Book Club Edition: Exploring the Overview Effect with Frank White

Mat Kaplan: Hello again, Planetary Radio listeners. I'm Mat Kaplan, senior communications advisor at the Planetary Society, and former host of The Weekly Show. We are back with just the second of our Planetary Society Book Club livestream recordings to be presented here in the podcast feed. We got started with author Andy Weir last month. This time, it's a visit with author and space philosopher Frank White, who coined the term The Overview Effect. You may have heard of it even if you've never heard of Frank, which would please him. You don't have to have read the book to be intrigued, touched and fascinated by his deep thoughts about how our advancement across the solar system and beyond has already begun to change our view of the cosmos, our appreciation for our own planet and what it means to be human. So once again, with gratitude to host and producer, Sarah Al-Ahmed, here's the conversation I recorded in July of 2025 with Frank White. It is a great pleasure and a tremendous honor to welcome the author of the book that I hope that many of you have been reading over the past month if you didn't read it a long time ago. I'm one of those who read it a long time ago and then got the fourth edition of the book recently so that I could see what had changed and I'm very glad that I did. Let me welcome our special guest and the author of that book, Frank White. Welcome.

Frank White: Thank you so much, Mat. It's great to be here.

Mat Kaplan: Let me give the required introduction of Frank White and you can find much more at frankwhiteauthor.com. Frank White author, all one word, .com. And it says right there, and I agree with this, author, space philosopher and consultant. His most famous and influential book is, as I've said, what we're going to be talking about this evening, though it has strong ties to many if not all of his other works, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution. It's had a profound effect on many, many people in the space community just as The Overview Effect itself has had a deeply profound effect on many of those few of us who have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and made it out there, whether it was for a few minutes or for a year, up into the great expanse that is above our heads. The film called The Overview is largely based on Frank's work and on the book. It's now been viewed ... I checked, Frank. It's up at about eight and a quarter million views on Vimeo now. I mentioned the fourth edition of the book, the one we're considering today. It includes Frank's interviews with 31 astronauts over quite a few years. I have watched a community build around Frank and his beliefs about our human destiny in space. I feel very fortunate to be part of that community. Before we go any further, you asked me if we could sort of dedicate this conversation to someone very special. Please go ahead and do that.

Frank White: Yeah. Thanks, Mat. Well, my late wife, Donna, who passed away three years ago at Christmastime, was a very important supporter of my work. She herself was not really fascinated with space exploration. She was really interested in children and family. But she understood that this was incredibly important to me. Today is her birthday and of course I've been missing her, but I thought this is a terrific way to honor her and I appreciate you giving a little time to say a little bit about how wonderful Donna's support for what always seemed to her to be far in the future. Her support for my work was tremendously important. Without her, I don't think I could have done the work I have done on The Overview Effect and other topics. So thanks so much, Mat. I appreciate it.

Mat Kaplan: Thank you, Frank. We are doubly honored to have given you the opportunity to pay tribute to her. Like her, my wife, not really a space person, but very supportive of my passion for all of this. Let me tell people a little bit more about the book because some of them may not have read it. The very first edition of the book, the foreword was written by Gerard K. O'Neill, and maybe we'll let Frank give you a sentence or two about the significance of that person, that name in a moment. But he said about this, "Frank White is one of a growing number of people who are not content with speculation on the human breakout from the bonds of planet Earth. Those people devote much of their creativity and hard work to making that breakout to a new ecological range a reality in their own time, rather than leaving it to an uncertain future." And before we hear more about Gerard K. O'Neill, this is part of the foreword for the fourth edition from our friend, astronaut and artist, Nicole Stott. Nicole said, "I was honored when Frank asked me to write foreword for this latest edition of The Overview Effect. Thankful is another word that comes to mind whenever I think about Frank and his work." So I think you should say at least one or two words about Gerard K. O'Neill because wasn't he partly responsible for setting you on this course?

Frank White: Yeah, very responsible. I mean, I've often said, Mat, no O'Neill, no Overview. And the reason I say that is this. I was searching for a space related home in the 1970s and early '80s and I just couldn't find one. I mean, I wasn't trained in engineering or anything technical, and in those days there didn't seem much opportunity for social scientists, liberal arts graduates, et cetera. But Gerard K. O'Neill, or Gerry, created the Space Studies Institute and he welcomed everybody. And the reason he did is now common. It was because he wanted to think about really large numbers of human beings living and working off world, filling up the solar system. That was his vision and he had a strong ecological vision as well because he felt that if we began to move our highly technological civilization off of the Earth to a larger system, that would be good for the Earth. And I think he's right. So I got involved in SSI and got to know Gerry, and I was thinking all the time about living off the planet Earth because of him. And that led to the flight across the country where I was looking down at the Earth and wondering what if I lived in an O'Neill community, and I thought I would have an overview. I would see the Earth as a whole system, I would have the Overview Effect. And that began the research that led to the four editions of the book. And I was just blown away really when Gerry agreed to write the foreword because that was really so appropriate. He wrote a great foreword too.

Mat Kaplan: He certainly did. Folks, if you're still not familiar with that name, other than this brief introduction from Frank, look it up. Gerard K. O'Neill, the man who pioneered space settlements, was the first to lead the research that considered the practicalities of building a city in space and how you would pay for it for that matter. And it's fascinating. I have the NASA study, the beautifully illustrated NASA study in the bookcase right next to me here.

Frank White: That's great. Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: Here is something from one of the astronauts that you've spoken to. It's Nicole again, but what she has to say is hardly unique. "It doesn't matter if you look out the window one time or multiple times in terms of how impressive it is, it hits you just as strongly." She was looking out the window. She was in the cupola to be exact of the International Space Station that Nicole spent months living on and made a couple of space shuttle missions as well. This is a theme that you heard over and over from astronauts, right?

Frank White: Yeah. I mean part of the research that I've done by interviewing astronauts has been the question of does it ever get old to be able to see the Earth with this overview perspective. By and large, the answer is no, it doesn't get old. Nicole stated it very cogently. We have to remember that the space station goes around the Earth 16 times a day. And also every time you do that journey or take that journey, the Earth is dynamic. It's changing. It's not a static picture. And there's another interview with Joe Allen and there's similar interviews with other astronauts in the book, but they focus on the dynamism of the planet, the sense that it's really a living being. And so I guess that's why it doesn't get old. It's not like you are seeing the same thing every day. You're seeing something different. The planet can surprise you even after you've been there for nine months.

Mat Kaplan: There are so many highlights I made, phrases and paragraphs that I pulled out of the book and I'm going to share a few of those. This one I thought was one of those that is really key to your message. Here it is. "The thesis of this book is that space exploration is a major step in a long evolutionary journey which we humans will be making not only for ourselves but also for the evolution of the universe." Now you said you think this is important to the future of Earth, but the universe as well. And then you go on to explain why you feel that way, but tell us.

Frank White: I've asked myself why is it that the universe ... Or Cosma, which is my name for the universe. Why has Cosma nurtured us over four and a half billion years of history so that the Earth has produced a species homo sapiens that can build rocket ships and telescopes that can look out into the universe without leaving Earth, but we can leave the Earth and we can have these dramatic new understandings of what the universe looks like when you're not on the surface? And I realized that most justifications for space exploration are focused on us, on humans. So I started thinking, well, are we giving something to Cosma that Cosma needs? And isn't it the case that as we evolve, as we become more self-aware, more intelligent, more conscious, doesn't that mean that the universe becomes more conscious and self-aware? Well, ipso facto, by definition, yes, because we're part of the universe. So one of the things I've attempted to do is define a new philosophy of space exploration and it focuses as much on what we can give as what we can take. It's in our nature to exploit our environment. We all know about that. And fortunately and partly because of the Overview Effect, we've understood that life is not all about taking, it's about giving as well. That's what that paragraph or sentence is all about. And honestly, it shows up a lot more, Mat, in my other book, Cosma Hypothesis. But I'm really attempting just to start a discussion. I don't know if it's correct, if that's the reason, but you do have to be somewhat astonished that we even exist. And I know some people would say from a religious point of view that they know that we were created by God and we are here for a purpose defined by God. Other people would say, "Well, I look at it somewhat differently." But without bringing religion into it, I notice that in an environment or in an ecosystem, every part of that ecosystem has a purpose. And by purpose I mean function. On Earth, we're coming to understand that mosquitoes have a purpose. Now, we don't like them and we don't like for them to realize their purpose through us, but we're starting to see that this complicated Earth is made up of so many different life forms and they all give something to this living planet. Maybe the universe is like that.

Mat Kaplan: You make me think of that great quote from our co-founder at the Society, Carl Sagan, that we are a way for the universe to know itself.

Frank White: Yeah. And I've used that quote a lot and that's a very succinct way of saying what I'm saying. I see it as another way for humanity to understand why we're here and maybe a broader understanding that more people can accept because it's not tied to any one ethnicity or culture or religion. But that's the whole point. I mean, I do know one thing. Going out into orbit or to the moon, we see the truth of where we are in the universe. I think astronomers get very close to that, but astronauts get close to it very much in a visceral way, experiential way. Spaceship Earth is a metaphor, but I think the astronauts feel it. They really feel it. It's not just a way of describing the Earth. It's like, yeah, and there's nothing out there except blackness and stars and this is the only place we know of where we can live without special equipment. It's humbling and it's also a call to action to take care of this planet. It's the best one in the solar ecosystem, and it might be the best one for light years. We don't know.

Mat Kaplan: As my boss, Bill Nye says, it's my favorite planet. Everybody I know and love lives here.

Frank White: And every historical figure that I admire lived here. And Carl Sagan talked about that too.

Mat Kaplan: Yep. That pale blue dot.

Frank White: Pale blue dot.

Mat Kaplan: I'm glad you mentioned that phrase, Spaceship Earth, because Buckminster Fuller, Bucky Fuller, you bring him up here and there in the book, and I have to pardon me for boasting a bit. One of my proudest experiences in my professional life is that I got to do one of the last interviews with Bucky before he passed away.

Frank White: Good for you.

Mat Kaplan: I'm so happy to have had that experience. And he as well, people know of him. They think, "Oh yeah, the guy who invented the geodesic dome." He was so much more than that. I would say that Bucky was a philosopher more than he was an inventor or an engineer. A philosopher in the same vein that I think you are.

Frank White: Bucky was always a role model for me and sort of the way Gerry O'Neill was. One of the things I liked about Bucky is that he wasn't afraid to move from one academic discipline to another. He didn't feel like, "Oh, I have to be an architect and I can't be anything else," or, "I have to be a philosopher. I can't be anything else." And he boldly moved around. He was a Renaissance person. And I would say I've attempted to live up to his example, and I was very, very pleased when I got the advance for the first edition of the book. Bucky had died not so long before that, and I went out to the cemetery where he's buried, to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. And I went out there to pay tribute to him. Sort of salute and say we're still spreading the gospel. And there is a Buckminster Fuller Institute and they were carrying on his work and I'm so glad because so many people and like Gerry O'Neill, I don't think he got credit when he was alive for what he had accomplished.

Mat Kaplan: No. No, I totally agree. Frank, I have so many questions for you, but as they come in from our members, Planetary Society members and members of the book club, I'm going to throw them at you. And if you have a question or a comment ... And I don't know if this is a question or a comment from Devon, but I'm going to read it cold here. He says, "I love the idea that the value we give back to the universe is more consciousness and awareness. It's easy to be pessimistic with current world affairs." You can say that again, Devon. "But do you think we can go backwards on our path as a species? Are we able to tell or is it normal to always see the worst of ourselves in the present?" Frank?

Frank White: Very good question. Challenging question. One of the aspects of humanity that puzzles everybody, including me, how can we do such wonderful things and such terrible things? How do we have this kind of dual personality? And I don't know the answer to that, but I do think that we're a product of evolution. That means two things. One, we can go forward, we should go forward. And I believe that space exploration is a big part of going forward. But I did some research for a presentation. I found out that 99% of all the species that ever existed on the Earth are extinct. And I think we have to hold in our minds the possibility that that could happen to our species. And we don't often think of ourselves as a species and I think it would broaden our perspective if we did. One reason I'm anxious to see more people leave the planet even briefly, is for them to experience the Overview Effect because it seems to have profound impact and it seems to become something that people want to share. And it started with the professional astronauts and they communicated to me that they didn't want to hold some kind of secret knowledge. One of them said to me, "You don't go to space for yourself. You don't do it for that reason. It's for the species, it's for humanity, it's for all life on this planet." So I think we could go backwards and I think it's worth looking at what is showing up in the media because I wrote a novel when I was in graduate school called American Revolution, and that was in the '60s. It was a very tough time in the '60s. And it's what we would now call a post-apocalyptic novel, but now that's a genre.

Mat Kaplan: You were ahead of your time.

Frank White: I was. I was. And I'm not happy about it. But what I'm concerned about is that it's becoming almost predictive or desensitizing that our civilization could collapse under pressure. I will say one other thing and then close. It occurred to me recently that while a lot of what's happening on the planet today seems the opposite of the Overview Effect, I think it's tied to the Overview Effect. The Overview Effect message is we're all in this together. We need to work together. There are no borders and boundaries except those that we create. I believe, and I can't prove it, that many of the people who appear to be in conflict with the Overview Effect message really are in conflict because they don't want it to be that way. The way the world is seen from orbit, the one integrated system, I think is hard for some people to accept. For them, almost contradicting it becomes part of their philosophy, but what they may not realize is that they're tied to the Overview Effect in the same way I am. I've embraced it. But we're all dealing with this radical new understanding of ourselves.

Mat Kaplan: I love the suggestion in your book that we get a summit conference, maybe the G-8, in low Earth orbit and see what happens. I don't know if some of those individuals, if they would feel the Overview Effect, but hey, we won't know if they don't try. You also made me think of a line in the book, another one that I highlighted, but I highlighted it with three exclamation points. The Overview Effect represents a new system of values that holds the key to human evolution, which seems to be very much in line with what you've been talking about for the last few minutes.

Frank White: Right. The values, they directly emerge from what the astronauts talk about, and I just mentioned some of them before, which is interconnectedness. The fact that we are connected to every other human being and indeed to all life on Earth. What happens in Japan affects what happens in America and what happens in Ecuador has an impact on people in China. We also ought to recognize that we are not on a stable platform with the heavens rotating above us. We are on a moving entity and you can call it a spaceship. We are moving through the universe at a high rate of speed, and that's the truth of the matter. I've often said that three words describe the Overview Effect. Truth, love, and identity. And truth is ... I won't say it's the most important, but once you get it's perhaps the most obvious because the astronauts don't have to be told that it's a spaceship, they see it. Love is just that you come to love humanity and the planet. And identity is the shift from me to we. It's a shift toward the common good. I just hope that this new paradigm can penetrate the consciousness of our planet quickly enough that we don't go downhill, we don't devolve, but we evolve.

Mat Kaplan: I certainly hope we're only looking at a temporary setback and not in geologic terms. When you wrote The Overview Effect and in the years since, I wonder if you've ever been surprised at how it has become kind of a ubiquitous term. You talk about this in the book. Not just one that is understood and appreciated and felt by astronauts, but by many of us who I think you use the term terranauts for the people who get it.

Frank White: We're all terranauts. I'm surprised every day, Mat. And I'm grateful every day. When I wrote the first edition, I thought it would become a commonplace term very quickly or I hoped it would. I was really hoping to go way beyond writing a book and to start a movement based on what the astronauts were telling me because I felt like we needed it. My initial surprise was that it didn't become a ubiquitous term and I didn't have a plan B and honestly, I spent 20 years thinking, "Well, that was a big flop up." It really wasn't until 2007 when David Beaver organized the first Overview Effect conference that I began to understand people were reading the book, they were being impacted by it, but pre-internet, things happened slowly. And so I think that everything really accelerated around 2012 when The Overview film premiered at Harvard. We had something like 250 people at the premiere. The film, 19 minutes long, was just put on the internet with no fanfare and people started watching it and it really created momentum for the idea. Going back to your question, I'm surprised every day, I'm grateful every day, and I'm very grateful that I'm here to see it happen. As I said, I don't think Gerry O'Neill got his due. I don't think Bucky did. Quite a few people work their whole lives on something important and they don't really know that it was appreciated and they don't ever know that. And so I'm just very happy about that, but it's not about me, and I've said this again and again. If there are any heroes to the story, it's the astronauts. They risk their lives to have the experience and to bring it back. They're the heroes. And like me, they share their story because they want our behavior on this planet to change. And the astronauts all talk about, I have a more environmental consciousness. I see the futility of war, etc. What the big payoff would be, and it's the big payoff for all the money was spent on space exploration, would be if we really changed the way we do things here on the Earth.

Mat Kaplan: My conversation with Frank White will continue after a brief break. I'll ask Frank about how The Overview Effect has been embraced by space activists and others. Please stay with us.

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Mat Kaplan: Welcome back to Planetary Radio Book Club Edition. I'm Mat Kaplan. I want to stick with this idea of the community that has grown up around this, which you have regular conversations with, and all the other organizations that have sort of adopted the Overview Effect. It has only been about a month since I had the chance to go take a zero G flight to go on the float. While I was doing that, I talked to a lot of people, and by the way, this was enabled by Space for Humanity, a fantastic organization that works to get regular folks, including young people from third world nations, give them the opportunity to experience the Overview Effect, as you know. I was surprised and pleased to see how often the Overview Effect came up as a phrase as I spoke to other people who were on that flight with me.

Frank White: Yeah. I think it's worth looking back at the fact that the first person to experience this phenomenon personally and directly was Yuri Gagarin, 1961. It was really 25 years before it had a name. And I think it's very important for phenomena to have names because then people can use it as a shorthand. They don't have to go into a lot of detail to explain what they're talking about. Nicole's talked about this, that this concept, these three words, The Overview Effect, even gave astronauts words they needed in order to express what had happened out there. So 25 years when it was not well known. And my friend and colleague, Stan Rosen, in fact did do research on what we call the Overview Effect before I did, and it just didn't have a name, what he was looking at. It was not published in a book, but I've read some of his papers and he was certainly looking at the same phenomenon that I was looking at. I think it's happened because society needs it. I think it's also part of the evolution we're talking about. Again, it's not about me and I will tell a little story here. We mentioned Donna earlier. When I first met Donna, The Overview Effect wasn't as well known as it is now, and we kind of got excited every time it got mentioned. And over time, it's mentioned very often. I would go show the article to her or the blog post and she would look at it and she would say, "Does it mention you?" I would say, "Oh, no, it doesn't." "Well, that's not okay." And for me, the fact that the term has its own life separate from me is a victory, but Donna and a lot of my friends are the same. The term has reached a point of maturity where it doesn't depend on me. Quite a few other people are doing research. They're expanding the meaning of the term, and that's really the only way I think it can spread and have the impact we want it to have.

Mat Kaplan: I think it's quite a legacy, by the way. I have a couple more questions for you, and interestingly, they are highly related and I think I'll do them in reverse order. Carr wants to know, have there been longitudinal studies following astronauts to see whether the Overview Effect's influence on worldview persists over years or decades, or do these insights fade over time? What does the evidence show? Has anybody actually researched this, looked into it? It's a small sample still. Only a few hundred of us have been up there.

Frank White: I don't know if there's been a longitudinal study. If there has been, I don't know about it. It should be done though, because everybody wants to know the answer to that question. I also think it's important to simply know how long the impact lasts and are there ways to have it last longer. Because the other reality that we've discovered about the Overview Effect is this is actually a way to change consciousness. It's hard to change consciousness. It may ultimately be a way to change behavior too. Without the longitudinal studies, we don't know whether it's a brief phenomenon or long lasting. I will say anecdotally that it appears to me that it does persist, but it evolves. It doesn't really stay the same. Charlie Walker is a person I've interviewed more than once who flew three times on the shuttle in the '80s, and shameless plug, but if you buy the latest edition, there is a recent interview with him, which means it's many, many years after his flight. What stood out for me in that interview was he said when he flew, he didn't consider it a spiritual experience, but now he does.

Mat Kaplan: How interesting. Yeah.

Frank White: That's interesting.

Mat Kaplan: Fascinating man by the way. He was largely responsible for me becoming involved and starting to do space media work when he was the leader of the National Space Society, so I-

Frank White: Yeah, he was.

Mat Kaplan: I have a special place in my heart for Charles.

Frank White: Yeah, Charlie's a great guy.

Mat Kaplan: Here's the other thing that came in that I said I would get to, and it's more of a statement. It's from Arnie. "The Overview Effect remains strong in many that have reached orbit. However, there appears to be a significant subset who seem to forget the feeling, yet you, Frank, maintain it without personally experiencing it. Bravo." I mean, as you said, you have the first inkling of it on that transcontinental flight.

Frank White: On the airplane.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah.

Frank White: I can also report another interesting phenomenon. Well, first of all, people always want to know, can you have the Overview Effect without going into outer space?

Mat Kaplan: Yeah. I'm not answering for you. I'm saying yes, I want the answer.

Frank White: Okay. I do have the answer. I distinguish between the overview and the effect. You can't really have the overview fully without going into orbit or on a suborbital hop or going to the moon. You can't have that overview of the Earth with the universe in the background without getting at a distance from the Earth, but I think you can have an effect that mirrors other shifts in awareness. I think you can have this realization of connectedness, the realization of oneness and other impacts on your awareness without leaving the planet. And then there's an -between state, which is climbing a mountain, going on an airplane. That's sort of distance. You're not quite as far away, but you do have a distance from the Earth. And interestingly enough, the airplane trip started all of this, and it's happened to me twice more on an airplane. I mean, it's interesting that we have this marvelous machine called an airplane, and we really mostly use it to get from one place to the other, not to change our consciousness. I was interviewed by a reporter, a freelance writer who was writing an article for Air Canada for their inflight magazine. She told me that there has been research and that ... I don't know why the number five sticks in my mind, but she said she was going to cite five people who had had really big ideas while on an airplane. I can't really explain that. What I would say about myself, and I'm not sure if it's universal, but from that experience that I had, I have not been able to escape it. It changed my life. It showed me my purpose. And even in the dark times when I thought I had failed, I couldn't let go of it. I do think that's the power of the Overview Effect, and I believe a lot of the astronauts are in the same boat as I am. They can't let go of it.

Mat Kaplan: For us planet locked terranauts who sadly may never get the chance to get the full Overview Effect experience, what can we do to help advance our progress toward what you believe is ... At least what you hope is our universal destiny?

Frank White: Well, everybody can start just by understanding the idea of being a crewmate on a spacecraft. It's just an idea. Maybe it's not experientially true to you, but you can start by each day thinking, "I'm a crew member," and you can start looking at other people not as competitors for status or people who may not be friendly toward you. You could start by having a sense that we're all in this together, and if this planet doesn't work out, we're all going to go down the drain together.

Mat Kaplan: You quote Bucky Fuller again as saying that humankind's fundamental decision is either creating a utopia or oblivion for all.

Frank White: I really believe that. And this level that I'm talking about what right now is not different from any other habit that you adopt every day. I mean, some people go running every day. It becomes a habit, it becomes part of them. Some people meditate every day. It becomes part of them. And this effort to become a Terranaut, if you will, it becomes something that you adopt. Now more directly, I really think that anyone who reads all the interviews in my book will get it. If they don't want to read part one and part two, which is my writing, that's fine. But I do believe if you read the interviews I've done with astronauts, you'll pick up on this idea. But then let's not forget that we do have another technology that can help us, and that's virtual reality.

Mat Kaplan: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Frank White: That can help a lot.

Mat Kaplan: I want to get to some of the concepts that you communicate in part two of the book, but before I do that, as we close in on the end of this conversation, we got another thing from Carr here. "William Shatner was reduced to tears in his suborbital flight, so that wasn't the Overview Effect? What about me seeing a nebula through an observatory thinking, 'My God, that's who we are.'" Well, you just mentioned a suborbital effect, maybe just fine for getting the feeling, the Overview Effect, but what about ... And also come to think of it, you said astronomers probably took on this as well.

Frank White: Right, right. Shatner is a complicated story in the sense that a lot of people told me before the commercial flights began that nobody was going to experience the Overview Effect on a suborbital flight because you weren't far enough from the Earth and you didn't have enough time. I believe that openness to the experience is really quite important, and it appears to me he was quite open to the experience and that was the Overview Effect. He did see the peril the Earth is in, and it wasn't a positive experience for him, but I think it was the Overview Effect, the shift in consciousness. One other aspect of this is the feeling of awe. A feeling of wonder at something bigger than ourselves. Looking at a nebula or looking at a star field or a globular cluster through a telescope or binoculars can evoke that feeling. It definitely can. And my friend Mike Simmons, who's an astronomer, says astronomy is the Overview Effect for the rest of us. So yeah, definitely.

Mat Kaplan: I love Mike. Founder of Astronomers Without Borders. I call him the Johnny Astroseed of the planet. Let me throw a couple of these things out that with apologies to people who have read the book and heard your explanations of them there, but I want you to talk a little bit about some of the other concepts beginning with what are the Copernican perspective and the universal insight?

Frank White: Well, I think they are expansions of the Overview Effect, but they are different. They are products of space exploration. One thing I should have said earlier is that when we talk about evolution, exploration is key because it gives you new insights, new opportunities that you didn't have before, but space exploration, at level one let's say you have the Overview Effect and it's all about the Earth and the Earth from space and in space against the backdrop of the cosmos. But very quickly you realize the suborbital view, the orbital view and the lunar view of the Earth, all Overview Effect, but quite different. And as we move further from the home planet, we have other changes in consciousness, and I noticed that some of the astronauts were beginning to have more of an awareness that we're part of the solar system. That we're not just part of the Earth, we're part of the solar system. I call that Copernican perspective just to say Copernicus was right. It's a heliocentric system, not geocentric. I believe people living on Mars won't really have the Overview Effect as much as the Copernican perspective. And then universal insight was a term that I developed to explain what happened to Edgar Mitchell. He came back from the moon and on the way back, well, he blew his mind and he became one with the universe. That's all I can say. I felt like it was so much bigger than that original shift that it needed a new name, and I've now found that versions of that experience have happened to other astronauts. Something that we would normally call a spiritual experience happens to them, and in fact, Mitchell went around to various experts after he returned and asked people what happened, and one person told him he had experienced a form of Samadhi, which is a kind of enlightenment. That's why I have those three terms, and the point of it is that space travel in general is a tool for changing awareness and consciousness.

Mat Kaplan: Flowing out of this, I think, is something you address near the end of ... Well, before the interviews begin in part two. And there are these three stages of development that you feel are ahead of us. Solaris, Galaxia, and something beyond these that is literally universal. Am I right? Is this the progression?

Frank White: Right. Well, the Overview Effect really is a theory and there's a hypothesis there. The original hypothesis was people living off world will be at a different state of consciousness than people living on the Earth. That's kind of changed to bringing the Overview Effect down to Earth to change earthly consciousness. So the first civilization in this taxonomy that I predicted out of the theory was Terra. Earth plus you might say. The Earth is no longer what it used to be. It's not just a physical system. It's now layered with, there's a human system, a techno system. It's a very complex overview system, I call it. And then there will be, I believe, a solar civilization as humans move off the Earth, and I don't believe that living as isolated outposts throughout the solar system is going to be workable, and I think large scale space migration is likely to create a need for institutions and cultures and ways of thinking that are solar centered. Beyond that, who knows? We still don't know if there are other alien or non-human civilizations out there, but over time I think a lot of us would hope that they're out there and we can connect with them. And then beyond that is some kind of universal civilization that we can only vaguely imagine. I do want to circle back, Mat, and say one thing that we don't have time to delve into, but the fifth edition of the book is going to have a lot more focus on AI and robotics.

Mat Kaplan: Wow. I'm with the Planetary Society, so I was hoping to ask you how does robotic space exploration fit into all of this?

Frank White: I believe it's going to be tremendously important. I was at a conference on AI with Rick Tumlinson and we were asked to have a fireside chat about AI and the Overview Effect. And I said to Rick the night before we were having dinner, I said, "We're both children of Gerry O'Neill and we've been preaching the gospel for 40 years, but large-scale space communities probably couldn't have happened before now because we are very fragile biological creatures. We're going to need AI-enabled robots to help us get habitats built and to create cities and to create O'Neill-type cylinders." In my humble opinion, I don't see how we can have a really large-scale migration of humans off the planet. It has to be in partnership with AI. In the meantime, AI is not just a partner and a friend and a servant. AI is evolving very, very rapidly. So I see them as partners, not as tools.

Mat Kaplan: And we don't have time to talk about it, but I know that another of your books is called The Neo-Singularity Is Here, so maybe another conversation sometime, Frank. I want to ask you about a couple of works of fiction. One of them I mentioned to you, and it's that novel Orbital, which is a book in which not a lot happens except that people go around the Earth 16 times. It's this fictional account, obviously very well researched, of a single day in the lives of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. You're familiar with it?

Frank White: Yeah. My friend Ron Rossano gave it to me and I have great admiration for that author, and I really don't know how she did it without being an astronaut. I think she did a lot of what I've done, which is to interview astronauts and to come to understand their lives. But it's so evocative and so human, and I admire her for bringing out the human element of what it means to be an astronaut because yes, they're doing extraordinary things and anybody who's met an astronaut and spent time with them, you realize they're very special, but there is a human element to their story, and in this case, it's about several people living in an extreme environment and how they adjust to it, how they deal with it, how they cope with one another, and it's riveting reading. I couldn't put it down. And I think that I would recommend that you give it to your friends who are skeptics about our passion and who don't get it. Just don't argue with them. Just give them that book and they can read it in a day or two really if they're intent on it. So I think it's terrific.

Mat Kaplan: I want to ask you about another series of books that also has become a series of television shows. I didn't warn you about this one, and it is about a future in which humanity is spread throughout the solar system, but it's a much darker vision of what's ahead of us than we might hope for brought on by the Overview Effect. I bet you've guessed already. I'm talking about The Expanse. Have you thought about the picture that they paint, which is all too much like what we've gone through in past human history, which I think was part of what the authors had in mind?

Frank White: Yeah, it's a cautionary tale. I think it's somewhat like what I said before, that we can evolve or we can become extinct. Nothing is cast in stone. And as you know, you've talked about the community of the Overview Roundtable who we're all focused on creating a positive future, and metaphorically we say what we want is a Star Trek's future, not an expanse future.

Mat Kaplan: Yes.

Frank White: I would say right now at this moment, we're at the tipping point about which way we want to go because we are approaching space exploration as a nationalistic enterprise. As you know, my nonprofit is called the Human Space Program, and I call it the Human Space Program, we call it the Human Space program because one of the ideas that came out of interviewing all these astronauts is that this enterprise that we're on is too big for one country and it's too exciting to spend our energy competing. You just listen to the rhetoric, which falls back into Cold War mentality, and when Jared Isaacman was being interviewed by senators about being a NASA administrator ... And let me say in advance that I have great admiration for him, and I wish he had become the administrator. But the talk was not about international cooperation. It was not, "Mr. Isaacman, how would you foster international cooperation?" No. It was, "How are you going to beat the Chinese to the moon?" I'm old enough to have gone through this once before. It's called the space race. John F. Kennedy saw that this was folly, and most people don't know, but he did contact the Soviet Union frequently to see if they would be willing to do a joint mission to the moon. He did try to head it off, and he even said at the UN, "Why don't we do a multinational mission?" And right now we have the same kind of choice and the nationalistic forces are pulling against a international or global approach to this enterprise, this initiative. And if you were to say it in more metaphorical terms, there's a tremendous push toward The Expanse and not Star Trek. I think we can still turn it around, but we have to be aware that the kind of values of the Planetary Society, Space for Humanity, the Human Space Program, not everybody shares our values about this great adventure, and we just have to accept that and do our best to communicate to people our vision.

Mat Kaplan: Here, here. Just one more for you, Frank. One of the other terms that you come up with in the book is homo-spacians. Do you think there are homo-spacians among us now, or is this still ahead of us in our evolution?

Frank White: There are homo-spacians among us mentally. You are one. I am one.

Mat Kaplan: I'm proud. Thank you.

Frank White: But when I was writing the book the first time around, I interviewed Peter Diamandis, who many people know. He was in med school at the time, and he said, "Have you heard of speciation?" And I said, "No. What is it?" And he talked about speciation as a way of a new species being created and splitting off from the main gene pool. And he said, "It happens all the time on Earth. A group of animals get separated from the mainstream and the mutations can take root more easily and so on." And he said, "I think that'll happen once we get off the planet." And it occurred to me that it could happen in two ways. One is natural. Radiation and differences in gravity and environment. It seems natural to me the human body and the mind will evolve to flourish in whatever environment we put ourselves in. However, we also have gene editing capabilities we didn't have years ago, and right now there are a lot of ethical questions about using those capabilities, but when you see that they might be used to help people grow and survive on the moon or in an O'Neill community or on Mars, I have a feeling that people will be more open to that and that could be another way that a new species could come into being. That is homo-spacians. It means that our descendants would be so different from us that they'd have to be considered a different line of evolution. I think it could be cool. That's the only word I can think of. It'd be cool. But it's not that far out. We already know that when astronauts go to the International Space Station, their bodies immediately change and start to change. And we believe when we talk about the Overview Effect, their brains change. So if you were off the planet longer than the ISS astronauts are, why wouldn't your whole physical system begin to react and become more accustomed to that environment?

Mat Kaplan: Anything else that you want to share about how people can learn more, not just by reading The Overview Effect, but about your nonprofit, your foundation, and whatever else you want to share?

Frank White: Well, of course you could go to www.humanspaceprogram.org. Be happy to engage you in what we do. But also YouTube has tremendous number of astronauts talking about their experience, and NASA has produced a Emmy nominated documentary called The Astronaut's Perspective, which is on YouTube, and then they have a series of three minute videos called Down to Earth. And I would suggest if you're really excited about all of this, just go to YouTube and look at what NASA is producing because it's pretty informative.

Mat Kaplan: Frank, thank you again for joining us here this evening, but also for what you have generated through this book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, and how you have quietly and gently led what has, I think, become a bit of a movement and quite a legacy as well. So thank you for all of that.

Frank White: Oh, thank you. And thank you for spreading the word through this tremendous group, The Planetary Society, and we're all working toward the same goal, and I'm just happy to be here tonight and have a chance to share with your team and your club members.

Mat Kaplan: Thank you, Frank. So here's that line I want to close with, and it's right out of very near the end of the book. "Exploring is a very human thing to do. I would hope that if every word of this book proves incorrect, humanity would still go out and explore the universe because it is a very human thing to do. In our search for new life and new civilizations, we will sail the seas of the cosmos and find ourselves." Thank you everyone for joining us and have a great evening. Ad astra, everyone.

Frank White: Ad Astra.

Mat Kaplan: We'll be back on the third Friday of September with another of our wonderful author conversations drawn from the Planetary Society Member Book Club. Want to join the club and participate in the live interactions? Then become a member of the Planetary Society. You'll be part of all our great work. Find out more at planetary.org/join. Planetary Radio is production of The Planetary Society. Our associate producers are Rae Paoletta and Mark Hilverda. Casey Dreier is the host of our monthly space policy edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. The Society's member community is led by Ambre Trujillo. The producer and host of Planetary Radio is Sarah Al-Ahmed. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. I'm Mat Kaplan, your host of the Planetary Radio Book Club Edition. And until next time, I'll say it again, Ad Astra.