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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I'll be chatting with

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Speaker 2: Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of

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Speaker 2: Rochester and author of the new book The Little Book

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Speaker 2: of Aliens, which is available now in all fourmats. So hey,

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Speaker 2: let's jump right into the conversation. I think you're going

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Speaker 2: to really enjoy this one. Hi, Adam, Welcome to the show.

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Speaker 2: It's great to be here. Thanks so much. You discussed

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Speaker 2: this a bit in the new book, The Little Book

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Speaker 2: of Aliens, and of course I have to ask you

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Speaker 2: about it here in the episode. How did you first

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Speaker 2: become interested in the possibility of alien life?

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Speaker 3: Well, hard for me to remember a time when I

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Speaker 3: wasn't interested in the possibility of alien life. As I

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Speaker 3: discussed in the book, I got my start on this

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Speaker 3: when I was five years old, when I wandered into

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Speaker 3: my dad's library. My dad was a writer who had

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Speaker 3: an interest in science fiction, science and science fiction, and

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Speaker 3: they're on the lower levels of the library, you know,

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Speaker 3: the lower shelf. There was all of his pulp science

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Speaker 3: fiction magazines, all those amazing stories and Isaac Asmanov's you

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Speaker 3: know whatever, and those pictures. You know, every cover had

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Speaker 3: a semi lurid illustration of dudes bouncing around on you know,

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Speaker 3: alien worlds and michel entire space suits or rocket ships

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Speaker 3: blasting through space, or bug eyed monsters and aliens, And

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Speaker 3: from that moment on, like, I've never had any other choice. So,

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Speaker 3: you know, after thirty years of being an astronomer, of

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Speaker 3: being an astrophysicist, including you know, a fair amount of

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Speaker 3: time recently last decade or so focusing on astrobiology, I

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Speaker 3: wrote the book because I really wanted people to see

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Speaker 3: how close we were to scientists finding evidence one way

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Speaker 3: or the other for alien life where they live on

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Speaker 3: alien planets.

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Speaker 2: Now I'll get back to like the real hunt for

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Speaker 2: extraterrestrial life here in a second. But on the subject

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Speaker 2: of just media that inspired you, were there any particular

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Speaker 2: favorite films? And I have to add the caveat. I'm

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Speaker 2: asking this as someone who appreciates both higher browse sci

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Speaker 2: fi but also the silliest cheese, So don't shy away

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Speaker 2: from mentioning anything from the discount Bend.

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Speaker 3: Plan nine from Outer Space. No, No, that actually not

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Speaker 3: so Listen. I'm a huge science fiction fan, huge, and

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Speaker 3: so when I was a kid, I devoured everything there was.

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Speaker 3: And you kids today don't know how bad it was

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Speaker 3: back then. Right back then, you literally had Star Trek reruns.

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Speaker 3: So this is the mid seventies, right when I'm coming

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Speaker 3: up as a kid Star Trek reruns. You had Lost

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Speaker 3: in Space, which was terrible, right, and then there was

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Speaker 3: all the bad science fiction movies from the fifties that

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Speaker 3: would rerun on like Saturday morning at eleven thirty what

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Speaker 3: was called Chiller Theater, which was you know, on Channel

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Speaker 3: eleven back in the days when you only had like

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Speaker 3: five or six channels. So I devoured everything. And so

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Speaker 3: the things, the things, the highbrow stuff I loved were

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Speaker 3: my dad. I remember one night my dad wakened me

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Speaker 3: up and say, come on, come on, you gotta watch this.

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Speaker 3: And it was Forbidden Planet, right, which is this classic

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Speaker 3: which is amazing because it's it's the embodiment of the

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifties pulp science fiction. But it's really smart, right,

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Speaker 3: It's really actually based on the Tempest and the key

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Speaker 3: idea that it has in there, which I explore in

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Speaker 3: the book quite a bit. I have a whole chapter

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Speaker 3: on it is the idea of dead ancient alien civilizations, right,

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Speaker 3: the vision of the Krell machinery when they're down in

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Speaker 3: the planet, if anybody's ever seen there. So, you know,

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Speaker 3: so all of Star Trek, all you know, movies like

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Speaker 3: This Island Earth, you know, which wasn't so great, but

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Speaker 3: so all of that really shaped my own on thinking

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Speaker 3: about about aliens and about space. It mattered quite a

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Speaker 3: bit to me. There's also a show called UFOs, which

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Speaker 3: do you know of that one? Have you ever seen that?

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Speaker 2: I don't think I know that one.

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Speaker 3: It was it was a British show. It was actually

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Speaker 3: a precursor to Space nineteen ninety nine, you know Space. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: so this was actually the same kind of models. You'll

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Speaker 3: see a lot of similarities, and it was it ran

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Speaker 3: you know, you can find it on the internet you want,

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Speaker 3: and it was this idea that you know, the the

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Speaker 3: UFOs were coming to steal human organs and there was

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Speaker 3: a secret shadow organization which was protecting the Earth from that.

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Speaker 3: And I loved that as well. So pretty much anything

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Speaker 3: I could get my hands on I watched endlessly, And

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Speaker 3: of course Marvel Comics because there was a whole space

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Speaker 3: side of you know, star Lord. You know when I

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Speaker 3: when I, you know, I was the the science advisor

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Speaker 3: for Doctor Strange and I got to meet Kevin Figi.

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Speaker 3: We were, you know, in the room working on the

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Speaker 3: script together, and he asked me, you know, what was

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Speaker 3: your favorite star Marvel and I got to like totally

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Speaker 3: nerd out. And there's this like one, this little known

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Speaker 3: edition of star Lord from seventies, which was actually my

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Speaker 3: favorite because it was a space opera, it was a

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Speaker 3: space adventure. So all of that really shaped my pop

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Speaker 3: culture understanding. And up until streaming, I think I could

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Speaker 3: claim I'd seen every science fiction movie TV show ever

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Speaker 3: made by stream. When streaming happened, it was I was overwhelmed.

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Speaker 2: But now I'm glad you mentioned like the you know,

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Speaker 2: aliens coming for Organs and so forth, because of course

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Speaker 2: that's a huge part of it, the scarier visions of

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Speaker 2: what alien contact might consist of, and like for my

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Speaker 2: own part, I remember there was a short period in

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Speaker 2: my childhood when I had just seen some UFO episodes

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Speaker 2: of Unsolved Mysteries, and I became legitimately scared for a

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Speaker 2: short amount of time that UFO abduction could happen to me.

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Speaker 2: I just wasn't exposed to like speculative or that many

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Speaker 2: optimistic views of what UFOs could consist of. So I

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Speaker 2: can't help but wonder how many others were sort of

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Speaker 2: fundamentally primed that way toward the possibility of alien life.

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, I have the the there's a chapter

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Speaker 3: in the book where I look at sort of the

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Speaker 3: pop culture effects of aliens, because you know, one of

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Speaker 3: the mazing things that is happening right now, and which

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Speaker 3: is really kind of the purpose or one purpose of

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Speaker 3: the book is to show people how the search for

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Speaker 3: life in the universe is now totally scientifically legitimate, which

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Speaker 3: it wasn't when I was coming up. When I was

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Speaker 3: coming up as a graduate student in the eighties, the

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Speaker 3: search for life was either a joke or it was

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Speaker 3: considered a dead end because the Viking probes in the

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Speaker 3: seventies to Mars hadn't really found anything. So it was

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Speaker 3: a really sort of dead period in the search for life.

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Speaker 3: And but now, you know, for reasons I'm sure we're

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Speaker 3: going to talk about and the reason they know that,

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Speaker 3: which is what a lot of the book is about.

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Speaker 3: We're really you know, the next giant telescope is only

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Speaker 3: is going to be built focusing on the detection of life.

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Speaker 3: So you're right that the pop culture really shaped a

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Speaker 3: lot of people's opinions about what we should think about

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Speaker 3: with aliens and what life in the universe might be. Now,

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Speaker 3: you know, as I discussed in the book, and I'm

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Speaker 3: sure we're going to talk about, I'm very skeptical about

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Speaker 3: that UFOs have anything to do with life outside the universe.

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Speaker 3: But again, as you say, the pop culture stuff, the

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Speaker 3: UFOs and the TV and the movies, whether highbrow or lowbrow,

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Speaker 3: shaped people's understanding of how we should be thinking about

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Speaker 3: life in the universe. And the amazing thing about the

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Speaker 3: science is the science takes us actually in a more

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Speaker 3: imaginative and more amazing directions because you've got to really

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Speaker 3: try and think about it in a systematic way. But

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Speaker 3: it's it's interesting to note, right, many people are afraid

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Speaker 3: of aliens or feeling, you know, they're they're it's either

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Speaker 3: one either the aliens are like these gods who are

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Speaker 3: coming down to give us the cures for cancer, or

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Speaker 3: they're coming to eat us or mate with us, you know,

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Speaker 3: one of the others.

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Speaker 2: So you mentioned the seventies being this pivotal point and

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Speaker 2: you and you you talked about this in the book.

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Speaker 2: Why did this What did the serious qut it, serious

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Speaker 2: consideration of potential alien life look like prior to the

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Speaker 2: seventies and the advent of SETI and what like? What

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Speaker 2: were the limiting factors in how did it change?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? So what's interesting is this question are we alone?

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Speaker 3: Is one of the oldest human questions around. You can

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Speaker 3: see the Greeks arguing about it, and you know, the

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Speaker 3: book starts with this discussion of the history of this.

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Speaker 3: So Aristotle and Democratists, you can see them kind of

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Speaker 3: arguing with each other in writing from two thousand, five

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Speaker 3: hundred years ago. Giordano Bruno gets burnt at the stake,

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Speaker 3: you know, for heresy, which had to do with Catholic doctrine.

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Speaker 3: But really one of the reasons he got in trouble

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Speaker 3: was he was advocating for this Copernican view that the

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Speaker 3: Earth was just one planet of many, and many of

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Speaker 3: those planets out among the stars would be inhabited. But

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Speaker 3: what happens, actually the first pivotal decade is the fifties,

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Speaker 3: because you get the Fermi paradox and you get the

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Speaker 3: Drake equation. You get these two things happening at the

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Speaker 3: beginning of the end, which are the first sort of

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Speaker 3: scientific the scientific questions, questions that you could ask a

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Speaker 3: you could ask scientifically, could pose a research problem and

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Speaker 3: carry it out. And then Drake, Frank Drake carries out

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Speaker 3: at the end of that nineteen sixty the first astro

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Speaker 3: biological experiment ever done. So he takes two radio telescopes

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Speaker 3: and he points him at the sky and he looks

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Speaker 3: for signals for from you know, an intelligent civilization something

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Speaker 3: like might be beaming off of Earth right now. And

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Speaker 3: that is the first time anybody's been able to do

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Speaker 3: any kind of experiment asking whether it's dumb life, you know,

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Speaker 3: microbial life, or smart life meaning that builds civilizations. So

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Speaker 3: that launches SETI. That launches the scientific inquiry about a

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Speaker 3: life in the universe. And through most of the sixties

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Speaker 3: it's it's you know, now SETI becomes a field, but

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Speaker 3: it's very marginal. It's still in the you know, there's

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Speaker 3: a few brave scientists doing it, but it's still kind

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Speaker 3: of seen to be kind of out there. And then

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Speaker 3: what happens is the UFOs and everything that's going on

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Speaker 3: with the UFOs, which is, you know, tends to be

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Speaker 3: the conspiracy theories and the hoaxes, and the that starts

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Speaker 3: to cloud the public's opinion about and the sign tis

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Speaker 3: even opinion about things like SETI. Now NASA is also

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Speaker 3: at the same time conducting searches, is thinking about life

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Speaker 3: on planets in the Solar System. So there's the Viking

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Speaker 3: landers to Mars, which scoop up some soil and try

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Speaker 3: and test for sort of earthlike microbes. Those have inconclusive results,

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Speaker 3: negative or inconclusive results. So by the time you coming

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Speaker 3: into the eighties, the search for life in the universe

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Speaker 3: is either you still have this sort of what we

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Speaker 3: call the giggle factor that if you tried to mention

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Speaker 3: the search for life in the universe, particularly the search

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Speaker 3: for intelligent life, meaning industrial technological life, yeah, eyebrows are

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Speaker 3: going to raise Congress literally some congressmen make Hay and

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Speaker 3: I talk about this the giggle factor in the book

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Speaker 3: and show people how this happened. Congress like doesn't even

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Speaker 3: allow NASA to fund SETI because the congressmen are like,

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Speaker 3: this is a waste of taxpayers dollars. You know, So

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Speaker 3: by the time you're into the late eighties when I'm

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Speaker 3: a graduate student. SETI is just there's a few brave

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Speaker 3: pioneers who are living on you know, prime funds, not

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Speaker 3: that SETI. Set he never really got a lot of funding,

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Speaker 3: and that's an important part of part of this, But

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Speaker 3: it's living on fumes. There really is barely any SETI

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Speaker 3: going on, and people the thought about, you know, even

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Speaker 3: dumb life on planets had stalled, and so by the

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Speaker 3: you know, when you're coming into the nineteen nineties, the

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Speaker 3: idea of life in the universe is almost nobody cares.

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Speaker 3: Nobody's paying except for you know, some pioneers. And certainly

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Speaker 3: when I was a scientist then there was a sense

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Speaker 3: of like, I don't even think about that. That's a

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Speaker 3: dead end, you know, or you're going to become a joke.

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Speaker 3: Don't waste your career on that, which is amazing, because

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Speaker 3: again that's the point of the book is to show

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Speaker 3: that right now, this is the most this is the

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Speaker 3: most important issue in astronomer or one of the most

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Speaker 3: important issues in astronomy. If you're a young astronomer, good

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Speaker 3: shot that you're going to aim your career at astrobiology.

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Speaker 3: Quite a change, right.

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Speaker 2: Oh, yes, So you mentioned the for Me paradox and

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Speaker 2: the Drake equation. What do you think are the most

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Speaker 2: important fundamentals for listeners are just like the alien curious,

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Speaker 2: alien optimist or skeptics out there to take home concerning

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Speaker 2: these two properties.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question, Rob because the point here

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Speaker 3: is that whether you are into UFOs or not into UFOs,

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Speaker 3: if you have, if you want to think about life

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Speaker 3: in the universe at all, you And that's why, you

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Speaker 3: know why I lay out this history in the book

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Speaker 3: in this short fun chapters. You know, it is literally

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Speaker 3: a little book of aliens because I wanted people and

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Speaker 3: easy to have an easy way in and out. For this,

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Speaker 3: you have to deal with the Fermi paradox and the

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Speaker 3: Drake equation. So let's deal with Let's think about the

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Speaker 3: Fermi paradox first. The Fermi paradox just asked the question,

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Speaker 3: if life is common, particularly intelligent life, then why aren't

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Speaker 3: they everywhere? Right? And that can take two forms. One

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Speaker 3: is why aren't they here now? Right? But Fermi recognized

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Speaker 3: very quickly He's he kind of did the calculation in

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Speaker 3: his head and saw that a spacefaring race, even if

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Speaker 3: it's going at a it can only go at a

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Speaker 3: tenth of the speed of light, which we believe is

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Speaker 3: the limit for any and nothing can travel faster than light.

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Speaker 3: That you would cross the galaxy and you could hop

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Speaker 3: from star system to star system in a time that's

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Speaker 3: very short compared to the the galaxy long for us,

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Speaker 3: it's on the order of six hundred thousand years. But

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Speaker 3: in terms of the galaxy, the galaxy should be entirely populated.

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Speaker 3: So one way of interpreting that is why aren't they

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Speaker 3: here now? Right? And so there's various answers to that.

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Speaker 3: But there's an indirect version of that which is more

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Speaker 3: important because people often have this feeling that, oh, every

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Speaker 3: night astronomers like take their telescopes and look at the

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Speaker 3: sky searching for evidence of alien intelligences, right, and nothing

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Speaker 3: could be further from the truth. Right, that's a version

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Speaker 3: what I call that the indirect Fermi paradoxes. Well, we've looked,

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Speaker 3: and we haven't found but as I said, because of

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Speaker 3: the giggle factor, we haven't looked, right, we have not

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Speaker 3: done those searches. There's never been any money funding to

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Speaker 3: use telescopes to do that. So Jason Wright and colleagues

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Speaker 3: did a study where they showed that if the sky

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Speaker 3: was like the ocean, how much of the ocean have

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Speaker 3: we searched and you know, and aliens were fish, how

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Speaker 3: much of the ocean have we searched for? And answer

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Speaker 3: is a hot up, right, that's all. You take all

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Speaker 3: the steady searches and you can buy them. And we've

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Speaker 3: basically looked at a hot tubs worth of ocean. Now,

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Speaker 3: if you looked at a hot tubs worth of water

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Speaker 3: and didn't find any fish, would you then say, up,

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Speaker 3: there's no fish in the ocean. So the answer is

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Speaker 3: we just haven't looked. But we are looking now, Like

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Speaker 3: finally there's funding, right, finally there's there's a community of

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Speaker 3: scientists with the backing of you know, the government science

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Speaker 3: agencies to really start this search for life. Whether it's

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Speaker 3: whether it's again dumb life or smart life, it doesn't matter.

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Speaker 3: We're finally we finally know where to look, We finally

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Speaker 3: know how to look, and we're looking. So that's the

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Speaker 3: Fermi paradox, the Drake equation. What's important about it was

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Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty after doing this his first search, he

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Speaker 3: was asked by the Government of All People to lead

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Speaker 3: a workshop on interstellar communications. And so they brought together

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Speaker 3: a few people, the eight or nine researchers, and what

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Speaker 3: Drake needed to do he needed an agenda for the meeting,

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Speaker 3: like what do we even talk about? And what he

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Speaker 3: did is he took the problem the question is how

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Speaker 3: many intelligence civilizations are there in the galaxy, and he

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Speaker 3: broke it up into seven sub problems, which when you

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Speaker 3: multiplied their answer together, you get the answer to the

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Speaker 3: big question. And it turned out that those sub problems

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Speaker 3: became so famous because he offered people a way of

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Speaker 3: breaking this big problem up into smaller problems that you

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Speaker 3: could actually do research on. For example, the first sub

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Speaker 3: problem is how many stars are there? Right, that's the

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Speaker 3: first thing you want to know, and we already he

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Speaker 3: already knew that, right. The second sub problem was how

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Speaker 3: many planets are there? Or what's the fraction of stars

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Speaker 3: with planets? At the time, nobody knew what that was.

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Speaker 3: It could have been that the universe was barren, you know,

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Speaker 3: that our solar system was a freak and most stars

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Speaker 3: don't have planets. And now we've answered that question thanks

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Speaker 3: to the Drake equation, and people said like, oh, that's

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Speaker 3: the next question we need to answer, we now know

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Speaker 3: that every star in the sky hosts a family of worlds.

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Speaker 3: That is, that's one of the that happened in the nineties,

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Speaker 3: the beginning of the nineties, and that was the beginning

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Speaker 3: of this change, right. That was a massive revolution in

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Speaker 3: astrobiology because it told us that the place where life forms,

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Speaker 3: which is planets, those are common, those are as cheap

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Speaker 3: as dirt. And then the next term in the Drake

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Speaker 3: equation was for every star that has planets, how many

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Speaker 3: planets are in the right place for life to form,

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Speaker 3: which we think has to do with liquid water on

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Speaker 3: the surface. What's the you know, how many are in

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Speaker 3: this this Goldilocks ban of orbits where it's not too hot,

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Speaker 3: not too cold, so you can have liquid water on

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Speaker 3: the surface. And the answer for that is one in five.

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Speaker 3: So go outside tonight, look up at the night sky.

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Speaker 3: Every star you see has has worlds orbiting it, and

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Speaker 3: every five of those has a planet that's sitting there

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Speaker 3: where the experiment with life and civilizations even is being

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Speaker 3: run by the universe.

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Speaker 2: So getting into what we're looking for, I thought we

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Speaker 2: thought we might ask about techno signatures and biosignatures in

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Speaker 2: what in twenty nineteen, he became principal investigator on NASA's

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Speaker 2: first grant to study techno signatures. So what are they

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Speaker 2: and how are we looking for them? And what have

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Speaker 2: we found?

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Speaker 3: Yes, So the amazing thing about these revolutions, so the

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Speaker 3: exoplanet revolution, as I call it, and started in nineteen

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Speaker 3: ninety five when we discovered our first planet. By within

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Speaker 3: another ten or twenty years or so, we had figured

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Speaker 3: out how to look into the atmospheres of those planets.

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Speaker 3: And what happens is, you know, we detect planets as

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Speaker 3: they when they orbit in front of their star. It's

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Speaker 3: like a little tiny eclipse. The planet passes in front

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Speaker 3: of the star and blocks the light. But if the

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Speaker 3: planet has an atmosphere, there's a little while when the

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Speaker 3: light from the star passes through the atmosphere and reaches us.

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Speaker 3: And when that happens, it leaves an imprint. There's some

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Speaker 3: of the light is absorbed by chemicals, compounds, molecule in

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Speaker 3: the atmosphere, and we can use that. Every one of

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Speaker 3: those imprints is like a fingerprint of what's in that atmosphere.

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Speaker 3: So we call that atmospheric characterization. And so what's in

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Speaker 3: that imprint, It potentially are signatures of things like a biosphere. Right,

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Speaker 3: So the Earth has a biosphere. It's the sum total

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Speaker 3: of all the life on the planet, all the plants,

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Speaker 3: all the plankton. It leaves a giant imprint in the

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Speaker 3: light from Earth, and the same thing can happen in

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Speaker 3: an alien world. So a biosignature would be something like oxygen.

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Speaker 3: Right on Earth. The only reason oxygen is in the

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Speaker 3: atmosphere is because life puts it there. If life goes away,

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Speaker 3: the oxygen goes away very quickly. So if you discover

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Speaker 3: oxygen in an alien world, that's a good shot that

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Speaker 3: that planet has life, a robust biosphere. So oxygen dimethyl sulfide,

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Speaker 3: that is a chemical which is in Earth's atmosphere. It's

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Speaker 3: only there because all the plankton are kind of fartening

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Speaker 3: it out there. So we have a whole long list

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Speaker 3: and that we're we're generating more and more lists of

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Speaker 3: bio signatures which if we detect them, that will be

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Speaker 3: and that will be evidence that there's life on that planet.

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Speaker 3: Techno signatures this is this is a newer field. And

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Speaker 3: as you say, I'm the principal investigator on the first

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Speaker 3: time NASA was willing to fund the search for intelligent life.

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Speaker 3: Last NASA had been funding the search for dumb life

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Speaker 3: for a while, but because of that giggle factor, techno

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Speaker 3: signatures or you know, intelligent life was not on the list.

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Speaker 3: Now it is. So the group I'm part of we

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Speaker 3: are looking for or we're designing, we're coming up with

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Speaker 3: the list of possible techno signatures. So one, what are they? One?

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Speaker 3: We just wrote a paper on this. Chemicals, industrial chemicals,

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Speaker 3: So for example, chlorofluorocarbons or CFC's. These are the things

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Speaker 3: that you know, we were using in air conditioners that

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Speaker 3: got pumped into the atmosphere and we're destroying the ozone hole,

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Speaker 3: right those things actually, so either by polue or if

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Speaker 3: you were trying to terraform mars, you would purposely pump

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Speaker 3: them into an atmosphere because they're great greenhouse gases. Actually,

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Speaker 3: so we showed that even with the James web Space telescope,

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Speaker 3: you could detect chloral flora carbons in the atmosphere of

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Speaker 3: a world that was forty light years away and if

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Speaker 3: it had levels close to our level even now, so

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Speaker 3: those that's if we and chloroflora carbons cannot be there

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Speaker 3: is just no way nature produces them. They're too complex

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Speaker 3: and weird, or so discover those you've discovered there's a

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Speaker 3: technological civilization there on that planet. If you discover those

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Speaker 3: in a planet's atmosphere, city lights, the if the you know,

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Speaker 3: if a civilization is using artificial illumination, we may be

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Speaker 3: able to detect the spectral signature, the signature in light

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Speaker 3: of those cities. The large scale use of solar panels,

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Speaker 3: you would be able to see the reflectants, all that

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Speaker 3: light bouncing off the solar panels, you'd be able to see.

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Speaker 3: And the list goes on and on. We may be

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Speaker 3: able to detect if you have a lot of satellites

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Speaker 3: in orbit, in geosynchronous orbit, you might be able to

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Speaker 3: detect they call that the Clark Belt after Arthur C. Clark.

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Speaker 3: You might be able to detect that. So, you know,

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Speaker 3: the list goes on and these we're figuring out now

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Speaker 3: exactly how to look for those. So once people start

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Speaker 3: doing these observations, they'll be able to they'll be able

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Speaker 3: to know exactly where to look. So it's amazing we

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Speaker 3: actually have the technology now so that over the next

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Speaker 3: ten years, twenty years, thirty years, we're going to have

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Speaker 3: actual data relevant to the question, whereas the last two thousand,

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Speaker 3: five hundred years have been people yelling at each other

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Speaker 3: or burning each other at the stake.

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Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating that with the techno signatures, you're

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Speaker 2: talking about things that have a lot more nuance to them,

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Speaker 2: I guess arguably compared to what might pop into a

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Speaker 2: lot of Sci five viewers' heads, not being something like

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Speaker 2: a Dyson sphere or a diceon cloud something they've seen

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Speaker 2: on Star Trek.

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Speaker 3: And so right, yeah, well, you know, the Dyson sphere

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Speaker 3: is still ongoing though there's still people looking for, you know,

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Speaker 3: alien megastructure. Who doesn't love saying alien megastructure. That's still

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Speaker 3: an ongoing concern. And you know, with one of the

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Speaker 3: important pieces of the history that I talk about in

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Speaker 3: the book is boujoyan star or Tabby star people called him.

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Speaker 3: And this was a this was a star we were

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Speaker 3: looking at with you know, the Kepler Space telescope, which

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Speaker 3: is a planet finder. And rather than the sort of

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Speaker 3: smooth the clips that we expect when a planet passes

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Speaker 3: in front of the star, what they were seeing signals

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Speaker 3: of like they couldn't understand it. It was like the

430
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:32,800
Speaker 3: light from the star was blotting out and then coming

431
00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:36,600
Speaker 3: back and then blotting out again, blotting, blotting nothing and

432
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,199
Speaker 3: for you know, so when people were thinking about this,

433
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:42,320
Speaker 3: they made their list of possible you know what this

434
00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:47,280
Speaker 3: was comets, clouds of dust, broken up planets, and at

435
00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:52,120
Speaker 3: the bottom list was alien megastructures. And that was twenty fourteen,

436
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:56,160
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. That blew the doors off of the old

437
00:22:56,520 --> 00:22:58,600
Speaker 3: the fact that they even mentioned this in the paper

438
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:00,680
Speaker 3: and that everyone was like, oh, yeah, okay, it could

439
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:03,360
Speaker 3: be kind of signaled that, you know, if you're doing

440
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:06,679
Speaker 3: this work, you can't laugh, you can't giggle about that

441
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:10,800
Speaker 3: possibility anymore. If you're going to stare at hundreds thousands

442
00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:15,879
Speaker 3: of planets and you know, look for biosignatures, you can't

443
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 3: ignore the possibility of that some of these are going

444
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 3: to have techno signatures. So that was really that was

445
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:25,280
Speaker 3: an art an apocryphal moment in this study where people

446
00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:29,080
Speaker 3: were finally, you know, the giggle factor was gone and

447
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,840
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, sure, okay, that's one of the things

448
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:34,040
Speaker 3: we have to consider. It's probably last on the list

449
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:36,679
Speaker 3: because you want to consider things you already know exist,

450
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 3: but it's there, and then you know, at some point

451
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:43,720
Speaker 3: we may have a planet where you really are going

452
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:44,680
Speaker 3: to take that seriously.

453
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:47,399
Speaker 2: Now, I of course have to ask you about the

454
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:52,240
Speaker 2: various alleged UFO evidence and the recent congressional hearings on

455
00:23:52,359 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 2: UFOs or UAPs. Do you feel like this had an

456
00:23:55,560 --> 00:24:00,240
Speaker 2: impact on like the average person's interest in or willingness to,

457
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 2: you know, give credence to UFO reports or to give

458
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:06,240
Speaker 2: credence to the possibility of alien life. And how should

459
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:10,880
Speaker 2: we logically consider the current state of UFO UAP evidence

460
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:11,720
Speaker 2: or lack thereof.

461
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 3: Yes. So that's the reason why about a third of

462
00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:19,440
Speaker 3: the book is about UFOs and UAPs, because I really

463
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 3: wanted people to understand how science sees them, how scientists

464
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,119
Speaker 3: see them. Because, of course, as you say, because of

465
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 3: pop culture, right, the UFOs have they they you know,

466
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 3: the alien invasion happened in the fifties and they won.

467
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 3: They live in our heads, you know. In many ways,

468
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 3: for me, the prevalence of UAPs and UFOs now is

469
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 3: actually because of what's been happening with the science right

470
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,919
Speaker 3: since the nineteen nineties. Every week there's a new story

471
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:50,480
Speaker 3: earth like planet found orbiting other stars, the fact that

472
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 3: scientists have been so clearly been willing to take the

473
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:59,120
Speaker 3: search for life seriously on alien worlds, I think helped

474
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 3: in some way smooth the ground for this you know,

475
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:07,120
Speaker 3: explosion of interest in UAPs and the whole I document

476
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,080
Speaker 3: both the history of you know, UAP or UFOs going

477
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 3: back to nineteen forty seven, the first the first sighting,

478
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:14,960
Speaker 3: and people really need to know that because that shapes

479
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 3: a lot of UFO culture to what's happening now with

480
00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 3: that twenty seventeen New York Times article. Right, that's what

481
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 3: blew everything out of the water, with those three videos

482
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 3: which have been you know, cycle endlessly over and over again,

483
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 3: and people sort of think there's lots of videos. There's

484
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:32,399
Speaker 3: really only those three. But the important thing is I

485
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 3: think that for people to understand where we're at right

486
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 3: and where we're going, and that's what I try and

487
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,399
Speaker 3: give people in the book. So the first thing is

488
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 3: that absolutely for a scientists, there is no evidence, not

489
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 3: even close, that would link anything about UFOs or UAPs

490
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 3: to alien life to something non human. Right, And you actually,

491
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 3: and that's why I wanted people to you know, if

492
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 3: you actually look even what has happened since twenty seventeen

493
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 3: that this that conclusion holds. You know, scientists are brutal.

494
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:06,959
Speaker 3: We're really really mean to each other, you know about

495
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 3: like trying to link a piece of data to a claim, right,

496
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 3: and where we are brutal and nasty to each other,

497
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:16,920
Speaker 3: because that is how we can ensure that we're correct.

498
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 3: If we weren't brutal and nasty to each other, you

499
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:22,919
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't be using these amazing technologies, right, you know,

500
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:29,199
Speaker 3: quantum mechanics, electronics, you know, electromagnetism. All the technology, all

501
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 3: the science that goes into the technology you and I

502
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 3: are using right now was because scientists are so mean

503
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 3: to each other. And the data for UFOs and UAPs

504
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:40,840
Speaker 3: just isn't even close to that. It's either blurry photographs,

505
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:43,760
Speaker 3: which haven't changed over seventy years, right, I mean there's

506
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 3: still blurry photographs come on, or personal testimony and personal testimony.

507
00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 3: It's not much science can do with that. So I

508
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:53,879
Speaker 3: think it's great that the pilots feel that they you know,

509
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 3: pilots have the freedom to report what they're seeing because

510
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 3: you know they are seeing something, the question is what

511
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 3: are they seeing? So like Ryan Grades, you know he's

512
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 3: one of the pilots who's involved with this. We you

513
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 3: and I was on his podcast. You know, I've had

514
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 3: some really great conversations, So that's great, and I'm all

515
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 3: for an open, transparent, you know, investigation by like they'd say,

516
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 3: the NASA panel or Project Galileo. It's for to investigate this, right,

517
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 3: and let's just let's go where the data leads us.

518
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:25,520
Speaker 3: But as of right now, that data does not lead

519
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,920
Speaker 3: us anywhere that would point to extraterrestrial So, for example,

520
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:32,480
Speaker 3: at the nat SO, the NASA panel held a hearing

521
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 3: and you know, they were talking about their results and

522
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 3: the results of some of the other agencies, and you know,

523
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 3: one of the things that was talked about there was,

524
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 3: you know, of the of the thousand or eight hundred

525
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 3: or so sightings, including those you know from the military,

526
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 3: that the government has and announced in that famous report

527
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:53,400
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, only six percent couldn't be explained, right,

528
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:57,159
Speaker 3: only six percent, right, which means that the sky the

529
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,160
Speaker 3: other ninety four percent had reasonable explanations. The sky is

530
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 3: not full of unexplainable stuff, which you know, the hype

531
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 3: around UFOs and UAPs makes it seem like, oh my god.

532
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 3: And then even that six percent, you know, some of

533
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:12,200
Speaker 3: those are unexplained because you don't even have you can't

534
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 3: even begin to make an explanation. Now. I will note though,

535
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 3: and I talk about this in the book, that some

536
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 3: of the ones in the unexplained category are truly when

537
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 3: you hear the stories, you know are truly freaky deeky,

538
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:26,159
Speaker 3: right in the sense like a ghost story, it raises

539
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,520
Speaker 3: the hair on the back of your neck. But until

540
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:32,879
Speaker 3: you do the research, you know those ones are probably

541
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,159
Speaker 3: we'll see, we'll just see where those go. But the

542
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:40,720
Speaker 3: fact is the vast overwhelming majority are either explainable or

543
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 3: don't have enough data to explain, with a tiny minority

544
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:46,120
Speaker 3: that are like, wow, okay, that's interesting, and then we're

545
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 3: just gonna have to do the re But again, that's

546
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 3: so even with that category, that's not a place that

547
00:28:51,280 --> 00:28:53,640
Speaker 3: you're or that's not enough to be make this jump

548
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 3: to this enormous conclusion that uh, that that aliens are

549
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 3: visiting us, because you know, again, you need this very

550
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 3: solid data chain, not just personal testimony, not that somebody said, oh,

551
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 3: the radar operator said it was moving at this speed.

552
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 3: I need to see the instrument. I need to know

553
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 3: how that instrument was built. I need to know everything,

554
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 3: just like I would with the James Webspace Telescope.

555
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 2: So how well prepared are we culturally and or institutionally too,

556
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 2: either you know, have that glimpse of some distant world

557
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 2: where there's a strong possibility that what we're looking at

558
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 2: is you know, anything ranging from a techno signature that

559
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 2: we can put stock in, or some sort of a megastructure,

560
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 2: or or even on the other end of the spectrum

561
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 2: like actual first contact. Like how how prepared are we

562
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 2: for those possibilities.

563
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 3: I believe that it will be the most profound discovery

564
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 3: in human history. It will it will reshape our understanding.

565
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 3: And again I don't care if we did, even if

566
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:02,000
Speaker 3: we find dumb light, even if we detect a planet

567
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 3: and you know, through its study, find that it's got

568
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 3: a biosphere that is equally it doesn't have to be

569
00:30:07,440 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 3: a civilization, right And the reason for that is life

570
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 3: is so bizarre compared to every other physical system. So

571
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:16,479
Speaker 3: I'm involved. I have a part of a project. I'm

572
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 3: actually the PI on this other study where we're also

573
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 3: just looking at the physics of life. We're trying to

574
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 3: answer why is life so different from every other physical system. Right,

575
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 3: So for example, you know, black holes are weird, black

576
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 3: holes are crazy, right, But a black hole will never

577
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 3: invent a giant rabbit that can punch you in the face,

578
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 3: which is a kangaroo, right. Only evolution does that. Life

579
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 3: is the only physical system which invents, which creates, which innovates,

580
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 3: and right now, as far as we know, we're the

581
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 3: only example of life in the entire universe. Like, you know,

582
00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 3: are we a one off? Are we an accident? Are

583
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 3: we a mistake? Or is life with all of its

584
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 3: creative capacity common? Because even if it's just life, even

585
00:30:57,960 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 3: if it's just microbes, it means that we're part of

586
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 3: a community, a cosmic community of life. And because of

587
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:07,720
Speaker 3: life's innovative capacities, who knows, you know, if it's if

588
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 3: life is common, who knows where it's gone. I don't

589
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 3: need to find an alien civilization. I just need to

590
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 3: find a microbe because then I know that evolution is

591
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 3: something that the universe does more than just here, and

592
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 3: evolution is unbounded. Evolution can do anything. So I don't

593
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 3: think we would have riots in the street, you know,

594
00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 3: I don't think that's going to be necessary, But I

595
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 3: do think, you know, if people want an example, the

596
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 3: Copernican Revolution, right, you know, in fourteen hundred, you went

597
00:31:36,240 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 3: to bed and you were like, oh, the sun's going

598
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 3: to rise tomorrow because the Earth is the center of

599
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 3: the universe and the sun goes around the Earth. And

600
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 3: then two hundred years later you went to bed and

601
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, the sun doesn't come up. The horizon

602
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 3: goes down because the Earth is spinning as it goes

603
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 3: around the Sun. And that was just an astronomical discovery.

604
00:31:54,160 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 3: And yet the Copernican Revolution figures in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,

605
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:05,719
Speaker 3: the Protestant Reformation. It was you know, it was a

606
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 3: game changer. It actually rewired how all of humanity understood

607
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 3: itself and what was possible. So, you know, these astronomical

608
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 3: discoveries don't just sit out there in some egghead's brain.

609
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 3: You know, they matter and they always have mattered. So

610
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 3: finding life in the universe one way or the other

611
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 3: would change everything. Finding a civilization would that. Now that outright,

612
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 3: that takes us even further. And I think the most

613
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 3: important thing there is, you know, we are so horrible

614
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 3: to each other, We're such a messed up species. And

615
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 3: though we're capable of so much, and it's not clear

616
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 3: whether or not, through nuclear war, climate change, or AI,

617
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 3: whether we're going to still be around in one hundred

618
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 3: years or five hundred years. Finding a civilization, as I

619
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:48,719
Speaker 3: discussed in the book, because we did research on this,

620
00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 3: would mean we would finding a civilization means finding an

621
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,760
Speaker 3: older civilization. That's what the probability tells you. Anything you

622
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 3: find will be older, and that means somebody made it right.

623
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 3: It would be It would be like an existence proof

624
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 3: that long lived civilizations are possible, and without we don't

625
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:05,720
Speaker 3: have to have contact with them, we don't have to

626
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 3: talk to them. Just knowing they were there would be

627
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 3: proof that, yeah, you know what, it's possible to get

628
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 3: through all of that evolutionary baggage and you know, make

629
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 3: it last for a long time.

630
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 2: That's a wonderful way of looking at it. I don't

631
00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 2: think I quite thought about that spin on it before.

632
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 3: Now.

633
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 2: Another thing you talk about in the book I wanted

634
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 2: to ask you about here is getting beyond sort of

635
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 2: the mirror image idea of what alien life consists of.

636
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 2: You know, it could be because as everyone always discusses,

637
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 2: like life on Earth and our model of intelligent life

638
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 2: is the only model we have when considering what might

639
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 2: be out there. But what else is possible?

640
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:48,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, the most fun parts of the book for me

641
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 3: where the last you know, third or so where I

642
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 3: started asking, you know, using what we understand with the

643
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 3: science we have, what might aliens look like? And what

644
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 3: might they be like? The first part of that is

645
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 3: understanding how evolution works. Right, so we know the laws

646
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 3: of physics and chemistry are universal, they're going to occur anywhere,

647
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 3: and we also Darwinian evolution is really a logic. It's

648
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 3: a logic that anything we'd want to call alive probably

649
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 3: has to follow. So that means you can use those

650
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:21,080
Speaker 3: as kind of guide rails. You know, remember when you

651
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 3: were bowling, when you were a little kid and had

652
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 3: those bumper rails that kept your ball. That's what science is, right.

653
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 3: Science is constrained imagination. You want to use your imagination,

654
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,479
Speaker 3: but you also don't want to just write science fiction story.

655
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 3: So you can use those three principles physics, chemistry, and

656
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 3: Darwinian evolution. And the cool thing about that is is

657
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 3: you see an evolution, there are two forces. There's convergence.

658
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 3: Physics and chemistry is going to give life problems. How

659
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 3: do you move around? How do you find food? You know?

660
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 3: Are you on a are you in a water world?

661
00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 3: Are you you know? Are you in a world that

662
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 3: has a surface and then an atmosphere. Evolution will probably

663
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 3: find the same kinds of solutions to those problems, like,

664
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:59,439
Speaker 3: for example, wings right. If you have an atmosphere, then

665
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,839
Speaker 3: you know, passing air over a curved surface great way

666
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 3: to get around, right, wings, But it doesn't mean the

667
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,720
Speaker 3: wings look will look anything like what has happened here.

668
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 3: Could be like some kind of weird bony frame with

669
00:35:11,719 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 3: like mucus, a gooey mucus, you know, in between them.

670
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,839
Speaker 3: That was just something I had to think of some ideas. So,

671
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 3: but evolution also works by accidents, like a trillion accidents.

672
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:27,440
Speaker 3: So this battle between accidents and sort of the you know,

673
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 3: physics and chemistry means that you know legs well, you

674
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,840
Speaker 3: should expect to find legs being you know, evolved in

675
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 3: lots of places, but don't expect them to look anything

676
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:39,799
Speaker 3: like what we have here. And in fact, accidents are

677
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 3: so important that Stephen J. Gould, to the great evolutionary biologist,

678
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 3: said that if you rewind the tape of life on Earth,

679
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 3: and allowed it to start over again. You wouldn't have

680
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 3: any species of the kind that we have today. Everything

681
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,600
Speaker 3: would be different. And this leads to a startling conclusion,

682
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 3: which is that in spite of Star Trek and in

683
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 3: spite of Star Wars, we are the only humans in

684
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 3: the entire universe. We are the only humanoids in the

685
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 3: entire universe. So we should not expect to find you know,

686
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:12,319
Speaker 3: little grays, little green men. You know, the idea of

687
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 3: a head on top of shoulders, with two arms and

688
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,240
Speaker 3: two legs, you know, maybe with an antenna on the forehead.

689
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 3: You know, I talk about the whole idea of prosthetic foreheads,

690
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 3: in the prevalence of prosthetic foreheads in sci fi. That's

691
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 3: just not going to happen. You know, the odds are

692
00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:30,640
Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty remote. So when we think about

693
00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 3: life in the universe, we should expect to be surprised,

694
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,919
Speaker 3: and we might also expect to be grossed out by

695
00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:39,399
Speaker 3: what we find. So that's the first point, and then

696
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 3: we can talk about alien ethics and alien minds. There's

697
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 3: always this idea that, oh, you know, we're going to

698
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 3: be able to figure out a way to communicate because

699
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 3: they'll you know, like Carl Sagan thought, oh, well, we'll

700
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:53,399
Speaker 3: teach them our maths and then we'll translate our maths

701
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 3: to their math, and that will be the beginning, you know.

702
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,759
Speaker 3: And then then very soon after you know, figuring out

703
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 3: that pie you know is involved with circles, we'll be

704
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 3: sharing knock knock jokes and cures for cancer. But that

705
00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:06,600
Speaker 3: may not be possible at all. And one of my

706
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 3: favorite science fiction movies is a Rival, right with that

707
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:12,439
Speaker 3: great you know, they send in aliens arrived, They send

708
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,840
Speaker 3: in a Carl Sagan kind of character and a linguist,

709
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:17,440
Speaker 3: and the Carl Sagan character with his you know, using

710
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 3: math to communicate fails spectacularly. And it's the linguist who

711
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 3: understands that language is not about mathematics, it's about the

712
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 3: experience of being in a body and living. And she

713
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 3: makes contact to find out that they actually have a

714
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 3: very different kind of physics even they live or experience

715
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 3: of physics. They live past, present, and future at the

716
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,879
Speaker 3: same time. So I think, you know, the beautiful part

717
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 3: about this study, the scientific study, is how we can

718
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:49,879
Speaker 3: use science to systematically explore or imagine the unimaginable. Right,

719
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 3: what we have to do now is get beyond the

720
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 3: terrestrial and imagine life as we don't know it. And

721
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of different projects by different people. We're

722
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 3: trying to do this in our own project, but to

723
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:05,839
Speaker 3: really break past the boundaries of Earth life. And that's

724
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:09,240
Speaker 3: really exciting because you know, it's great to go places

725
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:11,720
Speaker 3: where you know, you want to be surprised. The universe

726
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:13,319
Speaker 3: is much more imaginative than we are.

727
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I can't help but think of various

728
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,440
Speaker 2: sci fi visions we've had's they try and get into this,

729
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 2: like the differences and in what a potential extraterrestrial civilization

730
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 2: could want compared to us. And I guess like this

731
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 2: more basic, sort of Twilight Zone era version of this

732
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:33,319
Speaker 2: is like, well, we we want to explore and they

733
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 2: want to eat us, right, But you know, the more a.

734
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 3: Cookbook it's a cookbook's episode. Ever, it's still a waterful episode.

735
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 2: But but then you have all these other, you know,

736
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 2: visions I instantly think of, like I M. Banks' culture novels.

737
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 2: We're listening to the idea of like it, very advanced

738
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:54,959
Speaker 2: civilizations just ending up with fundamentally different goals and ambitions

739
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:58,320
Speaker 2: to the point where they just like sort of blink

740
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,719
Speaker 2: out of existence and so forth. And yeah, it's I

741
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:04,319
Speaker 2: feel like those kind of examples kind of help us

742
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 2: expand our horizon on imagining what aliens could want. And

743
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:12,160
Speaker 2: then also of course just sort of brings us to

744
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 2: a limit and realize, oh, there are all these other

745
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:16,359
Speaker 2: things we can't even imagine right right, And then but.

746
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:17,960
Speaker 3: That's what's cool is we have to then sort of

747
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 3: try to imagine them. We have to figure out how

748
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 3: to work our way like because the first so then

749
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:24,839
Speaker 3: what that means is and this was the fun part

750
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:27,239
Speaker 3: of exploring this in the book and people hopefully you know,

751
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 3: will take this journey along with us, is you have

752
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 3: to sort of the first thing you do is figure out, Okay,

753
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,000
Speaker 3: where am I blinded? Right? So the first job is

754
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 3: to say, what are the constraints that I've been operating

755
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 3: my where are my biases? What I what have I

756
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:43,960
Speaker 3: been blinding myself? To identify those, and then you can

757
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 3: see like, oh, oh I got to go around those,

758
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:49,640
Speaker 3: you know, and begin to work on that. So, uh,

759
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 3: you know, the science fiction writers, I've always wanted to

760
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:55,600
Speaker 3: have a meeting between scientists and science fiction writers because

761
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm a I read a lot of

762
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 3: science fiction, and I find often a lot of my

763
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:04,479
Speaker 3: best ideas that I want to pursue in research come

764
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 3: from you know, science fiction writers as storytellers have a

765
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 3: kind of imaginative capacity that I think we lack in

766
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 3: science because of these biases that we've put on for ourselves.

767
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:17,279
Speaker 3: And they're systematically doing it right in the sense that

768
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 3: they have to write a story that has, you know,

769
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,839
Speaker 3: challenges and obstacles, et cetera. So I think that could

770
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 3: be really fruitful. And that's part of this frontier that

771
00:40:25,360 --> 00:40:27,600
Speaker 3: we're on. We're going to look for life, and as

772
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:29,720
Speaker 3: we look for life, we have to look for things

773
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 3: that are not just replicas of life here on Earth.

774
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 2: Adam, thanks for coming on the show. This has been

775
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:37,359
Speaker 2: This has been a treat. This is a great way

776
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 2: to start my Wednesday morning here November. First, the book,

777
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:45,920
Speaker 2: The Little Book of Aliens is available in all formats.

778
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a great stocking stuff for,

779
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 2: if you will, for anybody on the spectrum of interest in,

780
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:58,319
Speaker 2: or skepticism about, or enthusiasm for alien life.

781
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 3: Thanks Rob, I really enjoy this conversation. Thank you for

782
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:01,640
Speaker 3: having me on.

783
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:06,360
Speaker 2: Thanks once more to Adam Frank for coming on the

784
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:09,480
Speaker 2: show again. The book is The Little Book of Aliens,

785
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 2: available now in all formats. You can read more about

786
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:18,160
Speaker 2: his work at adamfrankscience dot com and his Facebook author's

787
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 2: page is Adam Frank Author. Thanks as always to the

788
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:25,320
Speaker 2: excellent JJ Possway for producing the show. A reminder that

789
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 2: we are a science podcast here at sept Boil your

790
00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:32,240
Speaker 2: Mind with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays

791
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:34,239
Speaker 2: we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a short

792
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 2: form artifact or monster fact episode, and on Fridays we

793
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a

794
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema. And yes, we have

795
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 2: been meaning to discuss Forbidden Planned and maybe this island

796
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 2: ear for some time, so I don't know, maybe this

797
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 2: conversation will encourage us to go ahead and view one

798
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:56,760
Speaker 2: of those selections. As always, you can follow us wherever

799
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 2: you follow your various shows online where and all of

800
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:04,239
Speaker 2: our social media accounts are now reactivated, I recommend you

801
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:07,279
Speaker 2: check them out. We are st b y M podcast

802
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 2: on Instagram, so follow us there if you're not already

803
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 2: following us and if you want to get in touch

804
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 2: with us, you can email us directly at contact at

805
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 2: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

806
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:29,400
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

807
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

808
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,200
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