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METI: Existential Threat? Probably Yes · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and we're just doing what we can together, moddeling
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: through the both of us, and this is stuff you
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: should know.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Wow, Ed Waite has set up.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I wanted to make sure the bar was really low.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Well, hold on a second before we get going. We
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: don't often plug shows, but there's a new one on
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: our network called Inner Cosmos. Oh, yes, that we wanted
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to plug. That sounds super awesome. You know, have you
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: ever heard of David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist. Seems like
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: he might have come up before, but he's from Stanford.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: He's a best selling author and he's you know, he
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: explores these insightful questions about modern brain science, how it
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: intersects our lives. It's just kind of write up stuff
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: you should know. Is ali definitely and I think the
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: listeners would really checking it out.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: So go check it out.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: What's it called again, It's called Inner Cosmos. It's awesome,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: very nice. I'm excited about this one. I think this
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: may button up our sort of talking to aliens suite.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I think you're absolutely right, because we've done one on
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: SETI yes, which is called the Search for Estra Terrestrial
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Jerk Intelligence.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's go listen to that episode. It's great.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: That's listening out for stuff out in the Great Beyond.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: We did the Golden Records?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Did the Golden Records? What were those?
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Those were Carl Sagan's Love Child where he basically put
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: snippets of world music, pictures of people from around the world.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I think there was like greetings on there. And also
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: then there were plaques. There was engravings of like human anatomy,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: which is and I think our location in the universe too.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's where we are and this is a.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Penis you think exactly. Check it out.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So now we're moving on to probably the culmination, which
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: is something called medi.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, we did one more too, Yeah, No, we did. Okay,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: you didn't want to talk about that?
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Well, what was it? I can't remember.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Uh. I'll tell you, Chuck that there's a great name
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: for it, and uh I will share that with you directly.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: But I just want to talk about what a great
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: name it was. I named it myself, yeah, and uh
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: it was just an all around good name.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: It was kind of along these lines a little bit, right, man.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, I got it how alien contact might work. Isn't
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: that a great name?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: That's great?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: So that was okay, that came before and then now
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: this one, and you're right, it's all buttoned up. We'll
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: never talk about it again.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Right, But like I said, now we're going to talk
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: about MEDI which also goes by active SETI, and that's
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: messaging to extra you know, ets intelligence. I'm not going
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: to try and say that word ever again on the show.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Oh always goop it up and you always snicker it's cute.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: But let's get into it.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: So, Chuck, you said that active SETI METI. They're one
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: and the same. But the whole purpose of them is
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: to not just sit around and listen passively for you know,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: alien transmissions. That's what we've been doing forever. This is
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: something entirely different. It's proactive where we are now figuring
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: out how to shout out into the universe and send
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: those transmissions that we're hoping to find from alien civilizations
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: ourselves out there for other alien civilizations to find.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it turns out it's a pretty controversial thing.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you first hear this idea, you're like,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: if you're like me, you're like, oh cool, Like, great idea,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: let's start sending messages out. But a lot of people
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: are saying, oh no, no, let's slow our role here, right,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and we'll get into all the pros and cons toward
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the end. But there is an idea that capital g
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: capital s. The Great Silence is proof to some people
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: that hey, there is no one out here. We would
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: have heard something by now, the time that it would
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: take to colonize the Milky Way, you know, like it
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: would have happened by this point, and we would there
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: should be alien life everywhere if it was going to happen.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw someone say that it should be as
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: obvious to us as the full moon is, Like.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: The universe should be pretty obvious theeming.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: With alien life, and yet it's not. That's the basis
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: of the Fermi paradox. And so it's also been called
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: the Great Silence. It's just weird, it doesn't make sense,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: and so a lot of people say, well, that just
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: means we're alone in the universe. Other people there's a
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: SETI researcher, a legendary SETI researcher named Jill Tarter. She
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: said that that concluding that life, that the universe is
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: lifeless based on the small amount of searching we've done
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: is akin to dipping a glass of water in the
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: ocean and declaring the ocean lifeless after that.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Search, which is kind of the opposite. Like some people
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: are saying it would have happened by now, and she's saying,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: how do you know we've been listening for you know
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: how long, like sixty something years? Yeah, And she's like,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: that's nothing. So the idea of METI comes along, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: some people say that, you know, we may as well,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: because we've been inadvertently bouncing, you know, since the advent
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: of satellites for communication and television and stuff like that. Right,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: we've been sending signals out there inadvertently for years anyway,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: So why not just put a little purpose behind it?
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Or as our boss and founder of stuff you should know,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Connell Byrne would say, make it intentional.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: He'll always says that I love.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: That his ears are burning right now.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: It's a good later run a business with intention sure,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: as opposed to being reactive.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Right exactly, So he'd be a medi supporter. It sounds
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: like we should ask him sometime So there's a there's
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: a thing. It's that whole idea that you were talking
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: about that we've been basically broadcasting our presence inadvertently anyway.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: It's called the barn door argument, like we already left
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: the barn door open. You can't put the cow back.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: In something like that cow has already seen the city exactly, Yeah,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: can't take it back to the farm exactly, mixing metaphors.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: No, but I think it works very well, and we'll
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: get into that a little more. But the answer from
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of people to that is is that's actually
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: not true. You can kind of disassemble it, and we'll
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: do that later. But the idea is that if we're
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: if we switch over to purposeful transmissions, directed transmissions, what
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: what con will say?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Intentional intentional transmissions.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: That's a whole new ball of wax. And because we
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: don't know what's out there, we can't say that what's
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: out there wouldn't come harm us if we caught its attention.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: So because we don't know enough to say either way yet,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: we should not do that.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or at the very least, and again this is
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a preamble to what we're going to dig into more later.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: But at the very least, let's like slow our role
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: here and take our time and not let doritos do it.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that'll make happen at more sense in a minute.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: But Yeah, there's something in risk management called the cautionary principle,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: and it's basically saying, like, if if an activity or
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: an action could cause tremendous harm and you don't know
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: enough about it to say that it won't, either do
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: more research and figure out ways to make it safer,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: or don't do it at all. And that's the argument principle. Yeah,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: that's a lot. That's what a lot of people use
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: to argue against many we don't know enough right now.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: We're not saying don't do it. It's a cool, worthy pursuit,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: just don't do it the way that you guys are
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  Speaker 2: suggesting right now, which is completely off the cuff and
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: basically a group of rogue people are trying to do
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: it solo for the whole world.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a nice segue, speaking of good
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and bad ideas, to go back in time to the
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: fact to the idea that this isn't a new idea.
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  Speaker 1: We've been thinking about this as humans for a long
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: long time, dating back to the early nineteenth century, there
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: was a German mathematician named and these weren't crackpots. These
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: were pretty respected people in their fields. Carl Friedrich Gauss.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: He said, here's what we should do. Why don't we
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: cut down a bunch of the Siberian forest. Why don't
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: we plant wheat fields kind of like crop circles, but
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: in the shape of big right triangles. To just let people,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: your people, let these ets see it. If they can
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: see it, at least they'll know that we understand the
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Pythagorean theorem. Then about so, let's we'll get a bunch
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: of free wheat out of it. Wheat not weed.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: I said, wheat.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, they said weed.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: I can't see Carl Friedrich Gouss calling it weed.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: That'd be funny, though, if they just planted a huge
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: marijuana fields. They're like, you might as well kill two
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: birds here.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: That initiative might have happened back then.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So then a few decades later in Austrian astronomery, name
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: named Joseph von Littrew said, how about this, you like
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: wacky ideas, why don't we dig big twenty mile wide
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: trenches that are in different geometric shapes and fill them
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: with kerosene and set them on fire.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: It's a little you don't have anything but smoke inhalation
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: to show for it after that's done. At least with
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Gouss's idea, you had wheat or weed, depending on what
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: you grew.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: But these were sort of the early ideas of how
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: we could potentially send a message, you know, obviously before
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the advent of radio telescopes.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, and they were dumb, dumb ideas, but it does
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: show that we were thinking about this. We we want
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: to contact other civilizations that may be out there. Sure
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: there were I'm sure other proposals that didn't quite make
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: the historical cut. But if we kind of flash forward
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: to November of nineteen sixty two, we come to probably
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: what you could call the first medi broadcast. It was
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Soviet astronomers at a radar station in the Crimea. I
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: think it's one that's still there today called evepteriea a
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: seventy millimeters or seventy meter telescope. Seventy millimeters wouldn't be
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: very powerful, baby scope, but back in nineteen sixty two
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: they broadcast in morse code a three word message to
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: a star that was about two thousand light years away,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: and the message said world. You could also interpret the
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: word is peace. Lenin they're being very sick of fan
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: it USSR. They're being jingoistic.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: About ten years later, Americans and Soviets got together, or
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: at least the scientists did, and they said, all right,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: let's at least get together and start to brainstorm how
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: we might go about this. And they invited Frank Drake
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of the famous Drake equation and Carl Sagan famous for
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: being Carl Sagan. Sure Neil deGrasse Tyson wanted to go,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: but they said, you're only thirteen years old or so,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: just once you just concentrate on, you know, getting a date.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe just keep at it, buddy, just stay that kid.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: He's like, but I want to go. And then James
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Elliott was an astronomer that was there and he had
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the idea and sort of another two birds one stone.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: He said, we can get rid of all of our
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: nuclear warheads in the world if we just take him
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: to the far side of the moon and then blow
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: them up and that'll be detectable from one hundred and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: ninety light years away. And everyone was like, yeah, not
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: a great idea.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can kill two birds with one stone, but
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: you also lose the moon in the bargain. So no,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: it was a very good idea at all. But I
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: think at that no, that happened before I was going
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: to say, at that meeting, Frank Drake came up with
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: the Drake equation, which is basically a formula to figure
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: out the chances of other intelligent life out there in
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: the universe. I think that was more like nineteen sixty
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: or something like that. This is well into the seventies,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: so Drake was already legendary, at least as legendary as Sagan,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: and those two actually teamed up in nineteen seventy four
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: and they got together and I guess you could call
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: this probably the first at least Western or American medi transmission.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: It is called the Aricibo Message.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was a little more and you'll see,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: as the case with a couple of these early attempts,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: it was less like hey, I really think this is
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: going to reach somebody, and a little more like, hey,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: look how powerful our toys are these days. And that
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: was the case here with a radio telescope, the Arasibo
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: telescope in Puerto Rico, and they just kind of wanted
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: to show it off, so they aimed at at the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: M thirteen cluster, about three hundred thousand stars twenty five
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: thousand light years away this time, and considering the Soviet
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: when twelve years earlier it was two thousand light years away.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: They had you know, this is really getting out there
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: at this point.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Right, And the message they beamed was usay you yes, hey.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Actually the message they beamed was pretty remarkable, especially for
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: its time.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: So they said gerald forward, but who really.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: They use binary code ones and zeros, right, and they
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: represented ones and zeros same thing as light and dark,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: the presence of something, the absence of something, just two
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: sides to one coin. They chose that pretty ingeniously because
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: you can make a really good case that math, algebra, trigonometry, geometry,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: all these are human constructs to understand math, but they're
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: not necessarily a universal life language. You can make a
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: pretty good case that binary is a universal language, that
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: there's at base such a thing as something and not
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: something everywhere in the universe, and that's what they use
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: to transmit this message. And still today it's pretty much
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: agreed upon. If you're going to craft yourself a mety message.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: You're probably gonna want to use binary because it's it's
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: probably the language of the universe.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, that's kind of a really interesting thing.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And I think we talked about that a lot in
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: that third episode that you had to search.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: For how alien contact might work.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, can we even wrap our brains around the
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: fact that they may not even like understand what our
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: three dimensions are, much less what languages or whatever, you know.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: And I mean we also kind of tangentially got into
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: that and the Nuclear Semiotics episode. Oh yea, it's even
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: talking to other humans ten thousand years in the future
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: is virtually impossible. We're talking about like entirely different types
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: of beings conceivably, So it's a lot to kind of
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: take into consideration when you're crafting one of those messages.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So Sagan goes on, if we're kind
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of going on a timeline here in seventy seven to
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: launch those Golden Records that we have a really good
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: episode on. You should check that out. But again, this
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: was another thing where it wasn't showing off, but it
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: was kind of a kind of a publicity thing because
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the voyager one is really slow, only goes about thirty
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: eight thousand miles an hour, and Sagan was even like,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: this is not going to get very far out there.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: No, but it was I think what Sagan was doing
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: at the time, I don't remember. I'm sure we covered
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: it in the Golden Records episode and we did an
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: episode in Sagan too himself that he was probably just
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: trying to inspire humans to start thinking beyond Earth.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Sure, because there was just virtually.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: No chance whatsoever that any civilist was going to encounter
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: this one tiny, slow moving space probe. It's possible that
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: they could have noticed it, and we're tracking it, but
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: the chances are very low. So I think he was
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: trying to keep get people talking about this kind of thing.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: And that's still a bit of the spirit of medi today,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: to get people talking about how to contact other people,
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: what we want to say, and in doing that we
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: kind of examine our own values, like we strip away
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: all the now that's not really as important as this,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: like what's the basic things that make us humans that
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: we would want to express to some non human intelligences
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: about ourselves to get across who we are.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. So maybe before we take a break will
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: zip through these last attempts because there are a handful
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: of other ones sort of leading up to where we
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: are today. There was another Russian. This is a radio engineer,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: big medi guy named Alexander Zeitsef. He initiated for broadcasts
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: one ninety nine, two thousand and one, two thousand and three,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight using a Ukrainian radio telescope.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: And as with the others, you know, some photos, some music,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: something called the interstellar Rosetta Stone, which is another attempt
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: like here's our math and physics and chemistry and biology
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: here on Earth, then maybe you can understand this. NASA
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: did another publicity stunt when when they beamed the Beatles
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: song across the universe toward Polaris in two thousand and eight.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: They I can't remember if they were criticized for that
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: or not. Yeah. There was also you mentioned Dorito's. Dorito's
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: held a contest in the UK to come up with
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: a thirty second ad that got across humanity, and the
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: winning entry was a bunch of chips that escaped from
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: a bag and sacrificed one of their own to the
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: god of Salsa. Dorito's is like yeah, nailed it. That's
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: exactly all of humanity. We do that all the time.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: And they transmitted that that thirty second commercial over and
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: over for six hours. Eh, boy at a star called
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: forty seven ursa majoris, which is forty nine light years
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: away or forty five light years away.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine getting six hours of the same Dorito's
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: commercial over and over again and not being like, I'm
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: gonna invade that place. This is just too annoying.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And then should we even mentioned this last guy? Uh? Yeah,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: all right, why not. There's an artist named Joe Davis
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: who has made a couple of interstellar transmissions. One was
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: called Poetica Vaginal and he recorded the vaginal contractions of
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: ballet dancers and broadcasts those into outer space in nineteen
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: eighty five. And then I guess he I'm curious what
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: he did between eighty five and two thousand and nine
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: if that's what he did in eighty five. But finally
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine he did it again, except
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: this time he was like, let me just send out
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the genetic code for a plant enzyme that's essential for photosynthesis.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: That makes a little more sense.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: So that's basically where we are today, there's been a
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: handful of basically solo attempts of people who have friends
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: that work at Radar Telescope arras who beamed messages for
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: one reason or another, usually artistic or commercial.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of commercial, Yeah, God, look at that. I
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: just stepped all over it too. We'll be right back, Okay,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So we are back. We are catching up to the future,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and we're going to start with a man named Douglas
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: vakoch vakok I think it's fake koch veakoch v a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: koc h. He's a SETI guy, and he was there
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: for about sixteen years where he worked his way up
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: to the director of Interstellar Message Composition, which is you
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: know exactly you know where you want to be if
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: you want to send messages out. And he kept saying
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: like SETI, come on, let's do this, let's get on it,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: let's send messages out. And they just folded their arms
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and shook their head. Now and he said, fine, I'm
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: going to leave and I'm going to go start my
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: own little group called Mehdi. And that's where Mehdi was born.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and SETI also refused to go the opposite way
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: and outright ban messaging extraterrestrials. And so there were some
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: like high level critics of Mehdi who departed SETI. So
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: SETI was just shedding people left and right for a
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: little while over this topic. And it actually goes to
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: show you like in scientific circles, especially astronomy circles, it's
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: a big deal. It's a really heated discussion, like people
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: will start screaming at each other over this. Oh really, yeah,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: it's it's yeah, there's a lot of pettiness and backstabbing
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: and s talking. It's it's it's strange.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Science fight, science fight.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm not saying it's strange that it's controversial.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I'm saying the way that these scientists carry out the
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: debate and arguments is strange.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Right, It's it's uh, they don't they don't thumb wrestle
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: like any old dates, right, or what is it? Thumb war?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah? One, two, three, four, Yeah, we.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Always called it thumb wrestling. Though this whole thumbre thing
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: is just that's what the kids are doing these days.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's just you say thumb war with the rhyme,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: but I think you still call it thumb wrestling. That
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: was my experience, and that's typically the correct one.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: All right, very important work we're doing here, the thumb
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: wrestling thing. So Mehdi has one. They have actually tried
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: this one time in two thouy seventeen. They did a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: one short series of transmissions. They also use the ones
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and zeros technique because you said it was best, it
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: is and they said, Josh said it was best, so
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: let's go with that. And again in it included, you know,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: some basic numbers. It included some basic math, a little
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: bit of trigonometry, like, hey, here's how electromagnetic waves work.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Here's a little bit of music that might suit your fancy.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: And here's a clock. This is just going to count
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: how long it's been traveling.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I could not, for the life of me, figure out
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: how they would have done that. I saw, yeah, I
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: saw that. There was another one called the Beacon in
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: the Galaxy, which you'll talk about later. It has a
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: time stamp saying when are they proposed as a time
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: stamp saying when the message was sent? But I don't
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: understand a countdown clock. It doesn't make any sense.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's a countdown I think it's just
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a counting clock either.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Way, how would you do that with binary ones and zeros?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I just kind of figured the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: clock was separate.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: I really don't understand. I looked all over for it.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I did find that aw Techer had a little ten
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: second snippet aboard one of those transmissions is pretty pretty
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: good Awtecher there. I don't know that German, Austria and
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: I don't maybe British Scottish, I don't remember. But anyway,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: they're like a electronic duo that's been around for a
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: long time. It's really really good, you know, kind of weird.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Did they wear helmets so you can't see their faces?
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: No, nothing like that. They dressed kind of normcore and
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: they're just a couple of normal guys. But their their
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: music is really it can be really like a tonal
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: and hard to listen to, and then at other times
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: it's like the coolest music you've ever heard in your life.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: So if you go listen to Autecher after this and
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the first thing you hear, you're like, what is this?
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I don't like this at all. Go on to the
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: next track and see what.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll have to check that out. So that one
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: message that they sent in twenty seventeen, was blasted out
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to an exoplanet and we'll get to you know, sort
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: of the thinking these days is to send them toward exoplants.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: We'll get more into that in a sect. But it's
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: called g J two seventy three B and that's about
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: twelve light years from Earth and if someone there gets
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: it or something there gets it, we would get a
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: message back potentially in twenty forty two.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: So that was the only one that MEDI sent so far.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Like the MEDI Institute right there's the NASA's Jet Propulsion
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Laboratory is working on one that I mentioned, the beacon
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: in the galaxy, and it's it kind of follows in
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: the footsteps of messages going all the way back to
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: the Aricibo message, where it's saying like, hey, this is
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: math and this is science and check it out. But
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: it also is kind of departing from other messages and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: that they're basically saying here's where we are. Come visit
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: us if you want to get in touch. And that
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: kind of thing makes some people a little nervous, especially Chuck,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: because we've gotten so much better at finding exoplanets potentially
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: habitable planets outside of our solar system that now we
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: can kind of direct messages much more purposefully than we
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: could in the past, and so the chance of an
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: extraterrestrial intelligence, if there is one out there, actually receiving this,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: has increased tremendously if we do start sending messages directed
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: toward exoplanets.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've narrowed it down, narrowed it down to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: about twenty exoplanets right now out of the roughly fifty
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: three hundred that we have confirmed exists that are in
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: what's called the Goldilocks zone, which I know we've talked
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: about more than once, and that's the area where they
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: think that you know, like Goldilocks. It's not too warm,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: it's not too cold, there's probably surface water and an atmosphere.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: You may be near a sun like star, all of
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: this to say more easily, you're probably a lot like
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Earth and therefore have a greater chance of having life.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: So let's shoot something your way.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Right, So a lot of people are saying, like, no,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: this is not a good idea. It wasn't a good
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: idea before. Apparently, right after the Aricibo message went out,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Frank Drake was immediately criticized for doing that that was
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: very reckless. This is nineteen seventy four that he did that.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Every time somebody sends just a transmission out for fun
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: or kicks or as a Dorido's commercial, or even like
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: as a serious metisage, it gets condemned widely by people
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: who are saying you should not be doing this. You're
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: speaking for the entire world who told you you could
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And then secondly, we as we already talked about, this
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: is a potentially very dangerous thing. It's an existential risk.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Like it's possible that if you caught the attention of
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: another civilization and they came to see us, by definition,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: if they can come to see us or in any
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: way interact with us physically, they're just so much more
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: advanced than us that it does risk completely wiping us out.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess you know, we're at the point
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: where we can talk about criticisms and then what people
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: respond to the criticisms, and then the pros and cons.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: There are three major criticisms. We're going to save the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: big Daddy for the end, But the first couple are
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of like we mentioned earlier, said he's
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: been around for about sixty years, and they haven't been
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: super well fun over that time, so they haven't even
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: reached the potential of what SETI could be. Yet. There's
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a Russian billion billionaire name Yuri Milner who has said,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I'll give you guys one hundred million dollars over ten
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: year period. And by the end of that period, it's
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: called the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. We should be able to
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: scan ten times more sky than we can now using
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: telescopes that are about fifty times more sensitive.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Hey, get this, and I saw real quick, Chuck. I
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: thought that the sensitivity is so much that they would
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: be able to detect a one hundred watt laser same
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: as about one hundred watt light bulb five light years away. Wow,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: that's how much they're stepping up SETI all of a sudden,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: thanks to Yuri Milner.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: That's so, I thought you were going to say something
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: about like an alien fart.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: That's essentially that. Okay, all right, let's not mince words here.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: That's one and the same.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I thought that's where you're headed. So yeah, that's one
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: of the big arguments is SETI is in his and see,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: let's just slow our role here and just keep listening.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Right, And that doesn't mean, also Chuck, that we can't
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: start talking about crafting messages. Sure, we just should not
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: start shouting out into the void. Yes, the next one
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: is that I kind of touched on it, but MEHDI
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: is considered unauthorized diplomacy. And that's John Gertz, who was
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: a former chair of SETI and a big critic of Mehdi.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: He basically called it that unauthorized diplomacy. And if you
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: think back to our How Alien Contact Might Work episode,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: didn't even have to look it up that time. Nice.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: There was something that we talked about called the Declaration
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: of Principles for Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: and it basically guides scientists in how to respond if
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: we ever do receive an alien message. And the guidance
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: is don't respond. It's not up to you. We need
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: to form a glow will consensus before we ever say anything.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: And so medi critics are saying, if if we have
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: that as a as a guide line, as a guardrail
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: after we receive a message, shouldn't that count like doubly
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: and crafting a message and sending it out initially like
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: as a first first message and yeah, and many proponents
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: is shut up.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Well they kind of do, but Gertzy series about it
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and he's so serious. He's like, there should be international
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: laws drawn up around this and it should all be regulated.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And if you do something like this Dorrito's or Craigslist.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: We didn't even mention craiglist, craigslisten a message out. Yeah,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you should be prosecuted in the Hague, get the International
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Court of Justice. And I think in the two thousands
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: there were a couple of dozen scientists that all got
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: on board signed a position statement against Mehti and basically
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: said that you know, everyone's got to get together and
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: agree on this. You can't just if we can't just
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: answer an email, then you shouldn't send the email to
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: begin with.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Sure, it's a great point, it's a great great analogy there.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks. Should we take a break.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's take a break. I forgot we hadn't
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: taken our second one.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll take our second break and we'll talk
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: about what Mehdi says right after this.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, So Mehdi says, all right, we hear you. I
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: will even grant you that there is a slight risk
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: to this at vanishingly small risk. But we have some
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: counter arguments to all of your bs. So the number
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: one is we feel that ETI is out there. Other
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: intelligent civilizations are actually waiting for us to signal them
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: that if there are extraterrestrial intelligences out there, maybe they're
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: all being quiet. And this explains the great silence, because
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: there's some sort of agreement among in regalactic civilizations not
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: to disturb up and coming ones before they say that
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: they're ready to be contacted. And they said, what we
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: want to do is send that message that we're ready.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and some people saying we are ready, some people
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: saying no, we're not ready, We're not close to ready.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: And also like if we're working on the prim minis,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: they don't say priminis the premise that it's a danger,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: then like no one's ever going to say anything to anybody,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And then if it turns out there wasn't a danger,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: then we've just what have we been doing this whole time?
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're all going to live and die as civilizations
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: without ever being in touch with one another. And what
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: kind of a tragedy.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Would that be? That'd be a pretty big tragedy.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Another one is what we talked about earlier, that we've
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: already made our presence known.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And we've been blasting out television through space
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: for since nineteen fifty one with I Love Lucy, and
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: that message I Love Lucy is seventy two light years
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: away from Earth by now, and we've been like, if
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: we can send the Real Housewives shows into outer space,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: then surely we should be a little more intentional and
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: send out something else that actually shows our intelligence.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Andy Cohen just said, hey, well you are right, you're
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: not wrong.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Watch what happens.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: So I said that people can really kind of easily disassemble.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: This argument is really especially coming from astronomers and astrophysicists.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: This is a really glib argument. This is an argument
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: that's crafted to fool dummies like you and me. Right,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: if you really dig into it, those radio and TV
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: transmissions are so degraded when they escape out into space
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: that you, like you just couldn't pick them up. You'd
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: have to be in our backyard to pick up any
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: of that, and a right and know where it came from.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: If you were in our backyard, the further away you are,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: the less chance you have of picking up not just
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: like a I Love Lucy transmission, but all of Earth's
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: electromagnetic signature that we're leaking out into space at all times,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: you have such a small chance of picking Earth up
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: that it's it's it's actually mind boggling. John Gertz just
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: gave an example of a space alien space telescope that
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: was five hundred and fifty astronomical units away. That's zero
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: point eight percent the distance of a light year, So
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: it's actually relatively very close that this telescope would have
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: to be positioned so that eventually it was going to
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: get Earth right in its crosshairs, and when it finally did,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: it would have a three to four second opportunity to
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: pick Earth up every thirteen thousand years. So the idea
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: that we're just shouting out into the universe that we're
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: here just from being and broadcasting and emitting electro magneticism,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Oh God, I gotta rephrase that.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: You did it.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's a word though. Sure Anyway, it's
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: a not a valid argument.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Although wouldn't that be funny if aliens finally came down
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: and they just met all of us and they all
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: went lucy right, just called everything Lucy.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: That's like, oh, what was it? I think it was.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: There was some I want to say Futurama where there
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: was like a race that had picked up Ally McNeil,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: and they wanted to know what happened, and they showed
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: up like trying to find what happened at the at
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: the end, it was pretty good.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: That's funny. They would be very surprised to learn that
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: she married Han Solo.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Well they yeah, they would. It's still surprising, but they
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: took it as a as a real thing that they
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: were watching something real and not like a show.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: All right, So now we get into that final criticism
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: that we had kind of hung on too. We've alluded
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: to it a little bit, but that is the existential
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: risk that you talked about, where what if they like
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: kill us all because of this And it's you know,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: it's called the dark Forest theory, which is basically like, hey,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the universe may be full of intelligent life and all
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: these you know, ancient advanced civilizations and they are all
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: still surviving because they know when you go into the forest,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: you keep your mouth shut and you don't go in
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: there shouting around. And that's the dark forest theory. Like
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: you survive by being quiet.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Right, And so they're saying, what Medi's proposing to do
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: is walk into the forest and shout as loud as
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: we can to get the attention of anyone we can.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: And again, you take it back to this idea that
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: MEDI proponents will be like, look, if it's if this
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: civilization is as old as we suspect, it has to
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: be altruistic to have survived and not blown itself up.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: We talked a lot about that in the alien contact episode.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: That's not necessarily true, Like it's possible, that even probable,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: that they developed altruism for their own society, which is
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: how they would have survived. That doesn't necessarily mean it's
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: extended to other societies. They might have figured out a
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: long time ago that most societies that are up and
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: coming need to be wiped out because they're going to
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: screw things up for the universe. So they take it
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: upon themselves to wipe us out.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Right. It's kind of interesting, though, when I feel like,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: whenever we talk about this stuff, there are two camps.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: One is, hey, maybe they will wipe us all out,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: so there's a danger, so we shouldn't try. And then
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: another camp says, well, why do we assume that they
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: will wipe us out? What if they're friendly and they
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: have the solutions to cancer and global warming and climate change?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: But I never hear anyone saying, well, what if they're
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: both kind of like planet Earth?
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Like Earth is everything. It's people that would welcome you,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: or people that would spit in your face and start
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: a fistfight, like who knows? Why does it have to
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: be one or the other?
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like Topeka and Kansas City, right. So that's
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: a really great point though, and I actually have seen
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: some people say, like, you know, also, there's been plenty
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: of examples of even contact that wasn't meant to be
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: violent having horrible catastrophic consequences just here on Earth.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: And the other thing is this, so again many many
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: proponents really kind of bulk up that argument that MEDI
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: critics use, which is, you know, it's possible that they're
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: hostile and could wipe us out. And many proponents are like,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: you're being ridiculous, You're being a rational, paranoid, childish even
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: they're very dismissive of it. But if you dig into
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: what the MEDI critics are saying, they're not saying like, yeah,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: of course, an alien civilization is hostile and is going
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: to wipe us out if we contact them. They're saying,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: we don't know that they're not hostile, and we all
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: agree that there is a chance, however small, that they
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: could be hostile, and because the consequences of that chance
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: coming true would result in the end of humanity, right,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: that makes it not worth doing or else doing a
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: lot more cautiously than what you guys are proposing right now,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: because what we're proposing right now is basically the people
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: of medi and elected people who have access to radio
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: telescopes sending out messages for the rest of the world. Again,
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I know I've said it before, but you really have
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: to step back and think about what they're doing, especially
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: if you think all of this is ridiculous. It can
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: be ridiculous seeming, but at its core there's a definite
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: controversy there, and a rightful controversy, a worthy one.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Now, has the movie been made yet where a rogue metti,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you know, computer nerd late at night, kind of like
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a newman in Jurassic Park, right, you know, sneaks in
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and broadcasts a message that they've crafted that actually gets
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: heard and brings about the invitation for visitation.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: That was the subplot to Sleepless in Seattle, don't you remember?
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: You're right, I guess every idea has been taken.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: It's all been done. There's nothing new under the sun, Chuck,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: unless some aliens show up, and that will change a lot.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: I think this wraps up our alien contact episode. We
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: did UFOs too, a two parter on Project blue Book.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Remember, Yeah, and did we do some live thing at
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Comic Con once.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: That was on UFOs. In general, I.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Think, okay, all right, so this wraps it up until
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: we actually get that contact, and then we'll have to
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: follow up.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll put an asterisk on there. Yeah, or, as
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: you would say, an astros.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't say that, right do.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: Since I just made fun of Chuck and really lovingly everybody,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: it's time for listener mail.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: With intention. I'm gonna call this correct. I'm getting you back. Okay,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: you got something wrong in the skydiving episode. We had
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a few people right in already, but TJ's is more concise,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: so I'm gonna go with tech. Okay, Hey, guys, Scotting.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: In the Skydiming episode, Josh was explaining stall speed for
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: an aircraft and said that the prop planes can fly
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: slower before their engine stall. Not exactly correct. In aviation,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: stall speed refers to the minimum speed and aircraft can
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: fly that the wings generate lyft, so it's a wing stall.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: If you fly slower than an aircraft's stall speed, the
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: wings are not provided enough lift to overcome the aircraft's weight.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: It'll drop like a rock man.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: That would be so bad.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I always enjoy the great content and can always rely
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: on you guys for hours of education and entertainment. Sincerely,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: That is TJ. Singh.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, Thanks TJ. Well put gently put. And one
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: of my very best friends when I was a really
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: little kid, was named TJ. Thomas Jefferson even he was
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: a bi centennial baby.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Really yeah, that's pretty great. And listen to this PS.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: This is awesome. Sincerely, TJPS. An auto response to let
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: writers know their email was received would appreciated. Oh yeah,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: well how about this, TJ. I'm letting you know with
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: my mouth message received. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna write
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: it back THO, because I always let people know when
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: we've read their email.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Very nice, Thanks again, TJ. Thank you Chuck. That was
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: a good pick, and thank you everybody out there for
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: listening to us. If you want to get in touch
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: with us, like TJ did, you can send us an
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.