by the idea of, believable, but not necessarily real. And, uh, cuz you know, it's more fun to have those, to allow yourself to do that, but what the, one of the things I really wanted to get. Right. and I'm still working on making sure that I did get this right. Is that, all the geographic areas in Mars? Um, I wanted to be true too. One. Yep. Exactly. Well, and that's, uh, so the idea that there's a giant fresh water ocean under, under the surface there, that is an invented, that's not a, a confirmed fact, but, it could be though, like that they could discover something like that.

dave 17:37

And, and the, and the theory about Mars is that there was water there, or there is water frozen or underneath the ground. And that when. We finally get out to Mars. We will be able to extract, Hey, just like the characters in your book, extract that water. it just does though. Make me so angry, cuz I do feel like. If we're not taking care of this planet, why are we going out to ruin the next planet? But then also as a member of the USS vector, a science class shipping star fleet international, I do have some optimism that peer science and the good of humanity will keep us on the right side of the line. Between good and evil, but then we look at the war and Ukraine it seems to be another water war where, Putin and the Russian army is trying to make sure that they can control the water supply around crime, the fresh water supply. Also with that, the there's a nuclear plant that the world is watching to see if it's gonna fail as This horrible invasion continues. Will there be a nuclear fallout? Because it's my understanding that the one nuclear power plant has been taken off the grid is now just being maintained by, um, generators. And I, my understanding is it has been taken offline, but it takes months or longer to cool. it's complex. It's so complex and it's addressing the issues in a futuristic environment that we're dealing with here on earth currently in terms of resource SPARC. does the book address any of this kind of discovery doctrine, colonial exploration? You're the other, I'm gonna take what you have because I'm stronger than you, or is that something that we're gonna have to take and

Dan 19:24

see? So most of this book is, uh, focused on the Martian, technology and their, society and kind of how they're stuck and just the difficulty of their life. So it's more of a it's.

dave 19:36

the toil of the working class humans who we're calling Marons cuz they're on Mars. Yeah, because hu, because humans are no longer able to exist

Dan 19:46

on earth. Yep. it's basically it's desperation and you know, one in their society, one technological failure can, can mean the end for several people. Like people can die very easily and cuz it's such a harsh environment and uh, it's all because. In, in this story, humanity, didn't learn in time and they let the earth fall apart.

dave 20:09

Nuclear nuclear wars. Mm-hmm human on human violence. Did the weather play a role too? increasing temperatures, more fires. More droughts, more floods, more unpredictable nature. Yep.

Dan 20:25

Yeah. The idea is that, uh, at this point on earth, it's just not stable enough to even construct a dome that you could live in. Whereas on Mars, it's actually a more stable environment and you know, there's still storms, but it's, you don't have the extreme weather events that, earth is receiving at at that time in the. it's gotten to the point where, uh, an inhospitable planet is more hospitable than where we're.

dave 20:48

How is class addressed? how have you organized this futuristic civilization politic? Well, uh, the first and or, and reli or, and, or religiously, is there a church separation of church and state?

Dan 21:02

yes, there absolutely is., one of the first things I thought of that is, uh, when I was writing was that, uh, the Martian society hates the idea of religion and they consider religion to be one of the factors that destroyed the. and just how it motivates people to do horrible things and you know, there, and I'm, that's not necessarily my opinion, as a person. I absolutely see that there is a lot that has been that's bad that has come from religion. but I'm never gonna. Tell someone they're a bad person, if they're, you know, if they identify as Christian or Muslim or anything like that. but for the sake of the story, it's, religion is a force just like politics or money. And, uh, this, this futuristic margin in society considers religion. Very bad and something that destroyed the earth and it's outlawed in the Martian society. Oh wow. Mm-hmm And so that was one of the main kinda foundations for building kind of thinking of the society. And the other one was, the idea that they have moved beyond currency. So there are currency list society and. I thought a lot about, how would, before I thought of that, I thought, how would money work on Mars? You know, it because it's, again, it, they didn't, it was a mad rush to get off the earth and they, you know, they could see the end coming for decades ahead. And so they sent ships to Mars and the moon to start constructing these domes that they live in. But, It's gotten to the point where things got so bad that they had to leave. They had to evacuate and abandon the earth much faster than they had originally thought they would. So because of that, it was a huge, desperate rush to get off the planet. people who had more money, all of a sudden didn't really find themselves in the position of power that they had been in because. Their money was kind of worthless on Mars when everyone who was lucky enough to get off the planet and survive, they're all crammed into the same small little metal rooms. And they live in these small little cities and they all can't go outside. the idea is that money kind of quickly became, OBS.

dave 23:09

your skillset and what you know, and what you can do that becomes the riches.

Dan 23:14

Yeah. And well, really the riches, in the marching society is just surviving and the, the motivation for people to do their, not their jobs, but their roles, because of they don't have, they don't have money, so they're not getting paid the motivation to continue to do that. And to work is. To help everyone survive. They're working for the survival of the colony that they live in a real motivation. Yeah, it's, you know, it's life or death. And so there and there's, um, and this is something I might cuz I'm, you know, I'm still working on it and um, I've been working with an editor and she's given me a lot of good ideas. it's not in its final form yet, but you know, I had thought about what would the role of art be in this society? And I'm kind of leaning right now towards the idea that they just don't have time for it. And it's one of those things. It is scary, very scary. And it's one of those things that they,

dave 24:05

that they didn't they're like work songs or I guess, yeah, it would be reimagined because you might not have paper. For that purpose, you might not have paint.

Dan 24:17

the idea is that they've, uh, they've discovered certain resources that are, in the mountains and certain regions on the planet. they knew they were abandoning the earth ahead before moving to Mars. So they had some time to ship some resources to the planet to kind of start themselves off. but it's very limited compared to what we, everything that we take for granted a real

dave 24:38

reduced reuse, recycle environment.

Dan 24:41

Mm-hmm, absolutely

dave 24:42

reuse, reuse, reuse, and go without.

Dan 24:45

Yeah, yeah,

dave 24:46

absolutely. in the story, Mars and moon, is there conflict between the humans, whether that the secular humans. Mars the Martians or the colony on the

Dan 24:59

moon? so basically they, um, they don't have much communication together. they are the moon and, and, and Mars. Yeah, the moon and Mars. Yeah. So there, the way I have it is there are two separate colonies on, on Mars, on different parts of the. even just traveling Overland between the two colonies can be extremely dangerous. So it's like, you know, that harshness of isolation, like, yeah, even just going across the planet, they it's dangerous and not most people don't do it. They stay in their little domes and that's all they do. And that's a big motivator for the main character, Maria she's, she's a bit of a thrill seeker and she's kind of bored with living in these domes, not seeing the outside world, but.

dave 25:42

would the other in the story then be the harsh environment? Yeah. The lack of oxygen, the lack of water, the lack of food. That is the other that's what leads to the community working together in their different roles for

Dan 25:59

survival? Yep, absolutely. it's, you know, there's the three kinda. General main story types that you, that they say it's, uh, you know, person versus person, person versus self and person versus nature. So there's that, there's the person versus nature is one of the big elements of the story and there, but there, those, those other two elements are in there as well. Definitely. but it's, uh, the role of the planet and just people trying to survive and come to terms. Where they are is, uh, a big role and the moon to the Martians, the people on the moon are very mysterious. And so they're only able to communicate when the two, planets, when the earth and Mars are at their closest point, just because their technology isn't great for communicating anymore. when they do, they can only send, you know, these brief little text messages. what they know about each other is extremely limited. So. To each other, they kind of are the other, and they're, they're kind of, they know that they're there, but they kind of both assume that they'll never really be able to get back together again.

dave 27:03

interesting. And, and now if it wasn't for the COVID 19 pandemic, Season three. Do you think you would be as far along in this important, literary project, the science fiction story as you are it hasn't been released yet. So sorry, fans of, the show, you're not gonna be able to get this book yet, but it's getting closer every day Dan, would you say if there wasn't a pandemic, if the pandemic hadn't happened, would we still be talking about this book? Right.

Dan 27:30

I don't know, that's a tough call because, you know, I, the

dave 27:34

idea you had the idea for years.

Dan 27:36

Yep. And I did, and I, it had occurred to me to, uh, write it out before, I, I definitely wouldn't have been waking up as early as, uh, I had been if it hadn't been for the pandemic. although maybe, I mean, it's hard to tell what would've happened, but, um, any free time that I did have, outside of, you know, being with my family with Amanda or, or working, I, I had been focusing on music and, and that was kind of what I was interested in. And. I mean, I still, obviously I'm still interested in music, but it,

dave 28:04

music really got put on the back burner when we couldn't gather, you couldn't even gather with the other members of orbits, a fantastic band. orbits is exactly what the world needs. More space, psychedelic rock, it's inspirational. How this story originally your concept and you, I think you still have inklings of it is that this story is a song. And when you couldn't live your musician lifestyle, you followed your heart you'd already knew about this story was in you, but you started getting it out I wanna get this right. Is it a book or is it a Nova? Well,

Dan 28:40

it's both. So it's a, it's a, it's a Nove. and that's basically what defines that as just the word count and how many, how long it is. So it's,

dave 28:48

it's, it's around 29,000, just under 30,000 words.

Dan 28:52

Yeah. Uh, well, CLO closer to 25,000

dave 28:55

words, 25,000 words. And, and are you getting near the final revision?

Dan 28:59

Yeah. Yeah. What is driving me with this whole project is just, I wanna go through the whole process of trying to get a book published and, uh, it's been so enjoyable the whole time. Like every step of the way is something different and new. And, you know, at first I, I had always thought I wrote the first chapter and I was like, okay, I, I, I did it. I, you know, I got that done. And, but now I have to write the second chapter and this chapter's gonna have you. Some more descriptions of the world and it's like, and you, you can start getting in your head like, well, I, you know, I did that, but, but am I gonna be able to do this next step? And as you just push yourself to do it, the answer is always, yeah, of course you can. and so I I've really enjoyed it and, I'm getting closer to the final revisions. like I said, I, I hired a professional editor at one point, uh, in the summer and that was it wasn't cheap, but it, you know, it really gave me some great insight and, it was worthwhile very worthwhile. Yeah. And she's really nice lady. She, her name's Anna. She's from Toronto. Shout Anna from Toronto, Anna B. Yep. She's great. And, uh, she's very nice. And she. she's into these kind of books, like science fiction, that kind of thing. And she liked the fact that there was a female protagonist as well.

dave 30:15

Kind of reminds me of a Octavia Butler story in that regard because she's a fantastic what a fantastic author and her main characters are, are all that's that's her, that's how she writes as well.

Dan 30:28

She gave me great notes and there's, there's in certain sections. There's some significant revisions I'm gonna be doing. I'm working through that right now, but, uh, I hope to be, uh, sending out, uh, query letters to, uh, literary agents to try and get it, you know, traditionally published, um, before the end of the year.

dave 30:47

best of luck with that. And now we're going into. 2022. We're not yet looking at the COVID 19 pandemic in the rear view, but as you look forward into the, future, do you think we're headed towards a reality where we are gonna totally destroy and kill the earth? Our planet, our home, something that we. Part of, or are we gonna turn it around? Are we gonna love our mother? Are we gonna respect creation? Are we gonna stop with our over consumption and our disposable society? Cause I think it's, those are some of the elements that are destroying. Destroying our beautiful planet. It just during the pandemic, I've seen the brave people in BC standing up to protect the old growth forest at the fairy Creek blockades. But it seems that there just, there seems to be no end to the greed and no end to the amount of money that people will spend to will outspend on community activists.

Dan 31:49

yeah, it's, uh, some days I find I'm more optimistic than others. you know, one reason to be optimistic is, I was reading about this, uh, massive climate bill that, uh, the us has just, uh, signed. And, you know, of course there's always gonna be pushback against anything that you try and do for the environment, especially in that country, but in any country, really There's a lot of like, I, um, obviously it is like a 700 page document, so I haven't read it, but, it's like, there is some real, massive steps forward in that. And, you know, I'm just talk about the us, cuz the us is one of, is like the biggest, I, I don't know if it is the biggest, but it's up there obviously. as far as pollution goes and, um, there's a lot of. Provisions in there that are very, um, generous with environmental agencies, but, but also, you know, a lot of it is a lot. It's a lot of money that they're giving. It's like billions of dollars and they're putting a lot of this money towards small community groups and there aren't specific guidelines on how they have to use it. So is allowing, you know, the local, People at the local level,

dave 32:58

the front lines to be open edited. And, you know, I guess that it shows you that people are serious about taking care of our planet. And that's a really good example, Dan, that the, uh, president Biden and the United States is put a big push on to make some real change. And I guess nothing shows that more than when they start spending the. And it's happening. So, yeah. Thanks Dan. I was kind of feeling gloomy after talking about nuclear war and the planet being so inhospitable people go to the Mars and the moon. And I just have to say, NASA can knock on my door tomorrow and say, well, Dave, we'd like you to go to the Mars, the moon to unite and save humanity. And my first thing would be to say, no, I don't wanna go. But. What about you? If they came and asked you if you would go up because they needed you, you had that skill to save the future. Would you go out into space or are you okay? Like, no. Thanks. I'm.

Dan 33:53

That's tough call. I mean, space is cool and I've always thought of it. I've always loved it. And, uh, the idea of going there is a lot of fun, but I do love earth and I do love nature. And we've got a Maine here don't we? We really do. Yeah. And, and that's, you know, like you mentioned the billionaire space race. And what, what bugs me? I think the, I mean, other than it obviously being just a massive waste of money and resources that could go to so many other worthwhile things, is that it kind like there are a lot of people who look at it the same way we do a as like, kind of. It's just billionaires having fun and wasting money and stuff and wasting time and technology and all this stuff. And I feel like I'm a little worried that it, maybe it, it sours the general public on the idea of space exploration and going into space because I. I think there's a lot of value in that. And I think it's something that's worth investing in, not, not to abandon the earth, but to teach us about the earth and by studying other planets, you know, we learn more about our own planet. Yeah.

dave 34:54

Good point. Good point. It's not one or it doesn't have to be one all bad or all there could be, could be somewhere in the middle. But Dan, thank you so much for joining us here today on the pandemic show stories of the pandemic. For the people of the pandemic. No, one's alone on the pandemic

Dan 35:11

show. Thanks so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun, Dave. Thanks.

35:14

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