Untitled episode

Mara welcome great to be here my brother thank you so much really glad to have you I really love the phrase a stroke of Genius you were in Alaska with your family in a hotel one morning I think you were taking a shower yeah and you had this feeling and this Vision that kind of struck you and you know whether or not it it has anything

at all to do with genius tell us tell us about that moment you know I'm I'm in the shower and I felt uh I felt a presence and in my mind's eye I saw flashes of scenes from like history and how in the beginning whatever that means it seems like there was this intergenerational contract of stewardship with the planet but that Humanity over time has mostly

abandoned that intergenerational contract of stewardship and has forgotten about how interconnected things are did that moment change the life you led and and the work that you do absolutely so one of the people that I really look up to is Jane Goodall I watched uh something about Jane where she said that she went to a meeting as a scientist and she left that meeting an activist

in very similar ways I went to Anchorage kind of just this scientist and I came back both a scientist and now this space environmentalist activist to really try to I guess really showcase how we need to protect orbital space if there's a kind of Genius that mean something to you something that you would want to live up to or something you'd want to recognize in yourself

what would that what would that kind of Genius like actually look like to me the best kind of Genius is simply allowing myself to let the universe go through me and I guess use me as some sort of vehicle for the work that I'm trying to do and if I can keep myself kind of in the moment and in a place of compassion and empathy then

I think genius is just what comes through when you allow that to happen there's more garbage orbiting the Earth than there are working satellites you now work not just to make sure that all that stuff is properly tracked but to be an evangelist for expanding the way we think about Environmental Protection so that it includes all that stuff what can those of us who are not

scientists what can we do to to help you every day the technologies that we have are more and more reliant on these robots in the space that we call Satellites and we're tracking about 50,000 things ranging in size from a cell phone to the space station 5,000 are working and everything else is garbage so that's like 90% of the stuff is trash the thing that most

people just don't realize is that these satellites that are providing these critical services and and and capabilities position navigation timing Communications uh you know internet with the starlink satellites right any of these things can get schwacked that's the technical term get shacked by a piece of junk and this game over and then you lose that capability so I think more and more people just need to

be aware that oh well that space that's somebody else's problem no it's our problem because our way of life our technology is now going through this infrastructure there's a real stereotypical idea of Genius that I'm thinking of a kind of solitary genius working by herself or himself off off off in a in a fun cabin you know what does it mean what would it mean to

be a a genius collaborator back in the times of like the Renaissance people looked at folks Like You Know da Vinci Michelangelo and they said okay these are geniuses and in their own right right and people say well how can we how can anybody be like another one of those science has developed so much Beyond those days that there's no way for somebody to be able

to be quote unquote this Renaissance person that knows very deeply things in all these different fields like those days are gone okay but to me the Real Genius is recognizing where you bring in smart people from other fields that complement and augment your own to solve Wicked problems yeah con connectedness connections with one another but my understanding though from from reading a little of your writing

is that you were um I I think in your childhood you you felt really isolated I did yeah my mom was born in Haiti uh and you know she was naturalized citizen my father sier Leone naturalized citizen um they got divorced when I was very young and uh yeah my my father was just very abusive at the age of seven uh he kidnapped me and N9

days later they found me in some apartment in the Bay Area put me back on a plane to my mom and my mom had uh well we had a cousin that lived in crocus and so we fled the country cuz my mom's like you know I don't want your father to ever find you again he never uh did physically again but growing up in Venezuela I

felt very isolated I felt very alone I came into contact in this void with what seemed to feel like an ocean of infinite love and compassion and then I realized oh I have a choice here I can choose to meet my experiences with equal anger or I can choose to act from a place of love and compassion and heal heal from my pain and make my

healing be of service to others and that's what I've chosen to do when the MacArthur Foundation when they named you a fellow they said it was because they used a beautiful phrase It's because you envision transparent and collaborative solutions for the Earth's orbital spheres what are those Solutions and and maybe when when are they coming my inspiration for this comes from uh indigenous people from traditional

ecological knowledge Teek I call it ancient Tech and so for me my my the vision of my future is seeing Western science and traditionally ecological knowledge come together not annihilate each other but actually harmonize uh with each other so that then that could be the way of the future so that Humanity does recognize interconnectedness empathy the and stewardship thank you so much for being here and

sharing your story sharing yourself thank you brother truly enjoyed it thank you watch the business week show Thursday nights 10:30 Eastern on blueberg television or 8:30 on bloomberg.com or the blueberg app on connected TVs