The science fiction Universe of "Dark Matter"

Daniel and Jorge talk to a screenwriter and scientific advisor for the multi-verse show, "Dark Matter"

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, or have you seen a new TV show about
the multiverse?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Which one? I feel like there are multiple ones out there.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I know there are so many. Makes me wonder if
there are multiverse aliens out there, would they want to
watch shows about like a single universe a monoverse what?

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Wait? So if there is a multiverse and aliens, what
you're wondering about is whether they watch a show, a
particular show. Yeah, that's the first question you would ask them.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
I don't know if it's the first question, but it's
on the list.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, for sure, what's on? But that's an interesting concept,
like to them, a show about a single universe would
be weird and strange to them.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, exactly. And you know the stories that people tell,
the stories people are interesting. That tells you a lot
about how their mind works. So I think that would
be super fun.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
I am Jorge mcgartoonez and the author of Oliver's Great
Big Universe.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at UC Irvine, and I'll watch almost any science fiction
show that's out there, honestly.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh, would you like it and not like it at
the same time? Or do you like them all or
do you you just want to see them all?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
I watch almost all of them. I don't like all
of them. I usually finish them anyway, even if I
sort of hate watch them at the end. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Oh, I can't do that. If I don't like something,
forget it. I drop it, books, TV shows, movies, So
I'll stop watching a movie in the middle.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
I always just have this hope that they're going to
pull it off, you know that somehow, even though it
seems like nonsense, there's an explanation waiting at the end.
I'm almost always disappointed, but I still have that hope,
you know.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I think that's why they invented Wikipedia. Daniel.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Are you saying you stop watching something and just read
the plot summary on Wikipedia?

Speaker 4 (02:08):
No?

Speaker 3 (02:08):
I do, know, I do. It's such a time saver,
trust me, and then if what happens sounds interesting, then
I'll go see how they did it.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Wow, amazing. Maybe instead of living your life, you should
just read about yourself on Wikipedia. I mean it saves time.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Right, Well, who do you think is writing my Wikipedia?

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Is that? You? Wi?

Speaker 3 (02:30):
I mean, what better source about my life than me?

Speaker 4 (02:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Actually, I think there probably are better sources. People tend
to not be unbiased recounters of their own life story.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
A show in which we explain how the universe works
to you. We want to answer your questions and really
unwind the explanations so that they click in your mind
even better than if you just read the article on Wikipedia.
We do the Wikipedia for for you. So many people
write to me and say, hey, I write about this
on Wikipedia and it still doesn't make sense. Can you

(03:05):
explain that to me? That's what this show is about,
explaining everything that's out there in the universe in a
way that actually makes sense to you.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
That's right, because it is a pretty interesting universe, full
of cliffhangers, interesting plot twists, and amazing characters out there.
Hopefully without a series finale yet.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
I think it's going to end in a cliffhanger. What
do you think?

Speaker 3 (03:29):
But what's on the other side of the cliff? Daniel?

Speaker 1 (03:31):
I just hope we get another season, that's all, you know.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, yeah, how do you know we're not in the
second season?

Speaker 1 (03:36):
We could be in like season infinity, right If it's
just a series of bangs, and everyone is a new season.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
We could be like the soap opera of the meta metaverse,
meta meta universe. You know, it just goes on forever. Yeah, exactly,
that's the universe turns.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
And we'd like exploring the physics of the real universe,
but we also like thinking about other hypothetical, even fictional units,
because this is a great way to stretch our brains
to imagine the way that our universe might be. There's
a great history of science fiction authors being super creative
about the way physics might work in some universe in

(04:12):
their mind, and sometimes even inspiring real physics in new directions.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah. Because also, isn't it sort of the job of
physicists to think about possible futures or possible ways in
which the universe might work, and then go out there
and test them.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah. Absolutely, that is the job of theoretical physics, not
just describe what we've seen in the universe, but think
about what else might be out there, come up with
new experiments we could do to discover the way the
universe is. And in order to do that, you have
to be creative. You have to say, maybe the universe
works this way, maybe it works that way, how would
we know? What would it mean? You know, all the
big discoveries in the history of physics, Einstein's revolution with

(04:52):
relativity comes from thinking about the way the universe might work,
and science fiction authors do the same thing in another direction.
They maybe even take it further.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Now does that mean that a physicist can just lay
back and read what science fiction author is?

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Right, dude, you figured out our secret. That's embarrassing.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
I know.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
That's why I watch so much science fiction. I'm like,
I need a new idea for research. Let's turn on
the TV.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, that's right. Do you ever like reference that in
your scientific papers? You should.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Hasn't actually happened yet, but you know, I'm waiting for
the day. I'm keep investing.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Oh, I see, you're waiting for the day for someone
to make a TV show about a gripping drama that
takes place at the Large Hadron Collider, about a particle
physicist who has a podcast and then turns out to
be an international spot.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Mm hmm, yeah, exactly. You know the show we're talking
about today actually is about a physicist who turns out
to discover something exciting about the universe. Hmmm.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Interesting, Well, let's dig into that because to me, on
the program, we'll be tackling the sci fi universe of
dark matter. Now wait, Daniel, I thought we were talking
about the multiverse, not dark matter.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
I know.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes, the title of this show is maybe a touch
bit misleading.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
I agree, Yeah, misleading or inaccrid or maybe in season
Infinity will turn out that dark matter is what power
is the multiverse.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Well, I don't want to give away any spoilers, So
people got to read the book or check out the
TV show. This TV show is inspired by a book
of the same name by Blake Crouch. It was that
book that actually kicked off our whole series of science
fiction episodes.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah. Remember we recorded an episode where we talked about
the book. This was a long time ago, right, five
years ago? Four years ago.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, we actually chatted with Blake about a different book
of his Recursion about time travel. But reading that book
and thinking about the physics and wondering how authors used
physics as they developed their shows and how they developed
the science fiction universe is what inspired our whole series
of episodes of interviews with authors, which has been super fun.
So thanks Blake for writing that book.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah, thank you. Blake, and so he wrote the book
Dark Matter, on which the TV show is based on,
which you can see right now in Apple TV.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
That's right, by the time this episode airs, the finale
will have been out already, and so it's a fun
science fiction show on Apple TV.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Oh, does that mean we're going to do spoilers or
not spoilers.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
We are not going to do spoilers because I want
people to hear this episode and then watch the show.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
And or read the Wikipedia page.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
No, do not do that.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
It might see afy time. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Let's see, Yeah, let's see.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
But anyway, it's a show out there right now, and
it's a limited series, right how many episodes will there be?

Speaker 1 (07:41):
There's nine episodes in the first series and there hasn't
yet been news about whether they'll extended for a second series.
The story in the first series basically captures what happens
in the book.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Okay, does it vary from the book or did they
change anything or leave it as this?

Speaker 1 (07:54):
There's a few subtle modifications, but basically it follows the
story as laid out in the book.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah, mmm, okay, what's the general story of the book
or movie?

Speaker 1 (08:03):
For booth? So it's a multiverse inspired story, and it's
a story about a physicist and in one of the universes,
he invents a box that connects the multiverses. So it's
essentially about being able to travel from one universe to
another universe to imagine like alternative lives you might have lived,
or to maybe even change the universe you live in

(08:26):
because you regret some of your choices.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
WHOA wait, wait, wait, So first of all, it's a box.
Mm hmmm, not a douhiki or a machine. It's a box.
How big is this box? Like phone booth size box
or briefcase size box.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
No, it's big enough for a few people to stand in.
It's sort of like the size of a small garage.
I guess, looks like it's don't know, three meters across
or something. But it's a box because it's inspired by
Schrodinger's cat you know, the idea of putting a cat
in a box and then not knowing whether it's live
or dead because there's a quantum trigger poison in there
with a cat. So I think they used a box

(09:04):
because it's evoked by Schrodinger's cat experiment.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
I see, So does that mean that the multiverse in
the show is the quantum multiverse version, because I know
we've talked about there being multiple versions of multiverses.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, exactly. This is the quantum multiverse. The idea that
if there are random things happening in the universe, like
an electron could go left or could go right, and
quantum mechanics tells us that there's just a random probability
for either one, then you might ask how does the
universe choose? And in the Copenhagen interpretation, the universe just
picks one somehow, you know, rolls a die somewhere behind

(09:39):
the scenes, and an electron goes left or goes right.
That's the wave function collapse. But there's another version of
quantum mechanics, the many world's theory or Everrettian, that says
it doesn't collapse. It does both. The universe splits into two.
So the electron goes left in one universe and right
in another universe, and so those are two elements of
the multiverse.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
So now after the elect on splits, there are two
universes that exist, one in which the electron win left,
one in which the electrone went right. Whereas before there
was only one universe.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, and you have to be careful what you mean
by universe here. We use the word universe here to
evoke the universe that we experience, you know, our stars
and galaxies and our space and our bodies and all
that kind of stuff, and then we imagine many of
those we put those together into a multiverse. Some people
who support this theory of quantum mechanics think that that's
a little bit misleading. You're not really creating new universes.

(10:30):
You just have one big universe that's now split into
independent branches that can no longer talk to each other.
So it's a bit of a quibble about the naming.
But I think that leads people to imagine that like
all this new stars are being made somehow, all this
mass is being created, when it's really more like it's
splitting into both possibilities.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Now, in the show, the scientists physicists, I imagine built
a box and then what happens to the box If
you get in it, you can go to another multiverse,
or you can experience it, or what what is it
that it connects the multiverses?

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yes, the idea is that inside the box, the universe
has not made a choice about what's happening. There's nobody
observing it, there's nobody looking at it. So it's still
in this sort of quantum superposition where it can have
both possibilities. And so in that sense, it's like there
are multiple possibilities within the box, the same way that
when you put a cat in the box and you
don't look inside yet, the cat could still be alive

(11:23):
or still be dead, and quantum mechanics says, both possibilities
exist simultaneously, So now to experience both simultaneously. In the show,
they develop some sort of chemical, some sort of like
shot that you take that allows your brain to exist
in a superposition so that you can go inside the
box without collapsing the possibilities. So now you are inside

(11:45):
the box, and you are still in this quantum superposition,
so you're sort of like experiencing multiple universes simultaneously.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's like you're the cat intro Dinger's cat, and then
the cat took a pill or something or some medicine.
It can now is being both dead and alive. Yeah,
I guess that that, yeah, would not be experienced anything.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, exactly. And in the show they described it says,
turning off the observer effect what I described earlier. You know,
when the electron goes left or goes right, when it's
making that choice, that's what we call the observer effect.
When you ask the universe, okay, which one is it?
I want to observe the electron, And in the Copenhagen interpretation,
they say when it's observed, that's when the universe makes
a choice. And so in this story they sort of

(12:25):
like turn off the observer effect by taking the special
drug that allows your brain to be in a superposition,
and then you can basically choose which universe you want
to go into. You reopen the door, you walk out
in a new universe. In that universe, you made a
different choice in your earlier life, or you know, society
has gone a different way, or something is different about
the universe.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, I hear that there are all kinds of drugs
that will let you experience all kinds of universes. You
don't need a box. But wait, so taking this bill
of going into the box that gives you access to
all of the multiverses ever created, or just the ones
that happen after you go into the box based on
the choices you make inside the box. You know what

(13:06):
I mean, Like, it would make sense if you can
access the ones that you're super proposed in, but maybe
not the ones that were created a long time ago
or will be created in the future.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
No, it's a very good point, and there is a
bit of a scientific quibble there. Right, What might make
sense is you create this box. Now you haven't looked
at what's inside the box. Several things could be happening
inside the box. If you now go inside the box,
you can then choose any of those possible outcomes from
when you created the box. Right, That's not what happens
in the show. In the show, you can visit any

(13:38):
alternative universe in which you were born. So not like
the full breadth of all possible universes, including ones where
you never existed or the Earth never formed, just universes
in which you were born. But I agree with you
that that doesn't really make sense, because how could the
box have those universes connected to it? Right? It exists
in our universe? Yeah, yeah, okay, but that's a lot

(14:01):
less exciting, right If you create a box and then
you can go inside the box and then be in
any universe in which you made this box. Five minutes ago.
That doesn't really give you many new options. It doesn't
allow for exciting stories like I'm going to go inside
the box and then instead of being a physicist who
created this box, I'm going to go back and find
the woman I should have married instead of building this box.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
I guess either version would be kind of interesting. Like
I could go into this box, right, I can watch
a TV show and also at the same time, I
can maybe, uh, you know, write a novel, and then
at the end I'll have done both. Is that how
it works?

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Well, eventually you have to come out, right, not everybody
in the universe has taken this drug, and so then
when you come out, you're either going to be Jorge
who wrote a novel or Orge who watched a TV show.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
And I can choose which one.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
You can choose which one, Yes, But you can't be both.
You can't have both watched the TV show and written
a novel, which I think is what you're going for.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
But if I wrote the novel, do I remember how
I written the novel or remember having watched them the
TV show?

Speaker 2 (15:01):
No?

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Because when you come out, then the universe collapses and
makes your choice.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Right, Okay, But I'll have known, like if I picked
a novel, then I know that the novel I wrote
is better than the TV show I watched.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
When you come out, you won't You'll only have been
Horry wrote the novel, or Horaey who watched the TV show?

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, or Hori We just read the Wikipedia article about
but let's go back to the show. Sorry. So then
the physicists had then the option to go anywhere at
any point in his life in which he made a
decision and go that that way or not.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
But then if he goes the other way, then he'll
have been that person who made the other choice. Does
he stay the person he was before he went into
the box?

Speaker 1 (15:43):
He stays the person he was before he went into
the box, and now he's experiencing this new universe. So
one of the main storylines in the show is that
this physicist, the one we're following, actually didn't build the box.
He decided not to go into physics and instead follow
his wife's career and become a teacher. But then another
version of him that did build the box decides, you know,
life being a physicist isn't as exciting, and I should

(16:05):
have chosen love and comes and kidnaps the original version
of him and takes his place.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Wait what so Wait the main protagonist is not a physicist.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
He's a physicist by training, he got a PhD, etc.
But now he's teaching, he's not doing research. He decided
not to devote himself to buildings. He's not a practicing physicist.
But then the physicist version of him in the multiverse
turns out to be kind of evil. Yeah exactly. You know,
he decided following his career with maybe the wrong path,
even though it allowed him to create this box. Now

(16:34):
it lets him come back and live both versions, right,
he wants to be Woorge wrote the novel and watch
the TV show. He got to have a career, build
a box, and now he wants to go back and
experience love.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
So basically the moral of the story is, if you
become a physicist and you become a super villain. Yeah
takeaway here.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
I don't know. I mean, Bruce Banner has seven PhDs,
so maybe the guy just needs more PhDs so it becomes,
you know, on the good side.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah, yeah, but I think for Bruce Banner, he has
PhDs in non physics fields. What that balance is he.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Got seven PhDs and none of them are in physics really.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Some of them. I think most of them are not.
I don't know. I mean, looked at this transcript.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
I need to check out Bruce Banner CV.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, there you go. I'm sure he posts it
on Wikipedia. Okay, So then he gets kipnayed by his
alternate version. And then what happens when you kipnapped and
then placed in the other universe and now he's trapped
or what?

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, basically, and he has to figure out what happened
and try to get back to his original universe, and
then the story gets pretty wild. So it's a pretty
fun story. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Oh, do you give it a thumbs up or a
thumbs down or both thumbs up and thumbs us down.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's definitely a lot of fun to watch. I recommend
it if you're into science fiction. I think the science
of it is pretty solid, but there are some quibbles,
but I think they're sort of necessary fudge factors to
make the story work. Otherwise it just wouldn't be possible.
But it's definitely fun to watch, and it tries really
hard to follow rules, you know, to set up a
universe and to follow the consequences of that. I think

(18:02):
it does a good job of imagining where the story
might go that you wouldn't expect.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, I know following rules is very important to you.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Well, we think the universe follows rules, and we're trying
to figure it out, and so it's most fun to
follow rules in these stories. The science of it. I
do have a couple of quibbals. I mean, number one
is the issue you already brought up, like, if you
create this box, how is it possible that has access
to choices you made before you made the box? That
doesn't seem to work with me.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
My question is how do you pick which universe you
want to go into? Like is there a computer? Or
you say I want to go to the universe in
which I didn't become a physicist.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, they actually dig into that in great detail in
the show. I don't want to spoil how it works,
but they definitely grapple with that question. That's not something
they'd gloss over.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh interesting, like is there a user interface or do
you check out all the other universe and pick the
one you like.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
You're gonna have to watch the show or read the
Wikipedia page to find out.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Really, that's a big spoiler. The user interface is a
big spoiler.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
I don't want to give it away, man, I want
people to watch the show. But this does raise the question,
which is, you know, the role of the human in observing.
There's a lot of people out there who imagine the
quantum mechanics depends on like having a conscious observer. When
we talk about the observer effect, the wave function collapsing,
choosing one universe out of many, a lot of people

(19:20):
think that it requires a person like a conscious observer.
And I think that's just basically a misunderstanding of the
observer effect, because what quantum mechanics tells us is that
the wave function collapses anytime a quantum system interacts with
any classical object, meaning like something big, you know, like
a baseball or a screen or a detector or your eyeball.

(19:40):
Doesn't have to be something conscious. In this show, the
imagine that it has to be like a conscious person
to collapse the wave function, and that by taking this
ampul you're like removing that so it doesn't collapse. So
they're imagining that humans are special somehow in collapsing the
wave function. That's not the way it really works in
quantum mechanics, so they need this fudge for the show
to work. So you know, I can forgive it, but

(20:02):
I don't want people to misunderstand that quantum mechanics requires
a conscious human observer, right, Right.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
The things collapse just when they interact with other systems, right,
and a human brain is just another system.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Just what you're saying, It depends on the system they
interact with. A quantum system will not collapse if it
interacts with another quantum system. Like two electrons can interact
and still stay in quantum superposition because they're built quantum objects.
But if an electron interacts with a classical object, a screen,
a detector, your eyeball, whatever, then it will collapse. And
people are probably thinking, huh, what's the difference between a

(20:33):
classical and a quantum system? Where do you draw the line?
Isn't a classical system actually built out of little quantum particles? Yes?
Absolutely not a question we have an answer to. That's
the famous measurement problem in quantum mechanics.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
As in the answer just that classical objects are quantum objects,
except that they're just made up of so many quantum
objects that it statistically kind of overwhelms the uncertainty.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Well, we don't really understand how that happens, you know,
the transition between quantum and classical. If quantum objects can
interact with other quantum objects and remain in superposition, why
can a billion quantum objects not do that or a trillion.
That's not something we understand. According to mathematics, it should
be possible, you know, So we don't understand when something
becomes classical.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
What about this idea that you can connect multiverses together.
Is that something that physicists think is impossible? Or do
you think that it's possible to travel between multiverses.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
It's very skeptical that idea. Most of the multiverse theories
involve universes that cannot interact in any way. In the
many worlds theory, for example, the wave function has split
and there's no way for those branches of the wave
function to interact. Just simply having a box in one
of the universes that you haven't looked inside of doesn't
connect the universes in any way. There's no way to

(21:48):
connect to that other universe. So yeah, that I don't
think is actually possible. But you know, again, I'm willing
to fudge it, although it raises the question like if
one person in one of these universes builds a box,
and then all of a sudden, there's a box in
all those other universes that you can step out of.
That means that in any of the universes, anybody built
a box. It makes a box in the other universes.

(22:08):
Then all the universes should be filled with an infinite
number of boxes.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
What wait, wait, there's only one box in the show.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
No, there's an infinite number of boxes, because he builds
one box, and that makes the box appear in all
the other branches of the universe, so he can step
out of the box in those universes.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Wait what who built those other boxes in those other universes?

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, unexplained. It just sort of is created when he
builds the one and then doesn't look inside of it
because it's now in a quantum superposition. It exists in
all those universes. That's not really explained, And so if
any other version of him also builds the box, then
it should exist in our universe as well, and so
we should have an infinite number of those boxes. The

(22:49):
whole universe should be filled with boxes.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Well, isn't that a big plot hole? Like who built
the boxes in the other universes?

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah? Great question and a question I'm going to put
to the writers of the show in just a minute.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Oh well, this is pretty exciting, Daniel. You got to
interview two people involved in the show. One is one
of the screenwriters and the other one is a scientific
consultant for the show.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's right. I talked to Jacqueline ben Zachary, one of
the screenwriters for the show. She wrote a couple of
the last episodes. I talked to about writing for the
show and her process and how they consider the science.
And I know they involved a physicist as a scientific
consultant who happens to be a physicist that you and
I know, and who happens to be here with me
at the Aspen Center for Physics this week where I am,

(23:31):
and so I reached out to him and he agreed
to talk to me about what it's like to be
a science advisor on this kind of show.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
All right, Well, we'll get to Daniel's interview with a
screenwriter and scientific consultant for the Apple TV show Dark
Matter when we come back from the brick. All right,

(23:59):
we're talking about the Apple TV show Dark Matter, which
is a science fiction show about the multiverse and being
able to travel between them and being able to I guess,
high five and or kicknap other versions of yourself that
made bad choices according to your current version. It's a
little fuzzy.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, well, that's really the theme of the show is
like thinking about other parts of your life and decisions
you made, sort of like that sliding window movie. Was
it called a sliding glass doors? What was that movie
with Gwyneth Paltrow? You know, other choices you might have
made at least.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Other sliding glass window. Yeah, I think that's what it's
called the sliding rear view mirror.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah, there you go. That's really the theme of the show,
and they use the multiverse as a way to explore that.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Well, you got to interview both a screenwriter and the
scientific advisor for the show, and so here is Daniel's
interview with screenwriter Jacqueline ben Zachrey.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to
the podcast Jacqueline ben Zachary. Jacquelin, thank you for much.
We're taking some time.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
To talk to us, of course, and you can call
me JBZ. That's what most people do, so it's easier.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
All right, Great, So tell us a little bit about
your background. How you got into science fiction writing and
working in television for people who want to have your job?
How did you get it?

Speaker 4 (25:17):
Oh, very me and during and weird, it's kind of
how it all happened.

Speaker 5 (25:22):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
Yeah, I don't want to go back too far in time,
but I'm dyslexic. I grew up having a really difficult time.
Like I didn't really know how to read until I
was sixth grade or so somewhere and there I actually
figured out how to not just read, but understand what
I was reading, and it became an obsession, Like the
idea of words and what they mean. I think it's

(25:42):
not that they have greater meaning to me than other people,
but I think that I appreciate them in a different way.
I see them in a different way. So always, from
a very young age, I was obsessed with books and
with the idea of reading and like this concept that
it makes you if you can understand what you're reading,
which is like so silly and simple, but you know,

(26:04):
like I was a kid, and you know, once I
got a little bit older, I ended up working at
Amazon for a while doing some you know, I was
in process improvement, statistical analysis, and six Sigma. I really loved,
you know, Matthew Matthew Mathy all day. It was really great.
But I was missing some of that creative energy. So

(26:25):
I ended up it was a semi being headhunted.

Speaker 6 (26:28):
Semi.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
I was looking for an opportunity to be more in
I would say, a creative role. So I got a
job working in publishing Thomas Mercer, Amazon Publishing, and I
really loved that job. I really loved being around story
and writers and it just you know, life has a.

Speaker 6 (26:48):
Way of sort of evolving over time, you know.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
I started off in marketing and trying to understand how
people react to story and why they buy what they buy,
and slowly I became more convinced that the way to
sell a better book is to have the book be better.

Speaker 6 (27:05):
And so now I became an editor.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
But then I was really not very good at that
aspect of the job because I saw potential in every
single book, Like it was very easy for me as
the marketing person to say this book will sell well
and this one will not.

Speaker 6 (27:19):
But when it came to actually interacting the story. It's
very difficult for me to.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
Say, Ah, this story can never get good enough and
can never become a good enough you're as a writer,
will never be written the way that we want it
to be written. And so I kind of immediately sort
of started my own side business editing books as a
developmental story editor, which is a little different for those
of you who don't know much about publishing. It's like

(27:46):
there is sort of the acquisitions editor, whose job it
is to sort of make the money work and make
it make sense, and they do give a lot of notes.
But developmental editors are the people that, like, as you're
writing the book, help you figure stuff out, and help
you figure out your characters, and you.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
Know, in some cases, just write better.

Speaker 4 (28:04):
And so I started doing that on the side, and
then eventually that business grew to being my full time
job and I quit my big, stinky corporate job.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
That must have been an amazing moment, right, It's.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
An amazing moment that came a little bit with on
the heels of a tiny amount of failure, Like I
had had a memory breakdown, which I don't want to
go into too much detail here, not because it's not interesting,
but because it's not what we're here to talk about.
But I was spoken gibberish in a meeting. I was
very confused. I had fugue states. I was walking home strangely,
and it was kind of like this big moment where

(28:39):
it's like, Oh, you either have brain cancer and you're dying,
and this is your whole life just working sixty hours
a week making some amount of money that doesn't make
you happy, or you are doing this to yourself. It's
stress and you're creating this problem within your own brain.
And it was like the dark night of this whole weekend,
you know. And I kind of just looked at the

(29:00):
math and I was like, I can make enough money
off my business and not be unhappy, and it kind
of doesn't matter if I have cancer if it's stress.
So I quit my job and then found out I
wasn't dying. You know that, you know the story has
a happy ending for those you aren't sure, and.

Speaker 6 (29:15):
It was stress.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah, well that's great.

Speaker 6 (29:18):
It was a big moment for me when I got
to do that.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
And then from there I was in publishing for a
long time and I've been Blake Crutch's developmental editor since
Pines and so when he was developing a couple of
other projects. I've always been in the mix of that.
And we were working on developing another television show that
was like pretty close to going, and we'd gotten pretty

(29:41):
far on the road with some producers, and there was
like money already starting to come in for it, and
Dark Matter got greenlit, and it was this immediate moment
where it was like, you.

Speaker 6 (29:49):
Can't do both. That's literally impossible.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
So it was like, Okay, well, I guess we'll do
Dark Matter instead. And that's kind of how the whole
thing happened. It's so weird and but a lot of
fun too. I've really enjoyed the ride, wonderful.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, congrats in the show. It's a lot of fun.
The show features a lot of themes of quantum mechanics,
you know, that superposition, the multiverse. What is exciting to
you as a writer about these themes. What opportunities and
challenges does that create that you were excited about.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
Wow, that's a really good question. Theme wise, I think
I'm very drawn to duality in general. I think there's
something really fascinating about you know, for those of you
who are watching the show, and if you haven't, I
don't want to spoil anything, but for those who've watched
the show, we're dealing with one person who is expressed

(30:39):
in multiple versions of himself, and kind of how it
works is like we have Jason two and Jason one,
and they were the same person until fifteen years ago
when one decided to have a family and the other
decided to pursue his career. And to be clear, no
one here is saying you have to do one or
the other, but like for this story, that has happened,

(31:00):
and it was.

Speaker 6 (31:01):
The idea of like that.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Jason two later does a bunch of really i would say,
incredibly dastardly things and really horrifying, terrible things, and Jason
one kind of, you know, maintains this positivity.

Speaker 6 (31:15):
He's a good guy.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
But the reality is that they are the same person,
and when writing him and writing his actions and what
he's doing, you have to actually look deep within yourself
to the things that keep you from doing bad and
that or that keep you from doing good, and how
they are just like the Batman and the joke or
they are two sides of the same coin. And that's
exciting to look at. It's exciting to think about you

(31:39):
know why we make the choices that we make and
who we are when you strip away all those trapings
of life and circumstances, like how would you actually interact
and react to things? So those are thematically the funnest things.
But I am a big sci fi dork, Like.

Speaker 6 (31:54):
Definitely that's not I don't want to say not normal.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
That sounds really insulting, but you know, on the scale
of like, you know, the minutia and the science that
all really matters to me. So I was also equally
excited to be able to go in here and be like,
let's actually, you know, talk about some of these issues
to a wide audience of people. This kind of science
is kind of thinking this. I do think of physics

(32:20):
more as philosophy than anything else, this philosophical way of
thinking about the universe, and expose that to a lot
of people who would never normally choose this show because
we made it about regular people doing regular things, and
the science is just it's another character. It's not the

(32:41):
focus of every second, and that was probably the most
exciting part for me.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
The show is sort of like a mystery or a thriller.
You're trying to like unravel what happened, And to me,
I'm always really impressed when somebody writes that kind of
story in a science fiction universe because it's so challenging
for the audience to know if the rules are being
followed and what the rules are. How important is it
to you as a writer that the universe you've created

(33:07):
follows like a coherent and consistent set of rules, even
of course, if there aren't the rules of our universe,
or are you like, let's just make the story happen
and will you know, fill in some science frosting when
we need to.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
Oh, I'm definitely the more the first type. And this
goes back to being a developmental editor. You know, the tropes,
which is kind of what you're talking about, right, Like,
there's what the audience expects tropes. Like when I say mystery,
it means you don't know the solution to the problem
to the last twenty five percent of the show or
movie or book. Right, that's a mystery versus thriller, which
is like, you know the problem very early on, is

(33:38):
how are you going to solve it?

Speaker 6 (33:39):
You know? So like that's what the audiences expect.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
And then there's the writing tropes like actually, how you
structure things. So like for example, fantasy, we structure it
where you have multiple stories interacting at various points, so
you don't do that per se in like science fiction
usually that those are structural differences. So for me, like
when it comes to the mixing of like mystery and

(34:03):
thriller and you know, all these different things into our
speculative fiction, I am pretty obsessed with the rules because I.

Speaker 6 (34:09):
Think the rules are how you keep people grounded.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
So like there's the rules of the science, which I
think have to be established very early on, and it
needs to be blunt, Like it's the one area in
all of writing where you're like, hey, we can be.

Speaker 6 (34:20):
On the nose here, just say which is lazy and fun.

Speaker 7 (34:26):
Right.

Speaker 6 (34:27):
Then there is the playing.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
With the rules, which is like the assumptions that we make,
And there is the assumption that we make scientifically, like
consciousness connects to reality.

Speaker 6 (34:37):
We know that that is some element of that is true.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
Right, But then we sort of expand that out and say, Okay,
if consciousness connects to reality, then I guess you have
to have consciousness in this world in order to be
able to go to this world. So now how we
have a rule you have to have been born in
that world to be able to go there, And so
it is a lot of fun to take theoretically realish
rules and then sort of play with them as well.

(35:01):
I definitely think we did both in this show. And
I don't think you can ask people to trust you
so much that you throw a bunch of nonsense to
the wall and say that's not real science, that's not
real storytelling and expect people to go along with it.
Like people want to feel like they're satisfied at the
end of it, like, oh, I got it, and not
only did I get it, I got something hard. And

(35:21):
so we do have to always be coming back to
the rules and always be coming back to the things
that makes sense, and always coming back to what you've
established that it's also satisfying.

Speaker 6 (35:31):
And that's a trope thing, you know.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, well, how much of the rules of the universe
you're writing in are the rules of our universe? And
how much did you like extend and fill in the
gaps where we just don't know how things work? And
also tell us a little bit about how you used
the science advisor in this show. I happen to know
Cliff Johnson.

Speaker 6 (35:49):
Quite well I'm in love with him. If you could
let him know that, Like I.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
Think I think he knows, but if you could let
him know, that's very terming. He is super charming and
just really just nice and smart.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:02):
I asked him a question about entanglement once and he
was way too nice to me. How much of this
is the rules of our universe? I hope my understanding
is that, And God, I would love to know what
clif thinks.

Speaker 6 (36:17):
I think it's.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
Probably eighty five percent theoretically possible, right, Like, we're playing
with math that exists for sure, but we're expanding it
pretty considerably in like just just go with me here,
you know, we get philosophical too real, So I'd say, yeah,

(36:40):
it's pretty close. But there's definitely some stuff that's like,
you know, totally bs that we just sort of, you know,
added in there because it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 6 (36:48):
But I think the thing that we.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
Play with more in our universe is sort of history.
I think that that's the more fun thing to play with,
like for me especially, but I also know for Blake,
getting the science as close to possible to being lausible
so that you could go out and interact with other
forms of this science and understand it better. That's really
important to us, and so we try to stay in
that sphere. But like, you know, imagining a world where

(37:13):
completely different things happened, Like, that's a lot more fun
than playing with science, I think, and that tends to
be where we kind of really go off the rails.
Like one of the worlds that we explore, World twenty
six is the sort of utopia world.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
We're like, well, what if they just, you know.

Speaker 4 (37:30):
Instead of developing the bomb, what if they put all
those resources into creating what's called endless environmentally conscious energy, Right,
what if that was what we did instead. That's not
a judgment on the Manhattan Project. I grew up in Hamford.
I tend to have a very strong attachment to that
concept and that it's one of the greatest achievements in

(37:51):
all of human history, right, like doing that scale of
science and doing it that quickly, and.

Speaker 6 (37:56):
That engineering and on that thinking.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
But you know, the outcome wasn't really always like the
most pleasant thing, And so what if we'd done something
inherently more positive? What does that mean if you chose
that over a destructive device. Well, you're probably in a
world where there's more empathy. You're probably in a world
where where we communicate better, and so I think a
lot more liberty was taken with history and sociology than

(38:21):
was taken with real science, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, absolutely, I think that's really creative. I really liked
that part of the show. I found myself like excited
every time they opened the door to a new universe,
like what's this one? What did they dream of this time?
And yeah, I was always impressed.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
I just want to say this because I didn't really
answer your Cliver johnsonthing. Clifford was really great about being
a good carrot and stick guy.

Speaker 6 (38:41):
I just want to say that, like cliff.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
Was like, yeah, I mean, sure, you could make it
look like this, it's not a problem. But then I
remember there were a couple of times during in No
Atmosphere World who we had charred and burned stuff places
and He's like, no, absolutely not, that would not happen.

Speaker 6 (38:55):
Those were not the colors. That's not how it would
look like.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
I just love when you could tell that something really
matters to your scientific.

Speaker 6 (39:02):
Advice and you're like, oh, don't touch that.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, OK, yeah, well hopefully that's representative of like the
nerds watching your show, and you don't want to piss
them off either.

Speaker 6 (39:11):
Absolutely, I don't like being wrong. I don't think anyone.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Does, right. So for the nerds out there in the audience,
of which I count myself one, since I get to
talk to you, I do have some questions about the
rules of the universe and how it works. One thing
I was wondering about what you thought about how you
guys worked out, is how the box exists in the
other universes. Like if Jason creates the box in his universe,

(39:34):
he builds it, he physically puts it together, then he
goes to another universe he steps out of the box.
That box is also in that universe, And I found
myself wondering, like who built it or how did that
come to be? Do you guys grapple with that kind
of question? Are you just kind of like, hmm, we
need a little bit of fudge there.

Speaker 6 (39:50):
You're going to get into there.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
See now I'm going to contradict myself, like now we're
getting into woo wu Right.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Okay, let's go there.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
Yeah, for sure, for sure, like we know the laws
of thermodynamics would not allow this to happen, right, because
like our theory is that it spots and that it
it just arrives there.

Speaker 6 (40:06):
Because it is a gateway. So once Jason creates.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
It in his world, it's sort of like I guess
I would describe it as like an anchor point.

Speaker 6 (40:14):
It is the nexus by which all universes are connecting.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
So in theory, when you see that box, say in
no atmosphere world or in the world where they're in
the water, that is actually the same box. It's just
being represented there physically so we can go in and out.
And that's why the corridor is just the box repeating across,
because it's just your mind making sense of it. But definitely,
like you know, things start to fall apart when you

(40:42):
really think about it, because yeah, where did that energy?
Where did that matter come from? I mean, I think
it's the same matter. But yeah, you send me some
hate mail about that. It's probably not good.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
No, it's just fun to think about. And I like
that the show encourages you to like think hard about
how things work and what it means, and you know,
it changes how the characters behave in the world. I
think it is great. You know, it's a sign of
a really good science fiction. But in this case, you
guys weren't just starting from scratch and creating something new.
I mean, Blake had written this novel already. What's it

(41:15):
like to adapt a book like that to the screen
rather than start from scratch? What are the challenges there?

Speaker 4 (41:22):
I think the biggest challenge I'll start with that one,
which might reveal I'm a negative finger, But the biggest
challenge is like what people expect, the expectations.

Speaker 6 (41:31):
You know. I helped Blake develop this.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
Story, so I remember being in we were in Portland,
and like the idea of like, oh, how much your
emotions would affect the worlds that you land on came
directly from a dark conversation I was having with him
about RoboCop, you know what I mean, Like, so I'm
so immeshed in this story that.

Speaker 6 (41:51):
That aspect of it was very easy. It was like, oh, okay,
we can do that.

Speaker 4 (41:54):
But then you get letters from people that are like
I was considering, you know, ending my life, and then
I read this book and I thought I can actually
be empowered to make changes. And when you are facing
that kind of fan reaction, when you have literally hundreds
of people saying I hadn't read a book in twenty
years and I've read Dark Matter and one Day and

(42:16):
I'm now a.

Speaker 6 (42:17):
Big reader like that.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
I think that that had more of an emotional impact
on me than anything else. Was like how much the
story meant to a lot of people, and wanting to
fulfill those fan love feelings, but also creating that now
for a whole new audience of people who for whatever
reason would never read this book but will engage with
this material in this way.

Speaker 6 (42:38):
So that was probably the biggest challenge, was.

Speaker 4 (42:41):
Figuring out where to be true to that original stuff
to make the fans happy, but also solicit that same.

Speaker 6 (42:48):
Emotional reaction from new people.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
I would say the funnest part about it, for sure,
I love producing like I think the funnest part is
like looking at seven hundred versions of ash World that's
the world where the balt Worlds are crumbling, and watching
that VFX like for the seven thousandth time and being like,
I'd like this window to be slightly brighter, Like it
just speaks to some deeper OCD that I might have

(43:16):
from a writing standpoint, though, like adapting this book, I
think that the funnest part about it was getting to
expand the characters, because we don't really know Amanda, we
don't really know Daniella, we don't really know Charlie.

Speaker 6 (43:31):
We kind of get to know Ryan a little, but
we don't know him. We definitely don't know Layton.

Speaker 4 (43:36):
And you need to know them for the show to
make sense, Like, you know, you need to expand everyone,
because when you see them and they don't have reactions
to certain things, it's not a flaw of the book.
The book is a single POV game. It doesn't matter
what else is happening around you. But now you're actually
asking humans to embody that and we have to know
more about them, And that was the most exciting I think,

(43:57):
besides being weird about details and color of watches Jason
wearing in this scene and what color shirt is he wearing?
Seen to make that all work those puzzles, aside, expanding
the characters, especially the women, was the best part of
the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Well. As a viewer, I found one of the greatest challenges,
just like keeping track of like which Jason am I
watching now, especially you know later on when you get
so many different Jason's how do you handle that? As
a writer, how do you give the audience the clue,
you know, without like giving everybody a unique haircut, you know,
or have ring a number over their head.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
I mean that was probably one of the hardest things
to do, because the easiest answer is, like, you know,
because we have for those of you who've seen eight,
we have burn face Jason.

Speaker 6 (44:39):
We have Jason thirteen.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
Who's the guy that talks to Jason one in the tavern.
I want to call it the David Davin. That's the
real name of the village chap story. When they're talking, like,
these characters look different, so it makes it a lot easier.
But when we start getting into the fifty other Jasons
that are there, that was a lot harder. And what

(45:01):
I ended up doing with our costumer and our hair
and makeup people was in our eighties because those people
really need to understand what's happening. They have to organize
this whole thing. Was creating like a rubric of like
based on how violent the Jason is, we determined that
that is when he lost his Amanda because we feel
like Amanda psychologist.

Speaker 6 (45:19):
She's giving him.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
We see the whole show, she's giving him therapy the
whole time, she's comforting him.

Speaker 6 (45:24):
She's helping him figure this stuff out.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
So the earlier Amanda dies or leaves him, is the
more violent and more you know, sort of crazed and
unhinged the Jason is because we know that that's in him.

Speaker 6 (45:38):
We've established that.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
We've seen Prison World, where Jason has obviously done something
terrible to someone. We've seen what Jason too is capable of.
We know that Jason One's capable, So it's about what
actually breaks his brain and how.

Speaker 6 (45:51):
Broken is it. And so once we knew what that was, we.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
Just focused the costumes on where we think he branched
from Amanda. So careful viewers will see, like Jason in
the snow outfit from Snow World, if he's still in
that outfit, that means Amanda died close or left him
close to that time period. So that means that he
went twenty days alone in the box, which is a
lot crazier than going three days on the box because

(46:18):
what our Jason did, So that kind of makes big
difference if you look back, like some of the first
guy that gets killed by Jason One in the Alley,
the most violent guy that we've seen so far, he's
wearing the original costume, so that was kind of fun
to play with. And then we just did really settle
things from there green Beanie or blue Beanie, you know,
like just so that you could know it's not the

(46:39):
exact same guy you saw last time. But we also
embraced the idea that like it kind of also doesn't matter,
like if you're a little bit confused here and there,
that's actually part of the joys, Like, you know, it's
the same thing in Sceptin. Does do we know if
he got home? Like I think he didn't aside, but
it's kind of like doesn't matter. That's not the story
we're telling. The story we're telling is out the complexities

(47:01):
of coming back to your life. That's what we're talking about.
So I think it doesn't really matter. But yeah, it's
definitely all very carefully planned. And if you freeze the
show and you look at the color of the ring
of thread on their fingers, and you look at the
color of their hats, you will actually be able to
tell who is here.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Awesome. I'm sure somebody out there on Reddit is doing.

Speaker 6 (47:18):
Exactly or they're not.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
They're probably getting like hack into my computer, I get
the self you'll know.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Everything, So I asked our listeners if they have questions
for you, and listeners who are watching the show. We've
only seen six or seven episodes so far. Their number
one question was why is it called dark matter? And
obviously the physics in the show, but it's mostly like multiverse,
quantum mechanics, superposition. Where's the dark matter in the show?

Speaker 4 (47:46):
It came from a conversation and I was there for it,
but you know, it might be good to ask Cliff
actually about this. The there's a debate if dark matter exists, right.

Speaker 6 (47:57):
And there's also a debate about what it does.

Speaker 4 (47:59):
And like black holes, it's like I personally believe in
the sort of mirror universe of going through the black hole,
like you know, the chair just exists on the other side.
That's maybe not scientifically very accurate, but I think it's
an interesting theory. So that idea of the complete sort
of unknown. But also it's a word that you've heard
enough that you're like, ah, science fiction.

Speaker 6 (48:18):
That's honestly the truth, like she is like.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Mysterious science.

Speaker 6 (48:24):
Ye science see.

Speaker 4 (48:26):
And it doesn't actually if you dig into it actually
for sure mean anything yet like it's still you know,
like yeah, so yeah, but It's also a little confusing
because you know, Pearl Jams out there touring with Dark Matter,
and so, you know, maybe the most ideal name either.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
So my last question for you is a more personal one.
Imagine you have the box in front of you. You
can go inside of it, you can visit another universe
in which you exist. What's your alternative reality? What are
you choosing?

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Like?

Speaker 6 (48:55):
Am I intentionally choosing?

Speaker 4 (48:57):
Like I get to go see a version of myself
not like a cent atways, sort of wash up on
shore at a terrible place.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yeah, you can pick some other version of your life
to go visit, or you know, kidnap and replace them.
Where are you going?

Speaker 6 (49:10):
Huh?

Speaker 4 (49:10):
You know, the first thing I really wanted to do
with my life. I went to like a music magnet
high school, and I was very involved in music, and
for a long time I thought I was going to
be a musician. And it's one of those sort of
stories I think that everyone has, where like you get
to a certain point in your process where you realize
that it's not that you are not that you're a

(49:32):
hard worker, you're actually not talented, and some careers require
a certain level of actual talent and the realization that
I was not good enough to actually have the future
as like a composer and musician that I thought I
was going to have was a really brutal one, and
I often wonder if there is a world where I

(49:55):
hadn't decided that I wasn't good enough, and if I
had continued to fight and be that level.

Speaker 6 (50:02):
Of brave, you know, what would that life be like.

Speaker 4 (50:06):
I'm not saying she would have succeeded, but I would
like to see what she did, you know, that's the
curiosity of mine.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Awesome, Well, it would be cool to get to go
and you know, attend one of your own concerts in
another place in the multiverse. Very cool.

Speaker 6 (50:19):
Let me ask you what would yours be?

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Wow? A great question. I'm totally not prepared for that. Yeah. Well,
you know, physicist is sort of what I always wanted
to be, so I don't have that, Like, Oh I
wish I had gotten to be, But there are other
paths that I didn't take. You know, when I was young,
I also wanted to be an artist or a science
fiction author, for example, and never got to do that.

(50:42):
So yeah, I'd like to go see if that would
have worked out for another version, of Daniel.

Speaker 6 (50:46):
You still could anyway, it's right book.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Like you know, well, I live in southern California where
you're obliged to produce the screenplay every two years with
your citizenship. You know, totally, totally awesome. Well, thanks very
much for answering your question, and thanks for this wonderful show.
Speaking for everybody out there, we're really glad you created it.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Thank you, all right, thank you, all right, interesting conversation there.
It's kind of interesting how as a TV writer you
kind of have to think about what the science tells

(51:28):
you might be possible, and then you kind of have
to figure out how to get a good story out
of that.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Yeah, exactly, you got to balance both things. If you're
too strict on the science, it doesn't let you tell
the story you want to tell. But you also have
to be plausible, right, You have to have the story
makes sense so that the viewer is engaged. It feels
like there are rules that are being followed.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
I feel like, Daniel, do you have a flexible rule yourself.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
It's that flexible room.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Sometimes you like when the rules are followed, sometimes you don't.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
I always prefer when the rules are followed, but you know,
you can't be too harsh. You prefer you prefer right
strong preference.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Yeah, all right, Well, Dan, you also got to interview
the scientific advisor for the show, which is a friend
of ours, Cliff Johnson.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
He's a professor at UC Santa Barbara and an expert
in string theory and black holes and in general quantum
mechanics and a lot of fun to talk to.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Is he an expert in dark matter or multiverses?

Speaker 1 (52:19):
I think he's an expert in being a science advisor.
He's also worked for a lot of the Marvel movies.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
If you're an expert in the multiverses, does that make
you an expert in everything? Like, there's a version of
you out there that's probably an expert in some other
field that you currently don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Mm hmm, yeah exactly. If only you could draw on
their expertise.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Whoa, you can make a movie like The Matrix but
with multiverses, the multi tricks. Yeah, Hollywood, give me a call.
All right, Well, here is Daniel's interview with physicist Cliff Johnson.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Great, so that it's my pleasure to be here in
a conversation with Cliff Johnson. Cliff, tell everybody a little
bit about who you are, what you're excited about in science.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Well, I am a professor at the Clasics Department at
the University of California in Santa Barbara. I work on
things to do with roughly these days, I say, like
a quantum nature of space time. So interested in quantum gravity?
Black hold what it through? Your quantum gravity looks like?
So I work on things like string theory, et cetera,

(53:20):
but really thinking about space time and space and time
and what it means at the quantum metal. It's really
like on the cutting edge of understanding the nature of
the universe. So tell me about what it's like to
be a science advisor a show like this. What do
you see as the role of the science advisor?

Speaker 1 (53:37):
What is your job?

Speaker 2 (53:38):
So this is a really important question because there is
no model for what a science advisor should be, because
the industry still doesn't really know what that is. And
some of that A lot of us been working to
try and help cement that. And I think what we
shouldn't do is going with a red pencil and make
it seem like we own this stuff and they're daring

(54:02):
to play with it, and we're going to give them
a grade because they'll never fall right. Others have different opinions,
but my opinion is that the primary thing of that
to do is to serve the story they're trying to tell,
and to help them tell the story they want to tell. Now,
sometimes you can give them advice given what they want
to do in the science that they think they want

(54:23):
to use. You might then say, well, if you tell
me what your story goal is, I might help you
tweet that a little bit. Or maybe you don't need
this piece, or here's a whole other bit of science
who don't know that could be brought in to help
you achieve that, And they're very open to that because
now you want the storytellers sign and you're just trying

(54:44):
to serve a story. And then sometimes that can lead
to the story geting completely because they get excited about
the science. They now understand that bit of science pacts.
They only read about it in a popular account and
maybe misunderstood. Now they understand it now they see, oh,
I want to use this aspect more, or you tell
them so it really is. I think if you go in,
in my opinion, if you go in wanting to help

(55:06):
with the story, great things can come from that, especially
if that's early enough in the process that they're not
wedded to everything being completely set. And so then I
think science advising works is streaming. Well, you have all
the other times when you're called in you should guy,
you know, some big studio, it's all ready to go,

(55:27):
they're almost ready to shoot, and then they want some buzzwords.
You know, that's only so much you can do that.
But if you get to kind of almost become a collaborator,
someone to brainstorm, and if you then stick through it
right through to the end, you can get some great things.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Yeah, fascinating. Well, I think sometimes about the responsibility there,
because a lot of people watch science fiction and they
know it's fiction, but still a here buzz words to
hear science, and they absorb it. And I wonder sometimes
if there's a responsibility to show to get that right
and not use lead people into like common misunderstandings about

(56:05):
what is dark knight?

Speaker 2 (56:05):
What does it look like?

Speaker 1 (56:07):
You know, he said a dark lag in front of
your spaceship or not. What do you feel about that?
Is that science advisor has some responsibility there. We have
some responsibility to tell a little bit about what it's
really like you we that you know, there's no contract.
This is they must use a certain percientage of what
we tell them, right, right, so how you know it's

(56:27):
an advisor.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
I'm an advisor, so so I'll do my best to say, well,
it wouldn't really look like this, or if it does,
maybe you have a reason you could mention that, or
maybe what have you. But what happens. And this is
by no means intended as an apology for science advisors,
but it's all the process, right these these projects. It's

(56:52):
very different being a science advisor to say, on a
book where you're dealing with the author of the book,
versus being a science advisor to a thing that goes
into a big machine.

Speaker 8 (57:01):
As almost any project that you see on screen will be.
It will have gone through many stages. They've gone from
any iterations. You may have been the science advisor with
the screenwriter who.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Wrote the old beautiful science and then and then you know,
four years later you go and watch the thing and
it is not the thing that one was the final
screenplay that you saw, because it went from the screenwriter
to the studio to the director. They found for the
director had their own vision, blah blah, blah blah. So

(57:34):
you have no control, but you try and you hope
you can get the key people involved excited enough about
the science that they care to protect some of the
things that you got into the screenplay or what have you,
and on maybe you know some of your Later at
the stage where they're shooting, you get a call saying, hey,
you were the screen you helped the screenwriter. Now please

(57:57):
help the VFX people. Rightff like that. That's great. That
seldom happens, but when that happens, that's great because then
there's some continuity you can kind of look at a
different stages.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
So tell us a little bit about what were the
challenges of being scientificeder for this particular show. Because they
got quantum mechanics, they got multiverse, they got the observer effect,
they got all sorts of stuff going on.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
What did you do there?

Speaker 1 (58:18):
How did you change this story?

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Well, you know, I first have to say huge amount
of credit to Blake like Crouch, the author of the
book it was originally based on, and then you know
he's also the showrunner. A side note, there's a big
difference between TV and movies. In some ways, TV is
very much more righteous. In him the people who do
the writing end up. You know, the director works for

(58:43):
them and it's refress approximation. The showrunners have the fible
side that's very different in some of the models you
get in a big, big cinema. So that means that
I think Blake, who's hugely enthusiastic about science and it's
very open to hearing critiques and hearing new ideas and
incorporating that, he was also in control of the final show.

(59:08):
So I got the call to come in and chat
with the various departments and they basically said Blake said
do whatever you say. That never happened. So at the
end of the day, I think the main ideas were there,
and so credit to Blake that the main ideas were there.

Speaker 9 (59:30):
He really wanted is fascinated by the classic conundra in
quantum mechanics, but then he wanted to play with the
idea that essentially, wouldn't it be fun if you took
literally the everiety of interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is
that these probabilistic choices that you seem to have in
quantum mechanics really are granches of the verse.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
You know, you know, you had a fifty to fifty
chances of the quantum outcome being this way or the other,
and you could just go, well, that's life. That's that's probability.
But the cat was alive or it was dead when
you made the observation. Everyone will tell you know, there's
another universe in which it was the other, and then
that universe carried on, and so these choices mount up

(01:00:13):
and the universe continues branching. So Blake was going, well, well,
if you could explore those universes and essentially that's what
this is about, and then what would that mean physics wise?
So there's some there's some relatively old fashioned ideas about
the collapse of the weight function and things like that
when you make an observation of the wave function collapses.

(01:00:35):
We tend to not really foreground that as much when
we teach corantumic ads as we used to. And so
I was trying to explain to Blake a little bit
about some of the language that people use these days
in terms of coherence versus do coherence coupling systems.

Speaker 7 (01:00:53):
That it's, you know, how much can you isolate a
system from its environment so it doesn't sort of decohere
the couple to another system and what have you, And.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Those are the things you need to control if you
were going to do that as a physics experiment. So
that leads to them, what would that look like? What
would that device look like? So that's the box. So
it spend a lot of time discussing what the box
would look like, this, like that, and what's in the
walls of those bombs. So you don't of course, you
never learned that in the book or in the in

(01:01:24):
the show explicitly, but you do hear a discussion or
too about the fact that there's tech going on that
sort of cancels out things from the outside. And so
those are the sorts of things that was giving him
to make it seem at least.

Speaker 9 (01:01:39):
Another aspect of my job is that while you're watching
the thing, you're not popping out going that's ridiculous or
that doesn't make sense for it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
You're at least in the two hours of what have you,
the movie or the hour of the episode, you're going
with it.

Speaker 8 (01:01:52):
So to help the physicists have a plausible sounding conversation
with a plausible sounding content, that helps make it seem realistic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
So indeed, I'm very pleased to you know, when I
finally saw episodes of the show, I was very pleased
to see a lot of that stuff stayed in. And
some of that stuff was my scribbling on the screenplay
saying this is what they would say. And I gather
people really like that. You know, you hear, you see
the box, and you have a sense that this is

(01:02:22):
a real thing. Pold it up. So we wanted to
have weight, put it to feel real, wanted to have
it still feel like it's a prototype. So it's a
little sort of sort of sort of grungey looking, and
so and so forth. That's what you really think is
our job.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
We're not.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
We're not doing a documentary. But if you as much
as the creators will listen, I'll give you enough material
so that if if someone watching it digs a little bit,
they'll find there's more there there It isn't sort of
first level and then it all falls apart, so you
will see, you know, the character Jason go writings through

(01:03:00):
his notebooks at some point where talking about the original
design of the box. That is full of equations that
I gave them and that's real, uh, quantum physics. I
had some friends of mine who actually do real quantum information.

Speaker 5 (01:03:16):
Experiments where they try and create superposition states in quantum devices,
because these are important for building quantum computers. Right, those
are the same pieces of science that that character.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Would be doing, but real large in order to make
this box. So you know, I had notes of my
own that borrow some of their notes with their permission,
and that's all you see in Jason's in that book.
So that those are examples of the things that that
we worked on at the level of the show. Other
though of the book, we'd already been thinking about trying

(01:03:52):
to give a reality quote unquote to what would be
like when you're inside the box when in because now
this is no fantasy Blake's wonderful idea of having some
sort of drug that turns off the observer effect, whatever

(01:04:13):
that means. That's based on actual experiments that people are
thinking about right or have been doing, trying to understand
the role of quantum mechanics in the workings of the brain.
Quantum mechanics in perception of what we how do we

(01:04:34):
construct reality of the physical world, in terms of interacting
quantum mechanically with the world, to what extent there's our
brain chemistry have anything to do with that, I think
the answer to the questions is nobody knows the fact
that it's unknown. It's fun to play.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
With and it gives the writer a loss of place down. Well, congratulations,
and so you've seen the show, and you please without
king that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Yeah, i've been. So I'm most of the way through now.
I think there's maybe a couple of episodes I haven't
seen and i've been, although you know i've you know,
I read every script and worked at any script and
worked at all the different departments. It was especially long
ago that and of course I hadn't seen how it really.

(01:05:21):
It's been great to see how these how it's come
out overall as a show tonally, which I think is
primarily the most important thing to get right in the
total of the show. I think it really they really
nailed it, and such a strong cast, a great direction.
It's a great collection of directors. They got someone whom

(01:05:42):
I had spoken with early on and we were talking
about various aspects of the show. So I'm very pleased.
I'm very impressed.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
For me.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
It's a win win from the point of view of
a science advisor who's interested in getting people engaged science,
because there's this feeling off from episode one two. Right,
there are millions of people watching this thing. And after
they turn off this episode, they're talking about strolling that,
They're talking about Heisenberg and talking about uncertainty, they're talking

(01:06:14):
about all these these things that I've usually thought of.
Is about as obscure as you can get in science.
This is out there in the TV show about prime time.
That's fantastic. So I've been I've been very happy with that.
And you know this, I think wouldn't have happened without
writers like Blake who get excited about science and then

(01:06:37):
do this great job writing great stories builds around the science,
which is really what it's about.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Well, fantastic work, and I agree it's important to have
science out there, and science any stories, and science can
really enable so many fascinating stories. And if your goal
was to contribute to the story and to open the
space that they could explore and give it some plausible
credibility without feeling like a red pin pissing them up,
I think you've done that. I just spoke to Jacqueline
ben Zechery right, actually quote tell Clifford, I love him.

(01:07:08):
I think it well for.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
It was, it was one of the most fun and
fulfilling science advising collaborative experiences I've ever had. And you know,
I've done some good ones. I've done some really good
ones also with some of the some of the Marvel
people has a great one coming up which I've been
having all fun with. And I'm hoping that you know,

(01:07:32):
this is a new standard. Yeah, that we can that
we that we can convince the filmmakers the entertainment industry
to aspire to you where you really collaborate with scientists
to find new ways to at the very least right
from the point of view of just selling stories. Yeah,
it's it's a great way to just find new ways

(01:07:52):
of telling the same old stories, which is great. We
only tell a few stories as a species, we just
tell them in all these Science is a great way
to find new ways and so so this is a
great example of that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
All right, Well, thanks again for taking a few minutes
to jab. That's really appreciate it my session.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
All right, pretty cool, Daniel. Have you ever considered being
a scientific advisor for a TV show or something like that?
Has anyone approached you?

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Oh? Yeah, absolutely, I would love to be a science
advisor on anybody's project, and people actually email me their
stories all the time, asking me for advice, and I
give it to them. I just talked last week to
a team doing a science fiction horror show asking me
for plausible explanations for the story they wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Ooh interesting. Can you give any spoilers or did you
have to sign an NDA?

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
I didn't sign an NDA, but I think they would
not like me to give away their story on the pod.
But if they do get to produce it, and we'll
definitely talk about it on the podcast, that would be fun.
And so I want to encourage all science fiction writers
out there thinks deeply about how the universe might work,
create new universes for us, and think about what it's
like to live in them.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
Yeah, because it's an amazing universe. And who knows how
it will end up or get written up in Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Or he might not stick around to hear the end
of the universe. He's just going to read it on Wikipedia.
But I'll be there with you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
I'll read it after the universe ends, so we'll save
me a few trillion years hopefully. All Right, Well, we
hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you
next time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
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

(01:09:45):
favorite shows.