Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The Martian Revolution (featuring Mike Duncan)

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The Martian Revolution (featuring Mike Duncan) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: So Mars just is like, it feels like the planet
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: that has most most captured our imagination, the imagination of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the science fiction community, I think has been most captured.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: And it's whatever a couple hundred years run that we're
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: at now, but really like in the last century, like,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Mars has been the setting for so many different things,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and it's that planet that is like us but not,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and so it's just there, and so I picked it
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: for that reason.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, and
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: you know, I love science, but I gotta be honest,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I don't really listen to a lot of science podcasts.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: History podcasts is my thing, and I am such a
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: huge fan of the Revolutions podcas.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm a
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: big fan of science and history, and especially the history
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: of science. I really enjoy trying to get into the
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: minds of people in the past before they understood something
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: that we now take for granted, to try to grock
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: what it was like to learn that or to live
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: in a world when you didn't know that. Because I
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: feel like there's such a huge intellectual distance between us
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: and people who didn't know that the Earth is round,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: or moves around the sun, or the universe is so vast.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been reading the Journal of Parasitology starting at
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: nineteen twelve, moving to the presence, and I feel like
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: every once in a while you'll catch a paper where
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: they'll be explaining like, oh, this is how something works,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: and you know, as a scientist in the present that
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: they're wrong, but you can totally see their reasoning, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I feel like it helps you remember to be humble,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: because things that can seem right and seem obvious can
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: be wrong with more information. And so yeah, I also
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: enjoy the history of science in that regard.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: As well, And I think these two fields are more
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: closely related than people realize because science is also about storytelling.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, history obviously is storytelling. We're going back in
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: the past and trying to understand what happened and why,
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: what were the major themes and trends. But science is
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: also storytelling. We're telling a story about how the universe
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: works and how it came to be, and it's, if anything,
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: digging deep into the ancient history of the universe. So
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: I feel like these two fields are more closely connected
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: than a lot of people give them credit for.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I totally agree. And you and I have interviewed some
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: really great storytellers in the past, so we're both pretty
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: big sci fi geeks, and I often enjoy hearing from
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: a sci fi writer who's trying to explore how some
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: particular scientific concept might play out, you know, under slightly
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: different conditions or on a different planet or something like that.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And so I was really excited when Mike Duncan, who
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: does the Revolutions podcast, started writing science fiction. And so
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: instead of trying to test like what would it be
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: like living in a low gravity environment, he's bringing all
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: of his knowledge about past revolutions. So he has a
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: history podcast that he's did for a decade going through
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: different historical revolutions, and he's bringing that history and exploring
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: how these history street things will play out on the
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Martian environment.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: And he's doing something really interesting, which is that he
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: just dropped this into his normal nonfiction podcast feed about
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: history and just start talking about a future revolution as
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: if it was in the past, with all sorts of
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: like references and like comments about this source, which you
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: can't really believe. And you should read this other source,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: all of which is obviously made up, but completely deadpan
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: right as if it was real history. It's amazing.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I love it so much, and I particularly love it
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: because I listened to the Revolutions podcast. It helped get
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: me through the pandemic. I'm a huge fan. And he
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: did this series where he sort of summarized some of
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the main points he took away from a decade of
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: studying revolutions, and then the Martian Revolutions thing dropped, and
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my gosh, I get to hear, you know,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: all of the takeaways from the Russian revolutions on Mars,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: and I get to put together these two worlds that
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I love so much, you know, space settlements and the
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Revolutions podcast, and I am having so much fun.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: He's really the right person to be writing science fiction,
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: if you asks me. And I'm going to say something
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: a little controversial here, which is that we read a
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: lot of science fiction from scientists, but most science fiction
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: is not about the science, like, yes, you invent some concept,
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: but really it's about the people and the politics and
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: what life is like, and it's about the sociology and
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: the people who are best informed to write realistic stories
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: about that are people who know the stories from history.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: So historians and sociologists and political experts are the ones
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: who are going to be able to write effective, realistic
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: stories about new situations. And that's what science fiction really
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: is all about. So anybody who's into science fiction, I
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: really encourage you to check out the Revolutions podcast about
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: the Martian revolutions.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: And I've been waiting every week for a new episode
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: to drop, but you don't have to do that because
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: today is June third. The series wrapped up on June first,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: so they're all out there and you can start now
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: and you don't have to wait a week to hear
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the updates. It's all there and you can just listen
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: to it through.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: But first listen to our conversation with Mike Duncan, the
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: author and creator of Revolutions.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Mike Duncan is a history podcaster and author. He's written
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: the New York Times bestsellers The Storm Before the Storm,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, and
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Hero of Two Worlds, The Marquis de Lafayette in the
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Age of Revolution. His podcasts include The History of Rome
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: and the podcast will be discussing today Revolutions. Welcome to
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: the show, Mike.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me so, Mike.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Since you have dipped your toes into science fiction, which
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: I love, we want to start out by asking you
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: the same question we ask every science fiction author we
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: talk to, which is a philosophy question, and that is,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: when you step into a teleporter on Star Trek, does
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: it actually teleport you or does it disassemble you and
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: rebuild you somewhere else? Is it a murder machine or
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: an actual transportation device.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: It really strikes me as a murder machine above all.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, if that's how we have to categorize these things.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: It does seem to be deconstructing something and then recreating
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it from the matter on the other side. So you know,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: it's definitely like a ship of theseus situation, because there
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: is something about the identity that persists that is clearly
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: like locked inside the physiology of the body, so like
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: there is a there is a persistence of identity. But yeah,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: it really seems like whatever got onto the transport pad,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that entity doesn't exist anymore, and a new entity has
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: been created down there that is that is fundamentally different.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: And you can kind of see this sometimes with like
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you know, when they're a transporter mishaps, right, and there's
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: like there so now there's whatever. So like the Thomas
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Riker situation, like you've created a whole new thing down
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: there that thinks it was Will Riker and and but
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: you know the thing didn't get destroyed up on the ship,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: so clearly something new was being made.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: And so if you were given the opportunity to use
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: one of these fantastic devices, would you do you believe that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: I have never? I would never. I would never get
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: it on transporter in my life.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: No, same like if I had a shirt that said,
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: like McCoy was right.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: About everything, even he's getting off and on it all
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Right, So you have clearly revealed your like science fiction
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: creds already or convinced. So who are your favorite sci
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: fi authors? And have you always been interested in writing
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: sci fi? Yeah?
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know, I was, you know, a
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: nerdy teenager once and so science fiction is you know,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a part of my sort of cultural identity growing up.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I was obviously raised on Star Trek and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: raised on Star Wars and got into you know, when
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I was a kid. It was like Golden age sci
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: fi stuff, you know, Asimov and Clark and Hindline, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: then you know, you progressed ten years down the road
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: and you're like you look back on those guys and
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: you're like, a lot of this is actually like very problematic,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and maybe maybe I'm not maybe I'm not so happy
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: that there's so much Hindline like going into my brain,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: but wait, but we can not do that.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: But then, as you know, as I got older, it's
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: really like, you know, like Philip K. Dick is like
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: a huge is huge form.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: He's a huge influence, and Vonnegut was a very big
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: influence for me. And then also there's a more obscure,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: kind of out there dude called Robert Anton Wilson who
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed. And so if anybody out there knows
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Robert Anton Wilson, they're like, oh shit, Robert Anton Wilson. Okay,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: but yeah, those are the guys that sort of like
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: when I was getting into high school and being a
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: teenager and kind of thinking about what I wanted to
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: do with my life, and I knew I had some
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: like talent and some passion for writing that if that's
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the direction I wanted to go like, those guys were
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: kind of like my guiding North Stars less than Hindline.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: It's always my dream that somebody mentions to me some
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: science fiction author I've never heard of before, and now
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: a whole new vein of text has opened up for me.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: So I'm gonna go google Robert Anton Wilson after this
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: is done.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, dude, knockout Illuminatus. Sometimes yeah, it's great.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: So what kind of science fiction do you prefer?
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: Though?
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: Are you hardcore about folks following the rules they set
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: up in their universe, or are you okay with more
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: like a vibes based science fiction universe.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I think, like, you know, I don't don't want to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: have to pick one over the other. But if I did,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: you know, it's more the vibe space stuff, because you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I fundamentally come out of the Humanities department. You know,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: when I went to college and I had this notion
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to be a writer and specifically you know,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: do like science fiction stuff. I didn't enjoy the English
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: department at all. I didn't have any good times deconstructing
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: texts or reading these things or like talking about them.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: It's like, oh, look, another Christ delusion.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Great, you know, like this is kind of this is
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: boring me, and also I'm not good at it, so
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: maybe I cou should do something else. And when I
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: would think about those guys who I admired, they were
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: very literate in like philosophy, and they were very literate
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: in you know, Ray Bradberry is another one that I
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: would put on this list. This is more sort of
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: like philosophical where we are using science fiction as a
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: vehicle for like thought experiments, and you know, like Dick
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: is always constantly, you know, grappling with identity, like what
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: does identity mean? And you know, like if if you
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: wake up tomorrow and all your memories have been implanted,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: is that any different than you know, who you were before.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: We actually just you know, touched on this at the beginning,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: so like I wanted to study that stuff. So this
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: is a vehicle for like politics and history and philosophy
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: more than being like I was really into engineering, and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about what it would mean to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: build a spaceship and what it would mean to live
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: on Mars. That's that's not really my background. I need
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: you guys.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: I need you.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Guys doing those things for me. Yeah, for me, it's
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: much more of a it's all. It's metaphorical space for
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: me more than anything else.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Well, I love that there are lots of different flavors
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: of nerds, and I welcome them all into the community absolutely.
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I still read, you know, the Star Trek Technical Manual,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: you know, but even even I didn't come up with it.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And then like some days, I don't know, we'll maybe
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: get into this, but like, you know, I get dang by,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: you know, the people who are like only hard sci
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: fi is sci fi and everything else is like you know,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: less than and you know, like and they point to
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Star Trek as being like, you know, they're doing a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: good job.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: It's like they realize one day.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: That the world would kill everybody on the ship in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: like a nano second. It would become splats against the
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: back wall. They're right, what do we do? Oh, we'll
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: invent a thing called inertial dampeners.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: Right. It sounds science y, but it's magic, right, And
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: it's like they're not. It's magical thinking no less than
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: somebody like me just being like, yeah, they got grav units,
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: it makes artificial gravity, Like, just go with it. Who cares? Yeah,
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: problem solved? They're all grab units. And then people be like,
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: you can't artificially create gravity. It's like, I don't know, man,
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: I just did.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: So Starchek does science the way that like chat ChiPT
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: does science. It's like confidentely produced nonsense. It sounds about right.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: If you don't know anything, you're like, well, yeah, okay, sure,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: tachy on inertial drives or whatever. Yeah, technobabble, exact technobabble,
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: that's exactly it.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: So the Revolutions podcast ran for a decade, and during
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: the pandemic, the section on the Russian Revolution, like that
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: helped get me through the pandemic. I looked forward to
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: that every week. And then you stopped doing it, and
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: you took like a two year break, and then you
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: decided to put a sci fi story in the Revolutions feed.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: So in the feed of your nonfiction history podcast, we
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: now have this fictional story about Mars. What made you
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: decide that that was the right venue for your science
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: fiction and how has the audience responded?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: So I had this notion to do a fictional revolution,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to write a fictional revolution, and specifically science fiction fictional
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: revolution at least as far back as the French revolution
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: is how long this idea has been in my head.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: This is not something I came up with at the end,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Like I sort of knew this was going to be
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: something I was going to do for a really long time,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and a lot of paying attention to like the structural
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: beats and archetypes of these various revolutionary cycles, which often
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: mirror each other. I would take notes on these things
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: knowing that at some point I was going to write
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: what I'm writing, you know at this moment, and I
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: wanted to put it in the feed because it's a revolution, right,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and it fits as a revolution, and it is a revolution.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: It's just a fictional revolution.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Now, when I dropped this without telling anybody that I
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: was doing it and just loaded it in there, there
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is a split inside the Revolution's community, you know, between
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: people who who really do come to me for nonfiction
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and for history and now I am sort of not
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: doing that, and so, you know, no hard feelings. They're
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: just like, this isn't for me, this isn't what I'm
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: looking for I want, you know, I come to you
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: for history. And then lots of other people are like,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: this is the greatest thing that you could have ever
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: given me. Because you know, if you're into science fiction
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and you're into the Revolutions podcast, and then I write
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: a fictional account of a revolution on Mars, you know,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: this is like peanut butter and chocolate. You know, this
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: is the invention of the recent's peanut butter cup for
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. And then you know, a chunk
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: of other people are like, no, I'm not following you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: down this road. And you know, I got you know,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: some some upset emails in the early going, they've they've
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: mostly petered out, and some people were upset literally that
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I put it into I put a fictional thing into
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: something that was tagged nonfiction, and they're like, this is
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a nonfiction podcast. I can't fit it in my brain
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that fiction is now a part of it. It's like, well,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: go with it, maybe just just kind of maybe just
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: roll with it.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Well, and you said it in twenty two forty seven,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: so it's not like it's ambiguous.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: But I did, I mean, I get it in the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: in the first couple of weeks because I deadpanned the
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: whole thing. I did not signal that I was doing this.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I did not tell anybody I was doing even though
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I knew about this for like a decade, Like I
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: didn't tell anybody I was doing it, and then when
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I dropped the first stuff, I wasn't like I'm going
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: to write a fictional account of something. I just started
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: talking about the Martian Revolution as if it was real.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really important point that you've done
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: it in the same style exactly as if you really
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: were a historian of the future talking about it. So
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: it's like this fictional, non fictional style. It's incredible.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was also like clearly like there's self parody
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that is part of this, Like a lot of the
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: ticks that I do in the show, like I'm bringing
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: those back, and you know, the wording and the phrasing
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: and the style and the cadence, it's all meant to
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: eight myself, but in a fictional setting.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: And I actually you'll think.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: This that as a work of as a creative work,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: it's better if I never break character inside the show,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Like I never want to acknowledge inside the series on
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the Martian Revolution that this is being narrated by anybody
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: but somebody who lived two hundred and fifty years after
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the Martian Revolution and is now writing about it. That's
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I think that's actually important to keeping it. I don't
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: know the fidelity to the thing is that the.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: Word I'm looking for.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: That's the same reason that like everything Nathan Fielder does
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: works because he never breaks character. Do you worry that
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: in two hundred and fifty years from four hundred years
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: somebody's gonna unearth this and be confused because you never
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: indicate that it's fiction and our only clue is that
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: obviously it's set in the future. But what if deep
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: into the future somebody unders this.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not so worried about that because I will be
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: dead and so like whatever happens after this, I mean,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try my best to make the world,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: you know, better that when we leave it for our children.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: But like you know, I don't mind that much, like
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: I And partly it'll keep historians employed, you know, because
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: like right now, I'm writing a book.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I'm writing a book about the Crisis of the third Century,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: which is which is a period in Roman history.
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: It is famously very little.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It's not well documented because it was so it was
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: like this fifty year period that was so chaotic that
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: we don't have like good solid sources. But one of
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the sources that we do have is called the Historia Augusta,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: which we still don't know whether this was like a
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: hoax document that was made. It's like it's like a
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: series of biographies of the Caesars, the later Caesars, where
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of it just seems to be completely made up.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of his it's historical fiction that was
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: maybe done by somebody on purpose to trick people or
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: as some creative exercise, and we don't really know whether
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: True or not. So yeah, people could come along and
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: be like, you know, there was a revolution on Mars,
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: but I don't remember it going like this. He's like
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: one hundred years off on the dating, and none of
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: the name seems the line up.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: But he's very comedy. He's referencing all these books like
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: like I don't know.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: And just like chat GPT, you're referencing things that don't exist.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: See, I'm far more worried about chat GBT leaving a
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: record behind that makes it impossible to know what actually
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: happened than I am this little thing that I'm doing well.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: I was actually going to ask you about that. If
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: there are analogues of this in history, people writing pseudo
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: fiction of the future other than the examples you just made.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know, not in terms of history, because like
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the thing, like the thing I just referenced with somebody
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: writing it's a fake history, but it's of the past,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and you know, you do start to get you know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: proto science fiction being written of people speculating about the future,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: like the origins of science fiction, there's you know, several
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: steps along the way. But in terms of like using
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: these kinds of non fiction accounts to write something about
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the future seems pretty modern and like for me, you know,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it's like you know, like I said, Asimov, you know,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: like Foundation has like you know, galactic encyclopare media references,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and I know that done like the actual text of
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: it has a lot of like it's cyclopedic entries.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: And though I have not.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Read The Song of Ice and Fire, and you know,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I watched the show, but I know that's written as
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a history and those things like we're really those that
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: using nonfiction sort of tropes to write fiction is a
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: very fun thing.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: For me.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's for me, it's exactly at the intersection
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of my brain being inspired by those kinds of things.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: But it's all. It's all pretty modern.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I don't remember anything from like history that did this.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: There's probably somebody out there who will email us and
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: tell us what it is.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Let us know. The internet always lets you know.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: The Internet.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Internet always lets you know. This is
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: why you should never say always, You should never say never,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: you should never say first, you should never say last.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Never say those words and you will be fine.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: My husband gets so frustrated with me when we're writing
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: because they'll always try to put an always or never,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, we haven't read everything exactly. We don't
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: know that for sure.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And the thing is is like one time I said
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: that this was the only cavalry encounter to ever capture ships, right,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: like a cavalry captured boats.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Okay, that's pretty unique.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And there was an incident in a Dutch in a
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: frozen Dutch harbor during the wars of the French Revolution,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and I was like, this is the only time that
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: this ever happened, because it's so implausible. And then later
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I was doing Spanish American Independence and some Jose Antonio
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: pause is cavalry guys like took some gunboats. It was
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: just it was a shallow river, and so there's another cavalry,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a cavalry attack that captured boats, which you would think
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: would be impossible.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: At least you were the one who figured out the mistakes.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: I did someone email you with I did find that
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: one out.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Yet they're not always so nice when they email you
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: with up the mistakes.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: No, No, somebody actually emailed me about the Martian Revolution
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and the subject line was errors and mistakes in the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Martian Revolution, and.
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: It was not cheeky.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I've gotten some emails that are very cheeky and like
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: people are like responding with deadpan. They're like, you know,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: you reference this book and I have found him to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: be like very like sketching on the sources, and like
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: there's this other book that I think is way better.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And those are emails like these people get it and
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I'm having a really good time with them. But then
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: this guy emails me and these like errors and mistakes
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: in like your work of fiction, and I'm like, I
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: don't think you can do that.
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: You can say like I wish you hadn't have said that,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: or I wish you had done something different, but I
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: don't think you can tell me that there was an
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: error in it. No.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: My favorite email is when someone says they're telling you
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: an error you made, but actually you didn't talk about
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: their favorite pet topics. Yeah, and that was the error
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: that you made, was you didn't talk about that other thing.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: And you're like, I could have this book could have
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: been five thousand pages long. It had to end somewhere, man.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I when I did the American Revolution, I basically
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: got an email about every single local skirmish that ever
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: happened in the entire course of the American War of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Independence that I did not cover, and therefore have left
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: my audience bereft of the deinformation that they need. Like, okay, man,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: there was like seventeen guys there. I'm trying to talk
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: about the Declaration of Independence. You know, I got to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: pick and choose what I talk about here.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: So when you're doing history, obviously you want to be
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: rooted in the facts, and so you're constrained by what
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: actually happened. In this case, you could have chosen any
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: location anytime. Why did you choose Mars in the twenty
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: two hundreds.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: The other thing I'm doing with the show is, you know,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I'm taking all of these like historical moments historical events,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: historical beats, historical archetypes, and creating a mosaic story out
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of them. But I'm also taking science fiction tropes and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: using them. I'm like sort of combining both of those
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: at the same time. So there's aspects of the show
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: that's like, oh, this comes from the Mexican Revolution, and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: then there's a thing from the show, like that thing
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: that came from Enders Game. So Mars just is like,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: it feels like the planet that has most most captured
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: our imagination, the imagination of the science fiction community, I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: think has been most captured in it's whatever a couple
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: hundred years run that we're at now, but really like
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: in the last century, like, Mars has been the setting
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: for so many different things, and it's that planet that
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: is like us but not And so it's just there,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and so I picked it for that reason, right, Like
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted to live in the same place that you
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: know they were writing about one hundred years ago.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Well, let's take a break and when we get back,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about building a world on Mars. All right,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: we're back. So when Zach and I were researching a
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: city on Mars, we were often asked and often thought
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: about what could economically justify settling Mars, and we came
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: up with like nothing, And the proposals that we saw included,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: like you could start a reality TV show on Mars
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: and that would fund it. Even though people like started
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: shutting off the Apollo missions after twelve, they tuned back
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: in when the Oxygen canister up on thirteen, but after
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: that they started tuning out again. So I'm not convinced
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: reality TV would fund your space settlement.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: Unless you're intentionally killing people.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which hopefully notes yeah, But so I suspect, yeah,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: you came to the same conclusion that Mars doesn't have
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of resources valuable enough to send to Earth.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So tell us about the resource you came up with
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: that justifies settling Mars and how you picked that resource.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it's just that, like I had
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: to have a reason for us to go to Mars,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and at the moment, there is literally no reason for
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: us to go to Mars.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: Like going to Mars would be a stupid waste of
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: time and money.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: And I say that even as somebody who is like
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: enchanted by the wonders of space, you know, like I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: grew up on science fiction.
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: Just like everybody else.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: It's not like I want to say, you know, we
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: shouldn't explore and create and like advance our technologies and
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: all that stuff.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Like I love I love NASA, like I love I
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: love this stuff, I really do. But they're nothing on Mars.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: It's not like people think about Mars sometimes like it's
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: just like New Mexico or something, and you can just
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: go there and it's like red and desert.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: Ye, but that's the that's the only difference.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, as like I came up with this
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and I'll answer your question, but like, yeah, you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: reading City on Mars is just like really drills home that,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: like the future of the species is not building a
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: dome in the in the Mariana Trench, you know, because
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: that's an impossible, stupid place to try to like live,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: just like Mars. So I had to invent Essentially a
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: new periodic table of elements.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: Is what it is.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Basically, Like inside the periodic table of elements, we discover
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: that there's like some substratum matrices within that that we
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: had we've never discovered before and didn't know about before,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and it's in there and there's different versions of things
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and There's a thing called FOSS five, which I gave
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: it a very very long scientific name in the first episode,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: and which I could not recreate ever again, like I
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: actually had to fanatically spell it out for myself, and
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I just I did. It was technobabble, right, I just
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: like jammed together as many prefectses and suffexes into a
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: single world as I possibly could, and then then slapped
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: a five on it, which was a bit of an omase.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: There's a Red Rising series about a revolution on Mars,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: and their thing is like their mining helium three some
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: My thing is Phos five, which, again, like these are
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: meant to be the sort of like homages and tips
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: of the cap to all the people who came before me.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So Foss five is a thing that then powers what
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is essentially unlimited clean energy, and that is what allows
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: our species on Earth here to get out from under
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the twenty first century, which I am positing to be
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: like insane chaos anarchy, you know, climate disasters that is
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: going to define the twenty first century, and pulling out
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of the twenty first century is about the discovery of
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Phos five, the discovery of these things called flex cells,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: which allows us to have unlimited clean energy, and then
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: there's only a limited amount of this on Earth, but
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: there's a just a ton of it on Mars. Right
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: The volcanoes of Mars are loaded with PHOSS five. And
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: so that's what takes us there and gets us there
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and justifies it. And this is all just complete invention,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you know, because there's, like I said, there's nothing in
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: reality right that we as we understand it right now,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: that would justify the colonization of Mars.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: And if I could just dig into a tiny bit,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know how hardcore you went on the science here.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: Were you mentioning something with the atomic number is above
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: the numbers on the current periodic table or somehow like
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: stuck in between?
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: Oh no, No, I didn't get into that at all.
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: I just gave it. I just gave it a cool
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: sounding name.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Because there actually is a really fun concept in science
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: about these super heavy elements which could maybe have been
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: created in supernova events or nutrient star collisions, and potentially
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: could be in other places in the universe and could
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: have really weird properties.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So one of one of the things that I do
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: in the show is, you know, I'm constantly referencing like
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: these fake history books that talk about because the show
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: is set like the narrator's two hundred and fifty years
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: after event, so he's always referencing, you know, books that
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: have been written about the Martian Revolution. And in the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: very first episode, I was like, okay, if you want
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to learn more about out flex cells and FoST five
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: and how all this stuff works. You know, the definitive
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: account is by this doctor I forget what his name is,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and his book is called Suspending Disbelief. How to stop
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: caring about it even though you really want to care
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: about it and just kind of like, this is my book, right,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: and this is like signal to like the audience just
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: just just sit back and enjoy the story without getting
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: too caught up in like the mechanics of it, because
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. I'm I want to be Ray
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Bradberry and Philip K.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: Dick. I don't want to be Arthur C. Clark.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be and I don't even want
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to be Kim Stanley Robinson even though I love Kim
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Stanley Robinson.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: I can't do what he does. I can't do what
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: I can't do what those guys do.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll put more tachions into the disbelief dat exactly.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: But I want to ask you a history question about that.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: You're making this argument about the future and resources, and
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I was wondering if you're making a broader argument about
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: the cycle of civilization, about how we discover a new
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: resource which transforms our society, opens up a new territory,
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: and that we then go through this sort of cyclical
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: expansion and collapse or revolution. Is there a broader argument
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: that you're making there about the sort of structure of
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: human civilization.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: It's mostly a plot device to get us to Mars.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: But but your point is well taken. I mean, like
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the Dutch were powered by wind, and then when coal
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: supplants wind, then the British are suddenly like doing great
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: because they've got all this coal. And then we move
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: from coal to oil, and you know, now the United
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: States and now you know the Saudi's and you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the Middle East suddenly becomes like the main center of things.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: And it's been a minute since we've had a true
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: revolution in terms of our energy usage, like what and
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: how we use energy. And if something comes along, yeah,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I think it'll radically change the nature of our civilization
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and who's on top and who's who's not.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: What are some of the other historical points you're trying
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: to get across in this in this podcast? Is it
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: just for fun or are you trying to help people
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: understand revolutions better?
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: The project is, yes, to have fun, but also we're
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: going through the process of a revolution, and I am
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: trying to create the structures that I have seen previous
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: revolutions go through. There is an enseon regime of some
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: kind that is broken and dysfunctional, there will be resistance
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to that. It's not, however, just about you know, oppressed
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: masses rising up and overthrowing something. There is always disaffected
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: elites inside the enon regime who either want more power
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: or they're frustrated with the incompetence of the leaders of
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the regime, who start to turn against it because they
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: would prefer themselves to be in power. There are structures
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: inside of the movements where where any revolutionary movement that
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: comes together to overthrow the power that had ruled them previously,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: there's a thing that I positive it's called the entropy
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of victory that as soon as that group wins, they
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: break into two or even three factions and then begin
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: fighting amongst themselves. One of those factions wins, and then
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: that group splits into two. And there's this constant sort
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: of like like coming together and then breaking apart that
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I've seen so often, to the point where then you know,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: you get to the end of the Russian Revolution and
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Stalin is literally purging the old Bolsheviks, right, He's purging
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks are the one who they beat the Mensheviks,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: they beat the Srs, they beat the anarchists, they beat
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the Royalists, they beat the they beat the liberals. And
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: then you say, you have this tiny, tiny group of Bolsheviks,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and then even inside that Bolshevik click, then Stalin breaks
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: off from them and purges all the old Bolsheviks. So like,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: this is a thing that goes on, and that is
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: something that is happening inside the Martian Revolution for sure.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: I heard a great history joke the other day, which
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: is what the when the IRA gets together, the very
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: first thing they do is discuss the split.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, and that's the thing that's that's not that's
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: not just the IRA, that is every single group. I mean,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you know, like Monty Python's life with Brian like had
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: that great bit where they're like sitting around in the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: stands of the coliseum and it's like, you know, the
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: People's Party for I don't. I don't remember what is
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and I'm not even gonna try because then we're gonna
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: get money python people yelling at me.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: But you know the joke, right, I don't remember that
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: part of the Life of Brian. I remember the amazing
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: song at the end, which I played for my daughter
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: the other day. What were you going to ask?
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: Did I hear you say correctly that we're going through
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: a revolution right now? You mean like us literally at
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: this moment in time.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: No, no, no, no no, in the Martian Revolution?
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, I mean there are revolutionary things that are
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: happening right now in current events, but they're not like
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: fun revolutionary things. This is bad revolutionary things. But they're
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: doing revolutionary things that are very similar to sort of
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: year zero Jacobin stuff and like abolish everything Bolshevik stuff.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: They're just doing it for reactionary reasons, not for progressive reasons.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: So we talked about how you created FoST five to
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: give an excuse to go to Mars. What were some
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: of the other features of life on Mars that you
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: felt like you had to deal with So I know
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: you didn't constrain yourself to the hard science, but were
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: there things where you were like, oh, I really have
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: to deal with X and Y.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Well, it was like it was sort of in designing
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: what the cities would look like. It sure felt like
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: they were going to be living underground as opposed to like,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: you know, buildings on the surface. It just seemed like
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: that was going to be a thing. And so there's
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: this thing inside the show called the Martian Way, which
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: is like sort of how the people who lived on
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Mars wound up living, like their cultural attitudes and like
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: how they wind up behaving with each other. And there
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: is something to the fact that they're living in close
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: quarters with each other all the time that there's you know,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: it's corridors and rooms rather than like nobody really has
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: any open or empty space. And so if you're somebody
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: who can't handle being around people all the time, then
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: that you're not going to survive on Mars. And then
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: there's also a whole thing about how you know when
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: you're out there and you have to do this stuff,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: like the sort of the individualist settler archetype that we
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: think of like the rugged individual who goes out and
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: you know, makes their own farm and they're totally self sufficient.
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: Number one.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: That wasn't even true in the Old West. But it's
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: especially impossible in a situation like Mars. So like those
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: kinds of like but that's mostly about the social stuff,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and so to deal with other things, like what are
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the gravity differences? I invented gravi units and grave units
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: handle that. And there are air scrubbers that make sure
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: that the air is clean and works properly, and they've
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: got ways of generating food, and they've got ways of
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: generating water that are just it's not about trying to
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: figure out how we would actually live on Mars. And
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: then when it comes to like the ships, like the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: ships that are going back and forth. I mean I
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: literally say if I say in the show that, like
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: it would usually take six to eight weeks at this
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: point to get from Earth to Mars, depending on you know,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: where we are in the orbits, which just by coincidence,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: happens to be the amount of time it took sailing
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: ships to get from Europe to the Americas during the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: era of classical revolutions. Because that's what I'm here to
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: talk about more than anything else.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: If you've created these little science fiction do dads get
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: around some of these issues? Why not set the revolution
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: in the Marianna's Trench or Antarctica or somewhere else more realistic?
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: Oh, because it's fun to be on Mars. I mean,
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, straight up, man, It's just it's more, it's
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: more fun. What was cooler? Star Trek or SeaQuest DSV.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: You know, Star Trek.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Brandis was pretty awesome though.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: He was in SeaQuest right.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, he was the Yeah, he
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: was the he was the he was the tiger beat
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: heart throb from from SeaQuest.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I did have the tiger Beat things pinned to my
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: wall when I was the right age?
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: Who was who was it was?
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Brandis?
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, greater than light history on the pod today.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Really great hair, real loss for everyone. Yeah he did
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: have great hair. Yeah, all right, anyway, sorry to get
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: us off track there. When we were writing about a
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: city on Mars, a lot of the arguments that we
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: found for why you should settle space is that it
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: would cause cultural diversity, and a lot of people we're
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: arguing that, hey, you know, we're losing a bunch of
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: languages here on Earth. But if you go to Mars,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: they're going to be so cut off from everything that's
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: happening on Earth that you're going to get all of
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: this diversity in culture and we're going to be able
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: to undo this horrible homogenization that's happening here on Earth.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: How good do you think that argument is?
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: It's certainly nothing that I thought would happen. And this
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: is a lot, you know, I do in the early episodes.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: You know, the Martians do develop their own culture because
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: politics is off and downstream of culture, and so I
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that there was like a because
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: this is actually one of the things about revolutions is
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you go twenty thirty years before a revolution and you
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: start getting writers and artists and musicians who are exploring
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: new ideas and putting ideas that are out there that
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: then sort of the generation that grows up with those
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: sort of cultural outputs in their head, then they go
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: on and they do sort of like the political and
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: economic changes. And so the Martians absolutely have their own culture,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: but they're plugged into the company. They're plugged into and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: the signals that are coming out of omniicor are you know,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: they're watching the same shows, they're seeing the same commentary,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: they're they're receiving the same information as as Earthlings on
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Earth who are living under omnichor as auspices are in
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: the same way that like when I went to I
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: lived in I lived in France for three years. And
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: when I was in France, you know, thirty years ago,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: if I was living in France, I would have just
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: been bathed in French TV, French you know, magazines, French newspapers.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: Because that was the only thing that would be available.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: But I could sit in Paris today and just you know,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: beyond English language Twitter and watch English shows, and I'm
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: not I never felt like I was cut off from
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: like American culture when I was living in France. And
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: that's essentially what I'm positing for the Martians is that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of what they're getting passively is is cultural
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: products from Earth. Also in the way that like, you know,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that was true of the Americans in you know, in
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: both Spanish America and Anglo America and Franco America, they
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: were engaging with the cultural products of the mother countries,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: not from themselves, and it was a big deal when
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Hawthorn comes out and is relevant back in Europe. And
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: so there is a person whose name now escapes me
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: unfortunately because I wrote it so long ago. But it
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: was a big deal when there was a musician who
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: made a song that was actually a hit back on
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Earth and it was the first like Martian whoever, like
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: cracked the civilization was like geist back on Earth because
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: they're all living under that same thing, so they wouldn't
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: be cut off, and at least not in my at
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: least not in my story because like I mean, how
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: long does it take to get a signal? There just
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: is just a couple of minutes. It's not like it's
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: not like they're living in Lima, Peru in you know,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: like the fifteen hundreds, when it would take literally six
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to nine months to get a letter back to Spain,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and then another six to nine months to get the letter,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: you know, the response back like how.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: Are you that?
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Nine months later somebody's like I am fine. Nine months
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: later it winds up back in Lima, Like that's not
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: how it would I think be on Mars.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: So as a reader of science fiction, I'm always using
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: my physics brain to analyze, like does this make sense?
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: Would that actually work? But there's often social stuff and
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: historical stuff and big themes in these books that I
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: don't feel qualified to, like, you know, understand whether they're realistic.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: When you read science fiction, Like when you read the Expanse,
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: which is very political, right, it's got these communities and
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: they separate in these ways, does your history brain kick
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: in and you're like, that's not how it was to work,
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: or actually this should go a different way, or basically
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: what are your thoughts about those things? Yeah?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that part of this project for
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: me is to you know, I'm not infallible. I'm not
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: creating like a perfect product here or anything, but like
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I'm so steeped in the political history of human civilization
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that I do feel like I'm uniquely able to write
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: plausible politics for in a science fiction setting in a
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: way that lots of science fiction books. I have to
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: suspend my disbelief about how this society has been organized.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: You know, we all have to suspend our disbelief that
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: every planet anyone seems to go to, it's like the
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: planet is like a country, it's a node. Like there's
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: never there's never internal you know, conflict on any of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: these planets. It's always just like one planet equals like
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: one thing. And that's that's for storytelling reasons and for
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: dramatic reasons because it would get so complex. But yeah,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: for sure, I think, like I do have to suspend
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: disbelief all the time. And when I read you know,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the Kim Stanley Robinson books, which are fantastic, right, I
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: love those books, and I even wrote, I even wrote
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: into the show that the people who were designing all
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the stuff that allowed us to live on Mars, you know,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the company that was doing it was KSR Designs. They're
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: they're the leaders of Martian technology and spaceship technology. Because
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: that's it's Kim Stanley Robinson, right, that's that is what
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: that is meant to be. Some of the politics in
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: those books, I'm like, ah, Okay, that's fine, I'll suspend disbelief.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: It's fine, I don't mind. My thing is better on
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: the politics but obviously terrible on the science.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: So you and ks are both leaned into age extension
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: as a way to move forward the plots. I feel
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: like as a biologist, that's the thing that gets me.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I'm not convinced we're ever going to
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: be able to do that. And so the age extension
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: thing seems to have been dropped. Now does it come back?
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: I want to tell me what happened, I'm not going
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: to I'm not going to give any spoilers, all right,
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: all right, So the life extension thing opens up like
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: the like a third thing here, which is like, obviously,
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: if you know science fiction, you know that science fiction
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: is writing about the future, But what's it really writing
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: about the present?
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: Right? Every work of.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Science fiction is ultimately commenting on its own contemporary society,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: And so there is stuff that is in here, the
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: politics of this thing even more now than ever, like
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: freakily so, and we don't have to get into it,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: but like because a lot of these plot points that
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I came up with years ago or now like happening
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: in real life and it's really disturbing to me. But
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the agent, like the life extension thing, that's like we
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: live in a gerontocracy, Like we live in a world
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: where there's a generation of people who were the first
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: people to hit sort of real advances in medics to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the boomers, right, they hit these real advances in medicine
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: that are keeping us alive longer that are allowing eighty
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: year olds to continue to like, not just be dead,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: but continue to be alive. And when you look at
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: who the leadership is of the country, we were living
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: in a gerontocracy, which is the rule of old people.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: And I think that this is really bad, right, I
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: don't know how else to say it, Like, like, I
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: will editorialize and say that it is bad to have
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: leaders who are like I don't use email because I
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: don't understand email. Like, it's twenty twenty five. We've got
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: real problems, right, and I do not need people whose
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: brains were formed in the nineteen fifties to deal with
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: the issues that are facing us here in the twenty twenties.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: I think they're fundamentally unequipped to do the job at
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a certain point. I don't want to be agist, but like,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I just think that's true. So the Age the Life
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: extension stuff is meant to be a comment on that.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And my life extension juice is not like Fountain of
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Youth stuff. It's not you get to continue to be
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: alive and vital and your brain still functions. These people
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: are staying alive, but their bodies are just kind of
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: inert vegetables. Their brains are just kind of inert vegetables,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Like they're not they're not at the same level they're
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: cognitively and physically.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: All they are is merely alive.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing that I think is different from
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: previous life extension things, which is definitely a part of
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the Kim Stanley Robinson books. And you know, if you
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: read or not read, but like you watch some of
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: the Alien prequels like Prometheus, like there's a life extension,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: you know, a little subplot in there with that guy.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: But yeah, this is that part is almost entirely social commentary.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: All Right, We're going to take a break and when
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: we get back, we'll talk about whether or not a
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: revolution on Mars is inevitable. So I've been wondering whether
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: or not a revolution on Mars is inevitable or how
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: we could avoid it at one point. So, the way
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: international law is currently set up is that if you
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: go to space, you remain the responsibility of some nation,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: but you're not allowed to own your land. It looks
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: like the international community is going to let you extract
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: and sell resources, but it does seem like there could
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: be some fundamental conflicts. If you are like living very
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: far away, but you're still governed by people on Earth
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: who don't get what your life is like. Do you
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: feel like with our current set up, a revolution on
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Mars would be inevitable? Or what could we do to
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: avoid a future Martian revolution?
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: Should we be shortening Martian stocks? No?
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, big time.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Thing is inevitable, right, Like I have to officially declare
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: this as a representative of the History Department. Nothing is inevitable.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Just because a bunch of stuff happened before, that doesn't
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: mean it's going to happen now. There are lots of
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: times where it seems inevitable that something happens and it doesn't.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: There are other times where something seems unfathomably impossible and
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: then it just happens, And that's really what history is
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: all about. It sure does seem like in the history
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: of civilizations and colonizing civilizations that eventually those people who
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: are in the colonized place are going to want home rule.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And that seems to be pretty consistent across time. You know,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: not in every time, not in every place. But you know,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: there's a reason the America is there are a bunch
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: of independent countries and do not continue to be uniformly colonies.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: There are still a few colonies left and we've got
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: our own colonies. But yeah, that kind of thing happens
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: all the time. So if you actually, if we do
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: go to Mars and we do have the colonization of Mars,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: there's definitely going to be people who were like, yeah,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: we want Mars to be independent. And in the show,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: there's a guy Jose de Petrov who this is early
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: going like before this like precursor revolutionary stuff, you know,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: where he literally produced this like really influential documentary that
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: is that is saying exactly that, like it is inevitable
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: that Mars will be free, and so what we need
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: to do as Martians is be the agents of that inevitability,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Like we need we need to be the soldiers for
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: this force of history that is inevitably going to give
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Mars its independence. Whether it's today, tomorrow, or five hundred
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: years from now, it's going to happen. And then I
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: say in the show, of course he conveniently ignored all
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: the times in history where that didn't happen. But it
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: was a very influential documentary and you know, it impacted
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. And also just like in terms
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: of like where people's mentalities are at us, this has
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: happened so often in history that you know, our future
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Martians will know that, and they will have it in
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: their heads that you know, in certain times and places,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: you know, people that have gone off and and done
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: something far away wind up running it themselves. But how
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: do we avoid that if we don't want the Martians
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: to have their freedom, if we want to continue to
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: have them live under the thumb of the earthlings and
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the earthworms?
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: How do we do that?
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Necessarily? What I want?
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: No, I know, I know, I picked up on the subject.
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: You you hate the Martians and you want them.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: To serve you.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: They're the worst, They're.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: The absolutely worst. Yeah.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: But when you look at sort of the example of
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the United States without like unpacking the sort of the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: genocidal way that this unfolded, the Northwest Ordinance in was
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty early document in American history. That
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: is what lays the foundations for the path from colony
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: to statehood from debate not from colony but from from
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: territory tist and then saying, once you become a state,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: you're an equal part of this project that we are doing.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: And there is something to that, because there was an
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: argument at that do we take it for granted that
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: like this path, the statehood is a thing, But there
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: were arguments at the time that like the thirteen original colonies,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: they should be the states, and then as the white
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: settlers move into the interior, those should be territories that
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: are primarily serving us here on the coast, like the
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: real thing, like these United States, and then those are
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: going to be the territories. And it was a big
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: argument about whether you know, Ohio and Kentucky and Wisconsin
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: would would eventually be able to become states if enough
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Anglo settlers move there. And I think that doing that
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: has helped keep the country together. California, which is a
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: really far away from the East Coast, especially you know
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: at the time that the settlements of California are getting going,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: like California just became a state even though it was
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: a whole continent away and California did not. Ever, there
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: was no plausible independence movement. I mean, I'm from the Northwest.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I know about all the little subgroups that want independence
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: for Cascadia and independence for California, but there's never been
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: any need for it, and so I think that having
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: that kind of incorporation, legitimate incorporation, into the larger project
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: is how it would work.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I keep trying to think about the best way
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: to get Mars settlement started, which I don't think is
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: going to happen in the near term. But right now
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: I worry that we're going to have a scramble for territory,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: which is going to lead to conflict down here. So
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out a way where you don't get
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: a scramble, but at the right time without violence, you
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: give the people on Mars, you know, the ability to
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: govern themselves. Is a what sounds to me like a
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: complicated question. But I don't deal with the human stuff.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: I mostly deal with the science stuff.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's very trust Eelon. I'm sure he'll do it right.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's Tuste alone.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Some of the things that he has thrown out there
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: about like this is what Mars should be, Like it
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: should be democratic, but you should be able to rescind
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: any law with one third vote, with like, if one
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: third of the popular opposes a law, they should be
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: able to just like werecenting, It's like you're just sending
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: people to die like that is the only thing that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: this organization of society that you are positing will actually
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: accomplish is that everybody dying and you're creating a new Roanoak.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: So the way I get around that in the show,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: like the scramble for territory on Mars, is it's a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: monopoly and there's just one company, and they have secured
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: a monopoly at at a certain point in human history.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: They've secured a monopoly to all resources and territory beyond
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the line of lunar orbit, which you know, gets me
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: to want, you know, for one thing, being able to
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: make social commentary about life under a monopoly corporation, but
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: is also sort of like tipping a cap to you know,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: the line that the Pope drew that gave the Spanish
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: everything on one side and the Portuguese everything.
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: On the other.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Like the Spanish just for a while, the Spanish were
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: literally claiming all of the Americas as their own territory
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: because the Pope said that it was theirs, and that
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: was a real thing that happened, and so that's that's
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: how I kind of wrote it into the show. And
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I even said that like a couple of
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the corporation, the rival corporations to Omnicor that initially agreed
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: to giving Omnicor this monopoly, they were just like, this
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: is great. Let them claim that monopoly, because they're going
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: to go try to colonize it and they're going to
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: bankrupt themselves and they're not going to get anything out
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: of it. It's going to be a huge debacle. And
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: so like, letting them go off and try to do this,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: we're actually securing their collapse here on Earth, and that's
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: going to allow us to become more powerful, you know,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: in relation to them. And of course they were unfortunately
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: dead wrong, and Omniicor became very very powerful because they
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: did it, and that short didn't pay off.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: It did not.
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: Now they tried.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: I keep hearing people say, let mus do it, he'll
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: just go out there and die, and well, I think
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: that's high probability. I also worry about what would happen
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: if he was successful.
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: But there's there's no chance he gets on one of
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: those ships, none whatsoever. Wow, Eland Musk is not getting
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: on a ship to go to Mars. Never.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: He would never do that. He would send people to
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: do it. He would have other people die for sure,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: but he would be like, that's too risky for me.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: And would you get on a ship to Mars?
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: How about New Mexico? Would you visit New Mexico? That
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: goes great?
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I love in Mexico, lovely place.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: I grew up in New Mexico and couldn't get out
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: of there fast enough. But it is a beautiful place.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like the I think it's the
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: outdoorsy stuff, you know, it's a good, good place for
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: hiking and stuff.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: So tell us about what's next for you. You're planning
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: to write more fiction? Is there going to be a
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: Jovian Revolution inspired by Biova? Space tiring? What are you
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: planning on next?
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: At the moment, I am finishing my third book, which is,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: you know, nonfiction about a certain period in Roman history
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: where it seemed like their civilization was collapsing and that
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: would be irreversible and irretrievable, and then instead they pulled
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: themselves out of it and put themselves back together and
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: went on for another couple of centuries, which I feel
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: like is a pretty pertinent story that deserves that deserves
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: to be shoved into people's brains as we all doom,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: scroll our.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: Lives away a hopeful message.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, honest to God, like a hopeful message.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: And then you know, there's eight episodes left on the
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Martian Revolution, and then when that's done, I'm going to
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: restart sort of like the traditional series of revolutions, and
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I'll sort of pick it up where I left off
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: with Russia at the end of World War one ish
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: and so like the Irish, I'll do the Irish Revolution.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: You know, Cuba will be done, maybe the Spanish Civil War.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: I haven't quite I'm going to be calling it as
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: I see it and as I go, But there's basically
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century revolutions are left to be covered, and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: then you know there is there future fiction.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I would sure love to do more stuff like this. Basically,
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: the way I put it is, the people who.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Like it love it, and I've gotten a lot of
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: positive feedback about it and people saying that they really
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: really enjoy it, and so if I can do this
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: kind of thing again, that would be fantastic. Is there
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: going to be a sequel to the Martian Revolution? If
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: there is, it's already been coded into the show, and
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: you would just have to know what you were looking
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: for to be like, oh, that's what he's doing, because yeah,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: the sequel is known if it happens, and it should
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: already be something that if you were really paying attention,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: or if you just happen to accidentally have a realization
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: in your head one day. Oh, that's why he keeps
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: saying that, then you know what the sequel will be.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: Listen carefully, focus, Listen carefully, and it's it's there. It's there.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: This is something we should have asked earlier. But have
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: you written science fiction that is publicly available yet or
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: was this your first science fiction?
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: No, this is my first work of science fiction. This
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: is my first work of like published fiction. I have
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: stuff that I did, like like independently, like little short
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: story things, and I did the Three Day Novel Contest
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a couple times, and I did record an.
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: Audiobook of one of those. But that's like a that's
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: like a detective story that's using all the tropes from
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: like Raymond Chandler and stuff. But Nope, this is this
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: is the first science fiction.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: Got it So in the next eight weeks when the
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Martian Revolution is over, there's nothing for us to fall.
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: Back on, not fictionally, No, no, no, you no, you
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: can no, you can't be like, oh, I love this
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: new stuff and he's got this old stuff. I mean,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: you knows. Maybe I'll maybe I'll resurrect some of those stories.
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: They're all science fiction.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: E all right, well, I love the Martian Revolution. I'm
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: looking forward to what comes next, and I'm looking forward
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: to the history revolutions coming back to It's all wonderful.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the show. I
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: had a really great time.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We
• 54:27
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• 54:30
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• 54:33
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• 54:35
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• 54:41
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• 54:47
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  Speaker 3: O'll be shy right to us. This Sally