Speaker 1: Hey, or have you seen a new TV show about
Speaker 1: the multiverse?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Which one? I 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 what?
Speaker 3: Wait? So if there is a multiverse and aliens, what
Speaker 3: you're wondering about is whether they watch a show, a
Speaker 3: particular show. Yeah, that's the first question you would ask them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the first question, but it's
Speaker 1: on the list.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, what's on? But that's an interesting concept,
Speaker 3: like to them, a show about a single universe would
Speaker 3: 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 3: I am Jorge mcgartoonez and the author of Oliver's Great
Speaker 3: 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 3: Oh, would you like it and not like it at
Speaker 3: the same time? Or do you like them all or
Speaker 3: 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. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, I can't do that. If I don't like something,
Speaker 3: forget it. I drop it, books, TV shows, movies, So
Speaker 3: I'll stop watching a movie 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 3: I think that's why they invented Wikipedia. Daniel.
Speaker 1: Are you saying you stop watching something and just read
Speaker 1: the plot summary on Wikipedia?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I do, know, I do. It's such a time saver,
Speaker 3: trust me, and then if what happens sounds interesting, then
Speaker 3: I'll go see how they did it.
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.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, who do you think is writing my Wikipedia?
Speaker 1: Is that? You? Wi?
Speaker 3: I mean, what better source about my life than me?
Speaker 4: 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 3: But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 3: 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 for for you. So many people
Speaker 1: write to me and say, hey, I write about this
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia and it still doesn't make sense. Can you
Speaker 1: explain that to me? That's what this show is about,
Speaker 1: explaining everything that's out there in the universe in a
Speaker 1: way that actually makes sense to you.
Speaker 3: That's right, because it is a pretty interesting universe, full
Speaker 3: of cliffhangers, interesting plot twists, and amazing characters out there.
Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 3: Yeah, yeah, how do you know we're not in the
Speaker 3: second season?
Speaker 1: We could be in like season infinity, right If it's
Speaker 1: just a series of bangs, and everyone is a new season.
Speaker 3: We could be like the soap opera of the meta metaverse,
Speaker 3: meta meta universe. You know, it just goes on forever. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: that's the universe turns.
Speaker 1: And we'd like exploring the physics of the real universe,
Speaker 1: but we also like thinking about other hypothetical, even fictional units,
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 3: Yeah. Because also, isn't it sort of the job of
Speaker 3: physicists to think about possible futures or possible ways in
Speaker 3: which the universe might work, and then go out there
Speaker 3: 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 it further.
Speaker 3: Now does that mean that a physicist can just lay
Speaker 3: back and read what science fiction author is?
Speaker 1: Right, dude, you figured out our secret. That's embarrassing.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah, that's right. Do you ever like reference that in
Speaker 3: 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 3: Oh, I see, you're waiting for the day for someone
Speaker 3: to make a TV show about a gripping drama that
Speaker 3: takes place at the Large Hadron Collider, about a particle
Speaker 3: physicist who has a podcast and then turns out to
Speaker 3: be an international spot.
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. Hmmm.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Well, let's dig into that because to me, on
Speaker 3: the program, we'll be tackling the sci fi universe of
Speaker 3: dark matter. Now wait, Daniel, I thought we were talking
Speaker 3: about the multiverse, not dark matter.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: Yes, the title of this show is maybe a touch
Speaker 1: bit misleading.
Speaker 3: I agree, Yeah, misleading or inaccrid or maybe in season
Speaker 3: Infinity will turn out that dark matter is what power
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah. Remember we recorded an episode where we talked about
Speaker 3: the book. This was a long time ago, right, five
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah, thank you. Blake, and so he wrote the book
Speaker 3: Dark Matter, on which the TV show is based on,
Speaker 3: 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 3: Oh, does that mean we're going to do spoilers or
Speaker 3: not spoilers.
Speaker 1: We are not going to do spoilers because I want
Speaker 1: people to hear this episode and then watch the show.
Speaker 3: And or read the Wikipedia page.
Speaker 1: No, do not do that.
Speaker 3: It might see afy time. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's see, Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 3: But anyway, it's a show out there right now, and
Speaker 3: 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 3: Okay, does it vary from the book or did they
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yeah, mmm, okay, what's the general story of the book
Speaker 3: or movie?
Speaker 1: For booth? So it's a multiverse inspired story, and it's
Speaker 1: a story about a physicist and in one of the universes,
Speaker 1: he invents a box that connects the multiverses. So it's
Speaker 1: essentially about being able to travel from one universe to
Speaker 1: another 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 3: WHOA wait, wait, wait, So first of all, it's a box.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm, not a douhiki or a machine. It's a box.
Speaker 3: How big is this box? Like phone booth size box
Speaker 3: 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 don't know, three meters across
Speaker 1: or something. But it's a box because it's inspired by
Speaker 1: Schrodinger's cat you know, the idea of putting a cat
Speaker 1: in a box and then not knowing whether it's live
Speaker 1: or dead because there's a quantum trigger poison in there
Speaker 1: with a cat. So I think they used a box
Speaker 1: because it's evoked by Schrodinger's cat experiment.
Speaker 3: I see, So does that mean that the multiverse in
Speaker 3: the show is the quantum multiverse version, because I know
Speaker 3: 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 3: So now after the elect on splits, there are two
Speaker 3: universes that exist, one in which the electron win left,
Speaker 3: one in which the electrone went right. Whereas before there
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 1: those we put those together into a multiverse. Some people
Speaker 1: who support this theory of quantum mechanics think that that's
Speaker 1: a little bit misleading. You're not really creating new universes.
Speaker 1: You just have one big universe that's now split into
Speaker 1: independent branches that can no longer talk to each other.
Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a quibble about the naming.
Speaker 1: But I think that leads people to imagine that like
Speaker 1: all this new stars are being made somehow, all this
Speaker 1: mass is being created, when it's really more like it's
Speaker 1: splitting into both possibilities.
Speaker 3: Now, in the show, the scientists physicists, I imagine built
Speaker 3: a box and then what happens to the box If
Speaker 3: you get in it, you can go to another multiverse,
Speaker 3: or you can experience it, or what what is it
Speaker 3: 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 3: It's like you're the cat intro Dinger's cat, and then
Speaker 3: the cat took a pill or something or some medicine.
Speaker 3: It can now is being both dead and alive. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess that that, yeah, would not be experienced anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And in the show they described 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 interpretation,
Speaker 1: they say when it's observed, that's when the universe makes
Speaker 1: a choice. And so in this story they sort of
Speaker 1: like turn off the observer effect by taking the special
Speaker 1: 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 is different about
Speaker 1: the universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear that there are all kinds of drugs
Speaker 3: that will let you experience all kinds of universes. You
Speaker 3: don't need a box. But wait, so taking this bill
Speaker 3: of going into the box that gives you access to
Speaker 3: all of the multiverses ever created, or just the ones
Speaker 3: that happen after you go into the box based on
Speaker 3: the choices you make inside the box. You know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like, it would make sense if you can
Speaker 3: access the ones that you're super proposed in, but maybe
Speaker 3: not the ones that were created a long time ago
Speaker 3: or will 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? Yeah, yeah, okay, but that's a lot
Speaker 1: less exciting, right If you create a box and then
Speaker 1: you can go inside the box and then be in
Speaker 1: any universe in which you made this box. Five minutes ago.
Speaker 1: That doesn't really give you many new options. It doesn't
Speaker 1: allow for exciting stories like I'm going to go inside
Speaker 1: the box and then instead of being a physicist who
Speaker 1: created this box, I'm going to go back and find
Speaker 1: the woman I should have married instead of building this box.
Speaker 3: I guess either version would be kind of interesting. Like
Speaker 3: I could go into this box, right, I can watch
Speaker 3: a TV show and also at the same time, I
Speaker 3: can maybe, uh, you know, write a novel, and then
Speaker 3: at the end I'll have done both. Is that how
Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 3: But if I wrote the novel, do I remember how
Speaker 3: I written the novel or remember having watched them the
Speaker 3: TV show?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Because when you come out, then the universe collapses and
Speaker 1: makes your choice.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, But I'll have known, like if I picked
Speaker 3: a novel, then I know that the novel I wrote
Speaker 3: is better than the TV show I watched.
Speaker 1: When you come out, you won't You'll only have been
Speaker 1: Horry wrote the novel, or Horaey who watched the TV show?
Speaker 3: Yeah, or Hori We just read the Wikipedia article about
Speaker 3: but let's go back to the show. Sorry. So then
Speaker 3: the physicists had then the option to go anywhere at
Speaker 3: any point in his life in which he made a
Speaker 3: decision and go that that way or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: But then if he goes the other way, then he'll
Speaker 3: have been that person who made the other choice. Does
Speaker 3: he stay the person he was before he went into
Speaker 3: 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 decides, 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 3: Wait what so Wait the main protagonist is not a physicist.
Speaker 1: He's a physicist by training, he got a PhD, etc.
Speaker 1: But now he's teaching, he's not doing research. He decided
Speaker 1: not to devote himself to buildings. He's not a practicing physicist.
Speaker 1: But then the physicist version of him in the multiverse
Speaker 1: turns out to be kind of evil. Yeah exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: he decided following his career with maybe the wrong path,
Speaker 1: even though it allowed him to create this box. Now
Speaker 1: it lets him come back and live both versions, right,
Speaker 1: he wants to be Woorge wrote the novel and watch
Speaker 1: the TV show. He got to have a career, build
Speaker 1: a box, and now he wants to go back and
Speaker 1: experience love.
Speaker 3: So basically the moral of the story is, if you
Speaker 3: become a physicist and you become a super villain. Yeah
Speaker 3: 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 it becomes,
Speaker 1: you know, on the good side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but I think for Bruce Banner, he has
Speaker 3: PhDs in non physics fields. What that balance is he.
Speaker 1: Got seven PhDs and none of them are in physics really.
Speaker 3: Some of them. I think most of them are not.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, looked at this transcript.
Speaker 1: I need to check out Bruce Banner CV.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there you go. I'm sure he posts it
Speaker 3: on Wikipedia. Okay, So then he gets kipnayed by his
Speaker 3: alternate version. And then what happens when you kipnapped and
Speaker 3: then placed in the other universe and now he's trapped
Speaker 3: 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 3: Oh, do you give it a thumbs up or a
Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 quibbals. 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 3: My question is how do you pick which universe you
Speaker 3: want to go into? Like is there a computer? Or
Speaker 3: you say I want to go to the universe in
Speaker 3: 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 3: Oh interesting, like is there a user interface or do
Speaker 3: you check out all the other universe and pick the
Speaker 3: one you like.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to watch the show or read the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page to find out.
Speaker 3: Really, that's a big spoiler. The user interface is a
Speaker 3: 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 observing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people out there who imagine the
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics depends on like having a conscious observer. When
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: ampul you're like removing that so it doesn't collapse. So
Speaker 1: they're imagining that humans are special somehow in collapsing the
Speaker 1: wave function. That's not the way it really works in
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, so they need this fudge for the show
Speaker 1: to work. So you know, I can forgive it, but
Speaker 1: I don't want people to misunderstand that quantum mechanics requires
Speaker 1: a conscious human observer, right, Right.
Speaker 3: The things collapse just when they interact with other systems, right,
Speaker 3: and a human brain is just another system.
Speaker 1: Just what you're saying, It depends on the system they
Speaker 1: interact with. A quantum system will not collapse if it
Speaker 1: interacts with another quantum system. Like two electrons can interact
Speaker 1: and still stay in quantum superposition because they're built quantum objects.
Speaker 1: But if an electron interacts with a classical object, a screen,
Speaker 1: a detector, your eyeball, whatever, then it will collapse. And
Speaker 1: people are probably thinking, huh, what's the difference between a
Speaker 1: classical and a quantum system? Where do you draw the line?
Speaker 1: Isn't a classical system actually built out of little quantum particles? Yes?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not a question we have an answer to. That's
Speaker 1: the famous measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
Speaker 3: As in the answer just that classical objects are quantum objects,
Speaker 3: except that they're just made up of so many quantum
Speaker 3: 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: interact 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 3: What about this idea that you can connect multiverses together.
Speaker 3: Is that something that physicists think is impossible? Or do
Speaker 3: you think that it's possible to travel between multiverses.
Speaker 1: It's very skeptical that idea. Most of the multiverse theories
Speaker 1: involve universes that cannot interact in any way. In the
Speaker 1: many worlds theory, for example, the wave function has split
Speaker 1: and there's no way for those branches of the wave
Speaker 1: function to interact. Just simply having a box in one
Speaker 1: of the universes that you haven't looked inside of doesn't
Speaker 1: connect the universes in any way. There's no way to
Speaker 1: connect to that other universe. So yeah, that I don't
Speaker 1: think is actually possible. But you know, again, I'm willing
Speaker 1: to fudge it, although it raises the question like if
Speaker 1: one person in one of these universes builds a box,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, there's a box in
Speaker 1: all those other universes that you can step out of.
Speaker 1: That means that in any of the universes, anybody built
Speaker 1: a box. It makes a box in the other universes.
Speaker 1: Then all the universes should be filled with an infinite
Speaker 1: number of boxes.
Speaker 3: 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 3: 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 3: Well, isn't that a big plot hole? Like who built
Speaker 3: 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 3: Oh well, this is pretty exciting, Daniel. You got to
Speaker 3: interview two people involved in the show. One is one
Speaker 3: of the screenwriters and the other one is a scientific
Speaker 3: consultant for the show.
Speaker 1: That's right. I talked to Jacqueline ben Zachary, 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 3: All right, Well, we'll get to Daniel's interview with a
Speaker 3: screenwriter and scientific consultant for the Apple TV show Dark
Speaker 3: Matter when we come back from the brick. All right,
Speaker 3: we're talking about the Apple TV show Dark Matter, which
Speaker 3: is a science fiction show about the multiverse and being
Speaker 3: able to travel between them and being able to I guess,
Speaker 3: high five and or kicknap other versions of yourself that
Speaker 3: made bad choices according to your current version. It's a
Speaker 3: 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 least.
Speaker 3: Other sliding glass window. Yeah, I think that's what it's
Speaker 3: called the sliding 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 3: Well, you got to interview both a screenwriter and the
Speaker 3: scientific advisor for the show, and so here is Daniel's
Speaker 3: interview with screenwriter Jacqueline ben Zachrey.
Speaker 1: Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast Jacqueline ben Zachary. Jacquelin, thank you for much.
Speaker 1: We're taking some time.
Speaker 4: To talk to us, of course, and you can call
Speaker 4: 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 4: Oh, very me and during and weird, it's kind of
Speaker 4: how it all happened.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't want to go back too far in time,
Speaker 4: but I'm dyslexic. I grew up having a really difficult time.
Speaker 4: Like I didn't really know how to read until I
Speaker 4: was sixth grade or so somewhere and there I actually
Speaker 4: figured out how to not just read, but understand what
Speaker 4: I was reading, and it became an obsession, Like the
Speaker 4: idea of words and what they mean. I think it's
Speaker 4: not that they have greater meaning to me than other people,
Speaker 4: but I think that I appreciate them in a different way.
Speaker 4: I see them in a different way. So always, from
Speaker 4: a very young age, I was obsessed with books and
Speaker 4: with the idea of reading and like this concept that
Speaker 4: it makes you if you can understand what you're reading,
Speaker 4: which is like so silly and simple, but you know,
Speaker 4: like I was a kid, and you know, once I
Speaker 4: got a little bit older, I ended up working at
Speaker 4: Amazon for a while doing some you know, I was
Speaker 4: in process improvement, statistical analysis, and six Sigma. I really loved,
Speaker 4: you know, Matthew Matthew Mathy all day. It was really great.
Speaker 4: But I was missing some of that creative energy. So
Speaker 4: I ended up it was a semi being headhunted.
Speaker 6: Semi.
Speaker 4: I was looking for an opportunity to be more in
Speaker 4: I would say, a creative role. So I got a
Speaker 4: job working in publishing Thomas Mercer, Amazon Publishing, and I
Speaker 4: really loved that job. I really loved being around story
Speaker 4: and writers and it just you know, life has a.
Speaker 6: Way of sort of evolving over time, you know.
Speaker 4: I started off in marketing and trying to understand how
Speaker 4: people react to story and why they buy what they buy,
Speaker 4: and slowly I became more convinced that the way to
Speaker 4: sell a better book is to have the book be better.
Speaker 6: And so now I became an editor.
Speaker 4: But then I was really not very good at that
Speaker 4: aspect of the job because I saw potential in every
Speaker 4: single book, Like it was very easy for me as
Speaker 4: the marketing person to say this book will sell well
Speaker 4: and this one will not.
Speaker 6: But when it came to actually interacting the story. It's
Speaker 6: very difficult for me to.
Speaker 4: Say, Ah, this story can never get good enough and
Speaker 4: can never become a good enough you're as a writer,
Speaker 4: will never be written the way that we want it
Speaker 4: to be written. And so I kind of immediately sort
Speaker 4: of started my own side business editing books as a
Speaker 4: developmental story editor, which is a little different for those
Speaker 4: of you who don't know much about publishing. It's like
Speaker 4: there is sort of the acquisitions editor, whose job it
Speaker 4: is to sort of make the money work and make
Speaker 4: it make sense, and they do give a lot of notes.
Speaker 4: But developmental editors are the people that, like, as you're
Speaker 4: writing the book, help you figure stuff out, and help
Speaker 4: you figure out your characters, and you.
Speaker 6: Know, in some cases, just write better.
Speaker 4: And so I started doing that on the side, and
Speaker 4: then eventually that business grew to being my full time
Speaker 4: job and I quit my big, stinky corporate job.
Speaker 1: That must have been an amazing moment, right, It's.
Speaker 4: An amazing moment that came a little bit with on
Speaker 4: the heels of a tiny amount of failure, Like I
Speaker 4: had had a memory breakdown, which I don't want to
Speaker 4: go into too much detail here, not because it's not interesting,
Speaker 4: but because it's not what we're here to talk about.
Speaker 4: But I was spoken gibberish in a meeting. I was
Speaker 4: very confused. I had fugue states. I was walking home strangely,
Speaker 4: and it was kind of like this big moment where
Speaker 4: it's like, Oh, you either have brain cancer and you're dying,
Speaker 4: and this is your whole life just working sixty hours
Speaker 4: a week making some amount of money that doesn't make
Speaker 4: you happy, or you are doing this to yourself. It's
Speaker 4: stress and you're creating this problem within your own brain.
Speaker 4: And it was like the dark night of this whole weekend,
Speaker 4: you know. And I kind of just looked at the
Speaker 4: math and I was like, I can make enough money
Speaker 4: off my business and not be unhappy, and it kind
Speaker 4: of doesn't matter if I have cancer if it's stress.
Speaker 4: So I quit my job and then found out I
Speaker 4: wasn't dying. You know that, you know the story has
Speaker 4: a happy ending for those you aren't sure, and.
Speaker 6: It was stress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's great.
Speaker 6: It was a big moment for me when I got
Speaker 6: to do that.
Speaker 4: And then from there I was in publishing for a
Speaker 4: long time and I've been Blake Crutch's developmental editor since
Speaker 4: Pines and so when he was developing a couple of
Speaker 4: other projects. I've always been in the mix of that.
Speaker 4: And we were working on developing another television show that
Speaker 4: was like pretty close to going, and we'd gotten pretty
Speaker 4: far on the road with some producers, and there was
Speaker 4: like money already starting to come in for it, and
Speaker 4: Dark Matter got greenlit, and it was this immediate moment
Speaker 4: where it was like, you.
Speaker 6: Can't do both. That's literally impossible.
Speaker 4: So it was like, Okay, well, I guess we'll do
Speaker 4: Dark Matter instead. And that's kind of how the whole
Speaker 4: thing happened. It's so weird and but a lot of
Speaker 4: fun too. I've really enjoyed the ride, wonderful.
Speaker 1: 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, that superposition, the multiverse. What is exciting to
Speaker 1: you as a writer about these themes. What opportunities and
Speaker 1: challenges does that create that you were excited about.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's a really good question. Theme wise, I think
Speaker 4: I'm very drawn to duality in general. I think there's
Speaker 4: something really fascinating about you know, for those of you
Speaker 4: who are watching the show, and if you haven't, I
Speaker 4: don't want to spoil anything, but for those who've watched
Speaker 4: the show, we're dealing with one person who is expressed
Speaker 4: in multiple versions of himself, and kind of how it
Speaker 4: works is like we have Jason two and Jason one,
Speaker 4: and they were the same person until fifteen years ago
Speaker 4: when one decided to have a family and the other
Speaker 4: decided to pursue his career. And to be clear, no
Speaker 4: one here is saying you have to do one or
Speaker 4: the other, but like for this story, that has happened,
Speaker 4: and it was.
Speaker 6: The idea of like that.
Speaker 4: Jason two later does a bunch of really i would say,
Speaker 4: incredibly dastardly things and really horrifying, terrible things, and Jason
Speaker 4: one kind of, you know, maintains this positivity.
Speaker 6: He's a good guy.
Speaker 4: But the reality is that they are the same person,
Speaker 4: and when writing him and writing his actions and what
Speaker 4: he's doing, you have to actually look deep within yourself
Speaker 4: to the things that keep you from doing bad and
Speaker 4: that or that keep you from doing good, and how
Speaker 4: they are just like the Batman and the joke or
Speaker 4: they are two sides of the same coin. And that's
Speaker 4: exciting to look at. It's exciting to think about you
Speaker 4: know why we make the choices that we make and
Speaker 4: who we are when you strip away all those trapings
Speaker 4: of life and circumstances, like how would you actually interact
Speaker 4: and react to things? So those are thematically the funnest things.
Speaker 4: But I am a big sci fi dork, Like.
Speaker 6: Definitely that's not I don't want to say not normal.
Speaker 4: That sounds really insulting, but you know, on the scale
Speaker 4: of like, you know, the minutia and the science that
Speaker 4: all really matters to me. So I was also equally
Speaker 4: excited to be able to go in here and be like,
Speaker 4: let's actually, you know, talk about some of these issues
Speaker 4: to a wide audience of people. This kind of science
Speaker 4: is kind of thinking this. I do think of physics
Speaker 4: more as philosophy than anything else, this philosophical way of
Speaker 4: thinking about the universe, and expose that to a lot
Speaker 4: of people who would never normally choose this show because
Speaker 4: we made it about regular people doing regular things, and
Speaker 4: the science is just it's another character. It's not the
Speaker 4: focus of every second, and that was probably the most
Speaker 4: 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've created
Speaker 1: follows like a coherent and consistent set of rules, even
Speaker 1: of course, if there 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 4: Oh, I'm definitely the more the first type. And this
Speaker 4: goes back to being a developmental editor. You know, the tropes,
Speaker 4: which is kind of what you're talking about, right, Like,
Speaker 4: there's what the audience expects tropes. Like when I say mystery,
Speaker 4: it means you don't know the solution to the problem
Speaker 4: to the last twenty five percent of the show or
Speaker 4: movie or book. Right, that's a mystery versus thriller, which
Speaker 4: is like, you know the problem very early on, is
Speaker 4: how are you going to solve it?
Speaker 6: You know? So like that's what the audiences expect.
Speaker 4: And then there's the writing tropes like actually, how you
Speaker 4: structure things. So like for example, fantasy, we structure it
Speaker 4: where you have multiple stories interacting at various points, so
Speaker 4: you don't do that per se in like science fiction
Speaker 4: usually that those are structural differences. So for me, like
Speaker 4: when it comes to the mixing of like mystery and
Speaker 4: thriller and you know, all these different things into our
Speaker 4: speculative fiction, I am pretty obsessed with the rules because I.
Speaker 6: Think the rules are how you keep people grounded.
Speaker 4: So like there's the rules of the science, which I
Speaker 4: think have to be established very early on, and it
Speaker 4: needs to be blunt, Like it's the one area in
Speaker 4: all of writing where you're like, hey, we can be.
Speaker 6: On the nose here, just say which is lazy and fun.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: Then there is the playing.
Speaker 4: With the rules, which is like the assumptions that we make,
Speaker 4: And there is the assumption that we make scientifically, like
Speaker 4: consciousness connects to reality.
Speaker 6: We know that that is some element of that is true.
Speaker 4: Right, But then we sort of expand that out and say, Okay,
Speaker 4: if consciousness connects to reality, then I guess you have
Speaker 4: to have consciousness in this world in order to be
Speaker 4: able to go to this world. So now how we
Speaker 4: have a rule you have to have been born in
Speaker 4: that world to be able to go there, And so
Speaker 4: it is a lot of fun to take theoretically realish
Speaker 4: rules and then sort of play with them as well.
Speaker 4: I definitely think we did both in this show. And
Speaker 4: I don't think you can ask people to trust you
Speaker 4: so much that you throw a bunch of nonsense to
Speaker 4: the wall and say that's not real science, that's not
Speaker 4: real storytelling and expect people to go along with it.
Speaker 4: Like people want to feel like they're satisfied at the
Speaker 4: end of it, like, oh, I got it, and not
Speaker 4: only did I get it, I got something hard. And
Speaker 4: so we do have to always be coming back to
Speaker 4: the rules and always be coming back to the things
Speaker 4: that makes sense, and always coming back to what you've
Speaker 4: established that it's also satisfying.
Speaker 6: And that's a trope thing, you know.
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.
Speaker 6: Quite well I'm in love with him. If you could
Speaker 6: let him know that, Like I.
Speaker 4: Think I think he knows, but if you could let
Speaker 4: him know, that's very terming. He is super charming and
Speaker 4: just really just nice and smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I asked him a question about entanglement once and he
Speaker 4: was way too nice to me. How much of this
Speaker 4: is the rules of our universe? I hope my understanding
Speaker 4: is that, And God, I would love to know what
Speaker 4: clif thinks.
Speaker 6: I think it's.
Speaker 4: Probably eighty five percent theoretically possible, right, Like, we're playing
Speaker 4: with math that exists for sure, but we're expanding it
Speaker 4: pretty considerably in like just just go with me here,
Speaker 4: you know, we get philosophical too real, So I'd say, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's pretty close. But there's definitely some stuff that's like,
Speaker 4: you know, totally bs that we just sort of, you know,
Speaker 4: added in there because it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 6: But I think the thing that we.
Speaker 4: Play with more in our universe is sort of history.
Speaker 4: I think that that's the more fun thing to play with,
Speaker 4: like for me especially, but I also know for Blake,
Speaker 4: getting the science as close to possible to being lausible
Speaker 4: so that you could go out and interact with other
Speaker 4: forms of this science and understand it better. That's really
Speaker 4: important to us, and so we try to stay in
Speaker 4: that sphere. But like, you know, imagining a world where
Speaker 4: completely different things happened, Like, that's a lot more fun
Speaker 4: than playing with science, I think, and that tends to
Speaker 4: be where we kind of really go off the rails.
Speaker 4: Like one of the worlds that we explore, World twenty
Speaker 4: six is the sort of utopia world.
Speaker 6: We're like, well, what if they just, you know.
Speaker 4: Instead of developing the bomb, what if they put all
Speaker 4: those resources into creating what's called endless environmentally conscious energy, Right,
Speaker 4: what if that was what we did instead. That's not
Speaker 4: a judgment on the Manhattan Project. I grew up in Hamford.
Speaker 4: I tend to have a very strong attachment to that
Speaker 4: concept and that it's one of the greatest achievements in
Speaker 4: all of human history, right, like doing that scale of
Speaker 4: science and doing it that quickly, and.
Speaker 6: That engineering and on that thinking.
Speaker 4: But you know, the outcome wasn't really always like the
Speaker 4: most pleasant thing, And so what if we'd done something
Speaker 4: inherently more positive? What does that mean if you chose
Speaker 4: that over a destructive device. Well, you're probably in a
Speaker 4: world where there's more empathy. You're probably in a world
Speaker 4: where where we communicate better, and so I think a
Speaker 4: lot more liberty was taken with history and sociology than
Speaker 4: was taken with real science, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I think that's really creative. I really liked
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 this time?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I was always impressed.
Speaker 4: I just want to say this because I didn't really
Speaker 4: answer your Cliver johnsonthing. Clifford was really great about being
Speaker 4: a good carrot and stick guy.
Speaker 6: I just want to say that, like cliff.
Speaker 4: Was like, yeah, I mean, sure, you could make it
Speaker 4: look like this, it's not a problem. But then I
Speaker 4: remember there were a couple of times during in No
Speaker 4: Atmosphere World who we had charred and burned stuff places
Speaker 4: and He's like, no, absolutely not, that would not happen.
Speaker 6: Those were not the colors. That's not how it would
Speaker 6: look like.
Speaker 4: I just love when you could tell that something really
Speaker 4: matters to your scientific.
Speaker 6: Advice and you're like, oh, don't touch that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, OK, yeah, well hopefully that's representative of like the
Speaker 1: nerds watching your show, and you don't want to piss
Speaker 1: them off either.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I don't like being wrong. I don't think anyone.
Speaker 1: Does, right. So for the nerds out there in the audience,
Speaker 1: of which I count myself one, since I get to
Speaker 1: talk to you, I do have some questions about the
Speaker 1: rules of the universe and how it works. One thing
Speaker 1: I was wondering about what you thought about how you
Speaker 1: guys worked out, is how the box exists in the
Speaker 1: other universes. Like if Jason creates the box in his universe,
Speaker 1: he builds it, he physically puts it together, then he
Speaker 1: goes to another universe he steps out of the box.
Speaker 1: That box is also in that universe, And I found
Speaker 1: myself wondering, like who built it or how did that
Speaker 1: come to be? Do you guys grapple with that kind
Speaker 1: of question? Are you just kind of like, hmm, we
Speaker 1: need a little bit of fudge there.
Speaker 6: You're going to get into there.
Speaker 4: See now I'm going to contradict myself, like now we're
Speaker 4: getting into woo wu Right.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, for sure, like we know the laws
Speaker 4: of thermodynamics would not allow this to happen, right, because
Speaker 4: like our theory is that it spots and that it
Speaker 4: it just arrives there.
Speaker 6: Because it is a gateway. So once Jason creates.
Speaker 4: It in his world, it's sort of like I guess
Speaker 4: I would describe it as like an anchor point.
Speaker 6: It is the nexus by which all universes are connecting.
Speaker 4: So in theory, when you see that box, say in
Speaker 4: no atmosphere world or in the world where they're in
Speaker 4: the water, that is actually the same box. It's just
Speaker 4: being represented there physically so we can go in and out.
Speaker 4: And that's why the corridor is just the box repeating across,
Speaker 4: because it's just your mind making sense of it. But definitely,
Speaker 4: like you know, things start to fall apart when you
Speaker 4: really think about it, because yeah, where did that energy?
Speaker 4: Where did that matter come from? I mean, I think
Speaker 4: it's the same matter. But yeah, you send me some
Speaker 4: hate mail about that. It's probably not good.
Speaker 1: No, it's just fun to think about. And I like
Speaker 1: that the show encourages you to like think hard about
Speaker 1: how things work and what it means, and you know,
Speaker 1: it changes how the characters behave in the world. I
Speaker 1: think it is great. You know, it's a sign of
Speaker 1: a really good science fiction. But in this case, you
Speaker 1: guys weren't just starting from scratch and creating something new.
Speaker 1: I mean, Blake had written this novel already. What's it
Speaker 1: like to adapt a book like that to the screen
Speaker 1: rather than start from scratch? What are the challenges there?
Speaker 4: I think the biggest challenge I'll start with that one,
Speaker 4: which might reveal I'm a negative finger, But the biggest
Speaker 4: challenge is like what people expect, the expectations.
Speaker 6: You know. I helped Blake develop this.
Speaker 4: Story, so I remember being in we were in Portland,
Speaker 4: and like the idea of like, oh, how much your
Speaker 4: emotions would affect the worlds that you land on came
Speaker 4: directly from a dark conversation I was having with him
Speaker 4: about RoboCop, you know what I mean, Like, so I'm
Speaker 4: so immeshed in this story that.
Speaker 6: That aspect of it was very easy. It was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 6: we can do that.
Speaker 4: But then you get letters from people that are like
Speaker 4: I was considering, you know, ending my life, and then
Speaker 4: I read this book and I thought I can actually
Speaker 4: be empowered to make changes. And when you are facing
Speaker 4: that kind of fan reaction, when you have literally hundreds
Speaker 4: of people saying I hadn't read a book in twenty
Speaker 4: years and I've read Dark Matter and one Day and
Speaker 4: I'm now a.
Speaker 6: Big reader like that.
Speaker 4: I think that that had more of an emotional impact
Speaker 4: on me than anything else. Was like how much the
Speaker 4: story meant to a lot of people, and wanting to
Speaker 4: fulfill those fan love feelings, but also creating that now
Speaker 4: for a whole new audience of people who for whatever
Speaker 4: reason would never read this book but will engage with
Speaker 4: this material in this way.
Speaker 6: So that was probably the biggest challenge, was.
Speaker 4: Figuring out where to be true to that original stuff
Speaker 4: to make the fans happy, but also solicit that same.
Speaker 6: Emotional reaction from new people.
Speaker 4: I would say the funnest part about it, for sure,
Speaker 4: I love producing like I think the funnest part is
Speaker 4: like looking at seven hundred versions of ash World that's
Speaker 4: the world where the balt Worlds are crumbling, and watching
Speaker 4: that VFX like for the seven thousandth time and being like,
Speaker 4: I'd like this window to be slightly brighter, Like it
Speaker 4: just speaks to some deeper OCD that I might have
Speaker 4: from a writing standpoint, though, like adapting this book, I
Speaker 4: think that the funnest part about it was getting to
Speaker 4: expand the characters, because we don't really know Amanda, we
Speaker 4: don't really know Daniella, we don't really know Charlie.
Speaker 6: We kind of get to know Ryan a little, but
Speaker 6: we don't know him. We definitely don't know Layton.
Speaker 4: And you need to know them for the show to
Speaker 4: make sense, Like, you know, you need to expand everyone,
Speaker 4: because when you see them and they don't have reactions
Speaker 4: to certain things, it's not a flaw of the book.
Speaker 4: The book is a single POV game. It doesn't matter
Speaker 4: what else is happening around you. But now you're actually
Speaker 4: asking humans to embody that and we have to know
Speaker 4: more about them, And that was the most exciting I think,
Speaker 4: besides being weird about details and color of watches Jason
Speaker 4: wearing in this scene and what color shirt is he wearing?
Speaker 4: Seen to make that all work those puzzles, aside, expanding
Speaker 4: the characters, especially the women, was the best part of
Speaker 4: the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Well. As a viewer, I found one of the greatest challenges,
Speaker 1: just like keeping track of like which Jason am I
Speaker 1: watching now, especially you know later on when you get
Speaker 1: so many different Jason's how do you handle that? As
Speaker 1: 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 have ring a number over their head.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean that was probably one of the hardest things
Speaker 4: to do, because the easiest answer is, like, you know,
Speaker 4: because we have for those of you who've seen eight,
Speaker 4: we have burn face Jason.
Speaker 6: We have Jason thirteen.
Speaker 4: Who's the guy that talks to Jason one in the tavern.
Speaker 4: I want to call it the David Davin. That's the
Speaker 4: real name of the village chap story. When they're talking, like,
Speaker 4: these characters look different, so it makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 4: But when we start getting into the fifty other Jasons
Speaker 4: that are there, that was a lot harder. And what
Speaker 4: I ended up doing with our costumer and our hair
Speaker 4: and makeup people was in our eighties because those people
Speaker 4: really need to understand what's happening. They have to organize
Speaker 4: this whole thing. Was creating like a rubric of like
Speaker 4: based on how violent the Jason is, we determined that
Speaker 4: that is when he lost his Amanda because we feel
Speaker 4: like Amanda psychologist.
Speaker 6: She's giving him.
Speaker 4: We see the whole show, she's giving him therapy the
Speaker 4: whole time, she's comforting him.
Speaker 6: She's helping him figure this stuff out.
Speaker 4: So the earlier Amanda dies or leaves him, is the
Speaker 4: more violent and more you know, sort of crazed and
Speaker 4: unhinged the Jason is because we know that that's in him.
Speaker 6: We've established that.
Speaker 4: We've seen Prison World, where Jason has obviously done something
Speaker 4: terrible to someone. We've seen what Jason too is capable of.
Speaker 4: We know that Jason One's capable, So it's about what
Speaker 4: actually breaks his brain and how.
Speaker 6: Broken is it. And so once we knew what that was, we.
Speaker 4: Just focused the costumes on where we think he branched
Speaker 4: from Amanda. So careful viewers will see, like Jason in
Speaker 4: the snow outfit from Snow World, if he's still in
Speaker 4: that outfit, that means Amanda died close or left him
Speaker 4: close to that time period. So that means that he
Speaker 4: went twenty days alone in the box, which is a
Speaker 4: lot crazier than going three days on the box because
Speaker 4: what our Jason did, So that kind of makes big
Speaker 4: difference if you look back, like some of the first
Speaker 4: guy that gets killed by Jason One in the Alley,
Speaker 4: the most violent guy that we've seen so far, he's
Speaker 4: wearing the original costume, so that was kind of fun
Speaker 4: to play with. And then we just did really settle
Speaker 4: things from there green Beanie or blue Beanie, you know,
Speaker 4: like just so that you could know it's not the
Speaker 4: exact same guy you saw last time. But we also
Speaker 4: embraced the idea that like it kind of also doesn't matter,
Speaker 4: like if you're a little bit confused here and there,
Speaker 4: that's actually part of the joys, Like, you know, it's
Speaker 4: the same thing in Sceptin. Does do we know if
Speaker 4: he got home? Like I think he didn't aside, but
Speaker 4: it's kind of like doesn't matter. That's not the story
Speaker 4: we're telling. The story we're telling is out the complexities
Speaker 4: of coming back to your life. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: So I think it doesn't really matter. But yeah, it's
Speaker 4: definitely all very carefully planned. And if you freeze the
Speaker 4: show and you look at the color of the ring
Speaker 4: of thread on their fingers, and you look at the
Speaker 4: color of their hats, you will actually be able to
Speaker 4: tell who is here.
Speaker 1: Awesome. I'm sure somebody out there on Reddit is doing.
Speaker 6: Exactly or they're not.
Speaker 4: They're probably getting like hack into my computer, I get
Speaker 4: the self you'll know.
Speaker 1: Everything, So I asked our listeners if they have questions
Speaker 1: for you, and listeners who are watching the show. We've
Speaker 1: only seen six or seven episodes so far. Their number
Speaker 1: one question was why is it called dark matter? And
Speaker 1: obviously the physics in the show, but it's mostly like multiverse,
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, superposition. Where's the dark matter in the show?
Speaker 4: It came from a conversation and I was there for it,
Speaker 4: but you know, it might be good to ask Cliff
Speaker 4: actually about this. The there's a debate if dark matter exists, right.
Speaker 6: And there's also a debate about what it does.
Speaker 4: And like black holes, it's like I personally believe in
Speaker 4: the sort of mirror universe of going through the black hole,
Speaker 4: like you know, the chair just exists on the other side.
Speaker 4: That's maybe not scientifically very accurate, but I think it's
Speaker 4: an interesting theory. So that idea of the complete sort
Speaker 4: of unknown. But also it's a word that you've heard
Speaker 4: enough that you're like, ah, science fiction.
Speaker 6: That's honestly the truth, like she is like.
Speaker 1: Mysterious science.
Speaker 6: Ye science see.
Speaker 4: And it doesn't actually if you dig into it actually
Speaker 4: for sure mean anything yet like it's still you know,
Speaker 4: like yeah, so yeah, but It's also a little confusing
Speaker 4: because you know, Pearl Jams out there touring with Dark Matter,
Speaker 4: and so, 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: in which you exist. What's your alternative reality? What are
Speaker 1: you choosing?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 6: Am I intentionally choosing?
Speaker 4: Like I get to go see a version of myself
Speaker 4: not like a cent atways, sort of wash up on
Speaker 4: shore 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 6: Huh?
Speaker 4: You know, the first thing I really wanted to do
Speaker 4: with my life. I went to like a music magnet
Speaker 4: high school, and I was very involved in music, and
Speaker 4: for a long time I thought I was going to
Speaker 4: be a musician. And it's one of those sort of
Speaker 4: stories I think that everyone has, where like you get
Speaker 4: to a certain point in your process where you realize
Speaker 4: that it's not that you are not that you're a
Speaker 4: hard worker, you're actually not talented, and some careers require
Speaker 4: a certain level of actual talent and the realization that
Speaker 4: I was not good enough to actually have the future
Speaker 4: as like a composer and musician that I thought I
Speaker 4: was going to have was a really brutal one, and
Speaker 4: I often wonder if there is a world where I
Speaker 4: hadn't decided that I wasn't good enough, and if I
Speaker 4: had continued to fight and be that level.
Speaker 6: Of brave, you know, what would that life be like.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying she would have succeeded, but I would
Speaker 4: like to see what she did, you know, that's the
Speaker 4: 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 6: 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 had gotten to be, But there are other
Speaker 1: paths 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 6: You still could anyway, it's right book.
Speaker 1: Like you know, well, I live in southern California where
Speaker 1: you're obliged to produce the screenplay every two years with
Speaker 1: your citizenship. You know, totally, totally awesome. Well, thanks very
Speaker 1: much for answering your question, and thanks for this wonderful show.
Speaker 1: Speaking for everybody out there, we're really glad you created it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, all right, thank you, all right, interesting conversation there.
Speaker 3: It's kind of interesting how as a TV writer you
Speaker 3: kind of have to think about what the science tells
Speaker 3: you might be possible, and then you kind of have
Speaker 3: to figure out how to get a good story out
Speaker 3: 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 3: I feel like, Daniel, do you have a flexible rule yourself.
Speaker 1: It's that flexible room.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you like when the rules are followed, sometimes you don't.
Speaker 1: I always prefer when the rules are followed, but you know,
Speaker 1: you can't be too harsh. You prefer you prefer right
Speaker 1: strong preference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Well, Dan, you also got to interview
Speaker 3: the scientific advisor for the show, which is a friend
Speaker 3: of ours, Cliff Johnson.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's a professor at UC Santa Barbara and an expert
Speaker 1: in string theory and black holes and in general quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics and a lot of fun to talk to.
Speaker 3: 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 3: If you're an expert in the multiverses, does that make
Speaker 3: you an expert in everything? Like, there's a version of
Speaker 3: you out there that's probably an expert in some other
Speaker 3: field that you currently don't know.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah exactly. If only you could draw on
Speaker 1: their expertise.
Speaker 3: Whoa, you can make a movie like The Matrix but
Speaker 3: with multiverses, the multi tricks. Yeah, Hollywood, give me a call.
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 1: a conversation with Cliff Johnson. Cliff, tell everybody a little
Speaker 1: bit about who you are, what you're excited about in science.
Speaker 2: Well, I am a professor at the Clasics Department at
Speaker 2: the University of California in Santa Barbara. I work on
Speaker 2: things to do with roughly these days, I say, like
Speaker 2: a quantum nature of space time. So interested in quantum gravity?
Speaker 2: Black hold what it through? Your quantum gravity looks like?
Speaker 2: So I work on things like string theory, et cetera,
Speaker 2: but really thinking about space time and space and time
Speaker 2: and what it means at the quantum metal. It's really
Speaker 2: like on the cutting edge of understanding the nature of
Speaker 2: the universe. So tell me about what it's like to
Speaker 2: be a science advisor a show like this. What do
Speaker 2: you see as the role of the science advisor?
Speaker 1: What is your job?
Speaker 2: So this is a really important question because there is
Speaker 2: no model for what a science advisor should be, because
Speaker 2: the industry still doesn't really know what that is. And
Speaker 2: some of that A lot of us been working to
Speaker 2: try and help cement that. And I think what we
Speaker 2: shouldn't do is going with a red pencil and make
Speaker 2: it seem like we own this stuff and they're daring
Speaker 2: to play with it, and we're going to give them
Speaker 2: a grade because they'll never fall right. Others have different opinions,
Speaker 2: but my opinion is that the primary thing of that
Speaker 2: to do is to serve the story they're trying to tell,
Speaker 2: and to help them tell the story they want to tell. Now,
Speaker 2: sometimes you can give them advice given what they want
Speaker 2: to do in the science that they think they want
Speaker 2: to use. You might then say, well, if you tell
Speaker 2: me what your story goal is, I might help you
Speaker 2: tweet that a little bit. Or maybe you don't need
Speaker 2: this piece, or here's a whole other bit of science
Speaker 2: who don't know that could be brought in to help
Speaker 2: you achieve that, And they're very open to that because
Speaker 2: now you want the storytellers sign and you're just trying
Speaker 2: to serve a story. And then sometimes that can lead
Speaker 2: to the story geting completely because they get excited about
Speaker 2: the science. They now understand that bit of science pacts.
Speaker 2: They only read about it in a popular account and
Speaker 2: maybe misunderstood. Now they understand it now they see, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to use this aspect more, or you tell
Speaker 2: them so it really is. I think if you go in,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, if you go in wanting to help
Speaker 2: with the story, great things can come from that, especially
Speaker 2: if that's early enough in the process that they're not
Speaker 2: wedded to everything being completely set. And so then I
Speaker 2: think science advising works is streaming. Well, you have all
Speaker 2: the other times when you're called in you should guy,
Speaker 2: you know, some big studio, it's all ready to go,
Speaker 2: they're almost ready to shoot, and then they want some buzzwords.
Speaker 2: You know, that's only so much you can do that.
Speaker 2: But if you get to kind of almost become a collaborator,
Speaker 2: someone to brainstorm, and if you then stick through it
Speaker 2: right through to the end, you can 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 here buzz words to
Speaker 1: hear science, and they absorb it. And I wonder sometimes
Speaker 1: if there's a responsibility to show to get that right
Speaker 1: and not use lead people into like common misunderstandings about
Speaker 1: what is dark knight?
Speaker 2: What does it look like?
Speaker 1: You know, he said a dark lag in front of
Speaker 1: your spaceship or not. What do you feel about that?
Speaker 1: Is that science advisor has some responsibility there. We have
Speaker 1: some responsibility to tell a little bit about what it's
Speaker 1: really like you we that you know, there's no contract.
Speaker 1: This is they must use a certain percientage of what
Speaker 1: we tell them, right, right, so how you know it's
Speaker 1: an advisor.
Speaker 2: I'm an advisor, so so I'll do my best to say, well,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't really look like this, or if it does,
Speaker 2: maybe you have a reason you could mention that, or
Speaker 2: maybe what have you. But what happens. And this is
Speaker 2: by no means intended as an apology for science advisors,
Speaker 2: but it's all the process, right these these projects. It's
Speaker 2: very different being a science advisor to say, on a
Speaker 2: book where you're dealing with the author of the book,
Speaker 2: versus being a science advisor to a thing that goes
Speaker 2: into a big machine.
Speaker 8: As almost any project that you see on screen will be.
Speaker 8: It will have gone through many stages. They've gone from
Speaker 8: any iterations. You may have been the science advisor with
Speaker 8: the screenwriter who.
Speaker 2: Wrote the old beautiful science and then and then you know,
Speaker 2: four years later you go and watch the thing and
Speaker 2: it is not the thing that one was the final
Speaker 2: screenplay that you saw, because it went from the screenwriter
Speaker 2: to the studio to the director. They found for the
Speaker 2: director had their own vision, blah blah, blah blah. So
Speaker 2: you have no control, but you try and you hope
Speaker 2: you can get the key people involved excited enough about
Speaker 2: the science that they care to protect some of the
Speaker 2: things that you got into the screenplay or what have you,
Speaker 2: and on maybe you know some of your Later at
Speaker 2: the stage where they're shooting, you get a call saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you were the screen you helped the screenwriter. Now please
Speaker 2: help the VFX people. Rightff like that. That's great. That
Speaker 2: seldom happens, but when that happens, that's great because then
Speaker 2: there's some continuity you can kind of look at a
Speaker 2: different stages.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about what were the
Speaker 1: challenges of being scientificeder 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.
Speaker 2: What did you do there?
Speaker 1: How did you change this story?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I first have to say huge amount
Speaker 2: of credit to Blake like Crouch, the author of the
Speaker 2: book it was originally based on, and then you know
Speaker 2: he's also the showrunner. A side note, there's a big
Speaker 2: difference between TV and movies. In some ways, TV is
Speaker 2: very much more righteous. In him the people who do
Speaker 2: the writing end up. You know, the director works for
Speaker 2: them and it's refress approximation. The showrunners have the fible
Speaker 2: side that's very different in some of the models you
Speaker 2: get in a big, big cinema. So that means that
Speaker 2: I think Blake, who's hugely enthusiastic about science and it's
Speaker 2: very open to hearing critiques and hearing new ideas and
Speaker 2: incorporating that, he was also in control of the final show.
Speaker 2: So I got the call to come in and chat
Speaker 2: with the various departments and they basically said Blake said
Speaker 2: do whatever you say. That never happened. So at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, I think the main ideas were there,
Speaker 2: and so credit to Blake that the main ideas were there.
Speaker 9: He really wanted is fascinated by the classic conundra in
Speaker 9: quantum mechanics, but then he wanted to play with the
Speaker 9: idea that essentially, wouldn't it be fun if you took
Speaker 9: literally the everiety of interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is
Speaker 9: that these probabilistic choices that you seem to have in
Speaker 9: quantum mechanics really are granches of the verse.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, you had a fifty to fifty
Speaker 2: chances of the quantum outcome being this way or the other,
Speaker 2: and you could just go, well, that's life. That's that's probability.
Speaker 2: But the cat was alive or it was dead when
Speaker 2: you made the observation. Everyone will tell you know, there's
Speaker 2: another universe in which it was the other, and then
Speaker 2: that universe carried on, and so these choices mount up
Speaker 2: and the universe continues branching. So Blake was going, well, well,
Speaker 2: if you could explore those universes and essentially that's what
Speaker 2: this is about, and then what would that mean physics wise?
Speaker 2: So there's some there's some relatively old fashioned ideas about
Speaker 2: the collapse of the weight function and things like that
Speaker 2: when you make an observation of the wave function collapses.
Speaker 2: We tend to not really foreground that as much when
Speaker 2: we teach corantumic ads as we used to. And so
Speaker 2: I was trying to explain to Blake a little bit
Speaker 2: about some of the language that people use these days
Speaker 2: in terms of coherence versus do coherence coupling systems.
Speaker 7: That it's, you know, how much can you isolate a
Speaker 7: system from its environment so it doesn't sort of decohere
Speaker 7: the couple to another system and what have you, And.
Speaker 2: Those are the things you need to control if you
Speaker 2: were going to do that as a physics experiment. So
Speaker 2: that leads to them, what would that look like? What
Speaker 2: would that device look like? So that's the box. So
Speaker 2: it spend a lot of time discussing what the box
Speaker 2: would look like, this, like that, and what's in the
Speaker 2: walls of those bombs. So you don't of course, you
Speaker 2: never learned that in the book or in the in
Speaker 2: the show explicitly, but you do hear a discussion or
Speaker 2: too about the fact that there's tech going on that
Speaker 2: sort of cancels out things from the outside. And so
Speaker 2: those are the sorts of things that was giving him
Speaker 2: to make it seem at least.
Speaker 9: Another aspect of my job is that while you're watching
Speaker 9: the thing, you're not popping out going that's ridiculous or
Speaker 9: that doesn't make sense for it.
Speaker 2: You're at least in the two hours of what have you,
Speaker 2: the movie or the hour of the episode, you're going
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 8: So to help the physicists have a plausible sounding conversation
Speaker 8: with a plausible sounding content, that helps make it seem realistic.
Speaker 2: So indeed, I'm very pleased to you know, when I
Speaker 2: finally saw episodes of the show, I was very pleased
Speaker 2: to see a lot of that stuff stayed in. And
Speaker 2: some of that stuff was my scribbling on the screenplay
Speaker 2: saying this is what they would say. And I gather
Speaker 2: people really like that. You know, you hear, you see
Speaker 2: the box, and you have a sense that this is
Speaker 2: a real thing. Pold it up. So we wanted to
Speaker 2: have weight, put it to feel real, wanted to have
Speaker 2: it still feel like it's a prototype. So it's a
Speaker 2: little sort of sort of sort of grungey looking, and
Speaker 2: so and so forth. That's what you really think is
Speaker 2: our job.
Speaker 1: We're not.
Speaker 2: We're not doing a documentary. But if you as much
Speaker 2: as the creators will listen, I'll give you enough material
Speaker 2: so that if if someone watching it digs a little bit,
Speaker 2: they'll find there's more there there It isn't sort of
Speaker 2: first level and then it all falls apart, so you
Speaker 2: will see, you know, the character Jason go writings through
Speaker 2: his notebooks at some point where talking about the original
Speaker 2: design of the box. That is full of equations that
Speaker 2: I gave them and that's real, uh, quantum physics. I
Speaker 2: had some friends of mine who actually do real quantum information.
Speaker 5: Experiments where they try and create superposition states in quantum devices,
Speaker 5: because these are important for building quantum computers. Right, those
Speaker 5: are the same pieces of science that that character.
Speaker 2: Would be doing, but real large in order to make
Speaker 2: this box. So you know, I had notes of my
Speaker 2: own that borrow some of their notes with their permission,
Speaker 2: and that's all you see in Jason's in that book.
Speaker 2: So that those are examples of the things that that
Speaker 2: we worked on at the level of the show. Other
Speaker 2: though of the book, we'd already been thinking about trying
Speaker 2: to give a reality quote unquote to what would be
Speaker 2: like when you're inside the box when in because now
Speaker 2: this is no fantasy Blake's wonderful idea of having some
Speaker 2: sort of drug that turns off the observer effect, whatever
Speaker 2: that means. That's based on actual experiments that people are
Speaker 2: thinking about right or have been doing, trying to understand
Speaker 2: the role of quantum mechanics in the workings of the brain.
Speaker 2: Quantum mechanics in perception of what we how do we
Speaker 2: construct reality of the physical world, in terms of interacting
Speaker 2: quantum mechanically with the world, to what extent there's our
Speaker 2: brain chemistry have anything to do with that, I think
Speaker 2: the answer to the questions is nobody knows the fact
Speaker 2: that it's unknown. It's fun to play.
Speaker 1: With and it gives the writer a loss of place down. Well, congratulations,
Speaker 1: and so you've seen the show, and you please without
Speaker 1: king that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, i've been. So I'm most of the way through now.
Speaker 2: I think there's maybe a couple of episodes I haven't
Speaker 2: seen and i've been, although you know i've you know,
Speaker 2: I read every script and worked at any script and
Speaker 2: worked at all the different departments. It was especially long
Speaker 2: ago that and of course I hadn't seen how it really.
Speaker 2: It's been great to see how these how it's come
Speaker 2: out overall as a show tonally, which I think is
Speaker 2: primarily the most important thing to get right in the
Speaker 2: total of the show. I think it really they really
Speaker 2: nailed it, and such a strong cast, a great direction.
Speaker 2: It's a great collection of directors. They got someone whom
Speaker 2: I had spoken with early on and we were talking
Speaker 2: about various aspects of the show. So I'm very pleased.
Speaker 2: I'm very impressed.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 2: It's a win win from the point of view of
Speaker 2: a science advisor who's interested in getting people engaged science,
Speaker 2: because there's this feeling off from episode one two. Right,
Speaker 2: there are millions of people watching this thing. And after
Speaker 2: they turn off this episode, they're talking about strolling that,
Speaker 2: They're talking about Heisenberg and talking about uncertainty, they're talking
Speaker 2: about all these these things that I've usually thought of.
Speaker 2: Is about as obscure as you can get in science.
Speaker 2: This is out there in the TV show about prime time.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. So I've been I've been very happy with that.
Speaker 2: And you know this, I think wouldn't have happened without
Speaker 2: writers like Blake who get excited about science and then
Speaker 2: do this great job writing great stories builds around the science,
Speaker 2: 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 it some plausible
Speaker 1: credibility without feeling like a red pin pissing them up,
Speaker 1: I think you've done that. I just spoke to Jacqueline
Speaker 1: ben Zechery right, actually quote tell Clifford, I love him.
Speaker 1: I think it well for.
Speaker 2: It was, it was one of the most fun and
Speaker 2: fulfilling science advising collaborative experiences I've ever had. And you know,
Speaker 2: I've done some good ones. I've done some really good
Speaker 2: ones also with some of the some of the Marvel
Speaker 2: people has a great one coming up which I've been
Speaker 2: having all fun with. And I'm hoping that you know,
Speaker 2: this is a new standard. Yeah, that we can that
Speaker 2: we that we can convince the filmmakers the entertainment industry
Speaker 2: to aspire to you where you really collaborate with scientists
Speaker 2: to find new ways to at the very least right
Speaker 2: from the point of view of just selling stories. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's a great way to just find new ways
Speaker 2: of telling the same old stories, which is great. We
Speaker 2: only tell a few stories as a species, we just
Speaker 2: tell them in all these Science is a great way
Speaker 2: to find new ways and so so this is a
Speaker 2: great example of that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks again for taking a few minutes
Speaker 1: to jab. That's really appreciate it my session.
Speaker 3: All right, pretty cool, Daniel. Have you ever considered being
Speaker 3: a scientific advisor for a TV show or something like that?
Speaker 3: 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 3: Ooh interesting. Can you give any spoilers or did you
Speaker 3: 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 science fiction writers
Speaker 1: 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 3: Yeah, because it's an amazing universe. And who knows how
Speaker 3: 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 3: I'll read it after the universe ends, so we'll save
Speaker 3: me a few trillion years hopefully. All Right, Well, we
Speaker 3: hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you
Speaker 3: 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,
Speaker 1: disc Org, Insta, and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.