Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager, and
Speaker 1: today we are We're pretty excited because both of us
Speaker 1: are fans of The Expanse, which is a show on
Speaker 1: sci Fi. It speaks to all of Robert and my
Speaker 1: interests and man, we both watched the first season, really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. So we got the opportunity to work together
Speaker 1: with them and do an episode on their universe, basically
Speaker 1: taking a look at war and what is the cause
Speaker 1: of war and human history, but also looking toward the
Speaker 1: future and basically saying, what's it gonna look like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would interplanetary war be like? Uh? Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: an awesome opportunity. I was already a fan of the show,
Speaker 1: and it was actually reading the first book by James S. A.
Speaker 1: Corey when the opportunity presented it itself, and we said, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we've done this sort of thing before without any
Speaker 1: kind of advertising support for properties such as Dune, uh,
Speaker 1: the Let's see what else we rain? Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: ant Man One Man, and none of those people work
Speaker 1: together with us, but we did it. Because we're fans,
Speaker 1: and I think I think we might have done something
Speaker 1: like this eventually this year, because once I finally got
Speaker 1: a chance to watch it on Amazon Prime, I just
Speaker 1: fell in love with this show. It is fantastic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very well put together show. Uh. I would say
Speaker 1: that the best pure science fiction show on television right now. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as Robert mentioned, it's based on a series of novels
Speaker 1: by James Essay Corey Now that's a pen name actually
Speaker 1: for Daniel Abraham and Tai Frank. They serve as writers
Speaker 1: and producers on the show as well. And the first
Speaker 1: uh season of the show is based on the book
Speaker 1: that Robert mentioned, Leviathan Wakes, and that book was nominated
Speaker 1: for both a Hugo Award and a Locust Award. We're
Speaker 1: gonna try not to really spoil the show for you
Speaker 1: at all if you haven't seen it. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: mainly talking about the the mythos that it exists in,
Speaker 1: right like the universe that they've built for this this show,
Speaker 1: in this series of novels, um the real basic plot
Speaker 1: and this isn't really getting you much past. Like I
Speaker 1: would say, the first episode is that it's an ensemble
Speaker 1: of characters that are scattered around the Solar System. They're
Speaker 1: trying to unravel a conspiracy that threatens to begin a
Speaker 1: war between Earth, Mars and colonies that are within the
Speaker 1: Asteroid Belt. Yeah, and the really cool thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind, and certainly something we're gonna discuss at length here,
Speaker 1: is that all of this is crafted with with science
Speaker 1: in the forefront um. The authors and the show runners
Speaker 1: put a lot of effort into making sure that everything
Speaker 1: lines up. Not only were their entertainment expectations and our
Speaker 1: our political intrigue fascination, but but just like, what what
Speaker 1: is our current understanding of science and our current understanding
Speaker 1: of the universe. What kind of a future does that
Speaker 1: possibly present for us? And to that end, another thing
Speaker 1: we're really excited about is that we are going to
Speaker 1: have an interview at the end of this episode with
Speaker 1: the executive producer on the expanse Naren Shankar. He's also
Speaker 1: one of the show's writers. He's their science advisor as well.
Speaker 1: He has a background in engineering in physics, and so
Speaker 1: we're gonna ask him questions about how the show treats
Speaker 1: the realities of space, because that really is I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the selling points for me is that
Speaker 1: Space is as much a character as any of the
Speaker 1: other characters, and it's not just a setting. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Space is dangerous and big and hostile, uh in this show,
Speaker 1: as it should be. So before we get into the
Speaker 1: meat of this show, we want to establish, you know,
Speaker 1: what this episode isn't going to be, because we don't
Speaker 1: want you to be, you know, disappointed in what we
Speaker 1: cover and what we don't. This is a huge topic.
Speaker 1: This isn't gonna be us looking at military science really
Speaker 1: or delving into too much about future weapons technology. We
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: we're sticking to what causes war, what motivates war, and
Speaker 1: and really the ultimate end goal of the studies like
Speaker 1: this which have been going on for a long time
Speaker 1: is how to keep peace. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at past models of war and how they apply
Speaker 1: in trying to figure out the future of war. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do a detail breakdown of individual
Speaker 1: weapons systems. So we of course have covered some of
Speaker 1: those in the past and may cover them in the future,
Speaker 1: such as our episode from Life Believe the past year
Speaker 1: about the rods from God's the kinetic weapons system proposal,
Speaker 1: and that came up independently in their research. It wasn't
Speaker 1: something that like we were like, well, we're familiar with this,
Speaker 1: we'll bring this in it. Actually, that's something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people who speculate on what the future warfare
Speaker 1: is gonna look like once we're out in space, kinetic
Speaker 1: weapons immediately came up. So we'll we'll touch on that
Speaker 1: again too, and if you're in and also, one thing
Speaker 1: this this podcast is not going to be is you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about the Expanse a little bit in it,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna talk at at length about uh, just
Speaker 1: the future of war, war and what war is in general.
Speaker 1: So if you're not into the Expanse, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're just across the board not interested, well I fear not,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna we're gonna talk about a very grounded
Speaker 1: issues here. Okay, so why don't we get into it.
Speaker 1: And then what we'll do is basically, as we go
Speaker 1: along and we're talking about these various theoretical examples or
Speaker 1: historical examples, will maybe apply it to the expanse. But
Speaker 1: again we're not going to be very spoilery about the
Speaker 1: show in terms of like things that happened in the
Speaker 1: plot or with the characters. It's just mainly going to
Speaker 1: be about like what the setup is for the universe
Speaker 1: there and what it's like two years in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, well you know, I guess we should. Do
Speaker 1: you want to mention any of the characters before we
Speaker 1: move on or yeah, well, I think more so than
Speaker 1: the characters, what I mentioned is just like the three
Speaker 1: factions I suppose, and so set that up for people,
Speaker 1: which is that Earth is Earth still exists, there's a
Speaker 1: human population on it. It's a single planetary government though
Speaker 1: from what United Nations governed planet. Yeah. And then Mars
Speaker 1: has broken off from Earth. Mars is populated by human colonists,
Speaker 1: but they have a more technologically advanced colony I guess.
Speaker 1: So they have like a pretty intensely powerful military. They
Speaker 1: have like stealth ships things like that. Uh, And that
Speaker 1: they Mars and Earth are kind of teetering on the
Speaker 1: brink of a it's like a Cold war basically. And
Speaker 1: then the last faction is the Asteroid Belt. Uh. They
Speaker 1: refer to themselves as Belters. Uh. And that basically serves
Speaker 1: as like many colonies scattered throughout the Asteroid Belt of
Speaker 1: basically blue collar workers who are out there mining resources
Speaker 1: like air and water. In some type cases it's like ice,
Speaker 1: Like they're they're mining ice and outer space so that
Speaker 1: they can then bring it back and turn it into
Speaker 1: water basically for the survivability of everybody, whether they're on
Speaker 1: Mars or Asteroid Belt. Although Earth pretty much has access
Speaker 1: to all of the resources, we still have. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you play fast and loose with the the parallels,
Speaker 1: you can basically look at at Earth. Earth is Is
Speaker 1: is the European planet, Mars is the New World, and
Speaker 1: then the Asteroid Belt is just the the outskirts though,
Speaker 1: the wild, the utter frontier and there, and there's a
Speaker 1: there's a cultural splintering that has occurred really across all
Speaker 1: three domains, right. Yeah. And and the the other thing too,
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention is that the Belt is governed
Speaker 1: by Earth technically, I think like they have oversight, but
Speaker 1: there's also like uh corruption within the Belts government system.
Speaker 1: And then also what would you call it, like a
Speaker 1: grassroots insurgency happening. Yeah, the opcuh quasi terrorists or outright
Speaker 1: terrorist organization depending on how you look at it, because
Speaker 1: there's a large there's a lot of disenfranchisement that goes
Speaker 1: on in the Belts in in the expanse, right, the
Speaker 1: Belters don't seem to have the same rights. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a major plot point, all right. So at this point,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get into the first big question here.
Speaker 1: What is war? What is war itself as a thing
Speaker 1: that humans do, that humans most humans hate and despise
Speaker 1: and fear, and yet we absolutely have not stopped doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we conducted constantly and you know, I had no idea
Speaker 1: going into this research. I mean I had some idea,
Speaker 1: but but not how deep it goes. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are entire departments of study devoted to this. And so
Speaker 1: if you're out there listening and you have some familiarity
Speaker 1: with this, you may go, why didn't you mention this
Speaker 1: particular theoretical concept about war? You know? Uh, this because
Speaker 1: we really we would have to do an entire podcast
Speaker 1: that's just about for for years just about this topic
Speaker 1: in order to cover everything. So we're gonna try to
Speaker 1: boil it down to some of the major categories of
Speaker 1: of what is war and what causes it gonna read
Speaker 1: three quick quotes here that that that I feel set
Speaker 1: the stage. Uh. The first one comes from a corn
Speaker 1: Karthie's Blood Meridian or the evening Redness in the West.
Speaker 1: And this is These are the words of Judge Holden,
Speaker 1: who has a major character in that book, quasi supernatural villain.
Speaker 1: He says, it makes no difference what men think of war.
Speaker 1: War endures as well, asked men what they think of stone.
Speaker 1: War was always here before man was. War waited for him,
Speaker 1: the ultimate trade, awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the
Speaker 1: way it was and will be that way and not
Speaker 1: some other way. And then in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael and
Speaker 1: Adventurer of the Mind and Spirit, Uh, Ishmael, who's a
Speaker 1: talking gorilla in the book, if you're not familiar with it,
Speaker 1: says the following, my name is Ishmael. Yeah. Is. This
Speaker 1: law defines the limits of competition in the community of life.
Speaker 1: You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities.
Speaker 1: But you may not hunt down your competiti gers or
Speaker 1: destroy their food, or denied them access to food. In
Speaker 1: other words, you may compete, but you may not wage war.
Speaker 1: Now there are a couple of major resources that we
Speaker 1: look to to really ground ourselves here, and the first
Speaker 1: was that apparently the International Association for Political Science Students
Speaker 1: has as a really well written piece that that sums
Speaker 1: up war and its causes. Now, the person who authored that,
Speaker 1: Jan Tudovic. Uh, there's a quote from her that I'd
Speaker 1: like to use to start us off here, and she says,
Speaker 1: if we want to understand or explain how peace can
Speaker 1: be achieved, we have to understand war and its causation.
Speaker 1: And so, uh, this led me to another piece which
Speaker 1: is by a guy named Jack S. Levy, and it's
Speaker 1: called The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace
Speaker 1: and it's really pretty good review of all the literature
Speaker 1: on this topic. And I think it was written in
Speaker 1: the nineties, so there may even be like a whole
Speaker 1: John More that wasn't covered in this from the last
Speaker 1: decade or so. We pulled other resources to kind of
Speaker 1: tap into that those ideas, but Levy basically looked at
Speaker 1: everything and just threw it into one paper. It's interesting though, like,
Speaker 1: at this point, without even getting into the idea, is
Speaker 1: like the three quotes we looked at, the judge would
Speaker 1: hold that war is this thing that like permeates us
Speaker 1: and and and and pre exists. It's our nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Whereas Daniel Quinn would and Ishmael rather would argue that
Speaker 1: that war is this this corruption that we've inflicted on
Speaker 1: the world, and perhaps something we can take back. These
Speaker 1: are of course, both you know, kind of simplistic views
Speaker 1: of it or boiled down views, uh, and that we're
Speaker 1: getting into them the more complex take on the question,
Speaker 1: So Levy establishes, first of all, there's no consensus on
Speaker 1: what causes war, Like, there's a lot of disagreement in
Speaker 1: the academic community about this much less just between us
Speaker 1: human beings. In fact, he says, some people argue it
Speaker 1: maybe such a complex topic that it's it's actually impossible
Speaker 1: to generalize in any manner, but they try. Um and
Speaker 1: that the general definition of war is this quote, a
Speaker 1: large scale organized violence between political units. So if you
Speaker 1: want to differentiate it from other violence, the categorization is
Speaker 1: essentially a minimum of a thousand battle related fatalities have
Speaker 1: to be counted as a metric, and peace is subsequently
Speaker 1: identified as the absence of war. Now, the people who
Speaker 1: study this really deeply, they seem to distinguish between international war,
Speaker 1: civil war, and interstate wars to separate them from what
Speaker 1: I what are referred to as non state actors. I
Speaker 1: think today most people would just say terrorism. Um but
Speaker 1: but violence that's not conducted by a state actor. Right. So,
Speaker 1: to this end, the study of war is actually moved
Speaker 1: more toward what they called low intensity wars. And this
Speaker 1: has been since the end of the Cold War, so
Speaker 1: it's less focused on total annihilation. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that for sure. Um Levy also says it's really
Speaker 1: difficult to trace the causes of war because there's so
Speaker 1: many variations on them. Right, So if you think you
Speaker 1: have one theory and you try to apply it to
Speaker 1: every single instance of war, there's gonna be a variation
Speaker 1: in there that just stands out, right, So that makes
Speaker 1: it even more difficult. Um Subsequently, he says he he
Speaker 1: doesn't really buy into the whole human nature argument because
Speaker 1: of that, because there's so many variables, it's not constant enough.
Speaker 1: And Steady says, political scientists seem to be turning to
Speaker 1: h explaining war in peace, while philosophers, psychologists, and biologists
Speaker 1: ask why war war occurs at all in the first place. Right,
Speaker 1: um So that's really just the the general setup. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've now we've establed is like what war is
Speaker 1: that the ground rules essentially in terms of how academics
Speaker 1: are looking at it, how it's studied. Now what based
Speaker 1: on that? What are the causes? Human nature is socio cultural?
Speaker 1: What are what are all these theories for its motivation?
Speaker 1: The first place that I'd like to point out is
Speaker 1: there is an annual report that's put together by the
Speaker 1: Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research every year and it
Speaker 1: examines broadly what what leads to the current conflicts that
Speaker 1: exist in our modern society and they call it a
Speaker 1: Conflict Barometer. Now the edition focused on the following causes
Speaker 1: for war and they have uh that's the latest report
Speaker 1: that's been published because they haven't finished the one yet. Uh.
Speaker 1: They categorize the the intensity of these conflicts, but they
Speaker 1: basically break it down by whether it's a territorial war,
Speaker 1: a war of secession, de colonization, a war over autonomy,
Speaker 1: sys the system in place, or the ideology national power,
Speaker 1: subnational predominance, international power. So that those three kind of
Speaker 1: fall back into that what I was talking about earlier
Speaker 1: in terms of state actors, and then resources, which brings
Speaker 1: us back to our Ishmael quote. And then the last
Speaker 1: one is the other. Paul Goodman has also put together
Speaker 1: a short explanation of this. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: listical BuzzFeed version. I'm not saying that in like a
Speaker 1: derogatory way. On the causes of war. It's on this
Speaker 1: site called OWL caation and that's a website that's run
Speaker 1: by educators about their academic areas of expertise. And that's
Speaker 1: O w l C A t. Iowan trying to figure
Speaker 1: that out, an OWL on vacation um. And so his
Speaker 1: we're gonna use his list, the Heidelberg list and levies
Speaker 1: huge combination of theories as sort of like a grounding
Speaker 1: point for us as we moved through all of these.
Speaker 1: And the first one is really the psychology the human nature.
Speaker 1: So do we have war because of our innate inner rage?
Speaker 1: Is it because of the fears of mankind? Are we
Speaker 1: inherently violent? Or maybe ideology is inherent to the human brain.
Speaker 1: This is kind of the the Dawn of of Man
Speaker 1: two thousand one of Space Odyssey idea that the ape
Speaker 1: is inherently violent, maybe pushed a little by the monolith.
Speaker 1: But it all goes back to some some pretty human
Speaker 1: homedy bashing and some creatures skull and realizing this is
Speaker 1: the way, this is the this is the path to ascension. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and Goodman lumps under this causes like that a lot
Speaker 1: of you are probably thinking they were the first in
Speaker 1: my mind, religion or nationalism or revenge even right. We
Speaker 1: could also potentially play civil wars and revolutionary wars here,
Speaker 1: as they're often motivated by differing ideologies. But when you
Speaker 1: look back at that Heidelberg one, you know, those could
Speaker 1: fall under autonomy or de colonization, secession, things like that,
Speaker 1: so they break it out a little bit more finely. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one one thought that that came to mind as I
Speaker 1: was looking through this is of course, that you're talking
Speaker 1: about fears of mankind and and these different motivations. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to note that that the fear of
Speaker 1: the other is always a key motivator, be it a racial, cultural,
Speaker 1: or linguistic other. The hurdles to our ability to to
Speaker 1: do this continue to pose one of the leading threats
Speaker 1: to peace. That we we inevitably have this just ingrained
Speaker 1: in us, This this barrier to seeing individuals in another
Speaker 1: group as being like us, is having the same values
Speaker 1: as us, Is it indeed being part of us? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know my favorite example of this, and this isn't
Speaker 1: like an endorsement of the show, I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people have issues with it, but Lost they straight
Speaker 1: up had a group of characters called the Others on
Speaker 1: the Island. That was that really uh demonstrated this in
Speaker 1: a good way and that it was like, Okay, they
Speaker 1: are other from us. We think of them as being
Speaker 1: outside of us and a threat, right and and almost
Speaker 1: not even human in some cases. Uh, And it was
Speaker 1: it was a it was a nice analogy for what
Speaker 1: you're talking about there. Um, if you put it another way.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Kenneth Walts who's an international relations theorist,
Speaker 1: and he talks about it as the individual is the
Speaker 1: first category of the cause of war. And he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe human nature is the locus of the causes of war.
Speaker 1: We can find it in the behavior of mankind. But
Speaker 1: we're essentially talking about things like selfishness, misdirected, aggressive impulses,
Speaker 1: and and and while these are Waltz his terms, stupidity,
Speaker 1: and he says, look uplifting and enlightening men may lead
Speaker 1: to the elimination of war. So that's why we have
Speaker 1: to study this, we need to scrutinize it um and
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep coming back to that. And I would say,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't want to put like words
Speaker 1: in the author's not but I would assume that part
Speaker 1: of the project with the expense, is to enlighten people
Speaker 1: to what causes war so that in real life were
Speaker 1: less likely to just engage in that aggression. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have so many different media representations of war is
Speaker 1: just this noble and like even today we see these, uh,
Speaker 1: these these examples of it as this noble enterprise. And
Speaker 1: in our video games, like when we were talking about
Speaker 1: PTSD in the previous so we talked about how like
Speaker 1: so much of the so many of these games are
Speaker 1: just they just glorify, uh, the violent details of war
Speaker 1: and turn it into pure entertainment. And occasionally you'll have
Speaker 1: a game, I forget the name of the game in
Speaker 1: particular that a number of our listeners said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this one really focuses on PTSD a bit, but of
Speaker 1: course no. But basically nobody wanted to play that game
Speaker 1: because it it did not offer the the glorious vision
Speaker 1: of warfare that we've come to expect from entertainment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and also I think we would be out of
Speaker 1: line if we didn't at least give this some acknowledgment
Speaker 1: that in Waltz and in other referrals to war, and
Speaker 1: they referred to it very specifically as mankind and men.
Speaker 1: And you may be saying, well, why why are we
Speaker 1: using those terms instead of humankind. Well, there's actually a
Speaker 1: whole set of feminist theories around the causes of war
Speaker 1: that argue that due to the gendered nature of states
Speaker 1: and cultures, that this contributes to the persistence of war
Speaker 1: in our world politics. So for me, like oddly enough,
Speaker 1: the best fictional example I can think of what this
Speaker 1: would be Wonder Woman, um, which is about to be
Speaker 1: pretty popularized, I think, even more than she already is
Speaker 1: in American consciousness. But there's a big movie about to
Speaker 1: come up this somewhere. Um. But you know, she comes
Speaker 1: from this nation of women that live in peace away
Speaker 1: from men, but they're also a warlike culture, and they're
Speaker 1: capable of mass destruction. Like they they're they're amazons, you know,
Speaker 1: they're literally they're referred to um, so if men invade
Speaker 1: their territory, they're they're like this incredibly powerful military force,
Speaker 1: but but on their own they live in total peace.
Speaker 1: Um Levy argues though, that feminist theories treat gender systems
Speaker 1: as a constant. Again like this is his like argument
Speaker 1: against human nature as being capable of explaining war because
Speaker 1: of all the variations, and so he says, look that
Speaker 1: that also can't explain these variations in war. It's worth
Speaker 1: having as part of our sort of set of tools
Speaker 1: to look at war with. But he doesn't think that's
Speaker 1: the single answer. Well, and it's I've I've studied some
Speaker 1: of this, but before the question, well what have what
Speaker 1: have we had? Matriarchal cultures they engage in the same
Speaker 1: level of war, And you kind of see arguments on
Speaker 1: both sides. Some people say, oh, yes, we would, uh,
Speaker 1: a female lead society would be just as likely to
Speaker 1: engage in warfare as a male lead society. But I mean,
Speaker 1: basically it comes down to the fact we have so
Speaker 1: few models to actually look to on that that we
Speaker 1: we did, we're essentially starting from zero. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: that is connected to We're gonna talk about hegemony in
Speaker 1: a little bit here, but I think to like again,
Speaker 1: because we don't have examples that we can really look
Speaker 1: to as that say, like one way or the other,
Speaker 1: whether it's gendered or not, as the main cause, it's
Speaker 1: difficult to parse out because we don't have a language
Speaker 1: for understanding it any other way. Um, So that I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: like I said, there's a lot more to the human
Speaker 1: nature argument. Well, we've in and out of that, but
Speaker 1: that's essentially the human nature psychological component. And then we
Speaker 1: come to the economic argument. This is tied into the
Speaker 1: the Ishmael quote that we had earlier, and this, I
Speaker 1: would say, is where the expanse really seems to fall
Speaker 1: in terms of like what's causing war in the in
Speaker 1: the in storyline, Uh, we're essentially talking here about a
Speaker 1: competition for natural resources and wealth. There's national and international
Speaker 1: and in this case interplanetary power and resources. Now, these
Speaker 1: resources could be precious materials, or they could be livestock
Speaker 1: or natural resources like like oil or minerals. And some
Speaker 1: people believe that as the world's population increases, there's going
Speaker 1: to be an increase in the amount of wars that
Speaker 1: we have because we're gonna be fighting over fundamental essentials
Speaker 1: such as water and food, and this is this is
Speaker 1: kind of what we see playing out on an interplanetary
Speaker 1: level in the expanse right. Oh yeah, I mean especially water.
Speaker 1: The the need for water and among among the Belters
Speaker 1: is one of the key plot points that comes up
Speaker 1: again an Yeah, and Mars too, I think, because like
Speaker 1: they had this amazing technology, but they're on Mars and
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's there's not enough. If there's water
Speaker 1: there in this future, there's not enough to to serve
Speaker 1: the population that's there. And they keep talking about how
Speaker 1: they're under like domed cities and everything. They don't breathe
Speaker 1: natural air um and so yeah, and then air of
Speaker 1: course as well would be a commodity um, depending on
Speaker 1: how they generate it. Yeah. And then if you want
Speaker 1: whiskey then and you're in the belt, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to depend on that moss whiskey. You know, I gotta
Speaker 1: say I I would that. That's the thing. I was
Speaker 1: the most surprised by him saying, like, where are they
Speaker 1: getting all this booze from? Yeah? Yeah, he comes out
Speaker 1: more in the books, but but there's there are a
Speaker 1: lot of discussions, uh with the Thomas James's character where
Speaker 1: he's talking about drinking moss whiskey, and at one point
Speaker 1: he's eating a meal where he has some there's some
Speaker 1: real beans in there, but they're also some that grown beans.
Speaker 1: So there's there's there's so many details that are thrown
Speaker 1: out there and in the books but also incorporated into
Speaker 1: the show. Give you this this idea of the the
Speaker 1: the economics of the world, you're you're immersing yourself in. Well,
Speaker 1: Thomas James's character is pretty much constantly drinking, which is
Speaker 1: one of my you know, amusements of his character. But
Speaker 1: that that was definitely something I was like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: fits the like noir detective thing with his character. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's his character's name. Um man, Yeah, he's he's great
Speaker 1: in this. I'm I'm a Thomas Jane fan. Anyways, as
Speaker 1: you'll probably be able to tell from the ad reads,
Speaker 1: takes dance in this. But but yeah, he's really good
Speaker 1: in it. And yeahs I was immediately thinking probably two
Speaker 1: three episodes and I was like, wait a minute, where
Speaker 1: is he just getting all of this booze from He's
Speaker 1: just constantly doing it. Yeah, So okay, the economic argument
Speaker 1: falls under Kenneth Waltz his second explanation for war, and again,
Speaker 1: like we come back to like various explanations, right, is
Speaker 1: it is it um human nature? Is it economic? And
Speaker 1: he says, yeah, economic, but it's more about the state.
Speaker 1: And he argues that the social and political institutions that
Speaker 1: we create for ourselves, they should be seen as a
Speaker 1: factor in creating war. And if human nature can be
Speaker 1: changed through institutions, which is I would say, essentially like
Speaker 1: the basis of our of our society, right, like the
Speaker 1: idea that like we can live, we can coexist peacefully
Speaker 1: under institutions. Uh that, then those institutions should be our
Speaker 1: focus for stopping war. Yeah, because of course humans have
Speaker 1: always competed for resources, just as all species do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it goes back to that that Ishmael quote. Uh we
Speaker 1: and we even wiped out such competing intelligent hominid species
Speaker 1: as the Neanderthals in this very way. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you ever want a model for how humans would coexist
Speaker 1: with another intelligent species, that is sadly our best, our
Speaker 1: best example. It makes me think of and we've we've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show a bit lately, But
Speaker 1: like the Prometheus myth, like you know, fire was given
Speaker 1: to us by the gods but ultimately ends up causing problems,
Speaker 1: and war is one of those. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the Neanderthals, you can you can
Speaker 1: look back and there are different arguments about how all
Speaker 1: this actually played out. But exterminating a species just by
Speaker 1: out competing them sort of accidental genocide, I guess, is
Speaker 1: one thing. But to actively wage war over the resources,
Speaker 1: to say I will wipe you out, to get into
Speaker 1: that that sort of you know, that Hellenistic model of
Speaker 1: destroy your enemy city and the dissault the earth, that's
Speaker 1: a that's another thing entirely. Well, why don't we take
Speaker 1: a break and when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: continue on with these causes of war. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: So I know we have a number of fallout fans
Speaker 1: out there. So that quote, famous quote generally uh, narrated
Speaker 1: by Ron Perlman is probably bouncing around in your brain.
Speaker 1: War never changes. But that's that's what you get read
Speaker 1: to you at the beginning of the game. Is your
Speaker 1: your characters walking away with a dog? Yeah, And uh.
Speaker 1: The thing about that quote is that, yes, on one hand,
Speaker 1: the horror of war remains the death of innocence remains
Speaker 1: one of its central tenants. Uh mutual assured destruction being
Speaker 1: the perhaps the purest modern version of this. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about nuclear strikes between superpowers, you're talking about megadeaths
Speaker 1: of civilians. Nice metal reference there, Dave Mustan would be, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where they gotta leave. That's where the Yeah. Megadeath
Speaker 1: is a U is basically a way to to measure
Speaker 1: the death that would occur during a large scale nuclear war.
Speaker 1: But even on on like lower levels, there's just horror
Speaker 1: at every level. At two thousand and ten b MJ
Speaker 1: published study pointed out that quote the use of rape
Speaker 1: as a weapon of war has assumed strategic importance unquote
Speaker 1: in in the in the wake of the Second World War.
Speaker 1: So war is is and has always been nothing short
Speaker 1: of just an obscenity. There's your gendered nature of it again.
Speaker 1: And yet to to you know, we can say, all right, Ron,
Speaker 1: you're you're right for the most part. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, weapons and tactics evolve, as does the shape
Speaker 1: of war, the exact definition of the thing, the ethical
Speaker 1: boundaries of war. We invoke modern laws of war even
Speaker 1: as we've been to break them. UH. The and even
Speaker 1: the laws of war are ancient. Two. We can find
Speaker 1: examples of them in the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic. We
Speaker 1: find them in the Torah. And much discussion continues even
Speaker 1: to this day on the idea of just war theory,
Speaker 1: the idea that you know, if you if you fall,
Speaker 1: if you follow certain parameters both in the execution and
Speaker 1: the reason for war, then there is a just use
Speaker 1: of it. People are still divided on that. Yeah, right, interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see some of that throughout these theoretical UH applications.
Speaker 1: But also just like the scholars that are struggling with
Speaker 1: this are like trying to come to grips with not
Speaker 1: only like how this works in the grand scheme of humanity,
Speaker 1: but then like in the present tense, right, like like
Speaker 1: how do I apply this to the situation of maybe
Speaker 1: the nation state that I exist in that's currently at war. Now,
Speaker 1: we've already discussed a number of different theories for for
Speaker 1: why we have war, how war works, where it came from.
Speaker 1: Various theories have covered this one that I always thought
Speaker 1: had a nice ring to it. Uh. And again this
Speaker 1: is probably an overly simplistic model there, but there are
Speaker 1: those who are that basically need a few things to
Speaker 1: come together for warfare to be practical. You need surplus
Speaker 1: resources to to necessitate high risk raids and high speed
Speaker 1: mounts to make this sort of long distant strike feasible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very much. Again, in an economic sense, comes down to
Speaker 1: a risk reward. So there's there's some out there who
Speaker 1: have said but basically comes down to the horse. Before
Speaker 1: individuals had horses, you just weren't able to really wage
Speaker 1: something that was that was war as we think of
Speaker 1: it today. Not everyone agrees with that, but like I
Speaker 1: said that, the basic economic nut of that, I think
Speaker 1: is is very interesting to think about, and as we're
Speaker 1: gonna look to toward the end of this episode, but
Speaker 1: also in the context of the expanse, I mean, once
Speaker 1: we once we invent interplanetary space travel and we have
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's the next horse essentially, right, although
Speaker 1: I would argue, like the airplane, probably the car and
Speaker 1: then the airplane, right because as we're going to discuss,
Speaker 1: all of these things can be used as weapons on
Speaker 1: their own without even having weapons attached to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when you end up having states and empire, the
Speaker 1: rise of states and empires in human civilization. This changes
Speaker 1: war as well, so they're waging war for resources but
Speaker 1: also for plunder for slave labor. Uh. As William M.
Speaker 1: Dugger pointed out in as a piece online Evolution Theory
Speaker 1: Social Sciences, Volume three, you need the slaves to work
Speaker 1: the natural world into things that you you needed from
Speaker 1: the countryside. And you also needed the slaves to keep
Speaker 1: your cities running. Well. Uh, the places and these are
Speaker 1: the places where you grew and maintain the military required
Speaker 1: to power this sort of awful war based convection of empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that is definitely like one road empire studies
Speaker 1: are like imperial studies. But all of this leads us
Speaker 1: to the question of whether or not the causes of
Speaker 1: war derived from either international systems, national systems, or individual
Speaker 1: decision makers. Right, So we get back to is it
Speaker 1: is it just one person who's leading us to this
Speaker 1: or is there something fundamentally flawed with the institutions that
Speaker 1: we've created for ourselves. And I would say maybe it's
Speaker 1: all three, right, and I probably a lot of these
Speaker 1: studies would too, But possibly it's just one given the
Speaker 1: various scenarios. Right, So, key actors in world politics, they're
Speaker 1: currently seen as sovereign states that are quote acting rationally
Speaker 1: to advance their own security, power, and wealth. That's essentially
Speaker 1: again like the risk reward model, right, Like, all they
Speaker 1: want to do is make sure that their people are secure,
Speaker 1: they have power over at least their own destinies and
Speaker 1: the wealth to lead I guess, happy lifestyles. Now, the
Speaker 1: basics of this are what's referred to as the realist
Speaker 1: theory of war, and that is basically that the distribution
Speaker 1: of power is the primary factor in shaping international outcomes.
Speaker 1: And it's it's complicated. It gets even more complicated by
Speaker 1: making assumptions about foreign policy choices in the outcomes of
Speaker 1: various nation states. I mean, we see this playing out
Speaker 1: in the news every day, actually, right like Like so
Speaker 1: an example right now would be like the Russian hacking scandal, right,
Speaker 1: and we see that and it's always in the papers
Speaker 1: referred to as Russia did X or Russia is thought
Speaker 1: to have done why. Right, it's not Russia, it's not
Speaker 1: all of Russia's citizens. It's people within the institutions. If
Speaker 1: that's the case, right, But then you have to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: is it their institution that's flawed or is it again
Speaker 1: like some people say, oh, it's a key actor, it's Putin.
Speaker 1: Putin is the one that's influencing the institution negatively, right,
Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, it's really difficult, like super con
Speaker 1: complex too to dive into, especially on a current events scale. Right,
Speaker 1: you need like years away from stuff like this and
Speaker 1: many more facts than we have to be able to
Speaker 1: make a decision one way or the other. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think it was David Simon who made the comparison between
Speaker 1: our modern world and the world of of of ancient myth.
Speaker 1: In the ancient myth, you had heroes and you had gods,
Speaker 1: and both both exerted a tremendous amount of power. Um
Speaker 1: more so with the gods, but the heroes could really
Speaker 1: turn the tide as well. And today instead of God's
Speaker 1: we have systems and uh, but we still have a
Speaker 1: place for the individual, and the individual can still be
Speaker 1: tremendously influential or can just be crushed under the heels
Speaker 1: of said god like system. Man, you and I have
Speaker 1: been circling around this topic for a while now and
Speaker 1: I hadn't even realized it. We did the hero episode
Speaker 1: recently or heroism, but then the Wicked Problems episode definitely
Speaker 1: ties into this as well, like it certainly war as
Speaker 1: a wicked problem. Yeah, I mean anytime we cover the
Speaker 1: human condition, I mean essentially we're going to be dealing
Speaker 1: it's on some level with with war. And I gotta
Speaker 1: say David Simon, but my go to guy for quotes
Speaker 1: pretty much always trust trust him with what he's saying.
Speaker 1: I follow him on Twitter and I find insights from
Speaker 1: him almost every day. The guy is crazy smart and
Speaker 1: has just really um if you're not, I guess I
Speaker 1: should say who. David Simon is author Homicide, Life on
Speaker 1: the Streets and uh and later of course The Wire
Speaker 1: May Uh so various other projects he's been involved with.
Speaker 1: Those are probably the two big ones recent. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's how more particularly did a war based when Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's called Generation Kill and is is excellent, maybe the
Speaker 1: best depiction of modern war that I've ever seen in entertainment. Okay,
Speaker 1: So out of these arguments that we're talking about comes
Speaker 1: these capitalist economic systems, and they're seen actually as being
Speaker 1: the best guaranteers of peace. So basically it goes like this,
Speaker 1: that the state has trade and that generates economic advantages
Speaker 1: for state parties, and that the anticipation of war would
Speaker 1: disrupt trade, right, so it would also reduce the welfare
Speaker 1: of the people who were living within these nations states.
Speaker 1: So some argue that this is what led to the
Speaker 1: sort of current model of what's referred to as neoliberalism
Speaker 1: that we in the United States existent. Um, but you're
Speaker 1: basically looking at like the the argument is that, like,
Speaker 1: as long as we keep free market trade going on
Speaker 1: between international or in the case of the experience, interplanetary states,
Speaker 1: then that's like a deterrent for war. It's also this
Speaker 1: is the point where I think we should address hegemony.
Speaker 1: Although man hegemony is a really tough topic to dive into,
Speaker 1: I I gotta say, just from me personally, it is
Speaker 1: such a difficult concept that it's still being ironed out
Speaker 1: in many academic circles. But I studied it in graduate
Speaker 1: school and it left my head spinning after every class. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, the most difficult book I've ever read is
Speaker 1: called Hegemony and Socialist Strategy by ERNESTO. Leclow and chantel
Speaker 1: Moof uh, that book, it was like, you know, any
Speaker 1: any like a piece of literature that people say is
Speaker 1: like really difficult, like Thomas Pension or David Foster Wallace
Speaker 1: or something like that, or James Joyce, like, this thing
Speaker 1: was so much harder than any time I've tried to
Speaker 1: tackle stuff like that. But let's try to take a
Speaker 1: stab here. It's just a short definition of hegemony so
Speaker 1: we can line it up because I think it works
Speaker 1: within the parameters of the expense and what we're talking
Speaker 1: about now. This is from the Salem Press Encyclopedia entry,
Speaker 1: and the term hegemony is used to refer to a group, state,
Speaker 1: or other entity that exhibits political or cultural dominance over
Speaker 1: another group. And it's used in political science to refer
Speaker 1: to usually countries or states that exert powers over one another.
Speaker 1: But the ancient Greeks actually developed the term uh, and
Speaker 1: they used it to describe the interaction of their city states,
Speaker 1: which were called polis polus is uh with nearby territory,
Speaker 1: so how those city states interacted with their neighbors. Essentially today,
Speaker 1: though it really refers to the domineering behavior of one
Speaker 1: group over another, it may not even necessarily be national actors. Now,
Speaker 1: the power that's wielded by one group over another in
Speaker 1: this case could be military and nature, which you know
Speaker 1: leads to war. But more often it comes due to
Speaker 1: financial or technological superiority, which is backed by military authority.
Speaker 1: We see that in the expanse, certainly with with Earth
Speaker 1: and then how it's connected to the Belt right like
Speaker 1: Earth has you know, they're not like at war with
Speaker 1: the Belt, but they are dominant over the belt and
Speaker 1: they're they're backing that both with their trade of things
Speaker 1: like water, but also with their military authority. The United States,
Speaker 1: for instance, is understood to rise to hegemonic status partly
Speaker 1: because of petroleum production and the rise of the automobile.
Speaker 1: Another example in the expense would be that Mars has
Speaker 1: the this like superior technology, but Earth has access to
Speaker 1: resources like air and water. That's what puts them in dominance.
Speaker 1: Usually a hegemonic power encourages cooperation before they resort to force.
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not necessarily always militaristic and warlike uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, more often than not it's it's seen
Speaker 1: as being ideological. Yeah, but of course it's always worth
Speaker 1: remembering that that war is always in the background. War
Speaker 1: enforce is always in the background of any kind of
Speaker 1: of law and enforcement of law, and even when it
Speaker 1: comes down to paying your taxes, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: long line of things that happen if you don't pay
Speaker 1: your taxes, but the end result can be an official
Speaker 1: showing up at your door armed. So right, it's it's
Speaker 1: always there in the background. I mean you could tie
Speaker 1: that into the the Heidelberg variations and like secessionists or
Speaker 1: autonomous war movements. Um. Now, last bit about hegemony here
Speaker 1: the modern thought modern studies on it were heavily influenced
Speaker 1: by a guy named Antonio gramsc and gram She argued
Speaker 1: that ideology and ways of thinking also acted hegemonically, and
Speaker 1: he wrote these ideas while he was imprisoned as a
Speaker 1: communist during the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy.
Speaker 1: So he basically had I think it was like forty
Speaker 1: something like little notebooks that he filled with these ideas
Speaker 1: that were published later. And he thought that hegemony meant
Speaker 1: that the dominant group maintains its control through consent. So
Speaker 1: to your taxes. Example, I consent to paying these taxes, right, Um,
Speaker 1: that that that's basically how it's maintained. But there's always
Speaker 1: possibility of force behind it. This included social classes and
Speaker 1: not just national actors. So in addition, the dominant group
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily control all of the areas of a subordinated culture.
Speaker 1: So this is why we have such a heavy amount
Speaker 1: of subcultural theory and studies in universities now entire ideological
Speaker 1: systems like democracy, those can be seen as hegemonic. Gram
Speaker 1: She even argued that such concepts are dominant because they
Speaker 1: seem common and they seem natural to those of us.
Speaker 1: But that's because we exist within them, right. So for example,
Speaker 1: the common common example used to illustrate current hegemony would
Speaker 1: be like the idea that America is a Christian nation
Speaker 1: even though it's got a broad diversity of religious beliefs. Um,
Speaker 1: this stuff is really difficult to talk about, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, because and gram She and other theorists have
Speaker 1: argued this since then, the very language we use in
Speaker 1: society is formed by whatever the dominant ideology is. Subsequently,
Speaker 1: that makes it difficult to talk about anything that would
Speaker 1: be close to change. So basically, the the hegemonic idea
Speaker 1: here is sort of overlaid on top of all of
Speaker 1: these causes of war alright, So it's war plays on,
Speaker 1: and the the culture of war plays on and undoubtedly
Speaker 1: becomes an enterprise that moves cultures, religions, trade routes, customs,
Speaker 1: all manner of human creations and humans too, across vast distances.
Speaker 1: And it also advances technologies. It serves as the driving
Speaker 1: energy behind human endeavors and mega projects. Uh So, for many,
Speaker 1: War is highly profitable. And that that means if you're
Speaker 1: the head of an industry, if you're a CEO. But
Speaker 1: also it means if you're just at some point down
Speaker 1: the chain, you're benefiting from the technology. UM you know,
Speaker 1: the very a lot a lot of times you can
Speaker 1: think of like the very small, uh everyday technologies that
Speaker 1: came out of the Space Race, which of course was
Speaker 1: was part of the Cold War, part of this competition
Speaker 1: between um two superpowers. Yeah, and we see that in
Speaker 1: the expanse as well too. They they did. I kind
Speaker 1: of suspect that the people who work on this show,
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll get something from Duran Shankar about this,
Speaker 1: that they have done their homework like you and and
Speaker 1: before they sat down and they executed this massive project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like the show lines up with with pretty
Speaker 1: much everything we we found in research for this episode. Now,
Speaker 1: War of course also unifies. It has a way of
Speaker 1: distracting individuals from domestic woes, in large part by invoking
Speaker 1: and exploiting the threat of the other. And studies to
Speaker 1: have shown that the horrors of war hardened group bonds,
Speaker 1: and so we end up with just war beginning more war. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, Levy he mentions this is what is referred
Speaker 1: to as the rally round the flag effect, which always
Speaker 1: makes me think of that the page against the machine,
Speaker 1: so rally around the flag. But basically the idea here
Speaker 1: is that leaders anticipate popular support during war, and so
Speaker 1: sometimes it's tempting for them to undertake risky foreign ventures
Speaker 1: or policy simply to bolster their own support. So that's
Speaker 1: something to keep in mind. That is a that is
Speaker 1: a terrifying statement, I think for for everyone to hear
Speaker 1: it right now. But yeah, it's quite scary and not
Speaker 1: the scariest thing that we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: the podcast today. But um, sometimes this is referred to
Speaker 1: in the literature as diversionary theory of war, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's also done through scapegoating connected to ethno nationalism. So
Speaker 1: not only are you sort of connecting the leader is
Speaker 1: connecting the nation state to community and power, but ethnicity
Speaker 1: to the nation as well, very dangerous stuff as we've
Speaker 1: seen in the past. Now in the expanse, this maybe
Speaker 1: what's going on with both Earth and the Belt as
Speaker 1: they are arguing for war UH to possibly solidify their
Speaker 1: own political power, right like the like the terrorist organization
Speaker 1: and the Belt, like they're basically arguing for autonomy so
Speaker 1: they can solidify their own power, right but like likewise,
Speaker 1: Earth wants to solidify their power by keeping the Belt
Speaker 1: under their control so that they have UH an organization
Speaker 1: that's out in space that can can match or at
Speaker 1: least keep them up to date on what's going on
Speaker 1: with Mars and A. According to Levy, democratic leaders who
Speaker 1: initiate wars like this what I was talking about, where
Speaker 1: they're they're scapegoating or where they do the rally around
Speaker 1: the flag effect that's usually unsuccessful and they're more likely
Speaker 1: to be thrown out of power than non democratic ones.
Speaker 1: So that's I suppose encouraging at least. The personal cost though,
Speaker 1: can be much greater to authoritarian leaders, So that makes sense, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're an authoritarian leader and you you end up
Speaker 1: taking your nation to war, like if the results are poor,
Speaker 1: either your people are going to overthrow you and probably
Speaker 1: kill you, or you're going to be killed in the
Speaker 1: war that you've conducted. So then this leads to another
Speaker 1: like section of war theory, which is essentially demographic in nature. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea here being that population growth leads to scarce resources,
Speaker 1: which we mentioned earlier. The ethno nationalism ties into this,
Speaker 1: but also something that's called youth bulge theory, and it's
Speaker 1: I don't think it's what you're thinking of. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: actually an older episode of Stuff to Blow your mind
Speaker 1: and went into this a little bit. I believe it
Speaker 1: was the teenage Brain, Okay, and it talks about In
Speaker 1: that episode, we explored how the teenage brain is different
Speaker 1: from an adult brain, that there's there are different priorities,
Speaker 1: like biological priority, priorities to break away from your essentially
Speaker 1: your tribe, to find a new tribe, to find a mate. Thing, issues,
Speaker 1: threats all feel that much more immediate. You know, it's
Speaker 1: that you're young. You feel like you can change the
Speaker 1: world or you should change the world, kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: You and I have established previously on the show that
Speaker 1: the human brain doesn't finish even of all until age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of one way to think of the teenager.
Speaker 1: Think of the teenager is like a winged ant that's
Speaker 1: supposed to fly and found a new colony. That's essentially
Speaker 1: the idea. So that ties into youth bullge theory. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea that it depends on how many young people
Speaker 1: you have around. And I know this kind of sounds
Speaker 1: like blame the young people for everybody everything, blame millennials
Speaker 1: or whatever. But I mean, these are the stats. About
Speaker 1: eight of the world's civil con flick since the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies have occurred in countries with young, fast growing populations.
Speaker 1: And this is all according to analysis by the nonprofit
Speaker 1: Population Action International. So youth boom contributed to the rise
Speaker 1: of the Nazis in nineteen thirties too, also contributed to
Speaker 1: Japan's military ambitions in the Pacific, Imperial Japan, UH Tenement
Speaker 1: Square protests in China sixties seventies, countercultural revolution in the West.
Speaker 1: Afghanistan experiencing youth bulge in the years following the two
Speaker 1: thousand one US invasion. So you know, all this is
Speaker 1: not to say that youth bulge leads directly to war
Speaker 1: or unrest. In fact, I mean in the counterculture revolution,
Speaker 1: I think you can you can look to the opposite.
Speaker 1: You can see like a youth bulge movement for for
Speaker 1: for peace however, um, it just provides ample kindling still
Speaker 1: for so for it for social spark of religious or
Speaker 1: ethnic friction, friction, political rivalry, economic disparages, uh, food shortages,
Speaker 1: what have you? Like? It there, the young people were there,
Speaker 1: they have the numbers, they're they're ready to do something.
Speaker 1: What is going to be the thing that animates them? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And what is going to be that? What is going
Speaker 1: to be the methodology they employed? You know, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't have notes about this in front of me.
Speaker 1: This is pure speculation, But I wonder how youth bulge
Speaker 1: theory ties into planning what the draft ages for a
Speaker 1: nation's military, if it has a draft. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: always understood it as being like, well, of course, like
Speaker 1: the draft ages, what's twenty five here in the United States? Something?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, is it the same thing as when
Speaker 1: your brain stops evolving? No? Surely not the cut off? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the cut off age? I'm not sure about the
Speaker 1: cut off, but I guess what I'm getting at is
Speaker 1: like I'd always thought that the draft age was was
Speaker 1: connected to you know, youthfulness being that like you're at
Speaker 1: the peak of your physical acumen, right, like you you
Speaker 1: would be the most efficient at war, whereas like you
Speaker 1: and me at a current age would be okay, but
Speaker 1: like we're probably better off hanging back in the offices
Speaker 1: and doing strategy and podcasts. But you know, yeah, part
Speaker 1: of it would seem to be that the mind is perfect, right, that,
Speaker 1: like the mind is prepared for war and malleable. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So now the last bit in terms of causes that
Speaker 1: I just want to add in here is referred to
Speaker 1: as rationalism, uh, in terms of whether or not you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about territorial gain or maybe a community slash
Speaker 1: nation expanding in nature. Kenneth walt calls this the third
Speaker 1: and final cause for war. He locates it as being
Speaker 1: a description of an international system that has the authority
Speaker 1: to stop states from forcefully pursuing their own interests. So
Speaker 1: ideally this is what the United Nations would be for us, right,
Speaker 1: but it's possible we live in a condition of what
Speaker 1: Waltz refers to as international anarchy. Uh. In that he says, well,
Speaker 1: do we actually have a supreme authority that can just
Speaker 1: stop war? In its tracks, he says without basically, international
Speaker 1: anarchy under his terms, is a permissive or underlying cause
Speaker 1: of war. And we have too many limitations on the
Speaker 1: cooperation between states in our current international system, because, unlike
Speaker 1: in the expanse, at least is how it's been portrayed
Speaker 1: so far on the TV show, Earth is like a
Speaker 1: unified planet that the United Nations actually runs. Presumably there aren't,
Speaker 1: although we do know that there are sort of like
Speaker 1: militia movements, right, um, because one of the main characters
Speaker 1: it was like raised in like a militia sort of
Speaker 1: cult kind of um. But but more so just that
Speaker 1: like they don't seem to be dealing with international war,
Speaker 1: right They're more concerned about what's going on with Mars.
Speaker 1: They seem to have a sub star Trek level of
Speaker 1: control over their plans. Yeah, that's a good example. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about Star Truck as well in terms of, like, uh,
Speaker 1: what the United Nations is ideally supposed to do, right,
Speaker 1: I guess the United Federation of Planets in that case.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take another quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to take everything we've been
Speaker 1: talking about here. What we know about war in the present,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna extrapolate that into the interplanetary future. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So now it's time where we get into
Speaker 1: the I don't want to say fun stuff, but the
Speaker 1: science fiction stuff, uh, and taking these theories that we've
Speaker 1: set up in the beginning half of the show and
Speaker 1: kind of extrapolate them outward. How's this going to look
Speaker 1: on an interplanetary scale. Well, fortunately, we have so many
Speaker 1: wonderful and not so wonderful sci fi examples to look
Speaker 1: to when it comes to interplanetary war. But but let's
Speaker 1: stop to consider just the notion of interplanetary war within
Speaker 1: our solar system versus that of interstellar war war between
Speaker 1: between planets and planet terry civilizations that are in separate
Speaker 1: star systems. Okay. One of the issues here, of course,
Speaker 1: is just the very nature of science fiction. Science fiction
Speaker 1: dreams of the future, but it's often about the present,
Speaker 1: or or even about the past. It's an extrapolation of
Speaker 1: our current concerns and anxieties technological, political, spiritual, social, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Taking all of this and then gazing into the future.
Speaker 1: Every science fiction property speaks from a particular vantage point. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think that is what makes science fiction so compelling,
Speaker 1: and especially something like the expense. I mean, when I
Speaker 1: watch the expanse, it is not lost on me, like
Speaker 1: here are some lessons or commentary that we can take
Speaker 1: insights away from based on our current situation. Clearly, it's
Speaker 1: obvious that it was written in a post nine eleven
Speaker 1: world exactly, and so when we envision the future. When
Speaker 1: we're trying to envision war in the future, well we
Speaker 1: can only take what we have now and extrapolated. In
Speaker 1: the case of larger scale hot wars between major nation states,
Speaker 1: we're thankfully forced to contemplate older models of warfare, the
Speaker 1: world Wars and all of their their horror and and
Speaker 1: truly globe spanning industry. I think we always have to
Speaker 1: remember that the Second World War was truly a global affair.
Speaker 1: Virtually no part of the world remained untouched by it,
Speaker 1: if not by the actual combat, then at least by
Speaker 1: the economic models of it. Uh. We touched on this
Speaker 1: a bit in our Cargo Cults episode. Likewise, we often
Speaker 1: tend to fall back on our own colonial history, complete
Speaker 1: with its wars and genocides, in order to envision the
Speaker 1: founding of off world colonies and the possible splintering of
Speaker 1: planet based states. So let's let's consider that um ran
Speaker 1: across A nice source on this. Astrophysicist Michael H. Hart
Speaker 1: wrote about the matter in the book Interstellar Migration and
Speaker 1: the Human Experience, this being a collection of essays by
Speaker 1: different individuals, and he pointed out a few key things
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when applying Earth affairs to an
Speaker 1: interplanetary or interstellar setting. So, first of all, space is huge.
Speaker 1: While technology is drastically reduced terrestrial travel to a matter
Speaker 1: of hours, quote, there is no reasonable hope that future
Speaker 1: technology will ever succeed in reducing interstellar travel times two months. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, we were simply contained in this via
Speaker 1: the confines of special relativity, bearing some amazing, miraculous breakthrough.
Speaker 1: We can't beat a beam of light in a drag dice, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that this is an important point to to
Speaker 1: just like throw in like we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: the realities of it, but also like the fictional popularity
Speaker 1: of it, and of course, like what is the biggest
Speaker 1: fictional especially science fictional property right now that everybody knows
Speaker 1: and loves Star Wars, right, but like when you look
Speaker 1: at that there it's interstellar. And I mean, i'd say,
Speaker 1: other than the prequels, it's not necessarily about actual war, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it isn't. It isn't, but not in the
Speaker 1: way that we're talking about here. It's more about like
Speaker 1: a group of characters. Yeah, because the reality is that,
Speaker 1: based on our understanding of special relativity, a star to
Speaker 1: star travel would likely work out to at least a
Speaker 1: fifty year journey. And that's the Kessel run, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is not again, this is this is based
Speaker 1: on what we know conceivable future known technologies and and
Speaker 1: foreseeable technologies. This is the limit. This is like a
Speaker 1: hard reality limit, hard argues. So based on this galactic colonization, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be possible you could have this sort of
Speaker 1: uh you know, Ian in Banks culture universe, Star Wars, Dune,
Speaker 1: what have you. But it would require two million years
Speaker 1: of human endeavor, and during that time we would change drastically,
Speaker 1: so century by century you'd have genetic advances, you'd have
Speaker 1: bimillennial cultural change, like you know, like two different major
Speaker 1: changes every millennium, major genetic engineering events occurring every ten
Speaker 1: thousand years, and natural evolution producing marked changes every million years.
Speaker 1: So basically, the human race that would be able to
Speaker 1: travel from one star to another would be indistinct. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't look like us like we wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: tell that they were. You would see change and splintering
Speaker 1: occurring at various levels. So, given the time frame, given
Speaker 1: the distances involved and the limits of travel, we're looking
Speaker 1: at a completely colonized galaxy in two million years, but
Speaker 1: one consisting of splintered civilizations and cultures, and even you
Speaker 1: could even say special uh to the turn of to
Speaker 1: the tune of a few hundred billion that to match
Speaker 1: the number of stars. Now. As a side note, Heart
Speaker 1: also throws out there that since two million years is
Speaker 1: a drop in the bucket compared to the Milky Way
Speaker 1: galaxies ten billion year history, it means that any other
Speaker 1: emergence civilization out there would have had the same odds,
Speaker 1: since nothing has seeming expanded throughout the Milky Way Galaxy
Speaker 1: in the previous two million year increment, He says, quote,
Speaker 1: we might reasonably infer that we are the first colonizing
Speaker 1: civilization in our galaxy, and for the moment, probably the
Speaker 1: only species with an advanced technology. If this is so,
Speaker 1: it will be our descendants, who are the who are
Speaker 1: likely to colonize and populate the entire galaxy. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: all these distances that we've been talking about, these issues
Speaker 1: would make it difficult, if not impossible, for a centralized
Speaker 1: power or emperor to maintain control over a year one
Speaker 1: hundred light year radius area, much less anything larger and
Speaker 1: uh and he Heart points to a quote by the
Speaker 1: late great author c Arthur C. Clark here, author of
Speaker 1: two thousand and one Space Odyssey, who said, all the
Speaker 1: starborn colonies of the future will be independent. Their liberty
Speaker 1: will be inviolably protected by time as well as space. Now.
Speaker 1: Heart also goes on to point out that various other
Speaker 1: factors contribute to the idea that war isn't going away
Speaker 1: anytime soon. If we move out into into other star systems. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says that most of the Milky Way Galaxy will
Speaker 1: become populated by more aggressive civilizations and species, and the
Speaker 1: long range forecast is for continued aggression, war, and change.
Speaker 1: There is a small silver lining here in Heart's prediction
Speaker 1: of a of a human populated galaxy that still has war.
Speaker 1: He says that that he believes that interstellar war would
Speaker 1: be rare, far more rarity than it is on Earth. Again,
Speaker 1: distance and travel have to be factored in. He says
Speaker 1: there might be a war every fifty thousand years in
Speaker 1: his estimation. Okay, and I think we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: a little bit of why that is. But that that
Speaker 1: calls into question, you know, when we look at these
Speaker 1: fictional examples, the expanse, you know that's about two d
Speaker 1: years from now. The idea I think that Heart is
Speaker 1: working from is that like, as we technologically and and
Speaker 1: biologically evolve, that we will become less of a warlike species.
Speaker 1: So he's working from I think the human nature composed
Speaker 1: well and just the limits because they're basically saying that
Speaker 1: as you're doing with such distances here, that the type
Speaker 1: of governments you see in Star Wars, Dune or Fireflies
Speaker 1: another example, Uh, these would just be fantastic. How would
Speaker 1: you possibly maintain dominance and rule over these vast distances? Now?
Speaker 1: Star Wars, Dune and Firefly they all work because you have,
Speaker 1: essentially because you have a magical faster than light travel
Speaker 1: system that pops up something that you know that the
Speaker 1: author doesn't have to really explain all that much, but
Speaker 1: it's there, and it makes this this super fast travel possible. Uh,
Speaker 1: it makes it comparable to the short travel times we
Speaker 1: experience now on Earth due to advanced technology. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: always wonder, like in Star Wars, especially in the newer ones,
Speaker 1: when I've been watching them in the theaters, like like
Speaker 1: how long is it actually taking them when they're like
Speaker 1: jumping into hyperspace? You know, like is it is it
Speaker 1: like what we see on the screen It like three
Speaker 1: minutes or like a couple of days, and we just
Speaker 1: you know, the director left some of that on the
Speaker 1: on the floor. They cut out, like the three days
Speaker 1: of them sitting around in the back of the Millennium
Speaker 1: Falcon playing that game with Yeah, that I wish someone
Speaker 1: would make that into a video game. That would be
Speaker 1: about now. It's worth knowing. On the Expanse, we do
Speaker 1: not they do not require such a leap of faith.
Speaker 1: The Expanse does not in the plot in that world
Speaker 1: does not involve a faster than a light uh speed
Speaker 1: travel system. They do have something that's called the Epstein drive,
Speaker 1: which is a major, a majorly important factor in that world,
Speaker 1: but it's not faster than a light. Faster than light
Speaker 1: travel remains impossible for humans in the expanse and therefore
Speaker 1: lines up with a lot of what Hart is saying here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's why we're able to see
Speaker 1: such realistic depictions of what's leading up to war on
Speaker 1: the expense as well. There's another theorist and author of
Speaker 1: nano medicine named Robert A. Free Tis Junior. I believe
Speaker 1: is how it's pronounced um, and he's often brought up
Speaker 1: along with Heart because he wrote in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: about coming up with a more cost effective search for
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial intelligence, and he did so by using the cardasche
Speaker 1: of scale, which you've probably heard us mentioned here before
Speaker 1: Robert and previous hosts on the show. I've actually covered it.
Speaker 1: There's I believe two episodes, right, it's a two parter.
Speaker 1: I think I want it's been a while videos and
Speaker 1: I've written stuff with the side about it. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: if you're unfamiliar with it, though, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you a real brief breakdown. But if you want to
Speaker 1: go back, we have previous content about that. Uh. Cardaschef
Speaker 1: scale is a theoretical scale that was created in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties by astrophysicist Nikolai Kardaschev, and it describes the
Speaker 1: level of advancement of a civilization based on its ability
Speaker 1: to harness the energy of its surrounding environment. He has
Speaker 1: three types. The first is Type one, masters of planetary energy.
Speaker 1: Type two are the masters of solar system or star
Speaker 1: our energy, and Type three are masters of galactic scale energy.
Speaker 1: So I think we're basically talking about gods at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: But Freightis argues that since only type two and three
Speaker 1: could realistically afford star probe technology, basically interstellar travel, that
Speaker 1: interstellar warfare would be trivial to civilizations like this. The
Speaker 1: energy expenditure of like what we would think of as
Speaker 1: their warships would be minimal compared to the resources that
Speaker 1: they have, So they wouldn't have the economic uh battles
Speaker 1: over you know, what resources they have for their ships
Speaker 1: or for their survival like water and air and food
Speaker 1: and oil or whatever what have you. Um, And so
Speaker 1: it's interesting, wouldn't war over economics be less likely than
Speaker 1: well in the expanse, it's arguable, I think there's still
Speaker 1: a Type one civilization, right, so that this line ends
Speaker 1: up with what Heart's talking about here. They they've only
Speaker 1: conquered the planetary resources, the energies of one planet. I
Speaker 1: haven't really gotten out of the Solar System as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. Yeah, and of course here in
Speaker 1: the actual modern world we're still level zero. So fumbling
Speaker 1: for that for the first rung on the ladder. It really,
Speaker 1: you know, thought exercises like this really make you consider
Speaker 1: and realize that we aren't all that in terms of
Speaker 1: like how we like to think that we're so far
Speaker 1: evolved along the line of human history. But it's like, well,
Speaker 1: in terms of what this guy imagined and was able
Speaker 1: to sort of quantify with this theoretical scale, we're still
Speaker 1: zero now. I also turned to a great thread that
Speaker 1: was on Cora about how interplanetary war would be fought. Normally,
Speaker 1: I don't do this for our podcast episodes or for
Speaker 1: research that we do here at how stuff works, but
Speaker 1: we're getting into pretty speculative territory. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: see what crowdsourcing the question brought up there were. Turned out,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of smart people that contributed to
Speaker 1: this thread, and the two things I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: in particular. The top post was by somebody named Micaal Danilac,
Speaker 1: and he argued that interplanetary war would be all about
Speaker 1: who had the best technology to destroy their enemies, and
Speaker 1: we see that playing out in the expanse right because
Speaker 1: the stealth tech for ships, in the discovery of something
Speaker 1: I don't want to mention it because of spoilers and
Speaker 1: plot points, there's something that's discovered, basically on a scientific
Speaker 1: level that can turn the tide of war. Danaec argues
Speaker 1: there's four possible results for interplanetary war mutually assured destruction,
Speaker 1: which brings us back to what we were talking about
Speaker 1: with the butter war in our episode. But the butter
Speaker 1: battle um a race to get the best technology first.
Speaker 1: So then the person who has that technology or the
Speaker 1: sorry not the person, but the entity I guess the
Speaker 1: planet in this case, would be the winner that takes
Speaker 1: everything uh intervention by a more powerful civilization. So I
Speaker 1: think he's essentially talking about aliens here, that like aliens
Speaker 1: would come in an intervene in an interplanetary war and
Speaker 1: be like WHOA, Like we're we're Kardashiev type three halt
Speaker 1: you know, or uh total war, which unfortunately, a lot
Speaker 1: of the examples that we found seemed to indicate that
Speaker 1: even like preliminary beginnings of an interplanetary war would lead
Speaker 1: to what we see today as just being all out destruction.
Speaker 1: Another poster named Chris Rapier argued that the mass movement
Speaker 1: of troops and equipment that were used to in warfare,
Speaker 1: it just isn't feasible in space, regardless of whether it's
Speaker 1: interstellar or interplanetary. So it probably wouldn't involve us like
Speaker 1: having vast fleets that moved through space because it's too expensive,
Speaker 1: and the fleets would be like huge targets. They'd be
Speaker 1: super vulnerable, right, So, like again like Star Wars, like
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of like the stuff, the Clone Wars stuff
Speaker 1: right where they've got these like big ships that are
Speaker 1: dropping all these clones stormtroopers on planets and they're then
Speaker 1: they're entered, they're engaging in these massive battles, right Like
Speaker 1: those ships would just be like huge targets from so
Speaker 1: far away because the theoretically the planet's technology would be
Speaker 1: able to detect them and shoot them down. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: this is a classic example of the Star Wars. What
Speaker 1: you have essentially is World War two in space. Like
Speaker 1: it's a it's a futuristic take on that level of warfare.
Speaker 1: And warfare technology, and that leads us to possibly the
Speaker 1: most disturbing study I've read in all of my time
Speaker 1: on stuff to blow your mind, the lethality of interplanetary warfare.
Speaker 1: That's right now to set up, let's talk just a
Speaker 1: minute about colonialism. So, in order for planetary expansion to
Speaker 1: take place, something very much like colonialism has to occur.
Speaker 1: We can think, I think we're all on board with
Speaker 1: this concept. Right, you have to discover, you have to explore,
Speaker 1: you have to settle, then you colonized and the colony grows.
Speaker 1: But then we know what comes next. Rice, Right, in
Speaker 1: the case of of so many colonies here on Earth,
Speaker 1: there's this there's a more gradual easement of ties. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a there's a long process, a a
Speaker 1: long divorce that occurs between colonial master and colony. But
Speaker 1: especially since we're Americans, it's impossible to avoid the American
Speaker 1: Revolutionary war model. And this, of course is when the
Speaker 1: former British colonies waged war against the British Crown in
Speaker 1: order to gain independence. So autonomy. Yeah, so we might
Speaker 1: logically look to the possibility of the colonized Mars for
Speaker 1: ideas on how this might go down. And in the expanse,
Speaker 1: we go into the book, uh, into the books, into
Speaker 1: the TV series with an independent Martian state that's ruled
Speaker 1: by the Martian Congressional Republic and uh. In the back
Speaker 1: story here, there was an attempt to succeed by the
Speaker 1: Martians and it nearly came to war. But then the
Speaker 1: Martian forces, the forces developed the Epstein Drive that already mentioned.
Speaker 1: They had to. They developed it first, and they game
Speaker 1: technological superiority. So suddenly they had the advantage over Earth.
Speaker 1: With this technology, they could travel faster, uh, not as
Speaker 1: fast as White but like the they had the fastest
Speaker 1: ships in the Solar System. So then they reached out
Speaker 1: to the U N and they said, hey, you need
Speaker 1: this technology too, Why don't we just trade. You give
Speaker 1: us our and our independence and you can have the
Speaker 1: steam drive as well. This is why when the show begins,
Speaker 1: basically like when we see like these super fast like
Speaker 1: fighter kind of ships in outer space, people just automatically assume, oh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be the Martians because they're known for
Speaker 1: having both the fast technology and stealth technology. They took
Speaker 1: an unprecedented technological leap, like nothing god like, but enough
Speaker 1: to where it prevented outright war. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: big areas too of consideration here when we are comparing
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War to any of these sci fi Martian examples,
Speaker 1: is that the Revolutionary War and entailed late eighteenth century
Speaker 1: military technology, and at the time it took four to
Speaker 1: five weeks for a vessel to reach the United States
Speaker 1: from England. So that brings us to this paper. Robert
Speaker 1: really sets us up because colonialism is important to the
Speaker 1: argument that's presented here. The authors their names Crawford and
Speaker 1: Baxter Ian A. Crawford and Stephen Baxter. Baxter or some
Speaker 1: of you may be familiar with he is a British
Speaker 1: hard sci fi author. They basically argue that because of
Speaker 1: the confinement necessary for life supporting facilities in space, any
Speaker 1: kind of revolution against a governing body like what we
Speaker 1: you know, we think of with the American Revolution, or
Speaker 1: like what is sort of set up as the preface
Speaker 1: for the Expanse, it would be hazardous and basically impossible
Speaker 1: because of the energies wielded by interplanetary cultures. Any war
Speaker 1: like this would be just absolutely catastrophic and it could
Speaker 1: threaten the entire human species. Yes, so the the intensity
Speaker 1: of the weapons has changed. But one area where revolutionary
Speaker 1: war on Earth versus on Mars uh one area where
Speaker 1: it lines up kind of nicely is that that issue
Speaker 1: of distance. Because you think about about the distance between
Speaker 1: Earth and Mars um it varies. We have these things
Speaker 1: called Mars oppositions. Uh So Mars and Earth, the distance
Speaker 1: between the two it's it's constantly changing. The maximum distance
Speaker 1: between the two planets is a colossal two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million miles with the Sun between us. The average
Speaker 1: distance is more like one hundred forty million miles. But
Speaker 1: the closest popular possible distance is a tantalizing thirty three
Speaker 1: point nine million miles. So the closest we've come to
Speaker 1: that window in in recent history was two thousand threes
Speaker 1: Mars opposition of thirty four point eight million miles, but
Speaker 1: in July. But on July two thousand and eighteen, coming up,
Speaker 1: that will give us thirty five point eight which which
Speaker 1: ain't ain't bad at all. Were get going, yeah, and
Speaker 1: we won't see anything like that again until and then
Speaker 1: only by four hundred thousand miles. So I know these
Speaker 1: are big numbers to throw around, but the basic idea
Speaker 1: here is that that even in the future, there is
Speaker 1: still an enormous Atlantic Ocean between colonial Master and Colony,
Speaker 1: and it's an Atlantic ocean that shrinks and expands depending
Speaker 1: on on planetary rotation. And think about the resources that
Speaker 1: you would need not only to uh have such a
Speaker 1: venture take off, but also to accommodate such a venture
Speaker 1: on such a long journey. Yeah, so, and it was
Speaker 1: basically Atlantic ocean and the Earth to Mars void wouldn't
Speaker 1: be that different. A hundred and fifty to three hundred
Speaker 1: days to travel to Mars based on current in your
Speaker 1: future propulsion. But again that's that weaponry, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: that's where it's going to be different because we live
Speaker 1: in a world of the w m d s and
Speaker 1: most terrifyingly of all, we have that mutually assured destruction.
Speaker 1: Nuclear weapons alone put an entirely different spin on the
Speaker 1: possibilities for interplanetary war. And we should mention that in
Speaker 1: the Expanse, it's established in the first episode that they
Speaker 1: have nuclear weapons and they use them in space. Yes,
Speaker 1: Now that that paper we're talking about by Crawford and
Speaker 1: Baxter they point to, So it's a really cool paper.
Speaker 1: If you get a chance to to read it look
Speaker 1: it up. They point to several different sci fi examples,
Speaker 1: but they they mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars novel
Speaker 1: because it highlights that an un terraformed Martian civilization would
Speaker 1: be highly susceptible to attack. So all you have to
Speaker 1: do is crack the dome, damage the environmental support system.
Speaker 1: There's a part in the novel where high oxygen levels
Speaker 1: are introduced into a dome enclosure so that they can
Speaker 1: flash burn everything without damaging the infrastructure too much like
Speaker 1: total recall. Yeah, yeah, and uh and the yeah total
Speaker 1: recall I think provides a nice hostile um view of
Speaker 1: what Mars colony could, in broad strokes be. Uh, it
Speaker 1: would be vulnerable to attack. All you'd have to do
Speaker 1: is just attack the infrastructure, and that it includes not
Speaker 1: only any domes or cities on the ground or under
Speaker 1: the ground, but also orbital space elevators other things that
Speaker 1: are key to maintain this umbilical core between a planet
Speaker 1: that is that only has like just a small amount
Speaker 1: of life on it and the the life sustaining home planet.
Speaker 1: So again, like not only would the ships that would
Speaker 1: be necessary for warfare between planets be crazy vulnerable, but
Speaker 1: then like the actual systems that keep us alive out
Speaker 1: there would also be incredibly vulnerable. So you're just looking
Speaker 1: at like, you know, total destruction. And to call back
Speaker 1: to our Rods from God's episode, um, kinetic weapons alone
Speaker 1: would prove devastatingly effective against the planets surface, So you
Speaker 1: wouldn't even need nuclear weapons in this scenario. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so let's just touch on this real quick. But Robert
Speaker 1: and I had an episode last year on this that
Speaker 1: again was very disturbing, but it is essentially about the
Speaker 1: idea of uh to dropping huge items. In this case,
Speaker 1: I think they were metal, metal telephone pole sized beams
Speaker 1: from outer space on targets on Earth that would have
Speaker 1: the yield of a nuclear weapon in terms of like
Speaker 1: how much energy is exacted upon their target. Now, space
Speaker 1: weapons and vehicles are already being developed in the United
Speaker 1: States and other nations so that we can establish supremacy
Speaker 1: and outer space. Right. Much of this we know this.
Speaker 1: It came from the Cold War and the need for
Speaker 1: a missile defense system in space. Uh and and that's
Speaker 1: where sort of the Rods from God idea came from.
Speaker 1: If you go back to that episode, we talked about um.
Speaker 1: I believe his name was Pornell. He was the one
Speaker 1: who sort of pitched this theory. And again he was
Speaker 1: a science fiction writer who essentially ended up working for
Speaker 1: the United States government. So when you see stuff like
Speaker 1: the expanse, it's not all that uh, it's it's not
Speaker 1: all that unfeasible that you know, these guys might be
Speaker 1: coming up with ideas that are used in future incursions.
Speaker 1: So Crawford and Baxter in their paper, they bring this
Speaker 1: to the front of their argument, beginning with the War
Speaker 1: of Worlds and the idea that in that the Martians
Speaker 1: could have just totally destroyed Victorian England with simple kinetic
Speaker 1: energy bombardment from outer space. The only reason they didn't
Speaker 1: is because they wanted to colonize the planet. They wanted
Speaker 1: something left over. Yeah, I mean because one of the
Speaker 1: things about Rods from Gods that we that we that
Speaker 1: we covered in the episode was that the reason it
Speaker 1: wasn't a feasible um weapon system for modern humans is
Speaker 1: that you have to get that stuff into orbit. You
Speaker 1: have to have orbital dominance to then drop these weapons.
Speaker 1: But if you're a space faring civiliza, if you're just
Speaker 1: an interplanetary civilization leaving Earth going to Mars, you already
Speaker 1: have orbital a dominance exactly. Just having the ability to
Speaker 1: travel in space at an interplanetary level allows you or
Speaker 1: others to subvert space travel technology and turn it into
Speaker 1: kinetic weapons. And this is where it gets super disturbing
Speaker 1: for me. This proposal is exactly what was done with
Speaker 1: airplanes on September a leventh in two thousand one. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the kinetic energy of our current International Space
Speaker 1: Station's orbit that is equivalent to three keylow tons of
Speaker 1: t n T, and that is nothing compared to the
Speaker 1: energies of inner planetary craft that we may have in
Speaker 1: our future. By Crawford and Baxter's estimation, the kinds of
Speaker 1: ships that we see flying around in the Expanse, they
Speaker 1: would have the kinetic energy equivalent of the energy release
Speaker 1: in an all out nuclear war. It really, really that's
Speaker 1: super scary. The idea that like anybody, whether it's the
Speaker 1: civilization that possesses that technology or maybe like a in
Speaker 1: in the case of it could happen in the expanse world,
Speaker 1: right like a terrorist organization takes over some of that
Speaker 1: technology just flies a ship into a planet. It would
Speaker 1: utterly annihilate the human civilization that's there really makes you
Speaker 1: think a little bit more. On that episode that we
Speaker 1: it on the cases against Space and like all the
Speaker 1: arguments about why we shouldn't travel into space, I don't
Speaker 1: remember this being one of them. Like just the simple
Speaker 1: fact of us creating the technology that would allow us
Speaker 1: to travel between planets could be subverted to destroy humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there's a proportional scale for a technological creation. So
Speaker 1: an automobile is also a murder weapon. An airliner is
Speaker 1: also a weapon of mass destruction, and therefore you can
Speaker 1: extrapolate that and just say that, Yeah, spaceship is a
Speaker 1: weapon of genocide. Totally have used in that direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never even thought about that before. I mean Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Just think about Star Wars. What if Han Sola just
Speaker 1: like flew the Millennium Falcon at warp speed into the
Speaker 1: Death Star? Yeah? Well, I mean isn't that how the
Speaker 1: President deft the Aliens and Independence Day? That need just fly? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a spaceship. I think it was like an and
Speaker 1: And I also never saw the sequel that came out
Speaker 1: last year, so I don't know he's in it, but
Speaker 1: I think how he and he died. No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: maybe Randy Quaid. It was Randy Queen flew it up.
Speaker 1: Uh we we so quickly forget the sacrifices of Randy Quaid. Um,
Speaker 1: this all comes back to real basic like strate strategy
Speaker 1: in terms of warfare. Right, So, a higher location has
Speaker 1: always been strategically important in war. It provides an advantage
Speaker 1: to whichever side has it. Uh, Robert and I and
Speaker 1: those of you who are dn D player whos would
Speaker 1: understand this is simple dn D mechanics, Right, You get
Speaker 1: a plus two to your role if you're above your
Speaker 1: opponent and they are prone. So, thinking about it on
Speaker 1: a larger scale, if you're in outer space and the
Speaker 1: planet is below you. You know, even though we've been
Speaker 1: talking about how vulnerable those ships would potentially be if
Speaker 1: they're on a suicide run though, or or even if
Speaker 1: there's nobody in it there just you know, remotely flying
Speaker 1: this thing into a planet, it's absolutely devastated. I think
Speaker 1: that in modern D and D rules you would get
Speaker 1: an advantage on your role fifth edition. Yeah, that's true. Um.
Speaker 1: As such satellites have become really valuable just in terms
Speaker 1: of our modern warfare. For deploying troops. Right, this is
Speaker 1: where we got GPS from. We all have GPS on
Speaker 1: our phones now and it's the greatest thing ever, right,
Speaker 1: But it came out of determining what soldiers bearings were
Speaker 1: using a constellation of satellites, and satellites can also be
Speaker 1: used as weapons to shoot down terrestrial missiles. This is
Speaker 1: the whole idea of the other Star Wars, the one
Speaker 1: that Ronald Reagan in the United States established the Strategic
Speaker 1: Defense Initiative. Yeah, the one I remember as a kid
Speaker 1: getting they would have My parents would have the news
Speaker 1: on and they would be mentioned a Star Wars and
Speaker 1: like it's happening. They're talking about Star Wars on TV
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, not something different. The same thing
Speaker 1: happened to me. I imagine like our parents generation was
Speaker 1: incredibly frustrated by that branding effort. Uh. It's developing basically
Speaker 1: as enterprises try to take commercial advantage of outer space. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: like in our business, Robert and I are constantly reading
Speaker 1: press release is about what Elon Musk and other people
Speaker 1: are doing in terms of like sending commercial ships up
Speaker 1: into outer space. But likewise, it would be really easy
Speaker 1: to disrupt the economic advantage of a nation by attacking
Speaker 1: its enterprises in space with things like lasers or particle
Speaker 1: beams or space planes, which has all been proposed in
Speaker 1: actual warfare here on Earth. This isn't science fiction. And remember,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about in previous episodes, we talked about
Speaker 1: it a lot in our Star Trek episode. We are
Speaker 1: currently operating under the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: This is an international agreement that we won't put weapons
Speaker 1: of mass destruction in orbit, nor will we build military
Speaker 1: bases on celestial bodies like the moon. But it's vague
Speaker 1: enough in its language that the area that's just above
Speaker 1: Earth but not in outer space is accessible. So how
Speaker 1: do you then? The other question too is how do
Speaker 1: you define what a weapon of mass destruction is when
Speaker 1: you're placing it up there and that that sliver right
Speaker 1: if anything like it doesn't we've we've presented here. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a nuclear device. It can just
Speaker 1: be a It can be the satellite itself, so it
Speaker 1: can be a bunch of telephone poles. So Crawford and
Speaker 1: Baxter they sum it up like this. Here, I have
Speaker 1: a couple of quotes from the paper, They say, quote,
Speaker 1: the huge energy is routinely deployed by a culture capable
Speaker 1: of interplanetary travel on a large scale would make war
Speaker 1: potentially hugely damaging. The kinetic energy of a Mars transport
Speaker 1: craft would be equivalent to a one megaton nuclear weapon
Speaker 1: or and presumably would be capable of inflicting great damage
Speaker 1: on a surface colony or a world like the Moon
Speaker 1: or Mars. A craft capable of fast transport to the
Speaker 1: outer planets would acquire a kinetic energy comparable to a
Speaker 1: major nuclear war or to a significant asteroid strike that
Speaker 1: could inflict global damage. So the closert civilization comes to
Speaker 1: that first rung of the Kardashian scale, the more technologically
Speaker 1: trivial extinction level offense becomes. Crawford and Baxter uh tell
Speaker 1: Us quote Our conclusion is that he is that human
Speaker 1: affairs in an extraterrestrial context cannot be conducted through warfare,
Speaker 1: which is more likely to destroy the contending cultures and
Speaker 1: perhaps extinguish mankind altogether, than to lead to any desirable
Speaker 1: political outcome. And their end argument is that before we
Speaker 1: start cruising around in space, we need to establish a
Speaker 1: political framework that guarantees colonial liberty without recourse to conflict.
Speaker 1: This is what really what it comes down to. And
Speaker 1: almost all of these studies that we've talked about in
Speaker 1: this episode, when you're looking at war, whether it's how
Speaker 1: war was conducted, how it is conducted, or how it
Speaker 1: might be conducted, the essential reason for it is what
Speaker 1: can we do to keep peace to make sure that
Speaker 1: this doesn't result in the district auction of our species.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about war, We've been talking about
Speaker 1: the interplanetary war. Let's let's come back to the Expanse
Speaker 1: and discuss just how the Expanse stacks up to these
Speaker 1: various ideas and predictions and commentaries. I think, by and large,
Speaker 1: based on what I've read, what I've seen on the show,
Speaker 1: I've I've I've gotten to see the premiere episode for
Speaker 1: season two and it's and it's really good. I think
Speaker 1: that the Expanse sticks to most of these ideas exceedingly well.
Speaker 1: Remember in the show that the Mars Earth conflict almost
Speaker 1: resulted in a war, but that martianal leap and technology
Speaker 1: with the Epstein Drive that ceased open hostilities. The resulting
Speaker 1: Cold War threatens to go hot again, but the more
Speaker 1: rational players in the game realize that such an open
Speaker 1: armed conflict would likely prove catastrophic to both sides. There's
Speaker 1: even a conversation between two Martian characters in the premier
Speaker 1: episode of season two that explores this very notion, and
Speaker 1: the Expanse also limits the conflict to our soldar system
Speaker 1: and an acceptable realm of influence for one power such
Speaker 1: as un Governed Earth UH to play a major roll in. Now,
Speaker 1: while the the UN doesn't exercise such absolute power in
Speaker 1: the show, we can see where it conceivably could, But
Speaker 1: we can also see how crazy it would be to
Speaker 1: expect them to control anything more than they already exert
Speaker 1: control over like they're already they've already lost Mars and
Speaker 1: are struggling to maintain the belters UH. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's inconceivable that they would be able to control anything
Speaker 1: beyond that. And on that note, we now are really
Speaker 1: lucky because we have an opportunity to talk to Nuren Shankar,
Speaker 1: who is the executive producer on The Expanse. He's one
Speaker 1: of the show's writers, and like I mentioned at the top,
Speaker 1: he is also a science advisory as a background in
Speaker 1: engineering and physics. So we're gonna see what he thinks
Speaker 1: about these effects of war, and we're also going to
Speaker 1: take the opportunity to talk to him about how science
Speaker 1: is portrayed in the expanse. Can you start by telling
Speaker 1: our audience about your science background before you got into
Speaker 1: the entertainment business. My understanding is you have a PhD
Speaker 1: in engineering and physics. Mm hmm, that's right. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had kind of a weird trajectory coming into the
Speaker 1: entertainment business. I started at Cornell University as a as
Speaker 1: a liberal arts student, and a couple of years in
Speaker 1: I was I was studying like medieval studies and French literature,
Speaker 1: and a couple of years in I decided to transfer
Speaker 1: into the engineering school, which most people transfer out of UM,
Speaker 1: because I, you know, I always loved science and math
Speaker 1: and and frankly, you know, the job prospects of a
Speaker 1: medieval studies major work were somewhat um limited and uh,
Speaker 1: and so so I transferred into applied to engineering physics
Speaker 1: at Cornell, and I actually stay all the way through
Speaker 1: to U through graduate school to get my my PhD.
Speaker 1: And what started happening though, as I was in the
Speaker 1: process of doing my dissertation, I started just taking tons
Speaker 1: of courses in history and literature again because I missed it.
Speaker 1: And I and there was a moment when I was
Speaker 1: actually I was leaving this amazing lecture and taking a
Speaker 1: great course in the history of American foreign policy, and
Speaker 1: I walked out of the hall and and I was
Speaker 1: heading back to my lab. I was just like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can go back to this,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a It was just a weird
Speaker 1: circle for me. So I kind of came back to
Speaker 1: what I had originally wanted to do. But I finished
Speaker 1: my thesis and um. When I was done, I almost
Speaker 1: got a job at Apple, which I would have probably taken.
Speaker 1: Um and UM. And I had a couple of friends
Speaker 1: who were out in in Los Angeles lists that I've
Speaker 1: got to college with, and they were breaking into the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry and always done a lot of creative writing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, through the years. And I said, come out
Speaker 1: to l A and b a screenwriter, And I said,
Speaker 1: sounds great, and I just kind of threw some some
Speaker 1: suitcases in my current I drove out to l A. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that all the research that you've done though
Speaker 1: with history and especially in medieval studies played into the
Speaker 1: screenwriting right absolutely. And and it's what's interesting is that people,
Speaker 1: you know, I I tell the story to people and
Speaker 1: they go, boy, here you know where your parents upset
Speaker 1: that you know were you were? You upset that you
Speaker 1: know you wasted your education. And I go like, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, if you get educated properly, Um, it's
Speaker 1: not a waste because it allows you to approach really
Speaker 1: complex projects like you know, especially you know when you're
Speaker 1: a physical sciences major, really digest material, know how to
Speaker 1: do research. It's like all of those things come into play,
Speaker 1: um in what I do now. It's it's it's a
Speaker 1: complex business making its television show. And you're right, all
Speaker 1: of those things that the history and the literature, they
Speaker 1: inform everything that we always do. And um so I
Speaker 1: think I sort of weirdly or just fortunately kind of
Speaker 1: landed in the thing that I'm suited for. Um So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a very enjoyable business for me.
Speaker 1: I get to exercise the technical engineering side of my
Speaker 1: brain and then the purely creative side of my brain.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's kind of a nice happy medium
Speaker 1: for me. Well, it definitely shows in the Expanse. I
Speaker 1: know that you've worked on a lot of television shows
Speaker 1: before this, but you were talking about those complex projects,
Speaker 1: and it really seems like the Expanse takes the realities
Speaker 1: of physics in space seriously for far more than most
Speaker 1: science fiction television shows. I think our audience would be
Speaker 1: interested into how your team treats those realities. And you know,
Speaker 1: how does the writer's manage that, How much research goes
Speaker 1: into you guys choreographing scenes where ships or characters are
Speaker 1: are operating in zero or low gravity. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you know that really the credit for that
Speaker 1: is it's baked into the books because you know Ty
Speaker 1: Frank and Daniel Abraham, who are collectively James say Query
Speaker 1: who wrote the Expanse novels. That was that was the
Speaker 1: approach that they took. They wanted to write something that
Speaker 1: that had, you know, at least approached the reality of
Speaker 1: what life would be like in space, and so they
Speaker 1: thought these things through extremely deeply. Um. I think what
Speaker 1: happened was when when I was brought in to run
Speaker 1: the show. Part part of what attracted me to the
Speaker 1: project was that approach, because you know, I worked on
Speaker 1: Star Trek the Next Generation. I've done plenty of science
Speaker 1: fiction over the years. You typically run away from things
Speaker 1: because they're too hard to does, or you think that
Speaker 1: people think that they're boring, or the shows are not
Speaker 1: really about spaceships and and and living in space their
Speaker 1: metaphors for other things, and so people apply you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like let's let's ta battle starts Galactic for example,
Speaker 1: I show that I absolutely adore. I think it's a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: But the space, the way they use space in that
Speaker 1: show was classically World War Two engagements in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: That's how the whole show is made. That's a because
Speaker 1: in the episode we were talking about Star Wars is
Speaker 1: being very similar that they use is I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean Ron even run more even you know, he he
Speaker 1: wanted that sort of newsreel footage realism and it was
Speaker 1: applied to to you know, extremely good effect in that show.
Speaker 1: But the show is about other things. And what when
Speaker 1: I came at the experience, the thing that I thought
Speaker 1: would be interesting is embrace the concept of space, says
Speaker 1: a character, because I hadn't seen that done before. Embrace
Speaker 1: zero gravity, Embrace thrust gravity, Embrace all of these things.
Speaker 1: Because it distinguished it from other you know, other uh
Speaker 1: you know, attempts to do that sort of other other science,
Speaker 1: which that just completely ignored it because they were too
Speaker 1: complicated to understand or too weird or too difficult to produce. UM.
Speaker 1: And and I think it gave us, It has given
Speaker 1: the show a really unique quality, and everybody seems to
Speaker 1: respond to it, um because it kind of feels real,
Speaker 1: you know, and it just and and we don't comment
Speaker 1: on it. It's not like it's not a um you know,
Speaker 1: it's not piled with jargon, but it feels like it's
Speaker 1: it's a more realistic depiction of the environment than people
Speaker 1: have typically seen. Um. You know. And with regard to
Speaker 1: how the writers treated I mean, what ty Thy, Frank
Speaker 1: and Daniel, you know a ton of science and Tie
Speaker 1: in particular has thought out the battle and the technology
Speaker 1: to an incredible extent. So he's a you know, those
Speaker 1: guys are walking encyclopedias in the writer's room. They're part
Speaker 1: of your absolutely, yeah, and that's a very unusual thing
Speaker 1: as well. But you know the rest of the writers,
Speaker 1: they're not about science. Mark Mark Ferguson, Hawk Gosby, who
Speaker 1: wrote who wrote the pilot. Um, they're not They're not
Speaker 1: science guys at all. But I feel like writing, putting
Speaker 1: together a writing staff is is like casting the show.
Speaker 1: You find the right balance, and we haven't. We had
Speaker 1: a very very unusual writers room. We had Robin Visz
Speaker 1: who was on Madmen for many years. We have dand
Speaker 1: No Racks, who was on The Killing for many years.
Speaker 1: We have all these people who have never done science
Speaker 1: fiction before, and and then just trying Daniel who written
Speaker 1: the novels but they've never really worked in television before.
Speaker 1: And then there's me, And so that balance has I
Speaker 1: think hopefully pulled the best out of all of those
Speaker 1: people from those different different places and put it all
Speaker 1: into the show and made something I think is actually
Speaker 1: quite unusual and special. Yeah, we actually in the episode
Speaker 1: itself address this, just saying how much we like the
Speaker 1: show and that not only is it you know, as
Speaker 1: as people who do a show like ours our podcast
Speaker 1: is it is it really interesting on a scientific level,
Speaker 1: but also that just like the craft of writing of story,
Speaker 1: of plot of character is all there and just really strong. Um.
Speaker 1: And from my part, I have to say, like, even
Speaker 1: though I do a podcast like this, I always really
Speaker 1: enjoy this ship maneuvering because it's it just seems like
Speaker 1: an intuitive level, it's working the right way, Like there's
Speaker 1: something about it for me, the way that the ships
Speaker 1: are moving. It feels so real and I it connects
Speaker 1: me to the the alex character a little bit more
Speaker 1: to like, Oh, look at what a great pilot this
Speaker 1: guy is. He's so casually just like steering this behemoth around.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, we have a we have a great
Speaker 1: scene coming up in uh late in season two where
Speaker 1: we were it's it's not in the books really, but
Speaker 1: it's some alex Is is hiding behind a moon of
Speaker 1: Jupiter while the rest of the gang is on Ganymede
Speaker 1: station and and he has to get down to them,
Speaker 1: but there's patrols all over the place. So what he
Speaker 1: does is he plots a a swing shot de orbital
Speaker 1: trajectory from where he is and just whips around a
Speaker 1: bunch of moons. Now it's super fun to look at
Speaker 1: when you actually we actually look at the distances involved
Speaker 1: in the time it would take to do it, it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: which is larger the seas and a ridiculously long time.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, it would take him like,
Speaker 1: you know, six months but that doesn't quite working at all.
Speaker 1: Was a joke, but conceptually we're totally on point. Um,
Speaker 1: so I we we've got a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: we end up doing that a lot, but where it
Speaker 1: feels real, you know, And then I think that's that
Speaker 1: is really the key test at any of these things,
Speaker 1: where you know what, there's a moment. There's a moment
Speaker 1: in in the pilot where I wanted a particular shot.
Speaker 1: It was when, um, remember when the little the little
Speaker 1: spaceship the Nights that the guys took from the Canterbury
Speaker 1: they go to find the derelict ship there is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're looking at the visual effects of those, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of and it was like it's
Speaker 1: kind of boring, and I said, you know what, why
Speaker 1: don't we why don't we have that ship flip, you know,
Speaker 1: flipping in into like just that last bit of the
Speaker 1: deceleration burn and the engine plume kind of lights up
Speaker 1: the ship. That's that there's and it is so beautiful
Speaker 1: when you see these little maneuvering trusters fire and these
Speaker 1: ships kind of turned slowly, and and then you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I find it very beautiful. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of the ship movements and all of that stuff is
Speaker 1: really you know, we spend a lot of time, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about you know, the specifics of how they're gonna look,
Speaker 1: how the shots are gonna be, you know, how we're
Speaker 1: going to convey scale, and how we're going to deal
Speaker 1: with you know, relative speed that's like, and just how
Speaker 1: the camera needs to move. It's it's it's a whole
Speaker 1: the whole thing is really it's really fascinating. Um. You
Speaker 1: don't get into these conversations a lot in in other shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think it again, like I think it shows
Speaker 1: definitely and it's yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm always
Speaker 1: impressed by it. Yeah, and I'm thinking back to the
Speaker 1: scene you're talking about too, and just like it's like
Speaker 1: ballet and space with ships. That's that's what it was.
Speaker 1: And it's really you know them It's funny when you
Speaker 1: go back, like you know, in the history of movies
Speaker 1: to to look at shows that have treated this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Is you know, the one guy who got
Speaker 1: it right was Kubrick in two thousand and one. We
Speaker 1: bring we bring up two thousand and one in the
Speaker 1: episode as well. Yeah, it's like, well, and and yet
Speaker 1: in popular culture people remember like movies like you know,
Speaker 1: Outlander where somebody's helmet you know, gets peers in their
Speaker 1: head explodes and so so you know, so we've actually,
Speaker 1: you know, any time there's a moment that we can
Speaker 1: do this sort of stuff to sort of show real space,
Speaker 1: I try to take advantage of it. There was a
Speaker 1: moment on I think an episode sixth last season where
Speaker 1: the rock Hoppers are out of the belt and the
Speaker 1: guy's having a problem with his helmet and he just
Speaker 1: flips open the visor and he brings out and you
Speaker 1: like pulled the wire up and he closes it. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can survive in a vacuum. These guys would that
Speaker 1: that's not a big deal for them, and it was
Speaker 1: just and I was talking in the room, was like
Speaker 1: like what don't there they had explodes? Like no, and
Speaker 1: but but anyways, it's like some things like that, I
Speaker 1: think are the touches that are really really fun and
Speaker 1: m I remember when I was first reading a Vibe
Speaker 1: and wait, the moment I realized I want to do
Speaker 1: this show. Is that scene in that compartment where Chet's
Speaker 1: head gets blown off. Yeah, it was like I was, like,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that before, and that's that's pretty close
Speaker 1: to what's in the book actually, almost like sort of
Speaker 1: beat for beat. Now, speaking of the books and the
Speaker 1: various scientific details, and the authors do a terrific job
Speaker 1: of working all of these, not not only the big
Speaker 1: scientific ideas, but they're just the casual science grounding and
Speaker 1: all the minor details and flourishes, like particularly I think
Speaker 1: of the moss whiskey, the that grown beans, and the
Speaker 1: various workplace a pails that are encountered. Um, I can
Speaker 1: see where was Certainly all the having all these elements
Speaker 1: at your disposal are helpful and bringing the world to
Speaker 1: life on the screen. But is it ever I mean,
Speaker 1: is it ever challenging? You have just all sorts of
Speaker 1: references that you wish you had time to fit in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we do, actually, and we create so many more
Speaker 1: than you see. Sometimes it's like we would, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't, like you know, ads that are playing on
Speaker 1: TV screens for that grown beef and barbecues and like
Speaker 1: all of this stuff and moss whiskey, and you know,
Speaker 1: we do as much as we possibly can. All of
Speaker 1: that stuff is there in the books and so we
Speaker 1: try to pull it out as much as possible because
Speaker 1: I think that those things give real texture to the environment.
Speaker 1: UM and and all of those details and aggregate when
Speaker 1: when you keep touching on them, when you don't comment
Speaker 1: on them, it just makes you feel like you're in
Speaker 1: a different place. It's like when Miller, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of pours a little whiskey, but he's so used to
Speaker 1: Coreo list that he just kind of throws it at
Speaker 1: an angle and it just kind of drops into a
Speaker 1: glass and in a little spiral. It's like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: never shows never do that, and it's an expensive little
Speaker 1: effect and like, but to me, those are the touches
Speaker 1: that distinguish, and those are the things that really take
Speaker 1: the show to a different place. And people always notice
Speaker 1: now thematically speaking, um getting into into the books versus
Speaker 1: the TV Leviathan Wakes published almost seven years ago, and
Speaker 1: the series we've seen, I mean, basically the first season
Speaker 1: in the second season come out on on either side
Speaker 1: of of a rather pivotal political election here in the
Speaker 1: United States. We're currently looking at so much international political
Speaker 1: change as well, so much tension and anxiety. What has
Speaker 1: it been like to help manage the expression of this
Speaker 1: particular sci fi vision during the midst of all of this. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, let's see, I'm trying to think when we started,
Speaker 1: when we started development of season one, I think in
Speaker 1: so that was like, um, yeah, I think like April
Speaker 1: is when we started, and and so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the politics of that they have been cooking
Speaker 1: underneath it ever since. Um. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was so much you know, directly influenced it. But there's
Speaker 1: a theme in the books that we have been very
Speaker 1: conscious of since the very beginning, and that's about tribalization,
Speaker 1: and that certainly seems to be you know, something that
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily relevant right now is that this notion now
Speaker 1: the moment people start identifying another group of people as
Speaker 1: the other, as defined by different beliefs or skin color
Speaker 1: or shape or size or whatever, that that's when problems
Speaker 1: start happening all about human history. When you can say
Speaker 1: we're like this, they're not like us, therefore we don't
Speaker 1: have to like them. That's how Wars begin. And and
Speaker 1: it's definitely, um a kind of a deep theme in
Speaker 1: the show because one of the one of the things
Speaker 1: that we've tried to do is you know, we've kind
Speaker 1: of mixed people up, um Tie and Daniel always said, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who go out into space not
Speaker 1: just going to be you know, Caucasian, you know, Cornfred Nebraska,
Speaker 1: boys from from the United States. It's gonna be Indian
Speaker 1: and Chinese and everybody. And the show has done that.
Speaker 1: And yet the Belters are identifying as different than Birthers,
Speaker 1: who are definitely defining themselves as different from the Martians,
Speaker 1: and the same kinds of problems are happening. So even
Speaker 1: though we've gotten out into space, we've colonized portions of
Speaker 1: the Solar System once again, we're back at that place
Speaker 1: where human beings are tribalizing and seeing each other as different,
Speaker 1: and that way leads the conflict. Nurine, It's like you
Speaker 1: read our notes for the episode before we called you
Speaker 1: up here, because we we literally mentioned other ing in
Speaker 1: the episode as one of the main causes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and the diversity in the show and showing that,
Speaker 1: you know, how colonization would work out as something we
Speaker 1: speak to as well. Um. Our episode is focused on
Speaker 1: the concept of interplanetary war, and then we use the
Speaker 1: universe of the expanses like a reference point. But in
Speaker 1: that universe, you know, uh, what are the causes leading
Speaker 1: humanity to these wars? You know, we what we've seen
Speaker 1: so far, at least in season one, it seems to
Speaker 1: be mainly economic in nature. But but like you were
Speaker 1: just talking about, it seems that there's also a theme
Speaker 1: here that human nature leads to war no matter where
Speaker 1: we are. I think the truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: it's both of those things that when they happen simultaneously,
Speaker 1: that's when starts to blow up. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: human nature is human nature. You're always going to have it.
Speaker 1: But if you you know, if you have bad feelings
Speaker 1: and bad ideas occurring in times of economic stress or
Speaker 1: deprivation or you know, resource constriction, that is a that
Speaker 1: is a recipe for disaster historically, and you can you know,
Speaker 1: we have talked, we talk a lot about history in
Speaker 1: that room. Tie is like he's gotta you know, he's
Speaker 1: got an encyclopedia knowledge of Roman history. We've also talked
Speaker 1: a lot about you know, when I first sat now
Speaker 1: went with the stuff, I talked a lot about The
Speaker 1: Guns of August, which is which is Barbara Tuckman's book
Speaker 1: about the beginnings of world War one, and it was
Speaker 1: like this these you know, these little domino is that
Speaker 1: just kept knocking into each other, tiny events that led
Speaker 1: to a cataclysmic event. And we took that approach um
Speaker 1: through season one and into season two. Is you know,
Speaker 1: we're building to war. It hasn't quite come yet um
Speaker 1: in the show, but it's coming. It's like all of
Speaker 1: these little things, misunderstandings, misapprehensions, information that doesn't get communicated
Speaker 1: properly or gets misinterpreted in an odd way that makes
Speaker 1: somebody look bad that I think that's how war has happened. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll it take to somebody pushing a
Speaker 1: button or pulling a trigger. Um. And and so we've
Speaker 1: we've adopted that concept in our story time. Well it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's compelling for sure. Yeah, I guess this. Thanks thanks
Speaker 1: once again for taking the time out of your day
Speaker 1: to chat with us and uh and for your work
Speaker 1: on what has been a very entertaining and thought provoking
Speaker 1: science fiction television series. Well, thank you guys so much.
Speaker 1: It's really our pleasure. And now we we're we we
Speaker 1: love the show. Everybody involvement loves the show. We want
Speaker 1: you know, we're we are just want people to get
Speaker 1: out there and see it. It was an interesting trajectory
Speaker 1: overseason one that, you know, the little further we got
Speaker 1: along and now we're on Amazon Prime streaming and we're
Speaker 1: on Netflix internationally. It's like people are discovering it now
Speaker 1: and it's great to see that because you know, it
Speaker 1: seems across the board people are really responding to it,
Speaker 1: and I think they're going to be blown away by
Speaker 1: season two. It's uh, it's it's got some amazing stuff
Speaker 1: coming down the pike. So people know we're on the
Speaker 1: air of February one, all right, So there you have it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: The Expanse is a really really cool show, really cool
Speaker 1: book series. Uh. I highly recommend it. I think they
Speaker 1: play remarkably well with real science, with real cultural and
Speaker 1: political concerns in a way that entertains you but also
Speaker 1: keeps you thinking. Yeah, on top of like everything we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: it has great characters and the storytelling is smart. It's
Speaker 1: I've binge watched the first season with my wife in
Speaker 1: less than a week, and I'm very excited about the
Speaker 1: second season. And if you're if you find yourself though
Speaker 1: more concerned then entertained by some of the more depressing
Speaker 1: subject matter in this episode, I'd like to highlight a
Speaker 1: group that we've highlighted before, and that is the Arms
Speaker 1: Control Association. You'll find them at arms control dot org.
Speaker 1: They're founded in nine and it's a national, nonpartisan membership
Speaker 1: organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for
Speaker 1: effective arms control policies. Through its public education and media
Speaker 1: programs and its magazine Arms Control Today. They provide policymakers,
Speaker 1: the press, and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis,
Speaker 1: and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and aggrievements and
Speaker 1: related national security issues. So no, no matter what your
Speaker 1: level of interest, they have something for you, and you
Speaker 1: can donate at their website to help support their work
Speaker 1: to keep keep nuclear war and and war in general
Speaker 1: UH relegated as much as possible to the pages of
Speaker 1: history and fiction and science fiction. Yeah, it's certainly going
Speaker 1: to need to be the kind of group that we
Speaker 1: embrace before we go into space. And I didn't need
Speaker 1: for that to rhyme, but we we really need people
Speaker 1: to think about philosophical and political frameworks before we invent
Speaker 1: this technology because of what we've discovered in this episode.
Speaker 1: So all that said, we'd like to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Are you a fan of the expanse. How did our
Speaker 1: depiction of future warfare or the causes of warfare over
Speaker 1: the courts of history line up with your notions? Let
Speaker 1: us know, and I have a feeling that some of
Speaker 1: you are going to have strong opinions about this, especially
Speaker 1: after I read that Cora threat and I saw all
Speaker 1: of the various ideas of how people are thinking already
Speaker 1: about what the possibilities of interplanetary warfare are. The places
Speaker 1: that you can reach out to us our Facebook, Twitter, Humbler,
Speaker 1: and Instagram, or you could find us as stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com and you can always send
Speaker 1: us an email at blow the Mind at house to
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Remember