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