Latif Nasser of RadioLab Has One Burning Question for Elon Musk

With the Trump inauguration steadily approaching, we may be on the precipice of a lying epidemic. But at least we have Latif Nasser. Known for his hit podcast Radiolab, Nasser and his co-host Lulu Miller seek to squash mistruths and get down to the bottom of the universe’s most pressing unanswered questions, one galaxy at a time. Nasser, however, recognizes when his curiosity can get him into trouble. “I’d probably already be on my way to Guantanamo,” he joked when we asked him what he’d DM Elon Musk if given the opportunity. But who’s to say that would stop him? In this week’s Search History, we DM’d the astronomy savant to discuss his number one American political beef, the slide decks he’d present to Mesopotamian civilizations, and his one true love: Wikipedia.

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LATIF NASSER: Hey Ary! Merry Boxing Day!

ARY RUSSELL: Merry Boxing Day to you as well! Hope you’re staying warm! Ready to get started?

NASSER: I’m ready to go!

RUSSELL: A/S/L?

NASSER: That takes me back! 39/M/Toronto.

RUSSELL: What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

NASSER: Depends whether I wake up or my kids wake me up. Usually the latter, so usually doing some random thing like playing checkers or reading Curious George.

RUSSELL: The first thing my nieces want from their mom is Bluey, so I kinda get it.

NASSER: Oh man, Bluey makes me CRY. It’s so astonishingly good.

RUSSELL: What were your last three Wikipedia searches?

NASSER: Lemme screenshot, hang on.

RUSSELL: Got any juicy knowledge to share with us from those searches?

NASSER: Chaos.com was for the Chaos Computer Collective which puts on a giant hacker conference in Hamburg which is going on right now and I’m trying to do a story on a guy who is speaking there tomorrow. I was trying to figure out if they record ALL the talks or just some of the talks.

RUSSELL: Imagine trying to hack the hacker conference.

NASSER: LOL. I wouldn’t dare. Those guys are for real.

RUSSELL: Your only social media account is Twitter. What’s one thing you’d DM Elon Musk?

NASSER: I’d ask him for the Starlink WiFi password.

RUSSELL: And what would you do with that info?

NASSER: Ha. It’s a state secret so if he sent it to me, I’d probably already be on my way to Guantanamo.

RUSSELL: We’ll protect you. Zodiac sign?

NASSER: No idea. Hold on, let me check. Cancer! Good one?

RUSSELL: Cry babies sometimes, but overall great. What’s your favorite beef in American politics?

NASSER: Oooh there are so many. Let me think. The most recent one is probably how much everyone seems to hate Matt Gaetz.

RUSSELL: Arguably the most justified beef.

NASSER: Like if it is that hard to find someone in your corner, you have to be doing something wrong?

RUSSELL: Who was in your Myspace Top 8?

NASSER: Man, I never used MySpace. Right generation, but somehow missed it. I was on Napster ALL THE TIME. It was nirvana for a kid from the suburbs.

RUSSELL: Fuck, Marry, Kill, WITH famous scientists: Bill Nye, Neil Degrasse Tyson, David Attenborough.

NASSER: Oh man, great Q. F Neil Degrasse Tyson, marry the Science Guy and, truly the tragedy of my life that will haunt me till I die, kill Attenborough with the solace that he knows he is a part of evolutionary history.

RUSSELL: He’s like 98 so I don’t think he’d be too upset.

NASSER: Yeah, but that would make the killing even more unpleasant somehow.

RUSSELL: Was the moon landing fake?

NASSER: Ha. No. Did you know they left all kinds of stuff up there like golf balls and bags of poop?

RUSSELL: POOP????

NASSER: Yeah, I did a whole segment on the moon poop for my TV show. Poop ep is episode NUMBER TWO.

RUSSELL: I have to watch that episode but I’m scared of how disgusted I’ll be.

NASSER: I wanted it to be more gross, but the editors reined me in. I think it’s tastefully done.

RUSSELL: What’s an astronomy myth that pisses you off?

NASSER: This isn’t a myth exactly but I watched this Veritasium episode where they went around and asked people to rank objects in the solar system small to large. The objects were like, sun, moon, planet—basic stuff and a lot of people got it very wrong. Didn’t piss me off, just confused me. Like, people don’t know the moon is smaller than the sun?!? Also, we are doing this contest to name a quasi-moon in space, which is like this little asteroid that has become Earth’s little sidecar for the next 600 years. Anyway, we are doing a huge global contest to name this thing (Shameless plug – vote now at Radiolab.org/moon). [Editor’s note: The competition is now closed. You can check out the winner here: Radiolab.org/moon]

RUSSELL: Plug away.

NASSER: Okay, but SO many reactions I have gotten are “Okay, but is it gonna hit us???” A lot of people only seem to feel fear towards space, which I find so sad.

RUSSELL: I feel that way with the ocean.

NASSER: Fair, but space is like the vast majority of everything. It’s like saying you are afraid of everything!! Same with the ocean! That’s the majority of our planet! There’s so much beauty there you are totally oblivious to. That we all are!

RUSSELL: Send your favorite meme.

NASSER: Favorite meme? Okay, it might take me a second to find it. It was on Twitter a few years ago, pops up every once in a while. It’s the one where it starts with a bong hit, and then someone pretending to be god inventing a new kind of creature that we all know. Do you know that one?

RUSSELL: What’s a conspiracy theory we need to leave in 2024?

NASSER: Oh man. Can’t even count them. Lamest, most sincere answer is that climate change is a natural cyclical thing and it’s fine and we don’t need to do anything about it. 

RUSSELL: That’s not lame at all! That conspiracy is doing active damage to the planet.

NASSER: Yeah, but there have been so many more fun flowery weird ones, like the guy who said birds aren’t real.

RUSSELL: What celebrity do you want to send to space?

NASSER: Like on a one-way trip?

RUSSELL: One-way or round trip, depending if you like them or not.

NASSER: Ha. If I could send anyone to space (round trip) I think I’d send my 90-something neighbor, Lois, because she’d just have such a hoot. One time she fell down and broke her hip and I had to wait with her for the ambulance and while we were waiting she asked me about AI.

RUSSELL: Any celeb you don’t like you’d send on a one-way?

NASSER: I wouldn’t want to murder anybody but there are a few SCOTUS justices I’d definitely offer a free trip in a Winnebago up there.

RUSSELL: If time travel ever became possible, what’s one thing you would go back and change?

NASSER: I would go back to the start of the agricultural revolution in Mesopotamia and call a community meeting and outline everything that would come after and let them vote if they think settling down and farming is really the best option. There’d be a whole slide deck and everything. I’d make a very thorough presentation,

RUSSELL: You’d have to bring a translator, I’m sure.

NASSER: Right. Definitely.

RUSSELL: What’s a website everyone should know about?

NASSER: I mean it’s obvious, but Wikipedia. It’s our modern version of the pyramids. An honest miracle. My favorite chronicler of it is Annie Rauwerda aka Depths of Wikipedia. The line I’ve heard her say is, “A crowdsourced encyclopedia doesn’t work in theory, but it works in practice.” I love that line. You should still fact check but the amount of relevant, comprehensible, dependable information on there is miraculous.

RUSSELL: Final question. What’s your password?

NASSER: Obviously it’s “Password.” That should work for my email and bank account.

RUSSELL: I’ll hold onto that info for safekeeping.