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If you ask every surfer, basically every top performing surfer, guess what? They're watching every space shuttle launch because they're so into the stuff that is created to make these rockets go to space and help us survive in space. Everyone's just waiting for anything new that was created to trickle down to us so that we could like use it. And maybe it'll be that silver bullet to allow us to ride the waves better or the wind better.

Dude, you could shoot my surfboard into space and it can re-enter without burning up.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I'm your host and I got my co-host Chuck Knight.

Chuck, baby. What's up, Neil?

All right. Chuck, an actor, comedian, and, but more importantly, he's my host, my co-host.

All

right, Gary O'Reilly, thanks, well, thanks to UK for creating you and for lending you to us, your former soccer pro and game announcer, and we got you as my other co-host for this. So thanks for coming in. You're welcome. And making this happen. Now you put together this show, so tell me what you and the team of producers, So what do you got for us today?

All right, we have a guest born in Hawaii. Little hint of a clue there. Given the name Kai, which I do believe in Hawaiian language is the sea, rode his first wave aged 4.

20

something years later, he's a Red Bull athlete, 8 time stand up paddle world champion, if I'm not mistaken, the youngest ever Surfer Hall of Fame inductee In

2019.

In 2020, Chuck, you'll love this. He won the toe-in surfing challenge at Nazare, Portugal. You know that place? Well, you

know, it just doesn't get any bigger than that. What? Is that right? Yeah, Neil. You see what I did there?

Yeah, I

mean, these are liquid avalanches. These aren't waves. These are monsters of the deep. He's a windsurfer, paddleboarder we know. Windsurfer, kite surfer, wing foiler, he is considered by those that know, the ultimate water man.

Wait, with 70 foot liquid avalanches and our guest is still alive? Yeah, he's that good.

And just to add another facet to this rather incredible diamond, He's also an environmental campaigner who does not mind each clean up himself.

So he don't want to surf into a mat of plastic.

I

know, but he gets down there and he cleans up himself. So he's proper. Fantastic. So having said all of that, Kai Lenny.

Kai, thank you, dude, for coming on to StarTalk.

Oh, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here with you guys and you know I got so many questions for you guys.

No, no, no, no, that's a different show if you're going to ask me questions. We got questions for you. We don't get somebody like you on the show. So what is this, I hear that the ocean is like a battery pack for you? What does that mean?

Oh, you know, I think just the ocean for me is like, kind of what keeps me going. It definitely, I think beyond having, you know, my family and my kids, it's kind of my purpose. I wake up every morning and I just have this drive and longing to get in the water and experiment and ultimately ride the biggest waves I can find.

So it calls to you, the ocean calls to you.

It's a calling for sure. And 1 of my favorite big waves in the world is 15 minutes down the road here on Maui, and it's called, the world knows it by the name Jaws, but in Hawaiian it's called Pe'ahi, which means the beacon or to be called because it calls people from all around the world. And it called me since I was a little kid. I think 1 of my earliest memories alive was being on the cliff watching my heroes surf this gigantic wave. So, you know, what better place to have been born to become a product of my environment I am today than having Mount Everest sort of in your backyard.

Speaking of Little kids, what's a safe age for big wave? I mean, you're a big wave surfer. I mean, how's that? Does some, of course you gotta graduate to that, but I'm saying how young would it be, or could you be, and somebody say, get on out there, kid. Go ahead and get your first big wave.

Well, you know, I always thought, you know, surfing is kind of like this activity or water sports in general, or these activities that are kind of outside of society's bubble. I feel like the rules change, you know, you could have, you know, all the money in the world, all the opportunity in the world. But at the same time, you know, there's a different pecking order out in the water. There's like a different kind of like, it's very tribal, I would say. And I mean, that in the most positive way, you know, you kind of go back on our ancestral tendencies.

And when I first surfed Jaws was with Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama when I was 16 years old. And back then I thought that was like young. I was probably like the second youngest person to ever go out to surf these like proper big waves. Because it's sort of like a line in the sand where you could surf a giant wave maybe on the outer reefs here that could be a 30-foot face but as soon as you go to a place like Jaws or Peahi all of a sudden it's like a completely different energy level. I would say there's like 5 or 6 big waves I know around the world that have sort of this next level energy that, you know, it's I don't know how you could measure it, but it's you can feel it in the air.

You know how energy can't be created or destroyed. It starts with the sun, it goes to the atmosphere, the wind, and it goes into the ocean. And then when these waves explode, this energy gets released and you don't know what it transforms into necessarily, but it almost feels like it goes into yourself. But nowadays, kids are starting to surf these giant waves at like 12, 13 years old. And I'm like, thinking to myself, are they even strong enough?

Can their limbs handle getting pulled out? And it's actually been quite remarkable and eye opening how how big of waves they can not only ride because they got the skill set but how they can survive and they come up smiling and I'm like maybe this generation's just built completely different but

wait so you're ready to sit on the porch and say, young whippersnappers coming up.

Yeah. At 30 years old, I'm thinking I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh, these guys are next level. I mean, guys and girls, you should see these little kids that are, you know, they're going to be leading the sport into the future, big wave riding. And it's really exciting. You know, I think part of, you know, being a big wave rider of any kind is it's, it's kind of like, you can come in really hot for a couple of years and you could be amazing, but to be able to sustain, you know, the long career through big waves is really difficult just because, you know, it's life and death sometimes.

It's, you know, It doesn't happen every single day. So you don't have the opportunity to necessarily practice. You kind of get flung in from a flat summer into an apocalyptic winter. And while the rest of the world's kind of bummed that it's gonna be like an El Nino winter, all the big wave surfers are rejoicing because that means bigger waves and more consistent big waves. So

you said you're 15 minutes from a big wave location. So that means if we were to imprison you, we would just put you in Colorado or something, a landlocked state, and you would die.

I probably, my life cycle would be much shorter, but I'd probably find a mountain to tomahawk down, you know?

Right. Oh, okay. You'd just start snowboarding, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I thought my biggest inspiration for big waves was, uh, snowboarding because it got to the point where, you know, you can ride a big wave. You can go straight, you can ride inside these giant barrels. But I wanted to, what's the next level?

And that's doing big aerials on big waves. And if someone like Travis Rice, 1 of the legends of snowboarding, can go to Alaska and do an 80-foot jump and do 3 rotations, 2 rotations. Why can't I do it on a big wave? And I actually ended up going to Alaska a couple of weeks ago and actually experiencing with him what it's like. And I'd have to say being in the mountains to me is far scarier than actually riding big waves.

Big waves, it's like, oh, it's only a 50 to 60, 80, 70 foot wave on the face. Or these mountains are 2, 000 vertical feet and you have crevasses, 500 foot cliffs, avalanches coming behind you that'll bury you if you can't swim up.

So we're in a position to throw some physics at what it is you do. Do you think much about the physics of your rotations and your speed and the waves themselves?

Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I was never really good in math at school. I think I had so much energy sitting down wasn't kind of my calling and looking at numbers. But when I really got into what I'm doing now today, it's funny how the passion can bring out things that I wasn't necessarily good at, like the physics of things, trying to understand all the rotations. And then even like trying to predict these big waves, you end up sort of becoming a meteorologist, trying to read weather patterns and understand all these sort of things, and the tides of the world, and so on and so forth.

But I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on all of that.

I'll just set up the stage here, and then I know Gary and Chuck have questions. So in case the public doesn't know, A wave moving through the water is the speed of energy that has been deposited in the water at some earlier point. So water is actually not moving at that speed, it is the energy of all the water molecules communicating the flow of that energy from 1 molecule to the next. So that's why, like you ever see a duck sitting up on a, you know, on the ocean and then a wave just comes under the duck, the duck just goes up and down, that energy went under the duct and kept going, but the water didn't transfer until you get to the shoreline where the energy has to go somewhere. Where is it gonna go?

And If it's a really deep ocean, a tiny little wave in the deep ocean, measure up how much that energy is, and as the shoreline gets shallower and shallower, that energy is still there, But it's not moving as much water, so it has to move the water higher. And you get bigger and bigger waves as the shoreline gets shallower and shallower. And now that is 100% of everything I know about what you do. So...

Wow. But Neil, so Neil, is that why when you have a shelf off the shoreline, the waves get that much bigger at that place? Because all at once, all that energy is now slammed up to the shelf, but now it, boom, has to go somewhere, so it goes up and over.

Correct, it goes up, Rick, because it was carrying that much more mass of water previously, and now if the shore is shallower, then the mass of water isn't available to it, so it's got to do something. The energy has to go somewhere. Got you.

And

so it raises it higher against gravity. That's what it's doing. That's the power to do that.

So, Carl, when you get towed up, you're on 1 of these big waves, do you know in advance what trick you're about to perform? Or do you have to make intuitive on the spot calculations?

I like that.

You go, you know what, this wave, this angle, this wind, I need to bring this trick. Or is there something of you pre-planned how you're going to do this? Because you've got to give me artistry.

Well, the way influence your decision. Yeah. So another way to say

it is, are you? Are you? Is your performance bespoke to each way?

You know, it's where there's no 2 ways ever alike, even at a perfect spot And a lot of these places, the tricks or kind of the approach that I have really depends on the spot I'm traveling to. You know, for example, here in Hawaii, because we have no continental shelf, and it just rises, the mountain rises from super deep water I'll kind of find the right equipment to ride. So like let's say if I'm getting towed into a wave my board will be 13 pounds here and I will be you know probably traveling at around the wave itself will be going 25 to 30 miles an hour depending on the amount of joules that the storm produced. So on the biggest days we'll get 27, 000 30, 000 joules and then the wave will be like a big day out there is 20 feet at 20 seconds, which is kind of the swell interval and the sea height that it travels from 4, 000 miles from the storm. And I guess really having all that knowledge and knowing that there's like a 25 knot trade wind, There's going to be a chalk going across the face.

I'll know that trick I want to do at the beginning if I have the opportunity is a backside 360 and I'll be going left instead of right. And when I land my board will it'll be more of a 540 than a 360. So I'll be kind of landing on right again. And that'll put me in the perfect position to drop in and hopefully pull into the barrel of these giant waves. The tricky part about big waves or just waves in general is it's You can have a plan, but if you stick too much to it, you're going to kind of like, it's like dancing with a partner.

If you're kind of trying to do your own thing, and you're not kind of adjusting to that person, it's going to look forced. It's going to not look right. It's not going to be fluid. So in the back of your head, I always have an arsenal of maneuvers or things I can do. And as it kind of comes without thinking, I just kind of like do, you know, it's like, you don't think about walking, but you know that you have to put the next foot forward every time you step.

And it's kind of like that. So I spend a lot of time doing visualization. If I'm doing a long plane ride somewhere, you know, I'm just praying it's not my last plane ride. And I'm also thinking about how I'd want to do it. So having music is a trigger and trying to kind of place myself there and get my heart pumping to the point where I feel like my palms are sweating on an airplane.

I feel like I'm there.

You're factoring so much in there, the wind speed, the knowledge of a storm far out at sea, how much energy is coming towards you, but surely the underwater terrain matters, right? If there's a slope change, that'll have a big effect on the wave, won't it?

Yeah, and That's like, it's a great point. Every wave that I travel to, I have a really good understanding of the spot. So like here at Jaws, Peahe, the bathymetry is really unique.

Ooh, bathymetry, love it.

Ooh, new word. Ooh,

look at that.

Ooh, new word alert.

Yep. Yeah.

But the bathymetry of just the contour. So for example, we don't have a continental shelf here in Hawaii. It just is deep water. And that's the reason why all of the waves here have so much force because you can basically guarantee that same energy coming from the storm is going to just unload. And that's why Hawaii is known as being 1 of the best big wave places on planet Earth, maybe 1 of the more consistent ones.

Here, you know- Just

to remind people, the Hawaiian Islands are volcanic cones, so they come up from the bottom of the ocean. So your slope is, You're right, it's not the continental shelf. It's just the mountainside as it enters the water, right? It's that the mountain continues all the way down. And so that's a

steeper- It's that vertical mass.

Yes, there it is.

Very cool. And just because we've, like, the island itself is constantly kind of breaking into the ocean. I mean, the big island of Hawaii, which is, you know, you could fit all the other islands into it. Maui was at 1 point with similar size and you can just see daily that the cliff kind of is eroding away just from the salt and it's almost like the volcanic rock is rusting because we have this red dirt. So there's a lot of ledges along our coastline and that kind of will take all that swell energy like you described earlier and will force the waves vertically kind of ledge up.

But the interesting thing is, is you think with all this coastline that these giant waves coming in would actually be vertically taller everywhere. But there's a lot of places, there's a lot of, you know, underwater conditions that it requires. Like Jaws has a giant trench that travels way out to sea and it basically takes all that energy and it kind of sandwiches it in and it forces it into this kind of like, I would say track and the track kind of comes in and now there's this perfect triangle of reef not really reef boulders. We call them dinosaur eggs because what I believe happened is there was this big point this big cliff that had eroded away and what was left was the bedrock and over time it turned into these boulders because they kept rolling. And on a big wipeout, when you fall out at JAWS, you can actually hear these dinosaur eggs, probably the size of an entire living room going clink, clink, clink.

And your worst nightmare is you get caught between 1 of them. And you hear these big sounds and the wave itself produces this violent sound, this percussion, but underwater you could hear rock going, boom, boom. And you kind of bounce off those rocks sometimes, but luckily they're pretty round from kind of rolling around. But then there's all this, so these fingers there, and what gives you these long, long hold downs at this particular wave is that similar to this, if this is shallower and this is deeper, you can get stuck in these fingers and the water's traveling faster above you. So imagine letting go of a balloon inside and it floating and hitting the ceiling.

The water's moving so much faster above your head and you're kind of in this spinning vortex that you try to come up and we have these inflation vests. So we're wearing these airbags under our wetsuits with CO2 canisters up to 35 milligrams and or grams and you when you pull it, it just blows your airbag up and you brings you to the surface like a cork. But when the water's moving too fast above your head, you can't penetrate. Dr. Justin Marchegiani You're

just– you're bouncing off of the faster rushing water.

Dr. Tim Jackson Exactly. And it's like if you try to like dive into a river, you're gonna get swept across versus kind of traveling across the river. Dr.

Justin Marchegiani Right.

Dr. Tim Jackson And so the hold downs can vary from, if you're lucky, 5 seconds underwater. And if you're unlucky, you could be under for well over a minute and you could be dragged maybe 3 football fields. Wow.

That's not good.

That's insane. So now what do you... So wait, here's the deal though. Mentally, the first time this happens to you, and you're, okay, used to 5 seconds, but Now you're down for 30 seconds, 35 seconds. What is the training that you have to go through to say, I'm not gonna die?

Or do you just go, I'm gonna die? That's it.

And the first time I fell when I was 16, I was like underwater, I'm like, well, I lived a good life. I'm dead. There's no way. And I opened my eyes and I saw like, it looked like the most violent scene that you could ever paint. It was just these giant thunder cloud, lightning clouds moving at a speed that looked like a time-lapse.

It was just going so quick and such a deep blue water and you just felt like the whole ocean you're trapped under because in a second, you're 60 feet underwater. So you have to clear your ears immediately, otherwise you'll blow your eardrums out. And then it's like, you feel the pressure all of a sudden on your lungs. And, you know, there's no training for that. You kind of have to have, this is where like, you can do all your homework, you can do everything possible, but you sort of have to have faith in yourself.

And I always believed that if you didn't, you know, if you didn't believe in a higher power, put yourself in that situation and you start praying to someone, anyone.

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Kai, having described all of that, is that why you went into other events like paddle boarding?

I mean to be honest my heroes before me they did all these things and I was heavily influenced and this place on Maui is the mecca of big wave surfing, windsurfing and a lot of these sports have been invented here. We know that ancient Hawaiians used to paddle on surfboards with canoe paddles, so standard paddling, but it was kind of rebirthed here by these legendary figures. And then, you know, a lot of things have been invented that have actually helped us kind of realize the potential of the ocean, like kite surfing was created here. And most recently, and it's like, it's like a new old sport, you know, because the hydrofoils being invented for the military or by the military, you know, 100 years ago, it's been finally used now as personal use. And now that's a real sport that is kind of forced everyone to learn physics or the understanding of fluid dynamics.

And it's just it's really cool now because like when there's those big waves maybe 5 times a year that are in the exceptional range, let's say 50 to 60, 70 feet high, half that We have to be able to be entertained somehow, some other way. And what better way of understanding big waves that break along the shoreline than the swells that are out in the middle of the ocean. And so in the summertime, I'll take my hydrofoil board, or my paddleboard or whatever, and I'll go ride open ocean swells between the islands.

Can I, with the wing foiling, how much difference is there between the physics that you're presented with as a big wave surfer and then this sort of inter-island foiling that you do?

Oh, so like between the, like using the wing and then going like on the swells between islands? Yeah, so there that is like, It's funny because as a surfer, your perspective is right where the wave breaks. It's never beyond that. And so when you're able to utilize these other kind of equipments or facets of equipment, you basically have the ability to see beyond just where the wave breaks. And with the wind, you know, as a surfer, you've always watched birds ride the ridgeline of these swells and get all this energy from the updraft of the wind on these swells.

And it's just beautiful. And with the wing, that was kind of always my dream is to ride along the crest of the wave like I was a bird. I mean, it's constant chase for flight. But the cool thing about like the wing is, you know, you can be jumping and flying like a bird on the way out, and then you can be riding the swells from way out in the ocean in and then ride the breaking part of the wave and have... Because you don't have surface tension of the board dragging across the water, and you're kind of tapping into that energy source like a fish might or a dolphin, you know, below the surface, getting all this lifts from the front wing of this hydrofoil.

You know, you basically are able to kind of My perspective on doing sports or if I have an idea for a sport is if I had a kind of a spectrum of color, and I would look for the gray areas between them. And I'd be like, okay, the premise of this is I'm looking for something high-performance in all conditions. And if I can find something super high performance, and eventually I figure out that this 1 particular area, I'm not doing something high performance, what could I create so that I could be doing something fast, exciting, basically trying to give me the adrenaline fix a big wave might give me. And so, you know, that leads you to what's scarier than testing your skill by basically foiling a cross between open ocean islands and shark infested, you know, that's what's triggered.

Sure enough.

Basically going and surfing these swells. And it's like playing a kind of a game of chess with the ocean, because the swells are popping up. It's all local wind swell. It's not this long ground swell that is perfectly formed for a long time. It's this sort of like game of every 100 yards, maybe less, even 20 yards, a wave is doing this and you're kind of hopping from 1 to the next.

And if you get in a rhythm with the ocean, it's sort of like being on a swing or a pendulum and it just kind of takes you.

Oh, interesting. It's about what do you do in the bathtub?

I mean, it's like I'm probably using my hand to create a wave and put you in that barrel.

All right, so speaking of barrels and technique, so I just love watching surfing, like it's so poetic, you know? And I've noticed when you guys do tricks and maybe I'm noticing wrong. You'll let me know it looks as though Like a skateboarder you actually use the wave like the face of the wave you kind of surf down it to pick up speed, but then you surf back up it to do the trick. But then somehow you find, because the whole wave is continually curling, it doesn't care that you're there. But then somehow you find the lip, You do your trick, but then you come right back down in the place where it is once again curling like over you.

What is going on, man? Like that is, I mean, it's really crazy. It's just insane. What is, I mean, am I right when I'm seeing this? Is that what I'm seeing?

Oh, absolutely. You're spot on. It is like skateboarding. The only difference is, is the, that ramp is ever changing. And so your decision making of when you're going to hit that lip to catch air or to do a big turn, it all happens maybe a millisecond before you get there.

So you kind of initiate your bottom turn. If you go too far into the flats, you're gonna lose a lot of speed, but you might wanna do that in order to set up for a barrel. But if you're trying to do an aerial, you would cut across mid-face and you'd actually really load your fins up. So there'd be a lot of like pressure, you'd pressure them. So they'd be kind of preloaded.

And as you're coming up without forcing and trying to pull the board with you, you kind of allow the wave to push the board into the bottom of your feet.

So the wave is kind of spitting you out.

Absolutely. The wave is like a dance, you know? The wave is in itself, you have to be, if you're so in tune and timed with the wave, you can, it basically is the 1 that's kind of helping you along. Like it's your dance partner. It just, it kind of gives you that ability.

You know, people always wonder how do you keep your board stuck to the bottom of your feet? And sometimes it's utilizing wind that's going into the wave. And that kind of is like a glued to the bottom of your feet. But most of the time, it's hitting the lip at the right trajectory at the right speed, because speed is your friend, and the board starts leaving the water and the lip sort of taps the bottom of it, and it forces it into your feet, and your momentum moving forward kind of grips into it. And as you rotate, It just comes down to where your eyes are drawn to, where you're looking, where your hand position is.

So keeping your back hand lower than your right hand, keeping your left hand high so you kind of pendulum around or kind of, you know, pirouette rather. So it's like a bunch of little things and you can definitely drive yourself into insanity trying to figure it out because you go and try to put this to practice. And unless the wave is a good enough wave or gives you the opportunity, you know, in a single session, you might only get 1 or 2 tries. Um, you know, unless you're at somewhere really perfect. Or if you go to the latest man-made waves of the world, which, you know, are in Waco, Texas, in, you know,

Didn't we have Kelly Slater on? Doesn't he have 1?

He has 1, yeah.

And it's the dream to be able to go someplace and practice a maneuver repeatedly and not be like waiting for the ocean to spit something out. And also, because that's the thing with surfing. It's not like, okay, it's your turn to go down the ramp. It's literally like surfing's tribal enough where I'd say 60 to 70% of the time you're battling with other people to be positioned in the right spot to go down the wave. And you might have the best section of the entire day, but there could be somebody paddling out and in your way and drawing your eye or just being in simply in your way to hit it.

So you're like, I think that's why surfers can get quite frustrated because it's this finite resource that doesn't happen all the time and everyone is like kind of battling over.

Wow. That's what I was wondering. I, When I first saw surfing as a city kid, it was featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Yeah. And there, all the surfers just wading out there beyond the cresting of the wave.

And they're just waiting for a wave to come. And I just thought, suppose you get a

crappy wave. Suppose. Oh, you're so off. It's sometimes, you know, because there's like usually the best waves of this, like a set of waves that come in. Most of the time there's 3 waves in a set.

At certain spots, there could be up to 10 waves in a set, which is the dream, but 3 waves in a set. First wave usually cleans the lineup. So you don't usually know the first wave. And then the second wave is usually the best way because there's not the water has been taken off the reef or the sand bank. And there's like, it's shallower.

So it's going to stand vertically better and might barrel. And then there's always the risk that the third one's going to be the biggest wave. But at the same time it could come in smaller. It's kind of that wild card 1 where you could, you know, do everything right. Get the second wave of the set.

Be like, I got the sickest wave and you could kick out. And the third 1 was the better 1. But then it's a risk. It's 50 50. A lot of times you can be like, okay, it's my turn.

Everyone knows it. I'm going to let the second wave go. And then the third wave is going to come in. It's going to be the 1 and it's flat. It just didn't come in.

It was only a 2 wave set.

You're like, ocean hates me.

If you're not in rhythm with the ocean, that is like, that is, that is just your worst sessions come when you're not in tune with the ocean. And the best surfers that have won the most championships are the Kelly Slaters of our sport. Essentially, you know, he has the ability. He almost looks like people think from the land that he's willing the ocean, bending the ocean to his will. He's like, he can paddle over here and what is he doing?

Wave hasn't broken there all day. And then all of a sudden he'll get the 10 point ride and he'll win the world championship. That has happened to him. He has 11 world titles and probably has happened to him 7 of those world titles, that's how

he's lost. He is 1 with the ocean. He's Aquaman. In ways

that others are not. He's straight up 1 with the ocean, and I think his trick is he's been doing it so long and he's so knowledgeable, he can read. Because the ocean always gives you kind of triggers, little signs, like before a big swell hits. Cues. Yeah, cues, like the water color starts to change here from this kind of aqua blue to this turquoise.

Oh, it's really

down to fine detail.

Really big details. And then you start the wind sometimes even shifts when a big swell comes in. It'll cure instead of the normal northeast.

You really do have to have all of your senses on high alert.

Exactly. Because it'll turn like the wind might turn a little more easterly and it's just because of the disturbance of that storm and the storm usually gets drawn or it follows the swells pretty far so it's changing kind of the wind patterns around us. So it's all these little cues and it's even like we have all as a surfer you're always looking for indicator waves So you look down the coastline and you look for waves that might pop up and give you kind of a hint like, oh, okay. A set is coming or, oh, a westerly directions, like a swell at 2 25 is going to come in. Or this set is 235 degrees.

You know, you're kind of like, you're taking in little cues and Kelly's so good at that He knows the tide he even knows like the time a swell will hit. And because we have such a vast array of buoys in the Pacific, you can actually time when the biggest wave is going to come in. You can be like, OK, at 115, the set of the day is going to come in. Because that's when the buoy reading was highest, and that's when there was the most consistency. Yeah, but

I thought you guys were just out there twiddling your thumbs.

Wow, look at this. I mean, yeah.

Some people are so in tune, they don't even know that they're doing this.

Right, right. They became instinctive. So let me, so you, you know enough, based on this conversation at least, that I've learned that you make your own equipment. Is that because you know more than the people who made the commercial equipment and so you have to improve upon it? Is that what's going

on here? I think I have the ability and the advantage that I'm able to ride conditions that most people can't. And I can have the feedback in my head. And I usually try to translate that feedback to the master shapers that I've worked with or the designers of my sails, my kites, my wings, and then the hydrofoils and all that. And I've gone to...

Trying to translate a color to somebody who's never seen color before. It's always on the tip of your tongue. It's indescribable. And so I'm always going to the factory or our factory is an old pineapple mill here in the jungle of Maui with ironically some of the highest technology of the surfing industry. You know, all aerospace, basically stuff that kind of trickles down to, you know, us normal people.

We take and we try to like use it to make our equipment better. And so yeah, like a lot of my best ideas for how I'm going to ride waves and win has come from just epiphanies out in the water where it's like, how did I not see this? It almost took me 15 years of trying to work up the ladder of 1 particular sport. And then all of a sudden, you know, you see the light and it just comes so clear. And you're like, I have to go in immediately and write this down or I have to go straight to the people that I work with to try to translate this.

And I'd say I have the ability to actually do it all myself, but it's really nice working with people who are so focused on this 1 sort of skill set to make either the boards, the hydrofoils or the kites and you know, it's pretty cool.

So the board, the boards are water resistant, is that correct?

Well, the boards, usually the boards are foam core. So for the longest time, it's been polyurethane cores. And then it's really transitioned a lot, I would say 50% into EPS core. And now everyone's starting to kind of lean towards kind of environmentally friendly foam that's made out of sea algae, made out of sort of different stuff that if it was to be outside, it's fiberglass or carbon fiber shell. Because it really like it's the boards are like basically a crab, soft on the inside and hard on the outside.

But then you don't want too stiff of a board, too strong of a board, you want flex in it. So the art form is taking the fibers and basically being able to layer the board in such a way that the board's going to like dampen and bend and absorb the sea chop or the water and give you sort of like suspension.

So it's more like a reed, the way reeds are designed. They blow with the wind, they bend, they don't break.

Yeah, exactly. And if you're here in Hawaii and you watch the, you know, a palm tree, a 70, 80 foot palm tree, a coconut tree swaying in the wind, They're so strong, but they have give to them and they kind of absorb. So it's like finding that fine line of not too much give to the point where it's gonna break, but then stiff enough that you can have like, You can translate your body mechanics and energy into that board and then into the water.

Are there any natural water repellent solutions for your equipment? As opposed to the high-tech stuff that we hear and see a lot about?

Well, So back in the old days, you know, you would, the Hawaiians would, you know, Hawaiians really, you know, everything was, everything they did was in line with kind of the, I wouldn't say the gospel, kind of their, their idea of being so 1 with nature. And so they would go to the top of the mountain to where the Koa tree was, for example, and they'd cut down the Koa tree. They'd carve the board from within the Koa tree, or they might carve a canoe. And in order to seal it, they would use some sort of oils. I know nowadays we use a lot of linseed oil to kind of seal wood.

And

so I don't know the exact oil that they would use, but it's basically they rub the oil across the wood and it would just seal it just enough. So water would kind of absorb it, it would repel as well. And so that was like kind of the natural way of sort of doing that. And that's kind of like the core of surfing is first body surfing. And then second would be riding 1 of these kind of traditional boards because it really connects you directly to it.

And there's both sides of the spectrum. You know, there's no better feeling than just riding that kind of 1 of the, you know, Elias, it's called, which is kind of a shorter wood board that's really thin, maybe an inch and a half thick. And that is like, it brings you down to the spiritual side of surfing, kind of the, it connects you with nature in such a personal level because it's, there's something about it that does feel like true to riding waves. But then there's the other side of the spectrum, which is pushing the high performance side of everything. And it's like, what could we take that, you know, modern science is created and apply it to this and how far can we go?

And so, you know, if you ask every surfer that is trying, like basically every top performing surfer, guess what? They're watching every space shuttle launch because they're so into the stuff that is created to make these rockets go to space and help us survive in space. Everyone's just waiting for anything new that was created to trickle down to us so that we could like use it. And maybe it'll be that silver bullet to allow us to ride the waves better or the wind better.

Dude, you could shoot my surfboard into space and it can re-enter without burning up. That's right.

So Kai, we know you are environmentally friendly and you will do your own beach cleanup along with a lot of other people. How do you balance that kind of removal of plastic out of the ocean? And with all the high tech stuff, equipments and sealants that can come on a board or other surfing equipment, how do you kind of keep that out of the equation?

Yeah, it's really ironic, you know, that you want to keep the ocean clean and pristine. And yet we're riding boards that are made of this kind of toxic foam that, you know, won't dissolve in the ocean for a thousand years. Or just, you know, plastic in general, everything you get shipped nowadays is full of plastic. You know, it's wrapped in it. It's and and, you know, I noticed a kind of when we had the or when the tsunami in 2011 hit Japan, you know, at the time I was still in my teens and Fukushima, the Fukushima disaster, that was, that was a real eye-opener because obviously, you know, since growing up on an island, you're really impacted by sort of everything because it doesn't get hidden.

It's like you go to the beach and you're going to see trash or even if there's trash on the street here, there's nowhere to go. You're on an island in the middle of the Pacific and you know, The great gyre in the Pacific turned into the great garbage patch. And after that giant tsunami, all that trash or all the stuff that came from Japan got stuck in the gyre. So even today, I'm finding stuff along the beach that is, you know, has Japanese emblems on Japanese writing. And you're like, this has been out in the ocean that long, you know, and it's not even broken down.

The most common thing, color you're gonna see at plastic in the ocean is white and blue because the red, the brighter colors tend to be eaten by fish or chipped away as the sun sort of hits it and kind of breaks down enough into small microplastics. Fish will absorb that and eat it. And, you know, I've had a lot of friends who've gotten severe mercury poisoning in places they shouldn't have gotten it. And a lot of people are kind of equating into the fact that the fish are eating a lot of these plastics and, you know, generations of these fish are kind of like metabolizing it and it's turning into sort of a cancerous thing. Basically, when we do these giant beach cleanups, it's like if you had a teaspoon and you're trying to like empty your bathtub while the faucet's on.

It's like, it looks good, it feels good. You're doing your part locally. The turtles aren't going to get caught in it and stuff and fish hopefully aren't going to keep eating it. But that's like the last place it ends up. And so trying to figure out how to turn off the faucet, it's always like, I feel like when you're trying to preach to somebody or you're trying to kind of like tell somebody what they can't do and what they should do, it's like people want to rebel from that.

Like, I don't want to be like told what I'm doing. You know, I want to have that sort of freedom. And 1 of the solutions that we've sort of come up with is, at least endemically, but eventually, hopefully, mainstream is without necessarily changing the way people live, changing the products that they're using and sort of not having them realize that it's changed. So I've been working with this company, Atlantic Packaging, that's located on the East Coast. It's the single largest, you know, family American-owned packaging company.

And I mean, they wrap everything in plastic, but they have this initiative right now that we're working on called the New Earth Project. And it's really cool because they're trying to make packaging that is out of sustainable things. So basically cardboards, papers, mushroom fungi, trying to use something like that to make it just as affordable as plastic so that people will... Companies aren't going to lose millions and millions of dollars, billions maybe on packaging alone to try to ship their products and you give them things up because everyone wants to do the right thing. But shareholders, bottom lines, you know, you kind of got to play the game.

And so all the boards that I'm getting now that are shipped around the world are, you know, wrapped in packaging that is sustainable. And, you know, literally if it ended up in the ocean, like a turtle could live off of the mushroom package.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah. That's very cool. All right. But honestly, that is the key. The key is to make it so that you're not asking people to change their behavior.

You change the products that are already a part of their behavior. So electric cars do that. We're still driving the same car and everything. It's just that you're plugging it into the wall. There is some carbon footprint there, but you're not stopping.

The only thing you're changing is you're not stopping at a gas station to put gas in your car, you know? So you're not really asking people to do something that different. The change is in the wall outlet.

So Kai, I don't know if you know, but the New York Aquarium just fished out of the ocean. Its very first plastic fish, it evolved as a plastic. I'm just kidding.

I wouldn't have doubted it for a second. Because every time...

It's made

entirely of plastic. Yeah, please. It evolved to survive in the plastic world.

My brother and I will go fishing off of our wing foil boards. So we'll have kind of a hand line off of our harness And we'll go out and we know where kind of the holes are for I guess what people know is like GTs or in Hawaii They're a lua's There are these really like, you know, they're they're kind of scarier fishes than sharks Ironically, there's bullets underwater, But if you do bring them out a lot of times you look in the stomach there's plastic in it And I'm like if it's breaking down, you know, it's going into their cell

Well, everything is you know, they say you are what you eat, but everything is

that nature will be able to figure out a way to just eat plastic and it'll become a food source. And it'll be like metabolized and it'll be like perfectly fine for everything else. Because nature always finds a way. We just might be destroyed before then.

We'll all be long dead by the time nature gets around to that.

And then everything will reset again.

Exactly. So Kai, just to land this plane, do you have any questions for me?

Neil, I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to keep it down to a couple. I'm looking for the biggest surfable wave on a planet, ideally in our solar system, but if it's at least within the local galaxy, I need basically light speed soon so we can go surf other planets.

Okay, so here's the thing. Earth is the only object in our entire solar system that has surface water, and you're surfing water. So it's...

None of the moons?

None of the moons. Well, so the moon Titan of Saturn has oceans of liquid methane. Ooh. So that's, is liquid.

But... Not the right liquid.

There, there are several moons that have water oceans beneath a frozen surface. And so, and it does get tidal stressing to it, but the surfaces are all completely frozen over. And you get some ice geysers that, where the water punches through, freezes on the way out, and then you get these sort of ice geyser, ice volcanoes.

But... Like Enceladus.

Right, right, exactly. But right now, Earth is the best you got. That's all you got.

Yeah, I figure in our solar system, you know, it was just really watching that film Interstellar and seeing those waves that you know.

Oh, you got spoiled. Those are black hole waves, dude. Okay. So we send you down there. You can surf this like tidal wave for a black hole, near a black hole, But your time slows down and all the people waiting for you up at the spaceship, you live 15 minutes and they live 20 years.

Nobody's waiting for your ass to surf that wave.

Totally. No, totally. I mean that I was like, that is the most surfable wave I've ever seen.

Oh!

I don't know how 1 of the characters died, because I'm like, it's easy, you just would ride it. And as you get to the top, I can understand he probably got flicked a thousand extra feet above that thing, you know, with all that wind at the top, but last 10 feet, you got to duck through it and then you'll just pop out the other side.

You said it's easy because your name is Kai Lenny. That's why

it's easy. True,

true. I'm not sure

who's talking here. Yeah.

But, you know, another thing too is like, we're constantly trying to find other big waves around the world because like there can't only be 5 of these gigantic places, you know, where everything sort of lines up. I don't tend to believe that because I feel like so like Nazare, for example, you know, there's like there has to be so many other big waves around the world and for example, Nazare is in Europe, it's in Portugal, like it's in sort of the backyard of Western civilization and it was only served 13 years ago, like when it was big, like people sort of discovered it. And you're like this place, this mythical place was kind of like, it's been around for as long as humans have ever known. But before there at Nazare was considered, you know, a death sentence and not a place that you would go ride a wave. But that has me always thinking, like I'm constantly on Google Earth trying to find places to surf.

But if the image of, you know, you can't see below the surface, right? From the, on the Google images.

Not on Google, but we have the means of doing that, though. But yeah.

Yeah, so it's like trying to, obviously, if you can see the right position, the bit of imagery and stuff, I guess on Google Earth, unless a photo is taken of a place with a wave, You kind of don't understand a wave could actually be breaking there.

So it sounds like what you really want to do is ask yourself, and we do this in physics all the time, given everything that, given all these parameters that are creating this effect, how do I increase that effect? What do I have to change about the wind, the direction, the water, the elevation, all of this. So what would be really cool is if you folk just asked yourself, How do I maximize a wave on this earth? Then get a whole bunch of money together and create the surfing environment with the, and have a wave generating thing that's out there, or have a wave, find some way to maximize it, you get a hundred foot wave.

That's what we want, the mythical hundred foot wave. That's the dream.

I don't see why you can't just Put in the equations what will maximize it. And then build it. Just build it. Why wait for nature to come together with weird configurations?

Kelly Slater's wave pool is probably the tallest man-made wave that is surfable.

We talked about that in 1 of our episodes, didn't we?

Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did.

Yeah. And that whole project was like, I think somewhere 60 to 70 million. And they got a wave that was, I mean, they were inventing sort of the technology now that it's a little more established. I've been the 1, I'm like in Kelly's ear, I'm in all those people's ears constantly. I'm like, you guys, we need at least a 30 foot face wave because if you had that, you would like, That wave changed the landscape of surfing.

If you had a 30-foot wave, we would completely reinvent how we ride a big wave. Because now, all of a sudden, you have something to train on. Yes. 5 days a year.

Completely. Not waiting for random nature to give you something that might be good. But

this is exactly about manipulating how to create bigger waves in the ocean. Not geo storm engineering or anything like that. Don't worry.

Getting to the swell heights. It's like not Bond villain stuff.

Yeah, not Bond villain. Right, right, right.

The last, I mean, the last thing I really would talk about is that, is the swell height. So, um, the biggest swell I think ever recorded was by Ireland. Um, And it was like a 70 or 80 foot tall swell. And that was like a big deal. And to me, I was thinking I could ride that on a hydrofoil.

You know, that's probably, I mean, to get out there is kind of the hard part. Cause there's probably like, you know, millions of breaking giant swells, you know that it's a constant chaos, but you totally could ride 1 of those on a foil and probably be less dangerous than going to say a place like Nazareth. But there's this guy that I got leaked up with who created a drone and he was an ocean scientist, oceanographer, and he created a drone that sends a signal and bounces off the water. I'll have to send you the link to 1 of his videos. It's funny because sometimes, like social media and all that, There could be videos that are so big and people get so many views.

And then there's these other videos that get like 400 views. And it's something that's so mind blowing to me, at least. He made this drone, went to Nazare, and he was bouncing a signal off of the water to see the swell height because Nazare I would say out of all the big waves in the world is the most unique that I've been to in that there's a 10, 000 foot trench that goes all the way to the sand on 1 side and then there is basically on the other side, this sand point, this ancient kind of lighthouse is sitting on top of. And it's like the swell energy is going the opposite direction. It gets stuck in the trench and it wraps back in.

And 1 side of the beach, So Praia de Norte is where the wave breaks and the south side of that beach, it could be like a ripple. I'm not even joking, a ripple. And on the other side, it could be 80 foot waves. And you're like, it doesn't make sense, but it does because it's 10, 000 feet of water there and then 50 feet of water over here. So he flew the drone out over and he wasn't even trying to record people riding waves.

He just wanted to test his drone and he was bouncing the signal off the water. And the waves we don't go for and we miss, he was recording 70 feet of vertical height off of these swells. And he has it mapped down to, like I think it's down to like a millimeter of accuracy with his drone. And I think the reason why it's possible for a place like that to get that big of waves is it's this wedge effect. You know, you have the trench waves.

This is important data if you're gonna try to do this perfectly, right?

Yeah, So it's like the wave is coming in in the trench, the main predominant swell. And then the biggest waves at Nazare don't break the farthest out. They actually break the closest in. So what happens is you're always looking for a wave where There's 1 wave coming this way and it's basically a roadway. Another wave comes out of the north and then it hits and it doubles up.

So all that energy has to go somewhere, creates this rise. So I already think people have ridden hundred foot waves, maybe bigger, 120 foot waves, because the waves he was recording, it was not even a big day out there. And I'm like, people have had to have ridden taller waves, but we've yet to see. Hopefully this winter, I can convince him to fly his drone when it's really big over 1 of the waves I ride.

Well, if the weather events get more dramatic, you'll be getting bigger waves for sure.

Indeed, indeed.

Hey Neil, what were the biggest waves in all of time in the solar system?

Well, you want it to be around when the moon formed. The moon. So Earth was sitting there minding its own business in space, orbiting the Earth, and a Mars-sized protoplanet wayward, wandered into the earth, sideswiped us. Excuse me, bro.

Oh. That's what it said.

Pardon me. Excuse

me, bro. So sorry.

Sideswiped us past about 1% of Earth's crust into orbit around the Earth. So for a while there, Earth had a ring. And that ring rapidly coalesced, because if you're a big piece, you have slightly more gravity than another piece and so it'll win in the who wins the gravity and who attracts other small pieces contest and that a creating of the material became Earth's moon now all evidence all theories of this formation say that the moon formed 20 times closer to Earth than it is right now. Tidal forces go as the cube of a distance. Okay?

So Chuck, do you have a calculator?

I can get 1. Take

20.

Take 20. You got 1? Yep. Multiply it by

20.

Okay, that's easy That would be 20 squared that gets you what? 400. Now multiply by 20 again What do you get?

8, 000. 8, 000

when the moon formed it raised tides on earth There were

8, 000

times higher than today.

That's, I can't even imagine. It must've been chaos around here. 8, 000

times higher. So, it sounds like you and your peeps want to go... We need a moon.

We need the Death Star. But a Wayne star. It might be the Death Star for everyone that is by the way.

The strength of tides is very sensitive to the distance to the moon. Distance is a very sensitive indicator of the tides.

So we

need to... Tidal strength, And between any 2 bodies. So that's, so if you want, just, just, when we invent time machines, that's where you want to go. Okay?

I, I kind of wonder if I've already been.

Ooh. He's, he's reincarnated.

No, I wonder if I've already been because my future self made the time machine and I've already gone back in time.

Oh, right. You know what that reminds me of? During the science march back in what, 2020? No, 2017. During the science march on Washington, someone had a sign that says, what do we want?

A time machine. When do we want it? It doesn't matter.

It's true. It doesn't matter. Any time would be good.

Any time works for a time machine. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, another way of that, I mean, talk about meeting the environment in a big wave is, um, this 1 time I was down in Patagonia with these 2 Navy SEALs on a Red Bull trip and we were mountaineering and we were climbing 2 mountains that had never been climbed before. Ironically, 1 was named Shark Fin, because it looked like a giant shark fin. But we were walking and I felt like I was Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring. It was just like this most crazy trip of my entire life.

It was a defining moment, 2013. And I was walking across, we were walking across this kind of mountain and there was this like glacial lake at the bottom. And there was this massive glacier. It's probably since receded, I don't know, a mile. But I was standing there and, or we were walking and I looked down and all of a sudden I saw a piece of this ice fall into the water.

It displaced all this water and all of a sudden this perfect wave on this little, I think it was like a sediment deposit underwater. It like it was like a mound, a sea mound, you know, like there's waves like Cortez Bank that break off California, like a seamount makes giant waves. This wave broke and it was the most perfect wave ever. Glassy, there's no currents.

Plus when the glacier calves like that, it looks like it's almost in slow motion. And so you're not even thinking that there's much energy there until you watch it manifest as a wave and you say, I better get my ass out of

there if

you're in some kind of rowboat.

1 last thought on that though, The only thing, the cool thing about that whole experience was I was predicting that wave was 15 feet high and I thought maybe, because in comparison to the side of the glacial wall, I'm like, that's a 50 foot wall. I asked our guide that was from Patagonia down there, I'm like, how big is that glacial wall? Because we were going to go into ice climbing it later that day, like on the safer side. And he's like, that's 250 feet. And I was like, okay.

So that wave, by my rogue calculation, was around 50 feet tall. Yeah. And it was the perfect wave, probably 1 of the most perfect waves I've ever seen in my life. It barreled down to about like an inch. It just kept barreling.

And the water is 32 degrees, just to remind, just to be clear. Okay.

Good wetsuits now.

No Hawaii, 70 degree, 75 degree.

I get the wind chill here in Hawaii, but you don't get the wind chill.

Wind chill. Oh, Hawaiian wind chill. I feel so sorry for you.

Spoiler, no one's gonna give you any sympathy.

Yeah, I don't need any.

Good. That's the key. I don't need it.

I don't need it, but thank you.

All right, we gotta call this quits again. Kai Lenny, thanks for being on StarTalk. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition with Kai Lenny. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.

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