WEBVTT - Interplanetary War 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:15.360 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:17.840 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager, and 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.160 today we are We're pretty excited because both of us 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.200 are fans of The Expanse, which is a show on 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.720 sci Fi. It speaks to all of Robert and my 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.560 interests and man, we both watched the first season, really 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.120 enjoyed it. So we got the opportunity to work together 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:36.120 with them and do an episode on their universe, basically 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:40.840 taking a look at war and what is the cause 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:44.519 of war and human history, but also looking toward the 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.880 future and basically saying, what's it gonna look like? Yeah, 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.479 what would interplanetary war be like? Uh? Yeah, this is 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.120 an awesome opportunity. I was already a fan of the show, 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:57.600 and it was actually reading the first book by James S. A. 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.040 Corey when the opportunity presented it itself, and we said, yeah, 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.680 because we've done this sort of thing before without any 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.440 kind of advertising support for properties such as Dune, uh, 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:09.640 the Let's see what else we rain? Yeah, and the 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.560 ant Man One Man, and none of those people work 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:14.600 together with us, but we did it. Because we're fans, 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.039 and I think I think we might have done something 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:19.600 like this eventually this year, because once I finally got 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.319 a chance to watch it on Amazon Prime, I just 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.920 fell in love with this show. It is fantastic. Yeah, yeah, 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.200 it's very well put together show. Uh. I would say 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:33.120 that the best pure science fiction show on television right now. Yeah. So, 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:35.600 as Robert mentioned, it's based on a series of novels 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.280 by James Essay Corey Now that's a pen name actually 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:42.160 for Daniel Abraham and Tai Frank. They serve as writers 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:44.639 and producers on the show as well. And the first 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:48.120 uh season of the show is based on the book 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.080 that Robert mentioned, Leviathan Wakes, and that book was nominated 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.520 for both a Hugo Award and a Locust Award. We're 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:56.760 gonna try not to really spoil the show for you 0:01:56.760 --> 0:01:58.880 at all if you haven't seen it. We're gonna be 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.680 mainly talking about the the mythos that it exists in, 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.440 right like the universe that they've built for this this show, 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.880 in this series of novels, um the real basic plot 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.120 and this isn't really getting you much past. Like I 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.600 would say, the first episode is that it's an ensemble 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.399 of characters that are scattered around the Solar System. They're 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:20.320 trying to unravel a conspiracy that threatens to begin a 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.640 war between Earth, Mars and colonies that are within the 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.160 Asteroid Belt. Yeah, and the really cool thing to keep 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.000 in mind, and certainly something we're gonna discuss at length here, 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.440 is that all of this is crafted with with science 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:37.240 in the forefront um. The authors and the show runners 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.800 put a lot of effort into making sure that everything 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.919 lines up. Not only were their entertainment expectations and our 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.440 our political intrigue fascination, but but just like, what what 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.840 is our current understanding of science and our current understanding 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:57.040 of the universe. What kind of a future does that 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.520 possibly present for us? And to that end, another thing 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:02.880 we're really excited about is that we are going to 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.320 have an interview at the end of this episode with 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:09.520 the executive producer on the expanse Naren Shankar. He's also 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.880 one of the show's writers. He's their science advisor as well. 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:15.000 He has a background in engineering in physics, and so 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.880 we're gonna ask him questions about how the show treats 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.560 the realities of space, because that really is I think 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:22.280 it's one of the selling points for me is that 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.640 Space is as much a character as any of the 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.360 other characters, and it's not just a setting. Right. Yeah, 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:34.000 Space is dangerous and big and hostile, uh in this show, 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:37.320 as it should be. So before we get into the 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:39.800 meat of this show, we want to establish, you know, 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:42.119 what this episode isn't going to be, because we don't 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.720 want you to be, you know, disappointed in what we 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:46.840 cover and what we don't. This is a huge topic. 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.800 This isn't gonna be us looking at military science really 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.360 or delving into too much about future weapons technology. We 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:56.920 talk a little bit about that, but for the most part, 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:03.480 we're sticking to what causes war, what motivates war, and 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.200 and really the ultimate end goal of the studies like 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:08.080 this which have been going on for a long time 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.440 is how to keep peace. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.680 look at past models of war and how they apply 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:17.920 in trying to figure out the future of war. But yeah, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.000 we're not going to do a detail breakdown of individual 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.320 weapons systems. So we of course have covered some of 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.000 those in the past and may cover them in the future, 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.400 such as our episode from Life Believe the past year 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:32.000 about the rods from God's the kinetic weapons system proposal, 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:34.640 and that came up independently in their research. It wasn't 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:36.520 something that like we were like, well, we're familiar with this, 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.240 we'll bring this in it. Actually, that's something that a 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.360 lot of people who speculate on what the future warfare 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:45.200 is gonna look like once we're out in space, kinetic 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.039 weapons immediately came up. So we'll we'll touch on that 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.240 again too, and if you're in and also, one thing 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:52.240 this this podcast is not going to be is you know, 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:54.120 we're gonna talk about the Expanse a little bit in it, 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:58.960 but we're gonna talk at at length about uh, just 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.719 the future of war, war and what war is in general. 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.480 So if you're not into the Expanse, if you're if 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:08.120 you're just across the board not interested, well I fear not, 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.000 because we're gonna we're gonna talk about a very grounded 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.599 issues here. Okay, so why don't we get into it. 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.159 And then what we'll do is basically, as we go 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:20.160 along and we're talking about these various theoretical examples or 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.599 historical examples, will maybe apply it to the expanse. But 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.840 again we're not going to be very spoilery about the 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:28.479 show in terms of like things that happened in the 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:30.360 plot or with the characters. It's just mainly going to 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.279 be about like what the setup is for the universe 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.040 there and what it's like two years in the future. Yeah, 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:38.560 and uh, well you know, I guess we should. Do 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.320 you want to mention any of the characters before we 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.280 move on or yeah, well, I think more so than 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:45.760 the characters, what I mentioned is just like the three 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:48.800 factions I suppose, and so set that up for people, 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:52.320 which is that Earth is Earth still exists, there's a 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.800 human population on it. It's a single planetary government though 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.640 from what United Nations governed planet. Yeah. And then Mars 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:04.200 has broken off from Earth. Mars is populated by human colonists, 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:09.040 but they have a more technologically advanced colony I guess. 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:13.600 So they have like a pretty intensely powerful military. They 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:16.800 have like stealth ships things like that. Uh, And that 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.440 they Mars and Earth are kind of teetering on the 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.039 brink of a it's like a Cold war basically. And 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.520 then the last faction is the Asteroid Belt. Uh. They 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.240 refer to themselves as Belters. Uh. And that basically serves 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:32.200 as like many colonies scattered throughout the Asteroid Belt of 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.839 basically blue collar workers who are out there mining resources 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.200 like air and water. In some type cases it's like ice, 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.479 Like they're they're mining ice and outer space so that 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:44.039 they can then bring it back and turn it into 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.440 water basically for the survivability of everybody, whether they're on 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:51.160 Mars or Asteroid Belt. Although Earth pretty much has access 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:53.760 to all of the resources, we still have. Yeah. I mean, 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.800 if you play fast and loose with the the parallels, 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:01.760 you can basically look at at Earth. Earth is Is 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:05.960 is the European planet, Mars is the New World, and 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.320 then the Asteroid Belt is just the the outskirts though, 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:12.560 the wild, the utter frontier and there, and there's a 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.840 there's a cultural splintering that has occurred really across all 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.720 three domains, right. Yeah. And and the the other thing too, 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.200 I forgot to mention is that the Belt is governed 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.880 by Earth technically, I think like they have oversight, but 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:31.120 there's also like uh corruption within the Belts government system. 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:33.960 And then also what would you call it, like a 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:41.679 grassroots insurgency happening. Yeah, the opcuh quasi terrorists or outright 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:43.960 terrorist organization depending on how you look at it, because 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.360 there's a large there's a lot of disenfranchisement that goes 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.200 on in the Belts in in the expanse, right, the 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.520 Belters don't seem to have the same rights. Um. Yeah, 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:57.360 it's a major plot point, all right. So at this point, 0:07:57.480 --> 0:07:59.960 let's go ahead and get into the first big question here. 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.640 What is war? What is war itself as a thing 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:08.240 that humans do, that humans most humans hate and despise 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.160 and fear, and yet we absolutely have not stopped doing it. Yeah, 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:16.480 we conducted constantly and you know, I had no idea 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.440 going into this research. I mean I had some idea, 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.880 but but not how deep it goes. I mean, there 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:28.239 are entire departments of study devoted to this. And so 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:30.920 if you're out there listening and you have some familiarity 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.400 with this, you may go, why didn't you mention this 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:38.000 particular theoretical concept about war? You know? Uh, this because 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.280 we really we would have to do an entire podcast 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.280 that's just about for for years just about this topic 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:46.640 in order to cover everything. So we're gonna try to 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.400 boil it down to some of the major categories of 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.120 of what is war and what causes it gonna read 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.559 three quick quotes here that that that I feel set 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.800 the stage. Uh. The first one comes from a corn 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.520 Karthie's Blood Meridian or the evening Redness in the West. 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:07.319 And this is These are the words of Judge Holden, 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:12.480 who has a major character in that book, quasi supernatural villain. 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.400 He says, it makes no difference what men think of war. 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:20.800 War endures as well, asked men what they think of stone. 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:26.280 War was always here before man was. War waited for him, 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:30.319 the ultimate trade, awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.120 way it was and will be that way and not 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:37.520 some other way. And then in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael and 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:41.200 Adventurer of the Mind and Spirit, Uh, Ishmael, who's a 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.600 talking gorilla in the book, if you're not familiar with it, 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:50.800 says the following, my name is Ishmael. Yeah. Is. This 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.559 law defines the limits of competition in the community of life. 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:57.839 You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:00.400 But you may not hunt down your competiti gers or 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:03.400 destroy their food, or denied them access to food. In 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.920 other words, you may compete, but you may not wage war. 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.320 Now there are a couple of major resources that we 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.840 look to to really ground ourselves here, and the first 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:19.520 was that apparently the International Association for Political Science Students 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.760 has as a really well written piece that that sums 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:26.160 up war and its causes. Now, the person who authored that, 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.360 Jan Tudovic. Uh, there's a quote from her that I'd 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:31.839 like to use to start us off here, and she says, 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.559 if we want to understand or explain how peace can 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:39.720 be achieved, we have to understand war and its causation. 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:44.480 And so, uh, this led me to another piece which 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.839 is by a guy named Jack S. Levy, and it's 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:50.360 called The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:53.720 and it's really pretty good review of all the literature 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.319 on this topic. And I think it was written in 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:58.920 the nineties, so there may even be like a whole 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.600 John More that wasn't covered in this from the last 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.800 decade or so. We pulled other resources to kind of 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.480 tap into that those ideas, but Levy basically looked at 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.800 everything and just threw it into one paper. It's interesting though, like, 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:16.240 at this point, without even getting into the idea, is 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:19.319 like the three quotes we looked at, the judge would 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.280 hold that war is this thing that like permeates us 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.840 and and and and pre exists. It's our nature. Yeah, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:30.120 Whereas Daniel Quinn would and Ishmael rather would argue that 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.480 that war is this this corruption that we've inflicted on 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.960 the world, and perhaps something we can take back. These 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.800 are of course, both you know, kind of simplistic views 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:43.160 of it or boiled down views, uh, and that we're 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.480 getting into them the more complex take on the question, 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:52.520 So Levy establishes, first of all, there's no consensus on 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:54.840 what causes war, Like, there's a lot of disagreement in 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.800 the academic community about this much less just between us 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.760 human beings. In fact, he says, some people argue it 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.520 maybe such a complex topic that it's it's actually impossible 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:08.360 to generalize in any manner, but they try. Um and 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:11.840 that the general definition of war is this quote, a 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:17.480 large scale organized violence between political units. So if you 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:21.360 want to differentiate it from other violence, the categorization is 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.400 essentially a minimum of a thousand battle related fatalities have 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:30.240 to be counted as a metric, and peace is subsequently 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:34.000 identified as the absence of war. Now, the people who 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:38.520 study this really deeply, they seem to distinguish between international war, 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:44.880 civil war, and interstate wars to separate them from what 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.000 I what are referred to as non state actors. I 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.480 think today most people would just say terrorism. Um but 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.800 but violence that's not conducted by a state actor. Right. So, 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:58.520 to this end, the study of war is actually moved 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.120 more toward what they called low intensity wars. And this 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.320 has been since the end of the Cold War, so 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:09.079 it's less focused on total annihilation. We're going to talk 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.880 about that for sure. Um Levy also says it's really 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:16.839 difficult to trace the causes of war because there's so 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.560 many variations on them. Right, So if you think you 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:21.840 have one theory and you try to apply it to 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.880 every single instance of war, there's gonna be a variation 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.600 in there that just stands out, right, So that makes 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.760 it even more difficult. Um Subsequently, he says he he 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:35.640 doesn't really buy into the whole human nature argument because 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:39.280 of that, because there's so many variables, it's not constant enough. 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.559 And Steady says, political scientists seem to be turning to 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:48.760 h explaining war in peace, while philosophers, psychologists, and biologists 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:53.440 ask why war war occurs at all in the first place. Right, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:58.600 um So that's really just the the general setup. Okay, 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.160 so we've now we've establed is like what war is 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.880 that the ground rules essentially in terms of how academics 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:08.800 are looking at it, how it's studied. Now what based 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.040 on that? What are the causes? Human nature is socio cultural? 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.840 What are what are all these theories for its motivation? 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:17.800 The first place that I'd like to point out is 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.280 there is an annual report that's put together by the 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:26.280 Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research every year and it 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.120 examines broadly what what leads to the current conflicts that 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.480 exist in our modern society and they call it a 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:39.360 Conflict Barometer. Now the edition focused on the following causes 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.600 for war and they have uh that's the latest report 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:46.440 that's been published because they haven't finished the one yet. Uh. 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:50.760 They categorize the the intensity of these conflicts, but they 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.240 basically break it down by whether it's a territorial war, 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:59.560 a war of secession, de colonization, a war over autonomy, 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.440 sys the system in place, or the ideology national power, 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:09.720 subnational predominance, international power. So that those three kind of 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:11.640 fall back into that what I was talking about earlier 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:14.920 in terms of state actors, and then resources, which brings 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:17.280 us back to our Ishmael quote. And then the last 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:21.520 one is the other. Paul Goodman has also put together 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:23.880 a short explanation of this. It's kind of like the 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:27.240 listical BuzzFeed version. I'm not saying that in like a 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.880 derogatory way. On the causes of war. It's on this 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:32.720 site called OWL caation and that's a website that's run 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.160 by educators about their academic areas of expertise. And that's 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.440 O w l C A t. Iowan trying to figure 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:44.440 that out, an OWL on vacation um. And so his 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:49.640 we're gonna use his list, the Heidelberg list and levies 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.200 huge combination of theories as sort of like a grounding 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:56.440 point for us as we moved through all of these. 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:01.840 And the first one is really the psychology the human nature. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.400 So do we have war because of our innate inner rage? 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.400 Is it because of the fears of mankind? Are we 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:14.360 inherently violent? Or maybe ideology is inherent to the human brain. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.080 This is kind of the the Dawn of of Man 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:23.080 two thousand one of Space Odyssey idea that the ape 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:26.200 is inherently violent, maybe pushed a little by the monolith. 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.760 But it all goes back to some some pretty human 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.320 homedy bashing and some creatures skull and realizing this is 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.760 the way, this is the this is the path to ascension. Yeah, exactly, 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:42.920 and Goodman lumps under this causes like that a lot 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:44.960 of you are probably thinking they were the first in 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:50.040 my mind, religion or nationalism or revenge even right. We 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.960 could also potentially play civil wars and revolutionary wars here, 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:58.000 as they're often motivated by differing ideologies. But when you 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.200 look back at that Heidelberg one, you know, those could 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:04.040 fall under autonomy or de colonization, secession, things like that, 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:07.760 so they break it out a little bit more finely. Yeah. Now, 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:09.480 one one thought that that came to mind as I 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:11.040 was looking through this is of course, that you're talking 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:15.119 about fears of mankind and and these different motivations. I 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.320 think it's important to note that that the fear of 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:22.000 the other is always a key motivator, be it a racial, cultural, 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.919 or linguistic other. The hurdles to our ability to to 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.840 do this continue to pose one of the leading threats 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.600 to peace. That we we inevitably have this just ingrained 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:37.720 in us, This this barrier to seeing individuals in another 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:41.520 group as being like us, is having the same values 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:45.560 as us, Is it indeed being part of us? Yeah? 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:48.680 You know my favorite example of this, and this isn't 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:50.919 like an endorsement of the show, I know a lot 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.440 of people have issues with it, but Lost they straight 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.679 up had a group of characters called the Others on 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.760 the Island. That was that really uh demonstrated this in 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:03.960 a good way and that it was like, Okay, they 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:06.640 are other from us. We think of them as being 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:10.200 outside of us and a threat, right and and almost 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.439 not even human in some cases. Uh, And it was 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.119 it was a it was a nice analogy for what 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.359 you're talking about there. Um, if you put it another way. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.960 There's a guy named Kenneth Walts who's an international relations theorist, 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:26.560 and he talks about it as the individual is the 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:30.800 first category of the cause of war. And he says, yeah, 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:33.359 maybe human nature is the locus of the causes of war. 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.000 We can find it in the behavior of mankind. But 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:40.760 we're essentially talking about things like selfishness, misdirected, aggressive impulses, 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.600 and and and while these are Waltz his terms, stupidity, 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:49.720 and he says, look uplifting and enlightening men may lead 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:52.399 to the elimination of war. So that's why we have 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.399 to study this, we need to scrutinize it um and 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:57.679 we're gonna keep coming back to that. And I would say, 0:18:57.840 --> 0:18:59.320 I don't know, I don't want to put like words 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.640 in the author's not but I would assume that part 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.560 of the project with the expense, is to enlighten people 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:10.720 to what causes war so that in real life were 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.200 less likely to just engage in that aggression. I mean, 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.720 we have so many different media representations of war is 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:22.160 just this noble and like even today we see these, uh, 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.679 these these examples of it as this noble enterprise. And 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:26.640 in our video games, like when we were talking about 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:29.280 PTSD in the previous so we talked about how like 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:31.320 so much of the so many of these games are 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:36.680 just they just glorify, uh, the violent details of war 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:40.040 and turn it into pure entertainment. And occasionally you'll have 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:41.960 a game, I forget the name of the game in 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.400 particular that a number of our listeners said, oh, well, 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.480 this one really focuses on PTSD a bit, but of 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:50.480 course no. But basically nobody wanted to play that game 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:56.000 because it it did not offer the the glorious vision 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.359 of warfare that we've come to expect from entertainment. Yeah, 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:03.080 and and also I think we would be out of 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.760 line if we didn't at least give this some acknowledgment 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:09.200 that in Waltz and in other referrals to war, and 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.680 they referred to it very specifically as mankind and men. 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:14.960 And you may be saying, well, why why are we 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.080 using those terms instead of humankind. Well, there's actually a 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:22.080 whole set of feminist theories around the causes of war 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.600 that argue that due to the gendered nature of states 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.320 and cultures, that this contributes to the persistence of war 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:32.280 in our world politics. So for me, like oddly enough, 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:34.439 the best fictional example I can think of what this 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.320 would be Wonder Woman, um, which is about to be 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.600 pretty popularized, I think, even more than she already is 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.119 in American consciousness. But there's a big movie about to 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:46.720 come up this somewhere. Um. But you know, she comes 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:49.679 from this nation of women that live in peace away 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:52.960 from men, but they're also a warlike culture, and they're 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.919 capable of mass destruction. Like they they're they're amazons, you know, 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.840 they're literally they're referred to um, so if men invade 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:04.080 their territory, they're they're like this incredibly powerful military force, 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.000 but but on their own they live in total peace. 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:12.440 Um Levy argues though, that feminist theories treat gender systems 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:15.080 as a constant. Again like this is his like argument 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:19.720 against human nature as being capable of explaining war because 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:22.240 of all the variations, and so he says, look that 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.879 that also can't explain these variations in war. It's worth 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:28.600 having as part of our sort of set of tools 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:30.680 to look at war with. But he doesn't think that's 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:34.320 the single answer. Well, and it's I've I've studied some 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:37.159 of this, but before the question, well what have what 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:41.040 have we had? Matriarchal cultures they engage in the same 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.119 level of war, And you kind of see arguments on 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.959 both sides. Some people say, oh, yes, we would, uh, 0:21:47.680 --> 0:21:50.960 a female lead society would be just as likely to 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:53.800 engage in warfare as a male lead society. But I mean, 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:55.600 basically it comes down to the fact we have so 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.160 few models to actually look to on that that we 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:02.400 we did, we're essentially starting from zero. Yeah, and and 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:05.919 that is connected to We're gonna talk about hegemony in 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.040 a little bit here, but I think to like again, 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.280 because we don't have examples that we can really look 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.280 to as that say, like one way or the other, 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:17.480 whether it's gendered or not, as the main cause, it's 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:20.200 difficult to parse out because we don't have a language 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:26.600 for understanding it any other way. Um, So that I mean, obviously, 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:28.320 like I said, there's a lot more to the human 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:30.720 nature argument. Well, we've in and out of that, but 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:36.600 that's essentially the human nature psychological component. And then we 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:39.440 come to the economic argument. This is tied into the 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:43.720 the Ishmael quote that we had earlier, and this, I 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:47.160 would say, is where the expanse really seems to fall 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.520 in terms of like what's causing war in the in 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:54.159 the in storyline, Uh, we're essentially talking here about a 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:58.400 competition for natural resources and wealth. There's national and international 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:02.240 and in this case interplanetary power and resources. Now, these 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:04.919 resources could be precious materials, or they could be livestock 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:08.400 or natural resources like like oil or minerals. And some 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.439 people believe that as the world's population increases, there's going 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:13.320 to be an increase in the amount of wars that 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:16.640 we have because we're gonna be fighting over fundamental essentials 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:18.800 such as water and food, and this is this is 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:21.119 kind of what we see playing out on an interplanetary 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:23.879 level in the expanse right. Oh yeah, I mean especially water. 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.000 The the need for water and among among the Belters 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:30.159 is one of the key plot points that comes up 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:32.800 again an Yeah, and Mars too, I think, because like 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.359 they had this amazing technology, but they're on Mars and 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:38.960 there's you know, there's there's not enough. If there's water 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:42.200 there in this future, there's not enough to to serve 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:44.479 the population that's there. And they keep talking about how 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:47.040 they're under like domed cities and everything. They don't breathe 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:50.719 natural air um and so yeah, and then air of 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:54.159 course as well would be a commodity um, depending on 0:23:54.240 --> 0:23:56.840 how they generate it. Yeah. And then if you want 0:23:56.840 --> 0:23:58.960 whiskey then and you're in the belt, you're gonna have 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:01.160 to depend on that moss whiskey. You know, I gotta 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:03.040 say I I would that. That's the thing. I was 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:04.840 the most surprised by him saying, like, where are they 0:24:04.880 --> 0:24:07.480 getting all this booze from? Yeah? Yeah, he comes out 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:09.520 more in the books, but but there's there are a 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:13.160 lot of discussions, uh with the Thomas James's character where 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:16.800 he's talking about drinking moss whiskey, and at one point 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:19.080 he's eating a meal where he has some there's some 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:21.840 real beans in there, but they're also some that grown beans. 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:25.080 So there's there's there's so many details that are thrown 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.640 out there and in the books but also incorporated into 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:31.200 the show. Give you this this idea of the the 0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:35.239 the economics of the world, you're you're immersing yourself in. Well, 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:38.359 Thomas James's character is pretty much constantly drinking, which is 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:41.359 one of my you know, amusements of his character. But 0:24:41.400 --> 0:24:43.600 that that was definitely something I was like, Okay, this 0:24:43.680 --> 0:24:48.080 fits the like noir detective thing with his character. But yeah, 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:51.880 that's his character's name. Um man, Yeah, he's he's great 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:54.080 in this. I'm I'm a Thomas Jane fan. Anyways, as 0:24:54.080 --> 0:24:56.080 you'll probably be able to tell from the ad reads, 0:24:56.280 --> 0:24:58.880 takes dance in this. But but yeah, he's really good 0:24:58.880 --> 0:25:02.879 in it. And yeahs I was immediately thinking probably two 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:05.080 three episodes and I was like, wait a minute, where 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:07.480 is he just getting all of this booze from He's 0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:12.720 just constantly doing it. Yeah, So okay, the economic argument 0:25:12.800 --> 0:25:17.840 falls under Kenneth Waltz his second explanation for war, and again, 0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:20.480 like we come back to like various explanations, right, is 0:25:20.480 --> 0:25:24.200 it is it um human nature? Is it economic? And 0:25:24.480 --> 0:25:28.000 he says, yeah, economic, but it's more about the state. 0:25:28.400 --> 0:25:31.560 And he argues that the social and political institutions that 0:25:31.680 --> 0:25:34.600 we create for ourselves, they should be seen as a 0:25:34.640 --> 0:25:38.080 factor in creating war. And if human nature can be 0:25:38.200 --> 0:25:42.040 changed through institutions, which is I would say, essentially like 0:25:42.119 --> 0:25:45.399 the basis of our of our society, right, like the 0:25:45.440 --> 0:25:49.560 idea that like we can live, we can coexist peacefully 0:25:49.640 --> 0:25:53.959 under institutions. Uh that, then those institutions should be our 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:56.960 focus for stopping war. Yeah, because of course humans have 0:25:57.000 --> 0:26:00.320 always competed for resources, just as all species do. I mean, 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:02.800 it goes back to that that Ishmael quote. Uh we 0:26:02.880 --> 0:26:06.680 and we even wiped out such competing intelligent hominid species 0:26:06.680 --> 0:26:09.639 as the Neanderthals in this very way. I mean, if 0:26:09.640 --> 0:26:14.160 you ever want a model for how humans would coexist 0:26:14.200 --> 0:26:17.480 with another intelligent species, that is sadly our best, our 0:26:17.520 --> 0:26:20.280 best example. It makes me think of and we've we've 0:26:20.280 --> 0:26:22.480 talked about this on the show a bit lately, But 0:26:22.560 --> 0:26:26.200 like the Prometheus myth, like you know, fire was given 0:26:26.240 --> 0:26:29.159 to us by the gods but ultimately ends up causing problems, 0:26:29.200 --> 0:26:33.000 and war is one of those. Yeah, but you know, 0:26:33.160 --> 0:26:35.040 when it comes to the Neanderthals, you can you can 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:36.919 look back and there are different arguments about how all 0:26:36.960 --> 0:26:41.800 this actually played out. But exterminating a species just by 0:26:41.840 --> 0:26:46.200 out competing them sort of accidental genocide, I guess, is 0:26:46.760 --> 0:26:49.959 one thing. But to actively wage war over the resources, 0:26:50.040 --> 0:26:52.000 to say I will wipe you out, to get into 0:26:52.040 --> 0:26:55.600 that that sort of you know, that Hellenistic model of 0:26:55.840 --> 0:26:59.280 destroy your enemy city and the dissault the earth, that's 0:26:59.280 --> 0:27:02.080 a that's another thing entirely. Well, why don't we take 0:27:02.080 --> 0:27:03.639 a break and when we come back, we're going to 0:27:03.680 --> 0:27:10.800 continue on with these causes of war. All right, we're back, 0:27:10.840 --> 0:27:13.160 So I know we have a number of fallout fans 0:27:13.200 --> 0:27:18.280 out there. So that quote, famous quote generally uh, narrated 0:27:18.280 --> 0:27:21.760 by Ron Perlman is probably bouncing around in your brain. 0:27:22.880 --> 0:27:25.840 War never changes. But that's that's what you get read 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:27.840 to you at the beginning of the game. Is your 0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:31.240 your characters walking away with a dog? Yeah, And uh. 0:27:31.400 --> 0:27:34.200 The thing about that quote is that, yes, on one hand, 0:27:35.320 --> 0:27:38.760 the horror of war remains the death of innocence remains 0:27:38.800 --> 0:27:42.760 one of its central tenants. Uh mutual assured destruction being 0:27:42.800 --> 0:27:45.520 the perhaps the purest modern version of this. When you're 0:27:45.520 --> 0:27:52.160 talking about nuclear strikes between superpowers, you're talking about megadeaths 0:27:52.160 --> 0:27:56.480 of civilians. Nice metal reference there, Dave Mustan would be, Yeah, 0:27:56.520 --> 0:27:59.520 that's where they gotta leave. That's where the Yeah. Megadeath 0:27:59.640 --> 0:28:03.360 is a U is basically a way to to measure 0:28:03.400 --> 0:28:07.320 the death that would occur during a large scale nuclear war. 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:11.640 But even on on like lower levels, there's just horror 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:14.600 at every level. At two thousand and ten b MJ 0:28:14.880 --> 0:28:17.960 published study pointed out that quote the use of rape 0:28:17.960 --> 0:28:22.240 as a weapon of war has assumed strategic importance unquote 0:28:22.240 --> 0:28:24.480 in in the in the wake of the Second World War. 0:28:24.800 --> 0:28:28.240 So war is is and has always been nothing short 0:28:28.240 --> 0:28:31.359 of just an obscenity. There's your gendered nature of it again. 0:28:33.600 --> 0:28:37.240 And yet to to you know, we can say, all right, Ron, 0:28:37.280 --> 0:28:39.080 you're you're right for the most part. But on the 0:28:39.080 --> 0:28:43.160 other hand, weapons and tactics evolve, as does the shape 0:28:43.160 --> 0:28:46.160 of war, the exact definition of the thing, the ethical 0:28:46.200 --> 0:28:49.760 boundaries of war. We invoke modern laws of war even 0:28:49.760 --> 0:28:52.880 as we've been to break them. UH. The and even 0:28:52.920 --> 0:28:55.320 the laws of war are ancient. Two. We can find 0:28:55.320 --> 0:28:58.840 examples of them in the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic. We 0:28:58.920 --> 0:29:01.880 find them in the Torah. And much discussion continues even 0:29:02.000 --> 0:29:04.520 to this day on the idea of just war theory, 0:29:05.000 --> 0:29:08.560 the idea that you know, if you if you fall, 0:29:08.680 --> 0:29:12.000 if you follow certain parameters both in the execution and 0:29:12.080 --> 0:29:14.840 the reason for war, then there is a just use 0:29:14.920 --> 0:29:19.480 of it. People are still divided on that. Yeah, right, interesting, Yeah, 0:29:19.640 --> 0:29:24.160 you see some of that throughout these theoretical UH applications. 0:29:24.240 --> 0:29:28.720 But also just like the scholars that are struggling with 0:29:28.840 --> 0:29:31.000 this are like trying to come to grips with not 0:29:31.120 --> 0:29:35.080 only like how this works in the grand scheme of humanity, 0:29:35.200 --> 0:29:38.120 but then like in the present tense, right, like like 0:29:38.280 --> 0:29:40.640 how do I apply this to the situation of maybe 0:29:40.680 --> 0:29:44.200 the nation state that I exist in that's currently at war. Now, 0:29:44.240 --> 0:29:47.000 we've already discussed a number of different theories for for 0:29:47.240 --> 0:29:50.480 why we have war, how war works, where it came from. 0:29:51.000 --> 0:29:53.480 Various theories have covered this one that I always thought 0:29:53.520 --> 0:29:56.000 had a nice ring to it. Uh. And again this 0:29:56.080 --> 0:29:59.400 is probably an overly simplistic model there, but there are 0:29:59.440 --> 0:30:01.400 those who are that basically need a few things to 0:30:01.440 --> 0:30:04.400 come together for warfare to be practical. You need surplus 0:30:04.520 --> 0:30:08.760 resources to to necessitate high risk raids and high speed 0:30:08.920 --> 0:30:12.520 mounts to make this sort of long distant strike feasible. Yeah, 0:30:13.400 --> 0:30:15.800 very much. Again, in an economic sense, comes down to 0:30:15.880 --> 0:30:19.040 a risk reward. So there's there's some out there who 0:30:19.080 --> 0:30:21.240 have said but basically comes down to the horse. Before 0:30:21.720 --> 0:30:25.040 individuals had horses, you just weren't able to really wage 0:30:25.160 --> 0:30:27.560 something that was that was war as we think of 0:30:27.600 --> 0:30:31.040 it today. Not everyone agrees with that, but like I 0:30:31.080 --> 0:30:33.640 said that, the basic economic nut of that, I think 0:30:33.760 --> 0:30:35.840 is is very interesting to think about, and as we're 0:30:35.840 --> 0:30:38.000 gonna look to toward the end of this episode, but 0:30:38.080 --> 0:30:41.720 also in the context of the expanse, I mean, once 0:30:41.800 --> 0:30:44.960 we once we invent interplanetary space travel and we have 0:30:45.680 --> 0:30:49.000 you know, that's that's the next horse essentially, right, although 0:30:49.000 --> 0:30:51.600 I would argue, like the airplane, probably the car and 0:30:51.640 --> 0:30:53.840 then the airplane, right because as we're going to discuss, 0:30:54.320 --> 0:30:56.280 all of these things can be used as weapons on 0:30:56.360 --> 0:30:59.560 their own without even having weapons attached to them. Yeah, 0:30:59.600 --> 0:31:01.840 and when you end up having states and empire, the 0:31:01.960 --> 0:31:05.040 rise of states and empires in human civilization. This changes 0:31:05.080 --> 0:31:07.840 war as well, so they're waging war for resources but 0:31:07.960 --> 0:31:12.080 also for plunder for slave labor. Uh. As William M. 0:31:12.160 --> 0:31:16.400 Dugger pointed out in as a piece online Evolution Theory 0:31:16.560 --> 0:31:20.000 Social Sciences, Volume three, you need the slaves to work 0:31:20.160 --> 0:31:23.320 the natural world into things that you you needed from 0:31:23.360 --> 0:31:26.760 the countryside. And you also needed the slaves to keep 0:31:26.800 --> 0:31:29.320 your cities running. Well. Uh, the places and these are 0:31:29.360 --> 0:31:32.360 the places where you grew and maintain the military required 0:31:32.440 --> 0:31:37.200 to power this sort of awful war based convection of empire. Yeah, 0:31:37.400 --> 0:31:41.360 and and that is definitely like one road empire studies 0:31:41.400 --> 0:31:45.200 are like imperial studies. But all of this leads us 0:31:45.200 --> 0:31:47.360 to the question of whether or not the causes of 0:31:47.440 --> 0:31:53.160 war derived from either international systems, national systems, or individual 0:31:53.440 --> 0:31:55.320 decision makers. Right, So we get back to is it 0:31:55.480 --> 0:31:57.360 is it just one person who's leading us to this 0:31:57.560 --> 0:32:01.440 or is there something fundamentally flawed with the institutions that 0:32:01.480 --> 0:32:04.600 we've created for ourselves. And I would say maybe it's 0:32:04.640 --> 0:32:07.479 all three, right, and I probably a lot of these 0:32:07.520 --> 0:32:10.720 studies would too, But possibly it's just one given the 0:32:10.800 --> 0:32:14.600 various scenarios. Right, So, key actors in world politics, they're 0:32:14.680 --> 0:32:18.080 currently seen as sovereign states that are quote acting rationally 0:32:18.480 --> 0:32:22.440 to advance their own security, power, and wealth. That's essentially 0:32:22.560 --> 0:32:25.280 again like the risk reward model, right, Like, all they 0:32:25.320 --> 0:32:27.600 want to do is make sure that their people are secure, 0:32:28.160 --> 0:32:31.760 they have power over at least their own destinies and 0:32:32.080 --> 0:32:35.320 the wealth to lead I guess, happy lifestyles. Now, the 0:32:35.480 --> 0:32:39.560 basics of this are what's referred to as the realist 0:32:39.800 --> 0:32:42.959 theory of war, and that is basically that the distribution 0:32:43.040 --> 0:32:47.880 of power is the primary factor in shaping international outcomes. 0:32:48.000 --> 0:32:51.200 And it's it's complicated. It gets even more complicated by 0:32:51.280 --> 0:32:55.920 making assumptions about foreign policy choices in the outcomes of 0:32:56.080 --> 0:32:58.760 various nation states. I mean, we see this playing out 0:32:58.760 --> 0:33:02.840 in the news every day, actually, right like Like so 0:33:02.880 --> 0:33:06.640 an example right now would be like the Russian hacking scandal, right, 0:33:06.800 --> 0:33:09.560 and we see that and it's always in the papers 0:33:09.640 --> 0:33:13.640 referred to as Russia did X or Russia is thought 0:33:13.720 --> 0:33:18.160 to have done why. Right, it's not Russia, it's not 0:33:18.680 --> 0:33:23.280 all of Russia's citizens. It's people within the institutions. If 0:33:23.360 --> 0:33:26.040 that's the case, right, But then you have to ask yourself, 0:33:26.720 --> 0:33:30.240 is it their institution that's flawed or is it again 0:33:30.320 --> 0:33:33.280 like some people say, oh, it's a key actor, it's Putin. 0:33:33.400 --> 0:33:37.000 Putin is the one that's influencing the institution negatively, right, 0:33:37.840 --> 0:33:40.440 who knows. I mean, it's really difficult, like super con 0:33:40.760 --> 0:33:46.520 complex too to dive into, especially on a current events scale. Right, 0:33:46.640 --> 0:33:49.280 you need like years away from stuff like this and 0:33:50.120 --> 0:33:52.600 many more facts than we have to be able to 0:33:52.640 --> 0:33:54.640 make a decision one way or the other. Yeah. I 0:33:54.680 --> 0:33:58.440 think it was David Simon who made the comparison between 0:33:58.800 --> 0:34:02.880 our modern world and the world of of of ancient myth. 0:34:03.360 --> 0:34:06.520 In the ancient myth, you had heroes and you had gods, 0:34:07.080 --> 0:34:10.920 and both both exerted a tremendous amount of power. Um 0:34:11.320 --> 0:34:13.200 more so with the gods, but the heroes could really 0:34:13.239 --> 0:34:17.240 turn the tide as well. And today instead of God's 0:34:17.520 --> 0:34:21.400 we have systems and uh, but we still have a 0:34:21.520 --> 0:34:23.719 place for the individual, and the individual can still be 0:34:23.920 --> 0:34:28.360 tremendously influential or can just be crushed under the heels 0:34:28.600 --> 0:34:30.880 of said god like system. Man, you and I have 0:34:30.920 --> 0:34:32.880 been circling around this topic for a while now and 0:34:32.920 --> 0:34:35.320 I hadn't even realized it. We did the hero episode 0:34:35.360 --> 0:34:39.680 recently or heroism, but then the Wicked Problems episode definitely 0:34:39.840 --> 0:34:42.880 ties into this as well, like it certainly war as 0:34:42.880 --> 0:34:45.120 a wicked problem. Yeah, I mean anytime we cover the 0:34:45.200 --> 0:34:47.719 human condition, I mean essentially we're going to be dealing 0:34:47.800 --> 0:34:50.799 it's on some level with with war. And I gotta 0:34:50.840 --> 0:34:55.320 say David Simon, but my go to guy for quotes 0:34:55.360 --> 0:34:58.960 pretty much always trust trust him with what he's saying. 0:34:59.239 --> 0:35:02.120 I follow him on Twitter and I find insights from 0:35:02.200 --> 0:35:04.960 him almost every day. The guy is crazy smart and 0:35:05.080 --> 0:35:07.480 has just really um if you're not, I guess I 0:35:07.480 --> 0:35:10.440 should say who. David Simon is author Homicide, Life on 0:35:10.480 --> 0:35:13.120 the Streets and uh and later of course The Wire 0:35:13.640 --> 0:35:16.759 May Uh so various other projects he's been involved with. 0:35:16.800 --> 0:35:19.120 Those are probably the two big ones recent. Yeah. Yeah, 0:35:19.200 --> 0:35:22.040 so that's how more particularly did a war based when Yeah, 0:35:22.120 --> 0:35:25.600 that's called Generation Kill and is is excellent, maybe the 0:35:25.800 --> 0:35:30.560 best depiction of modern war that I've ever seen in entertainment. Okay, 0:35:30.640 --> 0:35:33.760 So out of these arguments that we're talking about comes 0:35:34.120 --> 0:35:38.279 these capitalist economic systems, and they're seen actually as being 0:35:38.360 --> 0:35:42.800 the best guaranteers of peace. So basically it goes like this, 0:35:43.080 --> 0:35:47.960 that the state has trade and that generates economic advantages 0:35:48.040 --> 0:35:52.080 for state parties, and that the anticipation of war would 0:35:52.160 --> 0:35:56.800 disrupt trade, right, so it would also reduce the welfare 0:35:57.000 --> 0:35:59.480 of the people who were living within these nations states. 0:35:59.800 --> 0:36:02.840 So some argue that this is what led to the 0:36:02.960 --> 0:36:06.480 sort of current model of what's referred to as neoliberalism 0:36:06.600 --> 0:36:10.680 that we in the United States existent. Um, but you're 0:36:10.680 --> 0:36:13.160 basically looking at like the the argument is that, like, 0:36:13.480 --> 0:36:15.840 as long as we keep free market trade going on 0:36:16.080 --> 0:36:21.560 between international or in the case of the experience, interplanetary states, 0:36:22.360 --> 0:36:27.320 then that's like a deterrent for war. It's also this 0:36:27.520 --> 0:36:30.200 is the point where I think we should address hegemony. 0:36:30.280 --> 0:36:34.160 Although man hegemony is a really tough topic to dive into, 0:36:34.880 --> 0:36:37.520 I I gotta say, just from me personally, it is 0:36:37.840 --> 0:36:41.480 such a difficult concept that it's still being ironed out 0:36:41.520 --> 0:36:44.400 in many academic circles. But I studied it in graduate 0:36:44.480 --> 0:36:48.120 school and it left my head spinning after every class. Uh. 0:36:48.480 --> 0:36:51.239 In fact, the most difficult book I've ever read is 0:36:51.320 --> 0:36:55.760 called Hegemony and Socialist Strategy by ERNESTO. Leclow and chantel 0:36:55.840 --> 0:37:00.480 Moof uh, that book, it was like, you know, any 0:37:00.600 --> 0:37:03.120 any like a piece of literature that people say is 0:37:03.160 --> 0:37:05.920 like really difficult, like Thomas Pension or David Foster Wallace 0:37:06.040 --> 0:37:09.520 or something like that, or James Joyce, like, this thing 0:37:10.200 --> 0:37:12.759 was so much harder than any time I've tried to 0:37:12.840 --> 0:37:15.560 tackle stuff like that. But let's try to take a 0:37:15.680 --> 0:37:18.480 stab here. It's just a short definition of hegemony so 0:37:19.000 --> 0:37:20.800 we can line it up because I think it works 0:37:20.920 --> 0:37:23.399 within the parameters of the expense and what we're talking 0:37:23.440 --> 0:37:27.480 about now. This is from the Salem Press Encyclopedia entry, 0:37:27.520 --> 0:37:32.280 and the term hegemony is used to refer to a group, state, 0:37:32.600 --> 0:37:36.759 or other entity that exhibits political or cultural dominance over 0:37:36.920 --> 0:37:40.359 another group. And it's used in political science to refer 0:37:40.480 --> 0:37:43.840 to usually countries or states that exert powers over one another. 0:37:44.280 --> 0:37:48.000 But the ancient Greeks actually developed the term uh, and 0:37:48.080 --> 0:37:51.080 they used it to describe the interaction of their city states, 0:37:51.120 --> 0:37:55.880 which were called polis polus is uh with nearby territory, 0:37:56.000 --> 0:37:59.920 so how those city states interacted with their neighbors. Essentially today, 0:38:00.120 --> 0:38:03.560 though it really refers to the domineering behavior of one 0:38:03.680 --> 0:38:09.960 group over another, it may not even necessarily be national actors. Now, 0:38:10.040 --> 0:38:13.080 the power that's wielded by one group over another in 0:38:13.200 --> 0:38:15.640 this case could be military and nature, which you know 0:38:15.880 --> 0:38:19.960 leads to war. But more often it comes due to 0:38:20.200 --> 0:38:24.920 financial or technological superiority, which is backed by military authority. 0:38:25.400 --> 0:38:29.040 We see that in the expanse, certainly with with Earth 0:38:29.520 --> 0:38:31.680 and then how it's connected to the Belt right like 0:38:31.840 --> 0:38:35.360 Earth has you know, they're not like at war with 0:38:35.520 --> 0:38:38.719 the Belt, but they are dominant over the belt and 0:38:38.800 --> 0:38:43.479 they're they're backing that both with their trade of things 0:38:43.560 --> 0:38:48.880 like water, but also with their military authority. The United States, 0:38:48.920 --> 0:38:53.280 for instance, is understood to rise to hegemonic status partly 0:38:53.360 --> 0:38:56.520 because of petroleum production and the rise of the automobile. 0:38:57.239 --> 0:38:59.560 Another example in the expense would be that Mars has 0:38:59.800 --> 0:39:02.600 the this like superior technology, but Earth has access to 0:39:02.719 --> 0:39:06.040 resources like air and water. That's what puts them in dominance. 0:39:06.480 --> 0:39:12.520 Usually a hegemonic power encourages cooperation before they resort to force. 0:39:12.600 --> 0:39:17.520 So it's not it's not necessarily always militaristic and warlike uh. 0:39:17.600 --> 0:39:20.319 And in fact, more often than not it's it's seen 0:39:20.360 --> 0:39:23.080 as being ideological. Yeah, but of course it's always worth 0:39:23.239 --> 0:39:26.279 remembering that that war is always in the background. War 0:39:26.440 --> 0:39:28.239 enforce is always in the background of any kind of 0:39:28.600 --> 0:39:31.279 of law and enforcement of law, and even when it 0:39:31.360 --> 0:39:35.440 comes down to paying your taxes, there's a there's a 0:39:35.520 --> 0:39:37.879 long line of things that happen if you don't pay 0:39:37.920 --> 0:39:41.640 your taxes, but the end result can be an official 0:39:42.000 --> 0:39:45.279 showing up at your door armed. So right, it's it's 0:39:45.320 --> 0:39:47.120 always there in the background. I mean you could tie 0:39:47.160 --> 0:39:51.560 that into the the Heidelberg variations and like secessionists or 0:39:51.920 --> 0:39:57.239 autonomous war movements. Um. Now, last bit about hegemony here 0:39:57.400 --> 0:40:01.840 the modern thought modern studies on it were heavily influenced 0:40:01.880 --> 0:40:05.880 by a guy named Antonio gramsc and gram She argued 0:40:06.000 --> 0:40:10.759 that ideology and ways of thinking also acted hegemonically, and 0:40:10.840 --> 0:40:14.000 he wrote these ideas while he was imprisoned as a 0:40:14.120 --> 0:40:18.520 communist during the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy. 0:40:18.719 --> 0:40:20.920 So he basically had I think it was like forty 0:40:21.040 --> 0:40:24.240 something like little notebooks that he filled with these ideas 0:40:24.480 --> 0:40:28.200 that were published later. And he thought that hegemony meant 0:40:28.320 --> 0:40:32.840 that the dominant group maintains its control through consent. So 0:40:33.040 --> 0:40:37.160 to your taxes. Example, I consent to paying these taxes, right, Um, 0:40:37.800 --> 0:40:41.600 that that that's basically how it's maintained. But there's always 0:40:41.840 --> 0:40:45.759 possibility of force behind it. This included social classes and 0:40:45.840 --> 0:40:48.799 not just national actors. So in addition, the dominant group 0:40:48.880 --> 0:40:53.600 doesn't necessarily control all of the areas of a subordinated culture. 0:40:53.640 --> 0:40:56.800 So this is why we have such a heavy amount 0:40:56.880 --> 0:41:01.560 of subcultural theory and studies in universities now entire ideological 0:41:01.680 --> 0:41:05.399 systems like democracy, those can be seen as hegemonic. Gram 0:41:05.520 --> 0:41:09.400 She even argued that such concepts are dominant because they 0:41:09.560 --> 0:41:12.080 seem common and they seem natural to those of us. 0:41:12.200 --> 0:41:15.520 But that's because we exist within them, right. So for example, 0:41:16.440 --> 0:41:20.160 the common common example used to illustrate current hegemony would 0:41:20.160 --> 0:41:23.000 be like the idea that America is a Christian nation 0:41:23.239 --> 0:41:27.440 even though it's got a broad diversity of religious beliefs. Um, 0:41:27.680 --> 0:41:29.800 this stuff is really difficult to talk about, as I 0:41:29.880 --> 0:41:33.640 mentioned earlier, because and gram She and other theorists have 0:41:33.800 --> 0:41:36.560 argued this since then, the very language we use in 0:41:36.719 --> 0:41:41.400 society is formed by whatever the dominant ideology is. Subsequently, 0:41:41.560 --> 0:41:43.959 that makes it difficult to talk about anything that would 0:41:44.280 --> 0:41:49.640 be close to change. So basically, the the hegemonic idea 0:41:49.800 --> 0:41:52.480 here is sort of overlaid on top of all of 0:41:52.560 --> 0:41:56.759 these causes of war alright, So it's war plays on, 0:41:57.040 --> 0:42:00.120 and the the culture of war plays on and undoubtedly 0:42:00.200 --> 0:42:05.160 becomes an enterprise that moves cultures, religions, trade routes, customs, 0:42:05.480 --> 0:42:09.160 all manner of human creations and humans too, across vast distances. 0:42:09.560 --> 0:42:12.480 And it also advances technologies. It serves as the driving 0:42:12.640 --> 0:42:17.680 energy behind human endeavors and mega projects. Uh So, for many, 0:42:18.080 --> 0:42:21.359 War is highly profitable. And that that means if you're 0:42:21.480 --> 0:42:25.320 the head of an industry, if you're a CEO. But 0:42:25.480 --> 0:42:28.120 also it means if you're just at some point down 0:42:28.200 --> 0:42:32.080 the chain, you're benefiting from the technology. UM you know, 0:42:32.160 --> 0:42:34.000 the very a lot a lot of times you can 0:42:34.040 --> 0:42:37.920 think of like the very small, uh everyday technologies that 0:42:38.000 --> 0:42:40.000 came out of the Space Race, which of course was 0:42:40.880 --> 0:42:44.239 was part of the Cold War, part of this competition 0:42:44.400 --> 0:42:47.759 between um two superpowers. Yeah, and we see that in 0:42:47.840 --> 0:42:51.160 the expanse as well too. They they did. I kind 0:42:51.200 --> 0:42:53.480 of suspect that the people who work on this show, 0:42:53.520 --> 0:42:56.400 and maybe we'll get something from Duran Shankar about this, 0:42:56.840 --> 0:42:59.759 that they have done their homework like you and and 0:43:00.000 --> 0:43:03.080 before they sat down and they executed this massive project. Yeah, 0:43:03.120 --> 0:43:05.520 I feel like the show lines up with with pretty 0:43:05.600 --> 0:43:09.239 much everything we we found in research for this episode. Now, 0:43:09.480 --> 0:43:12.600 War of course also unifies. It has a way of 0:43:12.680 --> 0:43:17.640 distracting individuals from domestic woes, in large part by invoking 0:43:17.680 --> 0:43:20.040 and exploiting the threat of the other. And studies to 0:43:20.160 --> 0:43:23.200 have shown that the horrors of war hardened group bonds, 0:43:24.000 --> 0:43:27.279 and so we end up with just war beginning more war. Yeah. 0:43:27.320 --> 0:43:30.240 In fact, Levy he mentions this is what is referred 0:43:30.239 --> 0:43:32.480 to as the rally round the flag effect, which always 0:43:32.520 --> 0:43:34.800 makes me think of that the page against the machine, 0:43:34.880 --> 0:43:38.399 so rally around the flag. But basically the idea here 0:43:38.480 --> 0:43:42.880 is that leaders anticipate popular support during war, and so 0:43:43.080 --> 0:43:46.920 sometimes it's tempting for them to undertake risky foreign ventures 0:43:47.040 --> 0:43:50.680 or policy simply to bolster their own support. So that's 0:43:50.719 --> 0:43:52.880 something to keep in mind. That is a that is 0:43:52.920 --> 0:43:56.040 a terrifying statement, I think for for everyone to hear 0:43:56.080 --> 0:43:58.840 it right now. But yeah, it's quite scary and not 0:43:59.080 --> 0:44:00.880 the scariest thing that we're going to talk about in 0:44:00.880 --> 0:44:04.320 the podcast today. But um, sometimes this is referred to 0:44:04.440 --> 0:44:08.480 in the literature as diversionary theory of war, but sometimes 0:44:08.560 --> 0:44:13.440 it's also done through scapegoating connected to ethno nationalism. So 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:16.480 not only are you sort of connecting the leader is 0:44:16.520 --> 0:44:20.200 connecting the nation state to community and power, but ethnicity 0:44:20.400 --> 0:44:24.120 to the nation as well, very dangerous stuff as we've 0:44:24.160 --> 0:44:27.400 seen in the past. Now in the expanse, this maybe 0:44:27.480 --> 0:44:29.839 what's going on with both Earth and the Belt as 0:44:29.920 --> 0:44:34.640 they are arguing for war UH to possibly solidify their 0:44:34.719 --> 0:44:38.160 own political power, right like the like the terrorist organization 0:44:38.239 --> 0:44:41.920 and the Belt, like they're basically arguing for autonomy so 0:44:42.040 --> 0:44:45.200 they can solidify their own power, right but like likewise, 0:44:45.520 --> 0:44:48.359 Earth wants to solidify their power by keeping the Belt 0:44:48.440 --> 0:44:53.040 under their control so that they have UH an organization 0:44:53.120 --> 0:44:55.560 that's out in space that can can match or at 0:44:55.600 --> 0:44:57.239 least keep them up to date on what's going on 0:44:57.360 --> 0:45:02.400 with Mars and A. According to Levy, democratic leaders who 0:45:02.480 --> 0:45:05.239 initiate wars like this what I was talking about, where 0:45:05.239 --> 0:45:07.479 they're they're scapegoating or where they do the rally around 0:45:07.480 --> 0:45:11.960 the flag effect that's usually unsuccessful and they're more likely 0:45:12.040 --> 0:45:14.520 to be thrown out of power than non democratic ones. 0:45:14.600 --> 0:45:18.600 So that's I suppose encouraging at least. The personal cost though, 0:45:18.640 --> 0:45:22.880 can be much greater to authoritarian leaders, So that makes sense, right, Like, 0:45:22.920 --> 0:45:25.560 if you're an authoritarian leader and you you end up 0:45:25.960 --> 0:45:28.759 taking your nation to war, like if the results are poor, 0:45:28.960 --> 0:45:31.520 either your people are going to overthrow you and probably 0:45:31.960 --> 0:45:34.440 kill you, or you're going to be killed in the 0:45:34.520 --> 0:45:37.800 war that you've conducted. So then this leads to another 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:43.080 like section of war theory, which is essentially demographic in nature. Uh. 0:45:43.160 --> 0:45:47.040 The idea here being that population growth leads to scarce resources, 0:45:47.080 --> 0:45:50.920 which we mentioned earlier. The ethno nationalism ties into this, 0:45:51.040 --> 0:45:54.200 but also something that's called youth bulge theory, and it's 0:45:54.440 --> 0:45:57.839 I don't think it's what you're thinking of. Yeah, there's 0:45:57.840 --> 0:45:59.600 actually an older episode of Stuff to Blow your mind 0:45:59.640 --> 0:46:01.160 and went into this a little bit. I believe it 0:46:01.239 --> 0:46:06.000 was the teenage Brain, Okay, and it talks about In 0:46:06.120 --> 0:46:09.240 that episode, we explored how the teenage brain is different 0:46:09.239 --> 0:46:12.160 from an adult brain, that there's there are different priorities, 0:46:12.239 --> 0:46:15.840 like biological priority, priorities to break away from your essentially 0:46:15.920 --> 0:46:20.080 your tribe, to find a new tribe, to find a mate. Thing, issues, 0:46:20.680 --> 0:46:23.799 threats all feel that much more immediate. You know, it's 0:46:23.840 --> 0:46:25.480 that you're young. You feel like you can change the 0:46:25.560 --> 0:46:27.600 world or you should change the world, kind of vibe. 0:46:28.040 --> 0:46:30.080 You and I have established previously on the show that 0:46:30.160 --> 0:46:34.520 the human brain doesn't finish even of all until age. Yeah, 0:46:34.600 --> 0:46:36.840 it's kind of one way to think of the teenager. 0:46:37.000 --> 0:46:39.799 Think of the teenager is like a winged ant that's 0:46:39.840 --> 0:46:42.640 supposed to fly and found a new colony. That's essentially 0:46:42.680 --> 0:46:47.239 the idea. So that ties into youth bullge theory. Uh, 0:46:47.400 --> 0:46:50.000 the idea that it depends on how many young people 0:46:50.040 --> 0:46:51.400 you have around. And I know this kind of sounds 0:46:51.440 --> 0:46:55.480 like blame the young people for everybody everything, blame millennials 0:46:55.560 --> 0:46:57.960 or whatever. But I mean, these are the stats. About 0:46:58.000 --> 0:47:01.000 eight of the world's civil con flick since the nineteen 0:47:01.040 --> 0:47:04.480 seventies have occurred in countries with young, fast growing populations. 0:47:04.920 --> 0:47:07.160 And this is all according to analysis by the nonprofit 0:47:07.360 --> 0:47:11.680 Population Action International. So youth boom contributed to the rise 0:47:11.719 --> 0:47:15.160 of the Nazis in nineteen thirties too, also contributed to 0:47:15.520 --> 0:47:21.800 Japan's military ambitions in the Pacific, Imperial Japan, UH Tenement 0:47:21.800 --> 0:47:27.720 Square protests in China sixties seventies, countercultural revolution in the West. 0:47:29.200 --> 0:47:32.319 Afghanistan experiencing youth bulge in the years following the two 0:47:32.360 --> 0:47:35.600 thousand one US invasion. So you know, all this is 0:47:35.640 --> 0:47:38.440 not to say that youth bulge leads directly to war 0:47:38.719 --> 0:47:43.640 or unrest. In fact, I mean in the counterculture revolution, 0:47:43.680 --> 0:47:45.320 I think you can you can look to the opposite. 0:47:45.320 --> 0:47:48.080 You can see like a youth bulge movement for for 0:47:48.320 --> 0:47:54.759 for peace however, um, it just provides ample kindling still 0:47:54.880 --> 0:47:58.160 for so for it for social spark of religious or 0:47:58.160 --> 0:48:04.080 ethnic friction, friction, political rivalry, economic disparages, uh, food shortages, 0:48:04.160 --> 0:48:07.160 what have you? Like? It there, the young people were there, 0:48:07.520 --> 0:48:10.480 they have the numbers, they're they're ready to do something. 0:48:10.600 --> 0:48:13.439 What is going to be the thing that animates them? Yeah? 0:48:13.600 --> 0:48:14.880 And what is going to be that? What is going 0:48:14.920 --> 0:48:17.440 to be the methodology they employed? You know, this is interesting. 0:48:17.800 --> 0:48:19.279 I don't have notes about this in front of me. 0:48:19.360 --> 0:48:22.240 This is pure speculation, But I wonder how youth bulge 0:48:22.280 --> 0:48:26.239 theory ties into planning what the draft ages for a 0:48:26.400 --> 0:48:29.919 nation's military, if it has a draft. I mean, I've 0:48:29.920 --> 0:48:32.080 always understood it as being like, well, of course, like 0:48:32.120 --> 0:48:35.319 the draft ages, what's twenty five here in the United States? Something? 0:48:35.400 --> 0:48:36.799 Oh my god, is it the same thing as when 0:48:36.800 --> 0:48:40.839 your brain stops evolving? No? Surely not the cut off? Yeah, 0:48:41.120 --> 0:48:42.560 what's the cut off age? I'm not sure about the 0:48:42.560 --> 0:48:44.600 cut off, but I guess what I'm getting at is 0:48:44.680 --> 0:48:48.759 like I'd always thought that the draft age was was 0:48:48.880 --> 0:48:51.880 connected to you know, youthfulness being that like you're at 0:48:51.920 --> 0:48:54.480 the peak of your physical acumen, right, like you you 0:48:54.520 --> 0:48:57.160 would be the most efficient at war, whereas like you 0:48:57.280 --> 0:49:00.360 and me at a current age would be okay, but 0:49:00.560 --> 0:49:03.480 like we're probably better off hanging back in the offices 0:49:03.520 --> 0:49:07.839 and doing strategy and podcasts. But you know, yeah, part 0:49:07.880 --> 0:49:11.360 of it would seem to be that the mind is perfect, right, that, 0:49:11.560 --> 0:49:16.600 like the mind is prepared for war and malleable. Yeah, okay, 0:49:16.640 --> 0:49:19.239 So now the last bit in terms of causes that 0:49:19.320 --> 0:49:21.719 I just want to add in here is referred to 0:49:21.840 --> 0:49:26.120 as rationalism, uh, in terms of whether or not you know, 0:49:26.239 --> 0:49:30.240 we're talking about territorial gain or maybe a community slash 0:49:30.400 --> 0:49:35.120 nation expanding in nature. Kenneth walt calls this the third 0:49:35.239 --> 0:49:38.719 and final cause for war. He locates it as being 0:49:39.239 --> 0:49:42.880 a description of an international system that has the authority 0:49:42.960 --> 0:49:47.840 to stop states from forcefully pursuing their own interests. So 0:49:48.480 --> 0:49:51.759 ideally this is what the United Nations would be for us, right, 0:49:52.280 --> 0:49:54.600 but it's possible we live in a condition of what 0:49:54.760 --> 0:50:00.600 Waltz refers to as international anarchy. Uh. In that he says, well, 0:50:01.000 --> 0:50:03.719 do we actually have a supreme authority that can just 0:50:03.880 --> 0:50:09.000 stop war? In its tracks, he says without basically, international 0:50:09.080 --> 0:50:12.920 anarchy under his terms, is a permissive or underlying cause 0:50:13.120 --> 0:50:16.080 of war. And we have too many limitations on the 0:50:16.160 --> 0:50:21.920 cooperation between states in our current international system, because, unlike 0:50:21.920 --> 0:50:24.040 in the expanse, at least is how it's been portrayed 0:50:24.120 --> 0:50:26.320 so far on the TV show, Earth is like a 0:50:26.600 --> 0:50:31.880 unified planet that the United Nations actually runs. Presumably there aren't, 0:50:31.920 --> 0:50:33.520 although we do know that there are sort of like 0:50:33.640 --> 0:50:37.040 militia movements, right, um, because one of the main characters 0:50:37.440 --> 0:50:39.840 it was like raised in like a militia sort of 0:50:40.840 --> 0:50:45.239 cult kind of um. But but more so just that 0:50:45.400 --> 0:50:50.239 like they don't seem to be dealing with international war, 0:50:50.640 --> 0:50:52.960 right They're more concerned about what's going on with Mars. 0:50:53.080 --> 0:50:56.560 They seem to have a sub star Trek level of 0:50:56.640 --> 0:50:59.160 control over their plans. Yeah, that's a good example. I 0:50:59.239 --> 0:51:02.120 was thinking about Star Truck as well in terms of, like, uh, 0:51:02.560 --> 0:51:05.520 what the United Nations is ideally supposed to do, right, 0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:08.200 I guess the United Federation of Planets in that case. 0:51:09.400 --> 0:51:11.279 All right, we're gonna take another quick break and when 0:51:11.320 --> 0:51:13.279 we come back, we're going to take everything we've been 0:51:13.280 --> 0:51:15.720 talking about here. What we know about war in the present, 0:51:15.800 --> 0:51:25.280 and we're gonna extrapolate that into the interplanetary future. Okay, 0:51:25.320 --> 0:51:27.919 we're back. So now it's time where we get into 0:51:28.120 --> 0:51:30.440 the I don't want to say fun stuff, but the 0:51:30.520 --> 0:51:34.480 science fiction stuff, uh, and taking these theories that we've 0:51:34.520 --> 0:51:36.120 set up in the beginning half of the show and 0:51:36.239 --> 0:51:38.879 kind of extrapolate them outward. How's this going to look 0:51:38.960 --> 0:51:44.000 on an interplanetary scale. Well, fortunately, we have so many 0:51:44.080 --> 0:51:47.160 wonderful and not so wonderful sci fi examples to look 0:51:47.200 --> 0:51:50.640 to when it comes to interplanetary war. But but let's 0:51:50.640 --> 0:51:53.600 stop to consider just the notion of interplanetary war within 0:51:53.680 --> 0:51:57.920 our solar system versus that of interstellar war war between 0:51:58.719 --> 0:52:02.040 between planets and planet terry civilizations that are in separate 0:52:02.160 --> 0:52:04.919 star systems. Okay. One of the issues here, of course, 0:52:05.040 --> 0:52:07.600 is just the very nature of science fiction. Science fiction 0:52:07.719 --> 0:52:11.480 dreams of the future, but it's often about the present, 0:52:11.680 --> 0:52:14.320 or or even about the past. It's an extrapolation of 0:52:14.400 --> 0:52:19.600 our current concerns and anxieties technological, political, spiritual, social, etcetera. 0:52:20.440 --> 0:52:22.440 Taking all of this and then gazing into the future. 0:52:22.560 --> 0:52:27.200 Every science fiction property speaks from a particular vantage point. Yeah, absolutely, 0:52:27.360 --> 0:52:31.240 I think that is what makes science fiction so compelling, 0:52:31.719 --> 0:52:34.759 and especially something like the expense. I mean, when I 0:52:34.840 --> 0:52:37.680 watch the expanse, it is not lost on me, like 0:52:38.000 --> 0:52:41.000 here are some lessons or commentary that we can take 0:52:41.080 --> 0:52:45.560 insights away from based on our current situation. Clearly, it's 0:52:45.560 --> 0:52:47.640 obvious that it was written in a post nine eleven 0:52:47.760 --> 0:52:51.160 world exactly, and so when we envision the future. When 0:52:51.160 --> 0:52:54.080 we're trying to envision war in the future, well we 0:52:54.120 --> 0:52:57.400 can only take what we have now and extrapolated. In 0:52:57.440 --> 0:53:01.400 the case of larger scale hot wars between major nation states, 0:53:01.800 --> 0:53:06.080 we're thankfully forced to contemplate older models of warfare, the 0:53:06.160 --> 0:53:08.480 world Wars and all of their their horror and and 0:53:08.600 --> 0:53:11.400 truly globe spanning industry. I think we always have to 0:53:11.440 --> 0:53:15.040 remember that the Second World War was truly a global affair. 0:53:15.160 --> 0:53:17.680 Virtually no part of the world remained untouched by it, 0:53:18.239 --> 0:53:20.560 if not by the actual combat, then at least by 0:53:20.560 --> 0:53:23.680 the economic models of it. Uh. We touched on this 0:53:23.760 --> 0:53:28.560 a bit in our Cargo Cults episode. Likewise, we often 0:53:28.640 --> 0:53:31.600 tend to fall back on our own colonial history, complete 0:53:31.640 --> 0:53:34.279 with its wars and genocides, in order to envision the 0:53:34.400 --> 0:53:37.880 founding of off world colonies and the possible splintering of 0:53:38.000 --> 0:53:44.520 planet based states. So let's let's consider that um ran 0:53:44.560 --> 0:53:49.080 across A nice source on this. Astrophysicist Michael H. Hart 0:53:49.680 --> 0:53:52.680 wrote about the matter in the book Interstellar Migration and 0:53:52.760 --> 0:53:55.920 the Human Experience, this being a collection of essays by 0:53:55.960 --> 0:53:58.560 different individuals, and he pointed out a few key things 0:53:58.640 --> 0:54:01.719 to keep in mind when applying Earth affairs to an 0:54:01.760 --> 0:54:06.759 interplanetary or interstellar setting. So, first of all, space is huge. 0:54:06.840 --> 0:54:10.439 While technology is drastically reduced terrestrial travel to a matter 0:54:10.520 --> 0:54:14.000 of hours, quote, there is no reasonable hope that future 0:54:14.080 --> 0:54:19.040 technology will ever succeed in reducing interstellar travel times two months. So, 0:54:19.120 --> 0:54:21.640 in other words, we were simply contained in this via 0:54:21.719 --> 0:54:27.080 the confines of special relativity, bearing some amazing, miraculous breakthrough. 0:54:27.280 --> 0:54:31.560 We can't beat a beam of light in a drag dice, right, Yeah. 0:54:31.840 --> 0:54:33.960 I think that this is an important point to to 0:54:34.120 --> 0:54:37.080 just like throw in like we're talking about you know, 0:54:37.280 --> 0:54:40.839 the realities of it, but also like the fictional popularity 0:54:40.920 --> 0:54:43.920 of it, and of course, like what is the biggest 0:54:44.440 --> 0:54:49.040 fictional especially science fictional property right now that everybody knows 0:54:49.080 --> 0:54:53.359 and loves Star Wars, right, but like when you look 0:54:53.400 --> 0:54:58.520 at that there it's interstellar. And I mean, i'd say, 0:54:58.560 --> 0:55:02.680 other than the prequels, it's not necessarily about actual war, right, Yeah, 0:55:02.840 --> 0:55:05.200 I mean it isn't. It isn't, but not in the 0:55:05.280 --> 0:55:07.279 way that we're talking about here. It's more about like 0:55:07.360 --> 0:55:10.759 a group of characters. Yeah, because the reality is that, 0:55:10.920 --> 0:55:15.480 based on our understanding of special relativity, a star to 0:55:15.560 --> 0:55:18.480 star travel would likely work out to at least a 0:55:18.600 --> 0:55:21.719 fifty year journey. And that's the Kessel run, right, Yeah, 0:55:22.400 --> 0:55:24.520 And this is not again, this is this is based 0:55:24.600 --> 0:55:28.400 on what we know conceivable future known technologies and and 0:55:28.480 --> 0:55:32.320 foreseeable technologies. This is the limit. This is like a 0:55:32.480 --> 0:55:39.520 hard reality limit, hard argues. So based on this galactic colonization, Yeah, 0:55:39.560 --> 0:55:41.360 it would be possible you could have this sort of 0:55:41.520 --> 0:55:45.840 uh you know, Ian in Banks culture universe, Star Wars, Dune, 0:55:45.960 --> 0:55:49.239 what have you. But it would require two million years 0:55:49.320 --> 0:55:52.719 of human endeavor, and during that time we would change drastically, 0:55:52.800 --> 0:55:55.800 so century by century you'd have genetic advances, you'd have 0:55:55.920 --> 0:55:59.919 bimillennial cultural change, like you know, like two different major 0:56:00.120 --> 0:56:04.560 changes every millennium, major genetic engineering events occurring every ten 0:56:04.640 --> 0:56:09.520 thousand years, and natural evolution producing marked changes every million years. 0:56:09.600 --> 0:56:12.920 So basically, the human race that would be able to 0:56:13.000 --> 0:56:17.320 travel from one star to another would be indistinct. They 0:56:17.320 --> 0:56:19.880 wouldn't look like us like we wouldn't be able to 0:56:19.920 --> 0:56:22.160 tell that they were. You would see change and splintering 0:56:22.200 --> 0:56:26.000 occurring at various levels. So, given the time frame, given 0:56:26.040 --> 0:56:28.600 the distances involved and the limits of travel, we're looking 0:56:28.640 --> 0:56:32.239 at a completely colonized galaxy in two million years, but 0:56:32.400 --> 0:56:36.640 one consisting of splintered civilizations and cultures, and even you 0:56:36.680 --> 0:56:39.480 could even say special uh to the turn of to 0:56:39.600 --> 0:56:42.520 the tune of a few hundred billion that to match 0:56:42.600 --> 0:56:46.120 the number of stars. Now. As a side note, Heart 0:56:46.200 --> 0:56:48.880 also throws out there that since two million years is 0:56:48.880 --> 0:56:51.000 a drop in the bucket compared to the Milky Way 0:56:51.040 --> 0:56:54.319 galaxies ten billion year history, it means that any other 0:56:54.440 --> 0:56:57.880 emergence civilization out there would have had the same odds, 0:56:58.360 --> 0:57:01.960 since nothing has seeming expanded throughout the Milky Way Galaxy 0:57:01.960 --> 0:57:04.640 in the previous two million year increment, He says, quote, 0:57:04.800 --> 0:57:07.839 we might reasonably infer that we are the first colonizing 0:57:07.920 --> 0:57:11.200 civilization in our galaxy, and for the moment, probably the 0:57:11.320 --> 0:57:14.000 only species with an advanced technology. If this is so, 0:57:14.440 --> 0:57:16.360 it will be our descendants, who are the who are 0:57:16.400 --> 0:57:21.400 likely to colonize and populate the entire galaxy. Yeah, so 0:57:21.600 --> 0:57:24.240 all these distances that we've been talking about, these issues 0:57:24.360 --> 0:57:27.640 would make it difficult, if not impossible, for a centralized 0:57:27.720 --> 0:57:31.440 power or emperor to maintain control over a year one 0:57:31.560 --> 0:57:35.560 hundred light year radius area, much less anything larger and 0:57:35.840 --> 0:57:38.240 uh and he Heart points to a quote by the 0:57:38.640 --> 0:57:41.520 late great author c Arthur C. Clark here, author of 0:57:41.600 --> 0:57:45.320 two thousand and one Space Odyssey, who said, all the 0:57:45.400 --> 0:57:48.800 starborn colonies of the future will be independent. Their liberty 0:57:48.880 --> 0:57:53.560 will be inviolably protected by time as well as space. Now. 0:57:53.640 --> 0:57:55.560 Heart also goes on to point out that various other 0:57:55.640 --> 0:57:58.240 factors contribute to the idea that war isn't going away 0:57:58.280 --> 0:58:04.600 anytime soon. If we move out into into other star systems. Uh. 0:58:04.680 --> 0:58:08.240 He says that most of the Milky Way Galaxy will 0:58:08.280 --> 0:58:12.160 become populated by more aggressive civilizations and species, and the 0:58:12.320 --> 0:58:15.960 long range forecast is for continued aggression, war, and change. 0:58:16.840 --> 0:58:20.040 There is a small silver lining here in Heart's prediction 0:58:20.400 --> 0:58:24.560 of a of a human populated galaxy that still has war. 0:58:25.040 --> 0:58:28.360 He says that that he believes that interstellar war would 0:58:28.400 --> 0:58:31.720 be rare, far more rarity than it is on Earth. Again, 0:58:31.880 --> 0:58:34.520 distance and travel have to be factored in. He says 0:58:34.560 --> 0:58:37.560 there might be a war every fifty thousand years in 0:58:37.720 --> 0:58:40.160 his estimation. Okay, and I think we're gonna get into 0:58:40.200 --> 0:58:42.360 a little bit of why that is. But that that 0:58:42.520 --> 0:58:44.480 calls into question, you know, when we look at these 0:58:44.520 --> 0:58:48.480 fictional examples, the expanse, you know that's about two d 0:58:48.640 --> 0:58:51.240 years from now. The idea I think that Heart is 0:58:51.280 --> 0:58:54.240 working from is that like, as we technologically and and 0:58:54.480 --> 0:58:59.080 biologically evolve, that we will become less of a warlike species. 0:58:59.560 --> 0:59:01.840 So he's working from I think the human nature composed 0:59:01.880 --> 0:59:04.640 well and just the limits because they're basically saying that 0:59:04.760 --> 0:59:08.880 as you're doing with such distances here, that the type 0:59:09.040 --> 0:59:13.560 of governments you see in Star Wars, Dune or Fireflies 0:59:13.560 --> 0:59:16.680 another example, Uh, these would just be fantastic. How would 0:59:16.680 --> 0:59:23.320 you possibly maintain dominance and rule over these vast distances? Now? 0:59:23.680 --> 0:59:26.720 Star Wars, Dune and Firefly they all work because you have, 0:59:27.240 --> 0:59:30.680 essentially because you have a magical faster than light travel 0:59:30.800 --> 0:59:33.120 system that pops up something that you know that the 0:59:33.200 --> 0:59:35.280 author doesn't have to really explain all that much, but 0:59:35.360 --> 0:59:39.720 it's there, and it makes this this super fast travel possible. Uh, 0:59:40.160 --> 0:59:43.280 it makes it comparable to the short travel times we 0:59:43.560 --> 0:59:46.600 experience now on Earth due to advanced technology. Yeah. I 0:59:46.720 --> 0:59:49.400 always wonder, like in Star Wars, especially in the newer ones, 0:59:49.440 --> 0:59:51.760 when I've been watching them in the theaters, like like 0:59:52.280 --> 0:59:54.400 how long is it actually taking them when they're like 0:59:54.600 --> 0:59:58.080 jumping into hyperspace? You know, like is it is it 0:59:58.200 --> 1:00:00.600 like what we see on the screen It like three 1:00:00.640 --> 1:00:04.320 minutes or like a couple of days, and we just 1:00:04.560 --> 1:00:06.840 you know, the director left some of that on the 1:00:07.080 --> 1:00:09.280 on the floor. They cut out, like the three days 1:00:09.360 --> 1:00:11.000 of them sitting around in the back of the Millennium 1:00:11.040 --> 1:00:14.760 Falcon playing that game with Yeah, that I wish someone 1:00:14.800 --> 1:00:16.600 would make that into a video game. That would be 1:00:17.000 --> 1:00:20.360 about now. It's worth knowing. On the Expanse, we do 1:00:20.520 --> 1:00:22.600 not they do not require such a leap of faith. 1:00:22.880 --> 1:00:26.560 The Expanse does not in the plot in that world 1:00:26.760 --> 1:00:29.960 does not involve a faster than a light uh speed 1:00:30.040 --> 1:00:33.960 travel system. They do have something that's called the Epstein drive, 1:00:34.320 --> 1:00:39.040 which is a major, a majorly important factor in that world, 1:00:39.320 --> 1:00:41.880 but it's not faster than a light. Faster than light 1:00:41.920 --> 1:00:45.200 travel remains impossible for humans in the expanse and therefore 1:00:45.520 --> 1:00:48.400 lines up with a lot of what Hart is saying here. Yeah, 1:00:48.400 --> 1:00:50.280 and I think that that's why we're able to see 1:00:50.320 --> 1:00:53.480 such realistic depictions of what's leading up to war on 1:00:53.560 --> 1:00:56.680 the expense as well. There's another theorist and author of 1:00:56.840 --> 1:01:00.959 nano medicine named Robert A. Free Tis Junior. I believe 1:01:01.040 --> 1:01:04.480 is how it's pronounced um, and he's often brought up 1:01:04.520 --> 1:01:07.720 along with Heart because he wrote in the nineteen eighties 1:01:07.760 --> 1:01:11.120 about coming up with a more cost effective search for 1:01:11.400 --> 1:01:15.440 extraterrestrial intelligence, and he did so by using the cardasche 1:01:15.480 --> 1:01:17.760 of scale, which you've probably heard us mentioned here before 1:01:17.960 --> 1:01:21.000 Robert and previous hosts on the show. I've actually covered it. 1:01:21.080 --> 1:01:24.640 There's I believe two episodes, right, it's a two parter. 1:01:25.240 --> 1:01:28.280 I think I want it's been a while videos and 1:01:28.360 --> 1:01:30.520 I've written stuff with the side about it. Yeah. If 1:01:30.640 --> 1:01:32.520 if you're unfamiliar with it, though, I'm going to give 1:01:32.560 --> 1:01:34.560 you a real brief breakdown. But if you want to 1:01:34.600 --> 1:01:38.160 go back, we have previous content about that. Uh. Cardaschef 1:01:38.240 --> 1:01:40.440 scale is a theoretical scale that was created in the 1:01:40.520 --> 1:01:45.200 nineteen sixties by astrophysicist Nikolai Kardaschev, and it describes the 1:01:45.320 --> 1:01:48.880 level of advancement of a civilization based on its ability 1:01:49.280 --> 1:01:52.520 to harness the energy of its surrounding environment. He has 1:01:52.600 --> 1:01:56.960 three types. The first is Type one, masters of planetary energy. 1:01:57.280 --> 1:01:59.880 Type two are the masters of solar system or star 1:02:00.000 --> 1:02:04.720 our energy, and Type three are masters of galactic scale energy. 1:02:04.880 --> 1:02:07.920 So I think we're basically talking about gods at that point. Um. 1:02:08.440 --> 1:02:12.439 But Freightis argues that since only type two and three 1:02:12.960 --> 1:02:19.280 could realistically afford star probe technology, basically interstellar travel, that 1:02:19.440 --> 1:02:24.880 interstellar warfare would be trivial to civilizations like this. The 1:02:25.160 --> 1:02:28.360 energy expenditure of like what we would think of as 1:02:28.400 --> 1:02:32.120 their warships would be minimal compared to the resources that 1:02:32.200 --> 1:02:37.280 they have, So they wouldn't have the economic uh battles 1:02:37.720 --> 1:02:40.720 over you know, what resources they have for their ships 1:02:40.800 --> 1:02:44.320 or for their survival like water and air and food 1:02:44.480 --> 1:02:48.960 and oil or whatever what have you. Um, And so 1:02:49.080 --> 1:02:53.760 it's interesting, wouldn't war over economics be less likely than 1:02:53.800 --> 1:02:56.919 well in the expanse, it's arguable, I think there's still 1:02:57.000 --> 1:03:00.160 a Type one civilization, right, so that this line ends 1:03:00.240 --> 1:03:03.120 up with what Heart's talking about here. They they've only 1:03:03.280 --> 1:03:08.440 conquered the planetary resources, the energies of one planet. I 1:03:08.520 --> 1:03:10.560 haven't really gotten out of the Solar System as far 1:03:10.640 --> 1:03:13.040 as I can tell. Yeah, and of course here in 1:03:13.120 --> 1:03:17.320 the actual modern world we're still level zero. So fumbling 1:03:17.440 --> 1:03:19.919 for that for the first rung on the ladder. It really, 1:03:20.040 --> 1:03:24.720 you know, thought exercises like this really make you consider 1:03:24.880 --> 1:03:28.800 and realize that we aren't all that in terms of 1:03:29.000 --> 1:03:31.160 like how we like to think that we're so far 1:03:31.320 --> 1:03:34.640 evolved along the line of human history. But it's like, well, 1:03:34.800 --> 1:03:37.120 in terms of what this guy imagined and was able 1:03:37.160 --> 1:03:40.919 to sort of quantify with this theoretical scale, we're still 1:03:41.120 --> 1:03:45.000 zero now. I also turned to a great thread that 1:03:45.160 --> 1:03:49.160 was on Cora about how interplanetary war would be fought. Normally, 1:03:49.520 --> 1:03:51.680 I don't do this for our podcast episodes or for 1:03:51.960 --> 1:03:53.720 research that we do here at how stuff works, but 1:03:53.960 --> 1:03:57.200 we're getting into pretty speculative territory. So I wanted to 1:03:57.280 --> 1:04:01.160 see what crowdsourcing the question brought up there were. Turned out, 1:04:01.200 --> 1:04:02.960 there are a lot of smart people that contributed to 1:04:03.040 --> 1:04:05.240 this thread, and the two things I wanted to mention 1:04:05.280 --> 1:04:09.120 in particular. The top post was by somebody named Micaal Danilac, 1:04:09.520 --> 1:04:13.200 and he argued that interplanetary war would be all about 1:04:13.320 --> 1:04:16.600 who had the best technology to destroy their enemies, and 1:04:16.800 --> 1:04:19.160 we see that playing out in the expanse right because 1:04:19.560 --> 1:04:22.920 the stealth tech for ships, in the discovery of something 1:04:23.120 --> 1:04:25.480 I don't want to mention it because of spoilers and 1:04:25.520 --> 1:04:28.720 plot points, there's something that's discovered, basically on a scientific 1:04:28.840 --> 1:04:32.440 level that can turn the tide of war. Danaec argues 1:04:32.720 --> 1:04:37.040 there's four possible results for interplanetary war mutually assured destruction, 1:04:37.120 --> 1:04:38.880 which brings us back to what we were talking about 1:04:38.920 --> 1:04:41.080 with the butter war in our episode. But the butter 1:04:41.120 --> 1:04:46.240 battle um a race to get the best technology first. 1:04:46.680 --> 1:04:48.840 So then the person who has that technology or the 1:04:48.960 --> 1:04:51.480 sorry not the person, but the entity I guess the 1:04:51.560 --> 1:04:53.800 planet in this case, would be the winner that takes 1:04:53.840 --> 1:04:59.000 everything uh intervention by a more powerful civilization. So I 1:04:59.080 --> 1:05:02.280 think he's essentially talking about aliens here, that like aliens 1:05:02.320 --> 1:05:06.080 would come in an intervene in an interplanetary war and 1:05:06.200 --> 1:05:10.280 be like WHOA, Like we're we're Kardashiev type three halt 1:05:10.800 --> 1:05:16.480 you know, or uh total war, which unfortunately, a lot 1:05:16.560 --> 1:05:20.520 of the examples that we found seemed to indicate that 1:05:21.040 --> 1:05:24.880 even like preliminary beginnings of an interplanetary war would lead 1:05:24.920 --> 1:05:27.720 to what we see today as just being all out destruction. 1:05:28.640 --> 1:05:32.800 Another poster named Chris Rapier argued that the mass movement 1:05:32.840 --> 1:05:36.560 of troops and equipment that were used to in warfare, 1:05:36.920 --> 1:05:39.800 it just isn't feasible in space, regardless of whether it's 1:05:39.840 --> 1:05:43.800 interstellar or interplanetary. So it probably wouldn't involve us like 1:05:43.880 --> 1:05:47.720 having vast fleets that moved through space because it's too expensive, 1:05:47.960 --> 1:05:50.920 and the fleets would be like huge targets. They'd be 1:05:50.960 --> 1:05:53.800 super vulnerable, right, So, like again like Star Wars, like 1:05:53.840 --> 1:05:55.920 I'm thinking of like the stuff, the Clone Wars stuff 1:05:55.960 --> 1:05:57.640 right where they've got these like big ships that are 1:05:57.720 --> 1:06:01.480 dropping all these clones stormtroopers on planets and they're then 1:06:01.520 --> 1:06:04.760 they're entered, they're engaging in these massive battles, right Like 1:06:05.080 --> 1:06:08.520 those ships would just be like huge targets from so 1:06:08.720 --> 1:06:12.080 far away because the theoretically the planet's technology would be 1:06:12.120 --> 1:06:14.840 able to detect them and shoot them down. Yeah, Like 1:06:14.960 --> 1:06:17.720 this is a classic example of the Star Wars. What 1:06:17.800 --> 1:06:21.320 you have essentially is World War two in space. Like 1:06:21.480 --> 1:06:25.040 it's a it's a futuristic take on that level of warfare. 1:06:25.040 --> 1:06:28.920 And warfare technology, and that leads us to possibly the 1:06:29.120 --> 1:06:32.560 most disturbing study I've read in all of my time 1:06:32.600 --> 1:06:36.840 on stuff to blow your mind, the lethality of interplanetary warfare. 1:06:37.320 --> 1:06:40.640 That's right now to set up, let's talk just a 1:06:40.680 --> 1:06:45.000 minute about colonialism. So, in order for planetary expansion to 1:06:45.080 --> 1:06:49.280 take place, something very much like colonialism has to occur. 1:06:50.040 --> 1:06:52.080 We can think, I think we're all on board with 1:06:52.160 --> 1:06:54.760 this concept. Right, you have to discover, you have to explore, 1:06:54.840 --> 1:06:57.440 you have to settle, then you colonized and the colony grows. 1:06:58.240 --> 1:07:00.440 But then we know what comes next. Rice, Right, in 1:07:00.480 --> 1:07:03.040 the case of of so many colonies here on Earth, 1:07:03.080 --> 1:07:06.360 there's this there's a more gradual easement of ties. You know, 1:07:06.520 --> 1:07:09.400 there's a there's a there's a long process, a a 1:07:09.600 --> 1:07:14.840 long divorce that occurs between colonial master and colony. But 1:07:15.240 --> 1:07:19.160 especially since we're Americans, it's impossible to avoid the American 1:07:19.200 --> 1:07:22.040 Revolutionary war model. And this, of course is when the 1:07:22.080 --> 1:07:25.240 former British colonies waged war against the British Crown in 1:07:25.400 --> 1:07:29.880 order to gain independence. So autonomy. Yeah, so we might 1:07:30.000 --> 1:07:33.280 logically look to the possibility of the colonized Mars for 1:07:33.440 --> 1:07:36.920 ideas on how this might go down. And in the expanse, 1:07:37.560 --> 1:07:40.320 we go into the book, uh, into the books, into 1:07:40.320 --> 1:07:43.560 the TV series with an independent Martian state that's ruled 1:07:43.600 --> 1:07:47.760 by the Martian Congressional Republic and uh. In the back 1:07:47.800 --> 1:07:50.440 story here, there was an attempt to succeed by the 1:07:50.560 --> 1:07:53.280 Martians and it nearly came to war. But then the 1:07:53.440 --> 1:07:57.840 Martian forces, the forces developed the Epstein Drive that already mentioned. 1:07:58.120 --> 1:08:00.200 They had to. They developed it first, and they game 1:08:00.280 --> 1:08:04.480 technological superiority. So suddenly they had the advantage over Earth. 1:08:04.560 --> 1:08:07.680 With this technology, they could travel faster, uh, not as 1:08:07.720 --> 1:08:10.760 fast as White but like the they had the fastest 1:08:10.800 --> 1:08:14.440 ships in the Solar System. So then they reached out 1:08:14.480 --> 1:08:16.320 to the U N and they said, hey, you need 1:08:16.360 --> 1:08:20.120 this technology too, Why don't we just trade. You give 1:08:20.200 --> 1:08:23.479 us our and our independence and you can have the 1:08:23.640 --> 1:08:26.240 steam drive as well. This is why when the show begins, 1:08:26.479 --> 1:08:29.800 basically like when we see like these super fast like 1:08:29.960 --> 1:08:33.320 fighter kind of ships in outer space, people just automatically assume, oh, 1:08:33.360 --> 1:08:36.160 it's got to be the Martians because they're known for 1:08:36.360 --> 1:08:41.960 having both the fast technology and stealth technology. They took 1:08:41.960 --> 1:08:45.599 an unprecedented technological leap, like nothing god like, but enough 1:08:45.680 --> 1:08:49.439 to where it prevented outright war. Now, one of the 1:08:49.520 --> 1:08:52.639 big areas too of consideration here when we are comparing 1:08:52.680 --> 1:08:56.520 the Revolutionary War to any of these sci fi Martian examples, 1:08:57.040 --> 1:09:00.759 is that the Revolutionary War and entailed late eighteenth century 1:09:00.840 --> 1:09:03.920 military technology, and at the time it took four to 1:09:04.000 --> 1:09:06.719 five weeks for a vessel to reach the United States 1:09:06.800 --> 1:09:10.799 from England. So that brings us to this paper. Robert 1:09:10.840 --> 1:09:13.400 really sets us up because colonialism is important to the 1:09:13.520 --> 1:09:17.560 argument that's presented here. The authors their names Crawford and 1:09:17.800 --> 1:09:21.320 Baxter Ian A. Crawford and Stephen Baxter. Baxter or some 1:09:21.360 --> 1:09:23.599 of you may be familiar with he is a British 1:09:23.680 --> 1:09:27.160 hard sci fi author. They basically argue that because of 1:09:27.240 --> 1:09:32.439 the confinement necessary for life supporting facilities in space, any 1:09:32.520 --> 1:09:36.320 kind of revolution against a governing body like what we 1:09:36.760 --> 1:09:38.920 you know, we think of with the American Revolution, or 1:09:39.400 --> 1:09:41.719 like what is sort of set up as the preface 1:09:41.800 --> 1:09:45.840 for the Expanse, it would be hazardous and basically impossible 1:09:46.200 --> 1:09:50.599 because of the energies wielded by interplanetary cultures. Any war 1:09:50.840 --> 1:09:54.439 like this would be just absolutely catastrophic and it could 1:09:54.479 --> 1:09:58.879 threaten the entire human species. Yes, so the the intensity 1:09:58.920 --> 1:10:02.560 of the weapons has changed. But one area where revolutionary 1:10:02.640 --> 1:10:07.120 war on Earth versus on Mars uh one area where 1:10:07.120 --> 1:10:10.080 it lines up kind of nicely is that that issue 1:10:10.120 --> 1:10:13.799 of distance. Because you think about about the distance between 1:10:13.880 --> 1:10:17.559 Earth and Mars um it varies. We have these things 1:10:17.600 --> 1:10:21.120 called Mars oppositions. Uh So Mars and Earth, the distance 1:10:21.120 --> 1:10:25.000 between the two it's it's constantly changing. The maximum distance 1:10:25.040 --> 1:10:27.320 between the two planets is a colossal two hundred and 1:10:27.400 --> 1:10:31.519 fifty million miles with the Sun between us. The average 1:10:31.560 --> 1:10:34.400 distance is more like one hundred forty million miles. But 1:10:34.479 --> 1:10:38.240 the closest popular possible distance is a tantalizing thirty three 1:10:38.280 --> 1:10:41.080 point nine million miles. So the closest we've come to 1:10:41.200 --> 1:10:44.960 that window in in recent history was two thousand threes 1:10:45.080 --> 1:10:48.600 Mars opposition of thirty four point eight million miles, but 1:10:48.960 --> 1:10:52.720 in July. But on July two thousand and eighteen, coming up, 1:10:53.439 --> 1:10:55.960 that will give us thirty five point eight which which 1:10:55.960 --> 1:10:58.360 ain't ain't bad at all. Were get going, yeah, and 1:10:58.439 --> 1:11:02.280 we won't see anything like that again until and then 1:11:02.439 --> 1:11:04.960 only by four hundred thousand miles. So I know these 1:11:04.960 --> 1:11:07.400 are big numbers to throw around, but the basic idea 1:11:07.520 --> 1:11:11.000 here is that that even in the future, there is 1:11:11.040 --> 1:11:16.719 still an enormous Atlantic Ocean between colonial Master and Colony, 1:11:16.840 --> 1:11:20.200 and it's an Atlantic ocean that shrinks and expands depending 1:11:20.400 --> 1:11:23.840 on on planetary rotation. And think about the resources that 1:11:23.880 --> 1:11:27.000 you would need not only to uh have such a 1:11:27.080 --> 1:11:30.040 venture take off, but also to accommodate such a venture 1:11:30.160 --> 1:11:32.640 on such a long journey. Yeah, so, and it was 1:11:32.840 --> 1:11:36.960 basically Atlantic ocean and the Earth to Mars void wouldn't 1:11:37.000 --> 1:11:39.000 be that different. A hundred and fifty to three hundred 1:11:39.080 --> 1:11:41.880 days to travel to Mars based on current in your 1:11:42.000 --> 1:11:45.759 future propulsion. But again that's that weaponry, as you mentioned, 1:11:45.920 --> 1:11:47.800 that's where it's going to be different because we live 1:11:47.800 --> 1:11:49.320 in a world of the w m d s and 1:11:49.360 --> 1:11:52.920 most terrifyingly of all, we have that mutually assured destruction. 1:11:53.560 --> 1:11:56.479 Nuclear weapons alone put an entirely different spin on the 1:11:56.560 --> 1:11:59.720 possibilities for interplanetary war. And we should mention that in 1:11:59.800 --> 1:12:03.160 the Expanse, it's established in the first episode that they 1:12:03.240 --> 1:12:05.840 have nuclear weapons and they use them in space. Yes, 1:12:06.760 --> 1:12:09.400 Now that that paper we're talking about by Crawford and 1:12:09.520 --> 1:12:12.439 Baxter they point to, So it's a really cool paper. 1:12:12.479 --> 1:12:14.240 If you get a chance to to read it look 1:12:14.280 --> 1:12:16.839 it up. They point to several different sci fi examples, 1:12:16.920 --> 1:12:21.040 but they they mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars novel 1:12:21.800 --> 1:12:26.559 because it highlights that an un terraformed Martian civilization would 1:12:26.600 --> 1:12:29.040 be highly susceptible to attack. So all you have to 1:12:29.080 --> 1:12:32.200 do is crack the dome, damage the environmental support system. 1:12:32.600 --> 1:12:36.280 There's a part in the novel where high oxygen levels 1:12:36.320 --> 1:12:38.720 are introduced into a dome enclosure so that they can 1:12:38.840 --> 1:12:42.360 flash burn everything without damaging the infrastructure too much like 1:12:42.439 --> 1:12:45.679 total recall. Yeah, yeah, and uh and the yeah total 1:12:45.720 --> 1:12:50.120 recall I think provides a nice hostile um view of 1:12:50.240 --> 1:12:56.240 what Mars colony could, in broad strokes be. Uh, it 1:12:56.280 --> 1:12:58.880 would be vulnerable to attack. All you'd have to do 1:12:59.000 --> 1:13:01.519 is just attack the infrastructure, and that it includes not 1:13:01.640 --> 1:13:03.960 only any domes or cities on the ground or under 1:13:03.960 --> 1:13:07.439 the ground, but also orbital space elevators other things that 1:13:07.520 --> 1:13:12.320 are key to maintain this umbilical core between a planet 1:13:12.439 --> 1:13:15.400 that is that only has like just a small amount 1:13:15.400 --> 1:13:19.080 of life on it and the the life sustaining home planet. 1:13:19.200 --> 1:13:22.200 So again, like not only would the ships that would 1:13:22.200 --> 1:13:26.080 be necessary for warfare between planets be crazy vulnerable, but 1:13:26.160 --> 1:13:29.639 then like the actual systems that keep us alive out 1:13:29.680 --> 1:13:32.519 there would also be incredibly vulnerable. So you're just looking 1:13:32.560 --> 1:13:36.160 at like, you know, total destruction. And to call back 1:13:36.200 --> 1:13:40.040 to our Rods from God's episode, um, kinetic weapons alone 1:13:40.120 --> 1:13:43.120 would prove devastatingly effective against the planets surface, So you 1:13:43.120 --> 1:13:46.640 wouldn't even need nuclear weapons in this scenario. Yeah, and 1:13:47.040 --> 1:13:49.400 so let's just touch on this real quick. But Robert 1:13:49.400 --> 1:13:51.040 and I had an episode last year on this that 1:13:51.680 --> 1:13:54.840 again was very disturbing, but it is essentially about the 1:13:54.920 --> 1:14:00.400 idea of uh to dropping huge items. In this case, 1:14:00.439 --> 1:14:03.679 I think they were metal, metal telephone pole sized beams 1:14:04.080 --> 1:14:07.760 from outer space on targets on Earth that would have 1:14:07.920 --> 1:14:10.479 the yield of a nuclear weapon in terms of like 1:14:10.560 --> 1:14:14.719 how much energy is exacted upon their target. Now, space 1:14:14.800 --> 1:14:17.599 weapons and vehicles are already being developed in the United 1:14:17.640 --> 1:14:21.080 States and other nations so that we can establish supremacy 1:14:21.160 --> 1:14:22.960 and outer space. Right. Much of this we know this. 1:14:23.080 --> 1:14:25.400 It came from the Cold War and the need for 1:14:25.680 --> 1:14:29.280 a missile defense system in space. Uh and and that's 1:14:29.320 --> 1:14:31.800 where sort of the Rods from God idea came from. 1:14:31.840 --> 1:14:33.840 If you go back to that episode, we talked about um. 1:14:34.120 --> 1:14:35.800 I believe his name was Pornell. He was the one 1:14:35.840 --> 1:14:38.280 who sort of pitched this theory. And again he was 1:14:38.320 --> 1:14:40.680 a science fiction writer who essentially ended up working for 1:14:40.720 --> 1:14:43.600 the United States government. So when you see stuff like 1:14:43.640 --> 1:14:46.640 the expanse, it's not all that uh, it's it's not 1:14:46.720 --> 1:14:49.560 all that unfeasible that you know, these guys might be 1:14:49.840 --> 1:14:53.200 coming up with ideas that are used in future incursions. 1:14:54.520 --> 1:14:57.280 So Crawford and Baxter in their paper, they bring this 1:14:57.400 --> 1:14:59.680 to the front of their argument, beginning with the War 1:14:59.800 --> 1:15:03.080 of Worlds and the idea that in that the Martians 1:15:03.160 --> 1:15:07.200 could have just totally destroyed Victorian England with simple kinetic 1:15:07.360 --> 1:15:10.160 energy bombardment from outer space. The only reason they didn't 1:15:10.200 --> 1:15:12.439 is because they wanted to colonize the planet. They wanted 1:15:12.520 --> 1:15:14.720 something left over. Yeah, I mean because one of the 1:15:14.800 --> 1:15:17.320 things about Rods from Gods that we that we that 1:15:17.400 --> 1:15:19.200 we covered in the episode was that the reason it 1:15:19.280 --> 1:15:24.360 wasn't a feasible um weapon system for modern humans is 1:15:24.439 --> 1:15:26.240 that you have to get that stuff into orbit. You 1:15:26.320 --> 1:15:29.879 have to have orbital dominance to then drop these weapons. 1:15:30.040 --> 1:15:32.200 But if you're a space faring civiliza, if you're just 1:15:32.200 --> 1:15:35.920 an interplanetary civilization leaving Earth going to Mars, you already 1:15:36.000 --> 1:15:41.640 have orbital a dominance exactly. Just having the ability to 1:15:41.840 --> 1:15:47.160 travel in space at an interplanetary level allows you or 1:15:47.360 --> 1:15:51.439 others to subvert space travel technology and turn it into 1:15:51.520 --> 1:15:54.879 kinetic weapons. And this is where it gets super disturbing 1:15:55.000 --> 1:15:58.320 for me. This proposal is exactly what was done with 1:15:58.520 --> 1:16:01.360 airplanes on September a leventh in two thousand one. So, 1:16:01.479 --> 1:16:06.479 for example, the kinetic energy of our current International Space 1:16:06.640 --> 1:16:11.160 Station's orbit that is equivalent to three keylow tons of 1:16:11.280 --> 1:16:14.840 t n T, and that is nothing compared to the 1:16:15.000 --> 1:16:17.560 energies of inner planetary craft that we may have in 1:16:17.600 --> 1:16:21.880 our future. By Crawford and Baxter's estimation, the kinds of 1:16:21.960 --> 1:16:25.400 ships that we see flying around in the Expanse, they 1:16:25.439 --> 1:16:29.839 would have the kinetic energy equivalent of the energy release 1:16:29.960 --> 1:16:35.280 in an all out nuclear war. It really, really that's 1:16:35.320 --> 1:16:39.200 super scary. The idea that like anybody, whether it's the 1:16:39.760 --> 1:16:43.760 civilization that possesses that technology or maybe like a in 1:16:43.920 --> 1:16:46.599 in the case of it could happen in the expanse world, 1:16:46.720 --> 1:16:48.960 right like a terrorist organization takes over some of that 1:16:49.000 --> 1:16:51.880 technology just flies a ship into a planet. It would 1:16:52.000 --> 1:16:57.200 utterly annihilate the human civilization that's there really makes you 1:16:57.320 --> 1:16:59.800 think a little bit more. On that episode that we 1:17:00.040 --> 1:17:03.400 it on the cases against Space and like all the 1:17:03.560 --> 1:17:06.760 arguments about why we shouldn't travel into space, I don't 1:17:06.760 --> 1:17:09.719 remember this being one of them. Like just the simple 1:17:09.840 --> 1:17:12.800 fact of us creating the technology that would allow us 1:17:12.880 --> 1:17:17.439 to travel between planets could be subverted to destroy humanity. Yeah, 1:17:17.520 --> 1:17:21.840 Like there's a proportional scale for a technological creation. So 1:17:22.280 --> 1:17:26.880 an automobile is also a murder weapon. An airliner is 1:17:26.960 --> 1:17:31.640 also a weapon of mass destruction, and therefore you can 1:17:31.720 --> 1:17:34.960 extrapolate that and just say that, Yeah, spaceship is a 1:17:35.040 --> 1:17:38.880 weapon of genocide. Totally have used in that direction. Yeah, 1:17:38.920 --> 1:17:41.280 I never even thought about that before. I mean Star Wars. 1:17:41.400 --> 1:17:43.680 Just think about Star Wars. What if Han Sola just 1:17:43.800 --> 1:17:46.800 like flew the Millennium Falcon at warp speed into the 1:17:46.880 --> 1:17:49.040 Death Star? Yeah? Well, I mean isn't that how the 1:17:49.120 --> 1:17:54.679 President deft the Aliens and Independence Day? That need just fly? Yeah? Yeah, 1:17:54.880 --> 1:17:56.560 not a spaceship. I think it was like an and 1:17:56.720 --> 1:17:58.559 And I also never saw the sequel that came out 1:17:58.680 --> 1:18:00.640 last year, so I don't know he's in it, but 1:18:00.760 --> 1:18:03.400 I think how he and he died. No no, no, no, no, 1:18:03.800 --> 1:18:06.080 maybe Randy Quaid. It was Randy Queen flew it up. 1:18:06.560 --> 1:18:12.080 Uh we we so quickly forget the sacrifices of Randy Quaid. Um, 1:18:12.840 --> 1:18:16.240 this all comes back to real basic like strate strategy 1:18:16.320 --> 1:18:19.240 in terms of warfare. Right, So, a higher location has 1:18:19.280 --> 1:18:23.320 always been strategically important in war. It provides an advantage 1:18:23.400 --> 1:18:26.320 to whichever side has it. Uh, Robert and I and 1:18:26.360 --> 1:18:28.160 those of you who are dn D player whos would 1:18:28.200 --> 1:18:30.479 understand this is simple dn D mechanics, Right, You get 1:18:30.560 --> 1:18:32.800 a plus two to your role if you're above your 1:18:32.840 --> 1:18:35.800 opponent and they are prone. So, thinking about it on 1:18:35.880 --> 1:18:38.519 a larger scale, if you're in outer space and the 1:18:38.640 --> 1:18:42.519 planet is below you. You know, even though we've been 1:18:42.520 --> 1:18:45.840 talking about how vulnerable those ships would potentially be if 1:18:45.880 --> 1:18:48.559 they're on a suicide run though, or or even if 1:18:48.560 --> 1:18:51.240 there's nobody in it there just you know, remotely flying 1:18:51.320 --> 1:18:54.640 this thing into a planet, it's absolutely devastated. I think 1:18:54.680 --> 1:18:56.800 that in modern D and D rules you would get 1:18:56.800 --> 1:19:01.160 an advantage on your role fifth edition. Yeah, that's true. Um. 1:19:01.840 --> 1:19:05.519 As such satellites have become really valuable just in terms 1:19:05.520 --> 1:19:08.600 of our modern warfare. For deploying troops. Right, this is 1:19:08.640 --> 1:19:10.960 where we got GPS from. We all have GPS on 1:19:11.000 --> 1:19:13.120 our phones now and it's the greatest thing ever, right, 1:19:13.479 --> 1:19:17.080 But it came out of determining what soldiers bearings were 1:19:17.200 --> 1:19:21.560 using a constellation of satellites, and satellites can also be 1:19:21.720 --> 1:19:24.400 used as weapons to shoot down terrestrial missiles. This is 1:19:24.560 --> 1:19:27.040 the whole idea of the other Star Wars, the one 1:19:27.120 --> 1:19:31.000 that Ronald Reagan in the United States established the Strategic 1:19:31.080 --> 1:19:33.439 Defense Initiative. Yeah, the one I remember as a kid 1:19:33.560 --> 1:19:36.080 getting they would have My parents would have the news 1:19:36.160 --> 1:19:37.760 on and they would be mentioned a Star Wars and 1:19:37.960 --> 1:19:40.639 like it's happening. They're talking about Star Wars on TV 1:19:40.800 --> 1:19:42.880 and they're like, no, not something different. The same thing 1:19:42.960 --> 1:19:45.320 happened to me. I imagine like our parents generation was 1:19:45.400 --> 1:19:51.360 incredibly frustrated by that branding effort. Uh. It's developing basically 1:19:51.479 --> 1:19:55.240 as enterprises try to take commercial advantage of outer space. Right, Like, 1:19:55.640 --> 1:19:59.400 like in our business, Robert and I are constantly reading 1:19:59.400 --> 1:20:01.840 press release is about what Elon Musk and other people 1:20:01.880 --> 1:20:05.040 are doing in terms of like sending commercial ships up 1:20:05.080 --> 1:20:07.960 into outer space. But likewise, it would be really easy 1:20:08.080 --> 1:20:12.560 to disrupt the economic advantage of a nation by attacking 1:20:12.680 --> 1:20:16.559 its enterprises in space with things like lasers or particle 1:20:16.640 --> 1:20:19.439 beams or space planes, which has all been proposed in 1:20:19.600 --> 1:20:24.240 actual warfare here on Earth. This isn't science fiction. And remember, 1:20:24.600 --> 1:20:26.920 as we've talked about in previous episodes, we talked about 1:20:26.920 --> 1:20:29.640 it a lot in our Star Trek episode. We are 1:20:29.720 --> 1:20:34.439 currently operating under the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven. 1:20:34.720 --> 1:20:38.479 This is an international agreement that we won't put weapons 1:20:38.520 --> 1:20:42.920 of mass destruction in orbit, nor will we build military 1:20:43.000 --> 1:20:46.799 bases on celestial bodies like the moon. But it's vague 1:20:46.880 --> 1:20:50.400 enough in its language that the area that's just above 1:20:50.479 --> 1:20:54.200 Earth but not in outer space is accessible. So how 1:20:54.360 --> 1:20:56.600 do you then? The other question too is how do 1:20:56.680 --> 1:21:00.160 you define what a weapon of mass destruction is when 1:21:00.200 --> 1:21:03.200 you're placing it up there and that that sliver right 1:21:03.280 --> 1:21:06.040 if anything like it doesn't we've we've presented here. It 1:21:06.080 --> 1:21:08.040 doesn't have to be a nuclear device. It can just 1:21:08.200 --> 1:21:10.800 be a It can be the satellite itself, so it 1:21:10.840 --> 1:21:14.439 can be a bunch of telephone poles. So Crawford and 1:21:14.520 --> 1:21:17.000 Baxter they sum it up like this. Here, I have 1:21:17.040 --> 1:21:19.920 a couple of quotes from the paper, They say, quote, 1:21:20.000 --> 1:21:23.479 the huge energy is routinely deployed by a culture capable 1:21:23.520 --> 1:21:26.519 of interplanetary travel on a large scale would make war 1:21:26.880 --> 1:21:31.000 potentially hugely damaging. The kinetic energy of a Mars transport 1:21:31.040 --> 1:21:34.759 craft would be equivalent to a one megaton nuclear weapon 1:21:34.880 --> 1:21:38.400 or and presumably would be capable of inflicting great damage 1:21:38.439 --> 1:21:41.160 on a surface colony or a world like the Moon 1:21:41.280 --> 1:21:44.560 or Mars. A craft capable of fast transport to the 1:21:44.640 --> 1:21:48.360 outer planets would acquire a kinetic energy comparable to a 1:21:48.479 --> 1:21:52.200 major nuclear war or to a significant asteroid strike that 1:21:52.360 --> 1:21:56.920 could inflict global damage. So the closert civilization comes to 1:21:57.000 --> 1:22:01.160 that first rung of the Kardashian scale, the more technologically 1:22:01.280 --> 1:22:06.960 trivial extinction level offense becomes. Crawford and Baxter uh tell 1:22:07.040 --> 1:22:09.679 Us quote Our conclusion is that he is that human 1:22:09.720 --> 1:22:14.640 affairs in an extraterrestrial context cannot be conducted through warfare, 1:22:14.880 --> 1:22:18.240 which is more likely to destroy the contending cultures and 1:22:18.360 --> 1:22:23.720 perhaps extinguish mankind altogether, than to lead to any desirable 1:22:23.800 --> 1:22:28.320 political outcome. And their end argument is that before we 1:22:28.520 --> 1:22:31.720 start cruising around in space, we need to establish a 1:22:31.840 --> 1:22:38.439 political framework that guarantees colonial liberty without recourse to conflict. 1:22:38.600 --> 1:22:40.880 This is what really what it comes down to. And 1:22:40.960 --> 1:22:43.080 almost all of these studies that we've talked about in 1:22:43.120 --> 1:22:46.920 this episode, when you're looking at war, whether it's how 1:22:47.040 --> 1:22:49.640 war was conducted, how it is conducted, or how it 1:22:49.760 --> 1:22:54.320 might be conducted, the essential reason for it is what 1:22:54.600 --> 1:22:58.439 can we do to keep peace to make sure that 1:22:58.560 --> 1:23:01.000 this doesn't result in the district auction of our species. 1:23:01.280 --> 1:23:03.160 So we've been talking about war, We've been talking about 1:23:03.240 --> 1:23:06.000 the interplanetary war. Let's let's come back to the Expanse 1:23:06.040 --> 1:23:09.240 and discuss just how the Expanse stacks up to these 1:23:09.320 --> 1:23:14.000 various ideas and predictions and commentaries. I think, by and large, 1:23:14.000 --> 1:23:16.719 based on what I've read, what I've seen on the show, 1:23:16.800 --> 1:23:20.040 I've I've I've gotten to see the premiere episode for 1:23:20.120 --> 1:23:22.960 season two and it's and it's really good. I think 1:23:23.040 --> 1:23:27.920 that the Expanse sticks to most of these ideas exceedingly well. 1:23:28.520 --> 1:23:31.559 Remember in the show that the Mars Earth conflict almost 1:23:31.640 --> 1:23:34.960 resulted in a war, but that martianal leap and technology 1:23:35.680 --> 1:23:40.839 with the Epstein Drive that ceased open hostilities. The resulting 1:23:41.080 --> 1:23:43.760 Cold War threatens to go hot again, but the more 1:23:43.960 --> 1:23:47.080 rational players in the game realize that such an open 1:23:47.240 --> 1:23:51.120 armed conflict would likely prove catastrophic to both sides. There's 1:23:51.120 --> 1:23:54.719 even a conversation between two Martian characters in the premier 1:23:54.840 --> 1:23:58.600 episode of season two that explores this very notion, and 1:23:58.680 --> 1:24:01.400 the Expanse also limits the conflict to our soldar system 1:24:01.600 --> 1:24:04.639 and an acceptable realm of influence for one power such 1:24:04.680 --> 1:24:08.519 as un Governed Earth UH to play a major roll in. Now, 1:24:08.560 --> 1:24:11.600 while the the UN doesn't exercise such absolute power in 1:24:11.680 --> 1:24:15.080 the show, we can see where it conceivably could, But 1:24:15.200 --> 1:24:17.120 we can also see how crazy it would be to 1:24:17.240 --> 1:24:21.360 expect them to control anything more than they already exert 1:24:21.400 --> 1:24:24.400 control over like they're already they've already lost Mars and 1:24:24.479 --> 1:24:27.479 are struggling to maintain the belters UH. You know, it's 1:24:27.560 --> 1:24:31.400 it's inconceivable that they would be able to control anything 1:24:31.520 --> 1:24:34.439 beyond that. And on that note, we now are really 1:24:34.479 --> 1:24:37.479 lucky because we have an opportunity to talk to Nuren Shankar, 1:24:37.600 --> 1:24:40.519 who is the executive producer on The Expanse. He's one 1:24:40.560 --> 1:24:42.439 of the show's writers, and like I mentioned at the top, 1:24:42.520 --> 1:24:45.240 he is also a science advisory as a background in 1:24:45.320 --> 1:24:48.479 engineering and physics. So we're gonna see what he thinks 1:24:48.840 --> 1:24:51.040 about these effects of war, and we're also going to 1:24:51.080 --> 1:24:53.719 take the opportunity to talk to him about how science 1:24:53.840 --> 1:25:06.160 is portrayed in the expanse. Can you start by telling 1:25:06.200 --> 1:25:09.240 our audience about your science background before you got into 1:25:09.280 --> 1:25:12.200 the entertainment business. My understanding is you have a PhD 1:25:12.320 --> 1:25:17.040 in engineering and physics. Mm hmm, that's right. Um. Yeah, 1:25:17.080 --> 1:25:19.720 I had kind of a weird trajectory coming into the 1:25:19.840 --> 1:25:24.559 entertainment business. I started at Cornell University as a as 1:25:24.600 --> 1:25:27.600 a liberal arts student, and a couple of years in 1:25:28.160 --> 1:25:32.840 I was I was studying like medieval studies and French literature, 1:25:33.040 --> 1:25:36.120 and a couple of years in I decided to transfer 1:25:36.280 --> 1:25:40.120 into the engineering school, which most people transfer out of UM, 1:25:40.320 --> 1:25:43.960 because I, you know, I always loved science and math 1:25:44.120 --> 1:25:47.519 and and frankly, you know, the job prospects of a 1:25:47.680 --> 1:25:52.200 medieval studies major work were somewhat um limited and uh, 1:25:53.400 --> 1:25:58.040 and so so I transferred into applied to engineering physics 1:25:58.080 --> 1:26:00.639 at Cornell, and I actually stay all the way through 1:26:00.720 --> 1:26:04.479 to U through graduate school to get my my PhD. 1:26:05.400 --> 1:26:08.680 And what started happening though, as I was in the 1:26:08.800 --> 1:26:14.639 process of doing my dissertation, I started just taking tons 1:26:14.720 --> 1:26:19.080 of courses in history and literature again because I missed it. 1:26:19.600 --> 1:26:22.320 And I and there was a moment when I was 1:26:22.400 --> 1:26:27.360 actually I was leaving this amazing lecture and taking a 1:26:27.479 --> 1:26:30.280 great course in the history of American foreign policy, and 1:26:30.360 --> 1:26:33.439 I walked out of the hall and and I was 1:26:33.720 --> 1:26:36.000 heading back to my lab. I was just like, man, 1:26:36.640 --> 1:26:37.960 I don't know if I can go back to this, 1:26:38.400 --> 1:26:42.040 and you know, it's a It was just a weird 1:26:42.200 --> 1:26:44.439 circle for me. So I kind of came back to 1:26:44.560 --> 1:26:47.400 what I had originally wanted to do. But I finished 1:26:47.439 --> 1:26:50.679 my thesis and um. When I was done, I almost 1:26:50.720 --> 1:26:53.040 got a job at Apple, which I would have probably taken. 1:26:53.800 --> 1:26:57.439 Um and UM. And I had a couple of friends 1:26:57.479 --> 1:27:01.400 who were out in in Los Angeles lists that I've 1:27:01.439 --> 1:27:03.960 got to college with, and they were breaking into the 1:27:04.080 --> 1:27:07.439 entertainment industry and always done a lot of creative writing, um, 1:27:07.760 --> 1:27:10.000 you know, through the years. And I said, come out 1:27:10.000 --> 1:27:11.599 to l A and b a screenwriter, And I said, 1:27:12.080 --> 1:27:14.360 sounds great, and I just kind of threw some some 1:27:14.520 --> 1:27:17.360 suitcases in my current I drove out to l A. Well, 1:27:17.400 --> 1:27:20.080 I'm sure that all the research that you've done though 1:27:20.200 --> 1:27:23.560 with history and especially in medieval studies played into the 1:27:23.720 --> 1:27:29.040 screenwriting right absolutely. And and it's what's interesting is that people, 1:27:29.160 --> 1:27:30.720 you know, I I tell the story to people and 1:27:30.800 --> 1:27:33.040 they go, boy, here you know where your parents upset 1:27:33.080 --> 1:27:35.200 that you know were you were? You upset that you 1:27:35.360 --> 1:27:37.479 know you wasted your education. And I go like, well, 1:27:37.560 --> 1:27:41.479 you know what, if you get educated properly, Um, it's 1:27:41.520 --> 1:27:44.120 not a waste because it allows you to approach really 1:27:44.240 --> 1:27:46.800 complex projects like you know, especially you know when you're 1:27:47.120 --> 1:27:51.560 a physical sciences major, really digest material, know how to 1:27:51.640 --> 1:27:54.639 do research. It's like all of those things come into play, 1:27:55.360 --> 1:27:58.240 um in what I do now. It's it's it's a 1:27:58.360 --> 1:28:02.160 complex business making its television show. And you're right, all 1:28:02.240 --> 1:28:04.559 of those things that the history and the literature, they 1:28:04.640 --> 1:28:09.439 inform everything that we always do. And um so I 1:28:09.479 --> 1:28:14.760 think I sort of weirdly or just fortunately kind of 1:28:14.880 --> 1:28:20.240 landed in the thing that I'm suited for. Um So, uh, 1:28:21.479 --> 1:28:24.680 it's a it's a it's a very enjoyable business for me. 1:28:24.720 --> 1:28:29.280 I get to exercise the technical engineering side of my 1:28:29.400 --> 1:28:32.200 brain and then the purely creative side of my brain. 1:28:32.360 --> 1:28:34.320 So it's it's it's kind of a nice happy medium 1:28:34.400 --> 1:28:38.360 for me. Well, it definitely shows in the Expanse. I 1:28:38.479 --> 1:28:41.200 know that you've worked on a lot of television shows 1:28:41.280 --> 1:28:44.799 before this, but you were talking about those complex projects, 1:28:44.840 --> 1:28:48.040 and it really seems like the Expanse takes the realities 1:28:48.120 --> 1:28:51.599 of physics in space seriously for far more than most 1:28:51.640 --> 1:28:54.519 science fiction television shows. I think our audience would be 1:28:54.560 --> 1:28:58.960 interested into how your team treats those realities. And you know, 1:28:59.000 --> 1:29:01.920 how does the writer's manage that, How much research goes 1:29:01.960 --> 1:29:05.120 into you guys choreographing scenes where ships or characters are 1:29:05.320 --> 1:29:09.640 are operating in zero or low gravity. Well, you know, 1:29:09.800 --> 1:29:13.240 I think you know that really the credit for that 1:29:14.439 --> 1:29:17.519 is it's baked into the books because you know Ty 1:29:17.600 --> 1:29:21.160 Frank and Daniel Abraham, who are collectively James say Query 1:29:21.600 --> 1:29:24.280 who wrote the Expanse novels. That was that was the 1:29:24.360 --> 1:29:26.920 approach that they took. They wanted to write something that 1:29:27.120 --> 1:29:31.160 that had, you know, at least approached the reality of 1:29:31.280 --> 1:29:34.479 what life would be like in space, and so they 1:29:34.600 --> 1:29:39.120 thought these things through extremely deeply. Um. I think what 1:29:39.360 --> 1:29:42.000 happened was when when I was brought in to run 1:29:42.120 --> 1:29:46.800 the show. Part part of what attracted me to the 1:29:46.880 --> 1:29:51.560 project was that approach, because you know, I worked on 1:29:51.960 --> 1:29:54.439 Star Trek the Next Generation. I've done plenty of science 1:29:54.479 --> 1:29:58.439 fiction over the years. You typically run away from things 1:29:58.600 --> 1:30:01.120 because they're too hard to does, or you think that 1:30:01.439 --> 1:30:04.680 people think that they're boring, or the shows are not 1:30:05.000 --> 1:30:09.000 really about spaceships and and and living in space their 1:30:09.200 --> 1:30:13.320 metaphors for other things, and so people apply you know, 1:30:13.439 --> 1:30:15.799 I mean, like let's let's ta battle starts Galactic for example, 1:30:15.840 --> 1:30:18.680 I show that I absolutely adore. I think it's a masterpiece. 1:30:19.320 --> 1:30:21.760 But the space, the way they use space in that 1:30:21.880 --> 1:30:27.759 show was classically World War Two engagements in the Pacific. 1:30:27.880 --> 1:30:30.120 That's how the whole show is made. That's a because 1:30:30.360 --> 1:30:32.720 in the episode we were talking about Star Wars is 1:30:32.760 --> 1:30:37.439 being very similar that they use is I mean, I 1:30:37.479 --> 1:30:40.400 mean Ron even run more even you know, he he 1:30:40.600 --> 1:30:44.519 wanted that sort of newsreel footage realism and it was 1:30:44.600 --> 1:30:47.960 applied to to you know, extremely good effect in that show. 1:30:48.680 --> 1:30:53.240 But the show is about other things. And what when 1:30:53.280 --> 1:30:56.479 I came at the experience, the thing that I thought 1:30:56.520 --> 1:31:00.280 would be interesting is embrace the concept of space, says 1:31:00.320 --> 1:31:03.720 a character, because I hadn't seen that done before. Embrace 1:31:04.160 --> 1:31:08.439 zero gravity, Embrace thrust gravity, Embrace all of these things. 1:31:08.720 --> 1:31:13.680 Because it distinguished it from other you know, other uh 1:31:14.280 --> 1:31:17.840 you know, attempts to do that sort of other other science, 1:31:17.840 --> 1:31:21.080 which that just completely ignored it because they were too 1:31:21.120 --> 1:31:25.040 complicated to understand or too weird or too difficult to produce. UM. 1:31:25.760 --> 1:31:29.200 And and I think it gave us, It has given 1:31:29.240 --> 1:31:32.479 the show a really unique quality, and everybody seems to 1:31:32.560 --> 1:31:36.479 respond to it, um because it kind of feels real, 1:31:37.080 --> 1:31:39.160 you know, and it just and and we don't comment 1:31:39.280 --> 1:31:43.760 on it. It's not like it's not a um you know, 1:31:43.840 --> 1:31:49.000 it's not piled with jargon, but it feels like it's 1:31:49.000 --> 1:31:52.280 it's a more realistic depiction of the environment than people 1:31:52.960 --> 1:31:56.240 have typically seen. Um. You know. And with regard to 1:31:56.320 --> 1:31:59.360 how the writers treated I mean, what ty Thy, Frank 1:31:59.439 --> 1:32:03.160 and Daniel, you know a ton of science and Tie 1:32:03.720 --> 1:32:07.200 in particular has thought out the battle and the technology 1:32:07.360 --> 1:32:10.639 to an incredible extent. So he's a you know, those 1:32:10.680 --> 1:32:14.040 guys are walking encyclopedias in the writer's room. They're part 1:32:14.080 --> 1:32:18.479 of your absolutely, yeah, and that's a very unusual thing 1:32:18.560 --> 1:32:20.479 as well. But you know the rest of the writers, 1:32:20.640 --> 1:32:23.800 they're not about science. Mark Mark Ferguson, Hawk Gosby, who 1:32:23.840 --> 1:32:27.880 wrote who wrote the pilot. Um, they're not They're not 1:32:28.000 --> 1:32:33.400 science guys at all. But I feel like writing, putting 1:32:33.439 --> 1:32:37.160 together a writing staff is is like casting the show. 1:32:37.920 --> 1:32:39.800 You find the right balance, and we haven't. We had 1:32:39.840 --> 1:32:44.160 a very very unusual writers room. We had Robin Visz 1:32:44.200 --> 1:32:47.280 who was on Madmen for many years. We have dand 1:32:47.360 --> 1:32:49.439 No Racks, who was on The Killing for many years. 1:32:50.000 --> 1:32:52.240 We have all these people who have never done science 1:32:52.280 --> 1:32:57.040 fiction before, and and then just trying Daniel who written 1:32:57.240 --> 1:32:59.519 the novels but they've never really worked in television before. 1:32:59.560 --> 1:33:02.640 And then there's me, And so that balance has I 1:33:02.760 --> 1:33:06.479 think hopefully pulled the best out of all of those 1:33:06.520 --> 1:33:10.360 people from those different different places and put it all 1:33:10.439 --> 1:33:13.759 into the show and made something I think is actually 1:33:14.120 --> 1:33:18.919 quite unusual and special. Yeah, we actually in the episode 1:33:18.960 --> 1:33:21.519 itself address this, just saying how much we like the 1:33:21.560 --> 1:33:24.519 show and that not only is it you know, as 1:33:24.640 --> 1:33:27.120 as people who do a show like ours our podcast 1:33:27.560 --> 1:33:30.360 is it is it really interesting on a scientific level, 1:33:30.479 --> 1:33:34.240 but also that just like the craft of writing of story, 1:33:34.439 --> 1:33:38.640 of plot of character is all there and just really strong. Um. 1:33:39.400 --> 1:33:42.160 And from my part, I have to say, like, even 1:33:42.200 --> 1:33:45.519 though I do a podcast like this, I always really 1:33:45.600 --> 1:33:49.320 enjoy this ship maneuvering because it's it just seems like 1:33:49.439 --> 1:33:53.559 an intuitive level, it's working the right way, Like there's 1:33:53.600 --> 1:33:56.000 something about it for me, the way that the ships 1:33:56.080 --> 1:34:00.519 are moving. It feels so real and I it connects 1:34:00.560 --> 1:34:02.800 me to the the alex character a little bit more 1:34:02.880 --> 1:34:05.080 to like, Oh, look at what a great pilot this 1:34:05.200 --> 1:34:09.000 guy is. He's so casually just like steering this behemoth around. 1:34:09.120 --> 1:34:11.200 You know, Well, we have a we have a great 1:34:11.320 --> 1:34:15.400 scene coming up in uh late in season two where 1:34:16.360 --> 1:34:19.360 we were it's it's not in the books really, but 1:34:19.600 --> 1:34:25.160 it's some alex Is is hiding behind a moon of 1:34:25.280 --> 1:34:28.360 Jupiter while the rest of the gang is on Ganymede 1:34:28.439 --> 1:34:31.920 station and and he has to get down to them, 1:34:31.960 --> 1:34:34.080 but there's patrols all over the place. So what he 1:34:34.200 --> 1:34:39.920 does is he plots a a swing shot de orbital 1:34:40.000 --> 1:34:43.200 trajectory from where he is and just whips around a 1:34:43.280 --> 1:34:47.320 bunch of moons. Now it's super fun to look at 1:34:47.960 --> 1:34:51.799 when you actually we actually look at the distances involved 1:34:51.840 --> 1:34:53.960 in the time it would take to do it, it's ridiculous, 1:34:54.040 --> 1:34:56.559 which is larger the seas and a ridiculously long time. 1:34:56.840 --> 1:34:58.360 So it's like, you know, it would take him like, 1:34:58.400 --> 1:35:03.559 you know, six months but that doesn't quite working at all. 1:35:03.680 --> 1:35:07.120 Was a joke, but conceptually we're totally on point. Um, 1:35:07.479 --> 1:35:09.560 so I we we've got a lot of you know, 1:35:09.800 --> 1:35:11.840 we end up doing that a lot, but where it 1:35:12.040 --> 1:35:15.160 feels real, you know, And then I think that's that 1:35:15.360 --> 1:35:18.920 is really the key test at any of these things, 1:35:19.000 --> 1:35:22.719 where you know what, there's a moment. There's a moment 1:35:22.840 --> 1:35:27.400 in in the pilot where I wanted a particular shot. 1:35:27.439 --> 1:35:30.599 It was when, um, remember when the little the little 1:35:30.720 --> 1:35:33.800 spaceship the Nights that the guys took from the Canterbury 1:35:34.040 --> 1:35:37.599 they go to find the derelict ship there is. Yeah, 1:35:38.200 --> 1:35:41.040 so we're looking at the visual effects of those, you know, 1:35:41.160 --> 1:35:43.320 and I was kind of and it was like it's 1:35:43.400 --> 1:35:45.360 kind of boring, and I said, you know what, why 1:35:45.400 --> 1:35:48.519 don't we why don't we have that ship flip, you know, 1:35:49.120 --> 1:35:51.560 flipping in into like just that last bit of the 1:35:51.640 --> 1:35:54.920 deceleration burn and the engine plume kind of lights up 1:35:54.960 --> 1:35:59.000 the ship. That's that there's and it is so beautiful 1:35:59.080 --> 1:36:01.680 when you see these little maneuvering trusters fire and these 1:36:01.720 --> 1:36:04.680 ships kind of turned slowly, and and then you know, 1:36:04.760 --> 1:36:09.000 it's like I find it very beautiful. I mean, all 1:36:09.160 --> 1:36:11.000 of the ship movements and all of that stuff is 1:36:11.120 --> 1:36:14.439 really you know, we spend a lot of time, you know, 1:36:14.640 --> 1:36:19.160 talking about you know, the specifics of how they're gonna look, 1:36:19.280 --> 1:36:21.880 how the shots are gonna be, you know, how we're 1:36:21.920 --> 1:36:25.400 going to convey scale, and how we're going to deal 1:36:25.479 --> 1:36:28.720 with you know, relative speed that's like, and just how 1:36:28.760 --> 1:36:30.800 the camera needs to move. It's it's it's a whole 1:36:30.840 --> 1:36:35.280 the whole thing is really it's really fascinating. Um. You 1:36:35.280 --> 1:36:39.720 don't get into these conversations a lot in in other shows. Yeah, 1:36:39.840 --> 1:36:41.759 well I think it again, like I think it shows 1:36:41.920 --> 1:36:45.360 definitely and it's yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm always 1:36:45.439 --> 1:36:47.439 impressed by it. Yeah, and I'm thinking back to the 1:36:47.520 --> 1:36:50.120 scene you're talking about too, and just like it's like 1:36:50.240 --> 1:36:53.720 ballet and space with ships. That's that's what it was. 1:36:53.840 --> 1:36:58.479 And it's really you know them It's funny when you 1:36:58.560 --> 1:37:00.639 go back, like you know, in the history of movies 1:37:00.760 --> 1:37:03.960 to to look at shows that have treated this kind 1:37:04.000 --> 1:37:07.840 of stuff. Is you know, the one guy who got 1:37:07.880 --> 1:37:10.600 it right was Kubrick in two thousand and one. We 1:37:10.800 --> 1:37:12.519 bring we bring up two thousand and one in the 1:37:12.520 --> 1:37:15.840 episode as well. Yeah, it's like, well, and and yet 1:37:16.760 --> 1:37:20.840 in popular culture people remember like movies like you know, 1:37:20.960 --> 1:37:24.960 Outlander where somebody's helmet you know, gets peers in their 1:37:25.000 --> 1:37:31.160 head explodes and so so you know, so we've actually, 1:37:31.960 --> 1:37:34.559 you know, any time there's a moment that we can 1:37:34.720 --> 1:37:38.120 do this sort of stuff to sort of show real space, 1:37:39.080 --> 1:37:41.200 I try to take advantage of it. There was a 1:37:41.280 --> 1:37:45.080 moment on I think an episode sixth last season where 1:37:45.120 --> 1:37:47.120 the rock Hoppers are out of the belt and the 1:37:47.200 --> 1:37:49.360 guy's having a problem with his helmet and he just 1:37:49.520 --> 1:37:51.519 flips open the visor and he brings out and you 1:37:51.600 --> 1:37:54.479 like pulled the wire up and he closes it. It's like, yeah, 1:37:54.600 --> 1:37:57.400 you can survive in a vacuum. These guys would that 1:37:57.560 --> 1:37:59.560 that's not a big deal for them, and it was 1:37:59.640 --> 1:38:01.800 just and I was talking in the room, was like 1:38:02.800 --> 1:38:08.519 like what don't there they had explodes? Like no, and 1:38:09.040 --> 1:38:12.439 but but anyways, it's like some things like that, I 1:38:12.520 --> 1:38:15.360 think are the touches that are really really fun and 1:38:15.880 --> 1:38:19.160 m I remember when I was first reading a Vibe 1:38:19.200 --> 1:38:21.400 and wait, the moment I realized I want to do 1:38:21.520 --> 1:38:24.599 this show. Is that scene in that compartment where Chet's 1:38:24.600 --> 1:38:29.439 head gets blown off. Yeah, it was like I was, like, 1:38:29.600 --> 1:38:32.920 I've never seen that before, and that's that's pretty close 1:38:33.000 --> 1:38:35.680 to what's in the book actually, almost like sort of 1:38:35.800 --> 1:38:39.000 beat for beat. Now, speaking of the books and the 1:38:39.120 --> 1:38:43.519 various scientific details, and the authors do a terrific job 1:38:43.560 --> 1:38:46.120 of working all of these, not not only the big 1:38:46.200 --> 1:38:50.040 scientific ideas, but they're just the casual science grounding and 1:38:50.200 --> 1:38:53.240 all the minor details and flourishes, like particularly I think 1:38:53.280 --> 1:38:57.120 of the moss whiskey, the that grown beans, and the 1:38:57.200 --> 1:39:01.240 various workplace a pails that are encountered. Um, I can 1:39:01.240 --> 1:39:04.120 see where was Certainly all the having all these elements 1:39:04.160 --> 1:39:07.000 at your disposal are helpful and bringing the world to 1:39:07.120 --> 1:39:08.800 life on the screen. But is it ever I mean, 1:39:08.920 --> 1:39:11.120 is it ever challenging? You have just all sorts of 1:39:11.200 --> 1:39:14.719 references that you wish you had time to fit in. Yeah, 1:39:14.880 --> 1:39:18.360 we we do, actually, and we create so many more 1:39:18.479 --> 1:39:21.320 than you see. Sometimes it's like we would, you know, 1:39:21.400 --> 1:39:23.960 we don't, like you know, ads that are playing on 1:39:24.080 --> 1:39:27.680 TV screens for that grown beef and barbecues and like 1:39:27.800 --> 1:39:30.880 all of this stuff and moss whiskey, and you know, 1:39:32.680 --> 1:39:35.280 we do as much as we possibly can. All of 1:39:35.360 --> 1:39:37.800 that stuff is there in the books and so we 1:39:37.880 --> 1:39:40.000 try to pull it out as much as possible because 1:39:40.040 --> 1:39:44.160 I think that those things give real texture to the environment. 1:39:44.760 --> 1:39:49.599 UM and and all of those details and aggregate when 1:39:49.720 --> 1:39:52.240 when you keep touching on them, when you don't comment 1:39:52.400 --> 1:39:54.479 on them, it just makes you feel like you're in 1:39:54.520 --> 1:39:57.160 a different place. It's like when Miller, you know, kind 1:39:57.200 --> 1:39:59.439 of pours a little whiskey, but he's so used to 1:39:59.520 --> 1:40:01.400 Coreo list that he just kind of throws it at 1:40:01.400 --> 1:40:03.040 an angle and it just kind of drops into a 1:40:03.080 --> 1:40:06.240 glass and in a little spiral. It's like, yeah, we 1:40:06.400 --> 1:40:10.559 never shows never do that, and it's an expensive little 1:40:10.600 --> 1:40:13.519 effect and like, but to me, those are the touches 1:40:13.560 --> 1:40:17.080 that distinguish, and those are the things that really take 1:40:17.200 --> 1:40:20.400 the show to a different place. And people always notice 1:40:22.320 --> 1:40:27.519 now thematically speaking, um getting into into the books versus 1:40:27.600 --> 1:40:32.160 the TV Leviathan Wakes published almost seven years ago, and 1:40:32.400 --> 1:40:36.479 the series we've seen, I mean, basically the first season 1:40:36.840 --> 1:40:40.360 in the second season come out on on either side 1:40:40.439 --> 1:40:44.800 of of a rather pivotal political election here in the 1:40:45.000 --> 1:40:48.960 United States. We're currently looking at so much international political 1:40:49.080 --> 1:40:52.320 change as well, so much tension and anxiety. What has 1:40:52.320 --> 1:40:55.280 it been like to help manage the expression of this 1:40:55.920 --> 1:41:00.320 particular sci fi vision during the midst of all of this. Well, 1:41:00.439 --> 1:41:03.960 you know, let's see, I'm trying to think when we started, 1:41:04.000 --> 1:41:07.600 when we started development of season one, I think in 1:41:09.479 --> 1:41:13.160 so that was like, um, yeah, I think like April 1:41:14.160 --> 1:41:17.400 is when we started, and and so yeah, I mean, 1:41:17.520 --> 1:41:20.519 you know, the politics of that they have been cooking 1:41:20.640 --> 1:41:24.160 underneath it ever since. Um. I don't know if it 1:41:24.320 --> 1:41:27.840 was so much you know, directly influenced it. But there's 1:41:27.880 --> 1:41:30.599 a theme in the books that we have been very 1:41:30.680 --> 1:41:35.280 conscious of since the very beginning, and that's about tribalization, 1:41:35.880 --> 1:41:38.800 and that certainly seems to be you know, something that 1:41:39.200 --> 1:41:45.080 is extraordinarily relevant right now is that this notion now 1:41:45.680 --> 1:41:50.880 the moment people start identifying another group of people as 1:41:51.000 --> 1:41:54.800 the other, as defined by different beliefs or skin color 1:41:55.000 --> 1:41:58.759 or shape or size or whatever, that that's when problems 1:41:58.800 --> 1:42:02.040 start happening all about human history. When you can say 1:42:02.280 --> 1:42:05.880 we're like this, they're not like us, therefore we don't 1:42:05.960 --> 1:42:10.240 have to like them. That's how Wars begin. And and 1:42:10.360 --> 1:42:15.320 it's definitely, um a kind of a deep theme in 1:42:15.439 --> 1:42:18.800 the show because one of the one of the things 1:42:18.880 --> 1:42:22.760 that we've tried to do is you know, we've kind 1:42:22.760 --> 1:42:26.880 of mixed people up, um Tie and Daniel always said, like, 1:42:26.960 --> 1:42:28.760 you know, the people who go out into space not 1:42:28.920 --> 1:42:33.280 just going to be you know, Caucasian, you know, Cornfred Nebraska, 1:42:33.360 --> 1:42:37.400 boys from from the United States. It's gonna be Indian 1:42:37.439 --> 1:42:41.240 and Chinese and everybody. And the show has done that. 1:42:42.080 --> 1:42:47.400 And yet the Belters are identifying as different than Birthers, 1:42:47.640 --> 1:42:50.839 who are definitely defining themselves as different from the Martians, 1:42:51.000 --> 1:42:53.640 and the same kinds of problems are happening. So even 1:42:53.680 --> 1:42:57.560 though we've gotten out into space, we've colonized portions of 1:42:57.600 --> 1:43:00.719 the Solar System once again, we're back at that place 1:43:01.520 --> 1:43:05.679 where human beings are tribalizing and seeing each other as different, 1:43:06.200 --> 1:43:10.080 and that way leads the conflict. Nurine, It's like you 1:43:10.360 --> 1:43:13.600 read our notes for the episode before we called you 1:43:13.760 --> 1:43:17.000 up here, because we we literally mentioned other ing in 1:43:17.120 --> 1:43:20.679 the episode as one of the main causes. Yeah, yeah, 1:43:20.760 --> 1:43:23.960 and and and the diversity in the show and showing that, 1:43:24.080 --> 1:43:26.400 you know, how colonization would work out as something we 1:43:26.800 --> 1:43:31.439 speak to as well. Um. Our episode is focused on 1:43:31.560 --> 1:43:34.880 the concept of interplanetary war, and then we use the 1:43:35.040 --> 1:43:37.760 universe of the expanses like a reference point. But in 1:43:37.920 --> 1:43:42.400 that universe, you know, uh, what are the causes leading 1:43:42.760 --> 1:43:46.280 humanity to these wars? You know, we what we've seen 1:43:46.400 --> 1:43:49.400 so far, at least in season one, it seems to 1:43:49.439 --> 1:43:52.280 be mainly economic in nature. But but like you were 1:43:52.360 --> 1:43:54.800 just talking about, it seems that there's also a theme 1:43:54.880 --> 1:43:58.000 here that human nature leads to war no matter where 1:43:58.080 --> 1:44:01.840 we are. I think the truth of the matter is 1:44:01.920 --> 1:44:06.000 it's both of those things that when they happen simultaneously, 1:44:06.400 --> 1:44:09.800 that's when starts to blow up. I mean, you know, 1:44:10.160 --> 1:44:12.760 human nature is human nature. You're always going to have it. 1:44:12.880 --> 1:44:16.880 But if you you know, if you have bad feelings 1:44:17.000 --> 1:44:23.160 and bad ideas occurring in times of economic stress or 1:44:23.320 --> 1:44:29.960 deprivation or you know, resource constriction, that is a that 1:44:30.120 --> 1:44:33.120 is a recipe for disaster historically, and you can you know, 1:44:33.920 --> 1:44:36.920 we have talked, we talk a lot about history in 1:44:37.040 --> 1:44:39.639 that room. Tie is like he's gotta you know, he's 1:44:39.840 --> 1:44:44.439 got an encyclopedia knowledge of Roman history. We've also talked 1:44:44.479 --> 1:44:46.240 a lot about you know, when I first sat now 1:44:46.360 --> 1:44:48.400 went with the stuff, I talked a lot about The 1:44:48.439 --> 1:44:51.639 Guns of August, which is which is Barbara Tuckman's book 1:44:51.640 --> 1:44:55.560 about the beginnings of world War one, and it was 1:44:55.680 --> 1:45:00.600 like this these you know, these little domino is that 1:45:00.800 --> 1:45:05.000 just kept knocking into each other, tiny events that led 1:45:05.040 --> 1:45:10.439 to a cataclysmic event. And we took that approach um 1:45:11.240 --> 1:45:15.040 through season one and into season two. Is you know, 1:45:16.320 --> 1:45:21.080 we're building to war. It hasn't quite come yet um 1:45:21.320 --> 1:45:23.760 in the show, but it's coming. It's like all of 1:45:23.800 --> 1:45:30.000 these little things, misunderstandings, misapprehensions, information that doesn't get communicated 1:45:30.080 --> 1:45:33.439 properly or gets misinterpreted in an odd way that makes 1:45:33.479 --> 1:45:37.559 somebody look bad that I think that's how war has happened. Um. 1:45:38.800 --> 1:45:42.120 And you know, I'll it take to somebody pushing a 1:45:42.200 --> 1:45:45.400 button or pulling a trigger. Um. And and so we've 1:45:45.479 --> 1:45:50.920 we've adopted that concept in our story time. Well it's yeah, 1:45:51.120 --> 1:45:54.040 it's compelling for sure. Yeah, I guess this. Thanks thanks 1:45:54.120 --> 1:45:55.800 once again for taking the time out of your day 1:45:55.840 --> 1:45:58.160 to chat with us and uh and for your work 1:45:58.280 --> 1:46:01.519 on what has been a very entertaining and thought provoking 1:46:01.600 --> 1:46:04.519 science fiction television series. Well, thank you guys so much. 1:46:04.560 --> 1:46:08.800 It's really our pleasure. And now we we're we we 1:46:09.000 --> 1:46:11.680 love the show. Everybody involvement loves the show. We want 1:46:11.760 --> 1:46:14.400 you know, we're we are just want people to get 1:46:14.400 --> 1:46:16.880 out there and see it. It was an interesting trajectory 1:46:16.960 --> 1:46:22.479 overseason one that, you know, the little further we got 1:46:22.520 --> 1:46:24.760 along and now we're on Amazon Prime streaming and we're 1:46:24.800 --> 1:46:28.559 on Netflix internationally. It's like people are discovering it now 1:46:29.040 --> 1:46:31.320 and it's great to see that because you know, it 1:46:31.360 --> 1:46:33.680 seems across the board people are really responding to it, 1:46:33.840 --> 1:46:36.599 and I think they're going to be blown away by 1:46:36.640 --> 1:46:40.719 season two. It's uh, it's it's got some amazing stuff 1:46:40.760 --> 1:46:43.680 coming down the pike. So people know we're on the 1:46:43.720 --> 1:46:49.760 air of February one, all right, So there you have it. Yeah, 1:46:49.800 --> 1:46:52.080 The Expanse is a really really cool show, really cool 1:46:52.120 --> 1:46:54.439 book series. Uh. I highly recommend it. I think they 1:46:54.479 --> 1:46:59.320 play remarkably well with real science, with real cultural and 1:46:59.400 --> 1:47:02.599 political concerns in a way that entertains you but also 1:47:02.840 --> 1:47:05.920 keeps you thinking. Yeah, on top of like everything we've mentioned, 1:47:06.240 --> 1:47:09.040 it has great characters and the storytelling is smart. It's 1:47:09.520 --> 1:47:12.200 I've binge watched the first season with my wife in 1:47:12.320 --> 1:47:15.040 less than a week, and I'm very excited about the 1:47:15.080 --> 1:47:17.960 second season. And if you're if you find yourself though 1:47:18.040 --> 1:47:23.120 more concerned then entertained by some of the more depressing 1:47:23.160 --> 1:47:26.439 subject matter in this episode, I'd like to highlight a 1:47:26.520 --> 1:47:29.160 group that we've highlighted before, and that is the Arms 1:47:29.200 --> 1:47:33.000 Control Association. You'll find them at arms control dot org. 1:47:33.320 --> 1:47:37.160 They're founded in nine and it's a national, nonpartisan membership 1:47:37.240 --> 1:47:40.960 organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for 1:47:41.160 --> 1:47:44.880 effective arms control policies. Through its public education and media 1:47:44.960 --> 1:47:49.040 programs and its magazine Arms Control Today. They provide policymakers, 1:47:49.240 --> 1:47:53.400 the press, and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis, 1:47:53.479 --> 1:47:58.160 and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and aggrievements and 1:47:58.320 --> 1:48:01.080 related national security issues. So no, no matter what your 1:48:01.160 --> 1:48:04.040 level of interest, they have something for you, and you 1:48:04.120 --> 1:48:06.880 can donate at their website to help support their work 1:48:07.000 --> 1:48:10.599 to keep keep nuclear war and and war in general 1:48:11.040 --> 1:48:14.280 UH relegated as much as possible to the pages of 1:48:14.439 --> 1:48:17.840 history and fiction and science fiction. Yeah, it's certainly going 1:48:17.960 --> 1:48:20.000 to need to be the kind of group that we 1:48:20.160 --> 1:48:23.599 embrace before we go into space. And I didn't need 1:48:23.680 --> 1:48:27.040 for that to rhyme, but we we really need people 1:48:27.160 --> 1:48:31.880 to think about philosophical and political frameworks before we invent 1:48:31.960 --> 1:48:35.000 this technology because of what we've discovered in this episode. 1:48:35.800 --> 1:48:38.760 So all that said, we'd like to hear from you. 1:48:39.439 --> 1:48:42.000 Are you a fan of the expanse. How did our 1:48:42.760 --> 1:48:46.720 depiction of future warfare or the causes of warfare over 1:48:46.760 --> 1:48:49.800 the courts of history line up with your notions? Let 1:48:49.920 --> 1:48:52.640 us know, and I have a feeling that some of 1:48:52.720 --> 1:48:55.200 you are going to have strong opinions about this, especially 1:48:55.240 --> 1:48:57.599 after I read that Cora threat and I saw all 1:48:57.680 --> 1:49:01.080 of the various ideas of how people are thinking already 1:49:01.200 --> 1:49:04.719 about what the possibilities of interplanetary warfare are. The places 1:49:04.800 --> 1:49:08.160 that you can reach out to us our Facebook, Twitter, Humbler, 1:49:08.360 --> 1:49:11.519 and Instagram, or you could find us as stuff to 1:49:11.560 --> 1:49:13.840 Blow your Mind dot com and you can always send 1:49:13.920 --> 1:49:15.720 us an email at blow the Mind at house to 1:49:15.880 --> 1:49:28.040 works dot com for more on this and thousands of 1:49:28.080 --> 1:49:36.519 other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Remember