Do Aliens Speak Physics, with Andy Warner

25:17It was just like, make these little monsters. Maybe this one has a thousand limbs. Maybe this one has a bunch of eyes. What do alien eyes look like? Let's dig into that. And then, you know, what are these aliens doing? Usually they're in conversation with a human in some sort of humorous way. And that was a fun thing to me because it kind of demonstrates one of the powers of cartooning because the whole book is about how difficult it is to connect with aliens, right? To find this common ground. Is it even possible? Maybe it's not. And so then almost every cartoon in it is this human speaking in English in a bubble to an alien, right?

25:56It almost works counter to the concept. But because it's a cartoon, it acts instead as a commentary. And so often these little characters are like a little Greek chorus or something like that, where they're commenting on it. They're adding a joke. They're undercutting the authors. They're making fun of us often. And the reader just takes it in stride. It's funny to them. And it then maybe hopefully deepens the experience because, you know, they're reading about aliens. You might as well get to see a few. Absolutely. So what was the hardest comic you had to do for the whole thing? Because I know for Zach, there's always like an image where he just can't draw the thing the right way.

26:34And so was there a particular one that you got hung up on? Well, I mean, a lot of the diagrams and stuff like that, Daniel will help me with them. And that's a very fun thing is that Daniel, you know, using whatever graphics program he does, will put together these little cartoons. Embarrassingly kludgy. They're not embarrassing, Daniel. They're beautiful. And then I'll draw over them. And so having somebody around to really help me out with kind of nuts and bolts of what I needed to get right was good. But in terms of the difficulty, I mean, I really had a lot of license because we start every chapter with sort of a science fiction fable, almost a hypothetical scenario.

27:18And so most of the time I was drawing the comics, I was drawing aliens and humans interacting, sometimes in a fictional setting with the hypothetical scenarios. So I could get as crazy as I wanted to. You know, I wasn't like having to get every single part of a diagram right as I would. And like, say in a city on Mars, if you mess up the way that it looks, somebody's going to call you out on it. Yeah. Nobody's seen the aliens. Little bit of that happened, but that's all right. And that was one of my favorite moments is getting the first draft of Andy's drawings. Because, you know, we have this text we've been working on and then it's time for him to illustrate it.

27:51And I get to be the first person to see these. And like, they always just added so much humor and levity and clarity to the work. So I was really glad for how the whole thing went. I had a great time. We also ended up cutting a bunch of them too. I mean, I overdrew. We also overwrote. Oh my God, Kelly. The original draft, was it like - Kelly knows because she read the first draft. She read the whole first draft, which is like two books worth. I loved it. I wish you could have kept it all. It was all great. We were having a lot of fun. There was like an extended sequence about Harvey Wallbangers that we really got into.

28:24We had to cut a lot of jokes. But we also, you know, it's good, I think, in writing humor to overwrite and then cut down. You end up with a stronger product. But, you know, some of my favorite little gags ended up on the cutting room floor. But I'll always remember the aliens. So how did the co-writing process work then with you two? Well, we would put together an outline just to make sure we were sort of aligned with where the book was going. What topics are we going to cover? What is the big idea? And then I would write a first draft and send it to him. and he would cut a bunch of stuff and ask me questions and revise a bunch of stuff.

28:58And then also add a bunch of stuff because Andy's not just a cartoonist. He also knows a lot about the history of science and history in general. And so he wrote a bunch of the chapters on like, you know, the path of science and where things have gone and added a bunch of wonderful details. And then we would go back and forth. And then when we thought the text was in shape, Andy would do a draft on the comics. And then I would comment on them, which meant like, wow, I love this one. No, I love this one. Ooh, this one's amazing. ha ha ha, LOL. I had really sharp comments. Yeah, you were very critical always.

29:31I was trying to be. I really was. I was like, what can I add? I don't know. I could just tell them which ones I laughed at. That helps. It really does. It was such a collaborative process. Yeah. I don't know. We would go through maybe like three to four ping pong backs over each chapter. Because we ended up, again, we would cut a bunch and then add a bunch back in. And it's hard at this point reading through it to remember. I mean, I did all the hard physics. But aside from the stuff that I really just can't wrap my tiny little brain around, a lot of the style has sort of melded into this hybrid of Dan Andy, the fusion of our two dad joke styles.

30:14I think we have a similar sense of humor that made it easy and a similar urge to kind of meander around. It was fun. Amazing. Well, thank you both for sharing information about the process of working on this. Let's take a break. And when we get back, let's talk about how do we know aliens even do science?

30:41June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Champs podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got like so much more to do. Like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums. We dropped like five right now. That's the rate we got to be going. Yeah, that's a good attitude. You'll also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed one of Nas's early videos. Which one? One Love. Wow! I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge.

31:16His moms were still up in that apartment. Nas was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Champs brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Champs from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mungus Shatikular and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us.

32:00I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

32:42Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused. stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host. And for years, I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. We The Unhoused is a two-time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon.

33:24Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to Weezy and Howes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is. Getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. Getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert E.

34:02Lee Boulevard. I get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're a historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky Statehouse that's actually worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:54We're back. I am grilling Din Andy. What did you say? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Did Andy about do aliens speak physics? So let's jump into some of the science here. So why do we even think that aliens do science? I think we hope that aliens do science. And that's part of just like our human projection. You know, the question of like, are we the only intelligent species in the universe, which is an ancient question and one that resonates with everybody. The fact that we ask that question says that we think intelligence is important, right? We're not just out there looking for like slime molds on other planets.

35:32There's a specific kind of alien we want to meet. And that kind of alien is similar to us because the important thing about us is that we're not just out there looking for science. is that we're intelligent. But also for me, the important thing about us is that we're trying to unravel the nature of the universe. We're this weird part of the universe that looks inward and tries to understand. And so I think we are very curious about whether aliens are like us. And so that's why we want to know, do they think about the universe the way that we do? But part of the book is trying to make the strongest case against those assumptions so that we can really figure out like, how do we know?

36:09And so even though there are some things that seem obvious, like, well, if aliens are technological and they figured out how to travel the stars, then obviously they must know how space works and how to bend it or how to curve it or how to create wormholes. And they can explain it to us, but that's an assumption. And so in the book, we dig into that very question, like, is it actually necessary to do science, to think about the universe as a puzzle that you're trying to unravel? in order to master technology that lets you navigate the stars. Right. And we have so many examples, even in just human history, of humans developing wildly complicated technologies with very little conception of what's going into those technologies on a fundamental level, like what makes them work.

36:55We're very willing to then improve, iterate on those technologies. I mean, think about blacksmithing, metallurgy, right? Or bread making, you know, these things that are not necessarily intuitive to the human brain we're able to harness and derive incredible complexity from with really no knowledge of how it actually works. And so that gives you this idea that maybe you could have this very technologically advanced alien species that just kind of iterated there and doesn't have that curiosity that makes them wonder, what is the fundamental basic part of the universe? Is there a fundamental basic?

37:37Maybe they just don't care. Maybe they just sort of iterated their way into warp drives and ended up on our front door and they just want to sample our food. We have all these assumptions because we got there. because we're curious in this very specific way. And one thing that we do over and over again that's kind of fun in this book is sort of a rug pull where we get people hyped up about a possible connection. Then we say, oh, no, no, no, pull the rug out. And then we dig deep into why maybe it's a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult to connect in that way than you would assume. So I've got a question for you then, Andy.

38:10So when Daniel was answering the question, it seemed pretty clear to me that what he was saying was that if he ended up on a planet and they made sourdough bread, but they didn't understand why, and that was where they maxed out, he would be really disappointed. If you got to a planet and the aliens made sourdough but didn't know why it worked, but they were, would you still be excited about meeting those aliens? I'd still eat the sourdough. I mean, we actually have a hypothetical situation. One of our little chapter starters has this hypothetical situation where we have this group of aliens that arrives and everybody meets them and they explain some stuff and the physics meet them.

38:47And, you know, there is this communication and they're just not interested in what the physicists are interested in. And the physicists kind of walk away disappointed while everybody else is having a party. So we have that, we imagine that exact scenario where I'm kind of chilling, eating the sourdough while Daniel's weeping in a corner. Do you think there are going to be alien cartoonists? Ooh. I mean, I would say that cartooning is simply a fundamental act in the universe. I cannot conceive. Why live in a universe without cartoons? I agree. Yeah. But I also want to defend myself a little bit there.

39:26I mean, I'm making it sound like our book is a bit of a wet blanket, you know, sort of like your book, Kelly. Yep. I was going to call us the wet blankets, but now it sounds like you're trying to back out. No, I think the answer either way is fascinating and wonderful. Like, look, either the aliens do science the way that we do and have a lot in common with us intellectually and emotionally, because science is emotional, right? It's this curiosity that drives us. It comes from within us. It's not rational. Either they are similar to us in that way, in which case, like, yeah, we can have a lot of fun, like, cooking up sourdough and standing at chalkboards writing Lagrangians and figuring out the mysteries of quantum gravity.

40:05It's going to be a great party. Or they're not. And they're more alien than we can imagine. And that's sort of what the book is exploring. But I don't think that that's a negative outcome. You know, that's really interesting. That's when we learn about ourselves, when we learn like, oh, wow, there are assumptions we've been making this whole time we didn't even realize we were making. It's sort of like the, you know, the equivalent of traveling to another country and discovering that they don't have coffee for breakfast. And you're like, what? You have spicy fish soup or like this other weird thing for breakfast or like what?

40:37That's fascinating, right? How disappointing would it be to go to another country and just discover Starbucks everywhere, right? And so, yes, you get your Starbucks on when you're in Thailand or whatever, and that's nice. But it's more interesting in some ways to not get that because that's when you learn about yourself and you learn about what's possible out there. You must be so good at writing grants. Whether I get the answer I want or I don't get the answer I want, it's interesting either way. And I would fund your grant, Daniel. Oh, thank you. Yes, yes. Well, you know, that is the case in particle physics.

41:08We publish no matter what. Find something, publish. Don't find something, publish. Yeah, and that's how you have thousands of publications. Job security, yeah. That's right. Exactly. So we got a question from a listener, Sarah. So let's go ahead and listen to that question real quick, and I'll see what you two think about the answer. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. This is Sarah from Louisville, Kentucky. My question is, are opposable funds necessary for the development of tools and technology? Would aliens need to have fingers and thumbs to make spaceships to visit us? Thank you and keep up the good work.

41:40All right, so I love that we got a biology question, sort of biology adjacent. I think the, what are the only other organisms that have opposable thumbs? Is it pandas and they use it to hold bamboo? Raccoons. Raccoons! Yeah. Oh, yeah. Garbage monsters. Yeah, absolutely. No, raccoons are the future, dude. I love them. They're still spreading, you know. Yeah? That's just because raccoons are your neighbors in Berkeley, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah, there's alleyways you can't go through because there's signs posted about how they'll beat you up and take your lunch. Oh my gosh. That's great. They're made of much sterner stuff in Berkeley than they are out here.

42:17They definitely run from us out here. Maybe we should send in the National Guard to clear out the raccoons. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, don't give anybody any ideas. But in all seriousness, I mean, an interesting aspect of this book actually is that biologists have actually spent a lot of time already thinking about aliens. It's this part of the thought experiments that people have already engaged in that we turn to to write this book. actually. There's already books about how humans evolved and how unique our evolutionary path may be compared to other environments, ammonia-based life forms, things like that.

42:53And so we actually already had this sort of rich tradition of thought experiments, of writing to look to for this book, and the answer is, of course, no. Opposable Thumbs, they've developed a few times. It's great, They're super useful. But there's a lot of different ways to articulate things in the world and engage in tool use. I mean, dolphins attach a sponge to their nose as they dig around in the inner tidal, or I guess it's in the sand. But, you know, we have all these examples, even just on Earth, of pretty complicated tool use, developing and being engaged in with animals that don't have these opposable thumbs.

43:31Don't get me wrong, they'd be really useful. And it'd certainly be fun to meet aliens with opposable thumbs. Yeah, and I want to give kudos here to the biologists because they really have done their homework much more than the physicists have. Wow. You know, imagining like what's beyond the box of our Earth assumptions. You know, what could alien life be like? As Andy says, you know, does it have to be based on carbon? Could it be silicon? That's exactly the kind of thinking I think physics hasn't done enough of. looking back inwards and saying, well, where are we making assumptions? Where could things have gone differently?

44:03And so, yeah, biologists have done a lot of this. But this is a great question. And I think there are examples of fairly intelligent critters on Earth, like octopus. They're very smart, and they obviously can interact with their environment. They have these grippers, et cetera, but they don't have opposable thumbs. But I think the heart of Sarah's question, essentially, is do you need some way to manipulate the environment so you can build up on stuff and interact with it in a sophisticated way. And I think that probably is required, but I wonder if that's possible underwater, you know, if it's possible to develop as complex tools underwater, you know, like, can you do metallurgy?

44:38Can you extract minerals? You know, I think that might be required as some sort of land-based thing. But again, you know, that's just our one experience. Who knows? Great question, Sarah. Yeah. So are you ruling Enceladus out then as a place where we'll find intelligent life because there's just too much water? I'm looking forward to having my mind blown by being wrong about that when we discover alien technology under the surface of Enceladus. Well, okay. I mean, one interesting thing that we, while we're on the subject of hands and thumbs, that we get into with this book, and Daniel kind of was probing at this, is how much of our own, the way we do science and what we're curious about is literally our structure, how our bodies are, the 10 digits on our hand that form how we count things, The fact that we're bipedal and so our neck cranes up to look at the sky pretty easily.

45:29And so we wonder about the stars in a way that maybe an animal on all fours of it's slithering around just simply wouldn't. And so a lot of the way that we track the development of science may actually come down to our very human form. And so if an alien evolves this entirely different way, they may have just a very different alien preoccupations based on something as simple as them not having thumbs, right? That may be the fundamental difference. So the genus Homo has been around for a long time and we've had this like sort of general body shape. But we haven't, as far as I know, been doing science the whole time.

46:07So when would we say that we started doing science? Man, that is such a deep question. And I know that the like typical pop sci explanation is like, well, Galileo and Francis Bacon decided to do experiments about 500 years ago and then science began. And we've been doing science ever since. And that's true maybe at the very zoomed out level. But when you look at it, like most stories, it's much more nuanced and interesting. Because people have been doing experiments for much longer than Galileo and Bacon. Even the Greeks, they tested stuff out. I think this simplified cartoon version. Hey there.

46:45Ooh, watch it, watch it. I do mean cartoon in a derogatory way there, unfortunately. Wow, I just realized I said that. this oversimplified version. There you go. It doesn't tell a true story because people have been, as Andy said earlier, they've been doing stuff for a long time, but they've also been sometimes wondering why does it work and how does it work and what is the mechanism? They haven't always figured it out. And the technique for figuring that out has definitely evolved, but also it's evolved since that moment of the scientific revolution. The way we do science today is not the same as the way we did science 500 years ago.

47:22We don't just have experiments anymore, for example. Now we have simulations. Here's a whole new category of scientific investigation that didn't exist before, in vivo, in vitro, in silico. So we don't know what the future holds also. So science is like a gradually evolving process. The science itself is not a static idea. I just love the idea of science not being a static idea. I think that was one of the things that really drew me to the book was Daniel articulating that in the first email he sent to me. And the idea of, you know, a lot of concepts that we have being these kind of living things that are re-examined and evolve and maybe had a few different times that they were quote-unquote invented and then fused together.

48:07I think Daniel's ability to perceive that is frankly what drew me to the project in the first place. Cool. And I think it's fascinating because it lets you imagine how aliens might be doing science. And maybe they don't do science at all, as we talked about, but also maybe they do some super crazy advanced version of science. We've added to our technique for building knowledge about the universe. There's no reason to imagine aliens a million or billion years more advanced than us have developed some new technique. And they look back at ours and they're like, oh my God, y 'all are so primitive.

48:37You're still doing that? It takes so long to figure out the universe. They might think about us the way we think about this hypothetical scenario of aliens who are not interested at all at how things work, right? And so even just a question of like, do we do science the same way tells us so much about our history and the assumptions we're making about the way that intelligent critters can understand the universe. Yep. I love the conversations about that in the book. All right. So let's assume that we get to meet aliens one day, which would be awesome. What would be some challenges of communicating with them?

49:09What do you imagine that would be like? Well, I mean, number one is, are we talking to the alien physicists or the alien cartoonists, right? I think we should let Andy answer this one first. Yeah, I mean, it's from the get-go, it's a more difficult prospect than you think, right? Because we have a bunch of examples, even just on Earth, of things that demonstrate a clear intelligence, clear, complex behavior that changes contextually. Like all these things, you know, that we're looking for over and over again. We're like, this makes humans and we have to redefine it every time a biologist raises their hand and says, well, actually, right, there's a bunch of other species that do that.

49:47But we find actual communication with these other organisms very difficult, if not impossible, right? Like people on TikTok, they have those boards where the dog presses the buttons to talk. Like, come on, give me a break. And we basically made dogs. Dogs are a human project. That fundamental issue that we deal with here on Earth with all of our species, client or not, is something that would immediately come up with aliens. It's just, you know, where is that point of connection? What is communication and how does it actually happen? And so that's why, you know, we go down this Carl Sagan route of finding the most basic things you could talk to one another about.

50:30But, you know, that dream, that Star Trek dream where everybody's got the communicators and stuff like that, like, we don't have those for dolphins. and they're right there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we don't have a concrete answer to this question, of course, because we haven't met the aliens, which is why we have to do this biological game of like, let's look around on Earth and try to imagine what the most difficult communication scenario is on Earth and then make it 10 times harder to imagine what it's like for the aliens. And as Andy says, we've already stumbled, right? We can't communicate with whales.

51:03We know they're talking to each other, but we don't know what they're saying. but also we have trouble communicating with humans, right? Like translating human languages is possible when you have like two existent populations who can like point to stuff and say, this is an apple, that's an apple. But when you have, when one of those populations is gone, but they've left a bunch of written writing behind, we really struggled to figure out what they're talking about. Even if we have enormous numbers of examples, even if we have a lot of culture in common, obviously the same biology, without like crazy cheat sheets like the Rosetta Stone, we may not have even ever translated Egyptian hieroglyphics.

51:39And there are still ancient human texts that we don't know what they mean. And so if we don't know how to do it for humans, if it's like too hard for humans, then like what are the chances we're going to be able to decode an alien message? And you know, like we've received weird messages from space. I don't messages, but signals from space, like the wow signal, right? What did that mean? We don't know. We don't know how to translate it. Is it encoded? How is it encoded? How would you know if you decoded it correctly, right? We don't know. And that's the whole problem is that there's always an encoding.

52:09You can't take an idea and just give it into somebody else's head. You have to pass through some sort of symbols. And those symbols are always fundamentally going to be arbitrary and cultural. They reflect who you are and what you think about those ideas. And as Andy mentioned, And Carl Sagan made a great effort on the Pioneer plaque to try to communicate with some potential alien civilization that's going to pick up the Pioneer probe. And, you know, before we rag on him, which we're about to, we should say that NASA only gave him like two weeks to come up with this. They were like, oh, wait, last minute idea.

52:41Maybe we should add a message to aliens. Can you have one by Tuesday? Oh, my gosh. So he did a great job for, you know, the time constraint. But in the end, what he drew on the pioneer plaque, and, you know, it's like a, again, cartoony version of the hydrogen atom. You mean the best of what we're able to do when you say cartoony version, I'm sure. Yeah. Done by good looking people, you know. It's our sort of mental image. And, of course, he avoided any English and even avoided like math. He was just trying to come up with pictograms that he thought would inspire in alien minds the same idea. But, you know, I showed the pioneer plaque to a bunch of grad students here at UC Irvine to get a sense for like, does this work?

53:23Even on the same like biological construct for physics grad students? And they had no idea what this thing was. You know, they were like, I don't know. They came up with clever interpretations, but nobody got anywhere close to what Carl Sagan was thinking. And it just highlights like how difficult it is to invent a communication system that really is universal. You can't do it. And this whole like linguists and philosophers of language who've worked on this and they've concluded it's essentially impossible to translate a language without those people around to like point at stuff. Wet Blanket Club.

53:57But you should still buy our book. That's right. Support the community of wet blanket people. And that's why in the book, we don't focus on this SETI like scenario where we get a message and we're like writing back and forth to the aliens over thousands of years. Instead, we imagine the aliens are here. We have a physical context together where we can point at apples and try to use that to build up a communication system because that potentially could actually work. Yeah. I mean, even just you using the word cartoony is actually a good example to talk about like the way that visual language is so contextual, right?

54:33Like comics is the art of simplification, like down to the dots of the eyes and like a triangle for a nose. somebody unfamiliar with comics does not recognize that as a human face necessarily. Or like, you know, the sweat beads going like this. Like this is contextual stuff that people familiar with the language are like, oh, I understand that. Somebody unfamiliar needs to be taught it, right? You extrapolate that out to the universe and my God, good luck. I think there are these Japanese comics where when they're sleeping, there's like a bubble coming out of their nose. Yeah, and I had no idea what that was.

55:07I was like, Ada, why do all, why do, Ada's my daughter. He's like, why do they all have snot bubbles? And she's like, no, they're sleeping, mom. They're sleeping. But I don't get snot bubbles when I'm sleeping. Exactly, right. Do you have the throb thing? I mean, I don't know, like, sweat definitely does erupt from my head whenever I'm nervous. But that's, that's just. I see. That's the equivalent of like a string of Z's coming out of somebody's mouth. Like not everybody snores, right? So you might be like, what? Fascinating. So the wet blankets need to go grab a little bit more tea. And when we're back, we're going to talk about whether or not aliens do math.

55:48June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Champs podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got like so much more to do. Like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums. We dropped like five right now. like, that's the rate we gotta be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. You'll also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed one of Nas's early videos. Which one? One Love. Wow! I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge.

56:23His moms were still up in that apartment. Nas was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Champs brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Champs from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mungus Shatikula, and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us.

57:07I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you, and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is.

57:51Getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. Getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard. To get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're a historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akilah Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky Statehouse that's actually worth the wall space.

58:28We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused. Stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host. And for years, I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories.

59:11In the last few months alone, I've interviewed Unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQIA plus community and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the Unhoused existence. We do Unhoused as a two time Webby and Signal Award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wittler, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the Unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to We The Unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00:00All right. The wet blankets now have our tea. We've run ourselves out. That's right. That's right. We're back. And so in the book, you also deal a lot with the question of how do we know aliens will do math? Because, you know, often people will be like, well, we'll just communicate in math because it's like this basic thing. We must all share it. But, you know, as wet blankets, you have to critically examine that. So what do you think? I think that's a really fun idea and it is a powerful idea. And I actually got to talk to Noam Chomsky when writing this book. What? Yeah, because he famously answers all of his emails, which is incredible.

1:00:34And one reason why I try to do the same thing, I'm not nearly as famous as Noam Shkampse. I'm sure he gets more emails about aliens than I do. But I wrote to him and asked him what he thought would be a good protocol for beginning a conversation with aliens, because he's a very smart dude, obviously thought about language, and he actually wrote back. And I had a conversation with him and his basic argument was aliens will do arithmetic. And so we can connect with them on the concept of like one plus one equals two, which he thought was universal. And we can argue the other side of this in a minute, but it is really fun to think through like, how do you go from one plus one equals two to like explain to me how you build a warp drive?

1:01:14There's some really interesting and fundamental concepts there because over the last 100 years or so, mathematicians have been digging into the basis of math and they've been wondering like, where do the rules of math come from? How is it all connected? What are the smallest number of axioms you can begin from and then build up all of human mathematics? What are the foundational rules? And they discovered something really cool, which is that it's all based on arithmetic. Like if you start from, I know how to add numbers and have a recipe for going from smaller numbers to bigger numbers for putting them together, then you can derive like calculus and linear algebra and differential equations.

1:01:51All of the cool, amazing, fantastical math we have comes from arithmetic. And I think this is where Noam Chomsky was coming from. He's like, you start there and you can build up to everything else. That is really the foundation of how we think and express ourselves. And of course, all of modern physics requires fancy math, but in the end, it's all just arithmetic. But has arithmetic always been the same? Like if you go back to ancient cultures, do they do arithmetic the same way that we do? Is it really that basic? Yeah, that's a really cool question because obviously people have been doing arithmetic for thousands of years, right?

1:02:22But it's only like 100 years ago, people formalized what the rules are. Like before that, arithmetic was more like a bunch of examples. Like I can write down 30 plus 31 equals 61. How do I do arithmetic for some new set of numbers I've never seen before? You need like a rule that applies always. So yes, people have been adding numbers the same way, but only recently have they like found those fundamental rules that underlie all of it. And it's really cool because those rules are kind of computational. They're like a little recipe. Like if you have a number, how do you get to the next one? And you can build up from there.

1:02:57And so the next thing Chomsky said was, yeah, you start from arithmetic and then you go to computer programs. because if arithmetic is like a little bit of computation, then you can go from there to like the simplest kind of computer. And this is something Alan Turing figured out like almost a century ago is that there is a basic computer, a way to describe like the most simple way to do computation, to like manipulate information. It's called the Turing machine. And you can go from like, how does arithmetic work? thinking about that as computation to building up to a Turing machine. And then if you can exchange basically computer programs with the aliens, then you can encode really complex ideas.

1:03:43And you can go from there to like, here's the Lagrangian of quantum field theory, you know, or here's why sleeping people have snot bubbles or whatever, right? Basically everything. And so this is the idea is like, try to find the fundamental ideas, start from there and use that to build up to the more complex. Because incredibly, the world is organized that way, or our ideas are. They're built on these few foundational concepts from which you can extrapolate. So could you help me understand how we get from understanding arithmetic to explaining, for example, the endocrine system? So I can sort of understand how math helps you explain physics.

1:04:22And biology absolutely has math. I don't want to imply it doesn't. But how does math help you understand something like the endocrine system? How would you explain that to an alien once you have math as a foundation? Is the idea that the computer program lets you do it after that? Well, to answer that, I'd have to understand the endocrine system. No, I actually do understand it a little bit because of Katrina's diabetes. But fundamentally, the endocrine system, as you say, there's a mathematical model for it, right? You know, these things create those things and you put insulin in the cell and the sugar goes across the barrier.

1:04:52And though we have a very rich sort of experience with it, fundamentally, it is a mathematical description. Right. We're talking about a number is going up and down and their relationships with each other, the differential equations. One of the reasons the endocrine system is complicated is because it is a bunch of differential equations. And so if you can go from arithmetic to computer programs, you can use those computer programs to describe models, right, to build models of an endocrine system. Then you can be like, oh, this is my model of the endocrine system. This connects to this part and this connects to that part.

1:05:23And so you can make those links between your mathematical model and what's happening in reality. Clearly, you should be one of the delegates on the first group that gets to talk to the aliens. I want to be the second group, actually. Because the first group might get eaten? Yes, exactly. We'll send in the biologists and the cartoonists for the first group. Hey. But, you know, all this assumes that aliens do math the way that we're talking about, that one plus one equals two on alien planets. And nobody's being Terrence Howard here. We're not suggesting that, you know, one times one equals two or something crazy, but that there are human assumptions in even in arithmetic, you know, the idea of oneness or two-ness.

1:06:06And here we're going to sound totally like bonkers philosophical for a minute. But these are the questions we're asking, you know, like would aliens come up with this concept of one plus one equals two? It's not that one plus one doesn't equal two around some alien planet, but that they might never arrive at that mathematics because they might not care about the distinctions between things. Saying one plus one equals two requires a few basic assumptions, like saying that a thing is a one thing, which means it has an edge. You're distinguishing it from the rest of the universe. And where is that edge anyway?

1:06:37Where does an apple end and the universe begins? Or where does my body end and the universe begin? And these are cultural dotted lines we're drawing around stuff because it makes sense to us. And as Andy says, that's our context. But it doesn't have to be, right? If you like grew up in the atmosphere of a star and everything is sort of fluid and constantly emerging into itself, maybe you're never like drawing those dotted lines. Maybe that seems totally made up. And like, yeah, maybe you can invent weird mathematics based on those arbitrary dotted lines. But maybe their mathematics is based on real numbers instead of integers.

1:07:08You know, it's all continuous and fluid. All right. So let's say that we do, we meet those aliens and we find a way to communicate with them through math and computer programs. Do you think that they would have made some of the same discoveries as us? Like, would they have gone on the same path that we went on? One thing that is really fascinating about science as the way humans practice it, at least, is how dependent it is on our own very human fascinations, our preoccupations. Like my dad with the sex-changing fish, he devoted his life to that. And now we all know that much more about sex-changing fish, and it's great.

1:07:44But had he not fallen in love with a blue-head wrasse, maybe that wouldn't have happened and we would know that much less. And so science, as humans practice it, you don't get an assignment, or rarely, maybe in Soviet Russia. But it's usually based on your preoccupations, your fascinations, and then that kind of drives the whole thing forward because somebody else gets fascinated by what you were fascinated by and what you found and what you explained to them, and they get preoccupied by it. And then they develop it and make it more complex and it compounds and la-di-da-di-da. But it all comes down to this very human brain becoming interested in something.

1:08:29And what humans become interested in is very human, right? I mean, we evolve to protect ourselves, to pass on our genes and to, you know, exit, right? And so whatever works in service of that is probably what we're preoccupied by, what we're fascinated by. In some way, there's arts, there's all these things that you can get into that aren't the basic things that help you not get eaten by the lion. But the circumstances that aliens evolved under are by necessity going to be different. I mean, it would be so, it's unlikely enough we're going to meet aliens. Having an alien walk out of the alien ship and it looks like Andy would be, you know, it's unimaginable.

1:09:11And so whatever you're dealing with, you're dealing with an organism, something intelligent that has evolved to survive a completely different set of circumstances and so therefore has a completely different set of interests that have just shaped the path of its science. And so from that level, I mean, it's going to be pretty wild and woolly compared to ours. I mean, maybe there's these questions that are fundamental they can dig down into that preoccupy them. But what gets them there, what gets them to that fundamental question is going to be a different path than the one that took us there. And so it's going to look different to an outsider, i.e.

1:09:50us. And even if they are like biologically identical to us, like take the most extreme version of this where there's just humans on planets all over the galaxy, right? Even in that scenario, how similar would their science be to ours? Because if you want to imagine like we're meeting these folks, we're having an interplanetary science conference. We want to see if we're at the same place. Are we asking the same questions? Do they have answers to our puzzles, right? Right. And even if they are humans, then they're very likely going to have taken a different path through science. And as Andy suggests, like if you look back to the history of our science, you can find all these moments when science pivoted on a happenstance like an accident.

1:10:31And we talked about some of these on the podcast, you know, somebody leaving something in a drawer over the weekend and then coming back and developing it anyway, even though that doesn't really make sense. And discovering radioactivity and x-rays and all these things were discovered accidentally. And it could have happened 100 years earlier or 100 years later. And the path of science depends on these things. And so even alternate Earths, we think probably would have a very, very different path through science. Even if you believe that there's one fundamental explanation to the whole universe, that there is an answer out there, that it's discoverable, we're probably all climbing different sides of sort of physics mountain, which is fun to think about.

1:11:11You know, if you imagine what would it be like to meet all those folks. But we can also do something more concrete, which is to look back into the history of the Earth before we had sort of one global scientific community, you know, when we weren't as connected. And so like the Mayans and the Chinese and the Greeks, they all developed sort of initial proto-scientific mathematical approaches to understanding the universe independently. And that's sort of like the best we can do without actually meeting the aliens to try to figure out like how universal is it, at least, you know, in the human biological brain to begin on the same path or, you know, is it vastly different?

1:11:52And so in the book, we dig deep into like what the Mayans were up to and how the Chinese mathematical structure was different. It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about history. That's one of the things I love about this book is that it's so interdisciplinary. You get a lot of history and a lot of philosophy and a lot of science. And I learned a lot also while reading it. That was also a terrifying part of the book because there's a long tradition of physicists writing books outside their discipline and embarrassing themselves. And I did not want to add to that canon. So I sent each of these chapters to like an eminent scholar in that field.

1:12:25Like, did I misrepresent this? I'm reading it this way. Is that right? And so I was always on pins and needles when we got those reviews back. Your humility will pay you back, I'm sure. That was a good thing to do. I mean, you'd rather hear you're wrong about it before you publish the book than after, right? Yes. Yep. That was absolutely my attitude. We also sent our chapters out to experts. And I'm like, please, like, be as brutal as possible. I want you to tell me that I'm wrong in secret. Get the knives out of there. That's right. That's right. Exactly. And can you spoil the ending a little bit?

1:12:59Were the Chinese, Babylonian, Mayans approaches to these things super different or were they pretty similar? They were similar in some ways and different in others. Like everybody started from, wow, the sky is really interesting and there seemed to be patterns and let's describe those mathematically. But they were also different. Like the Greeks are very geometric. You know, everything, the answer to every question in Greek astronomy is like, where are things in 3D space? Whereas the Chinese were more like algebraic. They had tables and patterns that they would use. And to them, that was an answer, which is really fascinating.

1:13:34Even though the Chinese sort of early model of the universe has sort of geometric inconsistencies, and you can see in the early literature, some Chinese scholars were like, hold on a second. If you're saying this and that, then how do eclipses happen? Well, maybe let's just not think about that. And so there are different ways of thinking about it. The tradition of sweeping things under the rug goes a lot that further than you think. Yeah. You know, because to them, the answer wasn't geometry, it was algebra. Also, we see like the different cultural importance, like to the Babylonians, which became the Greek tradition.

1:14:07This is like foundational and became like really the core of modern intellectual thought. Whereas to the Chinese, like this was useful and it was important politically. But then they got really interested in things like, you know, material science and gunpowder and astronomy didn't play as deeply important a role in their culture. So it's really fascinating to see sort of the similarities and the differences. All right. Well, I highly recommend the book. It's amazingly well-researched. It's super clear. It's funny. The comics are amazing. I highly recommend that people should go out and get Do Aliens Speak Physics.

1:14:41And you two are amazing little colla - little. You two. Sorry. You two are amazing collaborators. I'm sorry. I talk to my kids too much. I'll take it. I'll take it. Well, you two are my favorite two collaborators. I've been working with both of you for years on fun topics. So it's a joy for me to talk to both of you. Yay! It was an honor to be on the show. And it was an honor to make this book with Daniel, too. This was such a fun time. And it was also so fun to talk to you about it, Kelly. You had such good questions. Well, that's because Daniel wrote me an outline. But it was... I know how it is.

1:15:17Well, it was great to meet you, Andy. Thanks for being on the show. 100%. Thanks very much, everybody.

1:15:28Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you. We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D &K Universe. Don't be shy. Write to us. Joy is essential and it's also elusive.

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1:16:53And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off.

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