Do Aliens Speak Physics, with Andy Warner

Daniel and Kelly are joined by Andy Warner, the co-author and illustrator of Daniel's new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics, and talk about how we might chat about science with aliens.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Let's talk about fantasies. Scientific fantasies, of course, because every
scientist out there has got one a dream scenario in
which they discover something that shocks the world, or they
stumble across some new species or an ancient artifact.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
If you've been.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Listening to this podcast, then you can guess my scientific fantasy. It's,
of course, first contact. I want to meet the aliens.
But wait, you might think Daniel's no biologist. We know that,
and he's admitted to having no nat for chemistry either.
So what's Daniel's scientific interest in aliens? Well, the reason
I got into physics was because I thought the topic

(00:47):
was bigger than biology or chemistry. It doesn't try to
solve just the puzzles of life here on Earth, which
might only be relevant to life on Earth. Physics tries
to understand the laws of the whole universe. Its questions
are so much bigger they literally span the whole cosmos.
How did the universe begin? What is it made out of?

(01:08):
So alien contact is my scientific fantasy because I long
believe that physics is something that should be cross planetary
and cross species. I believe that somewhere out there was
an alien Daniel working on particle physics, and I'd like
to meet him and to make a mental connection over
our common interest in the mysteries of the universe. Physicists

(01:30):
don't need any bigger egos, but it's quite a boost
to think that you're studying something that could be the
topic of a galactic science conference. But is that just
fantasy or is it on solid ground? Could it actually happen?
I just wrote a book exploring this juicy topic. The
book is called Do Aliens Speak Physics? And it's out now.
Please pick up a copy. Today's episode is just a

(01:53):
little taste of what the book dives into. Welcome to
Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Alien Universe.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Hello.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
I'm Kelly Wadersmith. I study parasites and space, and I
am so excited that I finally get to meet Andy
Warner on today's show.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I'm Daniel.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
I'm a particle physicist, and I want to meet aliens
and talk to them about the nature of the universe
or find out that they're bored by that question, either one.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I'm excited about it, Daniel.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
None of us are surprised to find out that you
want to meet aliens, so here's my question, since we
are chatting with an amazing cartoonist today, do you have
any artistic skills at all? Where do you stand on
the art spectrum.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
I do do a lot of doodles.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Actually they're embarrassing, so I would never show them to anybody,
but I do enjoy doodling. I used to play this
game with Hazel where she would pick a random object
and then we would both dry without looking at each
other's page, and then compare and you learn a lot
about like how people imagine things and how they portray things.
It's a lot of fun. And for this book, I
did a bunch of doodles. Sometimes you try to explain

(03:10):
an idea and you need the visuals, and so I
would do what are kind of embarrassing basic drawings to
share with Andy, and then he would come back and like, oh,
you're talking about this, and he would do this incredible
sketch which really just captured all the ideas and conveyed
them beautifully. So yeah, I'm a big fan of art.
I do a little bit of art, but it's all
private art that would never show to anybody except for

(03:31):
my close collaborators.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Excellent, my art skills are like, I don't even get
the proportions right on stick figures. I am awful. And
it was so embarrassing because I took parasitology and we
were supposed to draw what we saw underneath the microscope
and that was a big part of our grade. And
all of my parasites were just blobs. This blob has
a uterus over here that I put an arrow towards,

(03:53):
and like, you just have to believe it was there.
And then it got worse because I married an artist
and at one point he was like, well, let me
teach you how to draw, and I realized that I
had just decided, well, I don't need to know anything
because this is your job, right and I'm offloading this
to you.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
And so, uh, I got the fish stuff covered, you
got the drawing stuff covered.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
That's right, equal distribution of labor. But luckily you and
I found people to work with who are good artists.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Absolutely, yes, it's a joy to collaborate with artists, isn't it?

Speaker 4 (04:23):
It is? It really is. I mean, especially because I
think you and I really like to dig deep into
topics and really get into the details, and it's hard
for people to follow you on that journey sometimes and
partly it's hard for them to follow, you know, one
because it's complicated material. But two sometimes it just gets
kind of exhausting, Yeah, to be like trying to understand
complicated topics for too long. And so it's nice one

(04:45):
to have an illustration that clearly shows it in case
you're not imagining it right in your head. And two
to give you a second to laugh and be like
huh okay. And you know, if you get the joke
because you got the science, that feels good too. It's
like a nice payoff, you know. And then also like
I love that our will show me that they're you know,
seeing things in a different way than I am, and
it makes me think about things differently. And anyway, it's

(05:06):
a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, And it's one reason why like this podcast is
fun because it's not just like one person talking about science.
It's a conversation and you help me explain the physics,
then I help you explain the biology, and you know,
there's a back and forth there. And in these books
where you have like a scientist and a cartoonist, there's
also a back and forth between the dialogue, the written
word and the cartoons. Right, they make fun of each other,

(05:28):
they refer to each other, and you're right, that's much
more interesting and relaxing because you need those little breaks,
you need to back and forth. So it just doesn't
seem like such a monologue.

Speaker 5 (05:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Absolutely, Well, today we're going to hear a little bit
more about this process. Andy's going to describe what it
was like, so we don't just have to take your
word for it, and we'll hear what it's like for
the poor cartoonists working with us. And so today we're
talking about your book. Do aliens speak physics? That's right,
the greatest book ever, sure to be a New York
Times bestseller, now available in all finebal stores. And so

(05:59):
we we asked our audience to get this conversation started.
Can we use physics to communicate with aliens? And let's
see what our audience thinks. Given that Daniel talks about
this all the time and we always love hearing about it.

Speaker 6 (06:16):
Physics is the basis of absolutely everything.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
We can't have a conversation just between two people without physics.
So absolutely physics is the only way we could communicate
with aliens. Physics and math are probably the most universal languages,
so I would.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
Say probably yes. I think that if we make an
experiment where the outcome is different from what the aliens expect,
that would be interesting.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
What else would you like to use? Magic?

Speaker 7 (06:42):
Or verse chemistry, general relativity, and the speed of light
in our conversations are more likely pen pal exchanges over
centuries than a phone call.

Speaker 8 (06:53):
I'm actually of the mind that we probably never will
encounter aliens.

Speaker 5 (06:58):
I'm pretty sure if we contact alliance, physics will be
involved in some way or another. And doun say I
couldn't be.

Speaker 6 (07:05):
I would think so because the only thing I can
think of is using the bands of the electro magnetic
spectrum to encode or entangle to send out communications.

Speaker 8 (07:18):
I don't know if we can use physics to talk
to aliens, but if you figure it out, please let
me know, because I'm pretty sure my stepmother is an
alien and she is impossible to communicate with.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, because there must be some values or firm lass
which are universal and we could base a recommunication on that.

Speaker 5 (07:42):
Communication requires some kind of shared experience or viewpoint, and
I think physics could provide that. Yeah, because the distances
are so great that they exceed human lifetimes. Can we
even use physicists.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
I think we can and probably should.

Speaker 5 (08:00):
We can depict things like one thing and another thing
equals to things numerically, and then we can display the
pytheg orient theorem once.

Speaker 7 (08:07):
We get the units of measurement figured out. Yeah, using
physics to talk to the aliens would probably work. It's
the one coming thing that we can discuss. This is
how fast light goes, and then that gives us their
units of measurement, and we figured it all out and
everything's wonderful. I'd rather a physicist was doing the talking
rather than a politician, but it's obvious that the best
scenario of the humanity would be to let me moderate.

Speaker 9 (08:27):
I think so. In fact, I think we're using basic
physics on the voyager probes the records that will allow
us to know and not communicate directly, but at least
give an alien civilization a starting point on how to
communicate with us.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
As always amazing answers, I had a good laugh at
the step mom comments.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
And the chemistry joke of course, and the chemistry.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
Joke of course. Yep. But this is a question you
have thought about a lot, and your co author Andy
has thought about a lot. So maybe we should just
jump right in and hear more about it.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
So then it's my absolute pleasure to welcome my co
author and collaborator and new favorite cartoonist to the podcast,
Andy Warner. Andy is a non fiction cartoonist. He's the
author of the New York Times best selling and hilarious
book Brief Histories of Everyday Objects.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
He was a.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Contributing editor at the NIB and teaches cartooning at the
California College of the Arts at Stanford and at the
Animation Workshop in Denmark. He works in South Berkley and
comes from the sea.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
What does that mean, Andy, What does it mean to
come from the sea?

Speaker 5 (09:38):
Well, I actually I grew up on a series of
small islands, first sam Blast and Panama, then Saint Croix
and the US Virgin Islands. That's where my sister was born,
and then goes to spend a lot of time in Corsica.
My dad is a marine biologist or was. He's retired now,
and he studied sex changing fish while I was growing up.

(09:59):
So for a summer job, sometimes I would be, you know,
floating above a reef with a snorkel, counting off how
many blue head wrasts there were, and there was always
tubs out back where he and various postdocs were removing
their go nads. It was a fun childhood.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (10:18):
I have two siblings and so we kind of grew
up running around on these islands.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
I was a fish person when I was a baby scientist,
and I love fish so much and blue headed rass.
I read all about sex changing and what we know
about the mechanisms behind that, and your childhood sounds absolutely
amazing to me.

Speaker 5 (10:36):
So I didn't even need to talk to you about
sneaker males. You already know the.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Drill, totally know about sneaker mails.

Speaker 5 (10:41):
Nice, that's my party story, Like, let me tell you
about sneaker males.

Speaker 4 (10:45):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
I mean it does sound like a lot of fun.
But I noticed, Andy, but you didn't grow up to
become a marine biologist. What does that say about your experience?

Speaker 10 (10:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (10:52):
Much the less sorrow of my dad. He definitely was
like he'll be the one. But you know what it
did teach me is how to talk to scientists, because
I grew up with him with all the people who
was working with his friends, my parents' friends in these
you know, somewhat isolated environments where there weren't a lot
of other kids around, and so in the absence of that,

(11:13):
I would talk to these grown ups. And talking to
scientists is a really interesting thing because they are very
fascinated by things, and so it taught me how to
be interested in things that maybe I'm not specialized in,
absorb their fascination, get fascinated by it in a similar way.
And then you know, you go and swim and you
see these fishs that they were talking to you about,
and it makes the science very real. And so, you know,

(11:35):
I ended up making a lot of comics about science.
I'm a nonfiction cartoonist and I do history, but I
also do science interpretation. And I like to think, or
at least I like to tell my dad that his
influences there.

Speaker 4 (11:50):
Well, so how did you learn to translate scientists? Because
you're right with like, we as a group get really
excited about stuff, but we're not always really good at
explaining that to other people. You know, we like jump
right to the mechanisms and we're talking about goodnetotrope and
releasing hormone or something instead of like, yeah, how did
you learn to communicate science to nonscientists?

Speaker 5 (12:10):
It's all about the asking questions, right, Like, these people
know things. It's not just somebody at a party blathering
on about something that they know nothing about. These are
really specialists that have devoted their lives to you know,
maybe it's somewhat esoteric knowledge to like the general public,
but like they can break it down into its little parts.
And so if you just sit there with somebody and

(12:31):
you kind of probe them and you question them, and
if you don't understand something, that's what you ask about.
Now that leads you into a new direction. It's that
technique that really gets me a lot of places is
being nice and interested in what people are talking about
and then asking them questions about it, you know, not
just like absorbing it, because that also demonstrates to them

(12:51):
that you're actually interested. A lot of people who have
specialized have this experience where they talk about what they
do to somebody whose eyes glaze over and they really
part way through, oh I've lost this person, and so
just not being that person they've lost being that person
that's like, oh no, like tell me more. It's you know,
it takes you along for the ride with them, and
that's been a really fun part of my entire career.

(13:13):
I mean, even with Daniel. Daniel was explaining a ton
of stuff, and as we put this book together, it's
one of my favorite parts about being the kind of
cartoonists that I am.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Frankly, I love how you talk about talking to scientists
the way we think about talking to aliens, you know,
as if scientists are the aliens. And so you're saying
that this whole time we've been writing a book about
talking to aliens, You've been practicing on me this whole time.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's awesome, absolutely.

Speaker 5 (13:41):
Firsthand knowledge. It is really interesting because scientists are often
used to talking with each other and this kind of
specialized language develops, and so as a layperson, like I'm
sort of a professional layperson in a lot of ways,
Like I talk to people and I get them to
talk to me about what they're interested in and then
breaking down And yes, Daniel, you're absolutely on the examination.

Speaker 4 (14:07):
So I'm interested in how this collaboration came about. And
so maybe Daniel, So I know Daniel is the one
who initially had the idea. So maybe Daniel, you can
tell me about how you came up with this idea initially,
and then we can talk about what it was like collaborating.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, so you know, I'm of course interested in physics
and like how does the universe work and all that
kind of stuff, But anybody who listens to the pod
knows that I'm also really interested in philosophy, and not
like weird abstract philosophy, but the context of the physics questions,
like what does it mean that the universe is made
of strings or springs or sprayings or whatever it's actually.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Made out of.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
You know, to me, the reason physics is exciting is
because of the philosophical implications of what we've learned. Space
is curvy or it's not or whatever. The universe is
infinite or it's finite. All those things have meaning. But
you know, they have meaning if you think you're discovering
the truth. They have less meaning if you think, hm,
this is just our description of the universe, and maybe

(15:01):
it's telling us just about ourselves and not the universe.
I wanted to write a book about that by figuring out,
you know, is physics the map or is it the
territory itself? Also because a lot of physicists deeply believe
that it's the territory and can't accept the concept that
it's the map, and I was a little bit more skeptical.
So I pitched this idea for a book to my

(15:21):
fourteen year old at the time, and he was like,
m boring, come on, I would never read that book.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
I know. I was totally crushed.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Honestly, I was like, this is my passion project. But
I also really respected his honesty.

Speaker 5 (15:36):
No better editor than a fourteen year old.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah, I know, right exactly. Your kids will make you humble.
But then I thought, well, how can I make this
more fun? Well, maybe it's more fun if you think
about why.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
It matters, you know, like, does it matter at all?

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Is it only of interest to philosophical interested people who
smoke banana peels on the roof? And I thought, well,
it matters if our description is human or if it's universal,
if somebody else has a different description, and like who
else might have a different description, Well, you know, alien scientists.
And so it was fun to imagine what might happen
when aliens arrive and we get to talk to their

(16:09):
scientists and learn like, oh, are we describing the universe
or is it just our description of.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Our experience of it?

Speaker 1 (16:16):
And I went back to my fourteen year old and
I was on pins and needles, and he was like, oh, yeah,
I would read that book, and so boom, I was
off to the races.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
Has he read the whole book?

Speaker 2 (16:27):
He has read the book?

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Actually, yeah, I mean he and my daughter read it
and they both contributed some jokes.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
So that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, I know Katrina has not yet read the book
though I know, yes, she's on spouse probation for that.
But you know, I also wanted a book that was
really accessible, and you know, I know a lot about physics,
and you guys know, the translating physics to what everybody
else out there can understand is not always easy, especially
when you're really close to the topic, and it's sometimes

(16:56):
hard for me to remember, like which of these concepts
are intuitive, ones are really a struggle to get over,
and what is the journey to really incorporating them. So
it's important to me to work with somebody who was
good at translating ideas, who knew how to speak to
aliens or physicists or alien physicists. And so I was
a big fan of Andy's work. I knew about it already.
I'd read his book, I followed his comics and so

(17:18):
I just cold emailed him to see if he was
up for this kind of collaboration.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
And so, what did you think, Andy, when Daniel pitch
this alien idea. Were you like, oh my gosh, a
crackpot has sent me an email, or were you like, what,
this is a great idea.

Speaker 5 (17:29):
Well, of course I was into it from the immediate
second I popped up in my email inbox. I'm like, hello,
I'm a physicist and I want to write a book
about aliens with you. It's a dream. I'm a cartoonist.
As long as I was on like a fishing scam,
I was on board.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Oh it still could be, It still could be, It still.

Speaker 5 (17:49):
Could It's really elaborate.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Exactly, I do the long con.

Speaker 5 (17:53):
Yeah, you need those bank account details for the book tour.
This is pretty standard in the industry. That's what I'm talking.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
Yeah, Yeah, that's what I tell my husband.

Speaker 5 (18:03):
Also, yeah, exactly, a very elaborate fishing scam bound.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
That's right. Yes, I'm committed.

Speaker 5 (18:10):
So yeah, I responded as quick as I could before
I emailed some other cartoonists, and I said, yes, of course,
this sounds really interesting. Let's get on the horn and
talk more about it, and so I think we did
a zoom meet up and just kind of discussed back
and forth, and it immediately became apparent to me that,
you know, this wasn't just a guy who was interested

(18:33):
in aliens and knew some stuff about physics, which obviously
Daniel is, but you know, he was approaching this project
using it as like a framing device, as a way
to look at all these really interesting, really profound, sometimes
frankly unsettling questions that are just out there in the
air around us, and if you care to look at them,

(18:54):
you can have a pretty crazy time digging deep into them.
It's just most of the time you choose to focus
on other things. And this book really digs into the
fundamental pieces of how science came to be what we
consider science, the paths of it. I mean, one of
the things I love that Daniel brought to this with
this notion of rather than the progression of science being

(19:16):
this sort of like path, this river moving ever forward,
it's that it's this kind of you know, so river system. Sure,
this progress, but there's these dead ends, these streams come
out and then they rejoin.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
You know.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
It's this really braided thing, this braided object, rather than
this just like path up the mountain to the peak
the summit, and you know, I'm I'm really interested in
how people frame things because it's how you tell a story,
it's how you get across information. And so the fact
that Daniel was able to take this very high concept

(19:50):
idea of the fundamental nature of the universe and marry
it to this like really grabby idea of just talking
to Aliens, I mean I was I was sold. And
then the more we were working together, it just never
wasn't fun, which is a great thing about working on
a book, you know, like there was always a new
thought experiment and a new way to consider the idea.

(20:11):
You know, like we get into our perceptions of the world.
And one of the things that was fun about working
with Daniels he has a very He's as excited to
learn new things as I am. And so we would say,
you know, we need to learn how dogs do it,
we need to learn how cuddle fish do it, like
what were the Mayans up to? And so like there
was this like exhilarating collaboration where we were just continually

(20:35):
bouncing stuff off of each other until the book went
to print. Frankly, and you know, and I think we
got somewhere interesting with it too. It's it's this. It
deals with pretty profound ideas in a very silly way,
but that doesn't make them not profound.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Awesome, Yeah, and we really wanted the book to be
accessible and to be fun, because yeah, it does deal
with pretty weighty issues, but we didn't want people to
feel like this is a dry academic text about philosophy
or even one of those like popular science books that
from a great famous person that you read and you
feel like, I'm in the presence of great ideas, but
I don't really get them, you know, those books.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
You know.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Our style is sort of like in the tradition of
like your book, Kelly, A City on Mars, and you know,
with Randall Munroe's book What If, and like all the
way back to like logic comics, where like you're touching
on deep, abstract, philosophical, fundamental stuff, but you're making it
fun and accessible. And I think the key to that
is cartoons, because they are fun and they make you
feel like, hey, how serious could we be Anyway? We're

(21:36):
like making dad jokes and there's you know, silly drawings here,
and Andy, I think is really underselling himself because he
did a lot of the translation, like, I you know,
I tried my best to make these ideas understandable. But
the way you ask great questions, Kelly, so does Andy,
and he's like, what does this really mean? And I'm
not getting it and keep explaining it until it makes sense.
And then of course the cartoons really bring it together

(21:58):
and add that note of levity that you need is
a break. You know, you're like, whoa, I really swallowed
a big concept here. Okay, I need to laugh, right,
you know, nobody can think hard for like twenty pages straight.

Speaker 5 (22:10):
Yeah, I mean there's a reason why the New Yorker
has gag cartoons or yeah, exactly exactly helps the medicine
go down easy.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
When you were clearly having a lot of fun with
the comics, Andy, and so tell us about what was
your process for like figuring out what the aliens would
look like.

Speaker 5 (22:26):
I mean, I gave myself a lot of leeway because
one thing that was fun about this book is that
from the get go, we're just like, we have no
idea what it's going to be like, Like not even
any guests, right, Like anybody that says they have a
guess is putting you on, and so we were always
interested in breaking stuff down too, it's constituent parts. And
because we were doing that with history of science, with philosophy,

(22:50):
I felt complete artistic license to do that with anatomy,
especially goopiness kind of dripping blobs and things like that.
And so what I would try to do is just
make them as different from the last one that I
had drawn, which was a fun experiment, and it's very
similar to how I sketch. I kind of sketch naturally
these little monsters in my sketch books, and so as

(23:11):
an outgrowth of that, it was just like, make these
little monsters. Maybe this one is a floating orb. Maybe
this one has a thousand limbs. Maybe this one has
a bunch of eyes. What do alien eyes look like?
Let's dig into that, and then you know, what are
these aliens doing? Usually they're in conversation with a human
in some sort of humorous way. And that was a
fun thing to me because it kind of demonstrates one

(23:32):
of the powers of cartooning, because the whole book is
about how difficult it is to connect with aliens, right
to find this common ground. Is it even possible? Maybe
it's not. And so then almost every cartoon in it
is this human speaking in English in a bubble to
an alien. Right, it almost works counter to the concept,

(23:53):
but because that's a cartoon, it acts instead as a commentary.
And so often these little characters are like a little
Great Chorus or something like that, where they're commented on it,
they're adding a joke, they're undercutting the authors, they're making
fun of us often and the reader just takes it
and strive it's funny to them, and it then maybe
hopefully deepens the experience, because you know, they're reading about aliens,

(24:16):
you might as well get to see a few.

Speaker 4 (24:19):
Absolutely, So, what was the hardest comic you had to
do for the whole thing? Because I know for Zach
there's always like an image where he just can't draw
the thing the right way, And so was there a
particular one that you got hung up on?

Speaker 5 (24:31):
Well, I mean a lot of the diagrams and stuff
like that. Daniel, Daniel will help me with them. And
that's a very fun thing, is that Daniel, you know,
using whatever graphics program he does, will put together these.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Little cartoons embarrassingly kludgy.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
They're not embarrassing Daniel, they're beautiful, and then I'll I'll
draw over them. And so having somebody around to really
help me out with the kind of nuts and bolts
of what I needed to get right was good. But
in terms of the difficulty, I mean, I really had
a lot of license because we start every chapter with

(25:07):
sort of a science fiction fable, almost a hypothetical scenario,
and so most of the time I was drawing the comics,
I was drawing aliens and humans interacting, sometimes in a
fictional setting with the hypothetical scenarios, so I could get
as crazy as I wanted to. You know, I wasn't
like having to get every single part of a diagram

(25:27):
right as I would and like say, in a city
on Mars, if you mess up the way that look,
somebody's gonna call you out on it. Yeah, nobody seen
me aliens.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
A little bit of that happened, but that's all right.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
And that was one of my favorite moments, is getting
the first draft of Andy's drawings, because you know, we
have this text we've been working on and then it's
time for him to illustrate it, and I get to
be the first person to see these and like they
always just added so much humor and levity and clarity
to the work. So I was really glad for how
the whole thing went. I had a great time.

Speaker 5 (25:57):
We also ended up cutting a bunch of them too.
I mean I over we also overwrote. Oh my god,
cal the little.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Draft was like Kelly knows because she read the first draft.
She read the whole first draft, which is like two books.

Speaker 5 (26:10):
I loved it.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
I wish you could have kept it all.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
It was a great We were having a lot of fun.
There was like an extended sequence about Harvey wallbangers we
rarely got into. We had to cut a lot of jokes,
but we also you know, it's it's good. I think
in writing humor, to overwrite and then cut down you
end up on a stronger product. But you know, some
of my favorite little gags ended up on the cutting
room floor. But I always remember the aliens.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
So how did the co writing process work then with
you two, Well, we.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Would put together an outline just to make sure we
were sort of aligned with where the book was going,
what topics are we going to cover, what is the
big idea? And then I would write a first draft
and send it to him and he would cut a
bunch of stuff and ask me questions and revise a
bunch of stuff, and then also add a bunch of stuff.
Because Andy's not just a cartoony st also knows a
lot about the history of science and history in general,

(26:59):
and so he wrote a bunch of the chapters on
like you know, the path of science and where things
have gone, and added a bunch of wonderful details. And
then we would go back and forth, and then when
we thought the text was in shape, and you would
do a draft on the comics, and then I would
comment on them, which meant like, Wow, I love this one.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
No, I love this one.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Ooh, this one's amazing ha ha ha lol, really sharp comments.

Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yeah, you're very critical.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
I was trying to be. I really was. I was like,
what can I add? I don't know. I could just
tell them which ones I laughed at.

Speaker 5 (27:31):
It helps, it really does. It was such a collaborative process. Yeah,
we I don't know. We would go through maybe like
three to four ping pong backs so for each chapter,
because we ended up again, we you know, we would
cut a bunch and then add a bunch back in.
And it's hard at this point reading through it to
remember I mean, you know, I did all the heart

(27:52):
physics on that. Yeah, But aside from this stuff that
I really just can't wrap my tiny little brain around,
A lot of the style has sort of melded into
the hybrid of Dan Andy two dad joke styles. I
think we have a similar sense of humor that made

(28:12):
it easy and a similar urge to kind of meander around.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
It was fun, amazing. Well, thank you both for sharing
information about the process of working on this. Let's take
a break, and when we get back, let's talk about
how do we know aliens even do science? We're back,

(28:47):
I am grilling Dan Andy. What did you say that?

Speaker 3 (28:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (28:52):
Yeah, okay, Andy? About do aliens speak physics? So let's
jump into some of the science here. So why do
we even think that aliens do science?

Speaker 1 (29:03):
I think we hope that aliens do science, and that's
part of just like our human projection, you know, the
question of like, are we the only intelligent species in
the universe, which is an ancient question and one that
resonates with everybody. The fact that we ask that question
says that we think intelligence is important. Right, We're not
just out there looking for like slime molds on other planets.

(29:24):
There's a specific kind of alien we want to meet,
and that kind of alien is similar to us, because
the important thing about us is that we're intelligent. But also,
for me, the important thing about us is that we're
trying to unravel the nature of the universe, where this
weird part of the universe that looks inward and tries
to understand. And so I think we are very curious

(29:45):
about whether aliens are like us, and so that's why
we want to know, like do they think about the
universe the way that we do. But you know, part
of the book is trying to make the strongest case
against those assumptions so that we can really figure out,
like how do we know? And so even though there
are some things that seem obvious, like well, if aliens

(30:05):
are technological and they figured out how to travel the stars,
then obviously they must know how you know, space works
and how to bend it or how to curve it
or how to create wormholes and they can explain it
to us. But you know, that's an assumption. And so
in the book we dig into that very question, like
is it actually necessary to do science to think about
the universe as a puzzle that you're trying to unravel

(30:28):
in order to master technology that lets you navigate the stars.

Speaker 5 (30:32):
Right, And we have so many examples even in just
human history, of humans developing wildly complicated technologies with very
little conception of what's going into those technologies on a
fundamental level, like what makes them work. We're very willing
to then improve, you know, iterate on those technologies. I mean,

(30:52):
think about blacksmithing, metallurgy, right, I mean or breadmaking, you know,
these things that are not necessarily intuitive to the human brain.
We're able to harness and derive incredible complexity from with
really no knowledge of how it actually works. And so
that gives you this idea that maybe you could have

(31:15):
this very technologically advanced alien species that just kind of
iterated there and doesn't have that curiosity that makes them wonder,
what is the fundamental basic part of the universe? Is
there a fundamental basic Maybe they just don't care. Maybe
they just sort of iterated their way into warp drives
and ended up on our front door and they just

(31:35):
want to sample our food. We have all these assumptions
because we got there and because we're curious in this
very specific way. And one thing that we do over
and over again. That's kind of fun in this book
is sort of a rug pull where we get people
hyped up about a possible connection. Then we say, oh no, no, no,
pull the rug out, and then we dig deep into why.

(31:56):
Maybe it's a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult
to connect in that way than you would.

Speaker 4 (32:00):
So I've got a question for you then, Andy. So
when Daniel was, you know, answering the question, it seemed
pretty clear to me that what he was saying was
that if he ended up on a planet and they
made sourdough bread but they didn't understand why, and that
was where they maxed out, he would be really disappointed.
If you got to a planet and the aliens made
sour dough but didn't know why it worked, but they

(32:21):
were would you still be excited about meeting those aliens?

Speaker 5 (32:23):
I'd still eat the sour dough. I mean, we actually
we have a hypothetical situation. One of our little chapter
starters has this hypothetical situation where we have this group
of aliens that arrives and everybody meets them and they
explain some stuff, and the physics meet them, and you know,
there is this communication and they're just not interested and
what the physicists are interested in, and the physicists kind

(32:45):
of walk away disappointed while everybody else is having a party.
So we have that, We imagined that exact scenario where
I'm kind of chilling eating the sour dough with Daniel's
weeping in a corner.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
Do you think there are going to be alien cartoonists?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Ooh?

Speaker 5 (33:00):
I mean I would say that cartooning is simply a
fundamental at the universe. I cannot conceive.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
Why live in a universe without cartoons? I agree, exactly, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
But I also want to defend myself a little bit there.
I mean, I'm making it sound like our book is
a bit of a wet blanket, you know, sort of
like your book, Kelly Yep.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
I was gonna call us the wet blankets, but now
it sounds like you're trying to back out.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
No, I think the answer either way is fascinating and wonderful. Like, look,
either the aliens do science the way that we do
and have a lot in common with us intellectually and emotionally,
because science is emotional, right, It's this curiosity that drives us.
It's it comes from within us. It's not rational either.
They are similar to us in that way, in which case, like, yeah,

(33:50):
we can have a lot of fun like cooking up
sour dough and standing at chalkboards right in lagrangeons and
figuring out the mysteries of quantum gravity. It's going to
be a great party. Or they're not, and they're more
alien than we can imagine. And that's sort of what
the book is exploring. But I don't think that that's
a negative outcome, you know. That's really interesting. That's when
we learn about ourselves, when we learn like, oh wow,

(34:13):
there are assumptions we've been making in this whole time
we didn't even realize we were making. It's sort of
like the you know, the equivalent of traveling to another
country and discovering that they don't have coffee for breakfast
and you're like, what you have spicy fish soup or
like this other weird thing for breakfast, or like what
that's fascinating?

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Right?

Speaker 1 (34:30):
How disappointing would it be to go to another country
and just discover Starbucks everywhere?

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Right?

Speaker 1 (34:35):
And so yes, you get your Starbucks on when you're
in Thailand or whatever, and that's nice, but it's more
interesting in some ways to not get that, because that's
when you learn about yourself and you learn about what's
possible out there.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
You must be so good at writing grits. Whether I
get the answer I want or I don't get the
answer I want, it's interesting either way, and I would
fund your grant.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Dat he'll oh, thank you, yes, yes, well you know
that is the case in particle physics.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
We publish no matter what.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Find something published, don't find something published.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Yeah, and that's that's how you have thousands of publications
job security.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, that's right, exactly.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
So we got a question from a listener, Sarah. So
let's go ahead and listen to that question real quick
and I'll see what you two think about the answer.

Speaker 10 (35:17):
Daniel and Kelly. This is Sarah from Lousville, Kentucky. My
question is our opposable thums necessary for the development of
tools and technology? Would aliens need to have fingers and
sums to make spaceships to visit us? Thank you and
keep up the good work.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
All right. So I love that we got a biology question,
sort of biology adjacent. I think the one of the
only other organisms that have opposable thumbs is it pandas
And they use it to hold bamboo.

Speaker 5 (35:42):
Raccoons.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Raccoons, Ah yeah, garbage.

Speaker 5 (35:47):
Yeah, absolutely, no, raccoons, dude, I.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
Love it.

Speaker 5 (35:53):
They're still spreading, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, that's just because raccoons are your neighbors in Berkeley, right.

Speaker 5 (35:59):
Yeah, there's alias you can't go through because there's signs
posted about how they'll beat you up and take your life.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Oh my god, it's great. Yeah, they're made of much
s turner stuff in Berkeley than they are out here.
They definitely run from us out here.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Maybe we should send in the National Guard to clear
out the raccoons.

Speaker 5 (36:14):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, don't give anybody any ideas. But in
all seriousness, I mean, an interesting aspect of this book
actually is that biologists have actually spent a lot of
time already thinking about aliens. It's this part of the
thought experiments that people have already engaged them that we
turn to to write this book. Actually, there's already books about,

(36:34):
you know, how humans evolved and how unique our evolutionary
path may be compared to other environments, you know, ammonia
based life forums, things like that, and so we actually
already had, you know, this sort of rich tradition of
thought experiments of writing to look to for this book,
and the answer is, of course no. Like opposable thumbs

(36:56):
they've developed a few times. It's great, they're super useful,
but there's a lot of different ways to articulate things
in the world and engage in tool use. I mean,
dolphins attached to spunge to their nose as they dig
around and the inner title or I guess it's for
in the sand. But you know, we have all these examples,
even just on Earth, of pretty complicated tool use developing

(37:19):
and being engaged in with animals that don't have these
opposable thumbs. Don't get me wrong, they'd be really useful
and it'd certainly be fun to meet aliens with the
possible thumbs.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, and I want to give kudos here to the
biologists because they really have done their homework much more
than the physicists have. Well, you know, imagining like what's
beyond the box of our Earth assumptions. You know, what
could alien life be like? As Andy says, you know,
does it have to be based on carbon? Could it
be silicon? That's exactly the kind of thinking I think
physics hasn't done enough of, you know, looking back inwards

(37:52):
and saying like, well, where are we making assumptions? Where
could things have gone differently? And so, yeah, biologists have
done a lot of this, but this is a great question,
and I think there are examples of like fairly intelligent
critters on Earth, like octopus. They're very smart, and they
obviously can interact with their environment. They have these grippers,
et cetera. But they don't have opposable thumbs. So I
think the heart of Sarah's question essentially is like, do

(38:13):
you need some way to manipulate the environment so you
can like build up on stuff and interact with it
in a sophisticated way. And I think that's probably is required.
But I wonder if that's possible underwater, you know, if
it's possible to develop as complex tools underwater, you know,
like can you do metallurgy, can you extract minerals? You know,
I think that might be required some sort of land

(38:36):
based thing. But again, you know, that's just our one experience.
Who knows great questions?

Speaker 4 (38:40):
Sarah, Yeah, so are you ruling Enceladus out then as
a place where we'll find intelligent life because there's just
too much water.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
I'm looking forward to having my mind blown by being
wrong about that when we discover alien technology under the
surface of Enceladus.

Speaker 5 (38:55):
Well, okay, I mean one one interesting thing that we
while we're on the subject of hands and thumbs that
we get into with this book, and Daniel kind of
was probing at this as how much of our own
the way we do science and what we're curious about
is literally our structure, how our bodies are, the ten
digits on our hand that form how we count things,

(39:16):
the fact that we're bipedal, and so our neck cranes
up to look at the sky pretty easily, and so
we wonder about the stars in a way that may
be an animal on all fours that it's slithering around
just simply wouldn't. And so a lot of the way
that we track the development of science may actually come
down to our very human form. And so if an

(39:37):
alien evolves this entirely different way, they may have just
a very different alien preoccupations based on something as simple
as them not having thumbs. Right, Yeah, that may be
the fundamental difference.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
So the genus Homo has been around for a long time,
and we've had this sort of general body shape, but
we haven't, as far as I know, been doing science
the whole time. When would we say that we started
doing science?

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Man, that is such a deep question, and I know
that they like typical popsie explanation is like, well, Galleo
and Francis Bacon decided to do experiments about five hundred
years ago, and then science began, and we've been doing
science ever since. And you know, that's like true, maybe
at the very zoomed out level, but when you look
at it, like most stories, it's much more nuanced and

(40:24):
interesting because people have been doing experiments for much longer
than Galileo and Bacon. You know, even the Greeks, like
they tested stuff out. I think this simplified cartoon.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
Version, watch it, watch it.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
I do mean cartoon in a derogatory way.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
There.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Unfortunately, Wow, I just realized I said that this oversimplified
version there you go, doesn't tell the true story because
people have been as Andy said earlier, they've been doing
stuff for a long time, but they've also been sometimes
wondering why does it work, and how does it work?

Speaker 2 (40:59):
And what is the mechanism.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
They haven't always figured it out, and the technique for
figuring that out has definitely evolved. But also it's evolved
since that, you know, moment of the scientific revolution. The
way we do science today is not the same as
the way we did science five hundred years ago. We
don't just have experiments anymore. For example, now we have
like simulations. Here's a whole new category of this of

(41:21):
scientific investigation that didn't exist before, you know, in vivo
in vitro, in silico. You know, so we don't know
like what the future holds. Also, so science is like
a gradually evolving process. The science itself is not a
static idea.

Speaker 5 (41:36):
I just love the idea of science not being a
static idea. I think that was one of the things
that really drew me to the book was Danielle articulating
that in the first email he sent to me. And
the idea of you know, a lot of concepts that
we have being these kind of living things that are
re examined and evolved and maybe had a few different
times that they were quote unquote invented and then fused together.

(41:59):
I think Daniel's ability to perceive that is frankly what
jurmany of the project in the first place cool.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
And I think it's fascinating because it lets you imagine
how aliens might be doing science, and like, maybe they
don't do science at all, as we talked about, but
also maybe they do some super crazy advanced version of science.
You know, we've added to our technique for building knowledge
about the universe. There's no reason to imagine aliens a
million or billion years more advanced than us have developed

(42:25):
some new technique and they look back at ours and
they're like, oh my god, y'all are so primitive. You're
still doing that. It takes so long to figure out
the universe. They might think about us the way we
think about you know, this hypothetical scenario of aliens who
are not interested in all at how things work, right,
And so even just a question of like do we
do science the same way tells us so much about
our history and the assumptions we're making about the way

(42:48):
that intelligent critters can understand the universe.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
YEP, I love the conversations about that in the book.
All right, so let's assume that we get to meet
aliens one day, which would be awesome. What would be
some challenges communicating with them? What would would you imagine
that would be?

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Like, well, I mean number one is are we talking
to the alien physicists or the alien cartoonists, right, I.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
Think we should let Andy answer this one first.

Speaker 6 (43:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:11):
I mean it's from the get go it's a more
difficult prospect than you think, right, because we have a
bunch of examples, even just on Earth, of things that
demonstrate a clear intelligence, clear complex behavior that changes contextually,
Like all these things. You know that we're looking for
overn governywhere like this makes humans and we have to

(43:32):
redefine it every time a biologist like raises their hand
and says, well, actually right, there's like a bunch of
other species that do that, but we can't. You know,
we find actual communication with these other organisms very difficult,
if not impossible, right, like people you know on TikTok
they have those boards where the dog presses the buttons
the talk like come on, give me a break, And

(43:53):
we basically made dogs like dogs are a human project action.
You know, that fundamental issue that we deal with here
on Earth with all of our species client or not
is something that would immediately come up with aliens. It's
just you know, where is that point of connection, where
what is communication and how does it actually happen? And

(44:14):
so that's why you know, we go down this Karl
Segan route of finding the most basic things you could
talk to one another about. But you know that dream,
that Star trek dream where everybody's got the communicators and
stuff like that, Like we don't have those for dolphins,
and they're right there.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
And you know, we don't have a concrete answer to
this question, of course, because we haven't met the aliens,
which is why we have to do this biological game
of like, let's look around on Earth and try to
imagine what the most difficult communication scenario is on Earth
and then make it ten times harder to imagine what
it's like for the aliens. And as Andy says, we've
already stumbled. Right, we can't communicate with whales. We know

(44:55):
they're talking to each other, but we don't know what
they're saying. But also we have trouble communicating with humans, right,
Like translating human languages is possible when you have like
two existent populations who can like point to stuff and
say this is an apple, that's an apple. But when
you have when one of those populations is gone but
they've left a bunch of written writing behind, we really

(45:16):
struggled to figure out what they're talking about, even if
we have enormous numbers of examples, even if we have
a lot of culture in common obviously the same biology,
without like crazy cheat sheets like the Rosetta Stone, we
may not have even ever translated Egyptian hieroglyphics. And there
are still ancient human texts that we don't know what
they mean. And so if we don't know how to

(45:37):
do it for humans, if it's like too hard for humans,
then like one are the chances we're gonna be able
to decode an alien message? And you know, like we've
received weird messages from space. I don't know messages, but
signals from space like the Wow signal? Right, what does
that mean?

Speaker 2 (45:51):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
We don't know how to translate it. Is it encoded?
How is it encoded? How would you know if you
decoded it correctly?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Right?

Speaker 4 (45:57):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
And that's the whole problem, is that there's always an encoding.
You can't take an idea and just give it into
somebody else's head. You have to pass through some sort
of symbols, and those symbols are always fundamentally going to
be arbitrary and cultural. They reflect who you are and
what you think about those ideas. And as Andy mentioned,
Carl Sagan made a great effort on the Pioneer Plaque

(46:20):
to try to communicate with some potential alien civilization that's
going to pick up the Pioneer probe. And you know,
before we rag on him, which we're about to, we
should say that NASA only gave him like two weeks
to come up with this. They're like, oh, wait, last
minute idea. Maybe we should add a message to aliens?
Can you have one by twosday? So he did a
great job for you know, the time constraint. But in

(46:41):
the end, what he drew on the Pioneer plaque and
you know, it's like a again cartoony version of the
hydrogen atom.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
You mean, the best of what we're able to do.
When you say.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, yeah, done by good looking people. You know, it's
our sort of mental image. And of course he avoided
any English, and he even avoided like math. He was
just trying to come up with pictograms that he thought
would inspire in alien minds the same idea. But you know,
I showed the Pioneer Plaque to a bunch of grad

(47:12):
students here at U c Irvine to get a sense
for like does this work even on the same biological
construct for physics grad students, and they had no idea
what this thing was, you know, they were like, I
don't know. They came up with clever interpretations, but nobody
got anywhere close to what Carl Sagan was thinking. And
it just highlights like how difficult it is to invent

(47:32):
a communication system that really is universal. You can't do it,
and this whole like linguist and philosophers of language who've
worked on this and they've concluded it's essentially impossible to
translate a language without those people around to like point
it stuff.

Speaker 5 (47:48):
What blanket club or you should still buy your books, that's.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
Right, support the community of wet blanket people.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
And that's why in the book we don't focus on
this SETI like scenario where we get a message and
we're like writing back and forth to the aliens over
thousands of years. Instead, we imagine the aliens are here,
we have a physical context together where we can point
at apples and try to use that to build up
a communication system, because that potentially could actually work.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Yeah, I mean, even just you're using the word cartoony
is actually a good example to talk about like the
way that visual language is so contextual, right, Like comics
is the art of simplification, like down to the dots
of the eyes and like a triangle for a No,
somebody unfamiliar with comics does not recognize that as a
human face necessarily, or like you know, the sweat beads

(48:38):
going like that's like this is contextual stuff that people
familiar with the language are like, Oh, I understand that
somebody unfamiliar needs to be taught, right. You extrapolate that
out to the universe, and my god, good luck.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
I think there are these Japanese comics where when they're sleeping,
there's like a bubble coming out of that bubbles. Yeah,
And I had no idea what that was. I was
like eight A, I know all why it is. My
daughter's like, why do they all have snot bubbles and
she's like, no, they're sleeping, mom, And I don't get
bubbles when.

Speaker 5 (49:07):
I'm sleeping, you, I mean, I don't know. Like, sweat
definitely does erupt from my head whenever I'm nervous, but.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
That's that's just I see.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
That's the equivalent of like a string of z's coming
out of somebody's mouth.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
You might be like, what fascinating?

Speaker 4 (49:24):
So the wet blankets need to go grab a little
bit more tea, and when we're back, we're going to
talk about whether or not aliens do math. All right,

(49:50):
the wet blankets now have our tea, and that's right,
that's right, we're back. And so so in the book
you also deal a lot with the question of how
do we know aliens will do math? Because you know,
often people will be like, well, well, just communicate in math,
because it's like this most this basic thing. We must
all share it. But you know, as what blankets, you
have to critically examine that. So what do you think?

Speaker 1 (50:12):
I think that's a really fun idea, and it is
a powerful idea. And I actually got to talk to
Noam Chomsky when writing this book. Yeah, because he famously
answers all of his emails, which is incredible and one
reason why I tried to do the same thing. I'm
not nearly as famous as NOMSCONSI. I'm sure he gets
more emails about aliens than I do. But I wrote
to him and asked him what he thought would be

(50:34):
a good protocol for beginning a conversation with aliens, because
like very smart dude obviously thought about language, and he
actually wrote back and I had a conversation with him,
and his basic argument was aliens will do arithmetic, and
so we can connect with them on the concept of
like one plus one equals two, which he thought was universal.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
And we can argue the other side of this in
a minute.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
But it is really fun to think through, like how
do you go from one plus one equals two? You
to like explain to me how you build a warp drive.
There's some really interesting and fundamental concepts there, because over
the last one hundred years or so, mathematicians have been
digging into the basis of math, and they've been wondering, like,
where do the rules of math come from? How is

(51:16):
it all connected? What are the smallest number of axioms
you can begin from and then build up all of
human mathematics. What are the foundational rules? And they discovered
something really cool, which is that it's all based on arithmetic.
Like if you start from I know how to add
numbers and have a recipe for going from smaller numbers
to bigger numbers for putting them together, then you can

(51:37):
derive like calculus and linear algebra and differential equations. All
of the cool, amazing, fantastical math we have comes from arithmetic,
and I think this is where Noam Chomsky was coming from.
He's like, you start there and you can build up
to everything else. That is really the foundation of how
we think and express ourselves. And of course all of
modern physics requires fancy math. But in the end, it's
all just arithmetic.

Speaker 4 (51:58):
But has arithmetic always been the same, Like, if you
go back to ancient cultures, do they do arithmetic the
same way that we do? Is it really that basic?

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Yeah, that's a really cool question because obviously people have
been doing arithmetic for thousands of years, right, but it's
only like one hundred years ago people formalize what the
rules are. Like before that, arithmetic was more like a
bunch of examples, like I can write down thirty plus
thirty one equals sixty one. How do I do arithmetic
for some new set of numbers I've never seen before?

(52:27):
You need like a rule that applies always. So yes,
people have been adding numbers the same way, but only
recently have they like found those fundamental rules that underlie
all of it. And it's really cool because those rules
are kind of computational. They're like a little recipe like
if you have a number, how do you get to
the next one? And you can build up from there.
And so the next thing Chomsky said was, yeah, you

(52:49):
start from arithmetic and then you go to computer programs,
because if arithmetic is like a little bit of computation,
then you can go from there to like the simplest
kind of computer. And this is something Alan Turing figured
out like almost a century ago, is that there is
a basic computer, a way to describe like the most

(53:13):
simple way to do computation to like manipulate information. It's
called the Turing machine. And you can go from like
how does arithmetic work? Thinking about that as computation, to
building up to a Turing machine. And then if you
can exchange basically computer programs with the aliens, then you
can encode really complex ideas and you can go from

(53:34):
there to like here's the Lagrangen of quantum field theory,
you know, or here's why sleeping people have snot bubbles
or whatever, right, basically everything. And so this is the
idea is like try to find the fundamental ideas, start
from there and use that to build up to the
more complex because incredibly the world is organized that way,
or our ideas are. They're built on these few foundational

(53:57):
concepts from which you can extrapolate.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
So could you help me understand how we get from
understanding arithmetic to explaining, you know, for example, the endocrine system.
So I can sort of understand how math helps you
explain physics and biology absolutely has math. I don't want
to imply it doesn't. But how does math help you
understand something like the endocrine system? How would you explain
that to an alien? Once you have math as a foundation,

(54:20):
is the idea that the computer program lets you do it?

Speaker 5 (54:23):
After that?

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Well, to answer that, I'd have to understand the endocrite system.
Though I actually do understand it.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
It's complicated a.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Little bit because of Concuter's diabetes, but fundamentally the endocrine system,
as you say, there's a mathematical model for it. Right,
you know, these things create those things, and you put
insulin in the cell and the sugar goes across the barrier.
And though we have a very rich sort of experience
with it, fundamentally it is a mathematical description.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
We're talking about number is going up and down in
their relationships with each other the differential equations. One of
the reasons the endocrine system is complicated because it is
a bunch of differential equations. And so if you can
go from a arithmetic two computer programs, you can use
those computer programs to describe models, right, to build models
of an endocrine system. Then you can be like, oh,

(55:08):
this is my model of the endocrine system. This connects
to this part, and this connects to that part, and
so you can make those links between your mathematical model
and what's happening in reality.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Clearly, you should be one of the delegates on the
first group that gets to talk to the aliens.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
I want to be the second group actually.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
Because the first group might get eaten.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yes, we'll send in the biologists and the cartoonists for
the first group. Okay, but you know, all this assumes
that aliens do math the way that we're talking about
that one plus one equals to one alien planets, and
nobody's being Terrence Howard.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Here.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
We're not suggesting that you know, one times one equals
two or or something crazy, but that there are human
assumptions in even in arithmetic. You know, the idea of
oneness or twoness. And here We're going to sound totally
like bonkers philosophical for a minute, but these are of
the questions we're asking, you know, like would aliens come
up with this concept that one plus one equals too?

(56:04):
It's not that one plus one doesn't equal to around
some alien planet, but that they might never arrive at
that mathematics because they might not like care about the
distinctions between things. You know, saying one plus one equals
to requires a few basic assumptions, like saying that a
thing is a one thing, which means it has an edge, right,
you're distinguishing it from the rest of the universe. And

(56:25):
where is that edge anyway? Like where does an apple
end and the universe begins? Or where does my body
end and the universe begin? These are cultural dotted lines
we're drawing around stuff because it makes sense to us,
and as Andy says, that's our context, but it doesn't
have to be.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
If you like grow up in the atmosphere of a
star and everything is sort of fluid and constantly merging
into itself, maybe you're never like drawing those dotted lines.
Maybe that seems totally made up, and like, yeah, maybe
you can invent weird mathematics based on those arbitrary dotted lines,
but maybe they're mathematics is based on real numbers instead
of integers. You know, it's all continuous and fluid.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
All right.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
So let's say that we do we meet those aliens
and we find a way to communicate with them through
math and computer programs. Do you think that they would
have made some of the same discoveries as us, Like,
would they have gone on the same path that we
went on.

Speaker 5 (57:14):
One thing that is really fascinating about science as the
way humans practice it, at least, is how dependent it
is on our own very human fascinations, right, our preoccupations,
Like my dad with the sex changing fish, right, he
devoted his life to that, and now we all know
that much more about sex changing fish, and it's great.
But had he not fallen in love with a blue

(57:36):
head wrass, maybe that wouldn't have happened and we would
know that much less. And so science as humans practice it,
you know, it doesn't you don't get an assignment or rarely,
I mean maybe in Soviet Russia, but you know you
it's usually based on your preoccupations, your fascinations, and then

(57:57):
that kind of drives the whole thing forward because somebody
else gets fascinated by what you were fascinated by and
what you found and what you explained to them, and
they get preoccupied by it, and then they develop it
and make it more complex and it compounds and ladi
da da da. But it all comes down to this
very human brain becoming interested in something. And what humans

(58:20):
become interested in is very human, right. I mean, we
evolve to protect ourselves, to pass on our genes and
to you know, exit right like, and so whatever works
in service of that is probably what we're preoccupied by,
what we're fascinated by in some way. You know, there's arts,
there's all these things that you can get into that

(58:41):
aren't you know, the basic things that help you not
get eaten by the lion. But the circumstances that aliens
evolved under are by necessity going to be different. I
mean it would be. So it's unlikely enough we're going
to meet aliens having an alien walk out of the
alien ship and it looks like andy would be you know,
it's unimaginable. And so whatever you're dealing with, you're dealing

(59:03):
with an organism, something intelligent that has evolved to survive
a completely different set of circumstances and so therefore has
a completely different set of interests that have just shaped
the path of its science. And so from that level,
I mean, it's going to be pretty wild and wooly
compared to ours. I mean, maybe they're maybe there's these

(59:23):
questions that are fundamental they can dig down into that
preoccupy them. But what gets them there, what gets them
to that fundamental question, is going to be a different
path than the one that took us there, And so
it's going to look different to an outsider, i e.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Us.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
And even if they are like biologically identical to us,
like take the most extreme version of this, where there's
just humans on planets all over the galaxy. Right, even
in that scenario, how similar would their science be to ours?
Because if you want to imagine, like we're meeting these folks,
we're having an interplanetary science conference, we want to see

(01:00:00):
if we're at the same place or were asking the
same questions to have answers to our puzzles. Right, and
even if they are humans, then they're very likely going
to have taken a different.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Path through science.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
And as Andy suggests, like if you look back to
the history of our science, you can find all these
moments when science pivoted on a happenstance, like an accident,
and we talked about some of these on the podcast.
You know, somebody leaving something in a drawer over the
weekend and then coming back and developing it anyway, even
though that doesn't really make sense, and discovering radioactivity and
X rays and all these things were discovered accidentally, and

(01:00:35):
it could have happened one hundred years earlier or one
hundred years later, And the path of science depends on
these things. And so even alternate earths, we think, probably
would have a very very different path through science. Even
if you believe that there's one fundamental explanation to the
whole universe, that there is an answer out there that
is discoverable, we're probably all climbing different sides of sort

(01:00:57):
of physics mountain, which is fun to think of about,
you know, if you imagine what would we like to
meet all those folks. But we can also do something
more concrete, which is to look back into the history
of the Earth before we've had sort of one global
scientific community, you know, when we weren't as connected and
so like the Mayans and the Chinese and the Greeks.

(01:01:19):
They all developed sort of initial proto scientific mathematical approaches
to understanding the universe independently.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
And that's sort of like the.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Best we can do without actually meeting the aliens to
try to figure out, like how universal is it at
least you know, in the human biological brain to begin
on the same path, or you know, is it vastly different?
And so in the book we dig deep into what
the Mayans were up to and how the Chinese mathematical
structure was different.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot
about history.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
That's one of the things I love about this book
is that it's so interdisciplinary. You get a lot of
history and a lot of philosophy and a lot of science.
And I learned a lot also while writing it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
That was also a terrifying part of the book, because
there's a long tradition of physicists writing books outside their
discipline and embarrassing themselves, and I did not want to
add to that canon. So I sent each of these
chapters to like an eminent scholar in that field, like
did I misrepresent this? I'm reading this this way? Is
that right? And so I was always on pins and needles.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
When we got those.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
Reviews back, your humility will pay you back. I'm sure
that that was a good thing to do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
I mean, you'd rather hear you're wrong about it before
you publish the book than after.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
Yes, yep, that was absolutely my attitude. We also sent
our chapters out to experts. I'm like, please, like, be
as brutal as possible. I want you to tell me
that I'm wrong in secret, that's right, that's right exactly,
and can you spoil the ending a little bit? Were
the Chinese, Babylonian Mayans approaches to these things super different

(01:02:54):
or were they pretty similar?

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
They were similar in some ways and different in others,
Like everybody started from wow, the sky is really interesting,
and there seemed to be patterns and let's describe those mathematically.
But they were also different, Like the Greeks are very geometric,
you know everything. The answer to every question in Greek
astronomy is like where are things in three D space?
Whereas the Chinese were more like algebraic. They're like tables

(01:03:18):
and patterns that they would use, and to them that
was an answer which is really fascinating. Even though like
the Chinese sort of early model of the universe has
sort of geometric inconsistencies, and you can see in the
early literature some Chinese scholars were like, hold on a second,
if you're saying this and that, then how do eclipses happen? Hmm, Well,
maybe let's just not think about that. Yeah, and so

(01:03:40):
there are different ways of thinking about it.

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
The tradition of sweeping things under the rug goes a lot, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
You know, because to them the answer was in geometry,
it was algebra. Also, we see like the different cultural importance.
Like to the Babylonians, which became the Greek tradition, this
is like foundational and became like really the core of
modern intellectual thought, whereas to the Chinese, like this was
useful and it was important politically, but then they got
really interested in things like, you know, material science and

(01:04:10):
gunpowder and astronomy didn't play as deeply important a role
in their culture. So it's really fascinating to see sort
of the similarities and the differences.

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
All Right, Well, I highly recommend the book. It's amazingly
well researched, it's super clear, it's funny, the comics are amazing.
I highly recommend that people should go out and get
to aliens speak physics. And you too are amazing little
little you too, You too are amazing collaborators. I'm sorry
I talked to my kids.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Well, you too are my favorite two collaborators. I've been
working with both of you for years on fun topics,
so it's a joy for me to talk to both
of you.

Speaker 9 (01:04:48):
Yay.

Speaker 5 (01:04:49):
It was an honor to be on the show, and
it was an honor to make this book with Daniel too.
This was such a fun time and it was also
so fun to talk to you about it. Kelly had
such good questions.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
Well that's because Daniel were it be an outline, but
it was, it was I know how well. It was
great to meet you Andy, Thanks for being on the show.

Speaker 5 (01:05:09):
Want to rest.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Thanks very much everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
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Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
We really would.

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