Dennis Whyte

So he walks through these moments of perception in the history of humanity that changed what we were, right?

And so as I was thinking about coming to discuss this, people see fusion, oh, it's still far away, or it's been slow progress.

It's like when my godmother was born, people had no idea how stars worked.

So you talk about that day, that insight, the universe changed.

It's like, oh, this is the... And they still didn't understand all the parts of it, but they basically got it.

It's like, oh, because of the understanding of these processes, it's like we unveiled the reason that there can be life in the universe.

That's probably one of those days the universe changed, right?

And that was in the 1930s.

And how it worked before, right?

I mean, fusion will be, because it's energy, its nature is that it will be, and anything that has to do with energy use tends to be a slower transition.

But they're the most, I would argue, some of the most profound transitions that we make.

I mean, the reason...

That we can live like this and sit in this building and have this podcast and people around the world is, at its heart, is energy use.

And it's intense energy use that came from the evolution of starting to use intense energies at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to now.

It's a bedrock, actually, of all of these.

But it doesn't tend to come overnight.

Which is energy, which is amazing for how fundamental it is to our society and way of life is a very poorly understood concept, actually.

Just even energy itself, people confuse energy.

energy sources, with energy storage, with energy transmission, these are different physical phenomena which are very important.

So, for example, you know, you buy an electric car and you go, oh, good, I have an emission-free car.