May 30, 2024 • 49 mins
Daniel talks to Peter Harness, screenwriter for "Constellation", about the quantum rules of his fictional Universe.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, Daniel, when did the latest run of the Large
Hadron Collider start?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ooh a few months ago? Ooh?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Does that mean we've shifted into another timeline in the multiverse?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, you know, people say that the Large Hadron Collider
somehow caused something called the Mandela effect, which is this
weird sensation that maybe we're in the wrong universe. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I think I want to be in the timeline where
nobody believes in the Mendela effect, because that's just silliness.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
But isn't this an established the physics theory kind of
the multiverse.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm just going to keep running the LC until we
end up in the universe I want to be in.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Is there a universe you want to live in? This
one's pretty good, So stop running the LAC then, because
it could get worse.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
All Right, you convinced me?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Good? Pressent button, press that big red button.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oo.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Hi. I'm Horaemery, cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great
Big Universe.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at uc Erline, and I'm a big fan of this universe.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this universe, especially because
it made me and everyone I.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Know, and despite that we're all fans of it as well.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm not a fan of the universes that didn't make me.
The obviously didn't know what it was doing.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What if blueberries in those universe taste twice as good?
You still think that those universes are not worth knowing?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Well, you mean can we visit them?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah? If we go visit those universes and they have
amazing pastries we never even thought about before, But there's
no jhee cham. Are you gonna be like, nah, this
isn't worth visiting.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well, it's worth visiting, but I still like my universe.
Could we import these blueberries? I mean it sounds like
a market opportunity if you ask me.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, that's a startup idea, right there, will multiverse pastries,
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah. I think we need a need like economics term
for multidimensional trade benefits.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I think gives a whole new meaning to import export,
multi import, multi export, quantum importing or quantum exporting exactly.
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Finally a use for the word quantum that means something.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
We're gonna be quantum rich. But anyways, Welcome to our
podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of
Our Heart Radio.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
In which we explore the fundamental meaning of reality and
the laws that govern it. We dig our way down
to the bedrock of nature and try to figure out
what the rules are for this universe, how they come
together to make this amazing, creative, bonkers universe that features
both blueberries, pastries and Jorge chams.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
That's right. We try to explore this universe, other universes,
all the universes, and what it all means to maybe
have different universes, and how we're ever going to find
out what the true reality of nature is.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
One way to explore the reality of nature is to
do experiments and to test our universe and force it
to reveal its laws. But another very important way is
to think about the possible universes we might live in,
to be creative, to imagine the ways that the universe
might be. That's something that theoretical physicists do, but it's
also something that science fiction authors do. They create whole
(03:30):
new universes in their minds and think about what it
means to live in those universes, what the consequences of
that fictional science might be.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
That's right. Science fiction has a long and interesting history
of thinking about possibilities for technology science and what those
changes and those possibilities might mean for the universe we
live in and the way that we live in.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Because one reason why physics is so important and so
influential is because it has great consequences. The things that
we learned about the nature of reality tell us a
lot about the meaning of our lives. If you discovered
that we lived in a multiverse with infinite numbers of
copies of you, would you feel more valuable less valuable?
It certainly would change your perspective on the meaning of
(04:12):
your life and the ways that you make your choices.
Science fiction authors are often very clever at exploring the
ways that understanding the universe affects the meaning of our lives.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Or I guess at least looking at current theories and
then maybe exploring that, maybe before they're established or not,
just kind of wondering what would that if this theory
was true? What would that mean for our everyday lives.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And sometimes even coming up with new technologies that might
be consequences of those theories that could change the daily
pattern of our lives. So on the podcast, we're normally
talking about actual physics of our actual universe, but we
have a whole series of episodes exploring the science of
fictional universes.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So at the end of the program we'll be exploring
the science fiction universe of Constellation. Yeah, this is a
new TV show right on Apple TV.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
That's right, Constellation is on Apple TV and it's a
science fiction show written by one of my favorite screenwriters,
and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Ooh, one of your favorite screenwriters. I didn't know you
followed screenwriters.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well, I watch a lot of TV, so I do
call this Guy's written detective mysteries that I've seen, and
also wrote the adaptation for Jonathan Strange and Mister Norell,
a famously fantastical book.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Oh yeah, my wife watched that show. Is that a
good show? I guess you liked it if if it's
one of your favorite writers.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The book is absolutely astounding and incredible. Really just a
worker genius. But I thought it was going to be unadaptable.
It's just so complicated and intricate. But he did a
great job at the TV show. The TV show is
a different thing than the book, but really well adapted.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Well. Now, this writer called Peter Harness now has a
new show on Apple TV and it's titled Constellation.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
That's right, and this one's salve in the science fiction category,
and there's a lot of quantum physics in it. Bose
Einstein condensates, space travel, multiverse, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
WHOA, So, I guess what's the TV show about.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So it starts on the International Space Station. There's a
bunch of astronauts up there and they're doing a science experiment.
They're making a Bose Einstein condensate on the space station,
which is what so Bose Einstein condensate is a weird
state of matter. Remember that particles fall into two categories,
fermions and bosons. Fermions, like electrons and other matter particles,
(06:34):
have this rule that you can't have two of them
in the same state. So if you try to cool
down a bunch of electrons, for example, that won't actually
all fall down to the lowest energy level. They'll each
find their own place on the ladder, so the whole
thing won't really cool down as much. But if you
play with bosons like photons or some kind of atoms,
they have no compunction against occupying the same energy level,
(06:54):
so you can cool them down much much lower. And
if you take a bunch of them and you cool
them all down, then their wave function overlap and they
form this new state of matter called a Bose Einstein contensate,
which is cool because it's sort of macroscopic. It's like
big enough you can see it, and it has quantum properties,
like it interferes with itself and all sorts of cool stuff.
(07:15):
So it's like a macroscopic piece of matter that has
quantum properties. It was first discovered in the nineties and
now they've replicated it in lots of situations, including in
real life on the space station.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Wha, don't you need a lot of equipment for that,
like like giant machines or can you do this in
your desktop or your spacetop.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I guess you don't need giant machines. It's not like
the large Hadron collider. Mostly this is done with atomic physics,
and so you need like an atom trap and you
need magnets, maybe lasers. It's not enormous, Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So then the scientists in the show did this in
space and then what happened?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So in the show they do this in space, and
then weird stuff happens. There's an accident and they come
back to Earth and discover that it's not really the
Earth they're familiar with. You know, some details are different
and people have different memories, and everybody thinks maybe they
went crazy up there. And as you watch it, you
discover that you're actually watching two stories in parallel, like
(08:09):
two different elements of a multiverse that have come to interact.
When the scientists did that experiment in space. WHOA.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
So the show is following this group of astronauts and
when they come back, things are different, and it's because
they're not in the same universe or are we going
back and forth between the two universes.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Both some of them have switched over to another universe,
and so now they don't like have the memory of
the correct history anymore. They disagree with people like did
we buy that red car? I thought our car was blue,
this kind of stuff. And there is still some interaction
between the universes, like the same person from two universes
can now talk to each other under some circumstances, and
so it's like these two universes have come into contact
(08:49):
and changed both of them.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Wait, like the people in the two universes swap places.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
In some cases, yes, not everybody, but in some cases yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Oh interesting. Now I guess as a quantum scientist, Daniel,
do you watch this and you're like, that's a lot
of vs or or do you find it interesting?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I always find it interesting, and what I'm looking for
is consistency. I treat each of these shows the way
I treat our universe, like I assume it's following some rules,
and I want to figure out what the rules are.
It's like watching a murder mystery. You're gathering clues, You're
trying to figure out what happened. And so when they
do experiments and get weird results, I take that as
the writers communicated to me some information about the way
(09:29):
their universe works, so I want to try to figure
it out. I'm not insisting that the science in that
universe obey the same rules as the science in our universe.
Of course, it's called science fiction for a reason, and
it's really fun for me to try to figure out
what are the rules of that universe.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Okay, so then what are the rules in this universe.
It sounds like maybe it's getting into the multiverse and
the quantum multiverse in particular.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, this leans a lot on things we're familiar with
in quantum mechanics, you know, superposition, the idea idea that
a particle can have the possibility of being in two
places at once, that both possibilities can exist simultaneously before
you look, and that only when a classical object interacts
with it does universe have to pick one or the other.
Like an electron can have a possibility to go left
(10:16):
or right, and it's not that it does both, but
that it maintains the possibility of having done both until
you've measured it. The idea of entanglement that two particles
with these possibilities can have their possibilities like tied together
in complicated ways. Ideas of interference, that these possibilities can
cancel each other out. All this kind of stuff is
used to pretty good effect in the show. But the
(10:38):
fundamental concept they're dealing with is actually not a multiverse.
It's something else. It's called a mirror verse, which is
like a multiverse but with only two universes in it.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
But two is multi though, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, But I think the more common idea of a
multiverse has an infinite number of universes in it, or
at least an enormous number. The most typical idea of
multiverse is the one that exists in like the Many
World's theory of quantum mechanics that says that when an
electron has a possibility to go left and to go right,
that both things do happen, that the universe splits into
two branches, and both of those universes then exist, and
(11:15):
those are different elements of the quantum multiver.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Right, And then that's supposed to happen with every single
particle that exists in the world. Like each time any
of the Brazilians electrons in the universe does something or
picks a possibility, you split off a new universe.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, so every billisecond, all the ten to the ninety
particles in the universe are creating new universes. So there's
an enormous number, many more than just two. In this show,
he's operating a much simpler sort of multiverse with just
two universes in it, which he calls the mirror Verse.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But why only two? How did these two get created?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, it's a good question. And as you'll hear in
my interview, I asked him about that, and he didn't
want to reveal it because he's got secret he wants
to reveal in season two. But there are some.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
That's like a side to saying, I'll do this in
my future work.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
My second Nobel Prize, we'll explain all of that.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
But there are some legit theories of the mirror verse
out there. I'm not exactly sure what Peter Harness has
in his brain, but there are scientists that talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
The mirror verse really like why too well.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Our universe is weird in some ways. For example, our
universe does not respect parody. Parody is like if you
flip the universe so that everything looks the way it
would in a mirror, you like, reflect it through the axis,
then the laws of physics would operate a little bit differently.
Our universe is sort of weirdly left handed, you've reflected
it in a mirror, it would look a little bit different.
(12:39):
We have a whole episode about paroity violation in our universe.
But there are some ways in which our universe has
made one of two choices, and so you can imagine
that there might be a mirror of our universe out there.
In a mirror verse where the opposite is true, like
the right handed version of our universe.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Then this is just like one choice you can make.
Aren't there like a bazillion of these choices.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, that's a good point. You know, there are other
basic symmetries. Parody is one that's violated maximally, though, and
so it's the one that seems most ripe for flipping,
you know, like time invariant symmetry is also not respect
in our universe, but is violated less dramatically than parity.
But you're right, you could have another universe where that's flipped.
There's also charge in variance, but that one's actually respected
(13:23):
in our universe. But yeah, there are other ways you
can imagine flipping the universe where it's made one choice
or another, Like you could have another universe where what
we call anti matter is the dominant kind of matter
in the universe.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Right. I think what you're saying is, maybe, you know,
there are certain rules in physics that maybe apply to
there being two versions of us of a universe.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Mm hmm, yeah, exactly, and time is an especially powerful one.
There was a theory that bounced around a few years
ago that at the Big Bang, two universes were created,
one flowing forwards in time and one flowing backwards in time.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Right, the Big Bang and then the Big Bong, Right.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, pass it over man, and another hit.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Of the big Bone. That's how they came up with
this theory, isn't it Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Exactly. And there were even those crazy events from the
Anita experiment at the South Pole that we just talked
about on the episode with Harry Cliff that received a
lot of silly buzz in the press for NASA discovers
a parallel universe right next to hours, which was totally
scientific misinformation. But there are those theories of another universe
going backwards in time. In none of those cases, though,
(14:31):
would you be able to interact with that universe? Like,
in none of those cases could you do an experiment
which is then can interfere because the quantum mechanics of
it is quite crisp. Like these universes when they branch,
do you call them another universe because you cannot interact
with it? That's sort of what it means. Like you
have the big wave function from the multiverse and then
it decoheres into separate wave functions. Those wave functions don't
(14:53):
interfere with each other, can't interact with each other at all.
That's sort of what we mean by another universe. So
the idea that you could do an experiment, even a
weird quantum one with Bose Einstein condensate in space, that
would somehow bring those universes together, that's science fiction. That's
not something we see in our kind of science at all.
That doesn't mean Peter Harness can't write it into the
(15:14):
fiction of his universe, but it's not something that exists
in our theories in any way.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So you're saying the whole show is just a bunch
of bs. I'm going to ask you, that's kind of
what you just said, Daniel. I didn't say it.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
No, I'm saying it's fiction, and he's allowed to create
new rules for his universe. And as you'll hear in
the interview, I asked him about this, whether he's operating
by the rules in our universe or some speculative physics theories.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I'm guessing he just said, yes, I'm going to reveal
the reason for that in the next season.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's exactly what he said.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
See, I can predict things in our universe as well,
all right, well, here is Daniel's interview with screenwriter Peter Harness,
creator of the new Apple TV show Constellation.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
All right, well then, it's my great pleasure to welcome
to the podcast. Peter Harness, an English playwright, screenwriter and actor.
Thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Thank you very much. I need to update Wikipedia. I
haven't done any acting for a very long time, but
it's nice. It's still it's nice, it still believes that
I have more.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Once an actor, always an actor. So tell us a
little bit about your background. How did you get into
writing for television and science fiction writing starting from playwriting?
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I think that I always wanted to write for TV
really more than anything else. And if I did a
little bit of playwriting earlier in my career, I think
it was a bit of a I can't really say
means to an end because both careers are pretty difficult
to get into, but I think I kind of did
(16:55):
it in the absence of writing for TV because really
that's what I've always wanted to do. That's my first love,
rather than film or the stage or anything like that.
So it was, yes, I was always trying my best
to get into TV from the get go.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
And why is that. Why were you so excited about
writing for television? What about that medium excited you?
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I think that I grew up watching so much television.
I hate to say it, but the majority of my
childhood was spent watching TV, and I was a big
fan of I was a doctor who obsessive when I
was small. And there's something about that program and the
(17:45):
kind of level of scrutiny that fans go into on it.
It kind of brings you into an awareness of television
is actually made by people, and that it has writers
and producers and other people who make it. I found
that fascinating, and I found the whole, like the history
(18:06):
of television fascinating, and I kind of started doing a
PhD on an English TV dramatist called Dennis Potter who
wrote The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven and Blue Room,
embed Hills and things like that, and he was very
well known in his day, and he was one of
those people who just, you know, expanded the boundaries of
(18:28):
what is what's possible with storytelling on the small screen.
And I've always wanted to get into it and be
able to tell those biggest stories over a longer period
of time. That you can't do in a movie or
a play. It's really it's really luxury to have seven
or eight hours to play with, or fifteen hours or
(18:51):
something like that. You can essentially tell a whole, big,
novelistic story and it can go anywhere and do anything.
I still find that incredibly exciting.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Well, you've done such a diversity of work, including original
stuff like Constellation and also really challenging adaptations like Jonathan
Strange and Mister Norell, which I watched and loved. Congratulations,
I tell us about the various challenges of that adapting
and existing complex work and inventing a whole new world yourself.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
It's very nice that you mentioned Jonathan Stranger Miss Normal
because I think, actually, other than Constellation, it's the thing
that I'm most proud of. I really I wouldn't change
a single second of that. I really love that show.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And I have to say, watching that, I was very
skeptical because I thought, who is going to adapt this? Wow?
This book is insane, So congrats, I was really impressed
by it.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Well, I mean, it's a challenge to get hold of
one of those unadaptable books. It is a challenge to
adapt it, and I like that kind of challenge. I
like that kind of mental puzzle. And it's an interesting
process adapting a book. And it's different with every book, actually,
because some authors have strengths or weaknesses in certain areas
(20:10):
and you have to be quite sensitive with them. I mean,
I think, maybe this isn't the right way to do it.
But whenever I adapted a book, I wanted I always
wanted it to feel something like the experience of reading
the book, you know, to preserve not just cherry pick
the ideas and the characters and some of the plot
(20:32):
and just do a kind of radical throw out of
everything and put all of my own ideas into it,
perhaps naively and foolishly, like I say, I always wanted
to preserve, preserve the tone and the soul of the
original book, and that varies obviously very much from books
to book. And with something like Johns and Stranger, Miss
(20:53):
and Noral, which has such a distinct voice and such
a distinct sense of humor and world, and I love
that book myself, and I really wanted, I really wanted
to make it as magical and funny and exciting to
watch as it was to read. The challenge usually is
(21:13):
to just basically take the book to pieces and find
out what all the component parts are, and what the
what makes the characters tick, and which images and which
scenes are important, and then and then I tend to
kind of build a dramatic structure underneath it. If you
see what I mean. A lot of novels don't really
(21:35):
they're not really according to like a film or TV
structure for storytelling. They've got their own pace and they
expect you to spend ten minutes with them on an
evening or kind of a couple of hours with them
on a train. So they're not they're not hooking you
in the same way. And so I always kind of
get inside and make the architecture a little bit different,
and then and then layer the bits of the story
(21:58):
that we remember back on with that. So it's quite
it's quite a delicate and surgical procedure, but it's a
lot of fun. And like I said, I was always
interested in adapting books that maybe people had had a
go at before and found difficult or found not easy
(22:20):
to tell in a movie or something. And I enjoyed
that very much. But I kind of found myself doing
more and more adaptations, and that's not surprising because most
things are adaptations these days. But really, after Strange and Novel,
I made myself a promise that I wasn't really going
(22:43):
to seriously focus on anything else until I'd gotten an
original idea over the line. That's why I got into writing,
That's why I wanted to be a writer. I have
stories that I want to tell, and it's easy to
get sidetracked into not telling them. So I promise myself
that for good of thrill, I would I'd focus on
(23:06):
trying to get an original thing over the line.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Cancelation is definitely a very original story, and so we
want to talk about that. But first we want to
orient ourselves sort of where you stand in the science
fiction universe. So we have a few questions we ask
all of our science fiction authors. So the first one
is do you think that Star Trek transporters kill you
and clone you or actually transport your atoms somewhere else?
(23:31):
That is, are they teleporters or actually murder machines.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
I think that's such a depressing thought. I'm always much
more on the doctor Who's side than the Star Trek side,
so I always feel a little bit kind of adulterous
thinking about the Star Trek, but they use that technology
in a Peter Cavaldi episode and Stephen actually made a
kind of play of that that he'd been broken down
(23:56):
into atoms and essentially killed and recreated. And I just
think that such a disturbing and horrible thought. But I
think that that kind of has to be how it works, right,
that has to be how it works. But it's just
it's just the most hideous thing that I've ever that
I've ever thought about. It looks, it looks so beautiful
(24:16):
and graceful, but yeah, they're just being butchered. No. I
think horrible as it is to think that, I think
that that that is what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So as difficult as that is to embrace. What technology
in science fiction would you most like to see become reality? Which,
as a scientist to actually be working on.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
It's hard to think of anything that I'd like to
see become a reality because usually the potential uses of
it or are also disturbing. I don't know, I'm a
bit of a ludd Eye. Really, I'm kind of anti technology.
It's not a great place to be in if you're
writing science fiction. I'm more horrified by the by the
(24:57):
potential frontiers of science than I am that I am
excited by them necessary I can't actually think of something.
I mean, I'd love to see time travel happening. I'd
love to see interstellar space travel. Actually, in terms of constellation,
it would be very interesting to get to the end
(25:17):
of quantum physics, or get even half an inch further
along the line, because the suggestions that it makes about
the universe are so are so tantalizing and interesting. But
I just generally think we're probably it's very hard for
us to cope with the technology that we've got. It
would be great if we could invent a machine which
(25:37):
would just put some of it back in the box
and then ration it out again a little bit more,
a little bit more slowly, so we could actually cope
with it without driving ourselves mad.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
As a species, well, maybe we should see science fiction
as warnings rather than inspiration. And then our last general
question is what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox?
If the galaxy is so old and there's so many
habitable planets, why haven't any aliens visited us yet?
Speaker 4 (26:04):
It's another depressing answer, and I'm obviously not the first
one to come up with it. It's because civilizations tend
to wipe themselves out before they managed to achieve that.
And also it might actually be impossible crossing such vast
levels of space might be something which just stumps any science. Yeah,
(26:29):
and I'm not entirely sure that aliens haven't visited as either,
So yeah, I think it's probably that they can't start
fighting each other for long enough to concentrate on getting
off the planet.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So then let's turn to Constellation. The show, which is
a lot of fun, features a lot of themes of
quantum mechanics, this superposition, multiverse, entanglement, et cetera. Tell me
what droot of these themes? What excited you about these
themes from a storytelling point of view.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Well, I didn't start out by one wanting to write
something about quantum physics. I started out really from the
idea of astronauts returning to Earth and feeling that something
was a miss and also this little ghost story of
(27:18):
a little girl lost in the forest and hiding in
a cupboard in an old, abandoned cabin. And that was
what really just came out when I sat down to
write the pilot, and so the whole development of the
show was working out how those two things fitted together,
and how and how that mother got back to that
(27:38):
child and had what had happened up there, and what
was causing the things that he was going through back
on Earth. And I think the quantum physics ideas just
started to slot in and started to give it some
degree of organization. And I'm very interested in the frontiers
(27:59):
of some ions and that quote biartheisy Clark about any
science sufficiently advanced being indistinguishable from magic. I find it
very interesting to see science at at the edge of
itself and how many things remain mysterious and unexplained. And
(28:20):
one of the things that the people who work with
quantum physics keep on saying about it is that it's
that if you think you understand it, you don't understand it.
I mean, Einstein called it spooky action at a distance,
didn't it? And there is something tantalizingly spooky about it.
(28:42):
And I like thinking about how you might explain you
might explain things like ghosts or fairies or historical UFO
encounters in terms of science and how they collide and
whether there's actually any difference between them, or whether whether
we're just describing the same thing in different terms. If
(29:06):
you see what I mean. It's very interesting to play
around with where science interacts with mythology or madness or
consciousness or other things that we don't really understand about
the human condition. And I wanted, I wanted to write
something which which took you through those steps and also
(29:26):
had the feeling of each of those each of those things.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Well, the show feels almost like it's written in the
style of a thriller or a mystery, but you know,
in a science fiction y sort of universe or in context.
And I know it's often said that you can't write
a mystery in the science fiction universe because for a mystery,
the reader has to know what the rules are, and
in science fiction the rules can be almost anything. And
you've written mystery and detective shows yourself, so for you,
(29:52):
how important is it for the viewer that your universe
follows a coherent and consistent set of rules, even if
those rules, you know, not the same as the rule
of our actual universe.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
I think writing something like this it's very important. I
think that it's it's it's no good if you if
you can just switch things out at the last minute
and and say and now she can grow another head,
or it's all about time travel. I think it's I
(30:23):
think it's very important because obviously part of the part
of the interest for some members of the audience is
figuring out those rules, and part of the fun of
making it is dropping hints to that and trying to
try to ration the ration the information, or allow people
(30:46):
a little bit more information here and there and let
them let them work out what's happening. But within that,
I think you've got to be very the audience has
to feel confident that there are rules. I think you've
got to present it with enough confidence to say, Okay,
you know, maybe you don't know what's happening yet, but
(31:08):
that's all right, because none of our characters do either,
and they're figuring it out alongside you, and you'll probably
actually get there a little bit ahead of them. So
it's fine. It's fine if you don't know everything at
the beginning, because you know, trust me, we're not making
it up. As we go along. Things will start to
(31:28):
fall into place. I think it's very important to do that,
and I think it's I think it's also very important
within that to give to have characters which are which
are living and breathing, and real characters and real situations.
So even if the law of the series or the
background of the series isn't in focus, you have clear
(31:51):
emotional investment in the characters. You know what they're going through.
And with Constellation, I really tried in each of those
situations that Joe or Alice or Henry and Bud find themselves,
I wanted to kind of present them like everybody knows
what it's like to go through a breakup, or most
(32:14):
people have an indication of what it's like to live
with someone who's suffering from mental illness. Everybody knows what
it's like to have a difficult relationship with a parent
or a child, And so I tried to get at
it through those things and give the emotional, the emotional
journey of it, the emotional backbone of it, a real strength,
so so it would carry all the weirdness along with
(32:38):
it and be and be understandable of itself.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, I'm definitely the slice of the audience that likes
to figure out what are the rules of this universe
that I'm watching. To me, that's the fun of science fiction.
It's like a big detective mystery. It's like what are
the clues. How does this world work? I'm trying to
piece it together. And that's a parallel to what we
actually do in reality. Like that's what science is. Where
all trying to solve the mystery of the universe and
(33:02):
we're getting a bunch of clues and trying to figure
out how it all makes sense. And I completely agree
with you with to trust the writer that it does
make sense, that there is some sense. And here in
our actual universe, I'm hoping that there really is some
sense behind everything. And we do wonder sometimes if there
is a coherent explanation, if they're just making things up.
So tell us in your universe, the universe of Constellation
(33:24):
takes place in in your mind, is it following the
same rules of physics as our universe or have you
sort of departed from it and created your own laws
that that that universe follows.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Yes, I would say yes, yea, yes it is. But
the laws of physics that it's following are perhaps interpreted
in a slightly kind of artistic way. They're not necessarily
kind of literally interpreted. I think the various quantum elements
(34:01):
are probably slightly I just I just found analogies kind
of from life or illustrated them in a way which
is not kind of replicatable in an experiment. But I'm
kind of obviously not a scientist, but from what I've
read and researched and understood it, here's to certain theories
(34:25):
about how physics might work, and whether they're provable or
proved or possible in the way that I present them,
I don't know, but it's all it's all, to my
mind possible, and and to to the kind of scientists
that I've spoken to, it's it's possible. Perhaps it's not likely,
(34:46):
but but it's a there's a world in which it's possible.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I'd love if you could go into more detail about
your process here. You mentioned that you've spoken to scientists,
you've done some research. What is it like when you're
writing on a topic that, as you said, you're not
an ex britty and you want to get right. Do
you call it a bunch of old friends? Is there
some like bank of scientists you can refer to. You
just do a bunch of reading yourself, some combination.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
It's a bit of a combination. I read up on
it as much as I could, and we had a
very really brilliant scientific advisor called Michael Brooks who used
to I believe he used to edit New Scientist, and
he writes a lot about the quantum universe and research
into the quantum universe, and he was very helpful at
(35:34):
looking at how the plot was taking shape and suggesting
ways in which it could more closely mirror the research
or certain theories or certain branches of it, and that
was really helpful. He was very good about suggesting the
(35:56):
actual physical circumstances in which you know, a consciousness might
porously go somewhere else and chemically what that might look
like in terms of how the brain is working. I mean,
I asked him quite a lot about consciousness because I think,
as well as all the quantum stuff, I think that
(36:17):
it's really about It's really about how the human consciousness
works and how we process reality, and to what extent
consciousness is a thing that can bleed between different places
and so and so we have rules for all of that,
(36:38):
those things that Henry writes on the board in episode
for hinting at it, but there's he was just very
useful at filling in gaps where I maybe was just wondering, how, how,
how could this work. If this was a thing, how
might it work? And he was very responsive and helpful
(36:59):
in saying, well, it could work like this, And I'd say,
does that sound likely to you? And it sounds as
likely as anything else. What do I know? He was
great And for the space stuff, I mean, we were
very keen that everything that could be made authentic about
it was felt very authentic. The design of the ISS
(37:22):
is extremely authentic, and the space procedure in the space
jargon is as authentic as we could we could make it.
We had Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space
and is also an identical twin whose brother also spent
a year in space, and he was extremely helpful. We
(37:44):
had a couple of consultants from ISA, and I did
a lot of research about it. You buy yourself a
luxury to invent these weird and crazy happenings by telling
a story which otherwise seems very plausible and very authentic.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Well, congrats, I'm doing so much research. I respect that.
So I asked our listeners if they had questions for
you about the show, and many of them are watching
it and enjoying it, and some of their questions were
about the multiverse, it struck them that it seems like
in the story there are basically two universes interacting, and
they were wondering why these two and why you decided
(38:25):
to have two universes interacting rather than like many many
universes you know, of the potentially infinite in the multiverse.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
I'm not going to tell you everything that I could,
because I want to give us some grunt to cover
in the event that we get to continue telling the story.
It's a mirror verse rather than a multiverse, I think,
And there's also a kind of physics related reason for
that too that I'm not going to kind of say
much about for now, But I think if you get
(38:54):
if you get into a multiverse situation where suddenly everything
is possible and you're suddenly achering off into bubble universes
at every decision point, that's a different kind of story.
And that is a world in which theoretically everything is possible,
and I wanted it to feel rather more closed and
(39:15):
consequential than that. You know, there are two realities. They're
extremely closely mirrored for reasons, but there are only kind
of two versions of our characters who may who may
or may not meet in the middle somewhere, and I
think that that somehow seems a bit more dangerous to
(39:35):
me and a bit more important than a multiverse where
some where, you know, someone can die and it doesn't
matter very much because there's another version of them there,
and someone can choose to wear a pink hat one day,
and someone can have, you know, several noses and eighty
five sisters in one different universe, and eighty four sisters
(39:57):
and the other. It just suddenly becomes kind of weird, baffling.
And I wanted to make something about a very tight,
particular constellation of people, and I think the mirroring and
having another one of you, that's something that we can understand,
and that's a notion that we have in us. We
(40:18):
have you know, we've got mirrors all around us, We've
got reflective surfaces. I think that that's a much more
to me. That's a more interesting proposition really than a multiverse,
which is which is also fascinating. But I wouldn't know
how to begin to organize the rules of telling that story.
(40:40):
And you know, you get into kind of everything everywhere,
all at one situation, which is utterly exhilarating. But I'd
soon I'd soon feel totally out of control of that,
you know. So it's a mirror verse, and there's obviously
some sort of meeting point in the middle, some sort
(41:00):
of liminal space or some you know, superpositional space where
things are not quite decided in the middle, and that
just seemed to be eventually the right way to tell
the story. I'm sure. I'm sure I did tinker around
with them maybe being other versions, other realities, but it
(41:21):
would have just it would have driven me even more
insane than writing it with two realities already drove me.
So I didn't do that well.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
This idea of a liminal space, the connection between the
two universes, I thought was really fascinating as you're writing it.
What are the sort of rules for how the two
universes can overlap? Because sometimes they seem separate, like two
characters can't hear each other, and sometimes they do seem connected,
they can hear each other. Other times it's through a
tape recording. I don't want to ask you to reveal
(41:52):
too many secrets, but so, what are the rules you
have in your mind for how these two universes interact?
Speaker 4 (41:59):
What can I say I don't I don't want to
seem coy about it. I'm a bit allergic to shutting
everything down in terms of spoilers, but but I know
if we carry on telling the story, there's a lot
of this to reveal, and I don't want to want
to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it and
advance for anybody because I know how how much people
enjoy figuring it out. Yeah, there are there are rules
(42:22):
to it, and perhaps it's got something to do with
the cow, and perhaps it's got something to do with
being in space, and perhaps it has something to do
with a particular emotional state or brain chemistry or something
like that. That's very vague, but it's kind of in
that area.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
It's vague but intriguing, Thank you very much. So then
my last question for you is do you have a
full idea of the whole story before you sit down
and write. You outline the entire plot and then you
sit down to write it, or you sort of discovering
it on the page as you write it. And is
that also true for like seasons two and three, you
already have those worked out.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
That I completely don't do it like that. I wish
I did. It would be a lot more efficient, I think,
But I tend to. I tend to work things out
on the page, and I tend to I tend to
write a lot of different material and then look at
it because it all, it all kind of comes from
(43:23):
the same place. If you're if you're dreaming up a project,
it all your your brain is very clever and good
at working things out subconsciously and generating these things without
you having to instruct it too much. So I tend
to write quite quite a big bunch of stuff and
(43:44):
then work out how how it all fits together, and
how the stories fit together, and how the characters, how
are the characters journeys and personalities merge, and give it
forward momentum. And I don't know, I don't know whether
that's the most efficient way of doing it, but I
know that I know that if you're outlining something properly,
(44:07):
outlining it is almost as difficult as writing it. It's
a peril of the job that you do have to
do outlines and things. But I'm not that great at
sticking to them all the time, because you just find
that if you're writing an outline of thing, something you're
(44:27):
kind of writing in shorthand. Often because you're not seeing
how ideally, if you're writing scenes, kind of characters just
lead you off in a different direction, or they lead
you somewhere a bit surprising and you think, oh, well,
I actually kind of can't tell that scene next because
because the characters, you know, decided against that and we
(44:50):
and we have to go somewhere else. And I'm a
big believer in going down rabbit holes and exploring blind
alleys because you'll always you'll always find something of interest there,
and even if it's just a line or a thought,
or even if or if it's just the knowledge that
the path that you that you didn't take, you were
right not to take. So it is a big period
(45:12):
of exploration for me. Having said that, I've been living
with this world and these characters for such a long
time that I do have I've got a good broad
idea of where it all goes. I've got i've got
a good idea of their their history and their backstory
and the stories that they can tell. And I've i've
(45:35):
got i've got an end destination. So so really i've
kind of I've got the broad brushstrokes of it, and
many specific happenings and events along the way, but I could.
I couldn't tell you what's going to happen at the
end of episode three in season four, because I mean,
I've got to leave myself somewhere to go as well.
(45:57):
You know, if you know exactly what you go into
right then then you can't surprise yourself and it stops
being so interesting to sit down and do it if
you just feel your inking it in.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
As I say, well, congratulations on season one. It was
a lot of fun to watch. What are you working
on right now? Is it Constellation season two or do
you have some other project cooking? Well, well, I am
I can't answer that, Okay, undisclosed projectdisclosed projects.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Yeah, no, but I'm busy. I'm fairly busy just now.
I wish I was having a holiday, but I'm not. Yes,
so I'm keeping myself busy.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
All right. Wonderful. Well, congratulations again, and thanks very much
for talking to us.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
All Right, pretty interesting interview. I noticed you were sort
of fan boying a little bit.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah. I really respect what this guy has done. I
like his writing. I like what he's done with his career.
You know, he's taken chances. I think it's just awesome.
I love getting to talk to people in other paths
in life and hearing about their experience and the risks
they took and what it's like to be there, because
you know, we only choose one path in our life,
and so it's sort of fascinating to imagine other paths
in your own life. And one way to do that
(47:29):
is to talk to people who have taken those paths.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
The mirror verse of your life. Yeah, did you ever
think at some point of being a TV writer? Sounds
like maybe you did.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I have written for television, dude, so have you?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
We have a TV show together, I mean, like science fiction,
physics stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah, that's right. We don't have any science fiction in
our show. Yeah. I would love to write science fiction.
I'm not sure about for television, but I read a
lot of science fiction. I think about science fiction just
like I think about science It's a lot of fun.
Maybe one day.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
So what else did you do You feel you learned
from Peter Harness about the process of writing for science
fiction for TV.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah. I was really curious what his process was, and
he took it pretty seriously. You know, he's not a physicist,
of course, but he reached out to some scientists. He
did a bunch of reading. He tried to write something
which was respectful of the ideas of science, but also
he took some liberties, you know, in order to tell
a story, and so I respect what he did.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Cool. Did you give me your business card? Are you like.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Calling let's collab man?
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Is that how they say it these days.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Let's find ourselves in a universe where we worked together.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
That's right. I want to interfere with your next project.
I want to entangle myself now.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
That career sound like something you would one in your
in your life there.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
I want to superimpose myself on your writing process.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
That's right. I am super imposing myself onto your contact list. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
I think he wants to keep my spooky action at
a distance.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Actually, yeah, he wants no entanglement for exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
I respect that. I respect that. No, it was very
nice of him to take some time to talk to me.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
I enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah, thank you very much, Peter Harness, and please check
out his new show Constellation, available on Apple TV. Well,
we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See
you next time.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media.
Where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter,
disc Org, Insta and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and
remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(49:39):
favorite shows.
Hey, Daniel, when did the latest run of the Large
Hadron Collider start?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ooh a few months ago? Ooh?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Does that mean we've shifted into another timeline in the multiverse?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, you know, people say that the Large Hadron Collider
somehow caused something called the Mandela effect, which is this
weird sensation that maybe we're in the wrong universe. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I think I want to be in the timeline where
nobody believes in the Mendela effect, because that's just silliness.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
But isn't this an established the physics theory kind of
the multiverse.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I'm just going to keep running the LC until we
end up in the universe I want to be in.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Is there a universe you want to live in? This
one's pretty good, So stop running the LAC then, because
it could get worse.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
All Right, you convinced me?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Good? Pressent button, press that big red button.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oo.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Hi. I'm Horaemery, cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great
Big Universe.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at uc Erline, and I'm a big fan of this universe.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this universe, especially because
it made me and everyone I.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Know, and despite that we're all fans of it as well.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I'm not a fan of the universes that didn't make me.
The obviously didn't know what it was doing.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What if blueberries in those universe taste twice as good?
You still think that those universes are not worth knowing?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Well, you mean can we visit them?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah? If we go visit those universes and they have
amazing pastries we never even thought about before, But there's
no jhee cham. Are you gonna be like, nah, this
isn't worth visiting.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well, it's worth visiting, but I still like my universe.
Could we import these blueberries? I mean it sounds like
a market opportunity if you ask me.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, that's a startup idea, right there, will multiverse pastries,
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah. I think we need a need like economics term
for multidimensional trade benefits.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I think gives a whole new meaning to import export,
multi import, multi export, quantum importing or quantum exporting exactly.
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Finally a use for the word quantum that means something.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
We're gonna be quantum rich. But anyways, Welcome to our
podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of
Our Heart Radio.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
In which we explore the fundamental meaning of reality and
the laws that govern it. We dig our way down
to the bedrock of nature and try to figure out
what the rules are for this universe, how they come
together to make this amazing, creative, bonkers universe that features
both blueberries, pastries and Jorge chams.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
That's right. We try to explore this universe, other universes,
all the universes, and what it all means to maybe
have different universes, and how we're ever going to find
out what the true reality of nature is.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
One way to explore the reality of nature is to
do experiments and to test our universe and force it
to reveal its laws. But another very important way is
to think about the possible universes we might live in,
to be creative, to imagine the ways that the universe
might be. That's something that theoretical physicists do, but it's
also something that science fiction authors do. They create whole
(03:30):
new universes in their minds and think about what it
means to live in those universes, what the consequences of
that fictional science might be.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
That's right. Science fiction has a long and interesting history
of thinking about possibilities for technology science and what those
changes and those possibilities might mean for the universe we
live in and the way that we live in.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Because one reason why physics is so important and so
influential is because it has great consequences. The things that
we learned about the nature of reality tell us a
lot about the meaning of our lives. If you discovered
that we lived in a multiverse with infinite numbers of
copies of you, would you feel more valuable less valuable?
It certainly would change your perspective on the meaning of
(04:12):
your life and the ways that you make your choices.
Science fiction authors are often very clever at exploring the
ways that understanding the universe affects the meaning of our lives.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Or I guess at least looking at current theories and
then maybe exploring that, maybe before they're established or not,
just kind of wondering what would that if this theory
was true? What would that mean for our everyday lives.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And sometimes even coming up with new technologies that might
be consequences of those theories that could change the daily
pattern of our lives. So on the podcast, we're normally
talking about actual physics of our actual universe, but we
have a whole series of episodes exploring the science of
fictional universes.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So at the end of the program we'll be exploring
the science fiction universe of Constellation. Yeah, this is a
new TV show right on Apple TV.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
That's right, Constellation is on Apple TV and it's a
science fiction show written by one of my favorite screenwriters,
and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Ooh, one of your favorite screenwriters. I didn't know you
followed screenwriters.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Well, I watch a lot of TV, so I do
call this Guy's written detective mysteries that I've seen, and
also wrote the adaptation for Jonathan Strange and Mister Norell,
a famously fantastical book.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Oh yeah, my wife watched that show. Is that a
good show? I guess you liked it if if it's
one of your favorite writers.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The book is absolutely astounding and incredible. Really just a
worker genius. But I thought it was going to be unadaptable.
It's just so complicated and intricate. But he did a
great job at the TV show. The TV show is
a different thing than the book, but really well adapted.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Well. Now, this writer called Peter Harness now has a
new show on Apple TV and it's titled Constellation.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
That's right, and this one's salve in the science fiction category,
and there's a lot of quantum physics in it. Bose
Einstein condensates, space travel, multiverse, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
WHOA, So, I guess what's the TV show about.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
So it starts on the International Space Station. There's a
bunch of astronauts up there and they're doing a science experiment.
They're making a Bose Einstein condensate on the space station,
which is what so Bose Einstein condensate is a weird
state of matter. Remember that particles fall into two categories,
fermions and bosons. Fermions, like electrons and other matter particles,
(06:34):
have this rule that you can't have two of them
in the same state. So if you try to cool
down a bunch of electrons, for example, that won't actually
all fall down to the lowest energy level. They'll each
find their own place on the ladder, so the whole
thing won't really cool down as much. But if you
play with bosons like photons or some kind of atoms,
they have no compunction against occupying the same energy level,
(06:54):
so you can cool them down much much lower. And
if you take a bunch of them and you cool
them all down, then their wave function overlap and they
form this new state of matter called a Bose Einstein contensate,
which is cool because it's sort of macroscopic. It's like
big enough you can see it, and it has quantum properties,
like it interferes with itself and all sorts of cool stuff.
(07:15):
So it's like a macroscopic piece of matter that has
quantum properties. It was first discovered in the nineties and
now they've replicated it in lots of situations, including in
real life on the space station.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Wha, don't you need a lot of equipment for that,
like like giant machines or can you do this in
your desktop or your spacetop.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I guess you don't need giant machines. It's not like
the large Hadron collider. Mostly this is done with atomic physics,
and so you need like an atom trap and you
need magnets, maybe lasers. It's not enormous, Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So then the scientists in the show did this in
space and then what happened?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
So in the show they do this in space, and
then weird stuff happens. There's an accident and they come
back to Earth and discover that it's not really the
Earth they're familiar with. You know, some details are different
and people have different memories, and everybody thinks maybe they
went crazy up there. And as you watch it, you
discover that you're actually watching two stories in parallel, like
(08:09):
two different elements of a multiverse that have come to interact.
When the scientists did that experiment in space. WHOA.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
So the show is following this group of astronauts and
when they come back, things are different, and it's because
they're not in the same universe or are we going
back and forth between the two universes.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Both some of them have switched over to another universe,
and so now they don't like have the memory of
the correct history anymore. They disagree with people like did
we buy that red car? I thought our car was blue,
this kind of stuff. And there is still some interaction
between the universes, like the same person from two universes
can now talk to each other under some circumstances, and
so it's like these two universes have come into contact
(08:49):
and changed both of them.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Wait, like the people in the two universes swap places.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
In some cases, yes, not everybody, but in some cases yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Oh interesting. Now I guess as a quantum scientist, Daniel,
do you watch this and you're like, that's a lot
of vs or or do you find it interesting?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I always find it interesting, and what I'm looking for
is consistency. I treat each of these shows the way
I treat our universe, like I assume it's following some rules,
and I want to figure out what the rules are.
It's like watching a murder mystery. You're gathering clues, You're
trying to figure out what happened. And so when they
do experiments and get weird results, I take that as
the writers communicated to me some information about the way
(09:29):
their universe works, so I want to try to figure
it out. I'm not insisting that the science in that
universe obey the same rules as the science in our universe.
Of course, it's called science fiction for a reason, and
it's really fun for me to try to figure out
what are the rules of that universe.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Okay, so then what are the rules in this universe.
It sounds like maybe it's getting into the multiverse and
the quantum multiverse in particular.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, this leans a lot on things we're familiar with
in quantum mechanics, you know, superposition, the idea idea that
a particle can have the possibility of being in two
places at once, that both possibilities can exist simultaneously before
you look, and that only when a classical object interacts
with it does universe have to pick one or the other.
Like an electron can have a possibility to go left
(10:16):
or right, and it's not that it does both, but
that it maintains the possibility of having done both until
you've measured it. The idea of entanglement that two particles
with these possibilities can have their possibilities like tied together
in complicated ways. Ideas of interference, that these possibilities can
cancel each other out. All this kind of stuff is
used to pretty good effect in the show. But the
(10:38):
fundamental concept they're dealing with is actually not a multiverse.
It's something else. It's called a mirror verse, which is
like a multiverse but with only two universes in it.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
But two is multi though, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, But I think the more common idea of a
multiverse has an infinite number of universes in it, or
at least an enormous number. The most typical idea of
multiverse is the one that exists in like the Many
World's theory of quantum mechanics that says that when an
electron has a possibility to go left and to go right,
that both things do happen, that the universe splits into
two branches, and both of those universes then exist, and
(11:15):
those are different elements of the quantum multiver.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Right, And then that's supposed to happen with every single
particle that exists in the world. Like each time any
of the Brazilians electrons in the universe does something or
picks a possibility, you split off a new universe.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, so every billisecond, all the ten to the ninety
particles in the universe are creating new universes. So there's
an enormous number, many more than just two. In this show,
he's operating a much simpler sort of multiverse with just
two universes in it, which he calls the mirror Verse.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But why only two? How did these two get created?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yeah, it's a good question. And as you'll hear in
my interview, I asked him about that, and he didn't
want to reveal it because he's got secret he wants
to reveal in season two. But there are some.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
That's like a side to saying, I'll do this in
my future work.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
My second Nobel Prize, we'll explain all of that.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
But there are some legit theories of the mirror verse
out there. I'm not exactly sure what Peter Harness has
in his brain, but there are scientists that talk about.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
The mirror verse really like why too well.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Our universe is weird in some ways. For example, our
universe does not respect parody. Parody is like if you
flip the universe so that everything looks the way it
would in a mirror, you like, reflect it through the axis,
then the laws of physics would operate a little bit differently.
Our universe is sort of weirdly left handed, you've reflected
it in a mirror, it would look a little bit different.
(12:39):
We have a whole episode about paroity violation in our universe.
But there are some ways in which our universe has
made one of two choices, and so you can imagine
that there might be a mirror of our universe out there.
In a mirror verse where the opposite is true, like
the right handed version of our universe.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Then this is just like one choice you can make.
Aren't there like a bazillion of these choices.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, that's a good point. You know, there are other
basic symmetries. Parody is one that's violated maximally, though, and
so it's the one that seems most ripe for flipping,
you know, like time invariant symmetry is also not respect
in our universe, but is violated less dramatically than parity.
But you're right, you could have another universe where that's flipped.
There's also charge in variance, but that one's actually respected
(13:23):
in our universe. But yeah, there are other ways you
can imagine flipping the universe where it's made one choice
or another, Like you could have another universe where what
we call anti matter is the dominant kind of matter
in the universe.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Right. I think what you're saying is, maybe, you know,
there are certain rules in physics that maybe apply to
there being two versions of us of a universe.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Mm hmm, yeah, exactly, and time is an especially powerful one.
There was a theory that bounced around a few years
ago that at the Big Bang, two universes were created,
one flowing forwards in time and one flowing backwards in time.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Right, the Big Bang and then the Big Bong, Right.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, pass it over man, and another hit.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Of the big Bone. That's how they came up with
this theory, isn't it Yeah?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Exactly. And there were even those crazy events from the
Anita experiment at the South Pole that we just talked
about on the episode with Harry Cliff that received a
lot of silly buzz in the press for NASA discovers
a parallel universe right next to hours, which was totally
scientific misinformation. But there are those theories of another universe
going backwards in time. In none of those cases, though,
(14:31):
would you be able to interact with that universe? Like,
in none of those cases could you do an experiment
which is then can interfere because the quantum mechanics of
it is quite crisp. Like these universes when they branch,
do you call them another universe because you cannot interact
with it? That's sort of what it means. Like you
have the big wave function from the multiverse and then
it decoheres into separate wave functions. Those wave functions don't
(14:53):
interfere with each other, can't interact with each other at all.
That's sort of what we mean by another universe. So
the idea that you could do an experiment, even a
weird quantum one with Bose Einstein condensate in space, that
would somehow bring those universes together, that's science fiction. That's
not something we see in our kind of science at all.
That doesn't mean Peter Harness can't write it into the
(15:14):
fiction of his universe, but it's not something that exists
in our theories in any way.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So you're saying the whole show is just a bunch
of bs. I'm going to ask you, that's kind of
what you just said, Daniel. I didn't say it.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
No, I'm saying it's fiction, and he's allowed to create
new rules for his universe. And as you'll hear in
the interview, I asked him about this, whether he's operating
by the rules in our universe or some speculative physics theories.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I'm guessing he just said, yes, I'm going to reveal
the reason for that in the next season.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
That's exactly what he said.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
See, I can predict things in our universe as well,
all right, well, here is Daniel's interview with screenwriter Peter Harness,
creator of the new Apple TV show Constellation.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
All right, well then, it's my great pleasure to welcome
to the podcast. Peter Harness, an English playwright, screenwriter and actor.
Thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Thank you very much. I need to update Wikipedia. I
haven't done any acting for a very long time, but
it's nice. It's still it's nice, it still believes that
I have more.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Once an actor, always an actor. So tell us a
little bit about your background. How did you get into
writing for television and science fiction writing starting from playwriting?
Speaker 4 (16:34):
I think that I always wanted to write for TV
really more than anything else. And if I did a
little bit of playwriting earlier in my career, I think
it was a bit of a I can't really say
means to an end because both careers are pretty difficult
to get into, but I think I kind of did
(16:55):
it in the absence of writing for TV because really
that's what I've always wanted to do. That's my first love,
rather than film or the stage or anything like that.
So it was, yes, I was always trying my best
to get into TV from the get go.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
And why is that. Why were you so excited about
writing for television? What about that medium excited you?
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I think that I grew up watching so much television.
I hate to say it, but the majority of my
childhood was spent watching TV, and I was a big
fan of I was a doctor who obsessive when I
was small. And there's something about that program and the
(17:45):
kind of level of scrutiny that fans go into on it.
It kind of brings you into an awareness of television
is actually made by people, and that it has writers
and producers and other people who make it. I found
that fascinating, and I found the whole, like the history
(18:06):
of television fascinating, and I kind of started doing a
PhD on an English TV dramatist called Dennis Potter who
wrote The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven and Blue Room,
embed Hills and things like that, and he was very
well known in his day, and he was one of
those people who just, you know, expanded the boundaries of
(18:28):
what is what's possible with storytelling on the small screen.
And I've always wanted to get into it and be
able to tell those biggest stories over a longer period
of time. That you can't do in a movie or
a play. It's really it's really luxury to have seven
or eight hours to play with, or fifteen hours or
(18:51):
something like that. You can essentially tell a whole, big,
novelistic story and it can go anywhere and do anything.
I still find that incredibly exciting.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Well, you've done such a diversity of work, including original
stuff like Constellation and also really challenging adaptations like Jonathan
Strange and Mister Norell, which I watched and loved. Congratulations,
I tell us about the various challenges of that adapting
and existing complex work and inventing a whole new world yourself.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
It's very nice that you mentioned Jonathan Stranger Miss Normal
because I think, actually, other than Constellation, it's the thing
that I'm most proud of. I really I wouldn't change
a single second of that. I really love that show.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And I have to say, watching that, I was very
skeptical because I thought, who is going to adapt this? Wow?
This book is insane, So congrats, I was really impressed
by it.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Well, I mean, it's a challenge to get hold of
one of those unadaptable books. It is a challenge to
adapt it, and I like that kind of challenge. I
like that kind of mental puzzle. And it's an interesting
process adapting a book. And it's different with every book, actually,
because some authors have strengths or weaknesses in certain areas
(20:10):
and you have to be quite sensitive with them. I mean,
I think, maybe this isn't the right way to do it.
But whenever I adapted a book, I wanted I always
wanted it to feel something like the experience of reading
the book, you know, to preserve not just cherry pick
the ideas and the characters and some of the plot
(20:32):
and just do a kind of radical throw out of
everything and put all of my own ideas into it,
perhaps naively and foolishly, like I say, I always wanted
to preserve, preserve the tone and the soul of the
original book, and that varies obviously very much from books
to book. And with something like Johns and Stranger, Miss
(20:53):
and Noral, which has such a distinct voice and such
a distinct sense of humor and world, and I love
that book myself, and I really wanted, I really wanted
to make it as magical and funny and exciting to
watch as it was to read. The challenge usually is
(21:13):
to just basically take the book to pieces and find
out what all the component parts are, and what the
what makes the characters tick, and which images and which
scenes are important, and then and then I tend to
kind of build a dramatic structure underneath it. If you
see what I mean. A lot of novels don't really
(21:35):
they're not really according to like a film or TV
structure for storytelling. They've got their own pace and they
expect you to spend ten minutes with them on an
evening or kind of a couple of hours with them
on a train. So they're not they're not hooking you
in the same way. And so I always kind of
get inside and make the architecture a little bit different,
and then and then layer the bits of the story
(21:58):
that we remember back on with that. So it's quite
it's quite a delicate and surgical procedure, but it's a
lot of fun. And like I said, I was always
interested in adapting books that maybe people had had a
go at before and found difficult or found not easy
(22:20):
to tell in a movie or something. And I enjoyed
that very much. But I kind of found myself doing
more and more adaptations, and that's not surprising because most
things are adaptations these days. But really, after Strange and Novel,
I made myself a promise that I wasn't really going
(22:43):
to seriously focus on anything else until I'd gotten an
original idea over the line. That's why I got into writing,
That's why I wanted to be a writer. I have
stories that I want to tell, and it's easy to
get sidetracked into not telling them. So I promise myself
that for good of thrill, I would I'd focus on
(23:06):
trying to get an original thing over the line.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Cancelation is definitely a very original story, and so we
want to talk about that. But first we want to
orient ourselves sort of where you stand in the science
fiction universe. So we have a few questions we ask
all of our science fiction authors. So the first one
is do you think that Star Trek transporters kill you
and clone you or actually transport your atoms somewhere else?
(23:31):
That is, are they teleporters or actually murder machines.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
I think that's such a depressing thought. I'm always much
more on the doctor Who's side than the Star Trek side,
so I always feel a little bit kind of adulterous
thinking about the Star Trek, but they use that technology
in a Peter Cavaldi episode and Stephen actually made a
kind of play of that that he'd been broken down
(23:56):
into atoms and essentially killed and recreated. And I just
think that such a disturbing and horrible thought. But I
think that that kind of has to be how it works, right,
that has to be how it works. But it's just
it's just the most hideous thing that I've ever that
I've ever thought about. It looks, it looks so beautiful
(24:16):
and graceful, but yeah, they're just being butchered. No. I
think horrible as it is to think that, I think
that that that is what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So as difficult as that is to embrace. What technology
in science fiction would you most like to see become reality? Which,
as a scientist to actually be working on.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
It's hard to think of anything that I'd like to
see become a reality because usually the potential uses of
it or are also disturbing. I don't know, I'm a
bit of a ludd Eye. Really, I'm kind of anti technology.
It's not a great place to be in if you're
writing science fiction. I'm more horrified by the by the
(24:57):
potential frontiers of science than I am that I am
excited by them necessary I can't actually think of something.
I mean, I'd love to see time travel happening. I'd
love to see interstellar space travel. Actually, in terms of constellation,
it would be very interesting to get to the end
(25:17):
of quantum physics, or get even half an inch further
along the line, because the suggestions that it makes about
the universe are so are so tantalizing and interesting. But
I just generally think we're probably it's very hard for
us to cope with the technology that we've got. It
would be great if we could invent a machine which
(25:37):
would just put some of it back in the box
and then ration it out again a little bit more,
a little bit more slowly, so we could actually cope
with it without driving ourselves mad.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
As a species, well, maybe we should see science fiction
as warnings rather than inspiration. And then our last general
question is what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox?
If the galaxy is so old and there's so many
habitable planets, why haven't any aliens visited us yet?
Speaker 4 (26:04):
It's another depressing answer, and I'm obviously not the first
one to come up with it. It's because civilizations tend
to wipe themselves out before they managed to achieve that.
And also it might actually be impossible crossing such vast
levels of space might be something which just stumps any science. Yeah,
(26:29):
and I'm not entirely sure that aliens haven't visited as either,
So yeah, I think it's probably that they can't start
fighting each other for long enough to concentrate on getting
off the planet.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
So then let's turn to Constellation. The show, which is
a lot of fun, features a lot of themes of
quantum mechanics, this superposition, multiverse, entanglement, et cetera. Tell me
what droot of these themes? What excited you about these
themes from a storytelling point of view.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Well, I didn't start out by one wanting to write
something about quantum physics. I started out really from the
idea of astronauts returning to Earth and feeling that something
was a miss and also this little ghost story of
(27:18):
a little girl lost in the forest and hiding in
a cupboard in an old, abandoned cabin. And that was
what really just came out when I sat down to
write the pilot, and so the whole development of the
show was working out how those two things fitted together,
and how and how that mother got back to that
(27:38):
child and had what had happened up there, and what
was causing the things that he was going through back
on Earth. And I think the quantum physics ideas just
started to slot in and started to give it some
degree of organization. And I'm very interested in the frontiers
(27:59):
of some ions and that quote biartheisy Clark about any
science sufficiently advanced being indistinguishable from magic. I find it
very interesting to see science at at the edge of
itself and how many things remain mysterious and unexplained. And
(28:20):
one of the things that the people who work with
quantum physics keep on saying about it is that it's
that if you think you understand it, you don't understand it.
I mean, Einstein called it spooky action at a distance,
didn't it? And there is something tantalizingly spooky about it.
(28:42):
And I like thinking about how you might explain you
might explain things like ghosts or fairies or historical UFO
encounters in terms of science and how they collide and
whether there's actually any difference between them, or whether whether
we're just describing the same thing in different terms. If
(29:06):
you see what I mean. It's very interesting to play
around with where science interacts with mythology or madness or
consciousness or other things that we don't really understand about
the human condition. And I wanted, I wanted to write
something which which took you through those steps and also
(29:26):
had the feeling of each of those each of those things.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Well, the show feels almost like it's written in the
style of a thriller or a mystery, but you know,
in a science fiction y sort of universe or in context.
And I know it's often said that you can't write
a mystery in the science fiction universe because for a mystery,
the reader has to know what the rules are, and
in science fiction the rules can be almost anything. And
you've written mystery and detective shows yourself, so for you,
(29:52):
how important is it for the viewer that your universe
follows a coherent and consistent set of rules, even if
those rules, you know, not the same as the rule
of our actual universe.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
I think writing something like this it's very important. I
think that it's it's it's no good if you if
you can just switch things out at the last minute
and and say and now she can grow another head,
or it's all about time travel. I think it's I
(30:23):
think it's very important because obviously part of the part
of the interest for some members of the audience is
figuring out those rules, and part of the fun of
making it is dropping hints to that and trying to
try to ration the ration the information, or allow people
(30:46):
a little bit more information here and there and let
them let them work out what's happening. But within that,
I think you've got to be very the audience has
to feel confident that there are rules. I think you've
got to present it with enough confidence to say, Okay,
you know, maybe you don't know what's happening yet, but
(31:08):
that's all right, because none of our characters do either,
and they're figuring it out alongside you, and you'll probably
actually get there a little bit ahead of them. So
it's fine. It's fine if you don't know everything at
the beginning, because you know, trust me, we're not making
it up. As we go along. Things will start to
(31:28):
fall into place. I think it's very important to do that,
and I think it's I think it's also very important
within that to give to have characters which are which
are living and breathing, and real characters and real situations.
So even if the law of the series or the
background of the series isn't in focus, you have clear
(31:51):
emotional investment in the characters. You know what they're going through.
And with Constellation, I really tried in each of those
situations that Joe or Alice or Henry and Bud find themselves,
I wanted to kind of present them like everybody knows
what it's like to go through a breakup, or most
(32:14):
people have an indication of what it's like to live
with someone who's suffering from mental illness. Everybody knows what
it's like to have a difficult relationship with a parent
or a child, And so I tried to get at
it through those things and give the emotional, the emotional
journey of it, the emotional backbone of it, a real strength,
so so it would carry all the weirdness along with
(32:38):
it and be and be understandable of itself.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, I'm definitely the slice of the audience that likes
to figure out what are the rules of this universe
that I'm watching. To me, that's the fun of science fiction.
It's like a big detective mystery. It's like what are
the clues. How does this world work? I'm trying to
piece it together. And that's a parallel to what we
actually do in reality. Like that's what science is. Where
all trying to solve the mystery of the universe and
(33:02):
we're getting a bunch of clues and trying to figure
out how it all makes sense. And I completely agree
with you with to trust the writer that it does
make sense, that there is some sense. And here in
our actual universe, I'm hoping that there really is some
sense behind everything. And we do wonder sometimes if there
is a coherent explanation, if they're just making things up.
So tell us in your universe, the universe of Constellation
(33:24):
takes place in in your mind, is it following the
same rules of physics as our universe or have you
sort of departed from it and created your own laws
that that that universe follows.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Yes, I would say yes, yea, yes it is. But
the laws of physics that it's following are perhaps interpreted
in a slightly kind of artistic way. They're not necessarily
kind of literally interpreted. I think the various quantum elements
(34:01):
are probably slightly I just I just found analogies kind
of from life or illustrated them in a way which
is not kind of replicatable in an experiment. But I'm
kind of obviously not a scientist, but from what I've
read and researched and understood it, here's to certain theories
(34:25):
about how physics might work, and whether they're provable or
proved or possible in the way that I present them,
I don't know, but it's all it's all, to my
mind possible, and and to to the kind of scientists
that I've spoken to, it's it's possible. Perhaps it's not likely,
(34:46):
but but it's a there's a world in which it's possible.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I'd love if you could go into more detail about
your process here. You mentioned that you've spoken to scientists,
you've done some research. What is it like when you're
writing on a topic that, as you said, you're not
an ex britty and you want to get right. Do
you call it a bunch of old friends? Is there
some like bank of scientists you can refer to. You
just do a bunch of reading yourself, some combination.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
It's a bit of a combination. I read up on
it as much as I could, and we had a
very really brilliant scientific advisor called Michael Brooks who used
to I believe he used to edit New Scientist, and
he writes a lot about the quantum universe and research
into the quantum universe, and he was very helpful at
(35:34):
looking at how the plot was taking shape and suggesting
ways in which it could more closely mirror the research
or certain theories or certain branches of it, and that
was really helpful. He was very good about suggesting the
(35:56):
actual physical circumstances in which you know, a consciousness might
porously go somewhere else and chemically what that might look
like in terms of how the brain is working. I mean,
I asked him quite a lot about consciousness because I think,
as well as all the quantum stuff, I think that
(36:17):
it's really about It's really about how the human consciousness
works and how we process reality, and to what extent
consciousness is a thing that can bleed between different places
and so and so we have rules for all of that,
(36:38):
those things that Henry writes on the board in episode
for hinting at it, but there's he was just very
useful at filling in gaps where I maybe was just wondering, how, how,
how could this work. If this was a thing, how
might it work? And he was very responsive and helpful
(36:59):
in saying, well, it could work like this, And I'd say,
does that sound likely to you? And it sounds as
likely as anything else. What do I know? He was
great And for the space stuff, I mean, we were
very keen that everything that could be made authentic about
it was felt very authentic. The design of the ISS
(37:22):
is extremely authentic, and the space procedure in the space
jargon is as authentic as we could we could make it.
We had Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space
and is also an identical twin whose brother also spent
a year in space, and he was extremely helpful. We
(37:44):
had a couple of consultants from ISA, and I did
a lot of research about it. You buy yourself a
luxury to invent these weird and crazy happenings by telling
a story which otherwise seems very plausible and very authentic.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Well, congrats, I'm doing so much research. I respect that.
So I asked our listeners if they had questions for
you about the show, and many of them are watching
it and enjoying it, and some of their questions were
about the multiverse, it struck them that it seems like
in the story there are basically two universes interacting, and
they were wondering why these two and why you decided
(38:25):
to have two universes interacting rather than like many many
universes you know, of the potentially infinite in the multiverse.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
I'm not going to tell you everything that I could,
because I want to give us some grunt to cover
in the event that we get to continue telling the story.
It's a mirror verse rather than a multiverse, I think,
And there's also a kind of physics related reason for
that too that I'm not going to kind of say
much about for now, But I think if you get
(38:54):
if you get into a multiverse situation where suddenly everything
is possible and you're suddenly achering off into bubble universes
at every decision point, that's a different kind of story.
And that is a world in which theoretically everything is possible,
and I wanted it to feel rather more closed and
(39:15):
consequential than that. You know, there are two realities. They're
extremely closely mirrored for reasons, but there are only kind
of two versions of our characters who may who may
or may not meet in the middle somewhere, and I
think that that somehow seems a bit more dangerous to
(39:35):
me and a bit more important than a multiverse where
some where, you know, someone can die and it doesn't
matter very much because there's another version of them there,
and someone can choose to wear a pink hat one day,
and someone can have, you know, several noses and eighty
five sisters in one different universe, and eighty four sisters
(39:57):
and the other. It just suddenly becomes kind of weird, baffling.
And I wanted to make something about a very tight,
particular constellation of people, and I think the mirroring and
having another one of you, that's something that we can understand,
and that's a notion that we have in us. We
(40:18):
have you know, we've got mirrors all around us, We've
got reflective surfaces. I think that that's a much more
to me. That's a more interesting proposition really than a multiverse,
which is which is also fascinating. But I wouldn't know
how to begin to organize the rules of telling that story.
(40:40):
And you know, you get into kind of everything everywhere,
all at one situation, which is utterly exhilarating. But I'd
soon I'd soon feel totally out of control of that,
you know. So it's a mirror verse, and there's obviously
some sort of meeting point in the middle, some sort
(41:00):
of liminal space or some you know, superpositional space where
things are not quite decided in the middle, and that
just seemed to be eventually the right way to tell
the story. I'm sure. I'm sure I did tinker around
with them maybe being other versions, other realities, but it
(41:21):
would have just it would have driven me even more
insane than writing it with two realities already drove me.
So I didn't do that well.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
This idea of a liminal space, the connection between the
two universes, I thought was really fascinating as you're writing it.
What are the sort of rules for how the two
universes can overlap? Because sometimes they seem separate, like two
characters can't hear each other, and sometimes they do seem connected,
they can hear each other. Other times it's through a
tape recording. I don't want to ask you to reveal
(41:52):
too many secrets, but so, what are the rules you
have in your mind for how these two universes interact?
Speaker 4 (41:59):
What can I say I don't I don't want to
seem coy about it. I'm a bit allergic to shutting
everything down in terms of spoilers, but but I know
if we carry on telling the story, there's a lot
of this to reveal, and I don't want to want
to spoil it. I don't want to spoil it and
advance for anybody because I know how how much people
enjoy figuring it out. Yeah, there are there are rules
(42:22):
to it, and perhaps it's got something to do with
the cow, and perhaps it's got something to do with
being in space, and perhaps it has something to do
with a particular emotional state or brain chemistry or something
like that. That's very vague, but it's kind of in
that area.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
It's vague but intriguing, Thank you very much. So then
my last question for you is do you have a
full idea of the whole story before you sit down
and write. You outline the entire plot and then you
sit down to write it, or you sort of discovering
it on the page as you write it. And is
that also true for like seasons two and three, you
already have those worked out.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
That I completely don't do it like that. I wish
I did. It would be a lot more efficient, I think,
But I tend to. I tend to work things out
on the page, and I tend to I tend to
write a lot of different material and then look at
it because it all, it all kind of comes from
(43:23):
the same place. If you're if you're dreaming up a project,
it all your your brain is very clever and good
at working things out subconsciously and generating these things without
you having to instruct it too much. So I tend
to write quite quite a big bunch of stuff and
(43:44):
then work out how how it all fits together, and
how the stories fit together, and how the characters, how
are the characters journeys and personalities merge, and give it
forward momentum. And I don't know, I don't know whether
that's the most efficient way of doing it, but I
know that I know that if you're outlining something properly,
(44:07):
outlining it is almost as difficult as writing it. It's
a peril of the job that you do have to
do outlines and things. But I'm not that great at
sticking to them all the time, because you just find
that if you're writing an outline of thing, something you're
(44:27):
kind of writing in shorthand. Often because you're not seeing
how ideally, if you're writing scenes, kind of characters just
lead you off in a different direction, or they lead
you somewhere a bit surprising and you think, oh, well,
I actually kind of can't tell that scene next because
because the characters, you know, decided against that and we
(44:50):
and we have to go somewhere else. And I'm a
big believer in going down rabbit holes and exploring blind
alleys because you'll always you'll always find something of interest there,
and even if it's just a line or a thought,
or even if or if it's just the knowledge that
the path that you that you didn't take, you were
right not to take. So it is a big period
(45:12):
of exploration for me. Having said that, I've been living
with this world and these characters for such a long
time that I do have I've got a good broad
idea of where it all goes. I've got i've got
a good idea of their their history and their backstory
and the stories that they can tell. And I've i've
(45:35):
got i've got an end destination. So so really i've
kind of I've got the broad brushstrokes of it, and
many specific happenings and events along the way, but I could.
I couldn't tell you what's going to happen at the
end of episode three in season four, because I mean,
I've got to leave myself somewhere to go as well.
(45:57):
You know, if you know exactly what you go into
right then then you can't surprise yourself and it stops
being so interesting to sit down and do it if
you just feel your inking it in.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
As I say, well, congratulations on season one. It was
a lot of fun to watch. What are you working
on right now? Is it Constellation season two or do
you have some other project cooking? Well, well, I am
I can't answer that, Okay, undisclosed projectdisclosed projects.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Yeah, no, but I'm busy. I'm fairly busy just now.
I wish I was having a holiday, but I'm not. Yes,
so I'm keeping myself busy.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
All right. Wonderful. Well, congratulations again, and thanks very much
for talking to us.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
All Right, pretty interesting interview. I noticed you were sort
of fan boying a little bit.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah. I really respect what this guy has done. I
like his writing. I like what he's done with his career.
You know, he's taken chances. I think it's just awesome.
I love getting to talk to people in other paths
in life and hearing about their experience and the risks
they took and what it's like to be there, because
you know, we only choose one path in our life,
and so it's sort of fascinating to imagine other paths
in your own life. And one way to do that
(47:29):
is to talk to people who have taken those paths.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
The mirror verse of your life. Yeah, did you ever
think at some point of being a TV writer? Sounds
like maybe you did.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I have written for television, dude, so have you?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
We have a TV show together, I mean, like science fiction,
physics stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah, that's right. We don't have any science fiction in
our show. Yeah. I would love to write science fiction.
I'm not sure about for television, but I read a
lot of science fiction. I think about science fiction just
like I think about science It's a lot of fun.
Maybe one day.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
So what else did you do You feel you learned
from Peter Harness about the process of writing for science
fiction for TV.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah. I was really curious what his process was, and
he took it pretty seriously. You know, he's not a physicist,
of course, but he reached out to some scientists. He
did a bunch of reading. He tried to write something
which was respectful of the ideas of science, but also
he took some liberties, you know, in order to tell
a story, and so I respect what he did.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Cool. Did you give me your business card? Are you like.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Calling let's collab man?
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Is that how they say it these days.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Let's find ourselves in a universe where we worked together.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
That's right. I want to interfere with your next project.
I want to entangle myself now.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
That career sound like something you would one in your
in your life there.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
I want to superimpose myself on your writing process.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
That's right. I am super imposing myself onto your contact list. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
I think he wants to keep my spooky action at
a distance.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Actually, yeah, he wants no entanglement for exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
I respect that. I respect that. No, it was very
nice of him to take some time to talk to me.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
I enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah, thank you very much, Peter Harness, and please check
out his new show Constellation, available on Apple TV. Well,
we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See
you next time.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media.
Where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter,
disc Org, Insta and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and
remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(49:39):
favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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