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

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Speaker 1 (02:06):
Hey or hey? Have you seen a new TV show
about the multiverse?

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (02:10):
Which one? Feel like there are multiple ones out there?

Speaker 1 (02:13):
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.

Speaker 5 (02:23):
What 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 (02:37):
I don't know if it's the first question, but it's
on the list.

Speaker 5 (02:40):
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 (02:51):
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 5 (03:15):
I am Jorge mcgartoonez, an author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
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 5 (03:26):
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 (03:33):
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.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
Yeah, Oh, I can't do that. If I don't like something,
forget it. I drop it, books, TV shows, movies, I'll
stop watching a movie.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
In the middle.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
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 5 (03:59):
I think that's why they invented Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Daniel, Are you saying you stop watching something and just
read the plot summary and Wikipedia?

Speaker 6 (04:06):
No?

Speaker 5 (04:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Wow. Amazing. Maybe instead of living your life, you should
just read about yourself on Wikipedia. I mean it saves time. Right.

Speaker 5 (04:21):
Well, who do you think is writing my Wikipedia?

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Is that you wi?

Speaker 5 (04:28):
I mean, what better source about my life than me?

Speaker 7 (04:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Actually, I think there probably are better sources. People tend
to not be unbiased recounters of their own life story.

Speaker 5 (04:38):
But anyways, Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
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 translation for you. So many people
to me and say, hey, I read about this on
Wikipedia and it still doesn't make sense. Can you explain

(05:04):
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 5 (05:11):
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 (05:24):
I think it's going to end in a cliffhanger. What
do you think?

Speaker 5 (05:27):
But what's on the other side of the cliff, Daniel?

Speaker 1 (05:29):
I just hope we get another season, that's all, you know.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
Yeah, yeah, how do you know we're not in the
second season.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
We could be in like Season Infinity, right, it's just
a series of banks and everyone is a new season.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
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, and.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
We'd like exploring the physics of the real universe. But
we also like thinking about other hypothetical, even fictional universes,
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
their mind, and sometimes even inspiring real physics in new directions.

Speaker 5 (06:15):
Yeah. Because also, isn't it sort of the job of
physicists to think about the possible futures or possible ways
in which the universe might work, and then go out
there and test them.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
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

(06:51):
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.

Speaker 5 (06:59):
It for Now does that mean that a physicists can
just lay back and read what science fiction author is?

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Right, dude, you figured out our secret. That's embarrassing.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
I know.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
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 5 (07:14):
Yeah, that's right. Do you ever like reference that in
your scientific papers? You should.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Hasn't actually happened yet, but you know, I'm waiting for
the day. I'm keep investing.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
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 spy.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
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.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
Hmm.

Speaker 5 (07:48):
Interesting. Well, let's dig into that because to me, on
the program, we'll be tackling the sci fi universe of
dark matter. And now, wait, Daniel, I thought we were
talking about the multiverse, not dark matter.

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

Speaker 5 (08:10):
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 (08:18):
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 5 (08:32):
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 (08:39):
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 5 (09:00):
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 (09:08):
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 5 (09:16):
Oh does that mean we're going to do spoilers or
not spoilers.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
We are not going to do spoilers because I want
people to hear this episode.

Speaker 5 (09:23):
And then watch the show and or read the Wikipedia page.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
No, do not do that.

Speaker 5 (09:30):
It might see any time. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Let's see, Yeah, let's see.

Speaker 5 (09:34):
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 (09:39):
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 5 (09:49):
Okay, does it vary from the book or did they
change anything or leave it as this?

Speaker 1 (09:52):
There's a few subtle modifications, but basically it follows the
story as laid out in the book.

Speaker 5 (09:57):
Yeah, okay, what's the general story of the book or
movie for book?

Speaker 1 (10:03):
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

(10:24):
because you regret some of your choices.

Speaker 5 (10:26):
Whoa wait, wait, wait, So first of all, it's a box.
Mm hmm, 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 (10:41):
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 I 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 triggered poison in
there with the cat. So I think they used a

(11:02):
box because it's evoked by Schrodinger's cat experiment.

Speaker 5 (11:06):
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 (11:15):
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

(11:37):
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 5 (11:57):
So now after the electron splits, there are two universes
that exist, one in which the electron win left and
one in which the electrone went right, whereas before there
was only one universe.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
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. You

(12:28):
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 5 (12:47):
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 does it
mean that it connects the multiverses?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
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

(13:21):
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

(13:43):
the box, and you are still in this quantum superposition,
so you're sort of like experiencing multiple universes simultaneously.

Speaker 5 (13:50):
It's like you're the cat Insurodinger's cat, and then the
cat took a pill or something or some medicine. It
can now experience being both dead and alive. But I
guess the dead kat would not be experienced anything.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, exactly. And in the show they describe 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

(14:23):
of like turn off the observer effect by taking this
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 it is different
about the universe.

Speaker 5 (14:43):
Yeah, I hear. 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.
So you go into the box based on the choices
you make inside the box, you know what I mean,

(15:04):
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 (15:15):
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

(15:37):
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?

Speaker 5 (15:56):
Yeah, yeah, okay, but.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
That's a lot less. 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 gonna go back and
find the woman I should have married. Instead of building

(16:19):
this box.

Speaker 5 (16:20):
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 you know, write a novel, and then at
the end I'll have done both. Is that how it works?

Speaker 1 (16:34):
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 5 (16:44):
And I can choose which one.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
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 5 (16:53):
But if I wrote the novel, do I remember having
written the novel or remember having watched the novel the
TV show?

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Because when you come out, then the universe collapses and
makes your choice, right.

Speaker 5 (17:05):
Okay, right, 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 (17:13):
When you come out, you won't You'll only have been
Horriy wrote the novel or Horaey who watched the TV show.

Speaker 5 (17:18):
Yeah, or horri We just read the Wikipedia article on matter.
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 (17:33):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 (17:33):
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 (17:41):
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 sides, you know,
life being a physicist isn't as exciting and I should

(18:03):
have chosen love and comes and kidnaps the original version
of him and takes his place.

Speaker 5 (18:08):
Wait what so Wait, the main protagonist is not a physicist.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
He's a physicist by training. He got a PhD, et cetera.
But now he's teaching, he's not doing research. He decided
not to devote himself to buildings.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
He's not a practicing physicist, but then the physicist version
of him in the multiverse turns out to be kind
of evil.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, exactly. You know, he decided following his career with
maybe the wrong path, even though it allowed him to create
this box. Now it lets him come back and live
both versions, right, he wants to be whoorgete 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 5 (18:42):
So basically the moral of the stories. If you become
a physicist and you become a super villain, yeah, takeaway here.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
I don't know. I mean, Bruce Banner has seven PhDs,
so maybe the guy just needs more PhDs so he becomes,
you know, on the good side.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
Yeah yeah, but I think for for Bruce Banner, he
has PhDs in non physics fields. What that balances?

Speaker 1 (19:04):
He got seven PhDs and none of them are in physics.

Speaker 5 (19:06):
Really some of them, I think most of them are not.
I don't know, I mean, looked at this transcript.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
I need to check out Bruce Banner CV.

Speaker 5 (19:15):
Yeah, yeah, there you go. I'm sure he posts it
on Wikipedia. Okay, so then he gets kipnaped by his
alternate version, and then what happens when you kidnapped and
then placed in the other universe and now he's trapped
or what?

Speaker 1 (19:26):
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 5 (19:34):
Oh, do you give it a thumbs up or a
thumbs down or both thumbs up and thumbs us down.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
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

(20:00):
it does a good job of imagining where the story
might go that you wouldn't expect.

Speaker 5 (20:05):
Yeah, I know following rules is very important to you.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
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 quibbles. 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 5 (20:27):
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 (20:36):
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 5 (20:45):
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 (20:50):
You're gonna have to watch the show or read the
Wikipedia page to find out.

Speaker 5 (20:54):
Really, that's a big spoiler. The user interface is a
big spoiler.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
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

(21:18):
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.

(21:38):
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 ampuol,
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,

(21:58):
you know, I can forgive it, but I don't want
people to misunderstand that quantum mechanics requires a conscious human observer.

Speaker 5 (22:04):
Right right, things collapse just when they interact with other systems, right,
and a human brain is just another system. Just what
you're saying.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
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 classical and a quantum system?

(22:32):
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 5 (22:44):
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 (22:53):
Well, we don't really understand how that happens, you know,
the transition between quantum and classical. If quantum objects can
intera 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 5 (23:14):
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 (23:25):
It's very skeptical of 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

(23:46):
to 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,
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 and makes the box in the other universes, then

(24:07):
all the universes should be filled with an infinite number
of boxes.

Speaker 5 (24:10):
What wait, wait, there's only one box in the show.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
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 5 (24:23):
Wait what who built those other boxes in those other universes?

Speaker 1 (24:27):
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

(24:48):
whole universe should be filled with boxes.

Speaker 5 (24:49):
Well, isn't that a big plot hole? Like who built
the boxes in the other universes?

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah? Great question, and a question I'm going to put
to the writers of the show in just a minute.

Speaker 5 (24:58):
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 (25:08):
That's right. I talked to Jacqueline ben Zechary, 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,

(25:29):
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 5 (25:35):
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 break.

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Speaker 5 (29:25):
All right, 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 (29:44):
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 leads to.

Speaker 5 (29:57):
Other sliding glass window. Yeah, I think that's what It's
called the lading rear view mirror.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, there you go. That's really the theme of the show,
and they use the multiverse as a way to explore that.

Speaker 5 (30:11):
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 Zachreed.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to
the podcast Jacqueline ben Zachary. Jacqueline, thank you very much
for taking some time.

Speaker 7 (30:28):
To talk to us, of course, and you can call
me JBZ. That's what most people do, so it's easier.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
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 7 (30:44):
Oh, very mean, during and weird, it's kind of how
it all happened. 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.

Speaker 9 (30:58):
Sixth grade or so.

Speaker 7 (31:00):
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 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.

Speaker 9 (31:19):
So always.

Speaker 7 (31:20):
From a very young age, I was obsessed with books
and with the idea of reading, and like this concept
that it makes you smart if you can understand what
you're reading, which is like so silly and simple, but
you know, 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.

(31:44):
I really loved you know, Mathew Mathew Mathy all day.
It was really great. But I was missing some of
that creative energy. So I ended up it was a
semi being headhunted.

Speaker 9 (31:56):
Semi.

Speaker 7 (31:56):
I was looking for an opportunity to be more in
I would say, a creative role. So I got a
job working and publishing Thomas Mercer, Amazon Publishing, and I
really loved that job. I really loved being around story
and writers and it's just, you know, life has a
way of sort of evolving.

Speaker 9 (32:16):
Over time, you know.

Speaker 7 (32:17):
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,
and so I became an editor, but then I was
really not very good at that aspect of the job

(32:38):
because I saw potential in every single book. Like it
was very easy for me as the marketing person to
say this book.

Speaker 9 (32:45):
Will sell well and this one will not.

Speaker 7 (32:46):
But when it came to actually interacting the story, it's
very difficult for me to say, Ah, this story can
never get good enough and can never become a good
enough as a writer, will never be written the way
that we on it to be written. And so I
kind of immediately sort of started my own side business

(33:07):
editing books as a developmental story let or, which is
a little different for those of you who don't know
much about publishing. It's like 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,

(33:28):
and you know, in some cases, just write better. 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 (33:41):
That must have been an amazing moment, right.

Speaker 7 (33:44):
It's 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've 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

(34:06):
moment where 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.

Speaker 9 (34:26):
And I kind of just looked at.

Speaker 7 (34:27):
The 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.

Speaker 9 (34:34):
So I quit my job and then found out I
wasn't dying.

Speaker 7 (34:37):
You know that, You know the story has a happy
ending for those you aren't sure, and he was stress, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Well that's great.

Speaker 9 (34:45):
It was a big moment for me when I got
to do that.

Speaker 7 (34:47):
And then from there, I was in publishing for a
long time, and I've been Blake Crouch's developmental editor since Pines,
and so when he was developing a couple of other projects,
because 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 you know, we've gotten

(35:08):
pretty far on the road with some producers and there
was like.

Speaker 9 (35:10):
Money already starting to come in for it, and.

Speaker 7 (35:12):
Dark Matter got greenlit, and it was this immediate moment
where it's like, you can't do both.

Speaker 9 (35:17):
That's literally impossible.

Speaker 7 (35:19):
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 random, but a lot
of fun too. I've really enjoyed the ride.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Wonderful. Well, congrats in the show. It's a lot of fun.
The show features a lot of themes of quantum mechanics.
You know, you have 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 7 (35:46):
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

(36:06):
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,

(36:27):
and it.

Speaker 9 (36:27):
Was the idea of like that.

Speaker 7 (36:30):
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 9 (36:42):
He's a good guy, but the reality is that they
are the same person.

Speaker 7 (36:46):
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 the joke er. They
are two sides of the same coin. And that's exciting
to look at. It's exciting to think about, you know,

(37:06):
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 dorc Like definitely
that's not I don't want to say not normal. That
sounds really insulting, but you know, on the scale of like,

(37:29):
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 more as
philosophy than anything else, this philosophical way of thinking about

(37:52):
the universe, and expose that to a lot of people
who would never normally choose the show because we made
it about regular people doing regular.

Speaker 9 (38:03):
Things, and the science is just it's another character.

Speaker 7 (38:06):
It's not the focus of every second, and that was
probably the most exciting part for me.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
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 created

(38:34):
follows like a coherent and consistent set of rules, even
of course if they 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 7 (38:45):
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.

Speaker 9 (38:59):
Of the show, movie, or book.

Speaker 7 (39:00):
Right, that's a mystery versus thriller, which is like, you
know the problem very early on is how are you
going to solve it? You know, so like that's what
the audiences expect. And then there's the writing trips, 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

(39:22):
like science fiction usually that's those are structural differences.

Speaker 9 (39:26):
So for me, like when it comes to the mixing
of like.

Speaker 7 (39:30):
Mystery and thriller and you know, all these different things
into our speculative fiction, I am pretty obsessed with the
rules because I think the rules are how you keep
people grounded. 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 on the nose here just same mean, which

(39:51):
is lazy and fun.

Speaker 9 (39:53):
Right.

Speaker 7 (39:54):
There is the weighing 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. We
know that that is some element of that is true, 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

(40:16):
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.

Speaker 9 (40:28):
I definitely think we did both in this show.

Speaker 7 (40:30):
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.

Speaker 9 (40:49):
And so we do have to always be.

Speaker 7 (40:52):
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, and that's
a trope thing.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
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 quite well.

Speaker 9 (41:17):
I'm in love with him. If you could let him
know that, like I think he I think he knows
if you could let him.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Ma, that's very charming.

Speaker 9 (41:25):
He is super charming and just really just nice and smart.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (41:30):
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 it.

Speaker 9 (41:43):
Clifford thinks I think it's.

Speaker 7 (41:46):
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 to real. So I'd say, yeah,

(42:07):
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 but
I think the thing that we 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 plausible so that you could

(42:28):
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 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.

Speaker 9 (42:48):
Of really go off the rails.

Speaker 7 (42:50):
Like one of the worlds that we explore, World twenty
six is the sort of utopia world. We're like, well,
what if they just, you know, 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

(43:10):
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 all of human history, right, Like,
doing that scale of science and doing it that quickly
and that engineering and on that thinking.

Speaker 9 (43:25):
But you know, the outcome wasn't really.

Speaker 7 (43:28):
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 or we communicate better. And so
I think a lot more liberty was taken with history
and sociology than less taken with real science, if you

(43:50):
know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, absolutely, I think that's really creative. I really like
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? Time?
And Yeah, I was always impressed.

Speaker 7 (44:02):
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. I just want to
say that, like cliff 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 where we had charred and
burned stuff places and he's like, no, absolutely, not, that
would not happen.

Speaker 9 (44:23):
Those are not the colors. That's not how it would
look like.

Speaker 7 (44:25):
I just love when you could tell that something really
matters to your scientific advice and you're like, oh, don't
touch that.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, yeah, well hopefully that's representative of like the nerds
watching your show, and you don't want to piss them
off either.

Speaker 9 (44:38):
Absolutely. I don't like being wrong. I don't think anyone
does right.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
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.
Creates the box, and his university builds it. He physically
puts it together. Then he goes to another universe he

(45:05):
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.

Speaker 9 (45:17):
Fudge there, you're going to get into there.

Speaker 7 (45:18):
See now I'm going to contradict myself, like now we're
getting into woo.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Wu Right, okay, let's go there.

Speaker 7 (45:23):
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 spawns and that it
it just arrives there because it is a gateway. So
once Jason creates it in his world, it's sort of
like I guess I would describe it as like an
anchor point. It is the nexus by which all.

Speaker 9 (45:44):
Universes are connecting.

Speaker 7 (45:45):
So in theory, when you see that box, say in
no atmosphere world or in the world where they're in
the water.

Speaker 9 (45:53):
That is actually the same box.

Speaker 7 (45:55):
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.

Speaker 9 (46:04):
But definitely, like you know.

Speaker 7 (46:08):
Things start to fall apart when you really think about it,
because yeah, where did that energy, where.

Speaker 9 (46:11):
Did that matter come from?

Speaker 7 (46:12):
I mean, I think it's the same matter, but yeah,
send me some hate mail about that.

Speaker 9 (46:18):
It's probably not good.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
No, it's just fun to think about, and I liked
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's 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 like to

(46:42):
adapt a book like that to the screen rather than
start from scratch? What are the challenges there?

Speaker 7 (46:49):
I think the biggest challenge I'll start with that one,
which might reveal I'm a negative thinker, But the biggest
challenge is.

Speaker 9 (46:56):
Like what people expect, the expectations. You know. I helped
like develop this story.

Speaker 7 (47:02):
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 that.

Speaker 9 (47:19):
Aspect of it was very easy. It was like, oh, okay,
we can do that.

Speaker 7 (47:21):
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 were 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 read Dark Matter and one day and

(47:43):
I'm now a big reader like that, 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.

Speaker 9 (47:54):
Fulfill those fan love feelings, but also.

Speaker 7 (47:58):
Creating that now for a whole new audience of people
who for whatever reason would never read this book, but
we'll engage with this material in this way. So that
was probably the biggest challenge, was figuring out where to
be true to that original stuff to make the fans happy,
but also so ilicit that.

Speaker 9 (48:15):
Same emotional reaction from new people.

Speaker 7 (48:19):
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.

Speaker 9 (48:43):
From a writing standpoint.

Speaker 7 (48:45):
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. We kind of get to
know in a little but we don't know him. We
definitely don't know Layton, and you need to know them

(49:05):
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, besides being weird about details and

(49:27):
what color of watch is Jason wearing in this scene
and what color shirt is he wearing to make that
all work those puzzles aside, expanding the characters, especially the women,
was the best part of the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
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 hovering a number over their head.

Speaker 6 (49:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (49:56):
I mean that was probably one of the hardest things
to do, because the easiest answers, like, you know, because
we have for those of you who've seen eight, we
have burn Face Jason. We have Jason thirteen. Who's the
guy that talks to Jason one in the tavern.

Speaker 9 (50:13):
I want to call it the David Damma. That's the
real name the village tap story.

Speaker 7 (50:16):
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.

Speaker 9 (50:27):
And what I ended up.

Speaker 7 (50:29):
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.
She's giving him we see the whole show, she's giving

(50:49):
him therapy. The whole time, she's comforting him, she's helping him.

Speaker 9 (50:51):
Figure this stuff out.

Speaker 7 (50:53):
So the earlier Amanda dies or leaves him, is the
more violent and more you know, sort of crazed and
unhinged that Jason is, because we know that that's in him.
We've established that, We've seen Prison World, where Jason has
obviously done something terrible to someone. We've seen what Jason
two is capable of. We know that Jason Wan's capable,

(51:15):
So it's about what actually breaks his brain.

Speaker 9 (51:18):
And how broken is it. And so once we knew
what that was, we.

Speaker 7 (51:21):
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, which

(51:45):
is 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

(52:06):
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 joy is like, you know,
it's the same thing Inception 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 about the complexities

(52:28):
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.

Speaker 9 (52:41):
You will actually be able to tell who is here.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Awesome. I'm sure somebody out there and Reddit is doing.

Speaker 7 (52:45):
Exactly or if they're not, they're probably getting like hack
into my computer.

Speaker 9 (52:49):
I get the cells right, but you'll know everything.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
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. The number one question
was why is it called dark matter? And obviously this
physics in the show, but it's mostly like multiverse, quantum mechanics, superposition.
Where's the dark matter in the show?

Speaker 7 (53:13):
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,
and there's also.

Speaker 9 (53:25):
A debate about what it does.

Speaker 7 (53:26):
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 9 (53:45):
That's honestly the truth, Like she.

Speaker 6 (53:47):
Is like.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Mysterious science.

Speaker 7 (53:52):
Ye science see, 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.

Speaker 9 (54:06):
You know, maybe the most ideal name either.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
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
and that you exist. What's your alternative reality? What are
you choosing?

Speaker 3 (54:22):
Like?

Speaker 9 (54:22):
Am I intentionally choosing?

Speaker 7 (54:24):
Like I get to go see the version of myself,
not like I accidentally sort of wash up on shore
at a terrible place.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
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 9 (54:37):
Huh?

Speaker 6 (54:38):
You know.

Speaker 9 (54:39):
The first thing I really wanted to do with my life.

Speaker 7 (54:41):
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 hard worker, you're actually
not talented, and some careers require a certain level of

(55:06):
actual talent. And the realization that I was not good
enough to actually have the future as like a composer
and musician.

Speaker 9 (55:15):
That I thought I was going to have was a
really brutal one.

Speaker 7 (55:19):
And I often wonder if there is a world where
I hadn't decided that I wasn't good enough, and if
I had continued to fight.

Speaker 9 (55:28):
And be that level of brave, you know, what would
that life be like.

Speaker 7 (55:33):
I'm not saying she would have succeeded, but I would
like to see what she did, you.

Speaker 9 (55:37):
Know, that's the curiosity of mine.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
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 9 (55:46):
Let me ask you what would yours be?

Speaker 1 (55:49):
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'd 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.
So yeah, I'd like to go see if that would

(56:11):
have worked out for another version of Daniel.

Speaker 9 (56:14):
He's still could anyway, it's right that book like, Well.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
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 our question,
and thanks for this wonderful show. Speaking for everybody out there,
we're really glad you created it.

Speaker 9 (56:33):
Thank you, all right, thank you.

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Speaker 5 (59:27):
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 you might be possible, and
then you kind of have to figure out how to
get a good story out of that.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
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 5 (59:52):
I feel like, Daniel, do you have a flexible rule yourself?

Speaker 1 (59:55):
What it's that flexible room.

Speaker 5 (59:56):
Sometimes you like when the rules are followed, sometimes you don't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
I always prefer when the rules are followed, but you
know you can't.

Speaker 5 (01:00:02):
Be too harsh. You prefer you prefer.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Right, strong preference.

Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
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 1 (01:00:12):
Yeah, 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 5 (01:00:21):
Is he an expert in dark matter or multiverses?

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
I think he's an expert in being a science advisor.
He's also worked for a lot of the Marvel movies.

Speaker 5 (01:00:29):
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 (01:00:39):
Mm hmm, yeah, exactly. If only you could draw on
their expertise.

Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
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 (01:00:55):
Great so that it's my pleasure to be here in a
conversation with Cliff Johnson.

Speaker 6 (01:00:58):
Click.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Tell everybody a little bit about who you are and
what you're excited about in science.

Speaker 13 (01:01:03):
Well, I am a professor at the Physics Department at
the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Speaker 6 (01:01:10):
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 I through your
quantum gravity looks like? So I work on things like.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
String theory, et cetera, but really thinking about.

Speaker 6 (01:01:28):
Space time and space and time and what it means
at the quantum medal.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
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. Is shoe like this?
What do you see as the role of the science advisor?

Speaker 6 (01:01:43):
What is your job?

Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
So this is a really important question because there is.

Speaker 6 (01:01:50):
No model for what a science advisor should be, because
the industry still doesn't really know what that is, and
so a lot of us been working to try and
help cement that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:59):
And I think what we shouldn't.

Speaker 6 (01:02:01):
Do is going with the red pencil and make it
seem like we own this stuff and they're daring to
play with it, and we're going.

Speaker 4 (01:02:09):
To give them a grade because they'll have a fall right.
Others have different opinions, but my opinion is that the
primary thing of that to.

Speaker 6 (01:02:18):
Do is to serve the story they're trying to tell,
and to help them tell the story they.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
Want to tell. Now, sometimes you can give them advice.

Speaker 6 (01:02:26):
Given what they want to do and the science that
they think they want 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 you don't know that could be brought
in to help you achieve that. And they're very open

(01:02:46):
to that because now you're own the storyteller sign and
you're just trying to serve a story. And then sometimes
that can lead to the story geting completely because they
get excitted about the science.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
They now understand that bit of science that's.

Speaker 6 (01:03:00):
I only read about it in a popular account and
maybe misunderstood.

Speaker 4 (01:03:03):
Now they understand it.

Speaker 6 (01:03:04):
Now they see, oh, I want to use this aspect more,
or you tell them so it really is. I think
if you go it, in my opinion, if you go
in wanting to help with the story, great things can
come from that, especially if it's early enough in the
process that they're not wedded to everything being completely set.

(01:03:24):
And so then I think science advising works istreamly. 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, they're almost ready to shoot, and then
they want some buzzwords.

Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
You know, that's only so much you can do that.

Speaker 6 (01:03:39):
But if you get to kind of almost become a
collaborator or someone to brainstorm, and if you then.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Stick through it right through to the end, you can
get some great things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
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 hubus where to hear
science and they absorb it. And I wonder sometimes if
there's a responsibility to the show to get that right
and and not use lead people into like common misunderstanding
about what is dark Knight, what does it look like?

(01:04:13):
You know you said a dark blog in front of
your spaceship or not? What do you feel about that?

Speaker 7 (01:04:18):
Is?

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
A science advisor has some responsibility there.

Speaker 6 (01:04:20):
We have some responsibility to tell a little bit about
what it's really like. We that you know, there's no
contract this says they must use a certain percentage of
what we tell them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Right, right, So how you know it's an advisor I.

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
Would advise them, so so I'll do.

Speaker 6 (01:04:37):
My best to just 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.

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):
But what happens. And this is by no.

Speaker 6 (01:04:49):
Means intended as an apology for science advisors, but it's
all the process right these these projects. It's very different
being a science advisor to say, on a book where
you're dealing with the author of the book, versus being.

Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
A science advisor to a thing that goes into a
big machine.

Speaker 6 (01:05:08):
As almost any project that you see on screen will be,
it will have gone through many stages.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
They've gone from any iterations. You may have been the
science advisor with the.

Speaker 13 (01:05:19):
Screenwriter who wrote the under 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
was the final.

Speaker 4 (01:05:31):
Screenplay that you saw, because it went from the screenwriter
to the studio to the.

Speaker 6 (01:05:36):
Director they found for the director had their own vision
blah blah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:39):
So you have no control, but you try, and you
hope you can get the key people involved excited enough
about the.

Speaker 6 (01:05:50):
Science that they care to protect some of the things
that you got into the screenplay or what have you
and or maybe you know, some years later at the
stage where they're shooting, a call saying, hey, you were
the screen you helped the screen writer it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
Now please help the VFX people, right and stuff like that.
That's great.

Speaker 6 (01:06:07):
That seldom happens, but when that happens, that's great because
then there's some continuity you can kind of look in
at a different stages.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
So tell us a little bit about what were the
challenges of being scifiiceder 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. What did
you do there? How did you change this story?

Speaker 4 (01:06:27):
Well, you know, I first have to say.

Speaker 6 (01:06:30):
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 show runner. A side note,
there's a big difference between TV and movies. In some ways,
TV is very much more righteous. You know, the people
who do the writing end up. You know, the director
works for them and it's the first approximation. The showrunners

(01:06:54):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:07:05):
And is very open to hearing critiques and hearing new
ideas and incorporating that, he was also in control of
the final show.

Speaker 6 (01:07:14):
So I got the call to come in and chat
with the various departments, and they basically said, Blake said,
do whatever you say.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
That never happened.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
So at the end of the day, I.

Speaker 6 (01:07:30):
Think the main ideas were there, and so credit to
Blake that the main ideas were there. 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

(01:07:54):
choices that you seem to have in quantum mechanics really
are branchings of the universe. You know, you know, you
had a fifty to fifty chance of the quantum outcome being.

Speaker 4 (01:08:03):
This way or the other, and.

Speaker 6 (01:08:06):
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 would 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
and the universe continues branching. So Blake was going, well, well,
if you could explore those universes and essentially that's.

Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
What this is about, and then what would that mean
physics wise?

Speaker 6 (01:08:31):
So there's 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. We
tend to not really foreground that as much when we
teach quantumic ads as we used to. And so I
was trying to explain to Blake a little bit about

(01:08:52):
some of the language that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:53):
People use these days in terms of coherence versus do
coherence coupling systems.

Speaker 6 (01:08:59):
It to you know, how much you isolate a system
from its environment so it doesn't sort of deecer here
by being coupled.

Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
To another system and what have you.

Speaker 6 (01:09:09):
And those are the things you need to control if
you were going to do that as a physics experiment.

Speaker 4 (01:09:15):
So that leads to them, what would that look like?
What would that device look like? So that's the box.

Speaker 6 (01:09:20):
So it spend a lot of time discussing what the
box would look like like that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
And what's in the walls of those bombs. So you don't,
of course, you never learned that in the book.

Speaker 6 (01:09:29):
Or in the in 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.
Another aspect of my job is that while you're watching
the thing, you're not popping out going that's ridiculous or

(01:09:50):
that doesn't make sense for it. 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. So
to help the physicists have a plausible sounding conversation with
a plausible sounding content, that helps it make it seem realistic.
So indeed, I'm very pleased to you know, when I

(01:10:12):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:10:25):
You know, you hear, you see the box, and you
have a sense that this is a real thing Sun
thought about.

Speaker 6 (01:10:30):
So we wanted to have weight, wanted to feel real,
wanted to have it still feel like it's a prototype.

Speaker 4 (01:10:35):
So it's a little sort of sort of sort of
grungey looking, and so and so forth. That's what really
think is our job.

Speaker 6 (01:10:43):
We're not we're not doing a documentary. But if you
as much as the creators will listen, I'll give you enough.

Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
Material so that.

Speaker 6 (01:10:54):
If if someone watching it digs a little bit, they'll
find there's more there there. It isn't sort of first
Night and the whole falls apart, So you will see
you know, the character Jason go writing through his notebooks
at some point where talking about the original design of
the box.

Speaker 4 (01:11:11):
That is full of equations that I gave them, and
that's real uh quantum physics.

Speaker 6 (01:11:18):
I had some friends of mine who actually do real
quantum information 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
would be doing, but rid large in.

Speaker 4 (01:11:40):
Order to make this box. So you know, I had
notes of my own that borrowed some of their notes
with their permission, and that's all you've seen Jason's note book.
So that those are examples of the things.

Speaker 6 (01:11:50):
That that we worked on at the level of the show.

Speaker 4 (01:11:55):
Other than of the book, we'd already been.

Speaker 6 (01:11:57):
Thinking about trying to give a reality quote unquote to
what would be like when you're inside the box, when
you're in because now this is no fantasy Blake's wonderful
idea of having some sort of drug that turns off

(01:12:17):
the observer effect, whatever 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

(01:12:40):
we how we construct reality of the physical world, in
terms of interacting quantum mechanically with the world.

Speaker 4 (01:12:48):
To what extent there's our brain chemistry have anything to
do with that.

Speaker 6 (01:12:51):
I think the answer to the questions is nobody knows.
The fact that it's unknown, it's fun to play with
and it gives the writer lots of places down well. Congratulations,
and so you've seen the show and you please without
a key out. Yeah, I've been, so I'm most of
the way through now.

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
I think there's maybe a couple of episodes I haven't seen.

Speaker 6 (01:13:14):
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 officially long ago
that and of course I hadn't seen how it really
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 things to get right in the

(01:13:36):
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, some of
whom I had spoken with early on and we were talking.

Speaker 4 (01:13:53):
About various aspects of the show. So I'm very pleased.
I'm very impressed.

Speaker 6 (01:13:57):
For me, it's a win win from the point of
view of a science advisor who's interested in getting people
engaged in science, because there's a feeling, you know, 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 up, they're talking about Heisenberg and talking

(01:14:18):
about uncertainty.

Speaker 4 (01:14:20):
They're talking about all these things that I usually thought
of is about as.

Speaker 6 (01:14:24):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:14:44):
Do this great job writing great stories builds around the science,
which is really what it's about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:49):
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 some plausible credibility
without feeling like red pin and pissing them off, I
think you've done that. I just spoke to Jacqueline ben
Zechery right actually said quote tell Clifford, I love him.

(01:15:14):
I think it pretty well.

Speaker 4 (01:15:15):
For it was.

Speaker 6 (01:15:18):
It was one of the most fun and fulfilling science
advising and 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 got fun with. And I'm hoping that you know,

(01:15:38):
this is a new standard.

Speaker 14 (01:15:39):
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.

Speaker 6 (01:15:50):
Find new ways at 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 of telling the
same old story, which is great.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
We only tell a few stories as a species, We
just tell them always.

Speaker 6 (01:16:04):
Science is a great way to find new ways, and
so this is a great example of that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
All right, Well, thanks again for taking a few minutes
a chat. That's really appreciate it my session.

Speaker 5 (01:16:14):
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 (01:16:21):
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 5 (01:16:38):
Ooh interesting. Can you give any spoilers or did you
have to sign an nda?

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
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 the 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 5 (01:17:03):
Yeah, because it's an amazing universe, and who knows how
it will end up or get written up in Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
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 5 (01:17:15):
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 (01:17:29):
For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social media,
where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant,
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,

(01:17:49):
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