Speaker 1: So Mars just is like, it feels like the planet
Speaker 1: that has most most captured our imagination, the imagination of
Speaker 1: the science fiction community, I think has been most captured.
Speaker 1: And it's whatever a couple hundred years run that we're
Speaker 1: at now, but really like in the last century, like,
Speaker 1: Mars has been the setting for so many different things,
Speaker 1: and it's that planet that is like us but not,
Speaker 1: and so it's just there, and so I picked it
Speaker 1: for that reason.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, and
Speaker 2: you know, I love science, but I gotta be honest,
Speaker 2: I don't really listen to a lot of science podcasts.
Speaker 2: History podcasts is my thing, and I am such a
Speaker 2: huge fan of the Revolutions podcas.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm a
Speaker 3: big fan of science and history, and especially the history
Speaker 3: of science. I really enjoy trying to get into the
Speaker 3: minds of people in the past before they understood something
Speaker 3: that we now take for granted, to try to grock
Speaker 3: what it was like to learn that or to live
Speaker 3: in a world when you didn't know that. Because I
Speaker 3: feel like there's such a huge intellectual distance between us
Speaker 3: and people who didn't know that the Earth is round,
Speaker 3: or moves around the sun, or the universe is so vast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been reading the Journal of Parasitology starting at
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve, moving to the presence, and I feel like
Speaker 2: every once in a while you'll catch a paper where
Speaker 2: they'll be explaining like, oh, this is how something works,
Speaker 2: and you know, as a scientist in the present that
Speaker 2: they're wrong, but you can totally see their reasoning, and
Speaker 2: I feel like it helps you remember to be humble,
Speaker 2: because things that can seem right and seem obvious can
Speaker 2: be wrong with more information. And so yeah, I also
Speaker 2: enjoy the history of science in that regard.
Speaker 3: As well, And I think these two fields are more
Speaker 3: closely related than people realize because science is also about storytelling.
Speaker 3: I mean, history obviously is storytelling. We're going back in
Speaker 3: the past and trying to understand what happened and why,
Speaker 3: what were the major themes and trends. But science is
Speaker 3: also storytelling. We're telling a story about how the universe
Speaker 3: works and how it came to be, and it's, if anything,
Speaker 3: digging deep into the ancient history of the universe. So
Speaker 3: I feel like these two fields are more closely connected
Speaker 3: than a lot of people give them credit for.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. And you and I have interviewed some
Speaker 2: really great storytellers in the past, so we're both pretty
Speaker 2: big sci fi geeks, and I often enjoy hearing from
Speaker 2: a sci fi writer who's trying to explore how some
Speaker 2: particular scientific concept might play out, you know, under slightly
Speaker 2: different conditions or on a different planet or something like that.
Speaker 2: And so I was really excited when Mike Duncan, who
Speaker 2: does the Revolutions podcast, started writing science fiction. And so
Speaker 2: instead of trying to test like what would it be
Speaker 2: like living in a low gravity environment, he's bringing all
Speaker 2: of his knowledge about past revolutions. So he has a
Speaker 2: history podcast that he's did for a decade going through
Speaker 2: different historical revolutions, and he's bringing that history and exploring
Speaker 2: how these history street things will play out on the
Speaker 2: Martian environment.
Speaker 3: And he's doing something really interesting, which is that he
Speaker 3: just dropped this into his normal nonfiction podcast feed about
Speaker 3: history and just start talking about a future revolution as
Speaker 3: if it was in the past, with all sorts of
Speaker 3: like references and like comments about this source, which you
Speaker 3: can't really believe. And you should read this other source,
Speaker 3: all of which is obviously made up, but completely deadpan
Speaker 3: right as if it was real history. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: I love it so much, and I particularly love it
Speaker 2: because I listened to the Revolutions podcast. It helped get
Speaker 2: me through the pandemic. I'm a huge fan. And he
Speaker 2: did this series where he sort of summarized some of
Speaker 2: the main points he took away from a decade of
Speaker 2: studying revolutions, and then the Martian Revolutions thing dropped, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my gosh, I get to hear, you know,
Speaker 2: all of the takeaways from the Russian revolutions on Mars,
Speaker 2: and I get to put together these two worlds that
Speaker 2: I love so much, you know, space settlements and the
Speaker 2: Revolutions podcast, and I am having so much fun.
Speaker 3: He's really the right person to be writing science fiction,
Speaker 3: if you asks me. And I'm going to say something
Speaker 3: a little controversial here, which is that we read a
Speaker 3: lot of science fiction from scientists, but most science fiction
Speaker 3: is not about the science, like, yes, you invent some concept,
Speaker 3: but really it's about the people and the politics and
Speaker 3: what life is like, and it's about the sociology and
Speaker 3: the people who are best informed to write realistic stories
Speaker 3: about that are people who know the stories from history.
Speaker 3: So historians and sociologists and political experts are the ones
Speaker 3: who are going to be able to write effective, realistic
Speaker 3: stories about new situations. And that's what science fiction really
Speaker 3: is all about. So anybody who's into science fiction, I
Speaker 3: really encourage you to check out the Revolutions podcast about
Speaker 3: the Martian revolutions.
Speaker 2: And I've been waiting every week for a new episode
Speaker 2: to drop, but you don't have to do that because
Speaker 2: today is June third. The series wrapped up on June first,
Speaker 2: so they're all out there and you can start now
Speaker 2: and you don't have to wait a week to hear
Speaker 2: the updates. It's all there and you can just listen
Speaker 2: to it through.
Speaker 3: But first listen to our conversation with Mike Duncan, the
Speaker 3: author and creator of Revolutions.
Speaker 2: Mike Duncan is a history podcaster and author. He's written
Speaker 2: the New York Times bestsellers The Storm Before the Storm,
Speaker 2: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, and
Speaker 2: Hero of Two Worlds, The Marquis de Lafayette in the
Speaker 2: Age of Revolution. His podcasts include The History of Rome
Speaker 2: and the podcast will be discussing today Revolutions. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the show, Mike.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me so, Mike.
Speaker 3: Since you have dipped your toes into science fiction, which
Speaker 3: I love, we want to start out by asking you
Speaker 3: the same question we ask every science fiction author we
Speaker 3: talk to, which is a philosophy question, and that is,
Speaker 3: when you step into a teleporter on Star Trek, does
Speaker 3: it actually teleport you or does it disassemble you and
Speaker 3: rebuild you somewhere else? Is it a murder machine or
Speaker 3: an actual transportation device.
Speaker 1: It really strikes me as a murder machine above all.
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's how we have to categorize these things.
Speaker 1: It does seem to be deconstructing something and then recreating
Speaker 1: it from the matter on the other side. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's definitely like a ship of theseus situation, because there
Speaker 1: is something about the identity that persists that is clearly
Speaker 1: like locked inside the physiology of the body, so like
Speaker 1: there is a there is a persistence of identity. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it really seems like whatever got onto the transport pad,
Speaker 1: that entity doesn't exist anymore, and a new entity has
Speaker 1: been created down there that is that is fundamentally different.
Speaker 1: And you can kind of see this sometimes with like
Speaker 1: you know, when they're a transporter mishaps, right, and there's
Speaker 1: like there so now there's whatever. So like the Thomas
Speaker 1: Riker situation, like you've created a whole new thing down
Speaker 1: there that thinks it was Will Riker and and but
Speaker 1: you know the thing didn't get destroyed up on the ship,
Speaker 1: so clearly something new was being made.
Speaker 3: And so if you were given the opportunity to use
Speaker 3: one of these fantastic devices, would you do you believe that.
Speaker 4: I have never? I would never. I would never get
Speaker 4: it on transporter in my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, same like if I had a shirt that said,
Speaker 4: like McCoy was right.
Speaker 1: About everything, even he's getting off and on it all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: Right, So you have clearly revealed your like science fiction
Speaker 2: creds already or convinced. So who are your favorite sci
Speaker 2: fi authors? And have you always been interested in writing
Speaker 2: sci fi? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know, I was, you know, a
Speaker 1: nerdy teenager once and so science fiction is you know,
Speaker 1: a part of my sort of cultural identity growing up.
Speaker 1: You know, I was obviously raised on Star Trek and
Speaker 1: raised on Star Wars and got into you know, when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. It was like Golden age sci
Speaker 1: fi stuff, you know, Asimov and Clark and Hindline, and
Speaker 1: then you know, you progressed ten years down the road
Speaker 1: and you're like you look back on those guys and
Speaker 1: you're like, a lot of this is actually like very problematic,
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe I'm not maybe I'm not so happy
Speaker 1: that there's so much Hindline like going into my brain,
Speaker 1: but wait, but we can not do that.
Speaker 4: But then, as you know, as I got older, it's
Speaker 4: really like, you know, like Philip K. Dick is like
Speaker 4: a huge is huge form.
Speaker 1: He's a huge influence, and Vonnegut was a very big
Speaker 1: influence for me. And then also there's a more obscure,
Speaker 1: kind of out there dude called Robert Anton Wilson who
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed. And so if anybody out there knows
Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson, they're like, oh shit, Robert Anton Wilson. Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, those are the guys that sort of like
Speaker 1: when I was getting into high school and being a
Speaker 1: teenager and kind of thinking about what I wanted to
Speaker 1: do with my life, and I knew I had some
Speaker 1: like talent and some passion for writing that if that's
Speaker 1: the direction I wanted to go like, those guys were
Speaker 1: kind of like my guiding North Stars less than Hindline.
Speaker 3: It's always my dream that somebody mentions to me some
Speaker 3: science fiction author I've never heard of before, and now
Speaker 3: a whole new vein of text has opened up for me.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna go google Robert Anton Wilson after this
Speaker 3: is done.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, dude, knockout Illuminatus. Sometimes yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: So what kind of science fiction do you prefer?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 3: Are you hardcore about folks following the rules they set
Speaker 3: up in their universe, or are you okay with more
Speaker 3: like a vibes based science fiction universe.
Speaker 1: I think, like, you know, I don't don't want to
Speaker 1: have to pick one over the other. But if I did,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more the vibe space stuff, because you know,
Speaker 1: I fundamentally come out of the Humanities department. You know,
Speaker 1: when I went to college and I had this notion
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be a writer and specifically you know,
Speaker 1: do like science fiction stuff. I didn't enjoy the English
Speaker 1: department at all. I didn't have any good times deconstructing
Speaker 1: texts or reading these things or like talking about them.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, look, another Christ delusion.
Speaker 1: Great, you know, like this is kind of this is
Speaker 1: boring me, and also I'm not good at it, so
Speaker 1: maybe I cou should do something else. And when I
Speaker 1: would think about those guys who I admired, they were
Speaker 1: very literate in like philosophy, and they were very literate
Speaker 1: in you know, Ray Bradberry is another one that I
Speaker 1: would put on this list. This is more sort of
Speaker 1: like philosophical where we are using science fiction as a
Speaker 1: vehicle for like thought experiments, and you know, like Dick
Speaker 1: is always constantly, you know, grappling with identity, like what
Speaker 1: does identity mean? And you know, like if if you
Speaker 1: wake up tomorrow and all your memories have been implanted,
Speaker 1: is that any different than you know, who you were before.
Speaker 1: We actually just you know, touched on this at the beginning,
Speaker 1: so like I wanted to study that stuff. So this
Speaker 1: is a vehicle for like politics and history and philosophy
Speaker 1: more than being like I was really into engineering, and
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what it would mean to
Speaker 1: build a spaceship and what it would mean to live
Speaker 1: on Mars. That's that's not really my background. I need
Speaker 1: you guys.
Speaker 4: I need you.
Speaker 1: Guys doing those things for me. Yeah, for me, it's
Speaker 1: much more of a it's all. It's metaphorical space for
Speaker 1: me more than anything else.
Speaker 3: Well, I love that there are lots of different flavors
Speaker 3: of nerds, and I welcome them all into the community absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I still read, you know, the Star Trek Technical Manual,
Speaker 1: you know, but even even I didn't come up with it.
Speaker 1: And then like some days, I don't know, we'll maybe
Speaker 1: get into this, but like, you know, I get dang by,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who are like only hard sci
Speaker 1: fi is sci fi and everything else is like you know,
Speaker 1: less than and you know, like and they point to
Speaker 1: Star Trek as being like, you know, they're doing a
Speaker 1: good job.
Speaker 4: It's like they realize one day.
Speaker 1: That the world would kill everybody on the ship in
Speaker 1: like a nano second. It would become splats against the
Speaker 1: back wall. They're right, what do we do? Oh, we'll
Speaker 1: invent a thing called inertial dampeners.
Speaker 4: Right. It sounds science y, but it's magic, right, And
Speaker 4: it's like they're not. It's magical thinking no less than
Speaker 4: somebody like me just being like, yeah, they got grav units,
Speaker 4: it makes artificial gravity, Like, just go with it. Who cares? Yeah,
Speaker 4: problem solved? They're all grab units. And then people be like,
Speaker 4: you can't artificially create gravity. It's like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 4: I just did.
Speaker 3: So Starchek does science the way that like chat ChiPT
Speaker 3: does science. It's like confidentely produced nonsense. It sounds about right.
Speaker 3: If you don't know anything, you're like, well, yeah, okay, sure,
Speaker 3: tachy on inertial drives or whatever. Yeah, technobabble, exact technobabble,
Speaker 3: that's exactly it.
Speaker 2: So the Revolutions podcast ran for a decade, and during
Speaker 2: the pandemic, the section on the Russian Revolution, like that
Speaker 2: helped get me through the pandemic. I looked forward to
Speaker 2: that every week. And then you stopped doing it, and
Speaker 2: you took like a two year break, and then you
Speaker 2: decided to put a sci fi story in the Revolutions feed.
Speaker 2: So in the feed of your nonfiction history podcast, we
Speaker 2: now have this fictional story about Mars. What made you
Speaker 2: decide that that was the right venue for your science
Speaker 2: fiction and how has the audience responded?
Speaker 1: So I had this notion to do a fictional revolution,
Speaker 1: to write a fictional revolution, and specifically science fiction fictional
Speaker 1: revolution at least as far back as the French revolution
Speaker 1: is how long this idea has been in my head.
Speaker 1: This is not something I came up with at the end,
Speaker 1: Like I sort of knew this was going to be
Speaker 1: something I was going to do for a really long time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of paying attention to like the structural
Speaker 1: beats and archetypes of these various revolutionary cycles, which often
Speaker 1: mirror each other. I would take notes on these things
Speaker 1: knowing that at some point I was going to write
Speaker 1: what I'm writing, you know at this moment, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to put it in the feed because it's a revolution, right,
Speaker 1: and it fits as a revolution, and it is a revolution.
Speaker 4: It's just a fictional revolution.
Speaker 1: Now, when I dropped this without telling anybody that I
Speaker 1: was doing it and just loaded it in there, there
Speaker 1: is a split inside the Revolution's community, you know, between
Speaker 1: people who who really do come to me for nonfiction
Speaker 1: and for history and now I am sort of not
Speaker 1: doing that, and so, you know, no hard feelings. They're
Speaker 1: just like, this isn't for me, this isn't what I'm
Speaker 1: looking for I want, you know, I come to you
Speaker 1: for history. And then lots of other people are like,
Speaker 1: this is the greatest thing that you could have ever
Speaker 1: given me. Because you know, if you're into science fiction
Speaker 1: and you're into the Revolutions podcast, and then I write
Speaker 1: a fictional account of a revolution on Mars, you know,
Speaker 1: this is like peanut butter and chocolate. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the invention of the recent's peanut butter cup for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And then you know, a chunk
Speaker 1: of other people are like, no, I'm not following you
Speaker 1: down this road. And you know, I got you know,
Speaker 1: some some upset emails in the early going, they've they've
Speaker 1: mostly petered out, and some people were upset literally that
Speaker 1: I put it into I put a fictional thing into
Speaker 1: something that was tagged nonfiction, and they're like, this is
Speaker 1: a nonfiction podcast. I can't fit it in my brain
Speaker 1: that fiction is now a part of it. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: go with it, maybe just just kind of maybe just
Speaker 1: roll with it.
Speaker 2: Well, and you said it in twenty two forty seven,
Speaker 2: so it's not like it's ambiguous.
Speaker 1: But I did, I mean, I get it in the
Speaker 1: in the first couple of weeks because I deadpanned the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I did not signal that I was doing this.
Speaker 1: I did not tell anybody I was doing even though
Speaker 1: I knew about this for like a decade, Like I
Speaker 1: didn't tell anybody I was doing it, and then when
Speaker 1: I dropped the first stuff, I wasn't like I'm going
Speaker 1: to write a fictional account of something. I just started
Speaker 1: talking about the Martian Revolution as if it was real.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really important point that you've done
Speaker 3: it in the same style exactly as if you really
Speaker 3: were a historian of the future talking about it. So
Speaker 3: it's like this fictional, non fictional style. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was also like clearly like there's self parody
Speaker 1: that is part of this, Like a lot of the
Speaker 1: ticks that I do in the show, like I'm bringing
Speaker 1: those back, and you know, the wording and the phrasing
Speaker 1: and the style and the cadence, it's all meant to
Speaker 1: eight myself, but in a fictional setting.
Speaker 4: And I actually you'll think.
Speaker 1: This that as a work of as a creative work,
Speaker 1: it's better if I never break character inside the show,
Speaker 1: Like I never want to acknowledge inside the series on
Speaker 1: the Martian Revolution that this is being narrated by anybody
Speaker 1: but somebody who lived two hundred and fifty years after
Speaker 1: the Martian Revolution and is now writing about it. That's
Speaker 1: I think that's actually important to keeping it. I don't
Speaker 1: know the fidelity to the thing is that the.
Speaker 4: Word I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: That's the same reason that like everything Nathan Fielder does
Speaker 3: works because he never breaks character. Do you worry that
Speaker 3: in two hundred and fifty years from four hundred years
Speaker 3: somebody's gonna unearth this and be confused because you never
Speaker 3: indicate that it's fiction and our only clue is that
Speaker 3: obviously it's set in the future. But what if deep
Speaker 3: into the future somebody unders this.
Speaker 1: I'm not so worried about that because I will be
Speaker 1: dead and so like whatever happens after this, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try my best to make the world,
Speaker 1: you know, better that when we leave it for our children.
Speaker 4: But like you know, I don't mind that much, like
Speaker 4: I And partly it'll keep historians employed, you know, because
Speaker 4: like right now, I'm writing a book.
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book about the Crisis of the third Century,
Speaker 1: which is which is a period in Roman history.
Speaker 4: It is famously very little.
Speaker 1: It's not well documented because it was so it was
Speaker 1: like this fifty year period that was so chaotic that
Speaker 1: we don't have like good solid sources. But one of
Speaker 1: the sources that we do have is called the Historia Augusta,
Speaker 1: which we still don't know whether this was like a
Speaker 1: hoax document that was made. It's like it's like a
Speaker 1: series of biographies of the Caesars, the later Caesars, where
Speaker 1: a lot of it just seems to be completely made up.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of his it's historical fiction that was
Speaker 1: maybe done by somebody on purpose to trick people or
Speaker 1: as some creative exercise, and we don't really know whether
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 4: True or not. So yeah, people could come along and
Speaker 4: be like, you know, there was a revolution on Mars,
Speaker 4: but I don't remember it going like this. He's like
Speaker 4: one hundred years off on the dating, and none of
Speaker 4: the name seems the line up.
Speaker 1: But he's very comedy. He's referencing all these books like
Speaker 1: like I don't know.
Speaker 3: And just like chat GPT, you're referencing things that don't exist.
Speaker 1: See, I'm far more worried about chat GBT leaving a
Speaker 1: record behind that makes it impossible to know what actually
Speaker 1: happened than I am this little thing that I'm doing well.
Speaker 3: I was actually going to ask you about that. If
Speaker 3: there are analogues of this in history, people writing pseudo
Speaker 3: fiction of the future other than the examples you just made.
Speaker 1: Oh, you know, not in terms of history, because like
Speaker 1: the thing, like the thing I just referenced with somebody
Speaker 1: writing it's a fake history, but it's of the past,
Speaker 1: and you know, you do start to get you know,
Speaker 1: proto science fiction being written of people speculating about the future,
Speaker 1: like the origins of science fiction, there's you know, several
Speaker 1: steps along the way. But in terms of like using
Speaker 1: these kinds of non fiction accounts to write something about
Speaker 1: the future seems pretty modern and like for me, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, like I said, Asimov, you know,
Speaker 1: like Foundation has like you know, galactic encyclopare media references,
Speaker 1: and I know that done like the actual text of
Speaker 1: it has a lot of like it's cyclopedic entries.
Speaker 4: And though I have not.
Speaker 1: Read The Song of Ice and Fire, and you know,
Speaker 1: I watched the show, but I know that's written as
Speaker 1: a history and those things like we're really those that
Speaker 1: using nonfiction sort of tropes to write fiction is a
Speaker 1: very fun thing.
Speaker 3: For me.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's for me, it's exactly at the intersection
Speaker 1: of my brain being inspired by those kinds of things.
Speaker 4: But it's all. It's all pretty modern.
Speaker 1: I don't remember anything from like history that did this.
Speaker 1: There's probably somebody out there who will email us and
Speaker 1: tell us what it is.
Speaker 2: Let us know. The internet always lets you know.
Speaker 3: The Internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Internet always lets you know. This is
Speaker 1: why you should never say always, You should never say never,
Speaker 1: you should never say first, you should never say last.
Speaker 1: Never say those words and you will be fine.
Speaker 2: My husband gets so frustrated with me when we're writing
Speaker 2: because they'll always try to put an always or never,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, we haven't read everything exactly. We don't
Speaker 2: know that for sure.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is like one time I said
Speaker 1: that this was the only cavalry encounter to ever capture ships, right,
Speaker 1: like a cavalry captured boats.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's pretty unique.
Speaker 1: And there was an incident in a Dutch in a
Speaker 1: frozen Dutch harbor during the wars of the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is the only time that
Speaker 1: this ever happened, because it's so implausible. And then later
Speaker 1: I was doing Spanish American Independence and some Jose Antonio
Speaker 1: pause is cavalry guys like took some gunboats. It was
Speaker 1: just it was a shallow river, and so there's another cavalry,
Speaker 1: a cavalry attack that captured boats, which you would think
Speaker 1: would be impossible.
Speaker 2: At least you were the one who figured out the mistakes.
Speaker 4: I did someone email you with I did find that
Speaker 4: one out.
Speaker 2: Yet they're not always so nice when they email you
Speaker 2: with up the mistakes.
Speaker 1: No, No, somebody actually emailed me about the Martian Revolution
Speaker 1: and the subject line was errors and mistakes in the
Speaker 1: Martian Revolution, and.
Speaker 4: It was not cheeky.
Speaker 1: I've gotten some emails that are very cheeky and like
Speaker 1: people are like responding with deadpan. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: you reference this book and I have found him to
Speaker 1: be like very like sketching on the sources, and like
Speaker 1: there's this other book that I think is way better.
Speaker 1: And those are emails like these people get it and
Speaker 1: I'm having a really good time with them. But then
Speaker 1: this guy emails me and these like errors and mistakes
Speaker 1: in like your work of fiction, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't think you can do that.
Speaker 4: You can say like I wish you hadn't have said that,
Speaker 4: or I wish you had done something different, but I
Speaker 4: don't think you can tell me that there was an
Speaker 4: error in it. No.
Speaker 2: My favorite email is when someone says they're telling you
Speaker 2: an error you made, but actually you didn't talk about
Speaker 2: their favorite pet topics. Yeah, and that was the error
Speaker 2: that you made, was you didn't talk about that other thing.
Speaker 2: And you're like, I could have this book could have
Speaker 2: been five thousand pages long. It had to end somewhere, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I when I did the American Revolution, I basically
Speaker 1: got an email about every single local skirmish that ever
Speaker 1: happened in the entire course of the American War of
Speaker 1: Independence that I did not cover, and therefore have left
Speaker 1: my audience bereft of the deinformation that they need. Like, okay, man,
Speaker 1: there was like seventeen guys there. I'm trying to talk
Speaker 1: about the Declaration of Independence. You know, I got to
Speaker 1: pick and choose what I talk about here.
Speaker 3: So when you're doing history, obviously you want to be
Speaker 3: rooted in the facts, and so you're constrained by what
Speaker 3: actually happened. In this case, you could have chosen any
Speaker 3: location anytime. Why did you choose Mars in the twenty
Speaker 3: two hundreds.
Speaker 1: The other thing I'm doing with the show is, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm taking all of these like historical moments historical events,
Speaker 1: historical beats, historical archetypes, and creating a mosaic story out
Speaker 1: of them. But I'm also taking science fiction tropes and
Speaker 1: using them. I'm like sort of combining both of those
Speaker 1: at the same time. So there's aspects of the show
Speaker 1: that's like, oh, this comes from the Mexican Revolution, and
Speaker 1: then there's a thing from the show, like that thing
Speaker 1: that came from Enders Game. So Mars just is like,
Speaker 1: it feels like the planet that has most most captured
Speaker 1: our imagination, the imagination of the science fiction community, I
Speaker 1: think has been most captured in it's whatever a couple
Speaker 1: hundred years run that we're at now, but really like
Speaker 1: in the last century, like, Mars has been the setting
Speaker 1: for so many different things, and it's that planet that
Speaker 1: is like us but not And so it's just there,
Speaker 1: and so I picked it for that reason, right, Like
Speaker 1: I wanted to live in the same place that you
Speaker 1: know they were writing about one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: Well, let's take a break and when we get back,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about building a world on Mars. All right,
Speaker 2: we're back. So when Zach and I were researching a
Speaker 2: city on Mars, we were often asked and often thought
Speaker 2: about what could economically justify settling Mars, and we came
Speaker 2: up with like nothing, And the proposals that we saw included,
Speaker 2: like you could start a reality TV show on Mars
Speaker 2: and that would fund it. Even though people like started
Speaker 2: shutting off the Apollo missions after twelve, they tuned back
Speaker 2: in when the Oxygen canister up on thirteen, but after
Speaker 2: that they started tuning out again. So I'm not convinced
Speaker 2: reality TV would fund your space settlement.
Speaker 3: Unless you're intentionally killing people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which hopefully notes yeah, But so I suspect, yeah,
Speaker 2: you came to the same conclusion that Mars doesn't have
Speaker 2: a lot of resources valuable enough to send to Earth.
Speaker 2: So tell us about the resource you came up with
Speaker 2: that justifies settling Mars and how you picked that resource.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it's just that, like I had
Speaker 1: to have a reason for us to go to Mars,
Speaker 1: and at the moment, there is literally no reason for
Speaker 1: us to go to Mars.
Speaker 4: Like going to Mars would be a stupid waste of
Speaker 4: time and money.
Speaker 1: And I say that even as somebody who is like
Speaker 1: enchanted by the wonders of space, you know, like I
Speaker 1: grew up on science fiction.
Speaker 4: Just like everybody else.
Speaker 1: It's not like I want to say, you know, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't explore and create and like advance our technologies and
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Like I love I love NASA, like I love I
Speaker 4: love this stuff, I really do. But they're nothing on Mars.
Speaker 1: It's not like people think about Mars sometimes like it's
Speaker 1: just like New Mexico or something, and you can just
Speaker 1: go there and it's like red and desert.
Speaker 4: Ye, but that's the that's the only difference.
Speaker 1: And you know, as like I came up with this
Speaker 1: and I'll answer your question, but like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: reading City on Mars is just like really drills home that,
Speaker 1: like the future of the species is not building a
Speaker 1: dome in the in the Mariana Trench, you know, because
Speaker 1: that's an impossible, stupid place to try to like live,
Speaker 1: just like Mars. So I had to invent Essentially a
Speaker 1: new periodic table of elements.
Speaker 4: Is what it is.
Speaker 1: Basically, Like inside the periodic table of elements, we discover
Speaker 1: that there's like some substratum matrices within that that we
Speaker 1: had we've never discovered before and didn't know about before,
Speaker 1: and it's in there and there's different versions of things
Speaker 1: and There's a thing called FOSS five, which I gave
Speaker 1: it a very very long scientific name in the first episode,
Speaker 1: and which I could not recreate ever again, like I
Speaker 1: actually had to fanatically spell it out for myself, and
Speaker 1: I just I did. It was technobabble, right, I just
Speaker 1: like jammed together as many prefectses and suffexes into a
Speaker 1: single world as I possibly could, and then then slapped
Speaker 1: a five on it, which was a bit of an omase.
Speaker 1: There's a Red Rising series about a revolution on Mars,
Speaker 1: and their thing is like their mining helium three some
Speaker 1: My thing is Phos five, which, again, like these are
Speaker 1: meant to be the sort of like homages and tips
Speaker 1: of the cap to all the people who came before me.
Speaker 1: So Foss five is a thing that then powers what
Speaker 1: is essentially unlimited clean energy, and that is what allows
Speaker 1: our species on Earth here to get out from under
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, which I am positing to be
Speaker 1: like insane chaos anarchy, you know, climate disasters that is
Speaker 1: going to define the twenty first century, and pulling out
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century is about the discovery of
Speaker 1: Phos five, the discovery of these things called flex cells,
Speaker 1: which allows us to have unlimited clean energy, and then
Speaker 1: there's only a limited amount of this on Earth, but
Speaker 1: there's a just a ton of it on Mars. Right
Speaker 1: The volcanoes of Mars are loaded with PHOSS five. And
Speaker 1: so that's what takes us there and gets us there
Speaker 1: and justifies it. And this is all just complete invention,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's, like I said, there's nothing in
Speaker 1: reality right that we as we understand it right now,
Speaker 1: that would justify the colonization of Mars.
Speaker 3: And if I could just dig into a tiny bit,
Speaker 3: I don't know how hardcore you went on the science here.
Speaker 3: Were you mentioning something with the atomic number is above
Speaker 3: the numbers on the current periodic table or somehow like
Speaker 3: stuck in between?
Speaker 4: Oh no, No, I didn't get into that at all.
Speaker 4: I just gave it. I just gave it a cool
Speaker 4: sounding name.
Speaker 3: Because there actually is a really fun concept in science
Speaker 3: about these super heavy elements which could maybe have been
Speaker 3: created in supernova events or nutrient star collisions, and potentially
Speaker 3: could be in other places in the universe and could
Speaker 3: have really weird properties.
Speaker 1: So one of one of the things that I do
Speaker 1: in the show is, you know, I'm constantly referencing like
Speaker 1: these fake history books that talk about because the show
Speaker 1: is set like the narrator's two hundred and fifty years
Speaker 1: after event, so he's always referencing, you know, books that
Speaker 1: have been written about the Martian Revolution. And in the
Speaker 1: very first episode, I was like, okay, if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about out flex cells and FoST five
Speaker 1: and how all this stuff works. You know, the definitive
Speaker 1: account is by this doctor I forget what his name is,
Speaker 1: and his book is called Suspending Disbelief. How to stop
Speaker 1: caring about it even though you really want to care
Speaker 1: about it and just kind of like, this is my book, right,
Speaker 1: and this is like signal to like the audience just
Speaker 1: just just sit back and enjoy the story without getting
Speaker 1: too caught up in like the mechanics of it, because
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. I'm I want to be Ray
Speaker 1: Bradberry and Philip K.
Speaker 4: Dick. I don't want to be Arthur C. Clark.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be and I don't even want
Speaker 1: to be Kim Stanley Robinson even though I love Kim
Speaker 1: Stanley Robinson.
Speaker 4: I can't do what he does. I can't do what
Speaker 4: I can't do what those guys do.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll put more tachions into the disbelief dat exactly.
Speaker 3: But I want to ask you a history question about that.
Speaker 3: You're making this argument about the future and resources, and
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you're making a broader argument about
Speaker 3: the cycle of civilization, about how we discover a new
Speaker 3: resource which transforms our society, opens up a new territory,
Speaker 3: and that we then go through this sort of cyclical
Speaker 3: expansion and collapse or revolution. Is there a broader argument
Speaker 3: that you're making there about the sort of structure of
Speaker 3: human civilization.
Speaker 1: It's mostly a plot device to get us to Mars.
Speaker 1: But but your point is well taken. I mean, like
Speaker 1: the Dutch were powered by wind, and then when coal
Speaker 1: supplants wind, then the British are suddenly like doing great
Speaker 1: because they've got all this coal. And then we move
Speaker 1: from coal to oil, and you know, now the United
Speaker 1: States and now you know the Saudi's and you know,
Speaker 1: the Middle East suddenly becomes like the main center of things.
Speaker 1: And it's been a minute since we've had a true
Speaker 1: revolution in terms of our energy usage, like what and
Speaker 1: how we use energy. And if something comes along, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it'll radically change the nature of our civilization
Speaker 1: and who's on top and who's who's not.
Speaker 2: What are some of the other historical points you're trying
Speaker 2: to get across in this in this podcast? Is it
Speaker 2: just for fun or are you trying to help people
Speaker 2: understand revolutions better?
Speaker 1: The project is, yes, to have fun, but also we're
Speaker 1: going through the process of a revolution, and I am
Speaker 1: trying to create the structures that I have seen previous
Speaker 1: revolutions go through. There is an enseon regime of some
Speaker 1: kind that is broken and dysfunctional, there will be resistance
Speaker 1: to that. It's not, however, just about you know, oppressed
Speaker 1: masses rising up and overthrowing something. There is always disaffected
Speaker 1: elites inside the enon regime who either want more power
Speaker 1: or they're frustrated with the incompetence of the leaders of
Speaker 1: the regime, who start to turn against it because they
Speaker 1: would prefer themselves to be in power. There are structures
Speaker 1: inside of the movements where where any revolutionary movement that
Speaker 1: comes together to overthrow the power that had ruled them previously,
Speaker 1: there's a thing that I positive it's called the entropy
Speaker 1: of victory that as soon as that group wins, they
Speaker 1: break into two or even three factions and then begin
Speaker 1: fighting amongst themselves. One of those factions wins, and then
Speaker 1: that group splits into two. And there's this constant sort
Speaker 1: of like like coming together and then breaking apart that
Speaker 1: I've seen so often, to the point where then you know,
Speaker 1: you get to the end of the Russian Revolution and
Speaker 1: Stalin is literally purging the old Bolsheviks, right, He's purging
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks are the one who they beat the Mensheviks,
Speaker 1: they beat the Srs, they beat the anarchists, they beat
Speaker 1: the Royalists, they beat the they beat the liberals. And
Speaker 1: then you say, you have this tiny, tiny group of Bolsheviks,
Speaker 1: and then even inside that Bolshevik click, then Stalin breaks
Speaker 1: off from them and purges all the old Bolsheviks. So like,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that goes on, and that is
Speaker 1: something that is happening inside the Martian Revolution for sure.
Speaker 2: I heard a great history joke the other day, which
Speaker 2: is what the when the IRA gets together, the very
Speaker 2: first thing they do is discuss the split.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, and that's the thing that's that's not that's
Speaker 1: not just the IRA, that is every single group. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like Monty Python's life with Brian like had
Speaker 1: that great bit where they're like sitting around in the
Speaker 1: stands of the coliseum and it's like, you know, the
Speaker 1: People's Party for I don't. I don't remember what is
Speaker 1: and I'm not even gonna try because then we're gonna
Speaker 1: get money python people yelling at me.
Speaker 2: But you know the joke, right, I don't remember that
Speaker 2: part of the Life of Brian. I remember the amazing
Speaker 2: song at the end, which I played for my daughter
Speaker 2: the other day. What were you going to ask?
Speaker 3: Did I hear you say correctly that we're going through
Speaker 3: a revolution right now? You mean like us literally at
Speaker 3: this moment in time.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no no, in the Martian Revolution?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I mean there are revolutionary things that are
Speaker 1: happening right now in current events, but they're not like
Speaker 1: fun revolutionary things. This is bad revolutionary things. But they're
Speaker 1: doing revolutionary things that are very similar to sort of
Speaker 1: year zero Jacobin stuff and like abolish everything Bolshevik stuff.
Speaker 1: They're just doing it for reactionary reasons, not for progressive reasons.
Speaker 2: So we talked about how you created FoST five to
Speaker 2: give an excuse to go to Mars. What were some
Speaker 2: of the other features of life on Mars that you
Speaker 2: felt like you had to deal with So I know
Speaker 2: you didn't constrain yourself to the hard science, but were
Speaker 2: there things where you were like, oh, I really have
Speaker 2: to deal with X and Y.
Speaker 1: Well, it was like it was sort of in designing
Speaker 1: what the cities would look like. It sure felt like
Speaker 1: they were going to be living underground as opposed to like,
Speaker 1: you know, buildings on the surface. It just seemed like
Speaker 1: that was going to be a thing. And so there's
Speaker 1: this thing inside the show called the Martian Way, which
Speaker 1: is like sort of how the people who lived on
Speaker 1: Mars wound up living, like their cultural attitudes and like
Speaker 1: how they wind up behaving with each other. And there
Speaker 1: is something to the fact that they're living in close
Speaker 1: quarters with each other all the time that there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's corridors and rooms rather than like nobody really has
Speaker 1: any open or empty space. And so if you're somebody
Speaker 1: who can't handle being around people all the time, then
Speaker 1: that you're not going to survive on Mars. And then
Speaker 1: there's also a whole thing about how you know when
Speaker 1: you're out there and you have to do this stuff,
Speaker 1: like the sort of the individualist settler archetype that we
Speaker 1: think of like the rugged individual who goes out and
Speaker 1: you know, makes their own farm and they're totally self sufficient.
Speaker 4: Number one.
Speaker 1: That wasn't even true in the Old West. But it's
Speaker 1: especially impossible in a situation like Mars. So like those
Speaker 1: kinds of like but that's mostly about the social stuff,
Speaker 1: and so to deal with other things, like what are
Speaker 1: the gravity differences? I invented gravi units and grave units
Speaker 1: handle that. And there are air scrubbers that make sure
Speaker 1: that the air is clean and works properly, and they've
Speaker 1: got ways of generating food, and they've got ways of
Speaker 1: generating water that are just it's not about trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how we would actually live on Mars. And
Speaker 1: then when it comes to like the ships, like the
Speaker 1: ships that are going back and forth. I mean I
Speaker 1: literally say if I say in the show that, like
Speaker 1: it would usually take six to eight weeks at this
Speaker 1: point to get from Earth to Mars, depending on you know,
Speaker 1: where we are in the orbits, which just by coincidence,
Speaker 1: happens to be the amount of time it took sailing
Speaker 1: ships to get from Europe to the Americas during the
Speaker 1: era of classical revolutions. Because that's what I'm here to
Speaker 1: talk about more than anything else.
Speaker 3: If you've created these little science fiction do dads get
Speaker 3: around some of these issues? Why not set the revolution
Speaker 3: in the Marianna's Trench or Antarctica or somewhere else more realistic?
Speaker 4: Oh, because it's fun to be on Mars. I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean, straight up, man, It's just it's more, it's
Speaker 4: more fun. What was cooler? Star Trek or SeaQuest DSV.
Speaker 4: You know, Star Trek.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Brandis was pretty awesome though.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was in SeaQuest right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, he was the Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was the he was the he was the tiger beat
Speaker 1: heart throb from from SeaQuest.
Speaker 2: I did have the tiger Beat things pinned to my
Speaker 2: wall when I was the right age?
Speaker 4: Who was who was it was?
Speaker 2: Jonathan Brandis?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, greater than light history on the pod today.
Speaker 2: Really great hair, real loss for everyone. Yeah he did
Speaker 2: have great hair. Yeah, all right, anyway, sorry to get
Speaker 2: us off track there. When we were writing about a
Speaker 2: city on Mars, a lot of the arguments that we
Speaker 2: found for why you should settle space is that it
Speaker 2: would cause cultural diversity, and a lot of people we're
Speaker 2: arguing that, hey, you know, we're losing a bunch of
Speaker 2: languages here on Earth. But if you go to Mars,
Speaker 2: they're going to be so cut off from everything that's
Speaker 2: happening on Earth that you're going to get all of
Speaker 2: this diversity in culture and we're going to be able
Speaker 2: to undo this horrible homogenization that's happening here on Earth.
Speaker 2: How good do you think that argument is?
Speaker 1: It's certainly nothing that I thought would happen. And this
Speaker 1: is a lot, you know, I do in the early episodes.
Speaker 1: You know, the Martians do develop their own culture because
Speaker 1: politics is off and downstream of culture, and so I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that there was like a because
Speaker 1: this is actually one of the things about revolutions is
Speaker 1: you go twenty thirty years before a revolution and you
Speaker 1: start getting writers and artists and musicians who are exploring
Speaker 1: new ideas and putting ideas that are out there that
Speaker 1: then sort of the generation that grows up with those
Speaker 1: sort of cultural outputs in their head, then they go
Speaker 1: on and they do sort of like the political and
Speaker 1: economic changes. And so the Martians absolutely have their own culture,
Speaker 1: but they're plugged into the company. They're plugged into and
Speaker 1: the signals that are coming out of omniicor are you know,
Speaker 1: they're watching the same shows, they're seeing the same commentary,
Speaker 1: they're they're receiving the same information as as Earthlings on
Speaker 1: Earth who are living under omnichor as auspices are in
Speaker 1: the same way that like when I went to I
Speaker 1: lived in I lived in France for three years. And
Speaker 1: when I was in France, you know, thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: if I was living in France, I would have just
Speaker 1: been bathed in French TV, French you know, magazines, French newspapers.
Speaker 4: Because that was the only thing that would be available.
Speaker 1: But I could sit in Paris today and just you know,
Speaker 1: beyond English language Twitter and watch English shows, and I'm
Speaker 1: not I never felt like I was cut off from
Speaker 1: like American culture when I was living in France. And
Speaker 1: that's essentially what I'm positing for the Martians is that
Speaker 1: a lot of what they're getting passively is is cultural
Speaker 1: products from Earth. Also in the way that like, you know,
Speaker 1: that was true of the Americans in you know, in
Speaker 1: both Spanish America and Anglo America and Franco America, they
Speaker 1: were engaging with the cultural products of the mother countries,
Speaker 1: not from themselves, and it was a big deal when
Speaker 1: Hawthorn comes out and is relevant back in Europe. And
Speaker 1: so there is a person whose name now escapes me
Speaker 1: unfortunately because I wrote it so long ago. But it
Speaker 1: was a big deal when there was a musician who
Speaker 1: made a song that was actually a hit back on
Speaker 1: Earth and it was the first like Martian whoever, like
Speaker 1: cracked the civilization was like geist back on Earth because
Speaker 1: they're all living under that same thing, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be cut off, and at least not in my at
Speaker 1: least not in my story because like I mean, how
Speaker 1: long does it take to get a signal? There just
Speaker 1: is just a couple of minutes. It's not like it's
Speaker 1: not like they're living in Lima, Peru in you know,
Speaker 1: like the fifteen hundreds, when it would take literally six
Speaker 1: to nine months to get a letter back to Spain,
Speaker 1: and then another six to nine months to get the letter,
Speaker 1: you know, the response back like how.
Speaker 4: Are you that?
Speaker 1: Nine months later somebody's like I am fine. Nine months
Speaker 1: later it winds up back in Lima, Like that's not
Speaker 1: how it would I think be on Mars.
Speaker 3: So as a reader of science fiction, I'm always using
Speaker 3: my physics brain to analyze, like does this make sense?
Speaker 3: Would that actually work? But there's often social stuff and
Speaker 3: historical stuff and big themes in these books that I
Speaker 3: don't feel qualified to, like, you know, understand whether they're realistic.
Speaker 3: When you read science fiction, Like when you read the Expanse,
Speaker 3: which is very political, right, it's got these communities and
Speaker 3: they separate in these ways, does your history brain kick
Speaker 3: in and you're like, that's not how it was to work,
Speaker 3: or actually this should go a different way, or basically
Speaker 3: what are your thoughts about those things? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that part of this project for
Speaker 1: me is to you know, I'm not infallible. I'm not
Speaker 1: creating like a perfect product here or anything, but like
Speaker 1: I'm so steeped in the political history of human civilization
Speaker 1: that I do feel like I'm uniquely able to write
Speaker 1: plausible politics for in a science fiction setting in a
Speaker 1: way that lots of science fiction books. I have to
Speaker 1: suspend my disbelief about how this society has been organized.
Speaker 1: You know, we all have to suspend our disbelief that
Speaker 1: every planet anyone seems to go to, it's like the
Speaker 1: planet is like a country, it's a node. Like there's
Speaker 1: never there's never internal you know, conflict on any of
Speaker 1: these planets. It's always just like one planet equals like
Speaker 1: one thing. And that's that's for storytelling reasons and for
Speaker 1: dramatic reasons because it would get so complex. But yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I think, like I do have to suspend
Speaker 1: disbelief all the time. And when I read you know,
Speaker 1: the Kim Stanley Robinson books, which are fantastic, right, I
Speaker 1: love those books, and I even wrote, I even wrote
Speaker 1: into the show that the people who were designing all
Speaker 1: the stuff that allowed us to live on Mars, you know,
Speaker 1: the company that was doing it was KSR Designs. They're
Speaker 1: they're the leaders of Martian technology and spaceship technology. Because
Speaker 1: that's it's Kim Stanley Robinson, right, that's that is what
Speaker 1: that is meant to be. Some of the politics in
Speaker 1: those books, I'm like, ah, Okay, that's fine, I'll suspend disbelief.
Speaker 4: It's fine, I don't mind. My thing is better on
Speaker 4: the politics but obviously terrible on the science.
Speaker 2: So you and ks are both leaned into age extension
Speaker 2: as a way to move forward the plots. I feel
Speaker 2: like as a biologist, that's the thing that gets me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I'm not convinced we're ever going to
Speaker 2: be able to do that. And so the age extension
Speaker 2: thing seems to have been dropped. Now does it come back?
Speaker 5: I want to tell me what happened, I'm not going
Speaker 5: to I'm not going to give any spoilers, all right,
Speaker 5: all right, So the life extension thing opens up like
Speaker 5: the like a third thing here, which is like, obviously,
Speaker 5: if you know science fiction, you know that science fiction
Speaker 5: is writing about the future, But what's it really writing
Speaker 5: about the present?
Speaker 4: Right? Every work of.
Speaker 1: Science fiction is ultimately commenting on its own contemporary society,
Speaker 1: And so there is stuff that is in here, the
Speaker 1: politics of this thing even more now than ever, like
Speaker 1: freakily so, and we don't have to get into it,
Speaker 1: but like because a lot of these plot points that
Speaker 1: I came up with years ago or now like happening
Speaker 1: in real life and it's really disturbing to me. But
Speaker 1: the agent, like the life extension thing, that's like we
Speaker 1: live in a gerontocracy, Like we live in a world
Speaker 1: where there's a generation of people who were the first
Speaker 1: people to hit sort of real advances in medics to
Speaker 1: the boomers, right, they hit these real advances in medicine
Speaker 1: that are keeping us alive longer that are allowing eighty
Speaker 1: year olds to continue to like, not just be dead,
Speaker 1: but continue to be alive. And when you look at
Speaker 1: who the leadership is of the country, we were living
Speaker 1: in a gerontocracy, which is the rule of old people.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is really bad, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know how else to say it, Like, like, I
Speaker 1: will editorialize and say that it is bad to have
Speaker 1: leaders who are like I don't use email because I
Speaker 1: don't understand email. Like, it's twenty twenty five. We've got
Speaker 1: real problems, right, and I do not need people whose
Speaker 1: brains were formed in the nineteen fifties to deal with
Speaker 1: the issues that are facing us here in the twenty twenties.
Speaker 1: I think they're fundamentally unequipped to do the job at
Speaker 1: a certain point. I don't want to be agist, but like,
Speaker 1: I just think that's true. So the Age the Life
Speaker 1: extension stuff is meant to be a comment on that.
Speaker 1: And my life extension juice is not like Fountain of
Speaker 1: Youth stuff. It's not you get to continue to be
Speaker 1: alive and vital and your brain still functions. These people
Speaker 1: are staying alive, but their bodies are just kind of
Speaker 1: inert vegetables. Their brains are just kind of inert vegetables,
Speaker 1: Like they're not they're not at the same level they're
Speaker 1: cognitively and physically.
Speaker 4: All they are is merely alive.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that I think is different from
Speaker 1: previous life extension things, which is definitely a part of
Speaker 1: the Kim Stanley Robinson books. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: read or not read, but like you watch some of
Speaker 1: the Alien prequels like Prometheus, like there's a life extension,
Speaker 1: you know, a little subplot in there with that guy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is that part is almost entirely social commentary.
Speaker 2: All Right, We're going to take a break and when
Speaker 2: we get back, we'll talk about whether or not a
Speaker 2: revolution on Mars is inevitable. So I've been wondering whether
Speaker 2: or not a revolution on Mars is inevitable or how
Speaker 2: we could avoid it at one point. So, the way
Speaker 2: international law is currently set up is that if you
Speaker 2: go to space, you remain the responsibility of some nation,
Speaker 2: but you're not allowed to own your land. It looks
Speaker 2: like the international community is going to let you extract
Speaker 2: and sell resources, but it does seem like there could
Speaker 2: be some fundamental conflicts. If you are like living very
Speaker 2: far away, but you're still governed by people on Earth
Speaker 2: who don't get what your life is like. Do you
Speaker 2: feel like with our current set up, a revolution on
Speaker 2: Mars would be inevitable? Or what could we do to
Speaker 2: avoid a future Martian revolution?
Speaker 3: Should we be shortening Martian stocks? No?
Speaker 4: Yeah, big time.
Speaker 1: Thing is inevitable, right, Like I have to officially declare
Speaker 1: this as a representative of the History Department. Nothing is inevitable.
Speaker 1: Just because a bunch of stuff happened before, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's going to happen now. There are lots of
Speaker 1: times where it seems inevitable that something happens and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: There are other times where something seems unfathomably impossible and
Speaker 1: then it just happens, And that's really what history is
Speaker 1: all about. It sure does seem like in the history
Speaker 1: of civilizations and colonizing civilizations that eventually those people who
Speaker 1: are in the colonized place are going to want home rule.
Speaker 1: And that seems to be pretty consistent across time. You know,
Speaker 1: not in every time, not in every place. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's a reason the America is there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of independent countries and do not continue to be uniformly colonies.
Speaker 1: There are still a few colonies left and we've got
Speaker 1: our own colonies. But yeah, that kind of thing happens
Speaker 1: all the time. So if you actually, if we do
Speaker 1: go to Mars and we do have the colonization of Mars,
Speaker 1: there's definitely going to be people who were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want Mars to be independent. And in the show,
Speaker 1: there's a guy Jose de Petrov who this is early
Speaker 1: going like before this like precursor revolutionary stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: where he literally produced this like really influential documentary that
Speaker 1: is that is saying exactly that, like it is inevitable
Speaker 1: that Mars will be free, and so what we need
Speaker 1: to do as Martians is be the agents of that inevitability,
Speaker 1: Like we need we need to be the soldiers for
Speaker 1: this force of history that is inevitably going to give
Speaker 1: Mars its independence. Whether it's today, tomorrow, or five hundred
Speaker 1: years from now, it's going to happen. And then I
Speaker 1: say in the show, of course he conveniently ignored all
Speaker 1: the times in history where that didn't happen. But it
Speaker 1: was a very influential documentary and you know, it impacted
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And also just like in terms
Speaker 1: of like where people's mentalities are at us, this has
Speaker 1: happened so often in history that you know, our future
Speaker 1: Martians will know that, and they will have it in
Speaker 1: their heads that you know, in certain times and places,
Speaker 1: you know, people that have gone off and and done
Speaker 1: something far away wind up running it themselves. But how
Speaker 1: do we avoid that if we don't want the Martians
Speaker 1: to have their freedom, if we want to continue to
Speaker 1: have them live under the thumb of the earthlings and
Speaker 1: the earthworms?
Speaker 4: How do we do that?
Speaker 2: Necessarily? What I want?
Speaker 4: No, I know, I know, I picked up on the subject.
Speaker 4: You you hate the Martians and you want them.
Speaker 3: To serve you.
Speaker 2: They're the worst, They're.
Speaker 4: The absolutely worst. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But when you look at sort of the example of
Speaker 1: the United States without like unpacking the sort of the
Speaker 1: genocidal way that this unfolded, the Northwest Ordinance in was
Speaker 1: it was a pretty early document in American history. That
Speaker 1: is what lays the foundations for the path from colony
Speaker 1: to statehood from debate not from colony but from from
Speaker 1: territory tist and then saying, once you become a state,
Speaker 1: you're an equal part of this project that we are doing.
Speaker 1: And there is something to that, because there was an
Speaker 1: argument at that do we take it for granted that
Speaker 1: like this path, the statehood is a thing, But there
Speaker 1: were arguments at the time that like the thirteen original colonies,
Speaker 1: they should be the states, and then as the white
Speaker 1: settlers move into the interior, those should be territories that
Speaker 1: are primarily serving us here on the coast, like the
Speaker 1: real thing, like these United States, and then those are
Speaker 1: going to be the territories. And it was a big
Speaker 1: argument about whether you know, Ohio and Kentucky and Wisconsin
Speaker 1: would would eventually be able to become states if enough
Speaker 1: Anglo settlers move there. And I think that doing that
Speaker 1: has helped keep the country together. California, which is a
Speaker 1: really far away from the East Coast, especially you know
Speaker 1: at the time that the settlements of California are getting going,
Speaker 1: like California just became a state even though it was
Speaker 1: a whole continent away and California did not. Ever, there
Speaker 1: was no plausible independence movement. I mean, I'm from the Northwest.
Speaker 1: I know about all the little subgroups that want independence
Speaker 1: for Cascadia and independence for California, but there's never been
Speaker 1: any need for it, and so I think that having
Speaker 1: that kind of incorporation, legitimate incorporation, into the larger project
Speaker 1: is how it would work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I keep trying to think about the best way
Speaker 2: to get Mars settlement started, which I don't think is
Speaker 2: going to happen in the near term. But right now
Speaker 2: I worry that we're going to have a scramble for territory,
Speaker 2: which is going to lead to conflict down here. So
Speaker 2: trying to figure out a way where you don't get
Speaker 2: a scramble, but at the right time without violence, you
Speaker 2: give the people on Mars, you know, the ability to
Speaker 2: govern themselves. Is a what sounds to me like a
Speaker 2: complicated question. But I don't deal with the human stuff.
Speaker 2: I mostly deal with the science stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's very trust Eelon. I'm sure he'll do it right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's Tuste alone.
Speaker 1: Some of the things that he has thrown out there
Speaker 1: about like this is what Mars should be, Like it
Speaker 1: should be democratic, but you should be able to rescind
Speaker 1: any law with one third vote, with like, if one
Speaker 1: third of the popular opposes a law, they should be
Speaker 1: able to just like werecenting, It's like you're just sending
Speaker 1: people to die like that is the only thing that
Speaker 1: this organization of society that you are positing will actually
Speaker 1: accomplish is that everybody dying and you're creating a new Roanoak.
Speaker 1: So the way I get around that in the show,
Speaker 1: like the scramble for territory on Mars, is it's a
Speaker 1: monopoly and there's just one company, and they have secured
Speaker 1: a monopoly at at a certain point in human history.
Speaker 1: They've secured a monopoly to all resources and territory beyond
Speaker 1: the line of lunar orbit, which you know, gets me
Speaker 1: to want, you know, for one thing, being able to
Speaker 1: make social commentary about life under a monopoly corporation, but
Speaker 1: is also sort of like tipping a cap to you know,
Speaker 1: the line that the Pope drew that gave the Spanish
Speaker 1: everything on one side and the Portuguese everything.
Speaker 4: On the other.
Speaker 1: Like the Spanish just for a while, the Spanish were
Speaker 1: literally claiming all of the Americas as their own territory
Speaker 1: because the Pope said that it was theirs, and that
Speaker 1: was a real thing that happened, and so that's that's
Speaker 1: how I kind of wrote it into the show. And
Speaker 1: you know, I even said that like a couple of
Speaker 1: the corporation, the rival corporations to Omnicor that initially agreed
Speaker 1: to giving Omnicor this monopoly, they were just like, this
Speaker 1: is great. Let them claim that monopoly, because they're going
Speaker 1: to go try to colonize it and they're going to
Speaker 1: bankrupt themselves and they're not going to get anything out
Speaker 1: of it. It's going to be a huge debacle. And
Speaker 1: so like, letting them go off and try to do this,
Speaker 1: we're actually securing their collapse here on Earth, and that's
Speaker 1: going to allow us to become more powerful, you know,
Speaker 1: in relation to them. And of course they were unfortunately
Speaker 1: dead wrong, and Omniicor became very very powerful because they
Speaker 1: did it, and that short didn't pay off.
Speaker 3: It did not.
Speaker 4: Now they tried.
Speaker 2: I keep hearing people say, let mus do it, he'll
Speaker 2: just go out there and die, and well, I think
Speaker 2: that's high probability. I also worry about what would happen
Speaker 2: if he was successful.
Speaker 4: But there's there's no chance he gets on one of
Speaker 4: those ships, none whatsoever. Wow, Eland Musk is not getting
Speaker 4: on a ship to go to Mars. Never.
Speaker 1: He would never do that. He would send people to
Speaker 1: do it. He would have other people die for sure,
Speaker 1: but he would be like, that's too risky for me.
Speaker 3: And would you get on a ship to Mars?
Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: How about New Mexico? Would you visit New Mexico? That
Speaker 3: goes great?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I love in Mexico, lovely place.
Speaker 3: I grew up in New Mexico and couldn't get out
Speaker 3: of there fast enough. But it is a beautiful place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like the I think it's the
Speaker 4: outdoorsy stuff, you know, it's a good, good place for
Speaker 4: hiking and stuff.
Speaker 3: So tell us about what's next for you. You're planning
Speaker 3: to write more fiction? Is there going to be a
Speaker 3: Jovian Revolution inspired by Biova? Space tiring? What are you
Speaker 3: planning on next?
Speaker 1: At the moment, I am finishing my third book, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, nonfiction about a certain period in Roman history
Speaker 1: where it seemed like their civilization was collapsing and that
Speaker 1: would be irreversible and irretrievable, and then instead they pulled
Speaker 1: themselves out of it and put themselves back together and
Speaker 1: went on for another couple of centuries, which I feel
Speaker 1: like is a pretty pertinent story that deserves that deserves
Speaker 1: to be shoved into people's brains as we all doom,
Speaker 1: scroll our.
Speaker 3: Lives away a hopeful message.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, honest to God, like a hopeful message.
Speaker 1: And then you know, there's eight episodes left on the
Speaker 1: Martian Revolution, and then when that's done, I'm going to
Speaker 1: restart sort of like the traditional series of revolutions, and
Speaker 1: I'll sort of pick it up where I left off
Speaker 1: with Russia at the end of World War one ish
Speaker 1: and so like the Irish, I'll do the Irish Revolution.
Speaker 1: You know, Cuba will be done, maybe the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: I haven't quite I'm going to be calling it as
Speaker 1: I see it and as I go, But there's basically
Speaker 1: the twentieth century revolutions are left to be covered, and
Speaker 1: then you know there is there future fiction.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I would sure love to do more stuff like this. Basically,
Speaker 4: the way I put it is, the people who.
Speaker 1: Like it love it, and I've gotten a lot of
Speaker 1: positive feedback about it and people saying that they really
Speaker 1: really enjoy it, and so if I can do this
Speaker 1: kind of thing again, that would be fantastic. Is there
Speaker 1: going to be a sequel to the Martian Revolution? If
Speaker 1: there is, it's already been coded into the show, and
Speaker 1: you would just have to know what you were looking
Speaker 1: for to be like, oh, that's what he's doing, because yeah,
Speaker 1: the sequel is known if it happens, and it should
Speaker 1: already be something that if you were really paying attention,
Speaker 1: or if you just happen to accidentally have a realization
Speaker 1: in your head one day. Oh, that's why he keeps
Speaker 1: saying that, then you know what the sequel will be.
Speaker 4: Listen carefully, focus, Listen carefully, and it's it's there. It's there.
Speaker 2: This is something we should have asked earlier. But have
Speaker 2: you written science fiction that is publicly available yet or
Speaker 2: was this your first science fiction?
Speaker 1: No, this is my first work of science fiction. This
Speaker 1: is my first work of like published fiction. I have
Speaker 1: stuff that I did, like like independently, like little short
Speaker 1: story things, and I did the Three Day Novel Contest
Speaker 1: a couple times, and I did record an.
Speaker 4: Audiobook of one of those. But that's like a that's
Speaker 4: like a detective story that's using all the tropes from
Speaker 4: like Raymond Chandler and stuff. But Nope, this is this
Speaker 4: is the first science fiction.
Speaker 2: Got it So in the next eight weeks when the
Speaker 2: Martian Revolution is over, there's nothing for us to fall.
Speaker 4: Back on, not fictionally, No, no, no, you no, you
Speaker 4: can no, you can't be like, oh, I love this
Speaker 4: new stuff and he's got this old stuff. I mean,
Speaker 4: you knows. Maybe I'll maybe I'll resurrect some of those stories.
Speaker 4: They're all science fiction.
Speaker 2: E all right, well, I love the Martian Revolution. I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to what comes next, and I'm looking forward
Speaker 2: to the history revolutions coming back to It's all wonderful.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the show. I
Speaker 2: had a really great time.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
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