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Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, I have kind of a basic question about

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Speaker 1: your science farm operation over there. Your questions make me nervous,

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Speaker 1: but as long as it doesn't involve anything that might

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Speaker 1: scare the kids, I'm willing to answer. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: if it's a science farm, then what are you farming science?

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Speaker 1: Do you harvest like raw science? Are you making organic

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Speaker 1: farm to journal science? We do actually do science right

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Speaker 1: here on the farm, but it's not all that we farm,

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Speaker 1: That's right. You also have some humans growing in the farm, right, Okay, Look,

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Speaker 1: we have children, but we are farming them. There's no

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Speaker 1: harvesting of the children going on. I mean, have you

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Speaker 1: checked with Zac about that? I know he can be

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Speaker 1: quite literal, you know. I'll admit I never thought to say,

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Speaker 1: please don't harvest the children while I'm recording the podcast. Well,

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Speaker 1: they're probably fine, I mean at least fifty. Hi. I'm Daniel.

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Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,

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Speaker 1: and I am not much of a gardener. I'm Kelly

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Speaker 1: Weener Smith. I'm an adjunct professor at Rice University, and

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Speaker 1: I too am not a gardener, and I once killed

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Speaker 1: a cactus. But you run a whole farm. I hear well,

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Speaker 1: Zach does the planting. I mostly just sort of mow

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Speaker 1: the hay when it gets too tall, which is fun

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Speaker 1: because I love the tractor. So I'm more of a

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Speaker 1: destroyer than a builder. I see well. In my marriage, also,

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Speaker 1: the gardening responsibilities are on the other spouse. Even in

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Speaker 1: the clay soil of our backyard in southern California, my

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Speaker 1: wife has managed to plant greenery which has thrived all

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Speaker 1: over our backyard. WHOA good for her? That's awesome. What

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Speaker 1: was she planted? She's planted a bunch of pretty hearty stuff,

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Speaker 1: mostly secculents. In our first year's here and Irvine. We

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Speaker 1: went back and forth between California and Geneva several times,

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Speaker 1: so we abandoned all the plans so she would just

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Speaker 1: planted a bunch of stuff, and then we come back

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Speaker 1: nine months later and see what was still alive. Nice.

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Speaker 1: Let natural selection run its course. I like it. I

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Speaker 1: can get behind that exactly, though it doesn't produce very

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Speaker 1: much edible stuff. Are you guys actually producing things on

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Speaker 1: your farm that you can eat? Like technically we are.

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Speaker 1: We're trying to do that. But what usually happens is

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Speaker 1: Zach starts the garden, and then we get totally bobbed

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Speaker 1: down by a project and almost everything dies. So very similar,

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Speaker 1: except we're not leaving the country. We're just being neglectful.

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Speaker 1: But this year our loofa gourds grew and so we

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Speaker 1: have a lifetime supply of squash based sponges if anyone's

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Speaker 1: in need of some more sponges. So that but that

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Speaker 1: was kind of fun. Well, welcome to the podcast. Daniel

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Speaker 1: and Jorge explain the universe in which we try to

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Speaker 1: grow a garden of ideas in your mind, playing ding

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Speaker 1: seeds of understanding about black holes and quantum physics, hoping

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Speaker 1: to nurture your understanding of how the universe out there

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Speaker 1: works and to grow your mind. So that's large enough

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Speaker 1: to incorporate all of these vast cosmic ideas. How many

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Speaker 1: of these do you have? I could go on and on,

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Speaker 1: but my regular co host, Horror Hey, can't be here today,

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Speaker 1: and so I'm delighted to be chatting with one of

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Speaker 1: our regular guest hosts, Kelly. Kelly, thank you very much

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Speaker 1: for joining us again today. I'm delighted to be back.

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Speaker 1: I had a ton of fun reading this book. That's right.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes on the podcast, we talk about the real universe,

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Speaker 1: the mysteries of nature, how far back we can explore

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Speaker 1: with our minds all the way back to the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the universe, or how black holes work and what's

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Speaker 1: inside of them. But sometimes we think about artificial universe,

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Speaker 1: is universe is created within our minds and explored by

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Speaker 1: science fiction writers, because we think that the creativity found

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Speaker 1: in science fiction is actually a vital element of science,

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Speaker 1: that thinking about the ways that the universe might be

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Speaker 1: is a very important way of actually doing science. And

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Speaker 1: so sometimes on the podcast we will read a science

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Speaker 1: fiction novel and talk about the science of that universe,

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Speaker 1: along with interviewing the author of that book to get

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Speaker 1: an insight into his or her mind. And so on

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Speaker 1: today's episode, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe

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Speaker 1: of a Half Built Garden. This book is by Ruthanna

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Speaker 1: Emery's and one of the things that I love about

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Speaker 1: her book is that I feel like when we talk

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Speaker 1: about climate change, we're often so negative that sometimes it

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Speaker 1: feels like it's not even worth trying to turn the

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Speaker 1: ship around. But her book is about a near future

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Speaker 1: humanity in three that is starting to turn the ship around.

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Speaker 1: They figured out some ways to start recovering from climate change.

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Speaker 1: That involves some new political organizations, new ways of people

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Speaker 1: sort of learning to work together. But no like amazing

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Speaker 1: tech that just pulls all of the carbon out of

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere, Like some hard work that needs to get done.

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Speaker 1: But I appreciated that that was sort of like a

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Speaker 1: take on climate change that was, you know, a little

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Speaker 1: bit positive, like we can do this sort of attitude. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this book takes place in about twenty eight three, and

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Speaker 1: clearly there have been some disasters between now and then,

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Speaker 1: some real climate change and probably some suffering. But to

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Speaker 1: write the book is not like a mad Max in Thunderdome.

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Speaker 1: Everything is destroyed and a few humans are scrabbling for

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Speaker 1: survival in a new harsh world. It really describes the

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Speaker 1: situation where we have adapted to it. We have come

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Speaker 1: up with new political and social organizations that do allow

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Speaker 1: large populations of humans to exist and even to thrive

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Speaker 1: and like have fun and chill out totally. And and

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Speaker 1: those humans sort of work together and exist in slightly

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Speaker 1: different ways than what we have now. So like you

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Speaker 1: still have corporations, and the corporation still sort of have

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Speaker 1: the like let's use all the resources sort of attitude.

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Speaker 1: They're not totally on board with turning the climate change

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Speaker 1: ship around, which isn't too surprising. You still have nations,

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Speaker 1: but the nations have a little bit less power than

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Speaker 1: they used to. And now it seems like most of

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Speaker 1: the activities that happen in people's lives are happening at

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Speaker 1: the watershed level. So within your watershed you make decisions

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Speaker 1: about you know, working together and what you're going to do,

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Speaker 1: and so you're sort of linked globally, but most of

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Speaker 1: the action is happening locally. And fun fact, I believe

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Speaker 1: the word for that is global, which is a great word.

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Speaker 1: Can you spell that word for us? What was that? Global? Global?

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Speaker 1: Like glocalization, it's when you've get like lots of exchanges

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Speaker 1: of information and stuff, but like at the local level,

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Speaker 1: it's sort of is interacting in people's lives and those

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Speaker 1: people are taking what is helpful for them and sort

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Speaker 1: of mixing it with their own culture to make something

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Speaker 1: that's a little bit new and sort of a little

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Speaker 1: bit localized. Well, it's fascinating to me to think about

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Speaker 1: the future of sort of human organization, and you know,

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Speaker 1: you can look in the past and you can see

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Speaker 1: that overall there's this trend towards sort of larger and

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Speaker 1: larger and more and more global organizations. The nations that

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Speaker 1: we have now are really vast compared to you know,

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Speaker 1: the city states of two thousand years ago, for example.

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Speaker 1: But there also is this sort of periodicity as we

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Speaker 1: build up large empires and then they collapse, and then

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Speaker 1: we build up new empires and then they collapse, And

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Speaker 1: so it's interesting to think about an alternative where we

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Speaker 1: don't just collapse into total disaster and have to scrabble

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Speaker 1: our way through five dred years of dark ages, but

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Speaker 1: instead we sort of fracture where things become a little

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Speaker 1: bit more local, and we can have like different priorities

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Speaker 1: in different areas and people organizing themselves from the bottom up.

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Speaker 1: I thought this book is really clever in the way

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Speaker 1: that it imagined like this middle ground for humanity not

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Speaker 1: total disaster. I thought that was a unique take on

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Speaker 1: it also and was very cool. And so, Daniel, do

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Speaker 1: you ever wonder are you living in an era where

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Speaker 1: there's going to be a break and a collapse? I

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Speaker 1: do wonder about that all the time, and I look

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Speaker 1: around at our lives and I think It's easy to

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Speaker 1: imagine us looking back in fifty years and being baffled

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Speaker 1: at how we lived, you know, just the sheer wealth

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Speaker 1: and the ibulance and the resources that we consume every

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Speaker 1: day without even thinking about it very much, you know,

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Speaker 1: gas and electricity and money and the food waste. It

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Speaker 1: does seem like it would be easy to look back

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Speaker 1: at this as sort of like the peak of the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire, just before the fall. I hope you're wrong,

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Speaker 1: but yes, I I think about that too. Sometimes I

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Speaker 1: think about how I might be living in a cave

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Speaker 1: talking to my grandchildren about you know, what television was

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Speaker 1: or what running water was. You'll be kicking the stone

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Speaker 1: around the old cave to play soccer. Maybe the solution

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Speaker 1: for us will be the same as a possible solution

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Speaker 1: presented in the book, which is aliens. And I also

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Speaker 1: really liked the take on aliens. They were sort of

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Speaker 1: like a fresh look at aliens, and she had a

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Speaker 1: very interesting take on their biology. And these aliens were friendly.

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Speaker 1: They had I thought, a very clever way of of

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Speaker 1: letting us know that. But I'll sort of leave that

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Speaker 1: to be unveiled to the reader when they read the book.

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Speaker 1: But they have kind of a scary message. What is

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Speaker 1: their message? Yeah, I thought this was a really cool

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Speaker 1: way to sort of put a pin in the issues

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Speaker 1: of climate change and how to live long into the future.

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Speaker 1: These aliens in the book, when they arrive, they are

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Speaker 1: very friendly, You're right, but their messages you have to

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Speaker 1: get off the planet. They think about planets as a

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Speaker 1: way to like incubate a new species. They're like planets

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Speaker 1: are like nests. You know, you can create a new species,

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Speaker 1: you can evolve, but they're not a place to live,

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Speaker 1: right Like, you basically got to move out of mom

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Speaker 1: and Dad's house eventually and go off into space. And

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Speaker 1: they come with a warning, you know, to say that

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Speaker 1: everybody who tries to live long term on a planet

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Speaker 1: eventually kills themselves. And they even say how they tried

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Speaker 1: to help for other species, but they got there too

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Speaker 1: late before those species basically exterminated themselves through climate change disasters.

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Speaker 1: And so they're coming with a warning saying get off

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Speaker 1: planet A S. A P. And not only get off planet,

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Speaker 1: but get off planet, and then you're gonna need to

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Speaker 1: dismantle that planet for rees sources that you're gonna need

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Speaker 1: to keep going in space, which to me was the

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Speaker 1: point where I was like, oh, man, like I could

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Speaker 1: imagine if the messages get off planet, you could be like, okay,

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Speaker 1: but like you know, of us are going to stay

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Speaker 1: because Earth can totally handle it. But it's like, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: that's not even an option for a variety of reasons,

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Speaker 1: one of which is we need your parts or you know,

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Speaker 1: we need the parts of the Earth to build stuff.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting, Yeah, how do you how do you

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Speaker 1: convince the aliens that you should get to stay or

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Speaker 1: and you know, of course humans never agree on anything,

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Speaker 1: and sort of seeing how the human species comes to

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Speaker 1: terms with this ultimatum is an interesting problem to watch

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Speaker 1: get solved throughout the course of the book. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I thought it's especially fascinating because it's a question that

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Speaker 1: we have now, like should we change that we believe

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Speaker 1: should we try to get off planet? Even if aliens

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Speaker 1: don't come and tell us that they think it's necessary.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who think that the

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Speaker 1: long term solution to human survival is to get off

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Speaker 1: the planet and establish basis on Mars, or build dyce

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Speaker 1: in Speares or these kinds of things. I know that

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Speaker 1: you're a skeptic though about survival in space and space settlement.

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Speaker 1: What do you think about not just moving out into

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Speaker 1: space but also dismantling this complex ecosystem that we use

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Speaker 1: as the like the foundation of our society. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: so in the nineteen seventies, the idea was really popular

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Speaker 1: that we need to go out into space because you know,

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Speaker 1: a population numbers are expanding like crazy, We're gonna run

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Speaker 1: out of space, We're gonna run out of resources. We

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Speaker 1: need to move into space. And you know, they like

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Speaker 1: war induced famine over not having enough resources and the

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Speaker 1: millions and millions of people dying from starvation, like those

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Speaker 1: things never came to pass. And so I think, no

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Speaker 1: doubt there have been famines and there have been problems,

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Speaker 1: but I don't think that space is going to be

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Speaker 1: the solution to these problems the way that a lot

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Speaker 1: of people think. And also, you know, so yes, I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm a skeptic. I think we can move into space

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Speaker 1: and we can have space settlements, but it's gonna take

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Speaker 1: us a lot longer than I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: people would probably guess or would probably expect. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of problems we still need to solve, and so

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Speaker 1: I suppose I think we need to figure out the

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Speaker 1: problems down here and not expect on moving people off

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Speaker 1: into spaces the solution, because I just don't think we

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Speaker 1: can do it fast enough to make content. Did I

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Speaker 1: answer your question? I sort of went off on a tangent. No,

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Speaker 1: absolutely you did. But now I wonder what is Kelly's

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Speaker 1: timeline for human space colonization. You think it's going to

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Speaker 1: take a while, and we're talking a hundred years, a

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Speaker 1: thousand years, Just like with soon ish, I always hesitate

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Speaker 1: to make like estimates for when such and such is

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Speaker 1: going to happen, because it depends not just on how

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Speaker 1: long it takes to make the technology, but like how

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Speaker 1: many politicians want to fund the project to make it happen,

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Speaker 1: And so you know, your estimate for how long it's

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Speaker 1: going to take depends on so many things that you

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Speaker 1: can't control that you're destined to be wrong. But what

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Speaker 1: I can say is I think it's a project that

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Speaker 1: if we force to happen quickly, we might regret because

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Speaker 1: you know, for example, we don't know if humans can

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Speaker 1: have babies in space safely, and I think we want

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Speaker 1: to figure that out before we, you know, move to Mars,

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Speaker 1: for example, and then discover that actually there's a bunch

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Speaker 1: of problems and we're, you know, not happy with how

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Speaker 1: things are going. So I think it would be better

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Speaker 1: if it took longer. Let's say, but I don't know

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Speaker 1: how long it would take for you to like meet

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Speaker 1: the bare minimum standards to move out into space, but

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Speaker 1: I think you should be way past that before we

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Speaker 1: go ahead and start that project. Well, I was hoping

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Speaker 1: to trick you into giving a specific number so that

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Speaker 1: I could call you up in and say, see, Kelly,

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Speaker 1: we're not yet in space. You were wrong. Nope, Nope,

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Speaker 1: there's no trick. In main, there's no But I do

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Speaker 1: think you bring up a really interesting issue, which is

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Speaker 1: that a lot of our technological bursts and development do

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Speaker 1: come in response to a crisis, you know, or for example,

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Speaker 1: a nationalistic race, which essentially is a crisis you know,

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Speaker 1: that we see an astory coming and then we scramble

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Speaker 1: to develop a technology necessary for that. And in this book,

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Speaker 1: I think it's quite interesting that the humans have like

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Speaker 1: kind of figured it out. You know, by the time

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Speaker 1: the aliens do arrive and say, hey, you've got to

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Speaker 1: get off planet, the humans have sort of threaded the

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Speaker 1: needle and figured out how to live maybe sustainably on

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Speaker 1: the planet. It's a really fun conversation they have both

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Speaker 1: internally within the humans and with the aliens about hey,

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Speaker 1: do we actually need to get off planet or are

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Speaker 1: we doing okay? Yeah, and and and you know, of course,

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Speaker 1: it being a discussion involving humans, there's a lot of disagreement.

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Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's interesting to argue, like, how do

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Speaker 1: we know, you know, when we get a handle on

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Speaker 1: this climate change thing, and hopefully it's when, not if,

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Speaker 1: How will we be able to convince ourselves that we've

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Speaker 1: really got things going in a better direction and we

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Speaker 1: don't have to worry anymore. And that's yeah, that's sort

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Speaker 1: of an interesting question that doesn't have a clear answer yet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: something else I really enjoyed about this book where the disagreements.

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Speaker 1: Often when aliens arrive, they're like monolithic in culture and

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Speaker 1: in politics and in opinion. You know, they all sort

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Speaker 1: of speak with one voice, but here they disagree with

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Speaker 1: each other, they have different personalities, they undermine each other.

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Speaker 1: I thought that was really fascinating and probably much more realistic. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think so often in the movies that I've seen

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Speaker 1: and the books that I've read, you have sort of

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Speaker 1: aliens with the hive mind where they all can sort

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Speaker 1: of like I guess it's not that different than the

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Speaker 1: humans sort of coming to a consensus with their technology,

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Speaker 1: but like you know, they even still disagree. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: like you said, the aliens are think very realistically portrayed

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Speaker 1: and that they don't all agree even and it's yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's very good writing. Yeah, often in science fiction

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Speaker 1: you meet like some species and it was like a

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Speaker 1: president of the planet, and I'm like, a president of

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Speaker 1: the planet. Really, like there's no way humans would ever

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Speaker 1: know elect the president who could then also act boldly right,

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Speaker 1: like it'd be so bogged down in you know, disagreements

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Speaker 1: among the planets. And so it's really nice for me

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Speaker 1: to see aliens that you know, don't always get along

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Speaker 1: and make decisions together. I thought that was really fascinating.

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Speaker 1: But I want to dig more into the science of

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Speaker 1: this universe that Ruth Anne Emers has created in her novel.

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Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back

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Speaker 1: and we're talking about the science fiction universe of the

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Speaker 1: novel I have built. Garden by ruth Anna Emiress whose

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Speaker 1: background is in cognitive psychology and sociology, and she's written

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Speaker 1: a really fascinating book, not just about aliens though, of course,

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Speaker 1: and we love the aliens, but also about the future

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Speaker 1: of human civilization, how humans come together to solve the

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Speaker 1: climate crisis and reorganize their own lives. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: one of the aspects of the technology that I thought

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Speaker 1: was really interesting is that everybody has this mesh that

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Speaker 1: they can put on their head and they can sort

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Speaker 1: of network ideas and so like, if you are about

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Speaker 1: to make a decision that could impact the whole community,

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Speaker 1: you can send that information out to the network, and

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Speaker 1: people can like add their input and vote up or

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Speaker 1: down on solutions. And if anybody has sort of like

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Speaker 1: research that's relevant, they can summarize it. And so the experts,

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Speaker 1: I think the experts have like extra weight. And it's

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Speaker 1: like having sort of like a Reddit all the time everywhere,

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Speaker 1: which which strikes me as being like kind of overwhelming,

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Speaker 1: you know, to be honest. Part of my like, well

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Speaker 1: I was reading it, one of my thoughts was like

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Speaker 1: I don't think I could handle that. Like just when

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Speaker 1: my phone vibrate in my pocket and I'm having a conversation.

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Speaker 1: I'm distracted, and I'm like, oh, this isn't good. If

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Speaker 1: like my brain were constantly working through threads of information

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Speaker 1: about decisions, I think that would be overwhelming. But you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe that's something you get used to. You what do

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Speaker 1: you think? I don't know. I was sort of amazed.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I love the richness of the experience

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Speaker 1: that she imagined. She really seems to have thought about

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Speaker 1: what it would be like to have read it in

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Speaker 1: your head all the time and to have these sort

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Speaker 1: of constant communal discussions and debate. I'm not sure I

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Speaker 1: would enjoy it also, but you know, it's really hard

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Speaker 1: to know whether you would appreciate a completely different human experience.

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Speaker 1: And the thing that made me wonder was, you know,

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Speaker 1: would people really be so well behaved? I imagine if

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Speaker 1: a bunch of people had access to like injecting ideas

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Speaker 1: into my brain, it might just be dominated by like

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Speaker 1: the loudest, meanest voices, the bullies. Basically, it sort of

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Speaker 1: requires everybody to be civil in a way and to

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Speaker 1: agree to the rules and to be moderated. And I

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Speaker 1: was wondering because you know, in today's society, we were

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Speaker 1: struggling with exactly just that, how much speech to allow

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Speaker 1: on social media platforms and how much to moderate it.

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Speaker 1: I was sort of wondering how they figured out that

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Speaker 1: balance in a way that we could all live with

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Speaker 1: Reddit inside of our brain. Yeah, I know, that's that's

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Speaker 1: a good question. It would be interesting to talk to

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Speaker 1: software engineers about how they're tackling that problem right now.

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Speaker 1: I don't think it's easy, but sociologically, I think it's

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Speaker 1: really fascinating, this idea of devolving control, rather than having

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Speaker 1: it be centralized in some distant foreign government, having it

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Speaker 1: be more local and community oriented people making these decisions themselves.

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Speaker 1: And in some sense that seems empowering because maybe you

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Speaker 1: want the people on the ground to be the ones

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Speaker 1: who are like taking care of the wildlife and understanding

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Speaker 1: really the water flow issues. But it could also really

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Speaker 1: lead to issues of like inequality. You have a bunch

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Speaker 1: of wealthy people get together and build their own school

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Speaker 1: and have their own fire department and their own police force,

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Speaker 1: and pretty soon they're living in like a literal bubble,

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Speaker 1: and if the wealth is concentrated there, it can be

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Speaker 1: very difficult for people without those resources to have access

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Speaker 1: to it and have opportunities, and then where you live

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Speaker 1: determines basically the course of your life. So I think

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Speaker 1: there's definitely pluses and mindsets to that sort of reorganization

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Speaker 1: of society. I agree completely. Yep, this stuff is super complicated,

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Speaker 1: but in her book she takes all of this on

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Speaker 1: and she talks about the ups and the downs. The

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Speaker 1: network crashes at one point, which creates, you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: literal headaches for people trying to make decisions, So you know,

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Speaker 1: she doesn't shy away from all of this. She really

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Speaker 1: seems to have done a lot of research into how

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Speaker 1: this would actually operate. Tell me what your impressions were

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Speaker 1: of the biology, because her aliens were really quite inventive.

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Speaker 1: Did you find it realistic? Yeah, I mean I really

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Speaker 1: enjoyed reading about the aliens. So I'm I'm not usually

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Speaker 1: a great person to talk to about, like critiquing the

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Speaker 1: science of a sci fi universe, because I'm pretty much

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Speaker 1: willing to accept anything as long as the person is

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Speaker 1: consistent with the rules that they lay out. But I

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Speaker 1: will say that she had some really interesting aliens. One

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Speaker 1: was kind of like an insect and one was kind

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Speaker 1: of like a spider, and seeing how you know, those different,

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Speaker 1: you know groups, since there are environments in very different ways,

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Speaker 1: and you know, how figuring out how they learned to

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Speaker 1: communicate with one another and appreciate the ways that they

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Speaker 1: were different and learned how to complement one another, and

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Speaker 1: how they how they essentially ended up living in symbiosis

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Speaker 1: and we're reaching out with humans to try to make

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Speaker 1: them another symbiotic partner. I thought that was really interesting.

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Speaker 1: And additionally, how they engineered their environments so that, you know,

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Speaker 1: both species could interact even though their you know, their

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Speaker 1: body plans were really quite different. She thought it through

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Speaker 1: quite a bit. What did you think of the aliens? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: super creative. I had never thought about having two aliens

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Speaker 1: and symbiosis come and visit and like invite us to

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Speaker 1: join their little club, you know. I thought that was

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Speaker 1: a really cool way of thinking about things. I also

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Speaker 1: really enjoyed our insights into the alien culture. You know.

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Speaker 1: On one hand, it was very easy to talk to

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Speaker 1: the aliens because by the time they arrived that already

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Speaker 1: heard a bunch of English in our broadcasts and train

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Speaker 1: themselves on it, so we could just like chat with

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Speaker 1: them immediately. On the other hand, they were important cultural

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Speaker 1: differences like the Aliens were weirded out when people didn't

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Speaker 1: bring their children along to you know, diplomatic meetings, because

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Speaker 1: apparently in their culture, that's a real sign of trust,

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Speaker 1: right that you brought your children. So I thought that

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Speaker 1: was really clever. So much in this book of that

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Speaker 1: was just really different from anything I've ever seen before. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I definitely found myself thinking afterwards, like, oh, what, I

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Speaker 1: what I want to live in that world? Like it

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Speaker 1: certainly would have made being a mom and maintaining my

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Speaker 1: career much easier if it was just expected that my

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Speaker 1: kids would come with me everywhere. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: I find it really hard to think sometimes when my

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Speaker 1: kid is getting up, you know, when my kids were

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Speaker 1: getting upset and I had to make a big decision.

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Speaker 1: But she has her characters deal with that kind of

432
00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:38,520
Speaker 1: stuff too, and so yeah, it was it was an

433
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:41,480
Speaker 1: interesting way to imagine the world that I think would

434
00:21:41,520 --> 00:21:43,880
Speaker 1: have some big benefits but would be difficult to implement.

435
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:46,640
Speaker 1: Something she described in her novel as sort of an

436
00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:50,640
Speaker 1: eventual end point for civilizations is not just moving out

437
00:21:50,680 --> 00:21:54,040
Speaker 1: to space, but also constructing sort of like mega projects,

438
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:57,360
Speaker 1: things like Dyson spears, which capture a large fraction or

439
00:21:57,400 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 1: all of the energy of a star, allowing realizations to

440
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:06,040
Speaker 1: like vaporized planets or or construct enormous other technologies that

441
00:22:06,119 --> 00:22:08,720
Speaker 1: require so much energy. I thought it was really interesting

442
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 1: to think about whether that's actually possible, you know, whether

443
00:22:12,119 --> 00:22:15,000
Speaker 1: that's the only way to live as an interstellar species,

444
00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:17,480
Speaker 1: or whether there are other ways to do it. Yeah,

445
00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:19,359
Speaker 1: I mean I found I found it to be a

446
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:22,240
Speaker 1: very depressing prospect, the idea that you would have to

447
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:25,439
Speaker 1: like grind up the Earth in order to make a

448
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:28,800
Speaker 1: dicense fear to keep a subset of these species alive

449
00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:32,280
Speaker 1: right now on Earth, you know, alive in space stations

450
00:22:32,359 --> 00:22:35,680
Speaker 1: or something. I hope that's not the direction of things.

451
00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:38,800
Speaker 1: What and it sounds complicated? What did you think of it?

452
00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: I think that is an interesting question. And you know,

453
00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:43,879
Speaker 1: if we were to build a dicense fear here in

454
00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:47,879
Speaker 1: our Solar system, I wouldn't start with grinding up the Earth,

455
00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:50,760
Speaker 1: you know, I would start with like mercury. Mercury has

456
00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:52,879
Speaker 1: a lot of really heavy metals in it, and we

457
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 1: don't really need it for anything else. We could like

458
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 1: lose mercury and not really notice. But it's a good

459
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:01,240
Speaker 1: point that if you wanted to build a full dicense fhere.

460
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:03,920
Speaker 1: If you wanted to capture like all of the ten

461
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:06,560
Speaker 1: to the twenty six watts of energy that the Sun

462
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: puts out, you would need a lot of material. Right

463
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:13,000
Speaker 1: If you built like a sphere at the radius of

464
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 1: the Earth like radius of one AU, then the internal

465
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: surface of that sphere would be like mind bogglingly large.

466
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 1: We're talking about five hundred million times the surface of

467
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,720
Speaker 1: the Earth. So we've never built anything the size of

468
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 1: the Earth. Now we're talking about building something like hundreds

469
00:23:30,600 --> 00:23:33,679
Speaker 1: of millions of times the surface area of the Earth.

470
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 1: It's like, we're not even close to doing that. So

471
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:39,359
Speaker 1: I think I'm more realistic. Trajectory is that you build

472
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:43,080
Speaker 1: a bunch of stations in space that are capable of

473
00:23:43,119 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: absorbing the power of the Sun and you use that

474
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 1: for your space based infrastructure. You don't necessarily need to

475
00:23:48,800 --> 00:23:53,200
Speaker 1: go from zero to complete dicensphere in an afternoon. Where

476
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: where would you live in the dicensphere. So, like you

477
00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:59,480
Speaker 1: build the dicensphere, do you live on like the outside

478
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 1: part of it? Are you just floating around inside of

479
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 1: the sphere. It's a tricky question, right, Like you could

480
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:07,440
Speaker 1: imagine living on the inside of this mega project. But

481
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:09,639
Speaker 1: there would be no gravity, right, You're not going to

482
00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:12,119
Speaker 1: be able to like walk around in the inside of it.

483
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 1: And then you might think, oh, let's spin the thing.

484
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 1: Right now, you have this enormous thing which is also spinning,

485
00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:21,760
Speaker 1: and it would be really unstable. You know, a Dyson

486
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: sphere that surrounds the Sun, you can stay there stably,

487
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: just sort of in orbit, but as soon as he

488
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:30,440
Speaker 1: gets off center a little bit, now the part that's

489
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 1: closer to the Sun is going to feel more gravity

490
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:36,000
Speaker 1: towards the Sun and it's going to very quickly fall

491
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 1: into the Sun. And so this thing would be very unstable.

492
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:42,240
Speaker 1: And now you're spinning it also, which makes it less stable,

493
00:24:42,359 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 1: and it would need to be much much stronger. Right,

494
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 1: this thing would require like a tensile strength that exceeds

495
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:52,159
Speaker 1: any known material that we can even imagine building it

496
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: out of. So it would be very hard to build.

497
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: It'd be very unclear to know, like where you would

498
00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 1: live on it. I think instead, much more realistic is

499
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 1: not to build a huge Dicen sphere that encircles the

500
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 1: whole star, but just to build a bunch of satellites

501
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: that like roughly circle the Sun, don't block it entirely.

502
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: That just gather a bunch of energy. Because the Sun

503
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 1: has so much energy, we don't even need all the

504
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 1: energy that the Sun puts out. What would we even

505
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 1: do with that other than building like giant space lasers.

506
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:21,560
Speaker 1: I don't want to live in a world with giant

507
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: space lasers. I don't think would you have to like

508
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,360
Speaker 1: replace these satellites regularly that would be an incredible job.

509
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:30,439
Speaker 1: Or do you you just imagine that these satellites are

510
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: gonna work forever. No, you definitely need to replace them.

511
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 1: And I think the most realistic plan I've ever heard

512
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 1: for building this kind of system is that you build

513
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:42,680
Speaker 1: a few of them manually out of materials from like mercury,

514
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 1: and then you build robots that make more, and you

515
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:48,159
Speaker 1: power those robots using the system that you built. So

516
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:51,440
Speaker 1: you sort of build a few bespoke ones yourself using

517
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:54,719
Speaker 1: human mining and industry, and then you use that as

518
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: a launching point for your like automatic self replicating robot

519
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: arm that can make more of these things. And then

520
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,919
Speaker 1: it basically like devours mercury and turns it into a

521
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 1: whole network of these things. And yet some of them

522
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:09,360
Speaker 1: will go offline, but you just keep building them where

523
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 1: you can recycle the materials somehow, and then you beam

524
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:14,679
Speaker 1: it to the Earth or to your I guess, to

525
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: your stations because you're living around the sphere. You and

526
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: I've talked about the prospect of getting solar power in

527
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: space and beaming it down to the Earth. That's tricky, right,

528
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:24,240
Speaker 1: because you've got to get it down to the Earth,

529
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: But you don't want to fry people, and you don't

530
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: want to build a giant space laser and handed over

531
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,560
Speaker 1: to politicians for so many reasons. But instead, if you

532
00:26:31,720 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 1: build it in space for use in space, then you

533
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:37,879
Speaker 1: know that mitigates some of those issues. You don't need

534
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: to beam it down to the planet. Um, you can

535
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: just sort of beam it around space. I suppose do

536
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 1: you feel like there's any ethical argument against destroying a

537
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,919
Speaker 1: planet just because we're not personally super interested in it

538
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 1: right now? I think there's definitely a question of you know,

539
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 1: colonization and treating it like a resource. We don't know,

540
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: for example, whether there's life on Mercury, and we also

541
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: don't know the sort of spectrum of post some whole life.

542
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: Potentially there is life on mercury that we don't even notice,

543
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 1: we don't even recognize, and we just like devour it

544
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,360
Speaker 1: and turn it into our battery system essentially without even

545
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 1: being aware of it. Or maybe life would have evolved

546
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:14,399
Speaker 1: on mercury in another hundred million years, just sort of

547
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: like slow going chemistry, and we've prevented that from happening.

548
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 1: So there are definitely important questions about how we treat

549
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: resources in space, and also who in our society gets

550
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: access to those resources, you know, should it be corporate

551
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 1: barons who are launching their own satellites, Should it be

552
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: national governments, or should it be like decisions made by

553
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: a bunch of local communities with Reddit in their brain?

554
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,040
Speaker 1: You know? These are important questions, they are, And I've

555
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: been reading a bunch of papers by philosophers about, you know,

556
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:44,879
Speaker 1: conservation of things in space, and you you know, you

557
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:47,919
Speaker 1: mentioned mercury's value if it has life on it, But

558
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:49,920
Speaker 1: I think they would argue that, like, I mean, it's

559
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: a whole planet that you know, has scientific value, and

560
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: even that even if it doesn't have scientific value, it

561
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: might be nice to look at. And should we, you know,

562
00:27:57,119 --> 00:27:59,679
Speaker 1: should we value it just because it's a giant thing?

563
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: That its cysts, and I think that's a very popular

564
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: argument with many people. But it's interesting to think about. Yeah,

565
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:07,920
Speaker 1: that is interesting in the same way that you might say, hey,

566
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 1: let's not demolish that mountain because of the coal inside

567
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: of it. It's kind of nice to look at and

568
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 1: to hike around on. We prefer it in mountain form, right,

569
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: And what are we going to do with all the

570
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 1: acronyms that we use to memorize the planets if there's

571
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:22,879
Speaker 1: no M at the beginning and we're gonna have to

572
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:24,880
Speaker 1: start over, and that's going to be tough. That's really

573
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:27,640
Speaker 1: an ethical issue. All those children we've taught this acronym

574
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,280
Speaker 1: and now they have to start again. Ye, not fair?

575
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:33,600
Speaker 1: What are we doing to our children? Think of the children?

576
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:37,000
Speaker 1: Think of the children. Indeed, all right, wonderful. Well, we

577
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: have a special tree coming up for you. After the break,

578
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to the author of a Half

579
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: Built Garden and hear about how she came up with

580
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 1: these ideas and why she is so fascinated by thinking

581
00:28:47,560 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: about them. But first we're gonna take another break. Then

582
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: it's my pleasure to welcome to the program ruth Anna Emiris.

583
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 1: She is a prolific author of many novels and has

584
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: been shortlisted for several awards, including being a finalist for

585
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 1: the Locust Award for Best First Novel, and she's here

586
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: to talk to us about her recent science fiction book,

587
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: A Half Built Garden. Ruthanna, thank you very much for

588
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: joining us, and welcome to the program. Thank you for

589
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 1: having me so First, we'd like to get to know

590
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: you a little bit before we ask you in detail

591
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 1: about your process of writing the book. Tell us a

592
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: little bit about your background and how you came to

593
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: write a book about aliens. I've really come to write

594
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: a book about aliens? I don't know. I've been writing

595
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: about aliens honestly most of my life. It's always been

596
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 1: one of my favorite sub genres of science fiction. How

597
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: I came to write book about climate mitigation that had

598
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: aliens in it is that I've lived in Washington, d C.

599
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: For about ten years, and one of the first things

600
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: that happened when I came here was that I got

601
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 1: involved in the local citizen science movement, and I got

602
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: involved people who were running projects that were bringing ordinary

603
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: people into the process of planning science, collecting data, analyzing data,

604
00:30:26,360 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: and seeing the way that that changes the way that

605
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: people think about the world and the ecosystems around them.

606
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: So when I started to think about, well, what sort

607
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:41,240
Speaker 1: of governance structures could be really different from what we

608
00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 1: have now and maybe do better at dealing with the

609
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:50,239
Speaker 1: huge existential problems that we face as a species, I

610
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 1: started to think about that sort of crowdsource system. And

611
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: because I am always interested in what challenges systems, and

612
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the ways that our current systems

613
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: are challenged by these problems, I started thinking about, Okay,

614
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: here's a system that works much better for these problems.

615
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: What makes this system break? And the answer was aliens?

616
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: Because why would it not be aliens? That's a good answer.

617
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: When I was reading the book, I found myself wondering

618
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: if you have a background in either ecology or political science,

619
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: because both of those sort of themes were done so

620
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 1: well in the book, And so do you have a

621
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: background in either of those topics? Thank you? My background

622
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: is in the social sciences more generally. I'm an experimental

623
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 1: cognitive psychologist by training, but I spend a lot of

624
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: time working with anthropologists and political scientists, and I also

625
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time working with ecologists and other

626
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: people who are working on other disciplines involved in solving

627
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 1: climate issues. So I'm always working on the how can

628
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: humans screw this up end of things? But I love

629
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 1: talking with and looking with the people who are working

630
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: on the how do we get carbon out of the atmosphere?

631
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: How do we improve the resilience of our systems from

632
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 1: uh energy standpoints? And then I'm coming back with, okay,

633
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: and how do we get people to actually implement the

634
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: solution now that you come up with it. Something I

635
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: really enjoy in science fiction novels and in particular in yours,

636
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: is imagining other ways that we can live, other ways

637
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: that we might organize ourselves. And your book describes a

638
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 1: pretty novel political and social organization, the watershed. Can you

639
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: explain this concept to our listeners? So, the dandelion networks

640
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: in a half built garden are they are built around watersheds,

641
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: and a lot of that was trying to think about

642
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 1: what sort of geographic boundaries would have some basis in

643
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: shared interests and shared problem solving, and it would make

644
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: people think more deeply about the world around them. They

645
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: are also technological system The networks are sort of many

646
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 1: internets that are based around watersheds or in some cases

647
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: around just you know, knitting or other shared interests as well,

648
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: and people can belong to more than one of them.

649
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: But the central thing they do is decision making. So

650
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: they include both systems set up for people to provide

651
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: input into a problem like how do we reduce level

652
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: of run off into the Anacostia River. And then they

653
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:08,240
Speaker 1: also include algorithms that, if you think about the way

654
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 1: that modern machine learning algorithms often unintentionally bring in biases

655
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: from their data sets, the dandelion algorithms deliberately bring in

656
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:25,040
Speaker 1: biases that we want to have. So they include algorithms

657
00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: that bias problems solving towards human rights or towards advocacy

658
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 1: for the local ecosystem. And so those algorithms also contribute

659
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: to solving problems and weighting solutions. One of the things

660
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: that I really enjoyed about the book, in addition to

661
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:47,799
Speaker 1: the things I've already mentioned that I enjoyed about the book.

662
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: So you talk about a law, you know, there are

663
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: people who are arguing that living on Earth isn't a

664
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,400
Speaker 1: viable long term solution. And I just finished reading a

665
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 1: bunch of books about space settlements, and it was interesting

666
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:00,760
Speaker 1: to hear some of those arguments or of coming back

667
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: and being heard from different characters in your book. So

668
00:35:04,239 --> 00:35:07,399
Speaker 1: what is your feeling about the future of humanity? Can

669
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:10,399
Speaker 1: we eventually make civilization work here on Earth or are

670
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 1: we going to need to move out to the stars

671
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: to solve our problems? You know, I kind of wrote

672
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: the book to argue with myself about that. If I

673
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,760
Speaker 1: had to take an end to say, I think that

674
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 1: we ought to get both. I love to see us

675
00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:28,239
Speaker 1: going out and colonizing space. At the same time, I

676
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 1: think that a lot of science fiction that valorizes the

677
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: destiny of humans in the stars tends to underestimate the

678
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: value of having a complex ecosystem that you evolved to

679
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,920
Speaker 1: live in and the distance that we are from actually

680
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 1: being able to make other places more amenable to human

681
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 1: life when we're currently in the process of making this

682
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:58,479
Speaker 1: one less amenable to human life. I probably did come

683
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: down on the side of the characters saying, you know,

684
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: we need to maybe figure out how to make this

685
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 1: work on easy mode in order to do it right

686
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: anywhere else. Is that the viewpoint you had when you

687
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 1: started writing the book or through the process of writing

688
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:15,400
Speaker 1: the book, you sort of formed that more like solid viewpoint.

689
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 1: Like I said, I wrote the book in part to

690
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 1: argue with myself that is srequitely why I write books. Well,

691
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,800
Speaker 1: something I thought was really fascinating are these political structures

692
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,799
Speaker 1: that you described with this Dandelion network. It seems to

693
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: me like sort of an opposite trend of what we're

694
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 1: seeing today where we're lurching towards globalization. In your book,

695
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: you have sort of these smaller, more local communities that

696
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: operates am I independently Do you think that that's a

697
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: future for humanity, that these larger national governments and international

698
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: corporations are going to break up in favor of more

699
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,600
Speaker 1: local solutions. I think it depends on the direction that

700
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:55,520
Speaker 1: we choose to go. Um, but I really see trends

701
00:36:55,640 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: in both directions. In the modern world. We get anything

702
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 1: that pushed towards greater globalization, but we also you know,

703
00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: over the course of this last couple of weeks, I've

704
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: been anxiously watching Twitter breakdown and started up Mastodon account

705
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: just to make sure that I still had something. And

706
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: there's something much more granular and localized about the Mastodon instances.

707
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: And you know, people talk about that as both drinks

708
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: and a weakness, just as the globalization of Twitter has

709
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: been a great strength and also turns out to make

710
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:44,160
Speaker 1: it kind of griddle. I also see a lot of

711
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 1: the best, quietest work towards sustainability and resilience happening at

712
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 1: the local level, you know, in towns and cities where

713
00:37:55,239 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: people really have concretely shared needs that let them negotiate

714
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 1: politics locally in a way that can be more challenging

715
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: at higher scales. Do you think we're gonna need like

716
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: a major political realignment, like having little watershed governments before

717
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 1: we can actually start to address some of these bigger

718
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: problems like climate change. I don't think it's the only way.

719
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:23,399
Speaker 1: As I said, I live in the DC area. I'm

720
00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 1: felt way person, and I have uh fondness for the

721
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: executive branch agencies and the hard work that people do

722
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: in them. The NASA people who are running around trying

723
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: desperately to be relevant in the book are kind of

724
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 1: a love letter to all the people that I have

725
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: seen around here working utterly thankless jobs and trying desperately

726
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 1: to solve problems while people detegrate them in you know,

727
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 1: xt door And I hope that we figure out how

728
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 1: to solve problems with the nation states we currently have,

729
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 1: because it's honestly easier to do things with systems that

730
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:17,440
Speaker 1: you've already got in place. But I also think that

731
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 1: having subsidiarity and overlapping systems provide some really important ability

732
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: to address problems in different ways. In a different level,

733
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: I'd like to hear more of your thoughts about how

734
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 1: technology plays a role in allowing that to happen. I mean,

735
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 1: I know that in the early days the Internet, we

736
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: all imagined that the internet would be a powerful force

737
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,479
Speaker 1: for direct democracy, and now we see there's another side

738
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: to it that can also amplify hate speech and connect

739
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 1: pockets of extremism. And in your book, it was fascinating

740
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,400
Speaker 1: how the networks and the discussion seemed to be the

741
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: core of this like communal, bottom up style government. It

742
00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:59,359
Speaker 1: was almost a utopian at the same time as being

743
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: a little bit topian. Because we're facing this crisis. Do

744
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: you think that Twitter or Mathadon or these other social

745
00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:07,839
Speaker 1: networks are going to be sort of a framework for

746
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:11,319
Speaker 1: reimagining our priorities and government strategies. I mean, I think

747
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:15,760
Speaker 1: they have been. You know, Twitter has changed the way

748
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: that we do some types of governance. I have a

749
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: friend who is currently completely freaking out because Twitter has

750
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 1: been the backbone of vastly improved disaster response over the

751
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:40,400
Speaker 1: last decade, and she's fairly certain that when uh new

752
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:43,879
Speaker 1: natural disaster happens in the next few months, people are

753
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 1: going to die because Twitter is broken, and as we

754
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:52,840
Speaker 1: will be losing infrastructure that we were depending on to

755
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 1: you know, put people in touch with resources and to

756
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:05,399
Speaker 1: get help quickly where it's needed. Most technologies, they can

757
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: be used in many different ways, but they also have

758
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 1: affordances that make some things easier and somethings harder. Twitter

759
00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 1: unfortunately makes some good things easier and some bad things easier,

760
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:25,680
Speaker 1: and I think that as we design new technologies, we

761
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: want to think very deeply about what affordances we're building

762
00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 1: in and trying actively to prevent or mitigate the worst

763
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:41,479
Speaker 1: of the negative law. I also tend to think about

764
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:46,279
Speaker 1: technology in a way that I think a lot of

765
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: people don't. It's not just the circuits, it's the social structures.

766
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: And for the dandelion networks, there are algorithms involved, but

767
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: there are also new modes of social organization and new

768
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 1: ways of teaching people to expect and be incentivized by

769
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: certain types of engagements. And then I'm also very fond

770
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:19,840
Speaker 1: of whole idea of humans as natural side works that

771
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: built into our neurology is the expectation of being slow used.

772
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 1: So literally, when you pick up a stick, you change

773
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:37,839
Speaker 1: the way you represent space around you, in your occipital

774
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: lobe where you normally represent space, because the distinction that

775
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 1: you actually make and representing space is places that I

776
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:47,720
Speaker 1: can reach and manipulate in places that I can't reach

777
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: and manipulate. So every time we take on a new technology,

778
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 1: it changes our representation of ourselves and of our ability

779
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:01,799
Speaker 1: to impact the world. And that was something else I

780
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:06,759
Speaker 1: was thinking of with the Dandelion Networks, was deliberately designing

781
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: something too create that cyborgness in a way that was

782
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: good for the world and good for the people who

783
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: use it. I really appreciate the considering technology in the

784
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: long term from both the perspectives of how it can

785
00:43:21,200 --> 00:43:22,920
Speaker 1: go well and how it can go poorly. And I

786
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:24,760
Speaker 1: had a project that I did once and I interviewed

787
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of people working on emerging technologies, and I

788
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 1: was really surprised by how many of them didn't have

789
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 1: the answer to well and explain to me all the

790
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: ways your technology could be bad. And I can't tell

791
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 1: if they just didn't want me to know, or if

792
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:39,120
Speaker 1: they really hadn't blowed it through, But I do feel

793
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: like in general, we tend to be a little bit

794
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:43,279
Speaker 1: rosier about technology and we try not to think about

795
00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:45,279
Speaker 1: the negative implications until they sort of hit us in

796
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: the face. What people do have answers, they go in

797
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 1: very interesting directions. So I was involved in I think

798
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: a similar project many years ago now, I think about

799
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. I got involved with with people who

800
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: were trying to do foresight work around nanotechnology and to

801
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 1: come up with policy recommendations in advance of actual capability.

802
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 1: And after a while in these rooms you would find

803
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 1: that everyone wanted to think about the grade youth problem,

804
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:29,800
Speaker 1: which is, you know, very specialtive nanotechnology that reproduces itself,

805
00:44:30,600 --> 00:44:33,839
Speaker 1: optimizes for pagano clips and turns the entire planet into

806
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 1: paper clips and zero. People wanted to think of about

807
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 1: inhaling nanoparticles, which was in fact a actual problem with

808
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 1: actual nanotechnology at the time, for you know, what what

809
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:58,560
Speaker 1: happens if there is UH bug in your paper clip

810
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 1: optimizer with there will be and how does it break down?

811
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:06,439
Speaker 1: People love the big dramatic and I love the big

812
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: dramatic futures still on the science fiction writer, but it

813
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: also got very interesting to me psychologically the types of

814
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 1: futures that people wanting to think about and the type

815
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: that they found uncomfortable to think about. I have a

816
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: question about the sort of emotional side of it. In

817
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: your story, humans and aliens have like really big and

818
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:29,680
Speaker 1: important cultural differences, but they can also successfully empathize with

819
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,800
Speaker 1: each other and in some cases understand each other's social

820
00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:35,480
Speaker 1: and political issues. There's even a thread where we get

821
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 1: a sense that one character develops romantic feelings for an alien.

822
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: Do you think that's something we can expect to happen

823
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 1: in our universe when maybe aliens or is it more

824
00:45:44,280 --> 00:45:47,960
Speaker 1: just that in the hard realistic take where aliens are

825
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:51,920
Speaker 1: incomprehensible emotionally doesn't make for a very satisfying science fiction story.

826
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly that's part of why I choose to

827
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: write aliens who are somewhat comprehensible emotionally. But I think

828
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: it's you know, it depends on the species. If you

829
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 1: look at be more intelligent to other species with whom

830
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: we share our planet. Currently, humans get along better with

831
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:19,560
Speaker 1: some of them than others, and when we get along

832
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:25,440
Speaker 1: with them, we have very weird and unexpected places of

833
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: breakdowns and communication. And the things that humans can agree

834
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: on with adolphins are very differus to the things that

835
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,440
Speaker 1: humans can agree on with a part and the relationships

836
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: that we go with them are also very different. And

837
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 1: I said, tool even for something where we could learn

838
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 1: to speak each other's languages better than humans and Paris do.

839
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: So then if aliens do arrive, do you think that

840
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 1: we should send cognitive psychologists to go talk to them first?

841
00:46:56,600 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: Are you volunteering? Yes, yes, I'm totally volunteering. Oh my gosh,

842
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: most people ask that question backpedal rapidly, so I'm glad

843
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:08,359
Speaker 1: for your enthusiasm. So I have sort of a light

844
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: question here. So what alien in either you know, literature

845
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: or movies or TV is the best done alien? Are

846
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:20,200
Speaker 1: the best written alien that you've come across? And what

847
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 1: was your thought process as you went through and like

848
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: designed your aliens for the book? It depends on how

849
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:28,479
Speaker 1: you defined I know I've said it depends a lot.

850
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: I I am very annoyingly sent there. I really love

851
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:39,760
Speaker 1: the aliens in Mary Deriyah russell Sparrow and the mix

852
00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:47,640
Speaker 1: of you know, understanding and horrible misunderstanding that happens there,

853
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:53,400
Speaker 1: and the interesting relationships between the different species there. And

854
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that was part of my own influence.

855
00:47:56,120 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 1: I'm wanting to write two species that have relationship and

856
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:04,319
Speaker 1: then come to those contest with humans together. I was

857
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: also thinking about my first two books are in fact

858
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 1: deconstructive love crafty and historical fantasy, and they use aliens

859
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:17,759
Speaker 1: that love Crafts made up. And Lovecot had many serious

860
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: issues as a person, some of which my books are

861
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: about arguing with. But he was really good at coming

862
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: up with not even remotely humanoid aliens. And then, you know,

863
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: having whole slide bars of those years, all the biology

864
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: that I just made up, It isn't this fun oh

865
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:46,120
Speaker 1: look funnest. And so when I went to create my

866
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: own aliens, I did set myself the bar of that

867
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: they have to be at least as interesting in terms

868
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 1: of body plans. And the aliens that I got to

869
00:48:56,560 --> 00:48:59,680
Speaker 1: borrow for my last actually I really enjoyed, you know,

870
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 1: all the biology that you incorporated into the aliens lives.

871
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:06,720
Speaker 1: They were, They were very interesting aliens to think about.

872
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 1: Speaking of aliens, why do you think we haven't been

873
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 1: visited yet? You know, what's your personal answer to the

874
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 1: Fermi paradox? Even how old the galaxy is and how

875
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 1: common rocky planets seem to be, why have we not

876
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:24,920
Speaker 1: yet been visited by aliens? We've been looking for a century.

877
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: That is a minuscule amount of time us working what

878
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: the fact that we haven't found aliens yet is very

879
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: much like my kid looking for her stuffed animal for

880
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:40,400
Speaker 1: two seconds and then mean that she hasn't sarned her stuff.

881
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 1: You make us sound very immature as a species. At

882
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:51,760
Speaker 1: least hope we're immature as a species. If we're mature

883
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 1: as a species, then I have a whole new answer

884
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:59,960
Speaker 1: for the Fermi paradox. Yeah, I could even art your

885
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:04,239
Speaker 1: in any of the answers from you know we we

886
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:10,360
Speaker 1: missed them to everyone killed themselves a climate change to

887
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 1: be accurate. But I also feel like we just haven't

888
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 1: been looking that lot. And also I do feel and

889
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: this is one of the things I was arguing with

890
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 1: myself about in the book, Like a lot of the

891
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: why haven't we found the people who colonized the galaxy

892
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,319
Speaker 1: already A lot of the answer to that is, I

893
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:34,280
Speaker 1: think the sort of mindset that it takes to try

894
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: and grow endlessly is the sort of mindset that it

895
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: takes to kill yourself off climate change. And I did

896
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 1: ask myself that I was writing it, was what would

897
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:49,160
Speaker 1: it take for someone to build a licensephere and still

898
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:54,280
Speaker 1: be worth talking too? Because I personally think that most

899
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 1: species you can imagine building dicenspheres, you hope they stay

900
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:06,680
Speaker 1: very far way from your solar system. Agreed. So, speaking

901
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: of far off tech, what tech that's either existing in

902
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:12,960
Speaker 1: your book or other sci fi books would you like

903
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:15,799
Speaker 1: to see made real? Most of all, I really like

904
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: the part of the networks that involves making it easier

905
00:51:20,440 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: and more organic for people to sense the details of

906
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 1: the boom around them. So the sort of augmented reality

907
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 1: where it's not going to block your ability to hear

908
00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: bird sell when you go out for a walk, but

909
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 1: you can also you know, dive into the health of

910
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:41,280
Speaker 1: the trees or find out what kind of a burden

911
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:44,000
Speaker 1: is if you're you know, not circlers who already has

912
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:49,919
Speaker 1: that memorized. I'm also very fond of the sensory substitution

913
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:55,680
Speaker 1: stuff that exists that I gave Judy. I just like

914
00:51:55,760 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: the idea of being able to have more senses. That

915
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:00,879
Speaker 1: would be awesome. I like to be able to see

916
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:03,000
Speaker 1: the universe and all sorts of new ways. I think

917
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 1: that would really fundamently change our view of it wonderful. Well,

918
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: thanks very much for telling us about the process of

919
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:10,360
Speaker 1: writing your book and giving us a little bit of

920
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:13,960
Speaker 1: insight into how you think about aliens and humans and

921
00:52:14,080 --> 00:52:16,919
Speaker 1: the prospects of their interactions. It's been a pleasure. Thank

922
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: you for having me up And can you tell our

923
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: listeners about any upcoming projects of yours? If they've enjoyed

924
00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:22,799
Speaker 1: your book as much as we have, what can they

925
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:27,200
Speaker 1: look out for. I don't have any upcoming publications at

926
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,000
Speaker 1: the moment. I have a novella that is sitting with

927
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:34,160
Speaker 1: a couple of publishers, so I hope there will be

928
00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:38,359
Speaker 1: a publication date on a couple of things soon. You

929
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 1: can also find me on a regular basis at the

930
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: Reading the Weird column on tour dot com, where I

931
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: am pull Worth and I do commentary on two hundred

932
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 1: years of your fiction with equal parts we and criticism,

933
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: nothing being published, just now hoping to have more stuck

934
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 1: out soon. Well, best of luck and very nice to

935
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:07,319
Speaker 1: chat with you. Yeah, thanks for being on the show,

936
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explain

937
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:20,960
Speaker 1: The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio or

938
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:23,959
Speaker 1: more podcast For my heart Radio, visit the I heart

939
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

940
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:28,440
Speaker 1: favorite shows.