The Science Fiction Universe of "Invasion"

Daniel and Jorge talk about alien arrival, as depicted on the show "Invasion" and Daniel talks to two of the writers, Tatiana Suarez Pico and Aditi Brennan Kapil about writing science fiction.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, you think a lot about aliens visiting us, right.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I do, Actually, I fantasize about it happening.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Oh boy, Well, what science fiction depiction of alien arrival
do you think best matches what you hope and dream about.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, you know, I think the most fun scenarios are
when we get to talk to the aliens and like
learn secrets of the universe from them, you know, like
in Star Trek.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Not the kind where it's like an action movie and
there's a big war.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I think that's probably much more realistic that the Aliens
show up and just zap us from orbit or they're
so weird we can never talk to them.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Mmmm.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
That sounds like less of than a happy ending there
or exciting movie.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I do think in reality it's more likely to go
badly than well. When have two civilizations come into contact
and then happily lived ever after.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I think there are lots of examples in human.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
History, physicists and cartoonists for example.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, there you go to totally alien civilizations still working
together after all these years.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
We're a beacon of hope in the universe.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
There you go, But do you still want aliens to
come down? If you think it's going to turn out badly.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes, I want to know that they exist.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
That's just better for you, not for the rest of us.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Everybody benefits from this kind of knowledge, man, not.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
As they get eaten. I guess you. Just please don't
run for world president.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Not's going to happen, and I have no chance of
winning anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Hi am Jorge Amrick, cartoonists and the author of Oliver's
Great Big Universe.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at u C Irvine. And please don't vote for me
for world president. That's the best campaign slogan I've ever heard. No, then,
please do vote for me, I gues I don't know.
I don't want to be a real president.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Just don't run. Just don't run, is what I'm saying.
You never know, you never know how people. They're crazy
voters out there.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
There are crazy voters out there. But I have enough
politics in my department and my collaborations. I don't need anymore.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yes, it's enough drama, I guess in our everyday lives,
which is why it's good that we have things like
science fiction and TV shows.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Right exactly, so we can watch other people's drama.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
In which we sit back and enjoy the incredible drama
that is our universe, all of its deep mysteries, all
of its mysterious functioning, all of the mysterious beings and
critters that might live out there in the universe and
might one day come to talk to us about their experience.
Our goal is to understand the entire universe. We think
it's possible, and to explain all of it to you.

(02:54):
We are sure that part is possible.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yes, because it is an amazing universe, full of things
beyond our imagine and things that are actually maybe a
little bit within our imaginations, which can be pretty wild
for some people.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
And part of trying to understand the universe is expressing
it in our terms, is getting answers to our questions
like how did it all begin? And what's going on?
And what are the rules? Questions that help shape the
context of our lives, that help us understand how we
should live and why we should live, and what we
should do with this time we have on Earth. So
it can be a fundamentally human experience, even if we're

(03:27):
digging into the nitty gritty of how reality works.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, and thinking about reality and the universe is the
job of scientists, but it's also the job of everyday people.
Lunch is people who consume science, but also artists and writers.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
And a super fun way to explore these issues is
to go beyond the questions of science and into the
realm of science fiction, to imagine what might be out
there in the universe. How could the universe work, what
other critters could it be filled with? And what do
they want for lunch?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Hopefully not us, hopefully somebody else, or hopefully they're vegan.
Has anyone ever made a movie where the aliens are vegan?

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Hmm?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
But maybe they consider us plants?

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Oh maybe they are plants.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Oh wow, they're here for revenge against the vegans.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Maybe the ethical thing for them is to eat animals.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Or maybe they come and kill all the vegans and
leave only the carnivores. What if their plants, then they're
out for revenge against the plant eating vegans. Right.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Oh, I see what you're saying, But I don't know.
I mean, everyone eats, you know, some kind of plant.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
I guess there are microbes out there that just eat sunlight.
But I think the point of the comparison is that
a lot of times these questions about aliens where they want,
what are their values, who would they eat if they
came are really questions about ourselves. How do we feel
about the choices we're making in our lives? And is
our experience typical? So I love watching science fiction and
reading science fiction to see people push those boundaries, to

(04:50):
try to think outside the box of what the intelligent
experience might be Like.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, I guess it's useful to think about what we
would do if we went out into the stars or
if we landed on the moon. How would things change
for us. It's kind of a useful exercise, right to
prepare us mentally and maybe socially as well.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Absolutely, And so I'm a big fan of science fiction,
And on the podcast, we have a whole series of
episodes where we read science fiction novels or watch science
fiction television shows and then talk to the authors about
how they built their science fiction universes and what it
means to them.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
And by we, Daniel mean said he does, and he
tells me about it on the podcast for the benefit
of everybody.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
That's right. I have Kelly on some of those episodes
and she actually reads the book.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Mmmmm.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the science
fiction universe of invasion.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Right. Invasion is a show on Apple TV. They have
a whole season out already in season two is just
now coming out, and as you might expect, this basic
topic is invasion by aliens.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Didn't they have a couple of alien invasion shows Apple TV?

Speaker 3 (05:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
I'm gonna have to watch this. There's so many alien
invasion shows, you know, there's like War of the Worlds,
but that's not on Apple. So there's a bunch of them.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Mmm.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
How come there are on any alien like alien visitation shows,
you know, and just like hey, they're coming by for
a visit.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Put out some cookies, make the good coffee. Aliens are coming.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Or like alien science shows, you know, like they come
to study us.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Mm wow, we are part of alien science.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
It's like a documentary.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Exactly narrated by David Attenborough.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yeah, maybe there's a alien David Attenborough out there with
a soothing voice and a cool British accent.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
The humans all gathered around the television once again.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
To watch more television about aliens visiting.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, there are lots of depictions of alien invasion on television.
This one I thought was kind of unique and sort
of fascinating in lots of respects.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Mmmm, so you watched the whole first season.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
I watched the whole first season and I'm caught up
on season two.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Well, how is it different this show?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, this show is a little bit less of like
an action show. It's not really like a video game
where you're seeing ships blast each other. Really more from
the point of view of people on Earth, and it
tries to describe like how confusing and disorienting and weird
it would be if aliens arrived, because you're not always
having perfect information about everything that's happening across the planet.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Mm. Sounds a little frustrating first of all. So no,
no laser blasters.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
No laser blasters, no Will Smith, Yeah, no Will Smith.
No like zapping the White House and then everybody knows
exactly what to do. It actually kind of reminded me
a little bit of how we felt in the early
days of the pandemic, when like, clearly something was going on.
Nobody liked it, but nobody exactly knew how bad it
was and what was happening and what was dangerous and

(07:39):
what wasn't. You know, information gets distorted and propagates slowly
and weirdly.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Hmmm. I wonder if that was partly inspired by the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I think probably it was. And it makes Her a
really fascinating show because it tries to give you a
little bit of a preview of what it would be
like for you if aliens invaded. They don't like come
to your home or like appear on the television and
explaining everything that's happening.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Well, I guess maybe it depends on how the aliens
come and visitors. Right, they might do all any kind
of thing when they come visit, right.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, they might. Absolutely. This explores one particular kind of experience,
and it's fun as a viewer because it forces you
to sort of put the puzzle pieces together and figure
out what might be happening and what the aliens might
be like. And they don't show you the Aliens until
very close to the end of season one.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
You have to wait a whole season to see the Aliens.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah. Well, because you know, most people don't get to
meet those foreign visitors immediately you're just on the ground
trying to survive with your family or get home from
your field trip that went awry because of the aliens attacked.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
You know, what's the basic premise? Are they here for
good reasons or bad reasons or I guess if they're
being sneaky about it, it must not be for a
good reason.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
It's definitely not for good reasons. I mean, they're killing people,
they're terraforming the planet. When they arrive, it definitely looks
like they're set up for colonization. But the basic story
follows like five different threads from around the world, people
what they experience, what they see, and then as a
viewer you're trying to put it all together.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Sounds interesting. Who are these main characters?

Speaker 2 (09:01):
So one group is a bunch of kids on a
field trip which goes horribly wrong. You know, their bus
is like bombarded with metal shrapnel and it falls into
a quarry and have to like survive. It's a little
bit of like a Lord of the Fly situation. And
one of the kids has a bit of a neurological
issue already, and he gets these weird visions which later
we understand are him sort of weirdly communing mentally with

(09:22):
the arriving aliens.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Wait, what, like he can he can think with the aliens.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, it turns out the aliens have really interesting and
creative way of communicating with each other, and some neuro
atypical humans can sort of pick up on those signals.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
WHOA interesting they can somehow think aliens.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, it's not so much that they're thinking in the
alien language, is that they're like receiving the transmissions. And
it's not a whole lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's not fun.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
It's not fun to get alien messages beamed into your brain.
According to this TV show.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Does it depend on what the aliens are thinking or
it's just not a pleasant experience.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, it's not a pleasant experience for this kid.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
All right.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Well, there's another really cool thread about an engineer who's
in contact with an astronaut on the Space Shuttle. The
Space Shuttle gets destroyed when the aliens arrive, but then
they keep getting messages from the potentially dead astronaut. So
then there's a mystery there of like is she really
alive or has she been absorbed into the alien mother
ships somehow? It's a fun puzzle.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
WHOA, wait, so the space shuttle out there in orbit
and they think it got destroyed or do you see
it get destroyed?

Speaker 2 (10:28):
You definitely see it get bumped into by the arriving
alien ship. Whether the astronauts survive is sort of the
question I see.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
So what else is going on around the world.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, so there's a few threads like that. There's another
group of school kids who all get spontaneous nosebleeds except
for again, one neuro atypical kid. Then he goes home
and his neighborhood is like weirdly bombed, except for his
house is left standing and his neighbors are a little
bit suspicious. But how that might have happened?

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Wait? What like somehow his house was spared?

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, somehow. So he's like a little bit of a
weird kid. That's something of a feme in the show
that certain humans get treated differently by the alien invasion,
and that of course causes tension among the humans, like, hey,
how come your house didn't get blown up and mine did?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Is because they're tastier or because they taste bad?

Speaker 2 (11:13):
It's not clear.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Stay tuned for season fifteen.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, and so it's a lot of fun and they're
definitely creative, and they're doing their best to show us
aliens we haven't seen before. I think I can talk
about it without spoiling it too much because season one
has been out for a while.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Wait wait, wait, wait, maybe you should give a spoiler
warning though. I mean, if you have to wait for
the whole season to see these Aliens, you're basically spoiling
the whole season.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, all right, so maybe I won't spoil it. I'll
just say that the Aliens.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
No, just give a spoiler alert, then you can spoil it.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
That's how it works, all right, Skip forward fifteen seconds
if you don't want to hear this. But the Aliens
are these weird black blobs that can sort of grow
legs in any direction to move. So the way they
move is this really strange kinetics sort of dance. They're
like constantly growing legs out in front of them to
touch stuff and move forward. It's very weird. They're sort

(12:02):
of like microbes blown up to the macroscopic scale.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
WHOA sounds a little bit weird and scary. Are they
friendly looking or are they sort of like, you know,
like the alien movies, terrifying.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
They're not like the alien movies. They don't look like
a predator, but they're definitely not friendly. And they get
this sort of like creepiness from being so weird, from
being so different from anything you've ever seen before. Like
there's no face there to even like try to connect with.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Do they have like a mouth?

Speaker 2 (12:27):
At least they do have a sort of kind of
orifice that they used to gobble people up.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Oh wait, they do gobble people up.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
They do gobble people up, like eat them whole. I
don't know if you could describe it as digesting. But
yet people definitely get killed and consumed.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Oh boy, at least the tasty ones.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, and so I really like this show, and the
science of it is interesting.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
They have these new ways for the aliens to communicate
with each other, which might weirdly overlap with human brain patterns.
The ships that arrive are these incredibly huge, like of
Star Wars size destroyers, and they have really interesting terraforming
technology to try to convert the atmosphere to something that
the aliens could naturally breathe.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Interesting. All right, Well, let's get into the science of
the Apple TV show Invasion. And then later on Daniel
has an interview with some of the writers from the show.
So let's dig into those things. But first let's take
a quick break. All right, welcome back. We're talking about

(13:37):
the science fiction universe of Invasion, the Apple TV show,
which is about an invision of the alien kind.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Finally something that's well named.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Right, Yeah, it takes a writer to do that.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
They did not have a physicist in charge.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Maybe all those tracking writers should go work for science
help give better names.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, if we had funding, we would definitely hire more writers.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
There you go. So we're talking about the TV show Invasion,
which has a new season out right now. You can
go watch the first season, I guess if you're subscribed
to Apple TV, right, mm hmm. And we talked a
little bit about the tone of the show and what's
going on. It's kind of a big mystery box. But
why the aliens are here? Are though? It's pretty clear
they're not friendly.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
It's pretty clear that they want what we have.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
They're not here to do science with the physicists. You're
here to do dinner with the.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Physicists exactly, dinner of the physicists.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
That's right, it's physics for dinner. So then you're saying
there's some interesting science or at least science fiction in it, right.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I'm always looking for a science fiction that creates
new rules and then follows them that gives us a
new sort of mental space to play with, because the
fun part for me in a science fiction show is
the mystery and trying to solve it and trying to
figure out like, huh, if the aliens can do this,
then maybe this is the rule they follow, and trying
to uncover what those rules are, just the same way
we're trying to uncover the rules of the real universe.

(14:54):
And so it's important to me that they're actually following
some rules so that the detective game is fair in
some respects. And this one, I think is definitely creative
and follows those rules.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
All right, Well, what are some of the rules?

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, the aliens have some weird way of communicating supposedly
with each other, and one crucial aspects of the plot
is that some of the kids on the planet can
sort of overhear it or can understand that they get
these visions of what the aliens are seeing. So what's
the science of that? Like, Well, you know, there's lots
of waves you could communicate invisibly between brains all sorts
of electromagnetic waves or sound waves you know infrasound or

(15:29):
whatever you could use to communicate.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Meaning, Like the aliens talk to each other telepathically to
each other, I guess they don't speak. Somehow they're transmitting
information between their brains.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Somehow they're transmitting information between their brains.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Which could just be like an electromane and the signal
or like a radio signal.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Absolutely the same way that our phones talk to each other.
You don't hear them speaking, but they're definitely passing messages
back and forth. And the question is, like, is it
plausible for the human brain to be able to pick
up those messages and interpret them as images. I mean,
android and iPhones can't even really talk to each other.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Right, that seems pretty unlikely. It's almost like you could
overhear yourself your cell phone, right, like you could somehow
envision what picture you're sending one person is sending another
person through your brain, like somehow that seems unlikely that
it would resonate in your brain.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Somehow, it seems unlikely that your brain would know how
to interpret that. You know that those signals could be
assembled by your brain into an image in your mind
it seems pretty hard to imagine, but you know, it
stretches the bounds of plausibility but doesn't quite break it.
I mean, it is possible that there's just sort of
like the natural way for a brain to represent images,
and aliens in humans happen to have it in common.

(16:41):
I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's not impossible.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Oh, I see, like maybe they map it out in
a similar way or something.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
I mean, there are studies that show that when you
think about a memory, you have an image in your mind,
there's a physical representation of that in the neurons in
your brain that have a similar physical relationship. Like see
images in people's brains of what they are thinking if
you scan it in the right way. So it's not
impossible that an alien image could you know, tweak your

(17:09):
neurons in a certain way to make you see something.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
It's possible, all right, what else do we have in
this world?

Speaker 2 (17:16):
The rest of the world is pretty straight up, like
huge ships. Yeah, sure, aliens could probably build huge ships.
Would they have terraforming technology? Yeah? Probably. Terraforming is pretty
challenging if you want to do it on a short
time scale, If you need to replace the atmosphere of
an entire planet. It's a pretty big project. You can't
just like have one pump to create methane or whatever

(17:37):
it is you need to breathe. You need pretty massive,
industrial sized converters. But they bring those along and so
that is totally plausible that the Aliens could convert our
atmosphere to theirs in a fairly short time. They do
have these very powerful pumps.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
One thing about huge ships is I always wonder how
they land and how they stay afloat. Now do these
big ships of the Aliens? Did they land on Earth
or did they stay hovering above the White House and
things like that.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
No, they just hover above. Then they send down little
landing ships.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Like are they in orbit or are they actually just floating?

Speaker 2 (18:09):
That's a good question. I hadn't considered the orbital mechanics
of it. They're pretty close to the surface, so I
think it'd be pretty challenging to be in orbit. So
they must be hovering someway.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Just magically floating. That's one thing that always gets me.
It's like the amount of energy you need to hold
something up that big would be huge unless they have
some sort of like anti gravity.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Right, Yeah, you're right, and that would be applying a
force downwards on the ground, and so you'd be able
to see them on the ground if they're not just
like manipulating gravity somehow.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Right, Yeah, we need to manipulate gravity. Cool. Well, it's
a lot of interesting things to think about here, and
to check out the Apple TV show Invasion. Now, Daniel,
you got to interview a couple of the writers from the.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Show I did. I got in touch with Tatiana Suarez
Pico and a DT Brendan Kapil. Both of them are
writers on season two of the show, and both of
them have really interesting stories about how they came to
become science fiction writers. They both started as playwrights actually,
and one of them was an actor before becoming a writer.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Interesting. All right, Well, here's Daniel's interview with Invasion writers
Tatiana Suardrez Pico and Aditi Brennan Capill.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to
the program the writers Tatiana Suarez Pico and Adit Brennan Capil,
who are both science fiction writers. Extraordinary. Thank you very
much for joining us today.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
So first, tell us a little bit about your background,
how you guys got into writing, how you got into
science fiction and television. Tell us the story I am.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
This is a dit speaking. I am originally a playwright,
and I drifted into TV and film writing the way
that many playwrights do. You know, TV and film actually
got really really exciting at one point, and oddly, possibly unusually,
my plays tended to have a little bit of a

(20:01):
genre twist to them, like I actually wrote things that
were like epic, metaphoric sci fi ish work or you know,
mythologically inspired work, Like there was always some kind of
something in there, which when people ask me about it
back then, I think I might have attributed it to
being Indian, because I feel like Indian people have like

(20:22):
a really specific like if you look at the like
the Ramayana, there was a spaceship like I think we
have very very old school sci fi cred and when
I got here and started writing TV and film, I
think a lot of what I ended up doing was
in the genre space, and specifically in the sci fi space.
For me, I think it has a lot to do

(20:43):
with the fact that if you want to tell radical stories,
oftentimes it's both more fun and easier to tell them
if you're in another world in a way, so that
you can sort of take the pieces of it that
may have been too close to home that there might

(21:03):
have been resistance to in terms of oh, I'm uncomfortable
with that subject matter, or I'm feeling a little you know,
preached to or something. You put it in a grand adventure,
you put it in space, and all of a sudden
you can talk about really difficult topics and people are like, yeah,
but it's just a yarn and I'm having a good
time and I get to sneak more radical content and

(21:25):
on people that way. And that was true when I
was writing plays, and it's true for writing TV and film.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
It's amazing to me how many people don't realize that
Star Trek is like deeply political and progressive. You know,
it's like, oh, it's about aliens, so it's no reflection
on us.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Yeah, you can get really feminist too when you get
into like, yeah, it's really interesting, which you can get
away with that. There would be serious resistance too if
you were like in a more grounded space.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, and Tatiana, what's your story?

Speaker 5 (21:54):
You know, I didn't know it was my dream, so
I was an actor first. Then I went to grad
school for that, and then I went to did a
POSTCRAD program for playwriting, and so I did that for
a little bit, probably not as extensively as I would
have liked to, because as soon as I graduated from
that program, I ended up working in television. And that's
just because I wrote a play that an agent liked

(22:16):
and said, I think I can get you a job
in LA And I said, what do I have to
do and he said, just be yourself and I said, okay,
I got this.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
So you were discovered.

Speaker 5 (22:26):
Yeah, I mean sure, the way that any agent will
look for material that they think they can market in
some way, because at the end of the day, it
is a business. So that's how I ended up doing this.
And like I said, I really didn't know it was
a job. I loved movies and I thought there were
actors and producers, and I never thought about writers. I

(22:48):
don't know why, and I certainly, even though I wrote
for a long time before, I consider myself myself a writer,
I never thought anyone would pay me actual money to write,
And somehow I thought people would pay me to act.
So it's kind of silly, but that led me to
a variety of jobs in the genre space. And what

(23:10):
I realized is that the things that I wanted to
do as an actor, which was be able to pay
a play a variety of characters and actions and places
and people and things, I actually gravitated toward that and
writing like that, the ability to create worlds seemed really

(23:31):
really exciting and really will suit it to me, Like
I was able to jump into that, into whatever the
space is with I think with a spirit of play.
I'm like, okay, go, so I think that that's how
I ended up here.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
It's incredible to me how important it is to sort
of know what the possibilities are in order to get
access to them. Do you think there are still like
jobs out there you don't even know exist that it
might be well suited to you, Like, oh, I didn't
know you could be a studio head and control entire
production budgets or things beyond that.

Speaker 5 (24:03):
I think there are less jobs now that I know,
just because of the experience, But I am certain there
are things that I'm like, wow, who does that? I mean,
even when when I think of science, I'm like, maybe
I should have studied science that that's actually changing the world.
And you know, sort of forgives in humanity in some
very tangible way. But I'm sure there are jobs out

(24:26):
there and possibilities. I should say that I have yet
to explore and understand and know.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
I have a very limited skill set.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
I think I managed to find the exact right groove.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
For my skill set.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Well, I'm so glad that happened.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
As am I there was a possibility of just what
are we gonna do? I don't know. It's a really
good thing. I was able to monetize the.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Thing I do.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
That's wonderful. So we have a set of questions that
we ask all all science fiction writers that we bring
on the show to sort of like put them on
the spectrum of concepts. So these are generic questions, not
necessarily about your writing. And the first one is a
little bit of philosophy. Do you think that Star Trek
transporters kill you and clone you on the other side
or actually transport your atoms somewhere else? Is it a

(25:19):
murder machine or a teleportation device.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
I need to believe that it's a teleportation device. I'm
very uncomfortable with a murder machine.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
Because there's those times when they get like lost and
they have to be found and.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
If they were in fact death No, no, no, no,
I'm going with teleportation.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Machine because you think it's true or because you need
it to be true.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
I would never travel by that means if it wasn't, like,
I don't know why any of them would get on
that little like thingy if it wasn't I don't yeah, no,
uh huh.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
I think that that would be it might be a
selling point for people if they were actually killing you,
like you you know, cross and to the other side,
and that you're new, you're born again. You know that's
a thing.

Speaker 4 (26:13):
Hey, why disassemble? Could you actually take out this thing
that I don't like? That would be great.

Speaker 5 (26:19):
Could you make me a little taller.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's like a really in depth colonoscopy here. We're just
going to disassemble. You will take out the stuff that's
not great, we'll put you back together. Not to worry,
but but I do.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
I do think that it would be sort of like
a selling point if you were actually dying, like what
what happens? And that are you conscious in the between
and the in between? You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (26:46):
Like what I don't even take roller coasters? Like, no,
you can have trouble.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
I think convincing certain types of people to ever be
transported would be in a shuttle every time.

Speaker 5 (27:03):
That is there and trained to get there. Exactly could
I row If anybody piloting thing.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Give me one of those little like rocket packs, I'll
just he'll be there.

Speaker 5 (27:16):
I like the deav in between, But I don't think
they're actually killing you. It feels like it's like some
sort of three D printing something, something that transports you.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
So now you're being cloned.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Well, that's what I'm thinking, opened up a whole thing
where there are several of me existing on several different
places because I've been killed and reassembled so many times,
And what if I wasn't really dead?

Speaker 4 (27:39):
What if that big transportation device.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Now has created these theories of alternate We're so screwed you.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Guys, which one is really you?

Speaker 5 (27:46):
That would be really interesting, like what happens, But.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
It's a fundamental flaw in the construction, Like, you do
not want that machine. You want a simple machine that
guarantees that you're the same person on the other.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Side, like a robot. Yeah. No, that's the advantage philosophical
advantage of a rowboat right there, all right? So second
general question is what technology in science fiction would you
most like to see become reality.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
Well, frankly, teleportation really excellent. That would be super convenient.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
I really don't enjoy the time it takes to travel places.

Speaker 5 (28:24):
I mean, I think it's a version of time travel, right,
I mean, I think we do it in the like
in the present when you get on a plane and
you end up in the future someplace else in the world.
I mean, it's also like the ability to I don't know,
fly at the speed of light. I don't know, like
travel is whatever that is. But the idea that you
could go back and forth in time and somehow effect

(28:47):
your future and then know at what point in your
future you could show up.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
I feel like I'm learning so much about Tatiana right now.
I feel like just the fact that your brain is
like the little is fascinating.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
Also, time travel is an airplane.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
It is it is. I mean, I als would make
a joke about this, but I'm like, how is the future?
Because they are technically in the future eight hours and
hours eighteen hours ahead, You're like, how you know?

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Time slippery? All right? Last general question is what's your
personal answer to the Fermi paradox. If the galaxy is
vast and old, why haven't we been visited by aliens?

Speaker 5 (29:29):
I think we have Okay, I don't have any tangible
scientific proof, so I you know, other than it's a conjecture.
But I I mean, maybe those videos that you see
on the internet of UFOs are made up, right, those
like where you see an aircraft going, Maybe they are.
Maybe they're just a trick. But who says that they

(29:52):
have not? And maybe we're not very interesting, Maybe we're
too primitive. Maybe it's just a couple of people who
visited or I don't know, and you know the way
that you would visit a foreign country and be like
maybe not there.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
They stop by, they didn't like the coffee, they left.

Speaker 5 (30:11):
These people are doing, I mean, they're you know, they're
they're gonna end up killing each other anyway, So can
we just like observe and then leave. So that's what
I mean. Who's to say that they have a visited?
I think that's my take on it.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
I guess I think, what if we're just a blip,
you know, what's to visit? Do you know what I mean?
Like it's such an insane accident of biology and evolution
and cosmic dust, that we even are like this, you know,
and that we have a planet that's like teeming with

(30:44):
life and perhaps that weird cosmic accident is and then
at some point, which is maybe soon in a cosmic sense,
will no longer be and uh, that's just kind of
there is to it. And maybe there's a blip of
some kind elsewhere, but is that something that we're really

(31:05):
privy to given what a blip we.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Are, you know, meaning that we don't live for very long,
and so our civilizations just might not overlap with other blips.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Sure, and we're not very important, so why like it's
sort of it feels like, though, why haven't we been
visited and why haven't we encountered? Is such a human
centric way to think to begin with. If we're not
the center of the universe, then it's just a it's

(31:34):
an accident of whatever what we do encounter and what
we don't encounter and what we'll never encounter, and we'll
just sort of like live our weird little ephemeral existence
and that'll be that and whatever we get to see
that that's cool, I guess, But I don't know, like
something you know, I work in theater. I used to
work in theater where things are and then they aren't, Like,

(31:56):
I'm all about the ephemeral. Yeah, I guess I just
don't think that the universe versus organized around our experience.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Well, I think it's fascinating in science fiction how a
lot of it really is the projection of the human
experience to say, well, if we were around for long enough,
we would explore the whole galaxy, so therefore other aliens
must also be doing that. But really we're just thinking
about what we would do, and it's impossible to really
put ourselves in the minds of aliens and.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Our desire to encounter something that we can understand so
that we can interpret it. I mean, I also think
that if we do presume alien life, which I'm totally
fine with presuming alien life, what are the odds that
we would even understand it, you know, that it would register.

Speaker 5 (32:39):
Or they even want to understand us.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, or have wants, I mean wants seem like a
very human thing.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Well, that brings me to a question I wanted to
ask you. When you're writing science fiction and you're portraying aliens,
seems to me like there's a bit of a choice there, Like,
you can make aliens extremely alien, which I think is
probably more realistic, and it makes them emotionally totally inaccessible.
Right we can't see what they're thinking, we can't know
what they're feeling, we can't even talk to them. Or
you can make them less realistic and more human, but

(33:09):
then you can know what they want and there's motivations
and you see their internal politics. What do you like
to write on that spectrum? More realistic but inaccessible, or
less realistic but more understandable.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
I guess Philosophically, I think the exploration of the something
that is completely other is really interesting and can reflect
interestingly on our humanity and how we perceive the world,
how we think about ourselves in the context of the universe. However,

(33:41):
pragmatically speaking, if you want to have scenes with said aliens,
it really helps if they have a face.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
Like it really really.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Helps if they have a face. It is incredibly hard
for us with our human brains, because ultimately, here's the thing.
We are writing and filming and communicating and acting for
a human audience. So ultimately we really really have to
gear what we're doing to a human brain and how
a human brain receives information. It is really hard to

(34:14):
have a scene with something that doesn't have a face.
It's hard to invest it with emotion, intent, it's hard
to give it any of those things. So I enjoy
the inscrutability of you know, cosmic dust, I guess. But
I think depending on the nature of the show, if
it is a show that wants to actually interact and

(34:36):
have conversations, then you need to anthropomorphize just a little bit.

Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I think that.
You know, my dad used to watch Star Trek, but
I grew up in Columbia, so I used to watch
it in Spanish, soa he Lesstrades, that was I think,
and I think what he was most excited about, and
what I got most excited about, by proxy, was that
there were all these aliens, right, these other planets, and

(35:04):
people that lived inhabited these other planets, that had wants
and needs and whichever way they were using them to
this because a variety of themes and topics that applied
to humans and humanity in our world, those other people,
those other creatures or beings were being used to reflect
our own wants and needs and things. But I think
that in order to have actual drama. Like Aditi said,

(35:29):
you do need them to want something. And that's not
to say that you don't relish some degree of alertness, right,
Like via the invasion, they were like lizards, right and
there was scary and hard to look at, and Diana
was evil and all of that, and I think, but
I think that that's their otherness. Was scary and interesting,

(35:49):
and I think you can make a meal out of
that in any scenario, in any sort of sci fi
show or world. But yeah, I agree with ideally you
want them to want.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Something, like you feel like it's Wars where they had
kind of a medley. You just need eyes, Like if
you just have eyes and maybe noise, you're okay. You
can get emotion like Chewy. And honestly, the robots are
like some of my I get. So they make me
emotional as emotional, if not more, as you know, the humans.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Even Jaba the Hut has needs.

Speaker 5 (36:19):
We're gonna say that Jaba Hut. I mean, I said
so little, but yet so much. You know, like you
understand which side Jaba is on.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
So then what about on invasion? We see the aliens
very briefly, but when we do see them, they're very other.
There are no eyeballs, there's no faces. We get some
sense of like, you know, malevolence. Tell us about writing
with such weird aliens.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
Actually, I should say neither of us worked on the
first season of Invasion. We both worked on the second
season and for the second season because we're in the
middle of airing. In addition to the fact that we're
on strike and not promoting, we also Canton shouldn't spoil,
so there's that component. But I think what I in,

(37:05):
you know, what I'll talk about the first season. I
think what I enjoyed about the aliens on Invasion, and
also about the slow burn of the kind of invasion
approach to sci fi was the very, very creepy, eerie
unknown of what is happening to us, which feels so

(37:27):
radical in a kind of in a filmography where we
are accustomed to we're under attack, how do we fight back?
We fight back, and usually it's literally DC fighting a
mother ship. Like you know, it's like the White House
is blown up, we shoot the thing. You know, it's
very binary and very literal and very linear, and who

(37:50):
is the enemy is very clear.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
It's like a video game.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Usually, yeah, very much so, and it's nice, it's very
convenient for storytelling, like you got your hero, you know
where to point your hero. But there's something so disruptive
and disturbing about not about something is happening to us,
to the planet, to us as a humanity, and we

(38:16):
can't quite figure out what and how do we go
about that? And how does the information reach the various
pockets that it reaches when it reaches them, and how
do you interpret the weird fragments of information that you have,
And that includes what the aliens look like. I mean,
they're incomprehensible, They're like, well, they don't have eyes, you

(38:37):
know what I mean, they have a mouth, which is
good and scary or like something that feels oritificy anyway,
But it's that sort of I think that the game,
especially in season one, and I shall refrain from spoiling
season two, the game that season one plays is very
much that's sort of like down to the ground realistic.
How do you figure out from the rapnels of information

(39:01):
that you have what is happening? And how terrifying is
it to not even be able to identify the nature
or the source of this threat that is clearly killing you.
You know, it's scary in a human way. It's scary
the way disease is scary, which I think is fascinating
and I take no credit for because I didn't work
out season one.

Speaker 5 (39:19):
I think there was also an effort to make those
particular creatures unlike any human or anything that you've ever seen,
because the less they look like you, the less you're
able to think or imagine that you can relate to
these things that are in front of you. And I
think the little bit that I can say of a

(39:40):
season two is once again because it's airing and strike stuff,
I feel like the joy and the Jews and that
story is that it's discovering how they are unlike us,
or how they are like us, you know, where and
how could we possibly communicate with a language and a

(40:02):
language that we don't understand. So like the way that
you know, what's your name, Amy's the language a specialist,
the linguist tries to communicate with beings that do not
communicate the way that you do. So I think that
there's a joy in that and an excitement and a
fear for the characters.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, wonderful. Tell me a little bit about what it's
like to work on a project like this where the
universe has been somewhat set up already, because I know
the season one was written basically by the creators of
the show, and then you guys got brought in for
season two. Do they like read you in in all
the secrets that are coming down the roads to make
sure that your writing is consistent with it? What's that

(40:41):
like to sort of operate in somebody else's universe that
they've begun to build.

Speaker 5 (40:46):
Yeah, I mean I would say that yes to what
you said. I believe they had like a writer's room before,
and that was done a way, and that was for
season one, and then there was a fairly mostly new
writers from for season two, and I think the spirit
of that season two room was We're going to let

(41:06):
you in on all the secrets, but also we are
so open to you bringing in ideas and also your
ideas as a viewer. Right. I think by now I
watch season one like six times, you know, and there's
you know, because of all the clues and the things,
and where can we grow the story? So there was
a spirit of openness and what else can you bring

(41:29):
to the table, How can we make this exciting? What
was exciting for you as a viewer watching the show
in the first season.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
I mean, ye, all right, I have lots more things
they want to talk about, but first, let's take a
quick break. Okay, we're back and we're talking to the

(42:03):
writers of the TV show Invasion. Compare what it's like
for us working on a big studio project like this
with a lot of your other work you both worked on,
you know, as playwrights, where it's just you and the
blank page and nobody's giving you notes. I'm assuming to
working on a project like this with this many levels
of review and discussion, And what's that like? Which one

(42:25):
is more fun for you? Or are the pros and cons?

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Oh they're such wildly different beasts. Kind of the beauty
of TV writing. But also the biggest difference for me
between it and writing a play, or even writing a
screenplay or you know, an audio play or anything that
is just mine is that in TV, the showrunner is

(42:52):
the lead artist, and everything you do in a really,
really fantastic, gorgeous I love this aspect of it, wait,
is in service to the lead artist's vision. So it's
like in the case of Invasion, Invasion is Simon Kinberg's
show and the case of the show I did for
Netflix years ago away the showrunners were the really really lovely,

(43:17):
amazing Wise Andrew Hinderocker and Jessica Goldberg. And when you
come into any TV room where you're inventing together, and
you have to invent together, and you have to all right,
and you have to all live in the same world,
and you have to somehow get into that space where
you're all inhabiting the same world. But what's helpful to

(43:40):
always remember is that ultimately that world is the showrunner's creation.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
That's their baby.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
That's who has in their gut the knowledge of what
this needs to be and wants to be. And you're
playing in that sandbox. So the really stark difference for
me is when it's mine, it's all my sandbox. It
is mine like I am. I'm not even the showrunner.
I'm just like the god of that little universe. My plays,

(44:07):
they are mine, they are my universe. I create them,
I make them go any which direction I please. At
some point I might be in service to someone else,
but not even really Like I'm in dialogue. I love collaboration.
What's fun about a writer's room is it's like improv
all day long with your friends, and then thankfully there's

(44:28):
someone who invented this world who can go, yeah, I
love that. Now let's not do that. Yeah great, go
that way. No no, no, no, I don't like that
at all, and you're like, cool, I'll go that way.
And when it's my world, I spend quality time thinking
really hard about what it is I'm trying to communicate
to the world. I spend quality time thinking about, you know,

(44:50):
like what the truth underneath a scene is that I
have to excavate in order to make it the most honest, profound,
insightful thing that I can say. And it's hot, and
it's like taking your innerds and smearing them across a
page and it takes forever, and it's agonizing writers' rooms. Yes,
it's like that when you're writing, because you want to
give them your best work, but it's not quite that painful.

(45:12):
It's like play with your friends, you know what I mean,
Because you have buddies. I can be like Gadiana, I
hate this scene so much, tell me something and she
tells me a.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
Joke and I go, okay, wait, I think I got it,
and I go, you.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Know, it's just a visceral difference in terms of process
and also in terms of whether you're in service or
whether you are the artist who is just stating a thing.

Speaker 5 (45:35):
Yeah, I think it's also a degree of community work, right,
because theater is community work once there is a project
and a creation on the table, right, And then you
bring in a designer, and you have a director, and
you have the actors, and you have a sound designer,
and you may have a theater. An artistic director of

(45:59):
a theater is also chiming in. And it feels like
TV is very much a community effort from the get go.
You know, even even with the creator slash showrunner, a
creator and a showrunner that work together, having those people
as people who are have created or given birth to

(46:20):
quote unquote given birth to a project in a world
it's very community oriented from the get go. And it
also depends on how flexible your creators or showrunner and
or show runner are and how willing they are to
stretch and open up the world in different ways that
they could have ever imagined. Some people are like, no,

(46:40):
it is this way, this is the only way I
want it, and that is completely fine, and then the other,
you know, the other end of that spectrum is like,
I'm very open to shaping this and taking it to
a place where I never imagined it could go.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Well. I'm wondering also about the process of like setting
up the rules for the world. Is it more like,
here's the universe we created, let's figure out what the
natural stories are, what it's like to be human in
this world, what it's like to live through this experience.
Or is it more like, here are the stories we
want to tell. You know, we'll figure out the rules
as we go along, which is a sort of more
natural process for you.

Speaker 5 (47:17):
It's a very personal question, right because and it also
depends on the story. Some stories require that you have
rules from the get go, even this tell Transporters, right like,
I know that they added like a machine that control
the tele transporting device and Star Trek, and then they
were like, oh, this falters. Here's a problem, you know
if you mess with it. But I think that there
are rules like maybe we never see the in between.

(47:39):
That's the rule, you know, because we don't want people
to go there. But I think it really depends on
the story that you're telling. I tend to do characters
and wants and needs and then go like, well, they
can't have it because, or they can't have this, or
they can or they want something forbidden because and why
is it forbidden in that world? And the rules Store

(48:01):
is sort of populating the world. But I've certainly worked
on shows where it was like the rules are you know,
I worked on the second iteration of this is in
sci fi, but it's genre certainly in period Penny Dreadful,
but it was in la and the rules were very clear.
You know, it's like it's period and the level of

(48:25):
horror is this, and this is what the person who's inhabiting,
the who's being inhabited were possessed by the devil. This
is what they can do. You know, they can't walk
through walls, but they can get into your head, you
know what I mean. But they can't. So those rules
were very clear, and they were set by the showrunner,
by John Logan. So as an example of rules are clear,

(48:48):
you cannot break them Otherwise, you know, you're sort of
pulling apart and tearing apart the fabric of the world
in the show.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
It's so particular, it's so particular the creator, I think,
just search for the story and the perfect vessel to marry,
like I is my thing, Like I feel like I
can meander through bazillion thoughts in my head. But unless
I come across one where I go, ooh, this story
inside this vessel look like a perfect marriage to me,

(49:18):
then I don't. I can't start, like I need the
vessel too in order to begin. So I think I
tend to have structure and some rules a universe in mind.
That there's to what degree is your project, your story,
accountable to rules?

Speaker 4 (49:34):
How much do you care about them?

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Because I think about I think about really geeky sci
fi stories where they clearly care so much about the science, right,
that's what gives them that tingle in their spine, right.
And then I think about others where it's really just
there to be a metaphor, it really truly is, you know,
Like I remember, I might get in trouble for this.

(49:59):
I remember when I saw gravity. We got to the end,
and I was like, it was just a metaphor. There
was no space travel.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
As far as I'm concerned, it was entirely a metaphor
about coming out of.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
Grief, how one comes out of grief. When she walked
out of that water.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
At the end, I was like, how she even alive?

Speaker 3 (50:20):
That's right, Oh, it's just a metaphor, just a metaphor,
And that's great. As long as the thing knows what
it is, I think it holds up as a narrative.
And I'm completely fine with the story existing in space
and just being an emotional metaphor. And I'm completely fine
with the meticulous math of you know, Chris Nolan figuring

(50:43):
out exactly how many layers of reality he needs his
characters to drop through.

Speaker 4 (50:48):
Where I'm like, oh my god, I can't. So it's
like those rules, also, I think are so particular to
the individual, and I think probably both Tatiana and I
have worked for people who fall everywhere that spectrum of
what it is they care about for the purposes of
their story.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
And I find that it takes me a minute to
calibrate my brain to oh, I may be more obsessed
right now with the science than you are, and I'm
going to have to just go icee ice, Ice. Okay,
it's a different vibe. This is a different vibe of story.
This is where this hangs out. Let me step back
and try to place myself there, because again, I am

(51:29):
of service, right, But it's so particular. It's it's such
an interesting thing. It's voice. It's the artist's voice.

Speaker 5 (51:35):
So DT and I worked on Invasion for like eighteen
months straight without break. I feel like add you were
keeping us. You were like keeping us on track in
terms of the whatever rules we had created for the world.
You were like, but the rules, but but wait, why
are we how could they possibly? No? I just remember

(51:55):
a couple of times in ways from where you were like,
my mind is exploding because how could possibly do this
when we've said this about the world. So I think
it was a very good You were great to have
in the room because when we thought about it, we
were like, she's.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Right, I can't.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
They can't.

Speaker 4 (52:13):
It's true, they can't.

Speaker 5 (52:14):
Do what we want him to do. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
That's actually a really good thing.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Also, in a TV writer's room, you can sort of
have a variety of people who care about a variety
of things, and they will give voice to those things,
and then the showrunner, the lead artist, whoever the lead
artist is, can be like, yep, I care about that.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
I don't care about that.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
I have care about that, And yes, I think my
jam On actually probably a couple of shows I've worked on.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Is but guys, the sciences, the rubles.

Speaker 5 (52:43):
I want to say that that's really important. And this
is why, because whenever I've watched the show just as
a viewer and the logic just doesn't add up with
the rules that you've given me, I'm like, check out.
I'm like, doesn't make sense. I stopped watching and start
judging because I can't engage any longer because I've suspended
my disbelief and you've given me rules, and I'm like, okay, great,

(53:04):
I've got the rules of the world. I'm now going
to you know, and the moment those things are start
to fall away, you start to check in with reality
and suspend your suspension of disbelief, is going like, oh
shut up, that would never happen because you told me
this before. So I think that that it is really important.
And once again, as a ditt said, the showrunner will decide,

(53:28):
you know, whether that's a rule that we want to
sustain for a particular scene or not. But I think
it's really important to keep that and you definitely did
that for us in that room. So on behalf of everybody.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Thank you, yes, thank you very much. Personally, as a scientist,
whenever I see science fiction, I'm always trying to solve
the puzzle. Why is it this way? What's going on?
And if I feel like the rules aren't being followed,
then I feel like it's the puzzles unsolvable, and then
it's like I feel betrayed.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Sometimes it's just a metaphors, just a metaphor.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
So my last question for you is, having spent eighteen
months working on this show and thinking deeply about Aliens
and arrival and all this kind of stuff. If you
heard that Aliens were arriving, would you think, ye, good
news for Earth, We're going to learn secrets of the universe,
or a bad news We're going to be lunch.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Definitely bad news.

Speaker 5 (54:19):
I was going to say the same, but only because
we did spend that amount of time being like, you know,
all these horrible things happening on Earth, and there were
so many downsides to that. How that ends up in
the story is a different story altogether. But you know what,
it's also because of so because so much sci fi
depicts the other the visitors as evil, I think my

(54:42):
first thought would be nothing good could come out of us,
But I want to be proven wrong. I there everybody
out there if they could listen to this podcast to pen,
I love for you to come and have coffee with
us and prove me wrong that there is much to

(55:02):
learn from other people and beings and that they may
possibly could learn something from us, if I could be
so arrogant to say that.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
So this probably falls back into my but we're cosmic
dust thing. Have you guys read this really really kind
of fascinating thinky sci fi novel called The Sparrow. It's
Mary Doria, Maria Doria Russell. Mary's something Doria Russell apologies,
I should fix that. So I think colonialism is why

(55:31):
I think it's bad news. Not because they come here
because they're determined to wipe us out with their amazing
super weapons, necessarily because that feels again very human centric
to me, but because is there a story of first
contact that we know that hasn't resulted in some couldn't
have foreseen it disaster.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Not with humans involved.

Speaker 4 (55:53):
Now, I don't know if.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
We're going to be bad for them or they're going
to be bad for us. But if they're coming, I'm
going to say they're the colonizers. But even if they
come with the best of intentions, you know, that the
smallpox are coming, you know what.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
I mean, like cosmic smallpox.

Speaker 4 (56:09):
I don't see how that's not the case.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
And that was sort of the kind of inner workings
theme of the well intentioned space travelers in the Sparrow,
which I thought was a really clever novel, really kind
of like well etched story.

Speaker 5 (56:25):
So what do you think, Dan, would you think if
you know they came to visit they what's your take
on it.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
I think there's an incredible opportunity there to learn about
the universe from a really alien perspective. I think so
much of our science is probably colored by our humanity
in a way that we can never unravel, in the
way that you can never really see your own cultures
imprint on your choices and your values. So I think
there's an incredible opportunity there. But I think it's much
more likely that if they do come, they will be

(56:53):
so alien and so other that we will never be
able to communicate with them and learn those secrets if
they do have them, and probably, you know, we'll end
up like in that Far Side cartoon where they look
like a hand and some farmer picks them up and
shakes them and dooms the earth to devastation, you know,
some simple mistake of miscommunication, disaster. You don't know every

(57:15):
Far Side cartoon by heart that it depicts aliens. Oh
my gosh, But I'm an optimist at heart, and I'm
looking forward to it. If aliens come, then at least
we will have learned one thing about the universe, which
is there are aliens. So before we get zapped from orbit,
you know, we'll have gained a tiny bit of knowledge.

Speaker 5 (57:32):
So somebody can ask what to kiss a long exactly?

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Do you think we'd accurately be able to identify them
as Like? Do you think we even have the ability
to identify life as life?

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Like, we don't even know what life is. We can't
even define it very well. So part of that learning
would be understanding what kind of things we can discover
and we can't discover, and you know where those boundaries are.
The more we learn about life, the more we realize
we should be looking for it in all sorts of way.

Speaker 5 (58:00):
Your places, it assumes that they are, like there's some
sort of degree of consciousness, right, So we just don't
know what package it would come in.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
Guys.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Earlier today I was walking around in my backyard, and
I think I stepped on an alien and wept out
an entire species.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
And that's the end of that. It looked like dust.
It was dust.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
How many times have you done that without even knowing?

Speaker 4 (58:26):
So many?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
All right, well, thanks very much for sharing all of
your thoughts about your process, about your experience and the
philosophy of Star Trek. Really appreciate your time and your
jokes and for sharing your gift of writing with us.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Thank you for having us this, Yeah, thank you?

Speaker 1 (58:44):
All right, pretty invasive conversation, sort of are they actually aliens?
Do you think? Is that how they know so much?

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Well? On the video, they seemed like humans and they
definitely had a human sense of humor, and you could
tell that they really enjoyed working together. They spent a
lot of time in that writer's room together, hammered a
lot of stuff out, and they got pretty deep and philosophical.
So this is a pretty thoughtful group.

Speaker 5 (59:04):
All right.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Well, the show is called Invasion. It's on Apple TV.
You can check out the second season right.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Now, that's right, And if you are a fan of
science fiction and you like these episodes, right to me
to send your recommendations. For authors and writers we should
talk to. Send it to questions at Danielandjorge dot com.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that, and next
time you look up to this guy, you think about
who might be out there and what might happen if
they come visit us or if we come visit them. Eventually.
Thanks for joining us, See you next time.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media,
where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter,
disc Word, Insta, and now TikTok. Happy holidays from everyone
here at the podcast. If you're looking for a science
themed gift for someone in your family, or just to
treat yourself, please consider buying one of our books. Our

(59:58):
first book, We Have No explores all of the things
science does and doesn't know about the world, from what
is mass to what happened before the Big Bang. It's
essential reading for fans of the podcast, and it's filled
with lots of hilarious cartoons drawn by Jorge, which you'll
miss if you only listen to the pod. And it's
available in dozens of languages, from Greek to Korean to English.

(01:00:21):
Of course, and this is an audiobook read by me
so check out. We have no idea our second book
frequently ask questions about the universe answers many of the
common questions we get from listeners. Where's the center of
the universe? Why can't we travel through time? What happens
if you fall into a black hole? Frequently Ask questions
about the universe is also available in audio and in

(01:00:43):
many many languages. So treat yourself for your family to
a dose of science and humor this year. If we
have no idea or frequently ask questions about the universe,
available at reputable and disreputable booksellers everywhere. They make a
wonderful gift for you, and it's the best way to
support your favorite pot. Happy holidays.

Speaker 6 (01:01:04):
Hi, this is Kelly Wienersmith.

Speaker 7 (01:01:07):
You may remember me from such dju conversations as that
one time Daniel said something that would scare my kids,
or that other time Daniel said something about how we're
all gonna.

Speaker 6 (01:01:19):
Die, which would probably scare my kids.

Speaker 7 (01:01:21):
Anyway, my husband and I wrote a book about the biological, psychological, technical, legal,
and ethical issues we still need to solve before we
settle space. The book is called A City on Mars,
and the bottom half of the expanses.

Speaker 6 (01:01:36):
James sa Corey liked it, so we think you should too.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Thanks, 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

(01:02:00):
into your favorite shows.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Hey Tore from the podcast. This holiday season, if you're
looking for a great gift for your kids, give him
a copy of Oliver's Great Big Universe, my new book
filled with signs, cartoons, and a hilarious story. It's a
big hit with kids and curious adults who love to read,
so check it out at Great Big Universe dot net.