Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseThe SF Universe of Cadwell Turnbull's "The Lesson"
Daniel and Jorge talk about the connections between science and art and discuss the science and politics of Cadwell Turnbull's "The Lesson"
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Hey Daniel, I know you're a big fan of aliens.
Well, I haven't met them yet. But yeah, I'm looking forward to.
It, right, But I wonder if you really thought it through though.
What do you mean? I'm all set? I have an aliens have arrived, go bag already packed.
Oh really, what's in it? An emergency kid and some bottled water and toilet paper.
Ooh, toilet paper? Good idea. Hold on, I'm gonna put that in my leak.
You're gonna neat that if the aliens come. I guess all I'm saying is that you don't really know how friendly these aliens are going to be.
Well, that's why I want to meet the aliens. But I don't want to be the first human to meet the aliens.
Oh, I see. You want to wait until that even the first group of humans. Then you want to talk to them when they're full.
That's my plan. I want to be dessert, not appetizer.
You don't want to be the piritee. Instead, I want to be the post dinner conversation. That's my plan. So you can be the dessert. I'll be the one that chows out with them.
Sounds good.
Hi am Warham, a cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi.
I'm Daniel I'm a particle physicist, and I'm happy to be any part of dinner with aliens.
I think you're just very sweet, Daniel, So you make a good dessert.
I can be salty.
Watch that well, could be one of those desserts. It's savory and sweet.
That's right. Would you like to meet Daniel. He's a particle physicist and he's umami flavored.
And they're gonna be likeugh, no, thanks, get me some cartoonists please. They're much more out of shape physicists. They're softer. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we take stock of the shape of the universe. How squishy is it, how firm, how fit is it? And how deep is our understanding of the fundamental needs nature of this reality. We take you on a tour of everything that's out there, from the very biggest, oldest, most ancient questions about the nature of this bizarre cosmos we find ourselves in to the newest, freshest exploration of the tiniest particles that make up this reality.
That's right. We'd like to talk about all the delicious and amazing facts about physicans that are out there for humans to discover and wonder about and feel amazed about. We also like to talk about the possible theories, the maybies that are out there, are the amazing possibilities that are waiting for us to discover.
That's right, because exploring the universe requires a lot of creativity. We don't just go out there and ask the universe, hey, tell us how things work. We have to discover it. We have to put together a story that explains all of the clues that we have found, and that sometimes requires a lot of mind bending creativity about what might be going on.
Yeah, Daniel, I wonder if there's a job out there where you have to just think of possibilities about the universe and think of interesting scenarios and what could happen.
That's called theoretical physicist.
Exactly, you just make stuff up.
Yeah, you go. I wonder if the universe works this way, what would that mean and how would we check? Or like, how can I tell a story about the universe that we've together all these weird experiments that we've seen. It's all about coming up with a narrative. I think that narratives are a deep part of the way the humans think, and that's essentially what science is. Trying to tell a story about all the experiences we've had.
And you get paid for it.
If you can get the job, you get paid for it. You're also welcome to do theoretical physics on your own time as an amateur.
Oh interesting, like a non paid theoretical physicist. Can I put that in a business card?
I think that almost everybody who listens to this podcast is a non paid theoretical physicist because you guys like to think about the nature of the universe, and you email me lots of fun ideas about how the universe might work. So in some sense we are all theoretical physicists, paid or not.
Yeah, even children, I guess you know. Children are trying to figure out the world and trying to figure out what the rules are, and that's basically what physicists are, right.
Children are children that never stopped asking those questions exactly.
So on the podcast, we like to talk about the theories that are out there and also the facts that scientists have discovered, but we also like to delve into the fictional side of science, in particular science fiction.
That's right, I'm an Avid reader of science fiction, because while I do enjoy our universe, I also like thinking about other ways that the universe might be. And I think it's really important for a scientists to sort of stretch their minds a little bit and imagine that the universe might be quite different from the ones that we think it is today, because lots of times in the history of science we have had to do exactly that, to toss out our conceptions of how the universe works and accept a completely different story that makes us feel really different about the nature of humanity and our context and what it means to be alive. And one great way to do that is to have somebody else do that thinking for you. My reading science fiction novels.
Yeah, and sometimes they're right, sort of right, Like sometimes they posit crazy scenarios and they turn out to be true, Right, like the internet? Was it the internet? Or satellites one of those technologies? Didn't those come from a science fiction novel?
Yeah? I think there are lots of example there, and they're not independent. Right. I'm not the only scientist to read science fiction. And so if you're a scientist and you read science fiction, you go ooh, that's a cool idea, let's make that real. Then sometimes that happens and people start to work on projects because they read about it in a novel. So science fiction authors out there, you may be controlling the future direction of human progress.
Are they technically theoretical theoretical physicists then? Or imaginary theoretical physicists? How would you name them?
They are creative directors of theoretical physics.
Oh, there you go, the most important job obviously. Yeah. So we like to talk about science fiction, and we like to interview science fiction authors on the podcast and to talk about this unique combination of physics and art. And speaking of this interesting interplay between physics and art, Daniel, you recently had a great conversation with some physicists and and artists that are collaborating on a special project.
That's right. As you may know. I think it's a great idea for a scientists to reach out and collaborate with people in the artistic creative community, not just to benefit from their ideas, but to work together as a way to communicate science, as a way to sort of make science more accessible. You and I've had a lot of fun doing that, and I recently ran across another pair of physicists and an artist who used to be a mechanical engineer working on a fun project together.
Oh my goodness, it's like an alternate universe version of us. Should we write a sciencewitch and novel about that?
It's pretty implausible.
Are they the anti version of it? Are they like the cool, funny, attractive versions of us? And if we touch them, we're all going to annihilate each other.
Well, they're definitely younger than we are. I won't comment on our relative attractiveness.
Yeah, so you talked to them and they have a great project that's going live pretty soon.
That's right. So here's a short conversation I had with Sophia gat Nasser, a physicist, and Katherine Machen, a space artist. So then it's my pleasure to welcome two friends to the podcast. Sofia gad Nazer and Katherine Machen welcome. Can you guys begin by introducing yourselves. Tell us a little bit about you and how you guys got to work together. Sophia, Yeah, so.
I am a PhD candidate at the University of California in Irvine.
So I know you very well.
Daniel and.
One of the most awesome professors at the school.
And what I do is like cosmology, sort of like astroparticle theory type stuff with simulations.
I work on dark.
Matter, particularly, although I'm interested in many other things, like you know, dark energy and stuff like that, and inflation also with something that I'm interested in, but like my current project is working on taking dark matter halos and using them.
To explod how the seeds for super massive black holes were formed in the early Verse.
WHOA very cool. So do you think that dark matter haloes can explain how we got super massive black holes so early in the universe?
It really depends on the model. It's highly dependent on the model.
Certain models would not be able to do it, and so if you have self interactions that's a consequence.
Of it, and so it's entirely model dependent.
Very cool, Very cool. And Catherine, I'm Kat.
I'm a deep space artist currently based in Sydney, Australia.
But I get around a little bit and I've.
Been making basically anything related to space artwork for the last five years. But prior to that, I made video games for a living my real job, I like to call it. And I actually studied mechanical engineering as a degree and that definitely didn't suit me because, yeah, I was too creative in a way for the rigidity of engineering.
So well, I am a big fan of collaborations between physicists and artists, especially artists who were once engineers, as Jorge was a mechanical engineer once as well. But tell me how you guys started working together and what you guys have in store for us.
We've both been prevalent in like the online science Steam community as far as content, Yeah, get some steam on the go, just getting people excited about space generally, I'm trying to get people to connect to the universe in the same way that Sofia is trying to pick it apart, and we're just trying to share it as much as possible. And our paths inevitably crossed when I joined Twitter a couple of years ago and I just found Sofia and they're just was enthrolled by all her contents.
I mean, I've been.
Doing this for about five years now, and a couple of years ago I reached out to actually was it a year ago? I reached out to you, Sofia and said, I'd really like to draw some book dark matter stuff if you could tell me how it works and try and visualize some of her research.
Yeah, what a year ago.
That's happy anniversary, babe. But you just can't find, you know, I mean unless you go to very specific space artists, of which there are not that many. And you know, if you go into any store, any gallery, you know, the one thing you won't find is beautiful pictures of the cosmos or beautiful pictures that describe, like you know, dark matter and its interactions and nothing. You know, you'll find a lot of abstracts and landscapes and bowls of fruit and that is obviously some people's cups of tea. But there's a lot of us out there that we want stuff on our walls that actually means something to us and gives us the chills because it reminds us that we're part of this incredible phenomenal universe. I mean, maybe someone gets that from a ball of bananas, but.
Don't discamp. So what do you guys have planned? What are you guys putting together? Can people expect to see?
We're basically putting together a series of really high like very luxurious artwork prints based on Sophia's research and other aspects of dark matter that you know, she's very fascinated with.
And also they're still also involved in my research.
Yes, so we're creating a series of these artworks and then making them available to the public to purchase, and obviously they can go into the store and order them, but it's only open for three days, so it is a very short span. But you know, we hope to maybe do something like this again in the future because I think what I realized is the overwhelming amount of support from the public that, like I, have been desperate to get something like this. No one's doing it, and even if there is a visualization available, it might not be guided by science.
It's really special because it's not a simulation. A simulation is based on literal, fundamental equations, and sort will turn out like if you have everything right as you think, you know, I mean, at least rite.
With whatever model you're using, it will turn out a certain way. But this is so much more beautiful because.
You get an extra touch of creativity from the art that goes into it. And so what I want people to take away from this is I want them to take away the science and.
The creativity that it takes to put.
Together something that is abstract, that you haven't visualized before where you're using like physics.
And then you're trying to sort of use.
An interpretation of what that would look like and put it on paper, and it's a really beautiful thing. So what I want people to take away from that is that as well as to support and bring you know, to the forefront steam like the merging of science and art together, because I think it's super important that we move in that direction.
Wonderful. Totally agree. So I know that you guys had something open in June by the time hearing this podcast that will have closed already. Let people know where they might be able to find your future works and collaborations if they go online, which they type into Google.
I think that it's pertinent just to go to all our social media channels because everything is really linked there, and obviously the specific URLs do change every time we run something, so but I would definitely head over their Astro party girl and at Katherine machen, which is dreadfully hard to spell, so probably just google it and it'll try and re correct it. I want of those names, and my mom was like, I would like you to be unique, and I spent my whole life trying to spell it to people.
You know.
Well, we'll put links to your social profiles in the show notes so people can find it there. Thanks to both of you for coming on and telling us about it, and congrats on your awesome new collaboration. Can't wait to see what you guys put together.
Thank you so much for having us.
All Right, pretty cool. I like that she's a space artist. Does that mean she does art in space or her artist spacey or.
Well she had a zoom background, so I couldn't tell if she was on the International Space Station at the time or just in Australia, which I think was equidistant for me anyway, So.
Yeah, it's just as alien really, who knows, maybe she was in her art space.
Yeah, but it was pretty cool. She told me that five years ago she didn't even know how to paint, and now she makes a living as a space artist. She used to work in video games. She has a background as a mechanical engineer. So it just goes to show you that people's lives can't take turns, and you can start out in one field and end up being quite successful in another.
As you well know, Yeah, anyone can be a space artist. You just need a little space and some art. But anyways, back to our conversation about science fiction and how they really expand our minds about what's possible and what could be out there in the universe and what would happen if we run into some of these amazing things. We have today a pretty interesting interview with a new author.
Right, that's right. This is a science fiction book by a debut author just broke into the scene, and a really fantastic book, and it takes it's sort of a new look at the idea of first contact, what it would be like if aliens came to Earth?
Right? And does it have a happy ending?
I'm not going to ruin it for you, but there's definitely a lot of suffering along the way, you know, that's what makes it feel real.
All right? Well, then today on the podcast, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe of cat Will Turnbulls the Lesson.
It's right, it's a super fun book, and I don't want to give up with the ending, but I guess I'll just say that it's unlikely that Disney is going to option this for a family movie.
What about Disney? Plus, I think Fox owns Disney now, right, can it be like a Marvel movie.
I don't know, have to be Disney like plus plus plus. I think Disney x Disney Max. Yeah.
So the book is called The Lesson and it's a science ficken novel and the author's name again is Catwill Turnbull. And it's a pretty interesting novel because you're saying it kind of reimagines first contact, right, because I guess usually first contact stories are either really good or really bad.
Right.
There's the et version where the aliens are friendly, and then there's the Independence Day version where the aliens are just here to destroy it.
Yeah, exactly, And it reimagined it in several ways.
You know.
Usually when the aliens come, they like land on the lawn of the White House, or attack New York City or something here. Instead, he centers the aliens in the Virgin Islands, not in like the financial or population or political center of the United States or of the world, but in this sort of like off the beaten path place. And he does something really cool with it, which is that he uses the arrival of aliens to sort of cast a light on or make us think more deeply about something that already exists in our society and that's the sort of colonial power structure. And he's from the Virgin Islands, so he knows a lot about the history and the you know, colonial mistakes that were made in the waves of the you know, the Spanish and the Danish and then the Americans sort of coming and taking over and making use of it for them. And so he imagines this alien arrival its sort of like the latest in waves of colonization of the Virgin Islands.
That's pretty cool. I guess if I was an alien, I would also land in a tropical paradise. Probably why good in New York City. It's terrible there in the winter.
Well maybe for an alien, New York City is a tropical paradise, right, maybe they like to lounge on beaches covered with snow. You know, who knows where their alien planet is?
Like, right, I guess New Yorkers are pretty exotic.
They are, in fact. And the cool thing is that he imagines this spaceship itself also sort of looks like a shell. You know, it's not like some weird mechanical object or even like a tic tac like we've seen in those Navy UFO videos. It looks like a shell. It's like a massive seashell descends and hangs out on the top of a mountain in the Virgin Islands.
Interesting, like a giant clamshell.
No, more like a nautilus shell, one of those like round ones with the many loops in.
It, like the kind of spirally. Oh, that's pretty cool. And that's how they land. It's like it flows, sid lands, it crashes, what does it do?
It gently floats and lands on the top. And then the aliens come out and they greet humanity and they come bearing gifts. Initially, obviously, these aliens are much more technologically advanced than we are because they can get here from where they came from, and they have very powerful technology. Initially, they're just like bestowing gifts. You know. They cure diseases and they give us technology, and they solve our energy problems and all sorts of stuff.
Interesting. They bring good things at first.
They do. They're like dinner party guests, you know, they show up with chocolates and wine and everything. They have very good manners in the beginning.
And these aliens have a name, right, the aliens of the name.
They're called the Eena. It's spelled y Naa and pronounce the eena, and they sort of can look like humans. Underneath there's something different, right, but they can sort of like put on this facade so they look more human, but they never quite human. They're always like a little bit weird, a little bit different. You can tell when one of them is around. They don't blend in perfectly smoothly into the human population.
Like New Yorker's basically.
I'm going to leave that alone.
But it's it a costume like a hologram or like are they like piloting you know, human like you know, bio robots.
So they have this technology in them called reefs, which are like little nano robots, which they can use to you know, repair their bodies or make their bodies look different, or control their bodies in all sorts of ways. And they're sort of under mental control. And so they have this technology where they can basically sheath themselves and these nano robots to give themselves another appearance. And you know, Catibella, I think is more interested in the emotional intellectual response and the relationship that's built rather than like the details of the technology of how this works. So he glosses over that a little bit.
He glosses over how the technology works. All right, So they come in bearing gifts and they solve all of our problems. But soon things are not quite what they seem.
Yeah, they are more powerful than we are, and they are here for a reason, right, not just like on a tour of beaches of the galaxy. They came looking for something, and they have their own interests. And you know, when a more powerful visitor comes to your shores wanting something, your resources or something from your civilization, then they do what they need to to get it. And that's sort of the history of the Virgin Islands. You know. People come and they take advantage of the resources and the opportunities that are there. And so when the interests of the humans and the ena conflict, then the humans find out what happens, which is that the na respond with casual but overwhelming violence.
Wow, they're salty.
They are salty.
They're sweet and salty, that's right.
As we meet more of the Ena, we find some of them are less interested in being friendly with the humans, and even like casual disrespect, you know, stepping in front of them or brushing against them, can be met with violence, like being torn in half and it's becomes pretty clear that the Ena don't see the humans as equals. They see them sort of look in to the way we see dogs or cows. You know, they're like, they're they're fine. You want to keep them happy if it's convenient, but as soon as it's inconvenient or annoying, you know, you don't think about their rights.
We're just like means to an end for them.
We are means to an end. And again, there's a really nice sort of parallel here to colonial structures, right. You know, when colonists comes sometimes have a very patronizing attitude, like we're going to bring new technology and we're going to bring our culture, and this is going to be good for everybody. But really it's just good for the colonists, right.
They think they're there to save the people that are already there.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, so that's meant to sort of mirror the colonial history of the Virgin Islands kind of.
Yeah, as a lot of really good science fiction does, it's written in a way to make us think about what's already going on in our society by exaggerating it, by accentuating it, by throwing a light on it. You know, from a science fiction point of view, and so he does a great job of doing that, and it's really interesting. He's a he's a great writer. And a lot of the characters respond in interesting ways, you know. Some of them like rebel against the Eena, and some of them are collaborators, they work with the Eena. Some of them even form like romantic relationships with the alien WHOA.
So I guess there's variation not just in the humans, but maybe also in the aliens, Like some aliens fall in love with the humans and some are maybe more sympathetic and some less.
Yeah, just like in every colonial story, right, you have a whole spectrum of people with different attitudes and different responses. So it's quite realistic and really quite engaging. I stayed uplate reading this book.
All right, well, let's get into the Signs of the Lesson by Kit Well Turnbull, and then let's get to your interview with the author. But first let's take a quick break.
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All right, we're talking about the science fiction universe of Catwell Turnbulls. The Lesson, a debut science fiction novel kind of about colonialism, but more like space colonialism exactly, galactic colonialism. Galactic colonialism. Yeah, I think that anytime you use that word, it doesn't sound great. And this is sort of a topic that is in the conversation right now in our culture right now, when we talk about going to Mars and maybe colonizing Mars, there's people sort of on both sides of the issue and saying that that's a good thing or that's a bad thing, right.
Yeah, exactly. People talk about the need to move humanity off of Earth. So we have our eggs in more than one basket, but other folks think that we shouldn't just treat the rest of the galaxy as like baskets for the take places to put our eggs. You know, there's a long history of human colonialism and a lot of it has led to a lot of pain and suffering, and a lot of mistakes were made sort of in the interests of capitalism or the interest of spreading our culture. So there are folks out there who want us to take a pause and think about like, should we let private companies like SpaceX lead the way to Mars and build colonies on Mars and sort of structure it in an explorational, colonial capitalistic way, or should we take a more measured approach. So there's a lot of discussion on both sides of this issue.
Right, And it's not just sort of about whether there are Aliens or Martians there on Mars that we will be taken over. So I think it's more about sort of preserving the marsiness of Mars also, right, not sort of like going there and just completely you know, turning it into Earth.
Yeah, the question is, you know, are there martians on Mars And if we come, when we aggressively terror form it, could we be wiping out Martian life, which would be scientifically a tragedy of course, but also from the point of view of like the value of life could be effectively genocide of an entire new, potentially independent form of life. And then there are people who take it a step further and say, even if there isn't life on Mars now, there could be life on Mars in a million years. And if we go and we turn it into Earth, that could be preventing independent life on Mars. So there's a whole fascinating spectrum of ideas there. There's a lot of interesting subtleties there, and real ethical and moral decisions we should sort of make consciously rather than just sort of like steamrolling because it sounds.
Cool, rather than just letting Elon Musk do whatever he wants.
I don't know, do you want him to be president of Mars. I mean, he's done some cool stuff.
I think he's president of his own middle planet right now.
Anyways, Another really interesting question is whether the same issues apply to exploration of the Solar System and the galaxy as it did to exploration of Earth. You know, a lot of colonialism and conflict on Earth is born from limited resources. Everybody wants gold, or people are looking for places to grow crops, or et cetera, et cetera. But it comes to the Solar System, it is so rich with resources. There's so much water out there and platinum out there, and so many planets. I'm not sure we necessarily need to fight over resources.
Well, I think that's the dream, right, The dream is not just to get more, to get more. The dream is to get more so that we stop fighting over more.
Yeah, And one question that Kadilla raises in his book is whether that's possible, whether species has sort of came into existence out of conflict, out of this struggle for survival and the gravity well of one planet. Can ever break free from that and live in a post scarcity society? In science fiction is a whole set of books that deal with like a post scarcity society, like Ian Banks culture novels where everybody has everything they ever want and can get it instantly. What is life like in that kind of utopian society? And then folks who think that that's never going to happen, and the humans are humans and we will always be fighting. Even if we have you know, planet sized blobs of platinum, there still will be people who want more or want it all for themselves.
Right, like our humans inherently greedy, like will enough ever be enough? And maybe not right, Like, maybe there's something about humans that will always want more than the other person.
Yeah, Jeff Bezos is an argument the humans will always be greedy and want more.
WHOA Well, he's going to be an astronaut soon and he might be president of Mars. Daniels might be about what do you say?
Yeah, well, I don't know if he's a listener to this podcast, but if the President of Mars is a race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, I might not even vote.
Daniel. It's your galactic duty.
Well, back to the novel, you know, that's something that he focuses on. The name of the book is the Lesson, and the Lesson. Without spoiling the book, I can tell you that the lesson the aliens come to teach us is that there is always struggle, that every society has to fight and struggle to survive. And then that's just sort of the way of life. And as you hear me talk to Cadwell about it in our interview, he thinks that humanity will never be able to throw off the shackles and change and grow into a utopian society, even if we have mountains of platinum, and you know, entire planets of water for everybody.
Interesting, Yeah, I guess, you know, we light that what live is right. It's a struggle, it's a competition. That's how it evolves. And it's hard to turn that off.
It is hard to turn that off, I suppose. But you know, we live differently now than we did a thousand years ago and twenty thousand years ago and fifty thousand years ago. And I have hope that humans can evolve, that we can change the way we live, that we won't always be struggling and have massive economic inequality. You know, I don't want that if we become a space faring species that I have one person owns in nine of the planets, and you know the rest of humanity is crowded onto one little one. You know, that's sort of an extension of the Jeff Bezos style gathering of resources. I hope that we can, you know, lift everybody out of poverty. That's the idea. But we'll see.
I think the lesson I'm learning here is how much you hate Jeff Beggers. I had no idea. You see, the sort of the epitome of evil these days.
No, I don't know the guy at all, but I don't understand why anybody needs that much money.
Well, that's because you've never had it, due.
I have never had it exactly, and in that situation, I don't know how I would act, so I shouldn't judge the man.
All right. Well, let's get into some of the science in the lesson by Capitol Turnbull. There are a couple of interesting science technologies here that he has in his book. There's this idea of nanobots called reefs, and whether or not aliens can even get here, or whether you know, first contact is a possibility for us, and if they come, would they actually be superior to us or not.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of really interesting science here. One of the coolest science fiction things he has in his book are these things called reefs. So these are like little nanobots that the aliens can control with their minds. So they basically, you know, they tell them to enter human body and repair it. For example, So when one alien wants to help a human, they can just like send these reefs in, say fix this problem more. That's how they cure a lot of human diseases. They share these little nanobots around and have them like go inside the body and do little repairs and that's pretty awesome. Of course, it also has other consequences. I mean, if the aliens have filled your body with nanobots under their control, they can do things like you know, kill people at will because they basically are in total control of your bodily functions. So not something I would necessarily sign up for.
Yeah, don't drink the nanobots too.
Late exactly, But you know, is it realistic? Could you actually do this? I mean I think this is the kind of thing people are working on, you know, synthetic immune systems, things like that, tiny little robots that can find and attack cells. I don't know how you would accomplish like actual like mind control of these robots, telling them, coordinating them somehow to do things. But it doesn't seem impossible to me. I mean, you're the engineer. Tell me, do you think nano robots are the future?
Uh?
Well, I was wonder if with anything with rid robotics is like where do they get their power? Like what you know, it takes energy to move these things for these things to do things like do they have little tiny nano batteries? Do you see that as being possible? Or how do you recharge you know what I mean? Or how do you build them? That's another thing I always wonder about, Like, I guess if you have nanobots, then you can have them build other nanobots. But how do you build the first nanobox.
Maybe you need like a microbot to build the nanobot, and you need a millibot to build a microbot.
There you you can just get smaller. And then when I start with nano or I guess maybe at nano you start getting into atomic limits, Like are these like robots with individual atoms?
Yeah? Yeah, I suppose you could build them out of individual atoms, but that would limit their complexity in terms of the power. I always figured, you know, they could power themselves the way our cells power themselves. Our cells don't have little batteries. They you know, live along a flow of energy from our blood. So I figured, you know, nanobots could like sip energy from our blood just the same way everything else does. I mean, that's how I would design it.
That's even more terrifying. They sit inside you, sucking up your your blood.
No, it's like a diet. Now I can eat as much as I want, because then nanobots are using all the calories eight.
Yeah, but if the aliens one to eat this, wouldn't that be counter productive?
Oh that's true, Yeah, exactly. Maybe.
Well, I guess the other part is the mind control, Like how would you transmit your thoughts to these things? And I guess you need like an amplifier, and then how would you decode your thoughts. Does the book get into any of that or is just sort of magical?
It's just sort of left unspecified. I don't think it's intended to be magical, but I don't think Cadwell's interest was like figuring out the technical details of how that worked. But you know, you could imagine you have nanobots in the brain that can read your signals, and maybe they don't have to be all directly controlled. You can like pass messages from nanobot to nanobot. They have effectively like our network, and so they can communicate sort of like in lots of little leaps, perhaps so of the way the internet works. So, I mean, I don't have a solution to this, but I imagine that it could be possible. When I was reading this, I didn't think, oh, that's implausible. It didn't take me out of the story. I just thought, well, that would be pretty cool.
I guess as a physicist you're like, sure, why not. But maybe as an engineer someone might be like, but how do you make that work exactly?
How are we going to fix these things? How we're going to repair these things, how we're going to do software upgrades?
You're like, I'll leave it to the lesser beings, the engineers. Thanks your words, all right. Well, the other little bit of science here is about aliens coming to Earth and is that realistic or not?
Yeah, and this is a question that really has popped up a lot recently because we've seen these alien UFO videos and people are wondering, like, is it even plausible for extraterrestrials to come to Earth? You know, we know that there are a lot of other planets out there that might potentially harbor life like on Earth, but we don't know if there are any near enough to come visit us, because even the nearest stars are pretty far away. The closest start to Earth is almost four light years away, and any reasonable kind of travel that's not FTL would take decades to get here, and so exploring the galaxy feels like it would take a long time. So without some sort of FTL travel like a warp drive or a wormhole, it does seem sort of implausible that aliens would come here, because how would they even know that we are here. Our signals have been broadcasted very far. We haven't put out very powerful signals, so you'd have to be really nearby our Solar system to even detect us to know we are here.
By FTL, you mean faster than light, right.
Yeah, exactly, because the galaxy is pretty big, the distances between stars are large, and we have this speed limit of light speed, and so without being able to go faster than light FTL, it seems pretty difficult to explore the galaxy and find all the glorious beaches for aliens to hang out on, right.
I guess one question I always have is why would they come here? I mean, like, if the Solar system is so full of resources and water and metals and minerals and materials, like, why even make a stop on Earth with these you know, locals, Why not just like take what they need from the Solar System and leave.
Yeah, that's a great question, and I can't answer that question. About this book without spoiling it. But these aliens are hunting for something specific, and they have been exploring the galaxy for a long time without finding it, and they think they might be able to find it on Earth, and that's the reason they are here, which isn't revealed until late to the book, and super fascinating and pretty creative. So I don't want to spoil it for our listeners, But it might be that Earth does have something rare. You know, what if life is pretty rare in the galaxy, then Earth represents something like a jewel, you know, billions of years of evolution working to solve a problem of highly evolved, complex little biological machines that are maybe otherwise difficult to figure out. You can look at evolution as sort of like a big computation, you know, solving a problem very slowly over billions of years, finding a solution through all this repeated mutation and evaluation. In some sense, it's extremely valuable information just to know, like, here's a potential solution to the life problem.
Yeah, and potentially delicious as well, which is maybe the problem in this because I don't know, I haven't read the book, but it sort of seems like that's where here maybe leaning, but I guess folks, we'll have to read the book to find out.
Yes, folks love to read the book.
All right, Well, then let's get to your interview with author Katwell Turnbull, who wrote the book to The Lesson, available now wherever you can find books. Here's Daniel's interview.
All right, so then it's my absolute pleasure to welcome to the podcast. Cadwell Turnbull, author of The Lesson, Welcome to the podcast.
Hey, yeah, I'm glad to be here.
Thank you, Thanks very much for joining us. I really enjoyed your book. Congratulations. And I'd like to hear first about how you got into science fiction writing or speculative fiction. Tell us a little bit about your background, where you came from, how this happened for you.
So I grew up in the Virgin Islands. I grew up on six Comments and my mom was a science fiction nerd, but mostly films, so she watched We had like a collection of Star Trek films. I had not watched any of the show, just the movies and a bunch of other science fiction movies. Socially, you know, she had time, Pops, I would watch that with her serenity. Oh jeez, I'm trying to I'm spacing on the name of this movie. And I watched it like a million times when I was a kid with my mom. It's Dennis Quaid because the guy that played Jesus.
Is it the time trouble one where they communicate back and forth? Yes, yes, when I was called frequency or something.
Frequency, Yes, So Frequency was you know, another one.
And then we also with TV, we watched Startgate together.
And so when I was, you know, in high school, I was really into Stargate at SG one, and that was the thing that I watched a lot.
You know, I was the one that was watching it, and my mom was it and wanting.
So yeah, that's how I got into you know, science fiction, you know, in a general sense.
But at school, you know, in high.
School, they would occasionally assign us to read things that were science fiction adjacent, so like you know, nineteen eighty four, Great New World, And I always found those stories more interesting than the more literary stories, and so I would actually finish those books and be able to you know, talk about them, and I would write about them for school. And then once I got to college, I just started reading a lot more science fiction on my own, you know, getting recommendations for friends that on Saint Thomas that wasn't really like a community of science fiction readers, and so it was whatever I stumbled across.
And then once I, like, you know, went to Pittsburgh for undergrad, just meant some other people that was into it, and they gave me books to read, and so that's how I got into the literature.
You know.
One of the earlier books that a friend handed me was The Lot of Heaven Maloquent, and I loved it so much, and I just continued reading her books, and now she's like.
My favorite author. She remains my favorite author to this thing wonderful.
Well, then I'd like to ask you some questions to sort of orient you in the universe of science fiction authors. These are questions we ask all of our science fiction author guests so you can sort of calibrate. So you're very familiar with Star Trek and the technology there, what's your opinion on the philosophical question of whether a Star Trek transporter kills you and clones you, recreating you somewhere else, or actually transports your very Adams to another location.
Oh wow, Okay, so this makes me think of It's not like the transporter, but it makes me think.
Of think like a dinosaur by Jim Kelly.
It was a story that he wrote in response to an older story called The Cold Equations. It's about a teleportation machine. It's sort of it's you are transferred to another place. But I'm going to spoil the whole story. What happens is the machine actually, because you know the aliens are created, don't.
Believe in like creating more stuff.
You'll be copied and transported to that new place where you'll be recreated, and then that original version of you will basically be murdered.
You know.
It's like the Prestige.
But it's I just love that story because it asked that same question, right, It's like, is the person that is recreated on the other side you or is that another you? And would it matter to me being copied if my copy lives on I'm dead, you know, and I think, you know, Star Trek, I think tries to, you know, hide that back by the fact. It's like it's the same particles, but like even if you are spit apart into particles and re created in another environment, my suspicion is you died. You know, that's where my mind goes. I have a pretty dark reading on it. It's I don't think you can just like be blown apart and pulled back together.
And that's the same conscious that's the other year.
Right, So then would you be willing to step into a Star Trek transport somebody shows up and says, hey, no more commuting for you. Would you be willing to do that? Or is that essentially signing up for your own murder?
I think it's signed up for my own murder.
I think I like the idea of a portal more than a teleporter. You know, like two areas in space being connected by some kind oftive rights you walk through.
That makes me feel like I'm not dead.
But the teleporter, I think, if it requires me to be blown apart and put back together, I am not for it.
So then, what technology and science fiction would you like to most see actually become reality? What should a scientist be working on? What's our number one priority?
I mean, I feel like the first question set me up for this, the portal, Like I really want to be able to like so right now as soon as I can talk about this, So I just got a new job at North Carolina State University, you know, teaching creative.
Writing, and thank you so much, thank you.
And my wife is a scientist and she's finishing up her PhD at Harvard and basically had to you know, separate for you know, for me to take this job, for her to continue to do her work.
And she's coming down at the end of the summer.
But it would have been really great if there was just a door in my apartment that I could open up and walk through and I can meet up there, hang out with, you know, my wife, and go to work.
That would just be fantastic. And so I think a lot about it.
Is I just finished the edits to my second book, and there's something like.
That in this book because I've been thinking a lot about it.
Yeah, it's like the next step in zoom technology. Right, you could actually just go through and be in a room together without having to commute. That would be great. So then let me ask you one more generic question before we dive into your book, which is, what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox? If there are so many amazing planets out there that seem like they could harbor life and the galaxy is quite old and doesn't take that long to get across. Why haven't we been visited by aliens yet?
Okay, so two thoughts for this. The first thought is that maybe we have. And you know, like I remember it was just earlier this week. I opened my phone, I went on Twitter, and I just saw trending that the Pentagon is going to at least you know, declassified documents about UFOs.
And it was all of the legitimate news sources.
I was just blowing my mind because I'm like, I was like, we're in the middle of a side by, you know, story right now with you know, what's going on, and then I'm reading about UFOs and it's being taken seriously.
It's news.
Obama is talking about it right right right.
Obama is talking about it, you know, high up officials are like this is a conservative?
Is a security I was like, is this them?
It seems like they've been chilling out, so maybe they are, and we just can't even understand it, Like they are visiting us, but they're like, well, why even bother trying to have a conversation with us. We clearly can't talk to them, and we're clearly not even you know, remotely close to us.
As bad as they.
Are, they probably just kind of just hang out and then they go back and they're like, well, you know, there are things are doing, okay, I guess, And that's pretty much it.
The other answer I have is that I really like the second book.
What I like is the wrong word for it, but I really enjoyed the second book to the Remembers the first past by Seeks in Loup the Dark Forest, and that book posits that the reason why no one's talking is because everyone's smart and we're quite dumb, and we're trying to talk to aliens aliens and like, yo, you should shut up because you know, we might not kill you. But there's some super advanced you know, you know, aliens somewhere else that are going to just be like, let's just take care of that problem before it becomes a problem. You know, if we're advancing enough to try to communicate with aliens, I imagine aliens being other aliens being self protective, you know, might preemptively respond to that in an aggressive and negative way.
And that's nice marriage. But it seems plausible, sort.
Of like we moved into a dangerous neighborhood, and we're inviting everybody over for brunch.
Right right.
The analogy that the book uses is that like it's a forest and every day's hunters in it, and we're the ones that led, we lit the fire, and now everyone knows where we are.
You know, basically oops.
So I think both of those answers boil us down to their being careful. That's why we can't really come from it, because aliens aren't establishing first contact in the way that we might imagine it being. Either there, you know, laying low, or they're researching us. They're just like checking it around.
Awesome, Thanks, all right, wonderful. I have lots more questions for our guest author, but first, let's take a quick break. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite. But the people in the dairy industry are us. Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste conserve natural resources and drive down greenhouse gas missions. Take water for exait, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times. The same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneuver into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit us dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
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Okay, we're back and we're talking to Cadwell Turnbull, author of The Lesson. Let's turn to the subject of your book, The Lesson, which is an awesome first contact story. When I read really good science fiction, I love when it sort of shines a light on something that already exists in our world. It makes us think about something we're living but not really paying attention to by accentuating it. And in your book, something you highlight is the power dynamics of society and the structures that enable it and support that and categorize people into sort of different classes of rights and privileges, especially in a colonial setting. And so when the aliens arrive in your book, they sort of fit in at the top layer of this power structure. Did you write it in this way on purpose, intentionally adding this new alien layer to sort of shine a light on the colonial and historical power structures we have here on earth.
Their answer is yes, by the end of it, like eventually the book was doing that on purpose, but I don't think I started that way. So the novel as a whole was inspired by a dream that I had several years back at this point, because it took me several years to write this thing. And it was set in a small town, and there were aliens in that small town, but they looked like people. There was something off about them, and you could just tell that they were aliens pretending to be people.
And they acted just like the.
Ena in the book that you know, Ena is the alien race in the book, and they anytime they felt threatened or disrespected in a way that made them worry for their safety at all, they would respond with, like, you know, egregious acts of violence. That dream had a character very much like the ambassador character in the book Mirror, and she was starting to feel guilty about her specific responses to threats because she was living among humans long enough to kind of incorporate some of human morality. And there was a character that was very much like the Derek character in the book. And the dream was so memorable to me that I thought, I should definitely do something with this. When your subconscious gives you something that good, you know, I feel like you're obligated to at least try.
And so that first.
The very first thing I tried was that story transplanted to the US Virgin Islands and having it was pretty much the same kind of setup, but the more and more I worked on it, the more and more I had to change it to fit the context. Because the dream that I had was like Middle America somewhere. It was somewhere in some small town. All the characters were white. I don't know why, you know this, That's just what came to me. And so when I transplanted it into the context that made sense to me, Saint Thomas, you know, mostly predominantly black, all of these other themes started coming up. You know, it's like, if this is transplanted to the Virgin Islands, this is how the Virgin Aalens people will read this thing.
You know, if they.
Eena show up and they're super powerful and they have all of these great gifts, but they respond to any you know, threat with you know, this kind of like violence that will be memorable, that will remind the Virgin not as people of colonialism, things that have happened in the past, you know, like how the Danish treated you know, the slave society of that time, right. And so it seemed to me that as soon as I made that transplant, it became about colonialism as well as power.
So their dream was about what do you do with power? And you know, how do you challenge beings more powerful than you? But because I made this decision, it also became about how does that also map on to, you know, things that have happened in our past. How does it map on to colonialism and powerful you know, societies on our own world going to new places and subjugating the people there, or bringing people to be subjugated.
So then when you wrote the story, is it necessary for them to be aliens? I mean, could you have written a similar story with like some overwhelming human army that comes and decides to recolonize or subjugate the people there. What about it makes it necessary for them to be aliens? I mean, I love aliens. I'm glad they were aliens.
And that's that would be my most basic response is just like I love aliens.
That's fine.
But I think it would be a really different story if it was just another empire. You know, I wouldn't be able to do two map it so closely to our present and you know, have the virginalois remain the same. I would have to create a justification for why there's a new empire somewhere on Earth coming and subjugating the virginialis because the virginalysis is it belongs to the US, and so we're in a pretty stable state of colonialism, you know what I mean. It's like the US if we misbehaved, shows up, you know, and they're like, what are you guys doing? Otherwise we're kind of like left to you know, to the most part, our own devices, and our structure is pretty much like any American state. And so I would have to create a context to make that possible for another human nation to come there and subjugate the US virginal ands without the US saying, hey, no, that's ours. But the the other answer to that is I just think that there's some really interesting things to do with aliens that are not just colonialism. And so so the book plays with that question of colonialism, but I also wanted to ask more existential questions about like how far would you go to make yourself impervious to harm? It's like the whole motive for the Ena. It's a really important aspect of their culture and their belief system that they believe that the universe is this like you know, ancient enemy, that they have the vanguage the universe itself, you know, so you imagine that the humors of a species like that their goal is to become more and more powerful so that nothing can hurt them, And that to me seems like something that I think is also true of humanity. Like I would argue that any person seeking power, you know, if I look back at like empires of any kind, I think that there's a fundamental insecurity that motivates great men or great people to be the most awful thing in the world in the environment around them, so that maybe they might be spared, is what I think. And so I think the EA are kind of embodiment of that thinking. They're like, if we make ourselves impervious, we will be spared. And I think that that Aliens needed to come and represent that ideology.
Yeah, I think that's really interesting, and I understand where it comes from. Here on Earth, we are all competing for resources. There is something of a survival of the fittest. You know, not everybody makes it, not every society makes it, not every person survives. I wonder though about whether that really maps onto the situation of an interstellar galactic empire. You know, if you can conquer space, if you can travel through space, isn't there enough room for everybody. Aren't there enough planets, enough asteroids filled with platinum, enough frozen water, enough resources, enough stars, foreverybody to have whatever they need. Isn't it possible we could end up in a post scarcity society? Is it colloquial to imagine that we'll have the same sort of conflicts on the galactic scale that we've had on the planetary scale. What do you think about the future society in that way?
So there's two answers to that, right, I think that sure that should be true, that everyone can live, and that if we have a universe worth of resources at our disposal, we should all be fine. But I do think that cultures are built before realities change, and that cultures are slow to change in the face of new realities, you know what I mean. And so my feeling is that right now, if we wanted to, we could be okay on Earth, you know, like everyone could have all the resources.
That they need.
We could live, you know, in relative peace and security with some measures taken, you know what I mean.
But I think right now we could do it.
But cultures are slow, and there's a lot of conflicts and tensions that create you know, it's not just the resources. It's ideologies, it's interests that create this kind of scarcity. And so my thinking with the Nail, at the very least is that their core motivation isn't that they need more resources to be more secure. Their motivation is fear. They worry that there's something out there, bigger and stronger that will take whatever they've gained from them, you know, and so their response is reactive. It's like, we continue to look for these, you know, solutions to our insecurity so that we can be completely secure. I don't think it even occurs to them that, you know, there's enough for everyone. It's it's like they believe that the universe, and some of this has to do with the history that I imagined for them. They believe the universe pits different synthic beings against each other, that it's like you have to strike first in order to be the one that maintains. And it is not a very utopian, idealistic vision, you know. And there's characters in this book that try to challenge that belief because they think differently. But you know, because you have a long established culture, it's really hard for them to shape that.
Yeah, it sounds like they have had a bad experience in the Dark Forest, and now they're more careful. So then let me ask you if you don't mind to weigh in on some of the current debate about human plans for colonization. You know, Elon Musk wants to do private colonization of Mars, and a lot of folks in the science community are saying, hold on, that's built on a colonial structure, which has led to, like all sorts of terrible things in human history, maybe we should take another approach. What do you think should we let Elon Musk be the new Dutch East India Company and colonize Mars or should we leave Mars for the Martians?
I would saying no.
I think that we've seen on our own planet, you know what runaway, you know, capitalism has done, and I think that it's dangerous to just extend that outward without thinking about regulating it. You know, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong or harmful about space exploration, but I do think that, you know, it's legitimate when people talk about, well, there's problems here that we haven't solved, why are we doing that?
And I think that at the.
Very least these things should be moving at similar paces, or space exploration should be slower than the work that we're doing on our own planet. If our own planet is a mess, why would we extend that out to other planets? Like why would we make other messes? And so that's my feeling. I don't think that it should be elon Musk. If we do it, it should be the public. It should be a collective process, and it should be subject to a lot of slow collective decision making.
So I like to imagine this scenario talking about power structures, about what happens when aliens come to Earth. And you know in your book, the aliens, for example, they don't see any difference in the value of a human life and an earth dog's life. So we're in sort of like a second category below the aliens. And you know, for me as a human, this feels shocking when I read it, but it's sort of a natural extension of our own moral structure here on Earth. We don't value the lives of pigs and cows the way we do humans. We raise them for meat. So do you think if aliens earth and they're vastly superior to us the way we imagine we are to cows and pigs, that we'd really have any right to object being treated like farm animals, being you know, raised for human bacon, et cetera. I mean, do we have a moral leg to stand on there? What do you think?
This makes me think of a really good story from Octavia Butler called Blood Child, where we are cattle. It's complicated. We're not exactly cattle. We're kind of like birth sacks. So like the aliens, they use us to help nurture their young, and they live inside our bodies and then they burst out of our bodies and hopefully, you know, the more progressive aliens try to make sure that the humans are not egregiously harmed in the process. But they're kind of like, well, whatever, if they get hungry. If these worms get hungry, you know, they have to eat, they have to eat. But I think there is a right to object. I think that we'll have no choice but to object because it's us, you know, And I think if we can make the argument, we can make the argument. You know, if we can convince the aliens not to just to eat us, that that would be great, or not to just use us as their birthing pods, that.
Would be great. But I think that in the same way that we make the argument. You know, we talk a.
Lot about all of us becoming vegetarians, and not all of us will agree. I think that we can't expect aliens to all come to the same agreement on this. Some of them might. We might be able to convince some of them, But if it's to their advantage to use us in some way that we feel is degrading to who we think we are, I think the same rules apply. We'll have to convince them or we'll have to fight, and you know, we'll likely lose. But I think that there's something to be said about gradually moving the ethics of another group by continued engagement with that group in whatever form.
Right.
Well, there's lots of reasons to be vegetarian, environmental, ethical, et cetera. But I suppose one of them is to gain moral standing when arguing with our future alien overlords. So let me ask you last question about the sort of the science and the fits of your novel. In your book, these aliens they can travel great distances between the stars. How much did you think about, you know, how that travel happens, and how to make it plausible? How critical. Is it to you that the science of your universe be plausible even if it is in the science of our universe.
That is a very good question. And the answer to that is it was not a huge concern, to be honest. Some of the ways that I kind of like convince myself that it was okay. It's because they are very old and even if they travel you know, slowly, they can do that just fine, and they won't really you know, affect them because they live for thousands of years already before the events of the book. But I'm pretty sure in the back of my mind I justified it the way that a lot of you know, really tropy soft science fiction justifies it is the ring gay or they have ftl you know, you know, they jump. I did not think about how far away their home world was from Earth, even I was much much more concerned with the history of the Virgin Islands and how the people were responding to them and what it made them think about, and questions of faith and all of these things that they brought up for the Virgin Islanders. And I was also really interested in what the ships looked like and modeling them off of like reefs and coral and seashells, because I thought this is meat the island, you know, an aland culture, see a seashell in the sky. So I just thought about the imagery of that more than even the physics of how that would work, you know. So I'm ashamed to say not a lot of dot.
That's all right, it was very compelling. Great, well, tell us if you can a little bit about your upcoming book, your next project.
So the title of it is No Gossenal Monsters. It's coming out on September seventh, you know, pretty soon. And it's fantasy. I even less consideration about how things work, you know, it's magic. So the way that I would pitch it, or how I've talked about it in the past, it's imagine the Civil Rights era but modernized and with monsters from popular culture and Koreban folklore and you know, other cultures. So were world's vampires. I have a monster in a book called Suquyant, which is like a you know, local Kobbean folklore monster. You know, a bunch of different islands have it. It's kind of like a vampire that removes its skin. It's kind of like a mix between a vampire and a sulky all of these different monsters that we recognize, and then some made up monsters that I created, and they're all advocating for their the human rights in a world that has just learned of the existence. I very much see it as like an in conversation with the lesson. So the lesson is like, how does humanity respond to a threat from without? And this one is like, how does society respond to a threat from within? Our darkest nightmares are real and how do we deal with that? And are they really that nightmarish?
Wow, it sounds like a lot of fun. Well, congrats on the Lesson, a wonderful book, and best of luck on new gods, new monsters, And thank you very much for coming in on the podcast and answering our awkward physics questions.
Thank you so much for having me.
This was really fun, all right, pretty interesting interview, fascinating author and book. I liked how he said that the story came to him from a dream he had about a man who has a relationship with an alien. Sounds like a pretty racy dream there.
Yeah, I'm not sure every dream you have about like that should turn into a novel, but this one he told me he started writing it as a short story and then just sort of grew and grew and grew, and he sort of fought the idea that it was a full novel and they'll eventually he just gave in. He's like, all right, let's turn this whole thing into a novel. And I'm glad he did because it's a really good book.
Interesting. Yeah, I guess you never know, right, Like, if you have a dream, it could turn into a book.
Yeah, exactly. If you can do that, if you can turn one dream into a novel, then you're a good writer. But hey, take notes of all your crazy dreams. They are your creativity.
And I also liked the discussion yet about colonialism, and it seems like he thinks that, you know, we should maybe colonize Mars. Like he thinks maybe we should leave Mars for the Martians.
Yeah. Well, as somebody who grew up in the Virgin Islands, I think he has a different and very valuable perspective on the question of being colonized.
So yeah, right, yeah, leave Mars weird. Be maybe the T shirt slogan keep Mars Weird, keep Mars.
Alien unners alien, Yeah, exactly.
Send one of those to Bezos and Elon Musk.
And as excited as I am about exploring the Solar System and getting answers to questions, and it just seems super fun to get out into space and build this technology. I think we do need to think carefully about how to make these decisions.
Right, Yeah, because they're planetary scale, right, they're galactic in scale.
Right.
We don't want to be like, hey, Mars seems really comfortable. It's our new home, but then it turns out that there are maybe you know, there's life kind of brewing under the surface.
Yeah, And do we want the head of some technology company to make those decisions on behalf of the entire human race. You don't get to unmake them once you've made them.
Right, We definitely don't want We definitely want maybe like a physicist making decisions because they're really in tune with humanity, the struggle of everyday people.
Right.
I'm not running for president of Mars for sure, definitely not. Don't vote for me.
Maybe just you could be the first gentleman who knows right. All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that, and we hope you check out the lesson the debut novel by author Catwell Turnbull. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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