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Speaker 1: Hey or hey? Have you seen a new TV show
Speaker 1: about the multiverse?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Which one? Feel like there are multiple ones out there?
Speaker 1: I know there are so many. Makes me wonder if
Speaker 1: there are multiverse aliens out there, would they want to
Speaker 1: watch shows about like a single universe? A monoverse.
Speaker 5: What Wait, So, if there is a multiverse and aliens,
Speaker 5: what you're wondering about is whether they watch a show,
Speaker 5: a particular show. Yeah, that's the first question you would
Speaker 5: ask them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the first question, but it's
Speaker 1: on the list.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, what's on. But that's an interesting concept,
Speaker 5: like to them, A show about a single universe would
Speaker 5: be weird and strange to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know the stories that people tell,
Speaker 1: the stories people are interesting. That tells you a lot
Speaker 1: about how their mind works. So I think that would
Speaker 1: be super fun.
Speaker 5: I am Jorge mcgartoonez, an author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I'll watch almost any science fiction
Speaker 1: show that's out there, honestly.
Speaker 5: Oh, would you like it and not like it at
Speaker 5: the same time? Or do you like them all? Or
Speaker 5: do you you just want to see them all?
Speaker 1: I watch almost all of them. I don't like all
Speaker 1: of them. I usually finish them anyway, even if I
Speaker 1: sort of hate watch them at the end.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Oh, I can't do that. If I don't like something,
Speaker 5: forget it. I drop it, books, TV shows, movies, I'll
Speaker 5: stop watching a movie.
Speaker 4: In the middle.
Speaker 1: I always just have this hope that they're going to
Speaker 1: pull it off, you know that somehow, even though it
Speaker 1: seems like nonsense, there's an explanation waiting at the end.
Speaker 1: I'm almost always disappointed, but I still have that hope,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 5: I think that's why they invented Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: Daniel, Are you saying you stop watching something and just
Speaker 1: read the plot summary and Wikipedia?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 5: I do know, I do. It's such a time saver,
Speaker 5: trust me, and then if what happens sounds interesting, then
Speaker 5: I'll go see how they did.
Speaker 1: Wow. Amazing. Maybe instead of living your life, you should
Speaker 1: just read about yourself on Wikipedia. I mean it saves time. Right.
Speaker 5: Well, who do you think is writing my Wikipedia?
Speaker 1: Is that you wi?
Speaker 5: I mean, what better source about my life than me?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Actually, I think there probably are better sources. People tend
Speaker 1: to not be unbiased recounters of their own life story.
Speaker 5: But anyways, Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 5: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: A show in which we explain how the universe works
Speaker 1: to you. We want to answer your questions and really
Speaker 1: unwind the explanations so that they click in your mind
Speaker 1: even better than if you just read the article on Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: We do the Wikipedia translation for you. So many people
Speaker 1: to me and say, hey, I read about this on
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and it still doesn't make sense. Can you explain
Speaker 1: that to me. That's what this show is about, explaining
Speaker 1: everything that's out there in the universe in a way
Speaker 1: that actually makes sense to you.
Speaker 5: That's right, because it is a pretty interesting universe full
Speaker 5: of cliffhangers, interesting plot twists, and amazing characters out there.
Speaker 5: Hopefully without a series finale yet.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to end in a cliffhanger. What
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 5: But what's on the other side of the cliff, Daniel?
Speaker 1: I just hope we get another season, that's all, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, how do you know we're not in the
Speaker 5: second season.
Speaker 1: We could be in like Season Infinity, right, it's just
Speaker 1: a series of banks and everyone is a new season.
Speaker 5: We could be like the soap opera of the meta metaverse,
Speaker 5: meta meta universe. You know, it just goes on forever. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 5: that's the universe turns, and.
Speaker 1: We'd like exploring the physics of the real universe. But
Speaker 1: we also like thinking about other hypothetical, even fictional universes,
Speaker 1: because this is a great way to stretch our brains
Speaker 1: to imagine the way that our universe might be. There's
Speaker 1: a great history of science fiction authors being super creative
Speaker 1: about the way physics might work in some universe in
Speaker 1: their mind, and sometimes even inspiring real physics in new directions.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Because also, isn't it sort of the job of
Speaker 5: physicists to think about the possible futures or possible ways
Speaker 5: in which the universe might work, and then go out
Speaker 5: there and test them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, that is the job of theoretical physics, not
Speaker 1: just describe what we've seen in the universe, but think
Speaker 1: about what else might be out there, come up with
Speaker 1: new experiments we could do to discover the way the
Speaker 1: universe is. And in order to do that you have
Speaker 1: to be creative. You have to say, maybe the universe
Speaker 1: works this way, maybe it works that way. How would
Speaker 1: we know? What would it mean? You know, all the
Speaker 1: big discoveries in the history of physics, Einstein's revolution with
Speaker 1: relativity comes from thinking about the way the universe might work,
Speaker 1: and science fiction authors do the same thing in another direction.
Speaker 1: They maybe even take.
Speaker 5: It for Now does that mean that a physicists can
Speaker 5: just lay back and read what science fiction author is?
Speaker 1: Right, dude, you figured out our secret. That's embarrassing.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 1: That's why I watch so much science fiction. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I need a new idea for research. Let's turn on
Speaker 1: the TV.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. Do you ever like reference that in
Speaker 5: your scientific papers? You should.
Speaker 1: Hasn't actually happened yet, but you know, I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: the day. I'm keep investing.
Speaker 5: Oh, I see, you're waiting for the day for someone
Speaker 5: to make a TV show about a gripping drama that
Speaker 5: takes place at the Large Hadron Collider about a particle
Speaker 5: physicist who has a podcast and then turns out to
Speaker 5: be an international spy.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, exactly. You know, the show we're talking
Speaker 1: about today actually is about a physicist who turns out
Speaker 1: to discover something exciting about the universe.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 5: Interesting. Well, let's dig into that because to me, on
Speaker 5: the program, we'll be tackling the sci fi universe of
Speaker 5: dark matter. And now, wait, Daniel, I thought we were
Speaker 5: talking about the multiverse, not dark matter.
Speaker 1: I know. Yes, the title of this show is maybe
Speaker 1: a touch bit misleading.
Speaker 5: I agree, yeah, misleading or inaccrid or maybe in season
Speaker 5: Infinity will turn out that dark Matter is what power
Speaker 5: is the multiverse.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to give away any spoilers, So
Speaker 1: people got to read the book or check out the
Speaker 1: TV show. This TV show is inspired by a book
Speaker 1: of the same name by Blake Crouch. It was that
Speaker 1: book that actually kicked off our whole series of science
Speaker 1: fiction episodes.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Remember we recorded an episode where we talked about
Speaker 5: the book. This was a long time ago, right five
Speaker 5: years ago, four years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we actually chatted with Blake about a different book
Speaker 1: of his Recursion about time travel. But reading that book
Speaker 1: and thinking about the physics and wondering how authors used
Speaker 1: physics as they developed their shows and how they developed
Speaker 1: the science fiction universe is what inspired our whole series
Speaker 1: of episodes of interviews with authors, which has been super fun.
Speaker 1: So thanks Blake for writing that book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you Blake. And so he wrote the book
Speaker 5: Dark Matter, on which the TV show is based on,
Speaker 5: which you can see right now in Apple TV.
Speaker 1: That's right, by the time this episode airs, the finale
Speaker 1: will have been out already. And so it's a fun
Speaker 1: science fiction show on Apple TV.
Speaker 5: Oh does that mean we're going to do spoilers or
Speaker 5: not spoilers.
Speaker 1: We are not going to do spoilers because I want
Speaker 1: people to hear this episode.
Speaker 5: And then watch the show and or read the Wikipedia page.
Speaker 1: No, do not do that.
Speaker 5: It might see any time. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's see, Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 5: But anyway, it's a show out there right now, and
Speaker 5: it's a limited series, right how many episodes will there be?
Speaker 1: There's nine episodes in the first series and there hasn't
Speaker 1: yet been news about whether they'll extended for a second series.
Speaker 1: The story in the first series basically captures what happens
Speaker 1: in the book.
Speaker 5: Okay, does it vary from the book or did they
Speaker 5: change anything or leave it as this?
Speaker 1: There's a few subtle modifications, but basically it follows the
Speaker 1: story as laid out in the book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, what's the general story of the book or
Speaker 5: movie for book?
Speaker 1: So it's a multiverse inspired story, and it's a story
Speaker 1: about a physicist and in one of the universes he
Speaker 1: invents a box that connects the multiverses. So it's essentially
Speaker 1: about being able to travel from one universe to another
Speaker 1: universe to imagine like alternative lives you might have lived,
Speaker 1: or to maybe even change the universe you live in
Speaker 1: because you regret some of your choices.
Speaker 5: Whoa wait, wait, wait, So first of all, it's a box.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm, not a douhiki or a machine. It's a box.
Speaker 5: How big is this box? Like phone booth size box
Speaker 5: or briefcase size box.
Speaker 1: No, it's big enough for a few people to stand in.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the size of a small garage.
Speaker 1: I guess looks like it's I don't know, three meters
Speaker 1: across or something. But it's a box because it's inspired
Speaker 1: by Schrodinger's cat you know, the idea of putting a
Speaker 1: cat in a box and then not knowing whether it's
Speaker 1: live or dead because there's a quantum triggered poison in
Speaker 1: there with the cat. So I think they used a
Speaker 1: box because it's evoked by Schrodinger's cat experiment.
Speaker 5: I see. So does that mean that the multiverse in
Speaker 5: the show is the quantum multiverse version, because I know
Speaker 5: we've talked about there being multiple versions of multiverses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. This is the quantum multiverse. The idea that
Speaker 1: if there are random things happening in the universe, like
Speaker 1: an electron could go left or could go right, and
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics tells us that there's just a random probability
Speaker 1: for either one. Then you might ask how does the
Speaker 1: universe choose? And in the Copenhagen interpretation, the universe just
Speaker 1: picks one somehow, you know, rolls a die somewhere behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, and an electron goes left or goes right.
Speaker 1: That's the wave function collapse. But there's another version of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, the many world's theory or Everrettian, that says
Speaker 1: it doesn't collapse. It does both. The universe splits into two.
Speaker 1: So the electron goes left in one universe and right
Speaker 1: in another universe, and so those are two elements of
Speaker 1: the multiverse.
Speaker 5: So now after the electron splits, there are two universes
Speaker 5: that exist, one in which the electron win left and
Speaker 5: one in which the electrone went right, whereas before there
Speaker 5: was only one universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have to be careful what you mean
Speaker 1: by universe here. We use the word universe here to
Speaker 1: evoke the universe that we experience, you know, our stars
Speaker 1: and galaxies and our space and our bodies and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And then we imagine many of those,
Speaker 1: we put those together into a multiverse. Some people who
Speaker 1: support this theory of quantum mechanics think that that's a
Speaker 1: little bit misleading. You're not really creating new universes. You
Speaker 1: just have one big universe that's now split into independent
Speaker 1: branches that can no longer talk to each other. So
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a quibble about the naming. But
Speaker 1: I think that leads people to imagine that like all
Speaker 1: this new stars are being made somehow, all this mass
Speaker 1: is being created, when it's really more like it's splitting
Speaker 1: into both possibilities.
Speaker 5: Now, in the show, the scientists physicists, I imagine built
Speaker 5: a box and then what happens to the box? If
Speaker 5: you get in it, you can go to another multiverse,
Speaker 5: or you can experience it or what what does it
Speaker 5: mean that it connects the multiverses?
Speaker 1: Yes, the idea is that inside the box, the universe
Speaker 1: has not made a choice about what's happening. There's nobody
Speaker 1: observing it, there's nobody looking at it. So it's still
Speaker 1: in this sort of quantum superposition where it can have
Speaker 1: both possibilities. And so in that sense, it's like there
Speaker 1: are multiple possibilities within the box. The same way that
Speaker 1: when you put a cat in the box and you
Speaker 1: don't look inside yet, the cat could still be alive
Speaker 1: or still be dead, And quantum mechanics says, both possibilities
Speaker 1: exist simultaneously, so now to experience both simultaneously. In the show,
Speaker 1: they develop some sort of chemical, some sort of like
Speaker 1: shot that you take that allows your brain to exist
Speaker 1: in a superposition so that you can go inside the
Speaker 1: box without collapsing the possibilities. So now you are inside
Speaker 1: the box, and you are still in this quantum superposition,
Speaker 1: so you're sort of like experiencing multiple universes simultaneously.
Speaker 5: It's like you're the cat Insurodinger's cat, and then the
Speaker 5: cat took a pill or something or some medicine. It
Speaker 5: can now experience being both dead and alive. But I
Speaker 5: guess the dead kat would not be experienced anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And in the show they describe it says,
Speaker 1: turning off the observer effect what I described earlier. You know,
Speaker 1: when the electron goes left or goes right, when it's
Speaker 1: making that choice, that's what we call the observer effect.
Speaker 1: When you ask the universe, okay, which one is it?
Speaker 1: I want to observe the electron and in the Copenhagen
Speaker 1: interpretation they say when it's observed, that's when the universe
Speaker 1: makes a choice. And so in this story they sort
Speaker 1: of like turn off the observer effect by taking this
Speaker 1: special drug that allows your brain to be in a superposition,
Speaker 1: and then you can basically choose which universe you want
Speaker 1: to go into. You reopen the door, you walk out
Speaker 1: in a new universe. In that universe, you made a
Speaker 1: different choice in your earlier life, or you know, society
Speaker 1: has gone a different way or something it is different
Speaker 1: about the universe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I hear. There are all kinds of drugs that
Speaker 5: will let you experience all kinds of universes. You don't
Speaker 5: need a box. But wait, so taking this bill of
Speaker 5: going into the box that gives you access to all
Speaker 5: of the multiverses ever created, or just the ones that happen.
Speaker 5: So you go into the box based on the choices
Speaker 5: you make inside the box, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like it would make sense if you can access the
Speaker 5: ones that you're super proposed in, but maybe not the
Speaker 5: ones that were created a long time ago or will
Speaker 5: be created in the future.
Speaker 1: No, it's a very good point, and there is a
Speaker 1: bit of a scientific quibble there. Right, What might make
Speaker 1: sense is you create this box. Now you haven't looked
Speaker 1: at what's inside the box. Several things could be happening
Speaker 1: inside the box. If you now go inside the box,
Speaker 1: you can then choose any of those possible outcomes from
Speaker 1: when you created the box. Right, That's not what happens
Speaker 1: in the show. In the show, you can visit any
Speaker 1: alternative universe in which you were born. So not like
Speaker 1: the full breadth of all possible universes, including ones where
Speaker 1: you never existed or the Earth never formed, just universes
Speaker 1: in which you were born. But I agree with you
Speaker 1: that that doesn't really make sense because how could the
Speaker 1: box have those universes connected to it? Right? It exists
Speaker 1: in our universe?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, but.
Speaker 1: That's a lot less. If you create a box and
Speaker 1: then you can go inside the box and then be
Speaker 1: in any universe in which you made this box five
Speaker 1: minutes ago, that doesn't really give you many new options.
Speaker 1: It doesn't allow for exciting stories like I'm going to
Speaker 1: go inside the box and then instead of being a
Speaker 1: physicist who created this box, I'm gonna go back and
Speaker 1: find the woman I should have married. Instead of building
Speaker 1: this box.
Speaker 5: I guess either version would be kind of interesting. Like
Speaker 5: I could go into this box, right, I can watch
Speaker 5: a TV show and also at the same time, I
Speaker 5: can maybe you know, write a novel, and then at
Speaker 5: the end I'll have done both. Is that how it works?
Speaker 1: Well, eventually you have to come out, right, not everybody
Speaker 1: in the universe has taken this drug. And so then
Speaker 1: when you come out, you're either going to be Jorge
Speaker 1: who wrote a novel or Orge who watched a TV show.
Speaker 5: And I can choose which one.
Speaker 1: You can choose which one, Yes, but you can't be both.
Speaker 1: You can't have both watched the TV show and written
Speaker 1: a novel, which I think is what you're going for.
Speaker 5: But if I wrote the novel, do I remember having
Speaker 5: written the novel or remember having watched the novel the
Speaker 5: TV show?
Speaker 1: Because when you come out, then the universe collapses and
Speaker 1: makes your choice, right.
Speaker 5: Okay, right, but I'll have known, like if I picked
Speaker 5: a novel, then I know that the novel I wrote
Speaker 5: is better than the TV show I watched.
Speaker 1: When you come out, you won't You'll only have been
Speaker 1: Horriy wrote the novel or Horaey who watched the TV show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or horri We just read the Wikipedia article on matter.
Speaker 5: But let's go back to the show. Sorry, So then
Speaker 5: the physicists had then the option to go anywhere at
Speaker 5: any point in his life in which he made a
Speaker 5: decision and go that that way or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: But then if he goes the other way, then he'll
Speaker 5: have been that person who made the other choice. Does
Speaker 5: he stay the person he was before he went into
Speaker 5: the box?
Speaker 1: He stays the person he was before he went into
Speaker 1: the box, and now he's experiencing this new universe. So
Speaker 1: one of the main storylines in the show is that
Speaker 1: this physicist, the one we're following, actually didn't build the box.
Speaker 1: He decided not to go into physics and instead follow
Speaker 1: his wife's career and become a teacher. But then another
Speaker 1: version of him that did build the box sides, you know,
Speaker 1: life being a physicist isn't as exciting and I should
Speaker 1: have chosen love and comes and kidnaps the original version
Speaker 1: of him and takes his place.
Speaker 5: Wait what so Wait, the main protagonist is not a physicist.
Speaker 1: He's a physicist by training. He got a PhD, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But now he's teaching, he's not doing research. He decided
Speaker 1: not to devote himself to buildings.
Speaker 5: He's not a practicing physicist, but then the physicist version
Speaker 5: of him in the multiverse turns out to be kind
Speaker 5: of evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. You know, he decided following his career with
Speaker 1: maybe the wrong path, even though it allowed him to create
Speaker 1: this box. Now it lets him come back and live
Speaker 1: both versions, right, he wants to be whoorgete wrote the
Speaker 1: novel and watch the TV show. He got to have
Speaker 1: a career, build a box, and now he wants to
Speaker 1: go back and experience love.
Speaker 5: So basically the moral of the stories. If you become
Speaker 5: a physicist and you become a super villain, yeah, takeaway here.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, Bruce Banner has seven PhDs,
Speaker 1: so maybe the guy just needs more PhDs so he becomes,
Speaker 1: you know, on the good side.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, but I think for for Bruce Banner, he
Speaker 5: has PhDs in non physics fields. What that balances?
Speaker 1: He got seven PhDs and none of them are in physics.
Speaker 5: Really some of them, I think most of them are not.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I mean, looked at this transcript.
Speaker 1: I need to check out Bruce Banner CV.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, there you go. I'm sure he posts it
Speaker 5: on Wikipedia. Okay, so then he gets kipnaped by his
Speaker 5: alternate version, and then what happens when you kidnapped and
Speaker 5: then placed in the other universe and now he's trapped
Speaker 5: or what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, and he has to figure out what happened
Speaker 1: and try to get back to his original universe, and
Speaker 1: then the story gets pretty wild. So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: fun story. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh, do you give it a thumbs up or a
Speaker 5: thumbs down or both thumbs up and thumbs us down.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a lot of fun to watch. I recommend
Speaker 1: it if you're into science fiction. I think the science
Speaker 1: of it is pretty solid, but there are some quibbles,
Speaker 1: but I think they're sort of necessary fudge factors to
Speaker 1: make the story work, Otherwise it just wouldn't be possible.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely fun to watch, and it tries really
Speaker 1: hard to follow rules, you know, to set up a
Speaker 1: universe and to follow the consequences of that. I think
Speaker 1: it does a good job of imagining where the story
Speaker 1: might go that you wouldn't expect.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know following rules is very important to you.
Speaker 1: Well, we think the universe follows rules, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out, and so it's most fun to
Speaker 1: follow rules in these stories, the science of it. I
Speaker 1: do have a couple of quibbles. I mean, number one
Speaker 1: is the issue you already brought up, like, if you
Speaker 1: create this box, how is it possible that has access
Speaker 1: to choices you made before you made the box? That
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to work with me.
Speaker 5: My question is how do you pick which universe you
Speaker 5: want to go into? Like is there a computer? Or
Speaker 5: you say I want to go to the universe in
Speaker 5: which I didn't become a physicist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they actually dig into that in great detail in
Speaker 1: the show. I don't want to spoil how it works,
Speaker 1: but they definitely grapple with that question. That's not something
Speaker 1: they'd gloss over.
Speaker 5: Oh interesting, Like is there a user interface or do
Speaker 5: you check out all the other universe and pick the
Speaker 5: one you like.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to watch the show or read the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page to find out.
Speaker 5: Really, that's a big spoiler. The user interface is a
Speaker 5: big spoiler.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give it away, man, I want
Speaker 1: people to watch the show. But this does raise the question,
Speaker 1: which is you know the role of the human in
Speaker 1: observing there's a lot of people out there who imagine
Speaker 1: the quantum mechanics depends on like having a conscious observer.
Speaker 1: When we talk about the observer effect, the wave function collapsing,
Speaker 1: choosing one universe out of many, a lot of people
Speaker 1: think that it requires a person like a conscious observer.
Speaker 1: And I think that's just basically a misunderstanding of the
Speaker 1: observer effect, because what quantum mechanics tells us is that
Speaker 1: the wave function collapses anytime a quantum system interacts with
Speaker 1: any classical object, meaning like something big, you know, like
Speaker 1: a baseball or a screen or a detector or your eyeball.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be something conscious. In this show, the
Speaker 1: imagine that it has to be like a conscious person
Speaker 1: to collapse the wave function, and that by taking this ampuol,
Speaker 1: you're like removing that so it doesn't collapse. So they're
Speaker 1: imagining that humans are special somehow in collapsing the wave function.
Speaker 1: That's not the way it really works in quantum mechanics.
Speaker 1: So they need this fudge for the show to work. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I can forgive it, but I don't want
Speaker 1: people to misunderstand that quantum mechanics requires a conscious human observer.
Speaker 5: Right right, things collapse just when they interact with other systems, right,
Speaker 5: and a human brain is just another system. Just what
Speaker 5: you're saying.
Speaker 1: It depends on the system they interact with. A quantum
Speaker 1: system will not collapse if it interacts with another quantum system.
Speaker 1: Like two electrons can interact and still stay in quantum
Speaker 1: superposition because they're built quantum objects. But if an electron
Speaker 1: interacts with a classical object, a screen, a detector, your eyeball, whatever,
Speaker 1: then it will collapse. And people are probably thinking, huh,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a classical and a quantum system?
Speaker 1: Where do you draw the line? Isn't a classical system
Speaker 1: actually built out of little quantum particles? Yes? Absolutely not
Speaker 1: a question we have an answer to. That's the famous
Speaker 1: measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
Speaker 5: As in the answer just that classical objects are quantum objects,
Speaker 5: except that they're just made up of so many quantum
Speaker 5: objects that it statistically kind of overwhelms the uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Well, we don't really understand how that happens, you know,
Speaker 1: the transition between quantum and classical. If quantum objects can
Speaker 1: intera with other quantum objects and remain in superposition, why
Speaker 1: can a billion quantum objects not do that or a trillion.
Speaker 1: That's not something we understand. According to mathematics, it should
Speaker 1: be possible, you know, so we don't understand when something
Speaker 1: becomes classical.
Speaker 5: What about this idea that you can connect multiverses together.
Speaker 5: Is that something that physicists think is impossible? Or do
Speaker 5: you think that it's possible to travel between multiverses.
Speaker 1: It's very skeptical of that idea. Most of the multiverse
Speaker 1: theories involve universes that cannot interact in any way. In
Speaker 1: the many worlds theory, for example, the wave function has
Speaker 1: split and there's no way for those branches of the
Speaker 1: wave function to interact. Just simply having a box in
Speaker 1: one of the universes that you haven't looked inside of
Speaker 1: doesn't connect the universes in any way. There's no way
Speaker 1: to connect to that other universe. So yeah, that I
Speaker 1: don't think is actually possible, but you know, again, I'm
Speaker 1: willing to fudge it. Although it raises the question like
Speaker 1: if one person in one of these universes builds a box,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, there's a box in all
Speaker 1: those other universes that you can step out of. That
Speaker 1: means that in any of the universes. Anybody built a
Speaker 1: box and makes the box in the other universes, then
Speaker 1: all the universes should be filled with an infinite number
Speaker 1: of boxes.
Speaker 5: What wait, wait, there's only one box in the show.
Speaker 1: No, there's an infinite number of boxes, because he builds
Speaker 1: one box and that makes the box appear in all
Speaker 1: the other branches of the universe, so he can step
Speaker 1: out of the box in those universes.
Speaker 5: Wait what who built those other boxes in those other universes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, unexplained. It just sort of is created when he
Speaker 1: builds the one and then doesn't look inside of it
Speaker 1: because it's now in a quantum superposition. It exists in
Speaker 1: all those universes. That's not really explained. And so if
Speaker 1: any other version of him also builds the box, then
Speaker 1: it should exist in our universe as well, and so
Speaker 1: we should have an infinite number of those boxes. The
Speaker 1: whole universe should be filled with boxes.
Speaker 5: Well, isn't that a big plot hole? Like who built
Speaker 5: the boxes in the other universes?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Great question, and a question I'm going to put
Speaker 1: to the writers of the show in just a minute.
Speaker 5: Oh well, this is pretty exciting, Daniel. You got to
Speaker 5: interview two people involved in the show. One is one
Speaker 5: of the screenwriters and the other one is a scientific
Speaker 5: consultant for the show.
Speaker 1: That's right. I talked to Jacqueline ben Zechary, one of
Speaker 1: the screenwriters for the show. She wrote a couple of
Speaker 1: the last episodes. I talked to about writing for the
Speaker 1: show and her process and how they consider the science.
Speaker 1: And I know they involved a physicist as a scientific
Speaker 1: consultant who happens to be a physicist that you and
Speaker 1: I know, and who happens to be here with me
Speaker 1: at the Aspen Center for Physics this week where I am,
Speaker 1: and so I reached out to him and he agreed
Speaker 1: to talk to me about what it's like to be
Speaker 1: a science advisor on this kind of show.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, we'll get to Daniel's interview with a
Speaker 5: screenwriter and scientific consultant for the Apple TV show Dark Matter.
Speaker 5: When we come back from the break.
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Speaker 5: All right, we're talking about the Apple TV show Dark Matter,
Speaker 5: which is a science fiction show about the multiverse and
Speaker 5: being able to travel between them and being able to
Speaker 5: I guess, high five and or kicknap other versions of
Speaker 5: yourself that made bad choices according to your current version.
Speaker 5: It's a little fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's really the theme of the show is
Speaker 1: like thinking about other parts of your life and decisions
Speaker 1: you made, sort of like that sliding window movie. Was
Speaker 1: it called a sliding glass doors? What was that movie
Speaker 1: with Gwyneth Paltrow? You know, other choices you might have
Speaker 1: made at leads to.
Speaker 5: Other sliding glass window. Yeah, I think that's what It's
Speaker 5: called the lading rear view mirror.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. That's really the theme of the show,
Speaker 1: and they use the multiverse as a way to explore that.
Speaker 5: Well, you got to interview both a screenwriter and the
Speaker 5: scientific advisor for the show, and so here is Daniel's
Speaker 5: interview with screenwriter Jacqueline ben Zachreed.
Speaker 1: Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast Jacqueline ben Zachary. Jacqueline, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for taking some time.
Speaker 7: To talk to us, of course, and you can call
Speaker 7: me JBZ. That's what most people do, so it's easier.
Speaker 1: All right, great, So tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your background. How you got into science fiction writing and
Speaker 1: working in television for people who want to have your job?
Speaker 1: How did you get it?
Speaker 7: Oh, very mean, during and weird, it's kind of how
Speaker 7: it all happened. Yeah, I don't want to go back
Speaker 7: too far in time, but I'm dyslexic. I grew up
Speaker 7: having a really difficult time, Like I didn't really know
Speaker 7: how to read until I was.
Speaker 9: Sixth grade or so.
Speaker 7: Somewhere and there I actually figured out how to not
Speaker 7: just read, but understand what I was reading, and it
Speaker 7: became an obsession. Like the idea of words and what
Speaker 7: they mean. I think it's not that they have greater
Speaker 7: meaning to me than other people, but I think that
Speaker 7: I appreciate them in a different way. I see them
Speaker 7: in a different way.
Speaker 9: So always.
Speaker 7: From a very young age, I was obsessed with books
Speaker 7: and with the idea of reading, and like this concept
Speaker 7: that it makes you smart if you can understand what
Speaker 7: you're reading, which is like so silly and simple, but
Speaker 7: you know, like I was a kid, and you know,
Speaker 7: once I got a little bit older, I ended up
Speaker 7: working at Amazon for a while doing some you know,
Speaker 7: I was in process improvement, statistical analysis, and six Sigma.
Speaker 7: I really loved you know, Mathew Mathew Mathy all day.
Speaker 7: It was really great. But I was missing some of
Speaker 7: that creative energy. So I ended up it was a
Speaker 7: semi being headhunted.
Speaker 9: Semi.
Speaker 7: I was looking for an opportunity to be more in
Speaker 7: I would say, a creative role. So I got a
Speaker 7: job working and publishing Thomas Mercer, Amazon Publishing, and I
Speaker 7: really loved that job. I really loved being around story
Speaker 7: and writers and it's just, you know, life has a
Speaker 7: way of sort of evolving.
Speaker 9: Over time, you know.
Speaker 7: I started off in marketing and trying to understand how
Speaker 7: people react to story and why they buy what they buy,
Speaker 7: and slowly I became more convinced that the way to
Speaker 7: sell a better book is to have the book be better,
Speaker 7: and so I became an editor, but then I was
Speaker 7: really not very good at that aspect of the job
Speaker 7: because I saw potential in every single book. Like it
Speaker 7: was very easy for me as the marketing person to
Speaker 7: say this book.
Speaker 9: Will sell well and this one will not.
Speaker 7: But when it came to actually interacting the story, it's
Speaker 7: very difficult for me to say, Ah, this story can
Speaker 7: never get good enough and can never become a good
Speaker 7: enough as a writer, will never be written the way
Speaker 7: that we on it to be written. And so I
Speaker 7: kind of immediately sort of started my own side business
Speaker 7: editing books as a developmental story let or, which is
Speaker 7: a little different for those of you who don't know
Speaker 7: much about publishing. It's like there is sort of the
Speaker 7: acquisitions editor, whose job it is to sort of make
Speaker 7: the money work and make it make sense, and they
Speaker 7: do give a lot of notes. But developmental editors are
Speaker 7: the people that, like, as you're writing the book, help
Speaker 7: you figure stuff out and help you figure out your characters,
Speaker 7: and you know, in some cases, just write better. And
Speaker 7: so I started doing that on the side, and then
Speaker 7: eventually that business grew to being my full time job
Speaker 7: and I quit my big, stinky corporate job.
Speaker 1: That must have been an amazing moment, right.
Speaker 7: It's an amazing moment that came a little bit with
Speaker 7: on the heels of a tiny amount of failure. Like
Speaker 7: I had had a memory breakdown, which I don't want
Speaker 7: to go into too much detail here, not because it's
Speaker 7: not interesting, but because it's not what we're here to
Speaker 7: talk about. But I've spoken gibberish in a meeting. I
Speaker 7: was very confused. I had fugue states. I was walking
Speaker 7: home strangely, and it was kind of like this big
Speaker 7: moment where it's like, oh, you either have brain cancer
Speaker 7: and you're dying, and this is your whole life, just
Speaker 7: working sixty hours a week making some amount of money
Speaker 7: that doesn't make you happy, or you are doing this
Speaker 7: to yourself. It's stress and you're creating this problem within
Speaker 7: your own brain. And it was like the dark night
Speaker 7: of this whole weekend, you know.
Speaker 9: And I kind of just looked at.
Speaker 7: The math and I was like, I can make enough
Speaker 7: money off my business and not be unhappy, and it
Speaker 7: kind of doesn't matter if I have cancer, if it's stress.
Speaker 9: So I quit my job and then found out I
Speaker 9: wasn't dying.
Speaker 7: You know that, You know the story has a happy
Speaker 7: ending for those you aren't sure, and he was stress, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's great.
Speaker 9: It was a big moment for me when I got
Speaker 9: to do that.
Speaker 7: And then from there, I was in publishing for a
Speaker 7: long time, and I've been Blake Crouch's developmental editor since Pines,
Speaker 7: and so when he was developing a couple of other projects,
Speaker 7: because I've always been in the mix of that, and
Speaker 7: we were working on developing another television show that was
Speaker 7: like pretty close to going and you know, we've gotten
Speaker 7: pretty far on the road with some producers and there
Speaker 7: was like.
Speaker 9: Money already starting to come in for it, and.
Speaker 7: Dark Matter got greenlit, and it was this immediate moment
Speaker 7: where it's like, you can't do both.
Speaker 9: That's literally impossible.
Speaker 7: So it was like, Okay, well, I guess we'll do
Speaker 7: Dark Matter instead. And that's kind of how the whole
Speaker 7: thing happened. It's so weird and random, but a lot
Speaker 7: of fun too. I've really enjoyed the ride.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Well, congrats in the show. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: The show features a lot of themes of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 1: You know, you have superposition, the multiverse. What is exciting
Speaker 1: to you as a writer about these themes. What opportunities
Speaker 1: and challenges does that create that you were excited about.
Speaker 7: Wow, that's a really good question. Theme wise, I think
Speaker 7: I'm very drawn to duality in general. I think there's
Speaker 7: something really fascinating about you know, for those of you
Speaker 7: who are watching the show, and if you haven't, I
Speaker 7: don't want to spoil anything, but for those who've watched
Speaker 7: the show, we're dealing with one person who is expressed
Speaker 7: in multiple versions of himself. And kind of how it
Speaker 7: works is like, we have Jason two and Jason one,
Speaker 7: and they were the same person until fifteen years ago
Speaker 7: when one decided to have a family and the other
Speaker 7: decided to pursue his career. And to be clear, no
Speaker 7: one here is saying you have to do one or
Speaker 7: the other, but like, for this story, that has happened,
Speaker 7: and it.
Speaker 9: Was the idea of like that.
Speaker 7: Jason two later does a bunch of really I would say,
Speaker 7: incredibly dastardly things and really horrifying, terrible things, and Jason
Speaker 7: one kind of, you know, maintains this positivity.
Speaker 9: He's a good guy, but the reality is that they
Speaker 9: are the same person.
Speaker 7: And when writing him and writing his actions and what
Speaker 7: he's doing you have to actually look deep within yourself
Speaker 7: to the things that keep you from doing bad and
Speaker 7: that or that keep you from doing good, and how
Speaker 7: they are just like the batman the joke er. They
Speaker 7: are two sides of the same coin. And that's exciting
Speaker 7: to look at. It's exciting to think about, you know,
Speaker 7: why we make the choices that we make, and who
Speaker 7: we are when you strip away all those trapings of
Speaker 7: life and circumstances, like how would you actually interact and
Speaker 7: react to things? So those are thematically the funnest things.
Speaker 7: But I am a big sci fi dorc Like definitely
Speaker 7: that's not I don't want to say not normal. That
Speaker 7: sounds really insulting, but you know, on the scale of like,
Speaker 7: you know, the minutia and the science, that all really
Speaker 7: matters to me. So I was also equally excited to
Speaker 7: be able to go in here and be like, let's actually,
Speaker 7: you know, talk about some of these issues to a
Speaker 7: wide audience of people. This kind of science is kind
Speaker 7: of thinking this. I do think of physics more as
Speaker 7: philosophy than anything else, this philosophical way of thinking about
Speaker 7: the universe, and expose that to a lot of people
Speaker 7: who would never normally choose the show because we made
Speaker 7: it about regular people doing regular.
Speaker 9: Things, and the science is just it's another character.
Speaker 7: It's not the focus of every second, and that was
Speaker 7: probably the most exciting part for me.
Speaker 1: The show is sort of like a mystery or a thriller.
Speaker 1: You're trying to like unravel what happened, And to me,
Speaker 1: I'm always really impressed when somebody writes that kind of
Speaker 1: story in a science fiction universe, because it's so challenging
Speaker 1: for the audience to know if the rules are being
Speaker 1: followed and what the rules are. How important is it
Speaker 1: to you as a writer that the universe you created
Speaker 1: follows like a coherent and consistent set of rules, even
Speaker 1: of course if they aren't the rules of our universe,
Speaker 1: or are you like, let's just make the story happen
Speaker 1: and will you know, fill in some science frosting when
Speaker 1: we need to.
Speaker 7: Oh, I'm definitely the more the first type. And this
Speaker 7: goes back to being a developmental editor. You know, the tropes,
Speaker 7: which is kind of what you're talking about, right, Like,
Speaker 7: there's what the audience expects tropes. Like when I say mystery,
Speaker 7: it means you don't know the solution to the problem,
Speaker 7: to the last twenty five percent.
Speaker 9: Of the show, movie, or book.
Speaker 7: Right, that's a mystery versus thriller, which is like, you
Speaker 7: know the problem very early on is how are you
Speaker 7: going to solve it? You know, so like that's what
Speaker 7: the audiences expect. And then there's the writing trips, like
Speaker 7: actually how you structure things, So like, for example, fantasy,
Speaker 7: we structure it where you have multiple stories interacting at
Speaker 7: various points, so you don't do that per se in
Speaker 7: like science fiction usually that's those are structural differences.
Speaker 9: So for me, like when it comes to the mixing
Speaker 9: of like.
Speaker 7: Mystery and thriller and you know, all these different things
Speaker 7: into our speculative fiction, I am pretty obsessed with the
Speaker 7: rules because I think the rules are how you keep
Speaker 7: people grounded. So like there's the rules of the science,
Speaker 7: which I think have to be established very early on,
Speaker 7: and it needs to be blunt. Like it's the one
Speaker 7: area in all of writing where you're like, hey, we
Speaker 7: can be on the nose here just same mean, which
Speaker 7: is lazy and fun.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 7: There is the weighing with the rules, which is like
Speaker 7: the assumptions that we make, and there is the assumption
Speaker 7: that we make scientifically, like consciousness connects to reality. We
Speaker 7: know that that is some element of that is true, right,
Speaker 7: But then we sort of expand that out and say, Okay,
Speaker 7: if consciousness connects to reality, then I guess you have
Speaker 7: to have consciousness in this world in order to be
Speaker 7: able to go to this world. So now how we
Speaker 7: have a rule you have to have been born in
Speaker 7: that world to be able to go there. And so
Speaker 7: it is a lot of fun to take theoretically realish
Speaker 7: rules and then sort of play with them as well.
Speaker 9: I definitely think we did both in this show.
Speaker 7: And I don't think you can ask people to trust
Speaker 7: you so much that you throw a bunch of nonsense
Speaker 7: to the wall and say that's not real science, that's
Speaker 7: not real storytelling, and expect people to go along with it.
Speaker 7: Like people want to feel like they're satisfied at the
Speaker 7: end of it, like oh I got it, and not
Speaker 7: only did I get it, I got something hard.
Speaker 9: And so we do have to always be.
Speaker 7: Coming back to the rules and always be coming back
Speaker 7: to the things that makes sense, and always coming back
Speaker 7: to what you've established that it's also satisfying, and that's
Speaker 7: a trope thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, how much of the rules of the universe
Speaker 1: you're writing in are the rules of our universe? And
Speaker 1: how much did you like extend and fill in the
Speaker 1: gaps where we just don't know how things work? And
Speaker 1: also tell us a little bit about how you used
Speaker 1: the science Advisor in this show. I happen to know
Speaker 1: cliff Johnson quite well.
Speaker 9: I'm in love with him. If you could let him
Speaker 9: know that, like I think he I think he knows
Speaker 9: if you could let him.
Speaker 1: Ma, that's very charming.
Speaker 9: He is super charming and just really just nice and smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I asked him a question about entanglement once and he
Speaker 7: was way too nice to me. How much of this
Speaker 7: is the rules of our universe? I hope my understanding
Speaker 7: is that, and God I would love to know it.
Speaker 9: Clifford thinks I think it's.
Speaker 7: Probably eighty five percent theoretically possible, right, Like, we're playing
Speaker 7: with math that exists for sure, but we're expanding it
Speaker 7: pretty considerably in like just just go with me here,
Speaker 7: you know, we get philosophical to real. So I'd say, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's pretty close. But there's definitely some stuff that's like,
Speaker 7: you know, totally bs that we just sort of, you know,
Speaker 7: added in there because it's a lot of fun but
Speaker 7: I think the thing that we play with more in
Speaker 7: our universe is sort of history. I think that that's
Speaker 7: the more fun thing to play with, like for me especially,
Speaker 7: but I also know for Blake, getting the science as
Speaker 7: close to possible to being plausible so that you could
Speaker 7: go out and interact with other forms of this science
Speaker 7: and understand it better, that's really important to us, and
Speaker 7: so we try to stay in that sphere. But like
Speaker 7: you know, imagining a world where completely different things happened, like,
Speaker 7: that's a lot more fun than playing with science, I think,
Speaker 7: And that tends to be where we kind.
Speaker 9: Of really go off the rails.
Speaker 7: Like one of the worlds that we explore, World twenty
Speaker 7: six is the sort of utopia world. We're like, well,
Speaker 7: what if they just, you know, instead of developing the bomb,
Speaker 7: what if they put all those resources into creating what's
Speaker 7: called endless environmentally conscious energy, Right, what if that was
Speaker 7: what we did instead. That's not a judgment on the
Speaker 7: Manhattan Project. I grew up in Hamford. I tend to
Speaker 7: have a very strong attachment to that concept and that
Speaker 7: it's one of the greatest achievements in all of human history, right, Like,
Speaker 7: doing that scale of science and doing it that quickly
Speaker 7: and that engineering and on that thinking.
Speaker 9: But you know, the outcome wasn't really.
Speaker 7: Always like the most pleasant thing, And so what if
Speaker 7: we'd done something inherently more positive. What does that mean
Speaker 7: if you chose that over a destructive device. Well, you're
Speaker 7: probably in a world where there's more empathy. You're probably
Speaker 7: in a world where or we communicate better. And so
Speaker 7: I think a lot more liberty was taken with history
Speaker 7: and sociology than less taken with real science, if you
Speaker 7: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I think that's really creative. I really like
Speaker 1: that part of the show. I found myself like excited
Speaker 1: every time they opened the door to a new universe,
Speaker 1: like what's this one? What did they dream of? Time?
Speaker 1: And Yeah, I was always impressed.
Speaker 7: I just want to say this because I didn't really
Speaker 7: answer your Cliver johnsonthing. Clifford was really great about being
Speaker 7: a good carrot and stick guy. I just want to
Speaker 7: say that, like cliff was like, yeah, I mean, sure
Speaker 7: you could make it look like this, it's not a problem.
Speaker 7: But then I remember there were a couple of times
Speaker 7: during in No Atmosphere World where we had charred and
Speaker 7: burned stuff places and he's like, no, absolutely, not, that
Speaker 7: would not happen.
Speaker 9: Those are not the colors. That's not how it would
Speaker 9: look like.
Speaker 7: I just love when you could tell that something really
Speaker 7: matters to your scientific advice and you're like, oh, don't
Speaker 7: touch that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well hopefully that's representative of like the nerds
Speaker 1: watching your show, and you don't want to piss them
Speaker 1: off either.
Speaker 9: Absolutely. I don't like being wrong. I don't think anyone
Speaker 9: does right.
Speaker 1: So for the nerds out there in the audience, of
Speaker 1: which I count myself one, since I get to talk
Speaker 1: to you, I do have some questions about the rules
Speaker 1: of the universe and how it works. One thing I
Speaker 1: was wondering about what you thought about how you guys
Speaker 1: worked out is how the box exists in the other universes.
Speaker 1: Creates the box, and his university builds it. He physically
Speaker 1: puts it together. Then he goes to another universe he
Speaker 1: steps out of the box. That box is also in
Speaker 1: that universe, and I found myself wondering, like, who built
Speaker 1: it or how did that come to be? Do you
Speaker 1: guys grapple with that kind of question? Are you just
Speaker 1: kind of like, hmm, we need a little bit of.
Speaker 9: Fudge there, you're going to get into there.
Speaker 7: See now I'm going to contradict myself, like now we're
Speaker 7: getting into woo.
Speaker 1: Wu Right, okay, let's go there.
Speaker 7: Yeah for sure, for sure, like we know the laws
Speaker 7: of thermodynamics would not allow this to happen, right, because
Speaker 7: like our theory is that it spawns and that it
Speaker 7: it just arrives there because it is a gateway. So
Speaker 7: once Jason creates it in his world, it's sort of
Speaker 7: like I guess I would describe it as like an
Speaker 7: anchor point. It is the nexus by which all.
Speaker 9: Universes are connecting.
Speaker 7: So in theory, when you see that box, say in
Speaker 7: no atmosphere world or in the world where they're in
Speaker 7: the water.
Speaker 9: That is actually the same box.
Speaker 7: It's just being represented there physically so we can go
Speaker 7: in and out. And that's why the corridor is just
Speaker 7: the box repeating across because it's just your mind making
Speaker 7: sense of it.
Speaker 9: But definitely, like you know.
Speaker 7: Things start to fall apart when you really think about it,
Speaker 7: because yeah, where did that energy, where.
Speaker 9: Did that matter come from?
Speaker 7: I mean, I think it's the same matter, but yeah,
Speaker 7: send me some hate mail about that.
Speaker 9: It's probably not good.
Speaker 1: No, it's just fun to think about, and I liked
Speaker 1: the show encourages you to like think hard about how
Speaker 1: things work and what it means, and you know, it
Speaker 1: changes how the characters behave in the world. I think
Speaker 1: it's great. You know, it's a sign of a really
Speaker 1: good science fiction. But in this case, you guys weren't
Speaker 1: just starting from scratch and creating something new. I mean,
Speaker 1: Blake had written this novel already. What's it like to
Speaker 1: adapt a book like that to the screen rather than
Speaker 1: start from scratch? What are the challenges there?
Speaker 7: I think the biggest challenge I'll start with that one,
Speaker 7: which might reveal I'm a negative thinker, But the biggest
Speaker 7: challenge is.
Speaker 9: Like what people expect, the expectations. You know. I helped
Speaker 9: like develop this story.
Speaker 7: So I remember being in we were in Portland, and
Speaker 7: like the idea of like, oh, how much your emotions
Speaker 7: would affect the worlds that you land on came directly
Speaker 7: from a dark conversation I was having with him about RoboCop,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean, Like, so I'm so immeshed
Speaker 7: in this story that that.
Speaker 9: Aspect of it was very easy. It was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 9: we can do that.
Speaker 7: But then you get letters from people that are like
Speaker 7: I was considering, you know, ending my life, and then
Speaker 7: I read this book and I thought I can actually
Speaker 7: be empowered to make changes. And when you were facing
Speaker 7: that kind of fan reaction, when you have literally hundreds
Speaker 7: of people saying I hadn't read a book in twenty
Speaker 7: years and I read Dark Matter and one day and
Speaker 7: I'm now a big reader like that, I think that
Speaker 7: that had more of an emotional impact on me than
Speaker 7: anything else. Was like how much the story meant to
Speaker 7: a lot of people, and wanting to.
Speaker 9: Fulfill those fan love feelings, but also.
Speaker 7: Creating that now for a whole new audience of people
Speaker 7: who for whatever reason would never read this book, but
Speaker 7: we'll engage with this material in this way. So that
Speaker 7: was probably the biggest challenge, was figuring out where to
Speaker 7: be true to that original stuff to make the fans happy,
Speaker 7: but also so ilicit that.
Speaker 9: Same emotional reaction from new people.
Speaker 7: I would say the funnest part about it, for sure,
Speaker 7: I love producing, like I think the funnest part is
Speaker 7: like looking at seven hundred versions of ash World that's
Speaker 7: the world where the balt Worlds are crumbling, and watching
Speaker 7: that VFX like for the seven thousandth time and being like,
Speaker 7: I'd like this window to be slightly brighter, Like it
Speaker 7: just speaks to some deeper OCD that I might have.
Speaker 9: From a writing standpoint.
Speaker 7: Though, like adapting this book, I think that the funnest
Speaker 7: part about it was getting to expand the characters because
Speaker 7: we don't really know Amanda, we don't really know Daniella,
Speaker 7: we don't really know Charlie. We kind of get to
Speaker 7: know in a little but we don't know him. We
Speaker 7: definitely don't know Layton, and you need to know them
Speaker 7: for the show to make sense, Like, you know, you
Speaker 7: need to expand everyone because when you see them and
Speaker 7: they don't have reactions to certain things, it's not a
Speaker 7: flaw of the book. The book is a single POV game.
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter what else is happening around you. But
Speaker 7: now you're actually asking humans to embody that and we
Speaker 7: have to know more about them, and that was the
Speaker 7: most exciting, I think, besides being weird about details and
Speaker 7: what color of watch is Jason wearing in this scene
Speaker 7: and what color shirt is he wearing to make that
Speaker 7: all work those puzzles aside, expanding the characters, especially the women,
Speaker 7: was the best part of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Well, as a viewer, I found one of the greatest
Speaker 1: challenges just like keeping track of like which Jason am
Speaker 1: I watching now, especially you know later on, when you
Speaker 1: get so many different Jason's. How do you handle that
Speaker 1: as a writer, how do you give the audience the clue,
Speaker 1: you know, without like giving everybody a unique haircut, you know,
Speaker 1: or hovering a number over their head.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean that was probably one of the hardest things
Speaker 7: to do, because the easiest answers, like, you know, because
Speaker 7: we have for those of you who've seen eight, we
Speaker 7: have burn Face Jason. We have Jason thirteen. Who's the
Speaker 7: guy that talks to Jason one in the tavern.
Speaker 9: I want to call it the David Damma. That's the
Speaker 9: real name the village tap story.
Speaker 7: When they're talking, like, these characters look different, so it
Speaker 7: makes it a lot easier. But when we start getting
Speaker 7: into the fifty other Jasons that are there, that was
Speaker 7: a lot harder.
Speaker 9: And what I ended up.
Speaker 7: Doing with our costumer and our hair and makeup people
Speaker 7: was in our eighties because those people really need to
Speaker 7: understand what's happening. They have to organize this whole thing
Speaker 7: was creating like a rubric of like based on how
Speaker 7: violent the Jason is, we determined that that is when
Speaker 7: he lost his Amanda because we feel like Amanda psychologist.
Speaker 7: She's giving him we see the whole show, she's giving
Speaker 7: him therapy. The whole time, she's comforting him, she's helping him.
Speaker 9: Figure this stuff out.
Speaker 7: So the earlier Amanda dies or leaves him, is the
Speaker 7: more violent and more you know, sort of crazed and
Speaker 7: unhinged that Jason is, because we know that that's in him.
Speaker 7: We've established that, We've seen Prison World, where Jason has
Speaker 7: obviously done something terrible to someone. We've seen what Jason
Speaker 7: two is capable of. We know that Jason Wan's capable,
Speaker 7: So it's about what actually breaks his brain.
Speaker 9: And how broken is it. And so once we knew
Speaker 9: what that was, we.
Speaker 7: Just focused the costumes on where we think he branched
Speaker 7: from Amanda. So careful viewers will see, like Jason in
Speaker 7: the Snow outfit from Snow World, if he's still in
Speaker 7: that outfit, that means Amanda died close or left him
Speaker 7: close to that time period. So that means that he
Speaker 7: went twenty days alone in the box, which is a
Speaker 7: lot crazier than going three days on the box, which
Speaker 7: is what our Jason did, so that kind of makes
Speaker 7: big difference if you look back, like some of the
Speaker 7: first guy that gets killed by Jason one in the alley,
Speaker 7: the most violent guy that we've seen so far, he's
Speaker 7: wearing the original costume. So that was kind of fun
Speaker 7: to play with. And then we just did really settle
Speaker 7: things from there green Beanie or blue Beanie, you know,
Speaker 7: like just so that you could know it's not the
Speaker 7: exact same guy you saw last time. But we also
Speaker 7: embraced the idea that like it kind of also doesn't matter,
Speaker 7: like if you're a little bit confused here and there,
Speaker 7: that's actually part of the joy is like, you know,
Speaker 7: it's the same thing Inception does. Do we know if
Speaker 7: he got home? Like I think he didn't aside, but
Speaker 7: it's kind of like, doesn't matter. That's not the story
Speaker 7: we're telling. The story we're telling is about the complexities
Speaker 7: of coming back to your life. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 7: So I think it doesn't really matter. But yeah, it's
Speaker 7: definitely all very carefully planned. And if you freeze the
Speaker 7: show and you look at the color of the ring
Speaker 7: of thread on their fingers and you look at the
Speaker 7: color of their hats.
Speaker 9: You will actually be able to tell who is here.
Speaker 1: Awesome. I'm sure somebody out there and Reddit is doing.
Speaker 7: Exactly or if they're not, they're probably getting like hack
Speaker 7: into my computer.
Speaker 9: I get the cells right, but you'll know everything.
Speaker 1: So I asked our listeners if they have questions for you,
Speaker 1: and listeners who are watching the show. We've only seen
Speaker 1: six or seven episodes so far. The number one question
Speaker 1: was why is it called dark matter? And obviously this
Speaker 1: physics in the show, but it's mostly like multiverse, quantum mechanics, superposition.
Speaker 1: Where's the dark matter in the show?
Speaker 7: It came from a conversation and I was there for it,
Speaker 7: but you know, it might be good to ask Cliff
Speaker 7: actually about this. The there's a debate if dark matter exists, right,
Speaker 7: and there's also.
Speaker 9: A debate about what it does.
Speaker 7: And like black holes, it's like I personally believe in
Speaker 7: the sort of mirror universe of going through the black hole,
Speaker 7: like you know, the chair just exists on the other side.
Speaker 7: That's maybe not scientifically very accurate, but I think it's
Speaker 7: an interesting theory, So that idea of the complete sort
Speaker 7: of unknown, but also it's a word that you've heard
Speaker 7: enough that you're like, ah, science fiction.
Speaker 9: That's honestly the truth, Like she.
Speaker 6: Is like.
Speaker 1: Mysterious science.
Speaker 7: Ye science see, and it doesn't actually, if you dig
Speaker 7: into it, actually for sure mean anything yet like it's
Speaker 7: still you know, like yeah, so yeah. But it's also
Speaker 7: a little confusing because you know, Pearl Jams out there
Speaker 7: touring with dark matter and so.
Speaker 9: You know, maybe the most ideal name either.
Speaker 1: So my last question for you is a more personal one.
Speaker 1: Imagine you have the box in front of you. You
Speaker 1: can go inside of it, you can visit another universe
Speaker 1: and that you exist. What's your alternative reality? What are
Speaker 1: you choosing?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 9: Am I intentionally choosing?
Speaker 7: Like I get to go see the version of myself,
Speaker 7: not like I accidentally sort of wash up on shore
Speaker 7: at a terrible place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can pick some other version of your life
Speaker 1: to go visit or you know, kidnap and replace them.
Speaker 1: Where are you going?
Speaker 9: Huh?
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 9: The first thing I really wanted to do with my life.
Speaker 7: I went to like a music magnet high school, and
Speaker 7: I was very involved in music, and for a long
Speaker 7: time I thought I was going to be a musician.
Speaker 7: And it's one of those sort of stories I think
Speaker 7: that everyone has, where like you get to a certain
Speaker 7: point in your process where you realize that it's not
Speaker 7: that you are not that you're hard worker, you're actually
Speaker 7: not talented, and some careers require a certain level of
Speaker 7: actual talent. And the realization that I was not good
Speaker 7: enough to actually have the future as like a composer
Speaker 7: and musician.
Speaker 9: That I thought I was going to have was a
Speaker 9: really brutal one.
Speaker 7: And I often wonder if there is a world where
Speaker 7: I hadn't decided that I wasn't good enough, and if
Speaker 7: I had continued to fight.
Speaker 9: And be that level of brave, you know, what would
Speaker 9: that life be like.
Speaker 7: I'm not saying she would have succeeded, but I would
Speaker 7: like to see what she did, you.
Speaker 9: Know, that's the curiosity of mine.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well, it would be cool to get to go
Speaker 1: and you know, attend one of your own concerts in
Speaker 1: another place in the multiverse. Very cool.
Speaker 9: Let me ask you what would yours be?
Speaker 1: Wow? A great question. I'm totally not prepared for that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, physicist is sort of what I always wanted
Speaker 1: to be, so I don't have that like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: wish i'd gotten to be, But there are other paths
Speaker 1: that I didn't take. You know, when I was young,
Speaker 1: I also wanted to be an artist or a science
Speaker 1: fiction author, for example, and never got to do that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'd like to go see if that would
Speaker 1: have worked out for another version of Daniel.
Speaker 9: He's still could anyway, it's right that book like, Well.
Speaker 1: I live in southern California, where you're obliged to produce
Speaker 1: the screenplay every two years with your citizenship, you know,
Speaker 1: totally totally awesome. Well, thanks very much for answering our question,
Speaker 1: and thanks for this wonderful show. Speaking for everybody out there,
Speaker 1: we're really glad you created it.
Speaker 9: Thank you, all right, thank you.
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Speaker 5: All right, interesting conversation there. It's kind of interesting how
Speaker 5: as a TV writer you kind of have to think
Speaker 5: about what the science tells you might be possible, and
Speaker 5: then you kind of have to figure out how to
Speaker 5: get a good story out of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you got to balance both things. If you're
Speaker 1: too strict on the science, it doesn't let you tell
Speaker 1: the story you want to tell. But you also have
Speaker 1: to be plausible, right, You have to have the story
Speaker 1: makes sense so that the viewer is engaged. It feels
Speaker 1: like there are rules that are being followed.
Speaker 5: I feel like, Daniel, do you have a flexible rule yourself?
Speaker 1: What it's that flexible room.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you like when the rules are followed, sometimes you don't.
Speaker 1: I always prefer when the rules are followed, but you
Speaker 1: know you can't.
Speaker 5: Be too harsh. You prefer you prefer.
Speaker 1: Right, strong preference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, Well, Dan, you also got to interview
Speaker 5: the scientific advisor for the show, which is a friend
Speaker 5: of ours, Cliff Johnson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, He's a professor at UC Santa Barbara and an
Speaker 1: expert in string theory and black holes and in general
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics and a lot of fun to talk to.
Speaker 5: Is he an expert in dark matter or multiverses?
Speaker 1: I think he's an expert in being a science advisor.
Speaker 1: He's also worked for a lot of the Marvel movies.
Speaker 5: If you're an expert in the multiverses, does that make
Speaker 5: you an expert in everything? Like, there's a version of
Speaker 5: you out there that's probably an expert in some other
Speaker 5: field that you currently don't know.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, exactly. If only you could draw on
Speaker 1: their expertise.
Speaker 5: Whoa, you can make a movie like The Matrix, but
Speaker 5: with multiverses, the multi tricks. Yeah, Hollywood, give me a call.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, here is Daniel's interview with physicist Cliff Johnson.
Speaker 1: Great so that it's my pleasure to be here in a
Speaker 1: conversation with Cliff Johnson.
Speaker 6: Click.
Speaker 1: Tell everybody a little bit about who you are and
Speaker 1: what you're excited about in science.
Speaker 13: Well, I am a professor at the Physics Department at
Speaker 13: the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Speaker 6: I work on things to do with roughly these days,
Speaker 6: I say, like a quantum nature of space time? So
Speaker 6: interested in quantum gravity? Black, Hold what I through your
Speaker 6: quantum gravity looks like? So I work on things like.
Speaker 4: String theory, et cetera, but really thinking about.
Speaker 6: Space time and space and time and what it means
Speaker 6: at the quantum medal.
Speaker 1: It's really like on the cutting edge of understanding the
Speaker 1: nature of the universe. So tell me about what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a science advisor. Is shoe like this?
Speaker 1: What do you see as the role of the science advisor?
Speaker 6: What is your job?
Speaker 4: So this is a really important question because there is.
Speaker 6: No model for what a science advisor should be, because
Speaker 6: the industry still doesn't really know what that is, and
Speaker 6: so a lot of us been working to try and
Speaker 6: help cement that.
Speaker 4: And I think what we shouldn't.
Speaker 6: Do is going with the red pencil and make it
Speaker 6: seem like we own this stuff and they're daring to
Speaker 6: play with it, and we're going.
Speaker 4: To give them a grade because they'll have a fall right.
Speaker 4: Others have different opinions, but my opinion is that the
Speaker 4: primary thing of that to.
Speaker 6: Do is to serve the story they're trying to tell,
Speaker 6: and to help them tell the story they.
Speaker 4: Want to tell. Now, sometimes you can give them advice.
Speaker 6: Given what they want to do and the science that
Speaker 6: they think they want to use, you might then say, well,
Speaker 6: if you tell me what your story goal is, I
Speaker 6: might help you tweet that a little bit, or maybe
Speaker 6: you don't need this piece, or here's a whole other
Speaker 6: bit of science you don't know that could be brought
Speaker 6: in to help you achieve that. And they're very open
Speaker 6: to that because now you're own the storyteller sign and
Speaker 6: you're just trying to serve a story. And then sometimes
Speaker 6: that can lead to the story geting completely because they
Speaker 6: get excitted about the science.
Speaker 4: They now understand that bit of science that's.
Speaker 6: I only read about it in a popular account and
Speaker 6: maybe misunderstood.
Speaker 4: Now they understand it.
Speaker 6: Now they see, oh, I want to use this aspect more,
Speaker 6: or you tell them so it really is. I think
Speaker 6: if you go it, in my opinion, if you go
Speaker 6: in wanting to help with the story, great things can
Speaker 6: come from that, especially if it's early enough in the
Speaker 6: process that they're not wedded to everything being completely set.
Speaker 6: And so then I think science advising works istreamly. Well,
Speaker 6: you have all the other times when you're called in
Speaker 6: you should guy, you know, some big studio, it's all
Speaker 6: ready to go, they're almost ready to shoot, and then
Speaker 6: they want some buzzwords.
Speaker 4: You know, that's only so much you can do that.
Speaker 6: But if you get to kind of almost become a
Speaker 6: collaborator or someone to brainstorm, and if you then.
Speaker 4: Stick through it right through to the end, you can
Speaker 4: get some great things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating. Well, I think sometimes about the responsibility there
Speaker 1: because a lot of people watch science fiction and they
Speaker 1: know it's fiction, but still a hubus where to hear
Speaker 1: science and they absorb it. And I wonder sometimes if
Speaker 1: there's a responsibility to the show to get that right
Speaker 1: and and not use lead people into like common misunderstanding
Speaker 1: about what is dark Knight, what does it look like?
Speaker 1: You know you said a dark blog in front of
Speaker 1: your spaceship or not? What do you feel about that?
Speaker 7: Is?
Speaker 1: A science advisor has some responsibility there.
Speaker 6: We have some responsibility to tell a little bit about
Speaker 6: what it's really like. We that you know, there's no
Speaker 6: contract this says they must use a certain percentage of
Speaker 6: what we tell them.
Speaker 1: Right, right, So how you know it's an advisor I.
Speaker 4: Would advise them, so so I'll do.
Speaker 6: My best to just say, well, it wouldn't really look
Speaker 6: like this, or if it does, maybe you have a
Speaker 6: reason you could mention that, or maybe what have you.
Speaker 4: But what happens. And this is by no.
Speaker 6: Means intended as an apology for science advisors, but it's
Speaker 6: all the process right these these projects. It's very different
Speaker 6: being a science advisor to say, on a book where
Speaker 6: you're dealing with the author of the book, versus being.
Speaker 4: A science advisor to a thing that goes into a
Speaker 4: big machine.
Speaker 6: As almost any project that you see on screen will be,
Speaker 6: it will have gone through many stages.
Speaker 4: They've gone from any iterations. You may have been the
Speaker 4: science advisor with the.
Speaker 13: Screenwriter who wrote the under old beautiful science and then
Speaker 13: and then you know, four years later you go and
Speaker 13: watch the thing and it is not the thing that
Speaker 13: was the final.
Speaker 4: Screenplay that you saw, because it went from the screenwriter
Speaker 4: to the studio to the.
Speaker 6: Director they found for the director had their own vision
Speaker 6: blah blah.
Speaker 4: So you have no control, but you try, and you
Speaker 4: hope you can get the key people involved excited enough
Speaker 4: about the.
Speaker 6: Science that they care to protect some of the things
Speaker 6: that you got into the screenplay or what have you
Speaker 6: and or maybe you know, some years later at the
Speaker 6: stage where they're shooting, a call saying, hey, you were
Speaker 6: the screen you helped the screen writer it.
Speaker 4: Now please help the VFX people, right and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 6: That seldom happens, but when that happens, that's great because
Speaker 6: then there's some continuity you can kind of look in
Speaker 6: at a different stages.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about what were the
Speaker 1: challenges of being scifiiceder for this particular show. Because they
Speaker 1: got quantum mechanics, they got multiverse, they got the observer effect,
Speaker 1: they got all sorts of stuff going on. What did
Speaker 1: you do there? How did you change this story?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I first have to say.
Speaker 6: Huge amount of credit to Blake like Crouch, the author
Speaker 6: of the book it was originally based on, and then
Speaker 6: you know he's also the show runner. A side note,
Speaker 6: there's a big difference between TV and movies. In some ways,
Speaker 6: TV is very much more righteous. You know, the people
Speaker 6: who do the writing end up. You know, the director
Speaker 6: works for them and it's the first approximation. The showrunners
Speaker 6: have the fible side. That's very different in some of
Speaker 6: the models you get in a big, big cinema So
Speaker 6: that means that I think Blake, who's hugely enthusiastic about science.
Speaker 4: And is very open to hearing critiques and hearing new
Speaker 4: ideas and incorporating that, he was also in control of
Speaker 4: the final show.
Speaker 6: So I got the call to come in and chat
Speaker 6: with the various departments, and they basically said, Blake said,
Speaker 6: do whatever you say.
Speaker 1: That never happened.
Speaker 4: So at the end of the day, I.
Speaker 6: Think the main ideas were there, and so credit to
Speaker 6: Blake that the main ideas were there. He really wanted
Speaker 6: is fascinated by the classic conundra in quantum mechanics, but
Speaker 6: then he wanted to play with the idea that essentially,
Speaker 6: wouldn't it be fun if you took literally the everiety
Speaker 6: of interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is that these probabilistic
Speaker 6: choices that you seem to have in quantum mechanics really
Speaker 6: are branchings of the universe. You know, you know, you
Speaker 6: had a fifty to fifty chance of the quantum outcome being.
Speaker 4: This way or the other, and.
Speaker 6: You could just go, well, that's life, that's that's probability.
Speaker 6: But the cat was alive or it was dead when
Speaker 6: you made the observation. Everyone would tell you know, there's
Speaker 6: another universe in which it was the other, and then
Speaker 6: that universe carried on and so these choices mount up
Speaker 6: and the universe continues branching. So Blake was going, well, well,
Speaker 6: if you could explore those universes and essentially that's.
Speaker 4: What this is about, and then what would that mean
Speaker 4: physics wise?
Speaker 6: So there's there's some relatively old fashioned ideas about the
Speaker 6: collapse of the weight function and things like that when
Speaker 6: you make an observation of the wave function collapses. We
Speaker 6: tend to not really foreground that as much when we
Speaker 6: teach quantumic ads as we used to. And so I
Speaker 6: was trying to explain to Blake a little bit about
Speaker 6: some of the language that.
Speaker 4: People use these days in terms of coherence versus do
Speaker 4: coherence coupling systems.
Speaker 6: It to you know, how much you isolate a system
Speaker 6: from its environment so it doesn't sort of deecer here
Speaker 6: by being coupled.
Speaker 4: To another system and what have you.
Speaker 6: And those are the things you need to control if
Speaker 6: you were going to do that as a physics experiment.
Speaker 4: So that leads to them, what would that look like?
Speaker 4: What would that device look like? So that's the box.
Speaker 6: So it spend a lot of time discussing what the
Speaker 6: box would look like like that.
Speaker 4: And what's in the walls of those bombs. So you don't,
Speaker 4: of course, you never learned that in the book.
Speaker 6: Or in the in the show explicitly, but you do
Speaker 6: hear a discussion or too about the fact that there's
Speaker 6: tech going on that sort of cancels out things from
Speaker 6: the outside, and so those are the sorts of things
Speaker 6: that was giving him to make it seem at least.
Speaker 6: Another aspect of my job is that while you're watching
Speaker 6: the thing, you're not popping out going that's ridiculous or
Speaker 6: that doesn't make sense for it. You're at least in
Speaker 6: the two hours of what have you, the movie or
Speaker 6: the hour of the episode, you're going with it. So
Speaker 6: to help the physicists have a plausible sounding conversation with
Speaker 6: a plausible sounding content, that helps it make it seem realistic.
Speaker 6: So indeed, I'm very pleased to you know, when I
Speaker 6: finally saw episodes of the show, I was very pleased
Speaker 6: to see a lot of that stuff stayed in. And
Speaker 6: some of that stuff was my scribbling on the screenplay
Speaker 6: saying this is what they would say, and I gather
Speaker 6: people really like that.
Speaker 4: You know, you hear, you see the box, and you
Speaker 4: have a sense that this is a real thing Sun
Speaker 4: thought about.
Speaker 6: So we wanted to have weight, wanted to feel real,
Speaker 6: wanted to have it still feel like it's a prototype.
Speaker 4: So it's a little sort of sort of sort of
Speaker 4: grungey looking, and so and so forth. That's what really
Speaker 4: think is our job.
Speaker 6: We're not we're not doing a documentary. But if you
Speaker 6: as much as the creators will listen, I'll give you enough.
Speaker 4: Material so that.
Speaker 6: If if someone watching it digs a little bit, they'll
Speaker 6: find there's more there there. It isn't sort of first
Speaker 6: Night and the whole falls apart, So you will see
Speaker 6: you know, the character Jason go writing through his notebooks
Speaker 6: at some point where talking about the original design of
Speaker 6: the box.
Speaker 4: That is full of equations that I gave them, and
Speaker 4: that's real uh quantum physics.
Speaker 6: I had some friends of mine who actually do real
Speaker 6: quantum information experiments where they try and create superposition states
Speaker 6: in quantum devices, because these are important for building quantum computers. Right,
Speaker 6: those are the same pieces of science that that character
Speaker 6: would be doing, but rid large in.
Speaker 4: Order to make this box. So you know, I had
Speaker 4: notes of my own that borrowed some of their notes
Speaker 4: with their permission, and that's all you've seen Jason's note book.
Speaker 4: So that those are examples of the things.
Speaker 6: That that we worked on at the level of the show.
Speaker 4: Other than of the book, we'd already been.
Speaker 6: Thinking about trying to give a reality quote unquote to
Speaker 6: what would be like when you're inside the box, when
Speaker 6: you're in because now this is no fantasy Blake's wonderful
Speaker 6: idea of having some sort of drug that turns off
Speaker 6: the observer effect, whatever that means. That's based on actual
Speaker 6: experiments that people are thinking about right or have been doing,
Speaker 6: trying to understand the role of quantum mechanics in the
Speaker 6: workings of the brain, quantum mechanics in perception of what
Speaker 6: we how we construct reality of the physical world, in
Speaker 6: terms of interacting quantum mechanically with the world.
Speaker 4: To what extent there's our brain chemistry have anything to
Speaker 4: do with that.
Speaker 6: I think the answer to the questions is nobody knows.
Speaker 6: The fact that it's unknown, it's fun to play with
Speaker 6: and it gives the writer lots of places down well. Congratulations,
Speaker 6: and so you've seen the show and you please without
Speaker 6: a key out. Yeah, I've been, so I'm most of
Speaker 6: the way through now.
Speaker 4: I think there's maybe a couple of episodes I haven't seen.
Speaker 6: And i've been, although you know i've you know, I
Speaker 6: read every script and worked at any script and worked
Speaker 6: at all the different departments. It was officially long ago
Speaker 6: that and of course I hadn't seen how it really
Speaker 6: it's been great to see how these how it's come
Speaker 6: out overall as a show tonally, which I think is
Speaker 6: primarily the most important things to get right in the
Speaker 6: total of the show. I think it really they really
Speaker 6: nailed it, and such a strong cast, a great direction.
Speaker 6: It's a great collection of directors. They got, some of
Speaker 6: whom I had spoken with early on and we were talking.
Speaker 4: About various aspects of the show. So I'm very pleased.
Speaker 4: I'm very impressed.
Speaker 6: For me, it's a win win from the point of
Speaker 6: view of a science advisor who's interested in getting people
Speaker 6: engaged in science, because there's a feeling, you know, from
Speaker 6: episode one two, right, there are millions of people watching
Speaker 6: this thing, and after they turn off this episode, they're
Speaker 6: talking about strolling up, they're talking about Heisenberg and talking
Speaker 6: about uncertainty.
Speaker 4: They're talking about all these things that I usually thought
Speaker 4: of is about as.
Speaker 6: Obscure as you can get in science. This is out
Speaker 6: there in the TV show about prime Time. That's fantastic.
Speaker 6: So I've been I've been very happy with that. And
Speaker 6: you know, this, I think wouldn't have happened without writers
Speaker 6: like Blake who get excited about science and then.
Speaker 4: Do this great job writing great stories builds around the science,
Speaker 4: which is really what it's about.
Speaker 1: Well, fantastic work, and I agree it's important to have
Speaker 1: science out there, and science any stories, and science can
Speaker 1: really enable so many fascinating stories. And if your goal
Speaker 1: was to contribute to the story and to open the
Speaker 1: space that they could explore and give some plausible credibility
Speaker 1: without feeling like red pin and pissing them off, I
Speaker 1: think you've done that. I just spoke to Jacqueline ben
Speaker 1: Zechery right actually said quote tell Clifford, I love him.
Speaker 1: I think it pretty well.
Speaker 4: For it was.
Speaker 6: It was one of the most fun and fulfilling science
Speaker 6: advising and collaborative experiences I've ever had. And you know,
Speaker 6: I've done some good ones. I've done some really good
Speaker 6: ones also with some of the some of the Marvel
Speaker 6: people has a great one coming up which I've been
Speaker 6: having got fun with. And I'm hoping that you know,
Speaker 6: this is a new standard.
Speaker 14: Yeah, that we can that we that we can convince
Speaker 14: the filmmakers the entertainment industry to aspire to you where
Speaker 14: you really collaborate with scientists to.
Speaker 6: Find new ways at very least right from the point
Speaker 6: of view of just selling stories. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 6: great way to just find new ways of telling the
Speaker 6: same old story, which is great.
Speaker 1: We only tell a few stories as a species, We
Speaker 1: just tell them always.
Speaker 6: Science is a great way to find new ways, and
Speaker 6: so this is a great example of that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks again for taking a few minutes
Speaker 1: a chat. That's really appreciate it my session.
Speaker 5: All right, pretty cool, Daniel. Have you ever considered being
Speaker 5: a scientific advisor for a TV show or something like that?
Speaker 5: Has anyone approached you?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, absolutely. I would love to be a science
Speaker 1: advisor on anybody's project. And people actually email me their
Speaker 1: stories all the time asking me for advice, and I
Speaker 1: give it to them. I just talked last week to
Speaker 1: a team doing a science fiction horror show asking me
Speaker 1: for plausible explanations for the story they wanted.
Speaker 5: Ooh interesting. Can you give any spoilers or did you
Speaker 5: have to sign an nda?
Speaker 1: I didn't sign an nda, but I think they would
Speaker 1: not like me to give away their story on the pod.
Speaker 1: But if they do get to produce it, and we'll
Speaker 1: definitely talk about it on the podcast, that would be fun.
Speaker 1: And so I want to encourage all the science fiction
Speaker 1: writers out there thinks deeply about how the universe might work,
Speaker 1: create new universes for us, and think about what it's
Speaker 1: like to live in them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because it's an amazing universe, and who knows how
Speaker 5: it will end up or get written up in Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: Or he might not stick around to hear the end
Speaker 1: of the universe. He's just going to read it on Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: But I'll be there with you.
Speaker 5: I'll read it after the universe ends, so we'll save
Speaker 5: me a few trillion years hopefully. All Right. Well, we
Speaker 5: hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See you
Speaker 5: next time.
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social media,
Speaker 1: where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant,
Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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