Transcripts For CSPAN2 Open Phones With Leland Melvin 201709

CSPAN2 Open Phones With Leland Melvin September 11, 2017

Homecoming game. I was running down the sideline. It was perfectly thrown in myte hands. And i lost the touchdown pass in my hands. In the thing is a scout was there for the university of richmond. He walked out of the stadium my coach jb greene believed in me. This time i caught the ball. That one catch resulted in a hundred 80,000 scholarship to the university of richmond. It was a great in the perseverance. In the second chance. How did you get from plane from the university of richmond spiders to the spacee Shuttle Missions. I think the turning of season to zero and ten i think the turning of season to zero and ten it brought some pro scouts down. And all of the hard work and dedication and discipline i went to work for nasa a friend of mine gave me an application a said you would be a great the astronaut i said yeah right. That same year and it filled i didnt fill the application out someone else did. The if that guy can it get and i can in i can get in. The competition and then believing that i could do the same thing and i applied andnd gotten to the astronaut course. Before we go any further. We want to tell the viewers this is a call in segment. He has been in space twice. Alk your chance to talk to an astronaut. Or if you live in the east central time zone. He 7488201. Pply what are you doing it that you are able to apply to nasa. A lot of people would like tosa apply to nasa. After leaving the Dallas Cowboys with a pulleded hamstring i went back to graduate school fulltime and i got my masters degree and then this woman said you should come work for nasa. Ious a she was tenacious. She said we need people like you at nasa and i applied and ended up getting the job to work as a research assistant. I was a material science engineer but we are working in an area called non destructive sciences and we were Building Systems for measuring damage in the Space Shuttle tiles using different types of sensors optical fibers. Lasers and systems for measuring damage. Llas he threw something in there by that Dallas Cowboys. I got drafted to the lions pulled a hamstring. Then i went to train with the Dallas Cowboys so i day im kissing footballs forer americas team. Nd that was the end of our football career. The date you applied to nasa from when you took off to atlantis. 199 i applied in 1997 got into the course. Ten years later it took me to fly in space. Is that typical. Most people fly within navy two to three years maybe three to four years if it is a different mission. But i have a little problem. I lost all my hair dash like hearing in a training accident. They forgot to put this little pad in my helmet that allows sai you to clear your ears. So they said i would never fly in space. It was training in the white eva suits. 6million pool. We are in the spacewalk suits. But in a suit there the suit there is an actual pad that you use to clear your ears. And mine was not in there. Test at 20 feet i told the test director to turn the volume up. My they realize the blood was coming out of my ears. They said emergency surgery they operated and looked around and couldnt find anything i ended up going to work in dc in this Educator Program and then when i was in that program we lost Space Shuttle columbia. I was there for the families. Te we are flying around the country going to different Memorial Services to get the family through this in the chief Flight Surgeon was in each one of those flights taking notes as we took off and landed. He he believed in me that i could actually fly in space and not get back in the pool not to get back in the pressure situations that i but i could fly in space and do a job in space to help advance our civilization. The photo on the cover of your book that has to be the best astronaut photo ever. If you look at the picture on the front all of our hands are connected. They are combined together in solidarity as the family gets to space. Leland melvin is our guest he has flown twice. In the second time was atlantis as well. How long were you there. The First Mission was 12 days. Sa if we were still flying the shuttle would you go. I would go again. W should the Shuttle Mission had ended. O we have other ways to deploy that. We completed the space station to build out. Deliv weve other people delivering cargo with the cost of the Space Shuttle program we would not be able to build a new rocket system and write a vehicle. It was relegated to the lower orbit. We wanted to go past that. And assist lunar space station and it will help us get to mars one day. You are on with author andrs astronaut. I was just cannot ask aboutsu the astronaut that has been up there for 665 days what do you think about that . Witso this is the island she applied 13 times to become an astronaut she is one of my heroes its one of these people that i hold up like catherine johnson. I love her to death. Who was or is catherine johnson. Year she is a 99yearold mathematician that calculated the trajectories to get john glenn orbiting the planet. He she was a hidden figure. They talked about her writing the book and margo is the daughter of bob lee who was an engineer who worked at nasa with me. Its kind of like a family affair. Catherine celebrated her 99th birthday in west virginia. No matter what zip code year from you can be or do anything they put your mind too. [inaudible] i apologize we will have to hang up there. I dont think either of us could understand. I apologize for that. We are listening on with astronaut leland mullen. Question how soon my young people begin academically for admission in space. It exactly how much mathematics does that program entail. The training to become an astronaut i started building things with my hands when i was in millet middle school. To get kids looking up in theai night sky. What was your second question, how much emphasis will be put on them in school. I think it should be more on steam. Hould be its part of stem education. Having kids building, creating. It prepared me for getting the space and working with other people and languages and working with our russian colleagues. Other they were all part of that training. Darnell you are on with leland melvin. Are o its so great to see you. I was just flipping through the channels and i saw this. What a fantastic story. My question is where had you been and why havent we heard the story before. I think about kathy johnson. She helped john glenn get around the planet. A lot of us had been Hidden Figures for quite a while. N who i got this book out of here so we can get more kids to know that we could play in the nfl. You could be an astronaut and you could be an educator. If you people that have your back and if you believe in yourself and your card. I want to show a photo to the book to the viewers. What is this a photo a. That was dr. Bobby thatcher. As well as a medical dr. Its the first time that two africanamerican men were in space at the same time. They called us the effort thats. That one picture they will listen to buy a billion people. They want to be astronauts. In the is nothing wrong with that. I was a ballplayer. You can do it so much more than this one thing. Host w when undocked from the International Space station. And we were floating in the mid deck of the Space Shuttle atlantis tyler marietta georgia that afternoon. Please go ahead. At nasa today discuss why there are some of the conspiracy theories about the moon landing and second question is do you think weou really landed on the moon . Allern you can see some the videos where it looks like theress things in the background also another thing i heard which was really good arent there different radiation belt and how where the rash not able to pass through that when they were headed towards them in. Tyler my friends have given their lives for expiration. Apollo one we lost people in a fire. John young who is not a liar hes a friend of mine who interviewed me to become an astronaut walked on the moon. I believe in this man he does an honest honorable person. I believe in the Space Program and i know that we have walked on the mint because of the efforts to help advance our civilization some we dont believe that the earth is round. Is round. You cant buy into some of the stuff that you see on youtube. Y more any other scientists that had analytical minds. And can understand that these things are real. An you talk about the twang what is the twang . Its when youre sitting in the shuttle and the three main engines come on and they are off from that stack so the entire shuttle rotates forward and then we come back here the main engine light they are eight bolts that have explosive charges in them that are ignited. And they blow away. D they b it is amazing because you know when you come back like on the green door. Thats how we come back up. But we take off right after that. A lot of people have felt the pressure on their chest. Is it like that. We pull about three as were going on. We start to labor the breath a little bit. Little bit to take really deep breaths. But after the solid rocket boosters you are doing this for a little by all. And then he gets muchh smoother. You in six and half minutes later you are in space. Is it just very smooth when you are ins base when you are in space . You have your seatbelt on. You are still in it. You push off with your back and now youre floating towards the front seat. Her weight back and forth. Boun who go through with when you see the most incredible lightyo show the colors of the caribbean a sunrise in a sunset every 45 minutes as you go around the planet every 90 minutes and youre doing this for people that we used to fight against. Did you ever run into space junk or satellites could you see them. I did not see any of that. Lots of times we would come back home there were little pits in the window from small particles that are actually hit the window. In my Second Mission we opened up that and we saw this thing that looked organic in translucent and was startingdo to flow out and i grabbed it and i said it was a piece of ice that had broken off from these that were part of the freon loops. Loops, k it kind of looked like a body floating up. The aliens on that movie contact. He alien thats what it looks like to me. T look one of my colleagues who is in space right now he looked to me like what is that. Lets hear from tamara in port orange florida. Im calling because we are coming up on an exciting milestone with the commercial crew a commercial crew programbe and i was wondering your thoughts on commercial crew and if you will be involved in that. With your background. H they used to be a counselor at space camp and ive been a flight educator and now im a stay home mom. I am all for commercial crew. Ar the more people to have that have an opportunity to go to space and experience this will help us to advance our perspective even more. It will help us to come together in civilization so whoever wants to go to space however we want to do it i embrace all of it. It can only help us advance as a civilization. Today i have a chance to talk to a lot of people at the National Book festival here in dc. And then also the Young Readers addition which hasle, steam experiments in the s back. You can do all this really exciting things. The key is to help us. To get t to take our place. And to help share these messages of hope and inspiration in future. I have retired from nasa but i still help out in certainn aspects when there are launches into missions andll thinks. How is your 90acre serenity farm. I start i sold the farm. Ld, i so in believing in themselves. The author and our guest is leland melvin. Hillary clintons new book what happened about the tribe the 16 president ial election will be Police Released this tuesday. She appeared this morning on cbs sunday morning here is a portion of the interview. After the first of the year i have a big decision to make was i going to go to the inauguration. I am a former first lady and former president and first ladies show up. Its part of that demonstration of the continuity of our government. There he was on the platform feeling like an out of body experience and then his speech which was a cry from the White Nationalist gods. This american carnage stops. Part of my supporters but im the president of all americans. The newest book what happened will be released on tuesday by simon and schuster. And on monday evening september 18 book tv will be to be will be covering a discussion between Hillary Clinton and politics and prose coowner and former chief speech writer they will discuss secretary clintons president ial campaign in 2016 and its aftermath. For more information check our website at book tv. Org. One thing that is clear is its utterly boring to understand the biology of the more torque aspects of your behavior. Your brain tells her spine tells your muscles to do something and her rate you have behaved. What is incredibly complicated is understanding the meaning of the behavior because in one setting firing a gun is some appalling act and another its a act of heroic selfsacrifice. Putting your hand on top of someone elses is deeply compassionate. The challenge for us is to understand the biology of the context of our behaviors. And that one is really challenging. You are never going to really understand what is going on if you get into your head that you are going to be able to explain everything when this is the part of the brain or the gene or the hormone or the childhood experience that explains everything. It doesnt work that way. Instead any behavior that occurs is the outcome of the biology that occurred a second before you and our before and all the weight to a million years before. To give you some sense of this. You are in some situation there is a crisis in writing. There is a stranger running at you. Maybe they are angry maybe they are afraid they have something in their hand that seems like a handgun and you are sitting there and you have a gun it turns out that what they have in their hand was a cell phone instead. Thus we ask a biological question why did the behavior occur in you. Why did that the behavior occur. What went on one second behind for in your brain that brought about that behavior. Not to begin to understand that the part of the brain that is at the top of the list of usual suspects as the brain is the brain region called the amygdala. You want think about the brain and that amygdala. You get an outburst of aggression. Human who had rare types of seizures that start their rare types of tumors if you are damage the amygdala you plant the ability of an organism to be aggressive. The amygdala is about violence. If you sit down your typical dr. And asked him what thats about that is not the first word that is good to come out of their mouth. What the amygdala is about his fear. Fear and exciting and learning to be afraid. We have just learned something very interesting which is you cannot understand the first thing about the neurobiology of violence without understanding the neurobiology of fear. There would be an awful lot more of sleeting between lions and lambs. The thing to begin to make sense is what parts of the brain does it talk too. In which reason region talks to in return. It is called the insular cortex. It is in fact boring if you are a lab rat or any other man on earth because it does something very straightforward. You buy into a piece of food in it is spoiled and rotten and rancid and all of that and what happens is as a result you are cortex activates and it triggers all sorts of brief boxes. You have a gag reflex. Very useful. You do the same thing with human. Get a nice human volunteer. All we have to do is pick about eating something disgusting something much more subtle sit down somewhat in your brain scanner and have them tell you about a time they did something miserable and rotten to some other human or tell them about some other occurrence of some human doing something miserable and run to someone else in the insular cortex will activate. And every other memo on earth it is gustatory disgust. It also does moral disgust. And what that tells you is why it is that if something is sufficiently appalling we feel sick to her some ask. It leaves a bad taste in her mouth. We feel nauseous because our brain invented the symbolic thing of moral standards some 40 or 50,000 years ago and did not invent a new part of brain at the time. There was some sort of Big Committee meeting and they said moral disgust there is the insular that does food discussed its okay. Give me some duct tape. Its now been a dual moral disgust as well and has trouble telling the difference. And no surprise the main part of the brain that it talks to in the human brain is the amygdala because once it decides that this thing is discussing you are a couple of steps away from it being scary and menacing and you need to act against. Suppose you see some moral ill that needs to be cured and someone could take an enormous selfsacrifice. If moral outrage was the abstraction distance it would be hard to pick up a have of steam to really be able to act against it. The stomach churning that is where the force comes to. To make a moral imperative imperative. That is great. But then there is a downside. It is not very good at remembering its only a metaphor that you are feeling disgusted and suddenly you have that whole problem of the world of people who are disgusted by somebodys behavior which in someone elses eyes is just the normal loving lifestyle discussed is a moving target in time and space. Be morally disgusted by something as a pretty good litmus test. We should know all of the ways in which that can get you into trouble. And at setup brilliant feeling for how the cortex works. Which is if you can get your minion to the point that when you talk about them living in the next valley. Them who think differently than you. If you can get your followers to the point that when you evoke them it activates because there is something just discussing about them you are 90 of the way towards pulling off your successful genocide. I kid every good genocidal movement is taking them and turning them into infestations. Great to be with you. Guest really glad to be here. Host i want to did a bit of background about how i came to know about your book. I was sent this book by the good folks at cspan and they were like we have a new book coming out do you mind ife

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