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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And

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Speaker 1: Julie I was thinking, you take the word astro and

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Speaker 1: you apply it to anything, and it immediately brings to

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Speaker 1: mind sort of a nineteen fifties, you know, space enthusiasm

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Speaker 1: kind of awesomeness and probably like an overstated awesomeness like

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Speaker 1: astro gum. You know, you could you could expect that

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Speaker 1: to be basically just gum, but maybe with cool packaging,

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Speaker 1: Yes man or astro man man or astro man or

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Speaker 1: you know, just think about astro lamp, astro desk, you know,

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Speaker 1: astro boy. They're they're they're all examples. So when you

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Speaker 1: when you talk about astro biology, there's a there's a

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Speaker 1: hint of of of absurdity to it. Yeah, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: quite square in the mind, doesn't. Yeah, it can easily

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Speaker 1: make you think of like old pulp magazine covers with

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Speaker 1: crazy wonky looking aliens that have no no basis in

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Speaker 1: in any kind of physiology that we have on Earth

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Speaker 1: or could even conceivably exist elsewhere. And it's also easy

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Speaker 1: to confine the whole realm of astrobiology to oh, I

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Speaker 1: wonder what aliens look like. But it's, as we're going

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Speaker 1: to explore in this uh, this little podcasts, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot more to it than that. Yeah, okay. Astrobiology really

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Speaker 1: deals with the speculation about the unknown, but it does

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Speaker 1: it through what we do know, right, what scientific theory

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Speaker 1: in data that we have. Yeah, it's it's uh, it's

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Speaker 1: it's about deduction. It's very like Sherlock Holmes would approve

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Speaker 1: of this. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean it's Sherlock Holmes

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Speaker 1: in the universe right right, saying what can I deduce here? Um?

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Speaker 1: You know, where where do we come from? Are we alone?

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Speaker 1: Astrobiology looks at origins, evolution, in the future of life

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Speaker 1: in the universe. Yeah, and it does it by drawing

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Speaker 1: on a bunch of different fields, yeah, including biology, astronomy, geology,

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Speaker 1: as and astrogeology and figuring out all the things that

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Speaker 1: really make life like yeah, chemistry, because basically this is

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Speaker 1: the key, all right, in contemplating life in space or

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Speaker 1: on other worlds. Uh, we know that, or we believe

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Speaker 1: the laws of physics are universal, So what the laws

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Speaker 1: of physics here are they gonna say, are the same

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Speaker 1: as they're gonna be in any corner of the known universe.

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Speaker 1: All right, So it stands. So it stands the reason

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Speaker 1: that the laws of life also apply elsewhere as well. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so we have to look at the best model of

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Speaker 1: life we have, which is the one we have on Earth.

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Speaker 1: The only model of life that we have is the

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Speaker 1: one we have here on Earth. So we need to

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Speaker 1: understand it. We need to understand how it forms, how

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Speaker 1: it evolves, how it changes, how it kicked off to

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Speaker 1: begin with? Did it did it just brew up here?

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Speaker 1: Did it get a kickstart from a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a space shrapnel? A little pans bermia in action? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Pants a great word, but but yeah, that's that's that's

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Speaker 1: one of the keys about about astrobiology. It's like taking

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Speaker 1: our model of life and really figuring out how it

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Speaker 1: works in order to figure out how it might work

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Speaker 1: somewhere else. And so you do. You have to think

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Speaker 1: about geology, you have to think about climate, you have

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Speaker 1: to think about about the biochemical aspect of it all.

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Speaker 1: It's auf so you end up drawing in a lot

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Speaker 1: of different fields. Yeah, and to make a sort of

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Speaker 1: Darwinian tinged joke. It really got its legs in the

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Speaker 1: last like forty years, UM. And a lot of that

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Speaker 1: is because there's been a burgeoning technology that's really aided astrobiology.

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Speaker 1: There's been the Human Genome Project, which has really helped

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Speaker 1: astrobiology in terms of looking at ancient genes, proteins, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, looking at old fossils and trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out what's going on here at the beginning, and how

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Speaker 1: can it inform us about what we are like right

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Speaker 1: now and what might be out there in the universe.

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Speaker 1: And the more we explore to it, it changes the

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Speaker 1: limits of what, if where life can be. Um. Extreme

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Speaker 1: aphiles are a huge example of this, you know, and

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Speaker 1: the microbes thriving around the geothermal heat in dark, deep

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Speaker 1: portions of the ocean. And again that's something of extreme

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Speaker 1: aphiles or something that we've gotten a much better hold

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Speaker 1: on since we've really in earnest begun to explore the

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Speaker 1: oceans right right right um, and you know, these geothermal

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Speaker 1: vents um and how and then I guess the idea is,

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Speaker 1: if an extreme aphile can exist in that sort of atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: then certainly it can exist somewhere out there in the

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Speaker 1: universe that's very different to the way that we we

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Speaker 1: humans um as liand lovers exist right right, Like it's

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Speaker 1: changed the way we've thought first about mars Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: in the past, it's been like, oh, well, maybe there's

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Speaker 1: a little liquid water um you know, around the near

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Speaker 1: the poles or something, or maybe it used to exist.

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Speaker 1: But but with with the extreme fhiles have changed the

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Speaker 1: equation a bit where we can say, oh, well, it

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Speaker 1: might actually be thriving somewhere deep below the surface. Likewise,

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Speaker 1: the there. You know, there's a lot of excitement about

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Speaker 1: Europa and the idea that beneath these frozen caps you

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Speaker 1: have a lightless ocean, which normally you might not imagine

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Speaker 1: things thriving, and a lightless ocean that's sealed forever beneath

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Speaker 1: the ice caps. But if they're geno geothermal events down there,

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Speaker 1: based on what we've we've discovered, that could that could

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Speaker 1: be it. That's could be how they're thriving down there.

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Speaker 1: Maybe not whole mermaid cities or anything, but maybe you

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Speaker 1: know some I'm sorry, but but yes, probably not mermaid cities.

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Speaker 1: And there are no treasure chests to have that. No,

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Speaker 1: this presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of

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Speaker 1: Tomorrow just but but still microas the idea of that

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Speaker 1: there's some sort of alien life is thriving somewhere, like

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Speaker 1: right now, there's a lightless ocean on one of the

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Speaker 1: Jovian moons, and there's something there might be something living

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Speaker 1: around this searing hot water. That's kind of beautiful. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like that. David Grinspoon, from his book Lonely Planet

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Speaker 1: said it helped that by the nineties, the second generation

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Speaker 1: of planetologists was becoming well established in the field of

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Speaker 1: astrobiology UM, which may at times been falsely hyped as

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Speaker 1: a scientific revolution or brand new discipline, but it is

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Speaker 1: a refreshing and encouraging development. A revolution really is going on,

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Speaker 1: not a scientific revolution, but a revolution in the culture

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Speaker 1: of science, one that is healthy for science in a

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Speaker 1: number of ways. And he talks about that is basically

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Speaker 1: saying that astrobiology is bridging all of these disciplines and

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Speaker 1: allowing them to to share their information socially, since we

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Speaker 1: do have this new understanding of the world UM. And

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Speaker 1: I think a good example of that is that, you know,

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Speaker 1: we kind of thought that the first earthlike planet that

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Speaker 1: we would find um outside of our Solar system would

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Speaker 1: be earthlike, right, But turns out that the nearest one

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Speaker 1: is more Jupiter. It's really hot, and it's really changed

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Speaker 1: the paradigm of what astrobiologists think happened in the universe.

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Speaker 1: How we developed jupiters, that's what they call it. That's

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Speaker 1: it's the new dance. I don't know what that is um.

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Speaker 1: So it really does has changed our understanding of of ourselves. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and of course there are other things in an astrobiology

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Speaker 1: that are a little more straightforward, like obviously we know

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Speaker 1: that water is really important to life as we understand it,

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Speaker 1: so in looking to other worlds, one of the things

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Speaker 1: we look for our signs that there may be water

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Speaker 1: on the planet. We also look for Earth like planets

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Speaker 1: that are in a habitable zone, you know, not too

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Speaker 1: close to the Sun because then the ports will be

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Speaker 1: too hot, and not too far away because then the

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Speaker 1: parts will be too cold. The goldils principle. Yes, yes, Hey,

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Speaker 1: this brings us to another interesting tidbit in the evolution

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Speaker 1: of the field of astrobiology, and that's the Martian meteorite

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Speaker 1: a l H eight four zero zero one. We ran

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Speaker 1: across this in nineties six and they found it contained

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Speaker 1: fossilized Martian nanobacteria, or that was the argument, tiny bacteria. Yeah. Now, subsequently,

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Speaker 1: the you know, the evidences has been discredited for the

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Speaker 1: most part, but still skept question right, yeah, just yeah,

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Speaker 1: heavily questioned. Skeptics still can't really explain the crystals of

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Speaker 1: magnetite found on this particular meteorite. But the thing is

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Speaker 1: they closely resemble crystals made by terrestrial bacteria. So it's

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Speaker 1: a real thought provoking relic. Yeah. So when it first

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Speaker 1: came out, people are like, oh, this is evidence that

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Speaker 1: life does exist outside there, outside of what we know.

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Speaker 1: And um, NASA really got behind this, um, which is

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Speaker 1: not to say they got behind something that was, um

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Speaker 1: not worth getting behind, But at the time I think

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Speaker 1: that really gave them a vehicle to say, you know what,

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Speaker 1: this this, whether or not it's right it, this is

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Speaker 1: a good idea for us to get behind astrobiology and

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Speaker 1: use it to try to explore the world more. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And part of that is like understanding Earth's early biosphere,

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Speaker 1: you know, examining the earliest sedimentary rock for biosignatures, UM,

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Speaker 1: searching for biosignatures of key micro organisms in these ancient rocks. UH,

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Speaker 1: analyzing genomic sequences UH and UH and and really looking

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Speaker 1: at at how evolutionary ecological changes may have occurred following

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Speaker 1: known asteroid impacts. Again, looking back to the idea of

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Speaker 1: pant spermia, the idea that that in the same way

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Speaker 1: that this meteorite may or may not have signs of bacteria, UM,

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Speaker 1: that in the distant past we might have had bacteria

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Speaker 1: introduced to the planet through one of these events of

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Speaker 1: pant spermia. I was hoping you'd say that again, there

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Speaker 1: you go. Well, I tried on the fly make an

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Speaker 1: adjective out of it, like pan spermom mamic. I don't know,

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Speaker 1: pansper mimic, pansper mimic. But that's just too much. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I love to think about that. But one of the

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Speaker 1: things that I read that if it was really interesting

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Speaker 1: is that once now said Dick, get behind it, it

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Speaker 1: was sort of allowed astrobiole just to sort of say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: the cats have the bag here. Yes, we're interested in

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Speaker 1: in looking at the Earth, um, looking at our solar system,

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Speaker 1: looking beyond it. But the reason we're really interested in

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Speaker 1: this is because we of course want to know if

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Speaker 1: there's some sort of alien life form out there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like that's the that's the real point

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Speaker 1: of the spear. Basically, again, I wonder what aliens look like,

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Speaker 1: But there's all this cool stuff that comes up comes

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Speaker 1: off the side of it, because we end up learning

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Speaker 1: much more about what we are because again it's kind

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Speaker 1: of like, uh, imagine a mystery where you're trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out why a coworker is is sad or stressed out,

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Speaker 1: and you're like, huh, well, why would I be stressed out?

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Speaker 1: Why would I be sad? And you have to you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe examine yourself to figure out what somebody else is doing.

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Speaker 1: And we're examining life on Earth to try and figure

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Speaker 1: out what life might consist of some more else, right exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And of course even then we know that that filter

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Speaker 1: is limited, right, so um trying to And again that's

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Speaker 1: why astrobiology so interesting because it has so many different

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Speaker 1: fields that can provide all those different filters. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: NASA is particularly interested in it too, because they feel

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Speaker 1: like astrobiology again really interesting and the point of the

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Speaker 1: spear is our wonder what aliens look like, So they

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Speaker 1: think it can serve to excite like new generations about science,

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Speaker 1: about all these different sciences that are tied up in astrobiology.

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Speaker 1: Maybe a kid gets into it because he wants to

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Speaker 1: know what an alien looks like, but ends up becoming

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Speaker 1: more interested in how climate change effects uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: species on on Earth as we know it today. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And you know, we've talked about this before, about how

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Speaker 1: there's this sort of cosmic naval gazing, like you know

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Speaker 1: between us, you know, humans making these lists of all

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Speaker 1: these banal things we're supposed to do in our life, right,

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Speaker 1: go to the group store, so on and so forth.

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Speaker 1: Every once in a while we kind of stop in

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Speaker 1: our you know, in our travels and go, why wait,

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Speaker 1: why are we here? Wait? There are other beings out there,

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Speaker 1: like are we alone? I mean, you can't help but

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Speaker 1: not have these thoughts. Yeah, it's like you're in the line.

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Speaker 1: You let you go. Let's see. Okay, I got the

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Speaker 1: soy milk, I got the bananas, I got the yogurt.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a god. Oh I forgot the U,

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Speaker 1: I forgot the nutella, and again yeah, yeah, why why

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Speaker 1: why did my deem thee? Why did it survive? You know,

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Speaker 1: it's going back so many hundred thousands of years. It's

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Speaker 1: pretty fascinating actually, um, But again, astrobiology is really seeking

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Speaker 1: to try to answer these questions. Astrobiologists actually, Paul Davies

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Speaker 1: in Charles Lynne Weaver line Weaver I found that cancer

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Speaker 1: share similarities with early forms of multicellular life. So again,

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Speaker 1: this is something that you were talking about that in

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Speaker 1: in this pursual we we find all these different pieces

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Speaker 1: of information emerging, and this is I think one of

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Speaker 1: the most fascinating ones. Um. So we're talking about ancient

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Speaker 1: forms of life that survived, you know, six hundred million

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Speaker 1: to one million, one billion years ago that might be

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Speaker 1: related to what we know no cancer. Yeah, it's kind

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Speaker 1: of I like to think of this kind of as

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Speaker 1: the demolition Man factor. For the one listener out there

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Speaker 1: who questioned h the exclusion of demolition Man references from

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Speaker 1: a recent podcast. In this film, in this science fiction film,

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Speaker 1: the world has advanced and become more peaceful, and uh,

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Speaker 1: this ultra violent Wesley Snipes type character is completely obsolete.

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Speaker 1: But he was frozen. He's not dead, he's frozen and

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Speaker 1: preserved in some sort of a prison. And then he

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Speaker 1: escapes on an unsuspecting world. So it's uh, the the

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Speaker 1: idea that Davis in line we were putting forth is

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Speaker 1: that is it cancer is uh is basically just the

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Speaker 1: Wesley snipes in this scenario. It is the the archaic

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Speaker 1: form of life way back on the scene and it's

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Speaker 1: causing chaos. Yeah, that's I'd like how you put that. Actually,

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Speaker 1: um as also known as atavistic, right, so it's reoccurring, uh,

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Speaker 1: not this digital right, not something that has gone extinct,

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Speaker 1: but something in our genetic coating that may pop up.

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Speaker 1: And that was quite a revelation. I mean, that's still

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Speaker 1: someone of a theory out there. But um, Unlike bacteria

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Speaker 1: and viruses, cancer has not developed the capacity to evolve

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Speaker 1: into new forms. So cancer is better understood as the

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Speaker 1: reversion of cells. This this atavistic quality to the way

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Speaker 1: that they behaved. UM. So basically what that's saying is

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Speaker 1: that because they are atavistic, there's a limited set of

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Speaker 1: functions that it can perform. And so and if we

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Speaker 1: can understand it in this way, we may actually be

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Speaker 1: able to treat it better that way, because it's not

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Speaker 1: a moving target anymore, there's some form of predictability to it. Right.

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Speaker 1: And it's not necessarily necessarily about understanding something new, but

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Speaker 1: understanding something very old, right right. And see that's very

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Speaker 1: That's what I think is so fascinating about this is

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Speaker 1: because we've always thought of cancer as rogue cells taking over,

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Speaker 1: but in fact, it's just that it's it's sort of

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Speaker 1: been there, Uh, that you've got our more modern cells

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Speaker 1: that if if they're damaged or they're not performing, all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden you have these cancer as cells that

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Speaker 1: have their own little toolkit, almost like a computer virus, right,

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Speaker 1: that sort of implant themselves. Um So, knowing that that

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Speaker 1: they've got the discrete function is pretty fascinating, and that

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Speaker 1: they can't evolve and they're not they're not a moving target.

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Speaker 1: Um so. And how how cool is that the astrobiology

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Speaker 1: is a part of that, right? Yeah. Again, the point

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Speaker 1: of the spear is still wonder what what aliens look like,

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Speaker 1: when what life in another world may consist of. But

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Speaker 1: we're learning so much about more about ourselves in our

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Speaker 1: quest to answer that question. Yeah. So for I mean

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Speaker 1: for anybody who thinks, I, well, what you know, why

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Speaker 1: is astrobiology important? It's just pine this skuy stuff. Um

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Speaker 1: it's just sort of like when people first looked at

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Speaker 1: the Human Genome Project and thought, well, this is ridiculous.

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Speaker 1: Why are we mapping the human genome? You know, what's

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Speaker 1: what's the worth in that? Well that there have been

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Speaker 1: all these different offshoots which allow us to look at

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Speaker 1: this very microscopic level and say, okay, look look at

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Speaker 1: how cancers UM performing as this sort of ancient uh gene. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's giving us a deeper understanding of life, and it's

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Speaker 1: also fueled a lot of of of measures to make

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Speaker 1: sure that as we continue to explore the worlds that

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Speaker 1: we keep this in mind and we don't pollute them

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Speaker 1: with with earth life, that that we we try and

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Speaker 1: keep it a little sanitary. I can't keep it clean, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: keep it clean if possible. But that's just one of

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Speaker 1: the many things that have come out of the come

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Speaker 1: out of this UM. But yeah, I mean it's in

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Speaker 1: young field. It's really exciting to be alive in this

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Speaker 1: you know, day and age where the sort of data

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Speaker 1: is coming to fruition UM. Not just that we have

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Speaker 1: our iPods handy, but we know that we can see

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Speaker 1: that the the full impact of something like the Human

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Speaker 1: Genome Project in astrobiology. Yeah, bring scientists together. It's a

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Speaker 1: beautiful thing. It is indeed beautiful speaking beautiful. I don't

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Speaker 1: we have just a quick note from a listening there, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we do. We've got a note from Michael and um.

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Speaker 1: He sent us a nice email and I'll just read

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Speaker 1: the first couple of um sentences. But we were talking

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Speaker 1: about subliminal messaging in our Eat Popcorn podcasts and I

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Speaker 1: had talked about a subliminal cross used in a politicians

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Speaker 1: commercial and at the time I couldn't remember who it was,

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Speaker 1: but he wrote to say, hey, I remember the controversy

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Speaker 1: surrounding Huckabees commercial and how people made a big deal

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Speaker 1: about the shelves in the background that formed a subliminal cross.

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Speaker 1: It was just like, okay, it was like books on

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Speaker 1: a shelf and they formed a cruciform shape. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: that's the interscesces of the bookshelves just kind of made

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Speaker 1: this cross. Like, I mean, if you looked at it,

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Speaker 1: you could see what looked like across. Honestly, I don't

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Speaker 1: know that I would have picked it out if I

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Speaker 1: hadn't been hip to the fact. But that's the thing

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Speaker 1: about subliminal messaging, right, You don't know what part of

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Speaker 1: your brain is pickcamp on stuff exactly, So thank you, Michael.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for the heads up on that. If you have

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Speaker 1: any cool examples of subliminal messaging you would like to

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Speaker 1: share with us, or if you have any thoughts on astrobiology,

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Speaker 1: if you are indeed an astrobiologist, or or in any

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Speaker 1: of the fields that stray into its territory, feel free

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Speaker 1: to drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. We

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Speaker 1: are blow the Mind on both of those, and you

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Speaker 1: can also drop us a line at blow the Mind

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast

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Speaker 1: icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it

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