Interplanetary War

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager, and
today we are We're pretty excited because both of us
are fans of The Expanse, which is a show on

(00:24):
sci Fi. It speaks to all of Robert and my
interests and man, we both watched the first season, really
enjoyed it. So we got the opportunity to work together
with them and do an episode on their universe, basically
taking a look at war and what is the cause
of war and human history, but also looking toward the

(00:44):
future and basically saying, what's it gonna look like? Yeah,
what would interplanetary war be like? Uh? Yeah, this is
an awesome opportunity. I was already a fan of the show,
and it was actually reading the first book by James S. A.
Corey when the opportunity presented it itself, and we said, yeah,
because we've done this sort of thing before without any
kind of advertising support for properties such as Dune, uh,

(01:07):
the Let's see what else we rain? Yeah, and the
ant Man One Man, and none of those people work
together with us, but we did it. Because we're fans,
and I think I think we might have done something
like this eventually this year, because once I finally got
a chance to watch it on Amazon Prime, I just
fell in love with this show. It is fantastic. Yeah, yeah,
it's very well put together show. Uh. I would say

(01:29):
that the best pure science fiction show on television right now. Yeah. So,
as Robert mentioned, it's based on a series of novels
by James Essay Corey Now that's a pen name actually
for Daniel Abraham and Tai Frank. They serve as writers
and producers on the show as well. And the first
uh season of the show is based on the book
that Robert mentioned, Leviathan Wakes, and that book was nominated

(01:51):
for both a Hugo Award and a Locust Award. We're
gonna try not to really spoil the show for you
at all if you haven't seen it. We're gonna be
mainly talking about the the mythos that it exists in,
right like the universe that they've built for this this show,
in this series of novels, um the real basic plot
and this isn't really getting you much past. Like I
would say, the first episode is that it's an ensemble

(02:14):
of characters that are scattered around the Solar System. They're
trying to unravel a conspiracy that threatens to begin a
war between Earth, Mars and colonies that are within the
Asteroid Belt. Yeah, and the really cool thing to keep
in mind, and certainly something we're gonna discuss at length here,
is that all of this is crafted with with science
in the forefront um. The authors and the show runners

(02:38):
put a lot of effort into making sure that everything
lines up. Not only were their entertainment expectations and our
our political intrigue fascination, but but just like, what what
is our current understanding of science and our current understanding
of the universe. What kind of a future does that
possibly present for us? And to that end, another thing

(03:00):
we're really excited about is that we are going to
have an interview at the end of this episode with
the executive producer on the expanse Naren Shankar. He's also
one of the show's writers. He's their science advisor as well.
He has a background in engineering in physics, and so
we're gonna ask him questions about how the show treats
the realities of space, because that really is I think

(03:20):
it's one of the selling points for me is that
Space is as much a character as any of the
other characters, and it's not just a setting. Right. Yeah,
Space is dangerous and big and hostile, uh in this show,
as it should be. So before we get into the
meat of this show, we want to establish, you know,
what this episode isn't going to be, because we don't

(03:42):
want you to be, you know, disappointed in what we
cover and what we don't. This is a huge topic.
This isn't gonna be us looking at military science really
or delving into too much about future weapons technology. We
talk a little bit about that, but for the most part,
we're sticking to what causes war, what motivates war, and

(04:03):
and really the ultimate end goal of the studies like
this which have been going on for a long time
is how to keep peace. Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
look at past models of war and how they apply
in trying to figure out the future of war. But yeah,
we're not going to do a detail breakdown of individual
weapons systems. So we of course have covered some of
those in the past and may cover them in the future,

(04:24):
such as our episode from Life Believe the past year
about the rods from God's the kinetic weapons system proposal,
and that came up independently in their research. It wasn't
something that like we were like, well, we're familiar with this,
we'll bring this in it. Actually, that's something that a
lot of people who speculate on what the future warfare
is gonna look like once we're out in space, kinetic

(04:45):
weapons immediately came up. So we'll we'll touch on that
again too, and if you're in and also, one thing
this this podcast is not going to be is you know,
we're gonna talk about the Expanse a little bit in it,
but we're gonna talk at at length about uh, just
the future of war, war and what war is in general.
So if you're not into the Expanse, if you're if
you're just across the board not interested, well I fear not,

(05:08):
because we're gonna we're gonna talk about a very grounded
issues here. Okay, so why don't we get into it.
And then what we'll do is basically, as we go
along and we're talking about these various theoretical examples or
historical examples, will maybe apply it to the expanse. But
again we're not going to be very spoilery about the
show in terms of like things that happened in the

(05:28):
plot or with the characters. It's just mainly going to
be about like what the setup is for the universe
there and what it's like two years in the future. Yeah,
and uh, well you know, I guess we should. Do
you want to mention any of the characters before we
move on or yeah, well, I think more so than
the characters, what I mentioned is just like the three
factions I suppose, and so set that up for people,

(05:48):
which is that Earth is Earth still exists, there's a
human population on it. It's a single planetary government though
from what United Nations governed planet. Yeah. And then Mars
has broken off from Earth. Mars is populated by human colonists,
but they have a more technologically advanced colony I guess.

(06:09):
So they have like a pretty intensely powerful military. They
have like stealth ships things like that. Uh, And that
they Mars and Earth are kind of teetering on the
brink of a it's like a Cold war basically. And
then the last faction is the Asteroid Belt. Uh. They
refer to themselves as Belters. Uh. And that basically serves

(06:29):
as like many colonies scattered throughout the Asteroid Belt of
basically blue collar workers who are out there mining resources
like air and water. In some type cases it's like ice,
Like they're they're mining ice and outer space so that
they can then bring it back and turn it into
water basically for the survivability of everybody, whether they're on
Mars or Asteroid Belt. Although Earth pretty much has access

(06:51):
to all of the resources, we still have. Yeah. I mean,
if you play fast and loose with the the parallels,
you can basically look at at Earth. Earth is Is
is the European planet, Mars is the New World, and
then the Asteroid Belt is just the the outskirts though,
the wild, the utter frontier and there, and there's a

(07:12):
there's a cultural splintering that has occurred really across all
three domains, right. Yeah. And and the the other thing too,
I forgot to mention is that the Belt is governed
by Earth technically, I think like they have oversight, but
there's also like uh corruption within the Belts government system.
And then also what would you call it, like a

(07:34):
grassroots insurgency happening. Yeah, the opcuh quasi terrorists or outright
terrorist organization depending on how you look at it, because
there's a large there's a lot of disenfranchisement that goes
on in the Belts in in the expanse, right, the
Belters don't seem to have the same rights. Um. Yeah,
it's a major plot point, all right. So at this point,

(07:57):
let's go ahead and get into the first big question here.
What is war? What is war itself as a thing
that humans do, that humans most humans hate and despise
and fear, and yet we absolutely have not stopped doing it. Yeah,
we conducted constantly and you know, I had no idea
going into this research. I mean I had some idea,

(08:19):
but but not how deep it goes. I mean, there
are entire departments of study devoted to this. And so
if you're out there listening and you have some familiarity
with this, you may go, why didn't you mention this
particular theoretical concept about war? You know? Uh, this because
we really we would have to do an entire podcast

(08:40):
that's just about for for years just about this topic
in order to cover everything. So we're gonna try to
boil it down to some of the major categories of
of what is war and what causes it gonna read
three quick quotes here that that that I feel set
the stage. Uh. The first one comes from a corn
Karthie's Blood Meridian or the evening Redness in the West.

(09:04):
And this is These are the words of Judge Holden,
who has a major character in that book, quasi supernatural villain.
He says, it makes no difference what men think of war.
War endures as well, asked men what they think of stone.
War was always here before man was. War waited for him,

(09:26):
the ultimate trade, awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the
way it was and will be that way and not
some other way. And then in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael and
Adventurer of the Mind and Spirit, Uh, Ishmael, who's a
talking gorilla in the book, if you're not familiar with it,
says the following, my name is Ishmael. Yeah. Is. This

(09:50):
law defines the limits of competition in the community of life.
You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities.
But you may not hunt down your competiti gers or
destroy their food, or denied them access to food. In
other words, you may compete, but you may not wage war.
Now there are a couple of major resources that we

(10:11):
look to to really ground ourselves here, and the first
was that apparently the International Association for Political Science Students
has as a really well written piece that that sums
up war and its causes. Now, the person who authored that,
Jan Tudovic. Uh, there's a quote from her that I'd
like to use to start us off here, and she says,

(10:32):
if we want to understand or explain how peace can
be achieved, we have to understand war and its causation.
And so, uh, this led me to another piece which
is by a guy named Jack S. Levy, and it's
called The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace
and it's really pretty good review of all the literature

(10:53):
on this topic. And I think it was written in
the nineties, so there may even be like a whole
John More that wasn't covered in this from the last
decade or so. We pulled other resources to kind of
tap into that those ideas, but Levy basically looked at
everything and just threw it into one paper. It's interesting though, like,

(11:14):
at this point, without even getting into the idea, is
like the three quotes we looked at, the judge would
hold that war is this thing that like permeates us
and and and and pre exists. It's our nature. Yeah,
Whereas Daniel Quinn would and Ishmael rather would argue that
that war is this this corruption that we've inflicted on
the world, and perhaps something we can take back. These

(11:36):
are of course, both you know, kind of simplistic views
of it or boiled down views, uh, and that we're
getting into them the more complex take on the question,
So Levy establishes, first of all, there's no consensus on
what causes war, Like, there's a lot of disagreement in
the academic community about this much less just between us

(11:57):
human beings. In fact, he says, some people argue it
maybe such a complex topic that it's it's actually impossible
to generalize in any manner, but they try. Um and
that the general definition of war is this quote, a
large scale organized violence between political units. So if you
want to differentiate it from other violence, the categorization is

(12:21):
essentially a minimum of a thousand battle related fatalities have
to be counted as a metric, and peace is subsequently
identified as the absence of war. Now, the people who
study this really deeply, they seem to distinguish between international war,
civil war, and interstate wars to separate them from what

(12:44):
I what are referred to as non state actors. I
think today most people would just say terrorism. Um but
but violence that's not conducted by a state actor. Right. So,
to this end, the study of war is actually moved
more toward what they called low intensity wars. And this
has been since the end of the Cold War, so
it's less focused on total annihilation. We're going to talk

(13:09):
about that for sure. Um Levy also says it's really
difficult to trace the causes of war because there's so
many variations on them. Right, So if you think you
have one theory and you try to apply it to
every single instance of war, there's gonna be a variation
in there that just stands out, right, So that makes
it even more difficult. Um Subsequently, he says he he

(13:32):
doesn't really buy into the whole human nature argument because
of that, because there's so many variables, it's not constant enough.
And Steady says, political scientists seem to be turning to
h explaining war in peace, while philosophers, psychologists, and biologists
ask why war war occurs at all in the first place. Right,

(13:53):
um So that's really just the the general setup. Okay,
so we've now we've establed is like what war is
that the ground rules essentially in terms of how academics
are looking at it, how it's studied. Now what based
on that? What are the causes? Human nature is socio cultural?
What are what are all these theories for its motivation?

(14:15):
The first place that I'd like to point out is
there is an annual report that's put together by the
Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research every year and it
examines broadly what what leads to the current conflicts that
exist in our modern society and they call it a
Conflict Barometer. Now the edition focused on the following causes

(14:39):
for war and they have uh that's the latest report
that's been published because they haven't finished the one yet. Uh.
They categorize the the intensity of these conflicts, but they
basically break it down by whether it's a territorial war,
a war of secession, de colonization, a war over autonomy,

(15:00):
sys the system in place, or the ideology national power,
subnational predominance, international power. So that those three kind of
fall back into that what I was talking about earlier
in terms of state actors, and then resources, which brings
us back to our Ishmael quote. And then the last
one is the other. Paul Goodman has also put together

(15:21):
a short explanation of this. It's kind of like the
listical BuzzFeed version. I'm not saying that in like a
derogatory way. On the causes of war. It's on this
site called OWL caation and that's a website that's run
by educators about their academic areas of expertise. And that's
O w l C A t. Iowan trying to figure
that out, an OWL on vacation um. And so his

(15:45):
we're gonna use his list, the Heidelberg list and levies
huge combination of theories as sort of like a grounding
point for us as we moved through all of these.
And the first one is really the psychology the human nature.
So do we have war because of our innate inner rage?

(16:05):
Is it because of the fears of mankind? Are we
inherently violent? Or maybe ideology is inherent to the human brain.
This is kind of the the Dawn of of Man
two thousand one of Space Odyssey idea that the ape
is inherently violent, maybe pushed a little by the monolith.

(16:26):
But it all goes back to some some pretty human
homedy bashing and some creatures skull and realizing this is
the way, this is the this is the path to ascension. Yeah, exactly,
and Goodman lumps under this causes like that a lot
of you are probably thinking they were the first in
my mind, religion or nationalism or revenge even right. We

(16:50):
could also potentially play civil wars and revolutionary wars here,
as they're often motivated by differing ideologies. But when you
look back at that Heidelberg one, you know, those could
fall under autonomy or de colonization, secession, things like that,
so they break it out a little bit more finely. Yeah. Now,
one one thought that that came to mind as I
was looking through this is of course, that you're talking

(17:11):
about fears of mankind and and these different motivations. I
think it's important to note that that the fear of
the other is always a key motivator, be it a racial, cultural,
or linguistic other. The hurdles to our ability to to
do this continue to pose one of the leading threats
to peace. That we we inevitably have this just ingrained

(17:32):
in us, This this barrier to seeing individuals in another
group as being like us, is having the same values
as us, Is it indeed being part of us? Yeah?
You know my favorite example of this, and this isn't
like an endorsement of the show, I know a lot
of people have issues with it, but Lost they straight

(17:54):
up had a group of characters called the Others on
the Island. That was that really uh demonstrated this in
a good way and that it was like, Okay, they
are other from us. We think of them as being
outside of us and a threat, right and and almost
not even human in some cases. Uh, And it was
it was a it was a nice analogy for what

(18:16):
you're talking about there. Um, if you put it another way.
There's a guy named Kenneth Walts who's an international relations theorist,
and he talks about it as the individual is the
first category of the cause of war. And he says, yeah,
maybe human nature is the locus of the causes of war.
We can find it in the behavior of mankind. But

(18:36):
we're essentially talking about things like selfishness, misdirected, aggressive impulses,
and and and while these are Waltz his terms, stupidity,
and he says, look uplifting and enlightening men may lead
to the elimination of war. So that's why we have
to study this, we need to scrutinize it um and
we're gonna keep coming back to that. And I would say,

(18:57):
I don't know, I don't want to put like words
in the author's not but I would assume that part
of the project with the expense, is to enlighten people
to what causes war so that in real life were
less likely to just engage in that aggression. I mean,
we have so many different media representations of war is
just this noble and like even today we see these, uh,

(19:22):
these these examples of it as this noble enterprise. And
in our video games, like when we were talking about
PTSD in the previous so we talked about how like
so much of the so many of these games are
just they just glorify, uh, the violent details of war
and turn it into pure entertainment. And occasionally you'll have
a game, I forget the name of the game in
particular that a number of our listeners said, oh, well,

(19:44):
this one really focuses on PTSD a bit, but of
course no. But basically nobody wanted to play that game
because it it did not offer the the glorious vision
of warfare that we've come to expect from entertainment. Yeah,
and and also I think we would be out of
line if we didn't at least give this some acknowledgment

(20:05):
that in Waltz and in other referrals to war, and
they referred to it very specifically as mankind and men.
And you may be saying, well, why why are we
using those terms instead of humankind. Well, there's actually a
whole set of feminist theories around the causes of war
that argue that due to the gendered nature of states
and cultures, that this contributes to the persistence of war

(20:29):
in our world politics. So for me, like oddly enough,
the best fictional example I can think of what this
would be Wonder Woman, um, which is about to be
pretty popularized, I think, even more than she already is
in American consciousness. But there's a big movie about to
come up this somewhere. Um. But you know, she comes
from this nation of women that live in peace away

(20:49):
from men, but they're also a warlike culture, and they're
capable of mass destruction. Like they they're they're amazons, you know,
they're literally they're referred to um, so if men invade
their territory, they're they're like this incredibly powerful military force,
but but on their own they live in total peace.
Um Levy argues though, that feminist theories treat gender systems

(21:12):
as a constant. Again like this is his like argument
against human nature as being capable of explaining war because
of all the variations, and so he says, look that
that also can't explain these variations in war. It's worth
having as part of our sort of set of tools
to look at war with. But he doesn't think that's
the single answer. Well, and it's I've I've studied some

(21:34):
of this, but before the question, well what have what
have we had? Matriarchal cultures they engage in the same
level of war, And you kind of see arguments on
both sides. Some people say, oh, yes, we would, uh,
a female lead society would be just as likely to
engage in warfare as a male lead society. But I mean,
basically it comes down to the fact we have so

(21:55):
few models to actually look to on that that we
we did, we're essentially starting from zero. Yeah, and and
that is connected to We're gonna talk about hegemony in
a little bit here, but I think to like again,
because we don't have examples that we can really look
to as that say, like one way or the other,
whether it's gendered or not, as the main cause, it's

(22:17):
difficult to parse out because we don't have a language
for understanding it any other way. Um, So that I mean, obviously,
like I said, there's a lot more to the human
nature argument. Well, we've in and out of that, but
that's essentially the human nature psychological component. And then we
come to the economic argument. This is tied into the

(22:39):
the Ishmael quote that we had earlier, and this, I
would say, is where the expanse really seems to fall
in terms of like what's causing war in the in
the in storyline, Uh, we're essentially talking here about a
competition for natural resources and wealth. There's national and international
and in this case interplanetary power and resources. Now, these

(23:02):
resources could be precious materials, or they could be livestock
or natural resources like like oil or minerals. And some
people believe that as the world's population increases, there's going
to be an increase in the amount of wars that
we have because we're gonna be fighting over fundamental essentials
such as water and food, and this is this is
kind of what we see playing out on an interplanetary
level in the expanse right. Oh yeah, I mean especially water.

(23:24):
The the need for water and among among the Belters
is one of the key plot points that comes up
again an Yeah, and Mars too, I think, because like
they had this amazing technology, but they're on Mars and
there's you know, there's there's not enough. If there's water
there in this future, there's not enough to to serve
the population that's there. And they keep talking about how

(23:44):
they're under like domed cities and everything. They don't breathe
natural air um and so yeah, and then air of
course as well would be a commodity um, depending on
how they generate it. Yeah. And then if you want
whiskey then and you're in the belt, you're gonna have
to depend on that moss whiskey. You know, I gotta
say I I would that. That's the thing. I was
the most surprised by him saying, like, where are they

(24:04):
getting all this booze from? Yeah? Yeah, he comes out
more in the books, but but there's there are a
lot of discussions, uh with the Thomas James's character where
he's talking about drinking moss whiskey, and at one point
he's eating a meal where he has some there's some
real beans in there, but they're also some that grown beans.
So there's there's there's so many details that are thrown

(24:25):
out there and in the books but also incorporated into
the show. Give you this this idea of the the
the economics of the world, you're you're immersing yourself in. Well,
Thomas James's character is pretty much constantly drinking, which is
one of my you know, amusements of his character. But
that that was definitely something I was like, Okay, this
fits the like noir detective thing with his character. But yeah,

(24:48):
that's his character's name. Um man, Yeah, he's he's great
in this. I'm I'm a Thomas Jane fan. Anyways, as
you'll probably be able to tell from the ad reads,
takes dance in this. But but yeah, he's really good
in it. And yeahs I was immediately thinking probably two
three episodes and I was like, wait a minute, where
is he just getting all of this booze from He's
just constantly doing it. Yeah, So okay, the economic argument

(25:12):
falls under Kenneth Waltz his second explanation for war, and again,
like we come back to like various explanations, right, is
it is it um human nature? Is it economic? And
he says, yeah, economic, but it's more about the state.
And he argues that the social and political institutions that
we create for ourselves, they should be seen as a

(25:34):
factor in creating war. And if human nature can be
changed through institutions, which is I would say, essentially like
the basis of our of our society, right, like the
idea that like we can live, we can coexist peacefully
under institutions. Uh that, then those institutions should be our
focus for stopping war. Yeah, because of course humans have

(25:57):
always competed for resources, just as all species do. I mean,
it goes back to that that Ishmael quote. Uh we
and we even wiped out such competing intelligent hominid species
as the Neanderthals in this very way. I mean, if
you ever want a model for how humans would coexist
with another intelligent species, that is sadly our best, our

(26:17):
best example. It makes me think of and we've we've
talked about this on the show a bit lately, But
like the Prometheus myth, like you know, fire was given
to us by the gods but ultimately ends up causing problems,
and war is one of those. Yeah, but you know,
when it comes to the Neanderthals, you can you can
look back and there are different arguments about how all
this actually played out. But exterminating a species just by

(26:41):
out competing them sort of accidental genocide, I guess, is
one thing. But to actively wage war over the resources,
to say I will wipe you out, to get into
that that sort of you know, that Hellenistic model of
destroy your enemy city and the dissault the earth, that's
a that's another thing entirely. Well, why don't we take

(27:02):
a break and when we come back, we're going to
continue on with these causes of war. All right, we're back,
So I know we have a number of fallout fans
out there. So that quote, famous quote generally uh, narrated
by Ron Perlman is probably bouncing around in your brain.

(27:22):
War never changes. But that's that's what you get read
to you at the beginning of the game. Is your
your characters walking away with a dog? Yeah, And uh.
The thing about that quote is that, yes, on one hand,
the horror of war remains the death of innocence remains
one of its central tenants. Uh mutual assured destruction being
the perhaps the purest modern version of this. When you're

(27:45):
talking about nuclear strikes between superpowers, you're talking about megadeaths
of civilians. Nice metal reference there, Dave Mustan would be, Yeah,
that's where they gotta leave. That's where the Yeah. Megadeath
is a U is basically a way to to measure
the death that would occur during a large scale nuclear war.

(28:08):
But even on on like lower levels, there's just horror
at every level. At two thousand and ten b MJ
published study pointed out that quote the use of rape
as a weapon of war has assumed strategic importance unquote
in in the in the wake of the Second World War.
So war is is and has always been nothing short
of just an obscenity. There's your gendered nature of it again.

(28:33):
And yet to to you know, we can say, all right, Ron,
you're you're right for the most part. But on the
other hand, weapons and tactics evolve, as does the shape
of war, the exact definition of the thing, the ethical
boundaries of war. We invoke modern laws of war even
as we've been to break them. UH. The and even
the laws of war are ancient. Two. We can find

(28:55):
examples of them in the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic. We
find them in the Torah. And much discussion continues even
to this day on the idea of just war theory,
the idea that you know, if you if you fall,
if you follow certain parameters both in the execution and
the reason for war, then there is a just use
of it. People are still divided on that. Yeah, right, interesting, Yeah,

(29:19):
you see some of that throughout these theoretical UH applications.
But also just like the scholars that are struggling with
this are like trying to come to grips with not
only like how this works in the grand scheme of humanity,
but then like in the present tense, right, like like
how do I apply this to the situation of maybe

(29:40):
the nation state that I exist in that's currently at war. Now,
we've already discussed a number of different theories for for
why we have war, how war works, where it came from.
Various theories have covered this one that I always thought
had a nice ring to it. Uh. And again this
is probably an overly simplistic model there, but there are
those who are that basically need a few things to

(30:01):
come together for warfare to be practical. You need surplus
resources to to necessitate high risk raids and high speed
mounts to make this sort of long distant strike feasible. Yeah,
very much. Again, in an economic sense, comes down to
a risk reward. So there's there's some out there who
have said but basically comes down to the horse. Before

(30:21):
individuals had horses, you just weren't able to really wage
something that was that was war as we think of
it today. Not everyone agrees with that, but like I
said that, the basic economic nut of that, I think
is is very interesting to think about, and as we're
gonna look to toward the end of this episode, but
also in the context of the expanse, I mean, once

(30:41):
we once we invent interplanetary space travel and we have
you know, that's that's the next horse essentially, right, although
I would argue, like the airplane, probably the car and
then the airplane, right because as we're going to discuss,
all of these things can be used as weapons on
their own without even having weapons attached to them. Yeah,
and when you end up having states and empire, the

(31:01):
rise of states and empires in human civilization. This changes
war as well, so they're waging war for resources but
also for plunder for slave labor. Uh. As William M.
Dugger pointed out in as a piece online Evolution Theory
Social Sciences, Volume three, you need the slaves to work
the natural world into things that you you needed from

(31:23):
the countryside. And you also needed the slaves to keep
your cities running. Well. Uh, the places and these are
the places where you grew and maintain the military required
to power this sort of awful war based convection of empire. Yeah,
and and that is definitely like one road empire studies
are like imperial studies. But all of this leads us

(31:45):
to the question of whether or not the causes of
war derived from either international systems, national systems, or individual
decision makers. Right, So we get back to is it
is it just one person who's leading us to this
or is there something fundamentally flawed with the institutions that
we've created for ourselves. And I would say maybe it's
all three, right, and I probably a lot of these

(32:07):
studies would too, But possibly it's just one given the
various scenarios. Right, So, key actors in world politics, they're
currently seen as sovereign states that are quote acting rationally
to advance their own security, power, and wealth. That's essentially
again like the risk reward model, right, Like, all they
want to do is make sure that their people are secure,

(32:28):
they have power over at least their own destinies and
the wealth to lead I guess, happy lifestyles. Now, the
basics of this are what's referred to as the realist
theory of war, and that is basically that the distribution
of power is the primary factor in shaping international outcomes.
And it's it's complicated. It gets even more complicated by

(32:51):
making assumptions about foreign policy choices in the outcomes of
various nation states. I mean, we see this playing out
in the news every day, actually, right like Like so
an example right now would be like the Russian hacking scandal, right,
and we see that and it's always in the papers
referred to as Russia did X or Russia is thought

(33:13):
to have done why. Right, it's not Russia, it's not
all of Russia's citizens. It's people within the institutions. If
that's the case, right, But then you have to ask yourself,
is it their institution that's flawed or is it again
like some people say, oh, it's a key actor, it's Putin.
Putin is the one that's influencing the institution negatively, right,

(33:37):
who knows. I mean, it's really difficult, like super con
complex too to dive into, especially on a current events scale. Right,
you need like years away from stuff like this and
many more facts than we have to be able to
make a decision one way or the other. Yeah. I
think it was David Simon who made the comparison between

(33:58):
our modern world and the world of of of ancient myth.
In the ancient myth, you had heroes and you had gods,
and both both exerted a tremendous amount of power. Um
more so with the gods, but the heroes could really
turn the tide as well. And today instead of God's
we have systems and uh, but we still have a

(34:21):
place for the individual, and the individual can still be
tremendously influential or can just be crushed under the heels
of said god like system. Man, you and I have
been circling around this topic for a while now and
I hadn't even realized it. We did the hero episode
recently or heroism, but then the Wicked Problems episode definitely
ties into this as well, like it certainly war as

(34:42):
a wicked problem. Yeah, I mean anytime we cover the
human condition, I mean essentially we're going to be dealing
it's on some level with with war. And I gotta
say David Simon, but my go to guy for quotes
pretty much always trust trust him with what he's saying.
I follow him on Twitter and I find insights from
him almost every day. The guy is crazy smart and

(35:05):
has just really um if you're not, I guess I
should say who. David Simon is author Homicide, Life on
the Streets and uh and later of course The Wire
May Uh so various other projects he's been involved with.
Those are probably the two big ones recent. Yeah. Yeah,
so that's how more particularly did a war based when Yeah,
that's called Generation Kill and is is excellent, maybe the

(35:25):
best depiction of modern war that I've ever seen in entertainment. Okay,
So out of these arguments that we're talking about comes
these capitalist economic systems, and they're seen actually as being
the best guaranteers of peace. So basically it goes like this,
that the state has trade and that generates economic advantages

(35:48):
for state parties, and that the anticipation of war would
disrupt trade, right, so it would also reduce the welfare
of the people who were living within these nations states.
So some argue that this is what led to the
sort of current model of what's referred to as neoliberalism
that we in the United States existent. Um, but you're

(36:10):
basically looking at like the the argument is that, like,
as long as we keep free market trade going on
between international or in the case of the experience, interplanetary states,
then that's like a deterrent for war. It's also this
is the point where I think we should address hegemony.
Although man hegemony is a really tough topic to dive into,

(36:34):
I I gotta say, just from me personally, it is
such a difficult concept that it's still being ironed out
in many academic circles. But I studied it in graduate
school and it left my head spinning after every class. Uh.
In fact, the most difficult book I've ever read is
called Hegemony and Socialist Strategy by ERNESTO. Leclow and chantel

(36:55):
Moof uh, that book, it was like, you know, any
any like a piece of literature that people say is
like really difficult, like Thomas Pension or David Foster Wallace
or something like that, or James Joyce, like, this thing
was so much harder than any time I've tried to
tackle stuff like that. But let's try to take a
stab here. It's just a short definition of hegemony so

(37:19):
we can line it up because I think it works
within the parameters of the expense and what we're talking
about now. This is from the Salem Press Encyclopedia entry,
and the term hegemony is used to refer to a group, state,
or other entity that exhibits political or cultural dominance over
another group. And it's used in political science to refer

(37:40):
to usually countries or states that exert powers over one another.
But the ancient Greeks actually developed the term uh, and
they used it to describe the interaction of their city states,
which were called polis polus is uh with nearby territory,
so how those city states interacted with their neighbors. Essentially today,
though it really refers to the domineering behavior of one

(38:03):
group over another, it may not even necessarily be national actors. Now,
the power that's wielded by one group over another in
this case could be military and nature, which you know
leads to war. But more often it comes due to
financial or technological superiority, which is backed by military authority.

(38:25):
We see that in the expanse, certainly with with Earth
and then how it's connected to the Belt right like
Earth has you know, they're not like at war with
the Belt, but they are dominant over the belt and
they're they're backing that both with their trade of things
like water, but also with their military authority. The United States,

(38:48):
for instance, is understood to rise to hegemonic status partly
because of petroleum production and the rise of the automobile.
Another example in the expense would be that Mars has
the this like superior technology, but Earth has access to
resources like air and water. That's what puts them in dominance.
Usually a hegemonic power encourages cooperation before they resort to force.

(39:12):
So it's not it's not necessarily always militaristic and warlike uh.
And in fact, more often than not it's it's seen
as being ideological. Yeah, but of course it's always worth
remembering that that war is always in the background. War
enforce is always in the background of any kind of
of law and enforcement of law, and even when it
comes down to paying your taxes, there's a there's a

(39:35):
long line of things that happen if you don't pay
your taxes, but the end result can be an official
showing up at your door armed. So right, it's it's
always there in the background. I mean you could tie
that into the the Heidelberg variations and like secessionists or
autonomous war movements. Um. Now, last bit about hegemony here

(39:57):
the modern thought modern studies on it were heavily influenced
by a guy named Antonio gramsc and gram She argued
that ideology and ways of thinking also acted hegemonically, and
he wrote these ideas while he was imprisoned as a
communist during the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy.

(40:18):
So he basically had I think it was like forty
something like little notebooks that he filled with these ideas
that were published later. And he thought that hegemony meant
that the dominant group maintains its control through consent. So
to your taxes. Example, I consent to paying these taxes, right, Um,
that that that's basically how it's maintained. But there's always

(40:41):
possibility of force behind it. This included social classes and
not just national actors. So in addition, the dominant group
doesn't necessarily control all of the areas of a subordinated culture.
So this is why we have such a heavy amount
of subcultural theory and studies in universities now entire ideological
systems like democracy, those can be seen as hegemonic. Gram

(41:05):
She even argued that such concepts are dominant because they
seem common and they seem natural to those of us.
But that's because we exist within them, right. So for example,
the common common example used to illustrate current hegemony would
be like the idea that America is a Christian nation
even though it's got a broad diversity of religious beliefs. Um,

(41:27):
this stuff is really difficult to talk about, as I
mentioned earlier, because and gram She and other theorists have
argued this since then, the very language we use in
society is formed by whatever the dominant ideology is. Subsequently,
that makes it difficult to talk about anything that would
be close to change. So basically, the the hegemonic idea

(41:49):
here is sort of overlaid on top of all of
these causes of war alright, So it's war plays on,
and the the culture of war plays on and undoubtedly
becomes an enterprise that moves cultures, religions, trade routes, customs,
all manner of human creations and humans too, across vast distances.
And it also advances technologies. It serves as the driving

(42:12):
energy behind human endeavors and mega projects. Uh So, for many,
War is highly profitable. And that that means if you're
the head of an industry, if you're a CEO. But
also it means if you're just at some point down
the chain, you're benefiting from the technology. UM you know,
the very a lot a lot of times you can

(42:34):
think of like the very small, uh everyday technologies that
came out of the Space Race, which of course was
was part of the Cold War, part of this competition
between um two superpowers. Yeah, and we see that in
the expanse as well too. They they did. I kind
of suspect that the people who work on this show,
and maybe we'll get something from Duran Shankar about this,

(42:56):
that they have done their homework like you and and
before they sat down and they executed this massive project. Yeah,
I feel like the show lines up with with pretty
much everything we we found in research for this episode. Now,
War of course also unifies. It has a way of
distracting individuals from domestic woes, in large part by invoking

(43:17):
and exploiting the threat of the other. And studies to
have shown that the horrors of war hardened group bonds,
and so we end up with just war beginning more war. Yeah.
In fact, Levy he mentions this is what is referred
to as the rally round the flag effect, which always
makes me think of that the page against the machine,
so rally around the flag. But basically the idea here

(43:38):
is that leaders anticipate popular support during war, and so
sometimes it's tempting for them to undertake risky foreign ventures
or policy simply to bolster their own support. So that's
something to keep in mind. That is a that is
a terrifying statement, I think for for everyone to hear
it right now. But yeah, it's quite scary and not

(43:59):
the scariest thing that we're going to talk about in
the podcast today. But um, sometimes this is referred to
in the literature as diversionary theory of war, but sometimes
it's also done through scapegoating connected to ethno nationalism. So
not only are you sort of connecting the leader is
connecting the nation state to community and power, but ethnicity

(44:20):
to the nation as well, very dangerous stuff as we've
seen in the past. Now in the expanse, this maybe
what's going on with both Earth and the Belt as
they are arguing for war UH to possibly solidify their
own political power, right like the like the terrorist organization
and the Belt, like they're basically arguing for autonomy so

(44:42):
they can solidify their own power, right but like likewise,
Earth wants to solidify their power by keeping the Belt
under their control so that they have UH an organization
that's out in space that can can match or at
least keep them up to date on what's going on
with Mars and A. According to Levy, democratic leaders who

(45:02):
initiate wars like this what I was talking about, where
they're they're scapegoating or where they do the rally around
the flag effect that's usually unsuccessful and they're more likely
to be thrown out of power than non democratic ones.
So that's I suppose encouraging at least. The personal cost though,
can be much greater to authoritarian leaders, So that makes sense, right, Like,

(45:22):
if you're an authoritarian leader and you you end up
taking your nation to war, like if the results are poor,
either your people are going to overthrow you and probably
kill you, or you're going to be killed in the
war that you've conducted. So then this leads to another
like section of war theory, which is essentially demographic in nature. Uh.

(45:43):
The idea here being that population growth leads to scarce resources,
which we mentioned earlier. The ethno nationalism ties into this,
but also something that's called youth bulge theory, and it's
I don't think it's what you're thinking of. Yeah, there's
actually an older episode of Stuff to Blow your mind
and went into this a little bit. I believe it
was the teenage Brain, Okay, and it talks about In

(46:06):
that episode, we explored how the teenage brain is different
from an adult brain, that there's there are different priorities,
like biological priority, priorities to break away from your essentially
your tribe, to find a new tribe, to find a mate. Thing, issues,
threats all feel that much more immediate. You know, it's
that you're young. You feel like you can change the
world or you should change the world, kind of vibe.

(46:28):
You and I have established previously on the show that
the human brain doesn't finish even of all until age. Yeah,
it's kind of one way to think of the teenager.
Think of the teenager is like a winged ant that's
supposed to fly and found a new colony. That's essentially
the idea. So that ties into youth bullge theory. Uh,
the idea that it depends on how many young people

(46:50):
you have around. And I know this kind of sounds
like blame the young people for everybody everything, blame millennials
or whatever. But I mean, these are the stats. About
eight of the world's civil con flick since the nineteen
seventies have occurred in countries with young, fast growing populations.
And this is all according to analysis by the nonprofit
Population Action International. So youth boom contributed to the rise

(47:11):
of the Nazis in nineteen thirties too, also contributed to
Japan's military ambitions in the Pacific, Imperial Japan, UH Tenement
Square protests in China sixties seventies, countercultural revolution in the West.
Afghanistan experiencing youth bulge in the years following the two

(47:32):
thousand one US invasion. So you know, all this is
not to say that youth bulge leads directly to war
or unrest. In fact, I mean in the counterculture revolution,
I think you can you can look to the opposite.
You can see like a youth bulge movement for for
for peace however, um, it just provides ample kindling still

(47:54):
for so for it for social spark of religious or
ethnic friction, friction, political rivalry, economic disparages, uh, food shortages,
what have you? Like? It there, the young people were there,
they have the numbers, they're they're ready to do something.
What is going to be the thing that animates them? Yeah?
And what is going to be that? What is going

(48:14):
to be the methodology they employed? You know, this is interesting.
I don't have notes about this in front of me.
This is pure speculation, But I wonder how youth bulge
theory ties into planning what the draft ages for a
nation's military, if it has a draft. I mean, I've
always understood it as being like, well, of course, like
the draft ages, what's twenty five here in the United States? Something?

(48:35):
Oh my god, is it the same thing as when
your brain stops evolving? No? Surely not the cut off? Yeah,
what's the cut off age? I'm not sure about the
cut off, but I guess what I'm getting at is
like I'd always thought that the draft age was was
connected to you know, youthfulness being that like you're at
the peak of your physical acumen, right, like you you
would be the most efficient at war, whereas like you

(48:57):
and me at a current age would be okay, but
like we're probably better off hanging back in the offices
and doing strategy and podcasts. But you know, yeah, part
of it would seem to be that the mind is perfect, right, that,
like the mind is prepared for war and malleable. Yeah, okay,
So now the last bit in terms of causes that

(49:19):
I just want to add in here is referred to
as rationalism, uh, in terms of whether or not you know,
we're talking about territorial gain or maybe a community slash
nation expanding in nature. Kenneth walt calls this the third
and final cause for war. He locates it as being
a description of an international system that has the authority

(49:42):
to stop states from forcefully pursuing their own interests. So
ideally this is what the United Nations would be for us, right,
but it's possible we live in a condition of what
Waltz refers to as international anarchy. Uh. In that he says, well,
do we actually have a supreme authority that can just

(50:03):
stop war? In its tracks, he says without basically, international
anarchy under his terms, is a permissive or underlying cause
of war. And we have too many limitations on the
cooperation between states in our current international system, because, unlike
in the expanse, at least is how it's been portrayed

(50:24):
so far on the TV show, Earth is like a
unified planet that the United Nations actually runs. Presumably there aren't,
although we do know that there are sort of like
militia movements, right, um, because one of the main characters
it was like raised in like a militia sort of
cult kind of um. But but more so just that

(50:45):
like they don't seem to be dealing with international war,
right They're more concerned about what's going on with Mars.
They seem to have a sub star Trek level of
control over their plans. Yeah, that's a good example. I
was thinking about Star Truck as well in terms of, like, uh,
what the United Nations is ideally supposed to do, right,

(51:05):
I guess the United Federation of Planets in that case.
All right, we're gonna take another quick break and when
we come back, we're going to take everything we've been
talking about here. What we know about war in the present,
and we're gonna extrapolate that into the interplanetary future. Okay,
we're back. So now it's time where we get into

(51:28):
the I don't want to say fun stuff, but the
science fiction stuff, uh, and taking these theories that we've
set up in the beginning half of the show and
kind of extrapolate them outward. How's this going to look
on an interplanetary scale. Well, fortunately, we have so many
wonderful and not so wonderful sci fi examples to look
to when it comes to interplanetary war. But but let's

(51:50):
stop to consider just the notion of interplanetary war within
our solar system versus that of interstellar war war between
between planets and planet terry civilizations that are in separate
star systems. Okay. One of the issues here, of course,
is just the very nature of science fiction. Science fiction
dreams of the future, but it's often about the present,

(52:11):
or or even about the past. It's an extrapolation of
our current concerns and anxieties technological, political, spiritual, social, etcetera.
Taking all of this and then gazing into the future.
Every science fiction property speaks from a particular vantage point. Yeah, absolutely,
I think that is what makes science fiction so compelling,

(52:31):
and especially something like the expense. I mean, when I
watch the expanse, it is not lost on me, like
here are some lessons or commentary that we can take
insights away from based on our current situation. Clearly, it's
obvious that it was written in a post nine eleven
world exactly, and so when we envision the future. When
we're trying to envision war in the future, well we

(52:54):
can only take what we have now and extrapolated. In
the case of larger scale hot wars between major nation states,
we're thankfully forced to contemplate older models of warfare, the
world Wars and all of their their horror and and
truly globe spanning industry. I think we always have to
remember that the Second World War was truly a global affair.

(53:15):
Virtually no part of the world remained untouched by it,
if not by the actual combat, then at least by
the economic models of it. Uh. We touched on this
a bit in our Cargo Cults episode. Likewise, we often
tend to fall back on our own colonial history, complete
with its wars and genocides, in order to envision the
founding of off world colonies and the possible splintering of

(53:38):
planet based states. So let's let's consider that um ran
across A nice source on this. Astrophysicist Michael H. Hart
wrote about the matter in the book Interstellar Migration and
the Human Experience, this being a collection of essays by
different individuals, and he pointed out a few key things

(53:58):
to keep in mind when applying Earth affairs to an
interplanetary or interstellar setting. So, first of all, space is huge.
While technology is drastically reduced terrestrial travel to a matter
of hours, quote, there is no reasonable hope that future
technology will ever succeed in reducing interstellar travel times two months. So,

(54:19):
in other words, we were simply contained in this via
the confines of special relativity, bearing some amazing, miraculous breakthrough.
We can't beat a beam of light in a drag dice, right, Yeah.
I think that this is an important point to to
just like throw in like we're talking about you know,
the realities of it, but also like the fictional popularity

(54:40):
of it, and of course, like what is the biggest
fictional especially science fictional property right now that everybody knows
and loves Star Wars, right, but like when you look
at that there it's interstellar. And I mean, i'd say,
other than the prequels, it's not necessarily about actual war, right, Yeah,

(55:02):
I mean it isn't. It isn't, but not in the
way that we're talking about here. It's more about like
a group of characters. Yeah, because the reality is that,
based on our understanding of special relativity, a star to
star travel would likely work out to at least a
fifty year journey. And that's the Kessel run, right, Yeah,
And this is not again, this is this is based

(55:24):
on what we know conceivable future known technologies and and
foreseeable technologies. This is the limit. This is like a
hard reality limit, hard argues. So based on this galactic colonization, Yeah,
it would be possible you could have this sort of
uh you know, Ian in Banks culture universe, Star Wars, Dune,

(55:45):
what have you. But it would require two million years
of human endeavor, and during that time we would change drastically,
so century by century you'd have genetic advances, you'd have
bimillennial cultural change, like you know, like two different major
changes every millennium, major genetic engineering events occurring every ten
thousand years, and natural evolution producing marked changes every million years.

(56:09):
So basically, the human race that would be able to
travel from one star to another would be indistinct. They
wouldn't look like us like we wouldn't be able to
tell that they were. You would see change and splintering
occurring at various levels. So, given the time frame, given
the distances involved and the limits of travel, we're looking
at a completely colonized galaxy in two million years, but

(56:32):
one consisting of splintered civilizations and cultures, and even you
could even say special uh to the turn of to
the tune of a few hundred billion that to match
the number of stars. Now. As a side note, Heart
also throws out there that since two million years is
a drop in the bucket compared to the Milky Way
galaxies ten billion year history, it means that any other

(56:54):
emergence civilization out there would have had the same odds,
since nothing has seeming expanded throughout the Milky Way Galaxy
in the previous two million year increment, He says, quote,
we might reasonably infer that we are the first colonizing
civilization in our galaxy, and for the moment, probably the
only species with an advanced technology. If this is so,
it will be our descendants, who are the who are

(57:16):
likely to colonize and populate the entire galaxy. Yeah, so
all these distances that we've been talking about, these issues
would make it difficult, if not impossible, for a centralized
power or emperor to maintain control over a year one
hundred light year radius area, much less anything larger and
uh and he Heart points to a quote by the

(57:38):
late great author c Arthur C. Clark here, author of
two thousand and one Space Odyssey, who said, all the
starborn colonies of the future will be independent. Their liberty
will be inviolably protected by time as well as space. Now.
Heart also goes on to point out that various other
factors contribute to the idea that war isn't going away
anytime soon. If we move out into into other star systems. Uh.

(58:04):
He says that most of the Milky Way Galaxy will
become populated by more aggressive civilizations and species, and the
long range forecast is for continued aggression, war, and change.
There is a small silver lining here in Heart's prediction
of a of a human populated galaxy that still has war.

(58:25):
He says that that he believes that interstellar war would
be rare, far more rarity than it is on Earth. Again,
distance and travel have to be factored in. He says
there might be a war every fifty thousand years in
his estimation. Okay, and I think we're gonna get into
a little bit of why that is. But that that
calls into question, you know, when we look at these
fictional examples, the expanse, you know that's about two d

(58:48):
years from now. The idea I think that Heart is
working from is that like, as we technologically and and
biologically evolve, that we will become less of a warlike species.
So he's working from I think the human nature composed
well and just the limits because they're basically saying that
as you're doing with such distances here, that the type

(59:09):
of governments you see in Star Wars, Dune or Fireflies
another example, Uh, these would just be fantastic. How would
you possibly maintain dominance and rule over these vast distances? Now?
Star Wars, Dune and Firefly they all work because you have,
essentially because you have a magical faster than light travel

(59:30):
system that pops up something that you know that the
author doesn't have to really explain all that much, but
it's there, and it makes this this super fast travel possible. Uh,
it makes it comparable to the short travel times we
experience now on Earth due to advanced technology. Yeah. I
always wonder, like in Star Wars, especially in the newer ones,
when I've been watching them in the theaters, like like

(59:52):
how long is it actually taking them when they're like
jumping into hyperspace? You know, like is it is it
like what we see on the screen It like three
minutes or like a couple of days, and we just
you know, the director left some of that on the
on the floor. They cut out, like the three days
of them sitting around in the back of the Millennium
Falcon playing that game with Yeah, that I wish someone

(01:00:14):
would make that into a video game. That would be
about now. It's worth knowing. On the Expanse, we do
not they do not require such a leap of faith.
The Expanse does not in the plot in that world
does not involve a faster than a light uh speed
travel system. They do have something that's called the Epstein drive,
which is a major, a majorly important factor in that world,

(01:00:39):
but it's not faster than a light. Faster than light
travel remains impossible for humans in the expanse and therefore
lines up with a lot of what Hart is saying here. Yeah,
and I think that that's why we're able to see
such realistic depictions of what's leading up to war on
the expense as well. There's another theorist and author of
nano medicine named Robert A. Free Tis Junior. I believe

(01:01:01):
is how it's pronounced um, and he's often brought up
along with Heart because he wrote in the nineteen eighties
about coming up with a more cost effective search for
extraterrestrial intelligence, and he did so by using the cardasche
of scale, which you've probably heard us mentioned here before
Robert and previous hosts on the show. I've actually covered it.

(01:01:21):
There's I believe two episodes, right, it's a two parter.
I think I want it's been a while videos and
I've written stuff with the side about it. Yeah. If
if you're unfamiliar with it, though, I'm going to give
you a real brief breakdown. But if you want to
go back, we have previous content about that. Uh. Cardaschef
scale is a theoretical scale that was created in the
nineteen sixties by astrophysicist Nikolai Kardaschev, and it describes the

(01:01:45):
level of advancement of a civilization based on its ability
to harness the energy of its surrounding environment. He has
three types. The first is Type one, masters of planetary energy.
Type two are the masters of solar system or star
our energy, and Type three are masters of galactic scale energy.
So I think we're basically talking about gods at that point. Um.

(01:02:08):
But Freightis argues that since only type two and three
could realistically afford star probe technology, basically interstellar travel, that
interstellar warfare would be trivial to civilizations like this. The
energy expenditure of like what we would think of as
their warships would be minimal compared to the resources that

(01:02:32):
they have, So they wouldn't have the economic uh battles
over you know, what resources they have for their ships
or for their survival like water and air and food
and oil or whatever what have you. Um, And so
it's interesting, wouldn't war over economics be less likely than

(01:02:53):
well in the expanse, it's arguable, I think there's still
a Type one civilization, right, so that this line ends
up with what Heart's talking about here. They they've only
conquered the planetary resources, the energies of one planet. I
haven't really gotten out of the Solar System as far
as I can tell. Yeah, and of course here in
the actual modern world we're still level zero. So fumbling

(01:03:17):
for that for the first rung on the ladder. It really,
you know, thought exercises like this really make you consider
and realize that we aren't all that in terms of
like how we like to think that we're so far
evolved along the line of human history. But it's like, well,
in terms of what this guy imagined and was able
to sort of quantify with this theoretical scale, we're still

(01:03:41):
zero now. I also turned to a great thread that
was on Cora about how interplanetary war would be fought. Normally,
I don't do this for our podcast episodes or for
research that we do here at how stuff works, but
we're getting into pretty speculative territory. So I wanted to
see what crowdsourcing the question brought up there were. Turned out,

(01:04:01):
there are a lot of smart people that contributed to
this thread, and the two things I wanted to mention
in particular. The top post was by somebody named Micaal Danilac,
and he argued that interplanetary war would be all about
who had the best technology to destroy their enemies, and
we see that playing out in the expanse right because
the stealth tech for ships, in the discovery of something

(01:04:23):
I don't want to mention it because of spoilers and
plot points, there's something that's discovered, basically on a scientific
level that can turn the tide of war. Danaec argues
there's four possible results for interplanetary war mutually assured destruction,
which brings us back to what we were talking about
with the butter war in our episode. But the butter
battle um a race to get the best technology first.

(01:04:46):
So then the person who has that technology or the
sorry not the person, but the entity I guess the
planet in this case, would be the winner that takes
everything uh intervention by a more powerful civilization. So I
think he's essentially talking about aliens here, that like aliens
would come in an intervene in an interplanetary war and
be like WHOA, Like we're we're Kardashiev type three halt

(01:05:10):
you know, or uh total war, which unfortunately, a lot
of the examples that we found seemed to indicate that
even like preliminary beginnings of an interplanetary war would lead
to what we see today as just being all out destruction.
Another poster named Chris Rapier argued that the mass movement

(01:05:32):
of troops and equipment that were used to in warfare,
it just isn't feasible in space, regardless of whether it's
interstellar or interplanetary. So it probably wouldn't involve us like
having vast fleets that moved through space because it's too expensive,
and the fleets would be like huge targets. They'd be
super vulnerable, right, So, like again like Star Wars, like

(01:05:53):
I'm thinking of like the stuff, the Clone Wars stuff
right where they've got these like big ships that are
dropping all these clones stormtroopers on planets and they're then
they're entered, they're engaging in these massive battles, right Like
those ships would just be like huge targets from so
far away because the theoretically the planet's technology would be
able to detect them and shoot them down. Yeah, Like

(01:06:14):
this is a classic example of the Star Wars. What
you have essentially is World War two in space. Like
it's a it's a futuristic take on that level of warfare.
And warfare technology, and that leads us to possibly the
most disturbing study I've read in all of my time
on stuff to blow your mind, the lethality of interplanetary warfare.

(01:06:37):
That's right now to set up, let's talk just a
minute about colonialism. So, in order for planetary expansion to
take place, something very much like colonialism has to occur.
We can think, I think we're all on board with
this concept. Right, you have to discover, you have to explore,
you have to settle, then you colonized and the colony grows.

(01:06:58):
But then we know what comes next. Rice, Right, in
the case of of so many colonies here on Earth,
there's this there's a more gradual easement of ties. You know,
there's a there's a there's a long process, a a
long divorce that occurs between colonial master and colony. But
especially since we're Americans, it's impossible to avoid the American

(01:07:19):
Revolutionary war model. And this, of course is when the
former British colonies waged war against the British Crown in
order to gain independence. So autonomy. Yeah, so we might
logically look to the possibility of the colonized Mars for
ideas on how this might go down. And in the expanse,
we go into the book, uh, into the books, into

(01:07:40):
the TV series with an independent Martian state that's ruled
by the Martian Congressional Republic and uh. In the back
story here, there was an attempt to succeed by the
Martians and it nearly came to war. But then the
Martian forces, the forces developed the Epstein Drive that already mentioned.
They had to. They developed it first, and they game
technological superiority. So suddenly they had the advantage over Earth.

(01:08:04):
With this technology, they could travel faster, uh, not as
fast as White but like the they had the fastest
ships in the Solar System. So then they reached out
to the U N and they said, hey, you need
this technology too, Why don't we just trade. You give
us our and our independence and you can have the
steam drive as well. This is why when the show begins,

(01:08:26):
basically like when we see like these super fast like
fighter kind of ships in outer space, people just automatically assume, oh,
it's got to be the Martians because they're known for
having both the fast technology and stealth technology. They took
an unprecedented technological leap, like nothing god like, but enough
to where it prevented outright war. Now, one of the

(01:08:49):
big areas too of consideration here when we are comparing
the Revolutionary War to any of these sci fi Martian examples,
is that the Revolutionary War and entailed late eighteenth century
military technology, and at the time it took four to
five weeks for a vessel to reach the United States
from England. So that brings us to this paper. Robert

(01:09:10):
really sets us up because colonialism is important to the
argument that's presented here. The authors their names Crawford and
Baxter Ian A. Crawford and Stephen Baxter. Baxter or some
of you may be familiar with he is a British
hard sci fi author. They basically argue that because of
the confinement necessary for life supporting facilities in space, any

(01:09:32):
kind of revolution against a governing body like what we
you know, we think of with the American Revolution, or
like what is sort of set up as the preface
for the Expanse, it would be hazardous and basically impossible
because of the energies wielded by interplanetary cultures. Any war
like this would be just absolutely catastrophic and it could

(01:09:54):
threaten the entire human species. Yes, so the the intensity
of the weapons has changed. But one area where revolutionary
war on Earth versus on Mars uh one area where
it lines up kind of nicely is that that issue
of distance. Because you think about about the distance between
Earth and Mars um it varies. We have these things

(01:10:17):
called Mars oppositions. Uh So Mars and Earth, the distance
between the two it's it's constantly changing. The maximum distance
between the two planets is a colossal two hundred and
fifty million miles with the Sun between us. The average
distance is more like one hundred forty million miles. But
the closest popular possible distance is a tantalizing thirty three

(01:10:38):
point nine million miles. So the closest we've come to
that window in in recent history was two thousand threes
Mars opposition of thirty four point eight million miles, but
in July. But on July two thousand and eighteen, coming up,
that will give us thirty five point eight which which
ain't ain't bad at all. Were get going, yeah, and

(01:10:58):
we won't see anything like that again until and then
only by four hundred thousand miles. So I know these
are big numbers to throw around, but the basic idea
here is that that even in the future, there is
still an enormous Atlantic Ocean between colonial Master and Colony,
and it's an Atlantic ocean that shrinks and expands depending

(01:11:20):
on on planetary rotation. And think about the resources that
you would need not only to uh have such a
venture take off, but also to accommodate such a venture
on such a long journey. Yeah, so, and it was
basically Atlantic ocean and the Earth to Mars void wouldn't
be that different. A hundred and fifty to three hundred
days to travel to Mars based on current in your

(01:11:42):
future propulsion. But again that's that weaponry, as you mentioned,
that's where it's going to be different because we live
in a world of the w m d s and
most terrifyingly of all, we have that mutually assured destruction.
Nuclear weapons alone put an entirely different spin on the
possibilities for interplanetary war. And we should mention that in
the Expanse, it's established in the first episode that they

(01:12:03):
have nuclear weapons and they use them in space. Yes,
Now that that paper we're talking about by Crawford and
Baxter they point to, So it's a really cool paper.
If you get a chance to to read it look
it up. They point to several different sci fi examples,
but they they mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars novel
because it highlights that an un terraformed Martian civilization would

(01:12:26):
be highly susceptible to attack. So all you have to
do is crack the dome, damage the environmental support system.
There's a part in the novel where high oxygen levels
are introduced into a dome enclosure so that they can
flash burn everything without damaging the infrastructure too much like
total recall. Yeah, yeah, and uh and the yeah total
recall I think provides a nice hostile um view of

(01:12:50):
what Mars colony could, in broad strokes be. Uh, it
would be vulnerable to attack. All you'd have to do
is just attack the infrastructure, and that it includes not
only any domes or cities on the ground or under
the ground, but also orbital space elevators other things that
are key to maintain this umbilical core between a planet

(01:13:12):
that is that only has like just a small amount
of life on it and the the life sustaining home planet.
So again, like not only would the ships that would
be necessary for warfare between planets be crazy vulnerable, but
then like the actual systems that keep us alive out
there would also be incredibly vulnerable. So you're just looking

(01:13:32):
at like, you know, total destruction. And to call back
to our Rods from God's episode, um, kinetic weapons alone
would prove devastatingly effective against the planets surface, So you
wouldn't even need nuclear weapons in this scenario. Yeah, and
so let's just touch on this real quick. But Robert
and I had an episode last year on this that
again was very disturbing, but it is essentially about the

(01:13:54):
idea of uh to dropping huge items. In this case,
I think they were metal, metal telephone pole sized beams
from outer space on targets on Earth that would have
the yield of a nuclear weapon in terms of like
how much energy is exacted upon their target. Now, space
weapons and vehicles are already being developed in the United

(01:14:17):
States and other nations so that we can establish supremacy
and outer space. Right. Much of this we know this.
It came from the Cold War and the need for
a missile defense system in space. Uh and and that's
where sort of the Rods from God idea came from.
If you go back to that episode, we talked about um.
I believe his name was Pornell. He was the one
who sort of pitched this theory. And again he was

(01:14:38):
a science fiction writer who essentially ended up working for
the United States government. So when you see stuff like
the expanse, it's not all that uh, it's it's not
all that unfeasible that you know, these guys might be
coming up with ideas that are used in future incursions.
So Crawford and Baxter in their paper, they bring this
to the front of their argument, beginning with the War

(01:14:59):
of Worlds and the idea that in that the Martians
could have just totally destroyed Victorian England with simple kinetic
energy bombardment from outer space. The only reason they didn't
is because they wanted to colonize the planet. They wanted
something left over. Yeah, I mean because one of the
things about Rods from Gods that we that we that
we covered in the episode was that the reason it
wasn't a feasible um weapon system for modern humans is

(01:15:24):
that you have to get that stuff into orbit. You
have to have orbital dominance to then drop these weapons.
But if you're a space faring civiliza, if you're just
an interplanetary civilization leaving Earth going to Mars, you already
have orbital a dominance exactly. Just having the ability to
travel in space at an interplanetary level allows you or

(01:15:47):
others to subvert space travel technology and turn it into
kinetic weapons. And this is where it gets super disturbing
for me. This proposal is exactly what was done with
airplanes on September a leventh in two thousand one. So,
for example, the kinetic energy of our current International Space
Station's orbit that is equivalent to three keylow tons of

(01:16:11):
t n T, and that is nothing compared to the
energies of inner planetary craft that we may have in
our future. By Crawford and Baxter's estimation, the kinds of
ships that we see flying around in the Expanse, they
would have the kinetic energy equivalent of the energy release
in an all out nuclear war. It really, really that's

(01:16:35):
super scary. The idea that like anybody, whether it's the
civilization that possesses that technology or maybe like a in
in the case of it could happen in the expanse world,
right like a terrorist organization takes over some of that
technology just flies a ship into a planet. It would
utterly annihilate the human civilization that's there really makes you

(01:16:57):
think a little bit more. On that episode that we
it on the cases against Space and like all the
arguments about why we shouldn't travel into space, I don't
remember this being one of them. Like just the simple
fact of us creating the technology that would allow us
to travel between planets could be subverted to destroy humanity. Yeah,

(01:17:17):
Like there's a proportional scale for a technological creation. So
an automobile is also a murder weapon. An airliner is
also a weapon of mass destruction, and therefore you can
extrapolate that and just say that, Yeah, spaceship is a
weapon of genocide. Totally have used in that direction. Yeah,

(01:17:38):
I never even thought about that before. I mean Star Wars.
Just think about Star Wars. What if Han Sola just
like flew the Millennium Falcon at warp speed into the
Death Star? Yeah? Well, I mean isn't that how the
President deft the Aliens and Independence Day? That need just fly? Yeah? Yeah,
not a spaceship. I think it was like an and
And I also never saw the sequel that came out
last year, so I don't know he's in it, but

(01:18:00):
I think how he and he died. No no, no, no, no,
maybe Randy Quaid. It was Randy Queen flew it up.
Uh we we so quickly forget the sacrifices of Randy Quaid. Um,
this all comes back to real basic like strate strategy
in terms of warfare. Right, So, a higher location has
always been strategically important in war. It provides an advantage

(01:18:23):
to whichever side has it. Uh, Robert and I and
those of you who are dn D player whos would
understand this is simple dn D mechanics, Right, You get
a plus two to your role if you're above your
opponent and they are prone. So, thinking about it on
a larger scale, if you're in outer space and the
planet is below you. You know, even though we've been
talking about how vulnerable those ships would potentially be if

(01:18:45):
they're on a suicide run though, or or even if
there's nobody in it there just you know, remotely flying
this thing into a planet, it's absolutely devastated. I think
that in modern D and D rules you would get
an advantage on your role fifth edition. Yeah, that's true. Um.
As such satellites have become really valuable just in terms
of our modern warfare. For deploying troops. Right, this is

(01:19:08):
where we got GPS from. We all have GPS on
our phones now and it's the greatest thing ever, right,
But it came out of determining what soldiers bearings were
using a constellation of satellites, and satellites can also be
used as weapons to shoot down terrestrial missiles. This is
the whole idea of the other Star Wars, the one
that Ronald Reagan in the United States established the Strategic

(01:19:31):
Defense Initiative. Yeah, the one I remember as a kid
getting they would have My parents would have the news
on and they would be mentioned a Star Wars and
like it's happening. They're talking about Star Wars on TV
and they're like, no, not something different. The same thing
happened to me. I imagine like our parents generation was
incredibly frustrated by that branding effort. Uh. It's developing basically

(01:19:51):
as enterprises try to take commercial advantage of outer space. Right, Like,
like in our business, Robert and I are constantly reading
press release is about what Elon Musk and other people
are doing in terms of like sending commercial ships up
into outer space. But likewise, it would be really easy
to disrupt the economic advantage of a nation by attacking

(01:20:12):
its enterprises in space with things like lasers or particle
beams or space planes, which has all been proposed in
actual warfare here on Earth. This isn't science fiction. And remember,
as we've talked about in previous episodes, we talked about
it a lot in our Star Trek episode. We are
currently operating under the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven.

(01:20:34):
This is an international agreement that we won't put weapons
of mass destruction in orbit, nor will we build military
bases on celestial bodies like the moon. But it's vague
enough in its language that the area that's just above
Earth but not in outer space is accessible. So how
do you then? The other question too is how do

(01:20:56):
you define what a weapon of mass destruction is when
you're placing it up there and that that sliver right
if anything like it doesn't we've we've presented here. It
doesn't have to be a nuclear device. It can just
be a It can be the satellite itself, so it
can be a bunch of telephone poles. So Crawford and
Baxter they sum it up like this. Here, I have

(01:21:17):
a couple of quotes from the paper, They say, quote,
the huge energy is routinely deployed by a culture capable
of interplanetary travel on a large scale would make war
potentially hugely damaging. The kinetic energy of a Mars transport
craft would be equivalent to a one megaton nuclear weapon
or and presumably would be capable of inflicting great damage

(01:21:38):
on a surface colony or a world like the Moon
or Mars. A craft capable of fast transport to the
outer planets would acquire a kinetic energy comparable to a
major nuclear war or to a significant asteroid strike that
could inflict global damage. So the closert civilization comes to
that first rung of the Kardashian scale, the more technologically

(01:22:01):
trivial extinction level offense becomes. Crawford and Baxter uh tell
Us quote Our conclusion is that he is that human
affairs in an extraterrestrial context cannot be conducted through warfare,
which is more likely to destroy the contending cultures and
perhaps extinguish mankind altogether, than to lead to any desirable

(01:22:23):
political outcome. And their end argument is that before we
start cruising around in space, we need to establish a
political framework that guarantees colonial liberty without recourse to conflict.
This is what really what it comes down to. And
almost all of these studies that we've talked about in
this episode, when you're looking at war, whether it's how

(01:22:47):
war was conducted, how it is conducted, or how it
might be conducted, the essential reason for it is what
can we do to keep peace to make sure that
this doesn't result in the district auction of our species.
So we've been talking about war, We've been talking about
the interplanetary war. Let's let's come back to the Expanse
and discuss just how the Expanse stacks up to these

(01:23:09):
various ideas and predictions and commentaries. I think, by and large,
based on what I've read, what I've seen on the show,
I've I've I've gotten to see the premiere episode for
season two and it's and it's really good. I think
that the Expanse sticks to most of these ideas exceedingly well.
Remember in the show that the Mars Earth conflict almost

(01:23:31):
resulted in a war, but that martianal leap and technology
with the Epstein Drive that ceased open hostilities. The resulting
Cold War threatens to go hot again, but the more
rational players in the game realize that such an open
armed conflict would likely prove catastrophic to both sides. There's
even a conversation between two Martian characters in the premier

(01:23:54):
episode of season two that explores this very notion, and
the Expanse also limits the conflict to our soldar system
and an acceptable realm of influence for one power such
as un Governed Earth UH to play a major roll in. Now,
while the the UN doesn't exercise such absolute power in
the show, we can see where it conceivably could, But

(01:24:15):
we can also see how crazy it would be to
expect them to control anything more than they already exert
control over like they're already they've already lost Mars and
are struggling to maintain the belters UH. You know, it's
it's inconceivable that they would be able to control anything
beyond that. And on that note, we now are really
lucky because we have an opportunity to talk to Nuren Shankar,

(01:24:37):
who is the executive producer on The Expanse. He's one
of the show's writers, and like I mentioned at the top,
he is also a science advisory as a background in
engineering and physics. So we're gonna see what he thinks
about these effects of war, and we're also going to
take the opportunity to talk to him about how science
is portrayed in the expanse. Can you start by telling

(01:25:06):
our audience about your science background before you got into
the entertainment business. My understanding is you have a PhD
in engineering and physics. Mm hmm, that's right. Um. Yeah,
I had kind of a weird trajectory coming into the
entertainment business. I started at Cornell University as a as
a liberal arts student, and a couple of years in

(01:25:28):
I was I was studying like medieval studies and French literature,
and a couple of years in I decided to transfer
into the engineering school, which most people transfer out of UM,
because I, you know, I always loved science and math
and and frankly, you know, the job prospects of a
medieval studies major work were somewhat um limited and uh,

(01:25:53):
and so so I transferred into applied to engineering physics
at Cornell, and I actually stay all the way through
to U through graduate school to get my my PhD.
And what started happening though, as I was in the
process of doing my dissertation, I started just taking tons

(01:26:14):
of courses in history and literature again because I missed it.
And I and there was a moment when I was
actually I was leaving this amazing lecture and taking a
great course in the history of American foreign policy, and
I walked out of the hall and and I was
heading back to my lab. I was just like, man,

(01:26:36):
I don't know if I can go back to this,
and you know, it's a It was just a weird
circle for me. So I kind of came back to
what I had originally wanted to do. But I finished
my thesis and um. When I was done, I almost
got a job at Apple, which I would have probably taken.
Um and UM. And I had a couple of friends

(01:26:57):
who were out in in Los Angeles lists that I've
got to college with, and they were breaking into the
entertainment industry and always done a lot of creative writing, um,
you know, through the years. And I said, come out
to l A and b a screenwriter, And I said,
sounds great, and I just kind of threw some some
suitcases in my current I drove out to l A. Well,
I'm sure that all the research that you've done though

(01:27:20):
with history and especially in medieval studies played into the
screenwriting right absolutely. And and it's what's interesting is that people,
you know, I I tell the story to people and
they go, boy, here you know where your parents upset
that you know were you were? You upset that you
know you wasted your education. And I go like, well,
you know what, if you get educated properly, Um, it's

(01:27:41):
not a waste because it allows you to approach really
complex projects like you know, especially you know when you're
a physical sciences major, really digest material, know how to
do research. It's like all of those things come into play,
um in what I do now. It's it's it's a
complex business making its television show. And you're right, all

(01:28:02):
of those things that the history and the literature, they
inform everything that we always do. And um so I
think I sort of weirdly or just fortunately kind of
landed in the thing that I'm suited for. Um So, uh,
it's a it's a it's a very enjoyable business for me.

(01:28:24):
I get to exercise the technical engineering side of my
brain and then the purely creative side of my brain.
So it's it's it's kind of a nice happy medium
for me. Well, it definitely shows in the Expanse. I
know that you've worked on a lot of television shows
before this, but you were talking about those complex projects,

(01:28:44):
and it really seems like the Expanse takes the realities
of physics in space seriously for far more than most
science fiction television shows. I think our audience would be
interested into how your team treats those realities. And you know,
how does the writer's manage that, How much research goes
into you guys choreographing scenes where ships or characters are

(01:29:05):
are operating in zero or low gravity. Well, you know,
I think you know that really the credit for that
is it's baked into the books because you know Ty
Frank and Daniel Abraham, who are collectively James say Query
who wrote the Expanse novels. That was that was the
approach that they took. They wanted to write something that

(01:29:27):
that had, you know, at least approached the reality of
what life would be like in space, and so they
thought these things through extremely deeply. Um. I think what
happened was when when I was brought in to run
the show. Part part of what attracted me to the
project was that approach, because you know, I worked on

(01:29:51):
Star Trek the Next Generation. I've done plenty of science
fiction over the years. You typically run away from things
because they're too hard to does, or you think that
people think that they're boring, or the shows are not
really about spaceships and and and living in space their
metaphors for other things, and so people apply you know,

(01:30:13):
I mean, like let's let's ta battle starts Galactic for example,
I show that I absolutely adore. I think it's a masterpiece.
But the space, the way they use space in that
show was classically World War Two engagements in the Pacific.
That's how the whole show is made. That's a because
in the episode we were talking about Star Wars is
being very similar that they use is I mean, I

(01:30:37):
mean Ron even run more even you know, he he
wanted that sort of newsreel footage realism and it was
applied to to you know, extremely good effect in that show.
But the show is about other things. And what when
I came at the experience, the thing that I thought
would be interesting is embrace the concept of space, says

(01:31:00):
a character, because I hadn't seen that done before. Embrace
zero gravity, Embrace thrust gravity, Embrace all of these things.
Because it distinguished it from other you know, other uh
you know, attempts to do that sort of other other science,
which that just completely ignored it because they were too

(01:31:21):
complicated to understand or too weird or too difficult to produce. UM.
And and I think it gave us, It has given
the show a really unique quality, and everybody seems to
respond to it, um because it kind of feels real,
you know, and it just and and we don't comment
on it. It's not like it's not a um you know,

(01:31:43):
it's not piled with jargon, but it feels like it's
it's a more realistic depiction of the environment than people
have typically seen. Um. You know. And with regard to
how the writers treated I mean, what ty Thy, Frank
and Daniel, you know a ton of science and Tie
in particular has thought out the battle and the technology

(01:32:07):
to an incredible extent. So he's a you know, those
guys are walking encyclopedias in the writer's room. They're part
of your absolutely, yeah, and that's a very unusual thing
as well. But you know the rest of the writers,
they're not about science. Mark Mark Ferguson, Hawk Gosby, who
wrote who wrote the pilot. Um, they're not They're not

(01:32:28):
science guys at all. But I feel like writing, putting
together a writing staff is is like casting the show.
You find the right balance, and we haven't. We had
a very very unusual writers room. We had Robin Visz
who was on Madmen for many years. We have dand
No Racks, who was on The Killing for many years.

(01:32:50):
We have all these people who have never done science
fiction before, and and then just trying Daniel who written
the novels but they've never really worked in television before.
And then there's me, And so that balance has I
think hopefully pulled the best out of all of those
people from those different different places and put it all

(01:33:10):
into the show and made something I think is actually
quite unusual and special. Yeah, we actually in the episode
itself address this, just saying how much we like the
show and that not only is it you know, as
as people who do a show like ours our podcast
is it is it really interesting on a scientific level,

(01:33:30):
but also that just like the craft of writing of story,
of plot of character is all there and just really strong. Um.
And from my part, I have to say, like, even
though I do a podcast like this, I always really
enjoy this ship maneuvering because it's it just seems like
an intuitive level, it's working the right way, Like there's

(01:33:53):
something about it for me, the way that the ships
are moving. It feels so real and I it connects
me to the the alex character a little bit more
to like, Oh, look at what a great pilot this
guy is. He's so casually just like steering this behemoth around.
You know, Well, we have a we have a great
scene coming up in uh late in season two where

(01:34:16):
we were it's it's not in the books really, but
it's some alex Is is hiding behind a moon of
Jupiter while the rest of the gang is on Ganymede
station and and he has to get down to them,
but there's patrols all over the place. So what he
does is he plots a a swing shot de orbital

(01:34:40):
trajectory from where he is and just whips around a
bunch of moons. Now it's super fun to look at
when you actually we actually look at the distances involved
in the time it would take to do it, it's ridiculous,
which is larger the seas and a ridiculously long time.
So it's like, you know, it would take him like,
you know, six months but that doesn't quite working at all.

(01:35:03):
Was a joke, but conceptually we're totally on point. Um,
so I we we've got a lot of you know,
we end up doing that a lot, but where it
feels real, you know, And then I think that's that
is really the key test at any of these things,
where you know what, there's a moment. There's a moment
in in the pilot where I wanted a particular shot.

(01:35:27):
It was when, um, remember when the little the little
spaceship the Nights that the guys took from the Canterbury
they go to find the derelict ship there is. Yeah,
so we're looking at the visual effects of those, you know,
and I was kind of and it was like it's
kind of boring, and I said, you know what, why
don't we why don't we have that ship flip, you know,

(01:35:49):
flipping in into like just that last bit of the
deceleration burn and the engine plume kind of lights up
the ship. That's that there's and it is so beautiful
when you see these little maneuvering trusters fire and these
ships kind of turned slowly, and and then you know,
it's like I find it very beautiful. I mean, all

(01:36:09):
of the ship movements and all of that stuff is
really you know, we spend a lot of time, you know,
talking about you know, the specifics of how they're gonna look,
how the shots are gonna be, you know, how we're
going to convey scale, and how we're going to deal
with you know, relative speed that's like, and just how
the camera needs to move. It's it's it's a whole

(01:36:30):
the whole thing is really it's really fascinating. Um. You
don't get into these conversations a lot in in other shows. Yeah,
well I think it again, like I think it shows
definitely and it's yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm always
impressed by it. Yeah, and I'm thinking back to the
scene you're talking about too, and just like it's like
ballet and space with ships. That's that's what it was.

(01:36:53):
And it's really you know them It's funny when you
go back, like you know, in the history of movies
to to look at shows that have treated this kind
of stuff. Is you know, the one guy who got
it right was Kubrick in two thousand and one. We
bring we bring up two thousand and one in the
episode as well. Yeah, it's like, well, and and yet

(01:37:16):
in popular culture people remember like movies like you know,
Outlander where somebody's helmet you know, gets peers in their
head explodes and so so you know, so we've actually,
you know, any time there's a moment that we can
do this sort of stuff to sort of show real space,

(01:37:39):
I try to take advantage of it. There was a
moment on I think an episode sixth last season where
the rock Hoppers are out of the belt and the
guy's having a problem with his helmet and he just
flips open the visor and he brings out and you
like pulled the wire up and he closes it. It's like, yeah,
you can survive in a vacuum. These guys would that
that's not a big deal for them, and it was

(01:37:59):
just and I was talking in the room, was like
like what don't there they had explodes? Like no, and
but but anyways, it's like some things like that, I
think are the touches that are really really fun and
m I remember when I was first reading a Vibe
and wait, the moment I realized I want to do

(01:38:21):
this show. Is that scene in that compartment where Chet's
head gets blown off. Yeah, it was like I was, like,
I've never seen that before, and that's that's pretty close
to what's in the book actually, almost like sort of
beat for beat. Now, speaking of the books and the
various scientific details, and the authors do a terrific job

(01:38:43):
of working all of these, not not only the big
scientific ideas, but they're just the casual science grounding and
all the minor details and flourishes, like particularly I think
of the moss whiskey, the that grown beans, and the
various workplace a pails that are encountered. Um, I can
see where was Certainly all the having all these elements

(01:39:04):
at your disposal are helpful and bringing the world to
life on the screen. But is it ever I mean,
is it ever challenging? You have just all sorts of
references that you wish you had time to fit in. Yeah,
we we do, actually, and we create so many more
than you see. Sometimes it's like we would, you know,
we don't, like you know, ads that are playing on
TV screens for that grown beef and barbecues and like

(01:39:27):
all of this stuff and moss whiskey, and you know,
we do as much as we possibly can. All of
that stuff is there in the books and so we
try to pull it out as much as possible because
I think that those things give real texture to the environment.
UM and and all of those details and aggregate when

(01:39:49):
when you keep touching on them, when you don't comment
on them, it just makes you feel like you're in
a different place. It's like when Miller, you know, kind
of pours a little whiskey, but he's so used to
Coreo list that he just kind of throws it at
an angle and it just kind of drops into a
glass and in a little spiral. It's like, yeah, we
never shows never do that, and it's an expensive little

(01:40:10):
effect and like, but to me, those are the touches
that distinguish, and those are the things that really take
the show to a different place. And people always notice
now thematically speaking, um getting into into the books versus
the TV Leviathan Wakes published almost seven years ago, and

(01:40:32):
the series we've seen, I mean, basically the first season
in the second season come out on on either side
of of a rather pivotal political election here in the
United States. We're currently looking at so much international political
change as well, so much tension and anxiety. What has
it been like to help manage the expression of this

(01:40:55):
particular sci fi vision during the midst of all of this. Well,
you know, let's see, I'm trying to think when we started,
when we started development of season one, I think in
so that was like, um, yeah, I think like April
is when we started, and and so yeah, I mean,

(01:41:17):
you know, the politics of that they have been cooking
underneath it ever since. Um. I don't know if it
was so much you know, directly influenced it. But there's
a theme in the books that we have been very
conscious of since the very beginning, and that's about tribalization,
and that certainly seems to be you know, something that

(01:41:39):
is extraordinarily relevant right now is that this notion now
the moment people start identifying another group of people as
the other, as defined by different beliefs or skin color
or shape or size or whatever, that that's when problems
start happening all about human history. When you can say

(01:42:02):
we're like this, they're not like us, therefore we don't
have to like them. That's how Wars begin. And and
it's definitely, um a kind of a deep theme in
the show because one of the one of the things
that we've tried to do is you know, we've kind

(01:42:22):
of mixed people up, um Tie and Daniel always said, like,
you know, the people who go out into space not
just going to be you know, Caucasian, you know, Cornfred Nebraska,
boys from from the United States. It's gonna be Indian
and Chinese and everybody. And the show has done that.
And yet the Belters are identifying as different than Birthers,

(01:42:47):
who are definitely defining themselves as different from the Martians,
and the same kinds of problems are happening. So even
though we've gotten out into space, we've colonized portions of
the Solar System once again, we're back at that place
where human beings are tribalizing and seeing each other as different,
and that way leads the conflict. Nurine, It's like you

(01:43:10):
read our notes for the episode before we called you
up here, because we we literally mentioned other ing in
the episode as one of the main causes. Yeah, yeah,
and and and the diversity in the show and showing that,
you know, how colonization would work out as something we
speak to as well. Um. Our episode is focused on

(01:43:31):
the concept of interplanetary war, and then we use the
universe of the expanses like a reference point. But in
that universe, you know, uh, what are the causes leading
humanity to these wars? You know, we what we've seen
so far, at least in season one, it seems to
be mainly economic in nature. But but like you were

(01:43:52):
just talking about, it seems that there's also a theme
here that human nature leads to war no matter where
we are. I think the truth of the matter is
it's both of those things that when they happen simultaneously,
that's when starts to blow up. I mean, you know,
human nature is human nature. You're always going to have it.

(01:44:12):
But if you you know, if you have bad feelings
and bad ideas occurring in times of economic stress or
deprivation or you know, resource constriction, that is a that
is a recipe for disaster historically, and you can you know,

(01:44:33):
we have talked, we talk a lot about history in
that room. Tie is like he's gotta you know, he's
got an encyclopedia knowledge of Roman history. We've also talked
a lot about you know, when I first sat now
went with the stuff, I talked a lot about The
Guns of August, which is which is Barbara Tuckman's book
about the beginnings of world War one, and it was

(01:44:55):
like this these you know, these little domino is that
just kept knocking into each other, tiny events that led
to a cataclysmic event. And we took that approach um
through season one and into season two. Is you know,

(01:45:16):
we're building to war. It hasn't quite come yet um
in the show, but it's coming. It's like all of
these little things, misunderstandings, misapprehensions, information that doesn't get communicated
properly or gets misinterpreted in an odd way that makes
somebody look bad that I think that's how war has happened. Um.

(01:45:38):
And you know, I'll it take to somebody pushing a
button or pulling a trigger. Um. And and so we've
we've adopted that concept in our story time. Well it's yeah,
it's compelling for sure. Yeah, I guess this. Thanks thanks
once again for taking the time out of your day
to chat with us and uh and for your work
on what has been a very entertaining and thought provoking

(01:46:01):
science fiction television series. Well, thank you guys so much.
It's really our pleasure. And now we we're we we
love the show. Everybody involvement loves the show. We want
you know, we're we are just want people to get
out there and see it. It was an interesting trajectory
overseason one that, you know, the little further we got

(01:46:22):
along and now we're on Amazon Prime streaming and we're
on Netflix internationally. It's like people are discovering it now
and it's great to see that because you know, it
seems across the board people are really responding to it,
and I think they're going to be blown away by
season two. It's uh, it's it's got some amazing stuff
coming down the pike. So people know we're on the

(01:46:43):
air of February one, all right, So there you have it. Yeah,
The Expanse is a really really cool show, really cool
book series. Uh. I highly recommend it. I think they
play remarkably well with real science, with real cultural and
political concerns in a way that entertains you but also
keeps you thinking. Yeah, on top of like everything we've mentioned,

(01:47:06):
it has great characters and the storytelling is smart. It's
I've binge watched the first season with my wife in
less than a week, and I'm very excited about the
second season. And if you're if you find yourself though
more concerned then entertained by some of the more depressing
subject matter in this episode, I'd like to highlight a

(01:47:26):
group that we've highlighted before, and that is the Arms
Control Association. You'll find them at arms control dot org.
They're founded in nine and it's a national, nonpartisan membership
organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for
effective arms control policies. Through its public education and media
programs and its magazine Arms Control Today. They provide policymakers,

(01:47:49):
the press, and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis,
and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and aggrievements and
related national security issues. So no, no matter what your
level of interest, they have something for you, and you
can donate at their website to help support their work
to keep keep nuclear war and and war in general

(01:48:11):
UH relegated as much as possible to the pages of
history and fiction and science fiction. Yeah, it's certainly going
to need to be the kind of group that we
embrace before we go into space. And I didn't need
for that to rhyme, but we we really need people
to think about philosophical and political frameworks before we invent

(01:48:31):
this technology because of what we've discovered in this episode.
So all that said, we'd like to hear from you.
Are you a fan of the expanse. How did our
depiction of future warfare or the causes of warfare over
the courts of history line up with your notions? Let
us know, and I have a feeling that some of

(01:48:52):
you are going to have strong opinions about this, especially
after I read that Cora threat and I saw all
of the various ideas of how people are thinking already
about what the possibilities of interplanetary warfare are. The places
that you can reach out to us our Facebook, Twitter, Humbler,
and Instagram, or you could find us as stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com and you can always send

(01:49:13):
us an email at blow the Mind at house to
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Remember

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