Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The Science Fiction Universe of "Venemous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman

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The Science Fiction Universe of "Venemous Lumpsucker" by Ned Beauman · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, quick announcement everyone, We have just joined TikTok, So
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: head over there and follow us to see videos of
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Daniel asking and answering science questions. All right, enjoy the pod. Hey, Kelly,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: is a mosquito technically a parasite?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Well, you maybe don't realize the can of worms you've
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: opened up if you go to a parasitology meeting. This
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: is something that we actually fight about. But I'll just
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: cut to the chase, because I'm sure what you wanted
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: was a short answer. H And I would say that
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: they are micro predators.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: What predators? You're saying that these bloodsuckers don't just make
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: me itch, they've turned me into their prey.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: They do. And you know, unlike parasites, they don't have
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: like durable, long lasting interactions with your body. They just
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: kind of take a meal and then they run off.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Does that mean that I don't have to feel bad
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: when I swap one of them?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think they feel bad when they're thinking your blood?
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: All right? Well, what if I was like going to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: kill all of the mosquitoes, then should I feel bad?
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Oh?
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  Speaker 2: I feel like now we're getting into like philosophy. This
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: is like a twisted version of the trolley problem.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, if I could pull a lever to
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: have that train kill every single mosquito, I would do it,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: even if it saved nobody's lives, even if it just
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: saved us from some itches.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: You don't need philosophy, you know the answers you go
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: with your gut.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: at UC Irvine and a deep deep hater of mosquitoes.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: I'm Kelly Wider Smith. I'm an adjunct professor at Rice University,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: and you know I'm also a deep deep hater of mosquitoes.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I thought that as a parasitologist, you were like the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: biggest ad of it for the most hated species on
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the planet.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I'm an advocate for some parasites, but your mosquitoes kill
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  Speaker 2: a lot of humans, and I don't think that we
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  Speaker 2: really know what would happen if you took them out
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: of the ecosystems. Maybe they play a role that we
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: don't know about. But I feel like if you eradicated
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: all of them and then no one got malaria anymore,
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  Speaker 2: we could probably find some way to fill in the
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: ecological niches that they were leaving empty. I think it
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: would be worth it to kill them all.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think I know what purpose mosquitoes serve. They
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: serve to limit people's happiness.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: You feel like there's some mechanism on this earth where
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: that's like a thing that needs to happen. I thought
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: that's what Twitter was for.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: They call it X now, Kelly, they call it x Oh.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm so behind.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Let's eliminate both of them, the mosquito of the Internet. Well,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: in which we dive deep into the joys of philosophy
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and physics and cosmology and think about everything that's out
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: there in the universe. We want to understand how it
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: all works. We want to it makes sense of the universe.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: We want to boil down all of those froth and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: quantum particles into a story that fits into your mind,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: that clicks together and goes Ah, I understand how it works.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: If only all questions were that straightforward.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Well, all the physics at least has a goal to
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: tell you a story that makes sense to you, to
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: incorporate into your mind a mental model of the whole universe.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: We don't dare to do that with chemistry and definitely
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: not with biology, but sometimes we can take a tiny
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: little sliver of physics and download it into your brain.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: My normal friend and co host Orge can't be here today,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: but I'm very excited to be here with you, Kelly.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I am super excited to be here with you. And
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: while I'm always super excited to be here with you,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: I'm particularly excited that we're a little bit more in
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: my niche today talking about you know, ecology and species conservation,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: and it's going to be a good time.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: That's right, because we usually talk about real science on
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the podcast, how the universe actually works. No, oh no,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: this is not a biology slam.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: I'm you are going the way in the mosquitoes, Daniel.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, you totally mistoo. No, no, let me finish.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I was going to say that usually we talk about
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: real science, but today we're talking about science fiction, not
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: that biology is not of real science. I think you're
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a little too defensive.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm a little sensitive. I feel like physicists often
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: look down on biology. I saw a talk by Freeman
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Dyson where he was certainly doing that. Anyway, I'll stop
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: being so sensitive no fairpoint.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Physicists have been guilty of that in the past. I
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: think it was Rutherford who said all science is physics
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: or stamp collecting, and I definitely do not agree with that.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: There is glory in chemistry and wondrous questions in biology.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: But today we are stepping beyond the bounds of all
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: kinds of science into the worlds of science fiction, because
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: one of the roles of science fiction is to think
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: about the boundaries of science, what's beyond it, What other
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: universes could we live in? What are the consequences of
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: the technology that we develop? If science keeps barreling forward,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: does it change the way we live and what it's
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: like to be a human being and the choices that
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: we have to make. And I think that there's a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: very close connection between the work of scientists and the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: imagination of science fiction. So we have a series of
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: episodes on this podcast where we read a science fiction novel,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: talk about the science in it, and then interview the
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: author about how they wrote it and why they decided
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: to build their science fiction universe the way they did.
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  Speaker 2: And most of the episodes that you and I have
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: done together with sci fi writers has been about being
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: moved into a world that's totally unlike our own, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: so it's sort of they build this brand new universe
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  Speaker 2: and you get to enjoy living in it for a while.
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  Speaker 2: What what's so exciting about today is that it's more
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: near term and you're left thinking, oh, gosh, is this
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  Speaker 2: going to be us in a few decades, And so
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit different than what we usually do,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: which and I really enjoyed it.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: This is a wonderful book we'll be talking about today.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: It's called The Venomous Lumpsucker, a novel by Ned Bowman
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  Speaker 1: and asks a really intriguing question about the nature of extinction,
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  Speaker 1: what price we should have to pay to drive a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: species extinct, whether we should care about species going extinct?
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  Speaker 1: For example, does the mosquito deserve to live?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: We think that's something that he talked about in particular.
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  Speaker 2: But I did appreciate that there was a whole sort
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: of speech about how we should be thinking about parasites
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  Speaker 2: and conservation, and that was very refreshing to me.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was fascinating. I thought about you as I
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: was reading this book. Today on the podcast, we'll be
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: covering the science fiction universe of the venomous lumpsucker.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: What a great name.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Everybody I tell about this book invariably says the what
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: are you serious? Who would name their book that?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: But I also like totally bought it. Like when I
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: first read the title, I thought, ah, I thought I
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: knew about a lot of the weird fish, but venomous
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: lovesucker I can totally buy there's a fish called venomous lovesucker.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: But I was wrong. But anyway, he came up with
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  Speaker 2: a really glorious creature.
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  Speaker 1: He really did. So let's tell people this setting the book,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and then we'll dig into what the story is. The
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: book is set somewhere in the near future on Earth,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: and it's very much set in our universe. This is
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: not the kind of book where they invent all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of new physics, and the universe is very different and
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  Speaker 1: we have fast and light travel. This basically takes place
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: on Earth in Europe in about fifteen years, and it's
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  Speaker 1: facing the question of how do we cope with this
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  Speaker 1: massive extinction event? So many species, so many little beetles
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  Speaker 1: are going extinct every day, What should we do about it?
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: What can we do about it? And this book paints
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: this specific picture about how society might handle it.
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  Speaker 2: And I thought he did a really nice job of
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: creating a world that you could imagine, like if we
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: take all the wrong turns between now and like fifteen
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  Speaker 2: to twenty maybe thirty years from now, we could be there.
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  Speaker 2: And so you know, right now we use carbon credits,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: and companies can buy carbon credits, you know, to essentially
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: pay for the right to release more carbon into the atmosphere.
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  Speaker 2: Here he's created extinction credits, where if you're going to
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  Speaker 2: start some big new project that's going to result in
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  Speaker 2: the extinction of some species, you can sort of pay
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  Speaker 2: for that with extinction credits. And you know, there's like
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  Speaker 2: a sliding scale for how many extinction credits you need
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  Speaker 2: depending on some characteristics of the animal that you're going
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  Speaker 2: to have go extinct. But like I bought that this
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  Speaker 2: is a path we could go down in a couple decades.
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  Speaker 2: What about you, Daniel.
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  Speaker 1: I thought it was both inspired, creative, and also very realistic.
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  Speaker 1: We often have trouble figuring out like how do we
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  Speaker 1: solve a problem, and when we can't figure out what
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  Speaker 1: direction to go in, we basically just turn it over
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to capitalism. We're like, can we financialize this can we
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  Speaker 1: incentivize people to do the right thing by making it
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  Speaker 1: expensive to do the wrong thing? And I feel like
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: that's sort of clever, like turn it over to the
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  Speaker 1: free market, But it also feels like sort of an
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  Speaker 1: abdication of our responsibility. But then again, we can never
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  Speaker 1: really decide on how to do anything, so it's better
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  Speaker 1: to do something than nothing, I suppose. But this was
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  Speaker 1: really uncomfortable to read about. This like financialization of extinction,
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  Speaker 1: It really reminds me of like putting a price on
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  Speaker 1: a human life. You know, when the government has to
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  Speaker 1: make decisions about like how much to spend on things,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: or should a company have to install seat belts? They
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: do so if the price of the seatbelt is less
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: than the expected loss of human life, you know, you
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: have to calculate, like, oh, human life is ten million dollars.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Makes me wonder, like, well, if I had ten million dollars,
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  Speaker 1: could I buy a murder credit to like kill somebody
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  Speaker 1: and then give that money to the family and be
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: like I bought the right to kill your husband, right?
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  Speaker 1: That seems terrible. This is just sort of the same
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: thing on a larger scale.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I do think humans for better or worse,
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  Speaker 2: feel more comfortable doing that with non human animals, and
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: like we get more uncomfortable, you know, if you're talking
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: about like, well, this chimpanzee really made me angry, Like people, would,
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  Speaker 2: you know, maybe make you pay more to take the
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: chimpanzee out than the like stink bug that lives on
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: your curtain or something. But yeah, no, I agree, these
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: things are complicated and uncomfortable, And I thought he also
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: did a really nice job of sort of like weaving
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: in the way that even our best intentions can get
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: corrupted by things like you know, the market doesn't always
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: do what we think it's gonna do, even though we
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: like maybe should have been able to anticipate the two
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: thousand and eight you know, financial crisis, because what were
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: we doing with the banking system and housing back then,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: But we didn't. And so, you know, things don't go
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  Speaker 2: exactly the way the characters thought they were going to
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: go with these extinction credits and how they're going to
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: pay out monetarily, and you know, this stuff doesn't always
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: work the way we think it will, and so this
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: is sort of a story about things going kind of
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: horribly awry.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is sort of a cautionary tale, and I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: thought it was super thoughtful and creative. There are so
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: many things that happened in the book that surprised me.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: And then as soon as I thought about I thought,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you know what, that's totally realistic, Like that's exactly what
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: could happen. And to me, that's the best kind of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: science fiction. Somebody who's like creatively thought about the consequences
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: of some new technology. And you know the way in
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the book, lobbyists and special interests add like loopholes and
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: exceptions and they end up like driving down the cost
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of extinction credits to make it like horribly cheap to
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: send some caterpillar off to its final demise. I thought
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: that was very realistic. Another aspect of the book which
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: is super fascinating is the role of technology. He thinks
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: about what it really means for a species to become
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: extinct when you can record it, when you can record
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: its genome and its behavior and get samples of it,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and if it's possible to bring a species back, is
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it still extinct?
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  Speaker 2: And this is a topic that's like near and dear
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  Speaker 2: to my heart. You know, the positive implications that we
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: think will happen when we create a technology. So you know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: right now people are working on de extinction, like can
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: you bring back the mammoth and put it back in
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: its and you know the permafrost habitats in Russia to
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: try to make the habitat what it once was, which
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: would be better for all of the other species that
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: were there. But you know, a lot of these technologies,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: even if they were envisioned with only positive implications, the
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: way they get rolled out can often have some pretty
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: negative implications. So here you see they're working on, you know,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: figuring out ways to store biological information so that you
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: cannot only bring back sort of members of a species,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: but you could even bring back specific individuals. And I think,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know what the original plan was
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: in the book for the people who made these technologies,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: but I can certainly imagine on Earth people having really
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: good intentions creating that technology, and then it makes extinction blurry,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Like is you know the beetle that you study really
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: extinct if everything that you need to bring it back
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: is in a computer and you could recreate it in
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: a lab at some point. So you know, these technologies
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: that are meant to help, but like can get used
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: in the wrong way and really mess up incentives is
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: to me a fascinating topic that I felt like he
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: handled really well on the book.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and lots of really interesting questions that seem initially
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: like they have obvious answers, like when is a species extinct?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: You might say, well, when there are no more living bits, right,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and when there are no more living individuals, But then
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: he walks you through these arguments in a really thoughtful way, like, well,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: if there's a few more living individuals but they can't
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: reproduce because it's too small a group where they can
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: only live in zoos, then is that really somehow less
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: extinct than another species where there are no living individuals,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: but we have the capacity to make more because of
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: our technology and we could bring them back. Which species
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: really is more extinct in that case? So it's very persuasive.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: It really changed my mind a lot of these tricky questions.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at the book tackles a lot of difficult questions.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So what is the story about, Daniel?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's not just like here's a future Earth
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: where everything is going wrong. It tells the story, and
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: it's from the point of view of a biologist who's
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: being asked to assess whether a particular species is intelligent because,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: as you said, it costs more extinction credits in this
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: book to kill something if it's intelligent, which I guess
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: makes sense, but also it feels really icky. And her
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: job is to assess whether the venomous lumpsucker is an
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: intelligent species or not. And it turns out she has
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: her own stake in this game. She wants it to
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: be intelligent for her own reasons. And in the book,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: some corporation comes along and accidentally kills off all of
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: the venomous lumpsuckers or do they And in these places
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: where people store these species, these biobanks then get hacked
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: and the whole question of whether species or extinct becomes
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: much more fuzzy and questionable. It's a really exciting sort
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of thriller that takes you through this world.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a totally fascinating world. Can you tell me
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: a little bit more about some of the science that
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: was sort of created or forwarded for the story in particular?
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about it actually, because
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff is biological, I mean, the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: core of technological innovations that exist in this world. Are
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the ability to preserve as species to imprinciple de extinctify it,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and they do, for example, genome sequencing. Of course you've
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: got to store the DNA, but they also do deep
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: scans of the animals and they watch their behaviors et cetera,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: et cetera. And as you said, this is something people
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: are actually working on now. So it made me wonder like,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: is it possible today or in the near future to
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: actually do this to bring a species back from extinction
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: or what would you need in order to make that possible.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So there are people who are way smarter than me
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: who would say that the answer is definitely yes, we
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: can bring species back from extinction. But to be honest,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: I'm skeptical that we're going to bring back the exact
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: same thing, and maybe that doesn't matter. So, for example,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: they're working on, as I mentioned, bringing back the wooly mammoth,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: and different groups are doing this in different ways. So
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: for example, one group has was I think it's the
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: genome from some elephant species, and then they're taking what
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: they've been able to get from mammoths that have been
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: like frozen in permafrost. What they've been able to extract
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: out of their genome. They're tinkering with an elephant genome
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: to try to make it look like a mammoth genome.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: But then there's all sorts of like you know, maternal
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: effects that are missing, so that mammoth would have to
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: be ges stated given the science that we have now
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: ges dated in the body of an elephant, And how
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: does that like hormonal environment, you know, differ. And then
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, some elephants and maybe some mammoths
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: like eat feces after they're born to get the right microbiome.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: And so now you're not getting like a mammoth microbiome.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: You're getting like an elephant microbiome. And is that enough?
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Did you say eat feces?
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Sure did, Yeah, this is biology, man. We get to
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: feces in about five minutes.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: You're saying it's not a mammoth if it has been
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: eaten mammoth poop when it was a baby.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't say that that's the line yes
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: or no, but I would say that, like, you know,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: so to some extent, these differences build up and like so, yes,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: you have a mammoth, but the mammoth is now placed
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: into an ecosystem that varies dramatically from what it was
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: in before. It's social interactions might be different, because will
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: they act the same in a different environment, And is
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: there something about their development that's missing that's going to
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: change the way they interact with each other, and so like, yes,
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: you have a mammoth, but you don't have the mammoth
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: you used to have. And the extent to which that matters,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe it's enough to just have a
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: mammoth back in the environment and that does some good,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: But I think these things are complicated. And as far
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: as MRI scans and like connectomes so that you can
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: bring back a human who is exactly the same as
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the person you love to just passed away, I think
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: we are way more than decades away from that. But
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there are a lot of people who disagree
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: with me. But it seems like when we first got
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: the human genome, we were like, there's so much we're
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: gonna be able to deal with it, And then we
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: were like, oh, well, not really, because actually it's much
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: more complicated, And that always seems to be the answer.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: A friend of mine just completed the connectome of life.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: The fruitfly which has a tiny number of neurons compared
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to the humans, and it took forever, and it seems
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: like we're never going to get to the connectome of
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the human brain. But you raise a lot of really
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: interesting questions that I think touch on the deeper issue
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: of like what does it really mean for a species
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to be extinct. It's not really just about the individuals.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: It's about their entire environment and can they survive and propagate?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: And that requires much more than just the actual bodies, right,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: It requires the parents and the poop and everything around
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: them and all this kind of stuff. And I think
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: that's one reason why all of the efforts so far
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: in the real world to de extinctify have focused on
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: things that are near relatives to existing species, Like you
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: could have a mammoth baby maybe born in an elephant,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and that's giving you something that's close to a mammoth.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Or you can have like an extinct rat be born
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: from existing rats. These kinds of things. I don't think
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: it could be possible, for example, to de extinctify species
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that was very distant from anything that was currently alive,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: like a dinosaur, although maybe I guess you could grow
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: one in a big alligator.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, Like I don't know how you
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: de extinctify a trilobite or something, for example. And maybe
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: the question is, like, you know, if you could de
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: extinct it, but it could only live in a zoo
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: because you've like destroyed all of its habitat and it
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: just can't. The things that it needed don't exist anymore.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: What kind of a life is that? And I'm sure
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: people would dramatically differ in their answer to that question,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: And so there you go.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the fascinating things about the book Venomous
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Lumpsucker is he talks about the influence of this technology
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: on decision making, and if it's possible to bring species
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: back from the dead, then doesn't make it less bad
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: to make them extinct. That it sort of makes the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: question like fuzzier now, because what is extinct really mean?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: You know, It's sort of like saying, oh, I can
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: upload you to the clouds, So what does it matter
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: if I murder you? Like, well, I still don't really
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: want to get murdered, even if I'm backed up.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I guess there's also like nobody wants
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: the physical pain of being murdered and many layers of
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: complication in all of these questions.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Many reasons to not be murdered by Kelly we Smith.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Speaking of commercialization. Let's take a quick break for word
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: from our sponsors, and we're back.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Well, we thoroughly enjoyed this book. We thought it was
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: very thoughtful, very interesting, very creative, but also very very funny.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I laughed out loud many times while reading this book.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, so, without further ado, let's bring Ned Bowman onto
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: the show.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Well, then it's my pleasure to welcome to the program today,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Ned Bowman. Ned, thank you very much for joining us today.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about yourself. How did
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you get into science fiction writing.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: Well, this is my fifth novel, but it's my first
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: real science fiction novel. I think it was inevitable that
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: I would write one eventually because I read pretty much
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: nothing but science fiction when I was growing up, and
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: then kind of moved over into more mainstream literary fiction,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: but continued to read science fiction, and to be honest,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: I always felt, like, you know, it was a genre
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: that I appreciated, but wasn't necessarily up to myself because
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: I think it requires quite a specific set of skills.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: But eventually, you know, I tried my hand at various
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: other things, and I had done it. I'd published a
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: couple of science fiction short stories, and then with this one,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: I thought, okay, I'll give it a shot, put everything
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: into it. Yeah, and that was how I ended up
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: with Venoma's Lampsyca.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: So you noted that you need to have a certain
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: set of skills to write science fiction. How did you
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: get those skills yourself? So you got a lot of
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: the you know, the biology in this book is fantastic
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: as a biologist. Did you like pull out biology textbooks?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: What was the process of trying to blend science fiction
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: with all of the appropriate science fact.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: Well, all of my books have been quite research heavy,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: you know. For instance, my second book had a lot
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: about the Avon God Theater in the Weimar era. You know,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: I don't think researching science is inherently any harder than
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: researching that kind of thing, at least until you get
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: into the really confusing stuff. When I say a specific
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: set of skills, I mean more trying to kind of
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: paint a plausible and internally consistent future world without leaving
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: huge gaps and blind spots. And I have always so
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: admired the science fiction novelists who were good at that,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: And with this book, I was very conscious it's set
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty years in the future, and A, I
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: don't specify the exact date, which makes it easier, and
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: also B I think fifteen to twenty years is kind
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: of the easiest place to put it because it's not
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: so soon that you can get refuted in all your
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: predictions really quickly. But it's also not so far away
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: that you really have to make some big calls about
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: like what's going to change and where things are going
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: to go. So I think I was doing it sort
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: of on easy modes in that respect, but that was
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: the challenge. Whereas the science stuff, Yeah, you know, at
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: this point, I'm just kind of used to being at
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: dilettante and with each book, I stroll through some new
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: arab of research and I didn't really find it any
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: harder than any of the stuff I've researched in the past.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Well, before we dive into the details of your book,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: we like to ask the same questions to every author
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to sort of put them on the spectrum of science fiction.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So here's some generic science fiction questions, not specifically about
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: your book. So the first one is do you think
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: that Star Trek style transporters kill you and clone you
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: or do you think they actually transport your atoms somewhere else?
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Well, I studied philosophis undergraduate and then later read this
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: book called Reasons in Persons by Derek Parfitt, which one
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: reviewer actually noticed as an influence on this book by coincidence,
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: which I hadn't really consciously thought about, but in hindsight, yeah,
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of those ideas had implanted themselves
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: in my head. And I think path It's answer would
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: be that you need to start thinking about personhood in
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: a way which doesn't have such strict boundaries. You have
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: to think about a person as being a kind of
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: soft entity which doesn't begin or and in a specific place.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: And if you look at things that way, then it's
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: legitimate to say, is the person who beams down to
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: the planet me sort of that person is semi continuous
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: with me, not continuous to the extent that we normally
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: think of ourselves as being continuous. And yeah, I think
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: Parfitt would say that's okay. That doesn't have to be
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: a strict boinary answer to that, So I think that's
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: probably what I would go with because I really respect
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Parfit's concept of the world.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So it is you as long as you redefine you
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to be whatever you ends up on the other side
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: of the transporter.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's fair enough to say it's sort
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: of you in many ways, pretty much you.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: That's a great answer. So another tech question, what tech
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: in science fiction would you most like to see become
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: a reality?
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: I think the science fiction story that has had the
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: most influence on me in terms of my sort of
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: personality and outlook is this story called Reasons to Be
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Cheerful by Greg Egan, and that is a story about
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: a guy who gets a brain tumor which affects his
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: ability to take pleasure in things, which kind of flattened
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: his abilities to take pleasure in things, and well, I
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: have no choice but to spore the ending bride any
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: think it really spoils it. They eventually develop a device
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: which allows him to adjust how much pleasure he takes
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: in different things, so he's able to say, not do
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: I like this or do I find that beautiful? But
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: do I want to like this? Do I want to
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: find this beautiful. What is it that it would be
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: most convenient or positive for me to take pleasure in,
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: and he's able to adjust it on that basis. I've
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: always felt that would be so good, that would make
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: it so much easier for us to adjust to the world.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: What would you change about your response to the world
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: first if you had this device.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Well, again, this kind of comes up in the novel,
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure again the novel was kind of influenced
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: an unconscious way by this story. But basically, one of
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: the two main characters of Venomous Lumpsucker is this guy
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: who's a real foodie, but because of the effects of
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: climate change in fifteen or twenty years, most foods don't
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: really taste of anything anymore. So he has to take
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: this pill, which means he doesn't care whether a meal
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: is good or not, which is sort of the more
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: destructive version of what I'm talking about. The better alternative
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: would be, you know, for him to go, well, what
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: is still available to me, I'm going to decide that
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: I will love that, and then I'll be perfectly adjusted
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: to the world that I actually have, as opposed to
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: the world that I would like to be in. I
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: mean there's probably a lot of more profound ways, so
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: you could use something like that. But that's probably what
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: I would do, at least to start off with, because
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: you know, I am quite a snob about like food
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: and fabrics and all that kind of thing. Like No,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: imagine if you could just take just as much pleasure
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: and cheap polyester as in cashmere, or you could take
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: just as much pleasure and a protein bar as in
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: you know, a delicious meal. Oh, I mean that's another one.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Like I'm trying to be vegan, not very successfully. I
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: would love you know, I would just adjustice so that
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: I didn't even want meat anymore and enjoyed chickpeas way
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: more than IEVER used to enjoy procido if I can.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: That's going to be tough.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Chickpeas are delicious. I'm definitely pro chickpee on this question.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: I'm pro check pee. But as soon as you start
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: eating vegan, you find yourself eating chickpeas like seven times
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: a day, and it's too much.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: No, there's so many kinds of beans out there. You
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: should get into indigenous kinds of beans. We're members of
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the Rangel Gordo Bean Clubs, and we get this shipment
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of heirloom beans every month. It's wonderful anyway. A big
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: fan of Greg Egan over here. Love his stories so
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: thoughtful and creative. Last genaeric question before we dive into
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the book is what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox?
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Why haven't aliens visited us? Or have they?
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I don't. I don't have a great answer
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: to that. I mean, I don't see strong reason to
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: believe that they have. I'm not particularly convinced by any
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: of those hypotheses about how they know where here and
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: they're watching and they've chosen not to visit us or interfere.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: The answer to it that kind of grips me with
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: the most like cold, implacable grip as soon as I
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: heard it. Is just the idea that all advanced civilizations
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: have actually destroyed themselves one way or another, you know,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: before they leave their solar systems, if not before they
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: leave their planets. So it could be that, But then
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: you'd think somebody would have got as far as you know,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: self replicating probes, ornoy machines or whatever. So I really
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: don't know why we haven't had any of those. I
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: can't explain that all.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Right, so let's start jumping into venomous lumpsucker. I love
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: this book. So the novel like, so I'm an ecologist,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: and so top like climate change in the massive extinction
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: event that we're living through right now, or topics that
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: are near and dear to my heart. What fascinates you
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: about these themes? Why did you decide that you wanted
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: to write a book around the topic of extinction.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a combination of you know, on the one hand,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: I am very concerned about the climates, and I love animals,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: and a lot of the sentiments in the book about
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: how thinking about animals being driven extinct is so painful
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: you can't even bear it, Like some of that is
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: an exaggeration of how I feel. But then on the
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: other hand, like I sail a studied philosophy, and I'm
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: often frustrated by the way we have so many surface
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: level debates about things which go round and round in
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: circles and you never get anywhere around. I always just
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: think this needs some real philosophy applied to it, and
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: the question of extinction is really one of those, you know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: because most people basically seem to agree that it's bad.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: If a species goes extinct, but obviously there's no consensus
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: on what we are willing to pay or sacrifice to
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: prevent that happening. That's not one of those questions you
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: can answer just by people sort of vaguely, you know,
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: talking past each other about how they feel about it.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: I really think if we're going to talk about how
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: much do we really care about preventing extinction, you have
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: to look at it riskly and ask, well, why is
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: it bad if a species goes extinct? How much do
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: we or should we care? Why is the species valuable?
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Why should we prevent it? And you have to look
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: at those philosophically instead of just relying on intuition and
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: assumptions and so on. So I thought that would be
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: an interesting basis for a novel to start, not offering answers,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: but at least asking some questions that I felt like
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: needed to be asked that weren't being asked in a
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: more serious philosophical way about this issue.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I totally agree, and I know that in your answer
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: you gave sort of two questions. One was what price
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: are we willing to pay? And the other was how
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: much should we care for me? One of the most
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: interesting things about the book was that it seemed to
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: sort of sound a warning about attempts to legislate and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: financialize decision making. I've often heard economists say things like
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: it's good to put a price on things, even if
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: it's the wrong price. Do you think that there's a
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: danger to try to assign a monetary value to moral
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: choices like a human life or the existence of a species.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Is that the right way for us as a society
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: to balance these things?
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think it's intrinsically immral to do that.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: You know, if you work in the government, you have
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: to operate at least in this country on the basis
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: of they're called qa L wise quality adjusted life years,
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: and you have to decide is it worth buying this
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: treatment for a rare cancer, And then you have to think, well,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: how many people will live how many extra years longer?
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: And you have to put a number on that stuff. So,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: you know, I find it very frustrating when people are like,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: we can't have bureaucrats putting a price on human life
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: or whatever, when I think you have to. That's the
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: only way you can make trade offs in it, you know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: relative scarcity, but on the other hand, when the reason
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: you're trying to put a price on something is because
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: you're saying, well, a price signal is the only signal
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: that the free market really understands. So the reason we're
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: putting in a price on it is so that we
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: can plug it into the free market and then pull
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: a few levers and then allow the free market to
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: work its magic and solve this problem for us. Again,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: I don't think that's inherently a moral. Is just one
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: of the things I'm saying in the book is it's
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: not going to work because the thing that the free
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: market is good at is rooting around any impediments to profit,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: and the free market the reason it works is it's,
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: you know, a collaboration of millions of very intelligent people
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: all working together to solve this problem. Where the problem
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: is someone is stopping us from making enough money. And
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: if opposed to them, you only have a handful of
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: kind of well meaning people in government, then the free
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: market is always going to outsmart the people in government.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: So that's why it's a danger. So that's why I
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: think it's genius to put a price on it, because
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: if that price is meant to be a kind of
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: you know, essentially translating it into free market language. You
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily want it in that language because once you
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: give it to them, you never get it back.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: And what is the role of the individual and how
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: these things all play out? You know, like I recently
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: purchased something like a new perse the other day made
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: out of billboards, and I felt so great because I'm
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: reusing something. But like maybe I didn't need that new
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: person So what extent do these like you know, credits
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: and these you know, telling people that your company is
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: greener and another like, to what extent is it's still
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: the individual's responsibility when we have all these ways of
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: making ourselves feel better that may not actually be doing anything.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I mean I really see by
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: the size of this, because on the one hand, you
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: often hear people saying the emphasis on individual responsibility for
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: climate change is just a way of distracting from the
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: fact that we need enormous structural changes at the level
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: of governments and mega corporations to make any real difference.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think it is literally the case
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: that you know, polluters, via their think tanks and lobbyists
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: and AstroTurf operations have tried to move the climate change
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: conversation towards people recycling their bottles or whatever, because it
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: kind of changes the terms of it, which makes it
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: easier for them to avoid these demands. But on the
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: other hand, I I'm always very conscious that my carbon footprint,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: as like an affluent northern European, is many times that
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: of the you know, median global person, and that also
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: does put me in a difficult moral position. But then
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: also I feel relatively smug about that. The whole thing
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: is like I don't drive, I don't have children, I've
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: basically given up flying, and like I said, I'm trying
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: to be vegan, and I live in five hundred square feet,
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: so like it's pretty easy for me to look down
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: on other people. I also think looking down at other
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: people for climate reasons is bad and not helpful, But
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: it does make it easy for me to say that
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: individual responsibility is important, because if you look at my
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: individual responsibilities, I come out looking pretty good, I think,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: although I do buy quite a lot of clothes. Of course,
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: the answer is we have to do both, like we
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: have to have governments making huge changes. Then also realistically,
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: in the future, all of us individually are going to
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: have to make changes in our lives as well, because
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: if all six or seven billion people on Earth live
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: like affluent Northern Europeans, that won't work. But we also
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: can't ask the majority of the global population to maintain
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: a lower standard living than we have because there's no
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: reason for that. So we are going to have to
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: smooth things out in some way. So I don't know,
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: but yeah, I think, you know, we have to do both.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Of course, I think it's really fascinating the moral implications
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: of turning things into costs. Though. If I'm willing to
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: pay more for a banana that's very environmentally expensive, does
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: that like make it okay that I'm eating this banana
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: because I've paid for it, Or like in the world
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: you've constructed, If I want a specific view from my condo,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: and I know that building a condo there meant some
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: caterpillar had to go extinct, but hey, I'm willing to
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: pay another ten k for that condo, does that like
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: absolve me of responsibility? Or am I just like seeding
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the responsibility for this choice to the algorithm of free
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: market capitalism.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: So there is this attitude that offsets are dangerous because
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: they simply, you know, shunt the damage to someone else,
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: and they relieve the pressure to actually make real changes,
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: and we need that pressure. I don't really agree with that.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: You know. Obviously, the premise of offsets is that the
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: free market is good at finding the most efficient method
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: and time and place to accomplish something. And if the
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: thing we want to accomplish is you know, not omit
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: one hundred times tons of carbon, then we might as
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: well do that in the most efficient time and place
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: and by the most efficient method. You know, I don't
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: think there's any reason why we can't smooth that out.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: But you know, as I write about in the book,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: the whole offset idea, since its inception and in every
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: implementation of it has been extremely be deviled by loopholes
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: and corruption and fraud and lies and so on. So
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: in practice it hasn't really worked. But in principle I
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: don't see anything wrong with it. You know, if the
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: fact that is it coldplay who were like, our tours
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: are going to be carbon neutral and some of the
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: ways we're going to do that with offsets, if the
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: offsets are real. But I think that's goods. I think
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: I was something it's good if the offsets are real.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: But the problem is again, because the free market is
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: so nimble and devious, a fake offset is always going
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: to be more profitable than a real one. So most
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: of the offsets will turn out to be fake. But
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: if we could make them more real, great, But the
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: free market is cleverer than us, so I don't think
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: that will ever happen.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these things are complicated and it all depends on
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: their implementation, which sort of leads to the next question.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: So technology is an important feature of the book, and
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: in the book they're working through the technology to maybe
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: to be able to bring individual people back after they've died,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: and then a whole species back after they've gone extinct.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: And so you know, this sort of ties in with
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the extinction credits. You don't have to feel quite as
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: bad if you think you can bring an animal back eventually. Also,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: so to you, what is the thing that makes extinction
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: so terrible? Like if we still have it as a
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: backup on one of our computers and we can maybe
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: bring it back one data, is that make it less
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: bad because maybe it's not completely gone? So what do
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: you think about the role of technology and extinction and
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: when is the species really extinct?
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I right about on the book. In principle,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: we could get to a point where we have all
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: of these threatened spece is in Buyo banks, and then
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: then the future we could bring them back. But will
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: we ever bring them back? I just don't think we will.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: I can see us bringing back willy mammoths and stuff,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: but the vorst majority of the species going extinct every
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: year are kind of very obscure rainforest beetles or whatever,
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: And I just don't think we ever will bring those
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: back because who is going to pay for that, and
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: who is going to keep them alive once they're brought back,
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: and you know where is that going to happen and
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: so on. So I think the fact that we could
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that we will. We probably won't, which means
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: we shouldn't put ourselves in that position of being like, well,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: we've still got them, so we could still bring them back,
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: so they're not really extinct. But then when you start
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: asking whether this kind of potential resurrected beetle is a
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: kind of Ersat's version the way real thing, that's when
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: you do start to like wander into this fazzia territory.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: You know, is there something inherently valuable about a beetle
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: that has continuously lived in the habitat in which it evolved, and,
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: as it were, the kind of community and ecosystem role
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: of that species within the you know, broader web of
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: species has continually existed from the first moment it evolved.
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: Is that more valuable than hypothetically the species being brought
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: back in a zoo in the future. Well, it seems
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: to me that it is. But it is harder than
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: to say, well, why it doesn't really seem to affect anyone.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: It doesn't make anyone's life better, even if we're very
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: invested in this beetle existing somewhere in the world, whose
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: life is better because this you know beetle has continuously existed.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: It is like caring deeply about your table being a
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: real antique instead of a fake antique. If you're very
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: into antiques, then of course you care about that. But
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: why should anyone else care about that? In particularly, why
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: should anyone else pay costs or give things up because
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: you care about that. That's a niche interest. It does
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: seem to me that it would be nice not to
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: eradicate this beetle and simply have it in a biobank
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: and clone it later. But you know that's not how
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: politics works. You can't say to people, well, we all
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: have to agree to do this because I think that
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: would be nice. So I think that's where philosophy comes in.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: That's where you have to start thinking, well, well, I
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: have reasons for thinking it would be nice, and once
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: we dig into the reasons, maybe you would start to
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: agree with me too. But then, of course the danger
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: is once you start digging into the reasons, the reverse
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: could happen. It could be that I start thinking, well,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: actually I don't even care anymore now that I've looked
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: at it, you know, really harshly, I don't care. I
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: think there actually are more important things. The other thing
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: I talked about in the book is that knowing that
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: this technology is there sort of takes the pressure off.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: It's going to make us more lackadaisical because we have
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: a plan B. I think there is something to that,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: but I wo you know, I don't think that's the
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: reason not to build biobanks or whatever. Better to have
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: them in case we need them than not to have
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: them out of a fear that they would make us
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: lazy or whatever.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating the way having biobanks or the
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: ability to rest the day species makes extinction itself less terrible,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: because it's the irreversibility of extinction that really gives it
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: its moral drama. Sort of reminds me of your answered
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: the question about teleporters, like, if I murdered somebody, it's
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: actually less terrible to murder them if I knew I
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: could just recreate them somewhere else. And then I'd say, like, look,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: according to you know, novelist Ned Bowman, you still exist
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: and you as you even if I murdered you and
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: recreated you.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great analogy actually, because again
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: I talk about this in the book. Yeah, the question
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: of whether something is extinct or not extinct, it's simplistic
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: to make that a binary. You know, extinction is arguably
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: not a clear cut enough concept that you can use
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: it in that way. It might be more helpful to
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: start talking about species being sort of extinct ish, although
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: again in the book Yeah, I asked, is that gonna
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: sort of expand our sense of how worried we might
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: need to be about a species, or on the contrary,
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: is it gonna let us relax when we shouldn't be
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: relaxing about it.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Well, then let me make the philosophical game of making
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: it more personal. Say we could scan you and resuscitate
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: you or recreate you later on. Would you want that
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: to happen? And would that make it less bad for
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: somebody to murder you?
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Well again, reading loads of Greg Egan when I was
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: younger has been a huge infert of my thinking about this,
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: because he writes more interestingly than anyone else I've ever
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: read about what it would be like to be an
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: uploaded consciousness. And you know, of course, if you end
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: up living on a computer, then you might live for
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: well a you might live for another million or billion
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: years and be at that point you have complete freedom
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: to alter yourself. So is the person at the end
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: of the Billionaires who's been radically kind of expanded and
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: altered and perhaps merged or split into two or whatever.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: Is that the same person as the person who was uploaded?
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Once again, I think it's preposterous to give a straight
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: yes or no answer. You have to say, well, there's
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: some degree of continuity in it being the sameish person,
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: But I don't know. So you know. That's why I
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: always think it's a bit kind of apid to say,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: or would you want to be immortal or not, because
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: clearly the person who's there at the end of eternity
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: is only in certain ways continuous with the person who
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: was there at the beginning of it, Like is that
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: person any more similar to you than your father is
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: similar to you or whatever. So when I think would
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: I want to live forever? Would that be terrifying? I
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: always thinking, well, I don't think living forever is possible
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: because the person at the end of forever is only
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: partly you. All of that said, my answer basically is no,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: I think seventy to ninety years is ample. I really
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: don't feel any need or desire to live several hundred
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: or several thousand more. And also, you know, one of
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: the things greg Igan writes about, and again there is
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: sort of reference in a distent way in the book,
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: is like, that's a lot of time to go nuts. Basically,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: that's a lot of time to become obsessed with the
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: wrong thing or to start valuing the wrong things. And obviously,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: if you're in this position way you can sort of
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: edit yourself, then that can really turn into a spiral.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: Like if you spend a week thinking there's nothing more
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: important than this thing that I've just got into, then
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: maybe you think, well, I'm going to edit myself so
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: I'm more committed to this thing that I've just got into.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: And then the person that you've become who's more committed
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: to it thinks, well, I got to become even more
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: committed to it. So you start editing your own conscious
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: so that you become more and more into this specific thing,
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: and then you can never get out of it, and
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: then you're just there for eternity, kind of shriveling up
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: into this monomoniacal commuter consciousness. And you know, I'm already
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: way too into Monster Hunter World for my Xbox, Like
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: I dread to think how much I could get into
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: it if I had complete control over my own consciousness
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: and was going to live a billion years. So no, basically,
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: I think safer to die of old age. But I
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: wish the best to anyone who's getting uploaded, and I
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: completely think that's possible and they will be the same
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: person at least in the short term, so I encourage
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: I encourage people to try it out, but not for me.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: So speaking of long term planning. What are your thoughts
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: on are we going to eventually avert this extinction disaster
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: at some point? Like, what do you think our prospects
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: are for humanity in the next one hundred or one
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: thousand years?
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Well, again, this is why I didn't set the book
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: any further in the future. I know people become furious
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: when this is said. I do think there is at
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: least a possibility that when we build an AI that's
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: like a million times more intelligent than any human being,
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: the AI will come up with something that we didn't
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: come up with. Like, I do think that could happen.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: I don't think we should rely on that happening. And
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: if that doesn't happen, I don't think it is looking
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: very good. I actually listen to a different podcast recently
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: with Peter Watts, the Canadian science fiction novelist who's really
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: brilliant and also famous for his pessimism, and his take
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: on it is that even with a lot of geo engineering,
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: so much climate change has already locked into the oceans
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: and so forth, that we can avert the very worst. Maybe,
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: but we can't. It's already too late to avert the
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: almost as bad and the almost as bad definitely involves
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: a lot of ecosystems being absolutely devastated and a huge
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: chunk of the biodiversity of the Earth just going away,
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: probably before we have the opportunity to scan and preserve
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: it all. But then, you know, you've got to have
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: a certain amount of intellectual humility about this stuff. Like
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: every ten years you look at the grass and it's
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: like the graph is not where it's supposed to be,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Like sometimes it's worse or sometimes it's better, Like the
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: whole thing about renewable energy having gone down in price
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: point ninety seven percent or whatever it is over the
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: past decade. So I really can't say it'll be nice
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: if Ani saved us, But I do want to emphasize
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: I don't think we should like sit back and wait
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: for that to happen. It would be if that was
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: only the emergency plan and we came up with something
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: better in the meantime.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: All Right, we have lots more hard philosophical questions for
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: a NED. Well, first we have to take a quick break. Okay,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: we're back and we are channing with Niin Bowman, the
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: author of Venomous Lumpsucker. Well, I'd love to hear a
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: little bit more about your writing process. You said you
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: did a lot of research. Why did you decide to
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: invent a fictional species for your book whereas the rest
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: of it seems to follow the rules of our universe?
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: Well, the book had to be premised on a highly
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: intelligent species, and most of the highly intelligent species that
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: we know about are fairly well publicized, so the fact
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: of whether they are endangered or extinct is a fact
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: in the world that people know, which would have made
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: it very hard to fictionalize it. So I had to
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: come up with a fictional intelligent species that could plausibly
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: have remained obscure. And I didn't really feel like it
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: could be a mammal because if you look at the
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: club of mammals, there aren't actually that many, Like there
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: really aren't that many mammals, especially in Europe, and if
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: there was an intelligent mammal, we would have heard about it.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, apart from the ones that we obviously already
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: know about. I really don't think there are any very
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: intelligent mammals that just nobody who's noticed yet. That didn't
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: feel realistic to me. So I made it a fish
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: because there are so many fish, and fish intelligence is
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: still pretty understudied, so it was just about credible to me,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: and hopefully it's the reader that there could be this
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: fish that was really special, but just we hadn't really
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: been paying any attention and it had maybe gone extinct
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: without anyone really noticing. And the other advantage of a
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: fish is that fish are hard to find. Like, if
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: it's a bird, you can just set up cameras or whatever.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you care enough about it, you can
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: just set up loads of cameras. But if something is
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: obviously in the ocean, then you know, it's very dark
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: down there, so it's easier to believe that you could
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: have a quest for this species that didn't just entail
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: well we you know, send up one hundred drones with
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: cameras to look for it.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: So when I was reading the book, it sort of
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: reminded me of some George Saunders short stories that I've read,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: like it's sort of like wild and out there and
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, what are these people thinking? But at
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: the end you're left positing all these big questions about
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: society and humanity. And clearly I'm no literary critic, so
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: I've done a horrible job of describing all of this.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: But who outside of like your science fiction influences, Who
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: are your like straight fiction influences other than Egan?
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, I love George Saunders. Well I wouldn't really
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: say he's an influence on me, partly because like so
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: on as I think he talks about this, ultimately he's
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: like very concerned with human feeling and human kindness and
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: stuff like that, and like I'm not interested in that
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: kind of thing at all, Like that's that's not what
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: I write Norm's about. So there's a there's a there's
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: a limit to how much I can take from him.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: So influences from outside science fiction, well, yes, funny. Any
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: of the names I would mention, I don't know how
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: much you would see of them in this book. Well, actually,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Graham Green is one. You know, Green's novels are all
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: about putting kind of tortured people into terrible moral situations,
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: and I think that was definitely an influence. And what
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: happens to Rasaint in this book, and actually when now
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: they think about it, when she talks about Catholics and
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: you know how thorny their theology is. I think I
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: almost put kind of Catholics in the Graham Green novel
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: or Catholic Grand Green readers or whatever, So that's definitely
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: in there. I don't know other than that, you know,
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to say I have transcended my influencers
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: or anythink, but I would say that my earlier novels
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: were very much a patchwork of influences and pastiches and
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: even direct quotes, and I would happily go, well, this
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: bit is from this person, and this bit is from
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: this person. But I don't know. By the point of
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: this novel, I'm still like totally in the shadow of
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: all my influences, but I think I've at least found
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: my own style and preoccupations to this to the point
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: that I wouldn't say about this novel, well, this novel
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: is simply this writer and this writer and this writer
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: mashed together in the way that I would have with
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: the early ones.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: So the book is really thoughtful. But I also want
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: our listeners to appreciate, like how funny it is on
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: the page, and part of that just comes from you know,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: your particular terms of phrase. And as I was reading it,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I was struck by this for one word which I
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: had to look up, and I'm going to ask you
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: to give us like a useful definition of it because
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I need to know it in context. What exactly is
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: an rgbargie?
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: Well, the thing is, as with any word like that,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: if there was an easier way of saying it than
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: meant the same thing that I would have used that like.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: I think I'm pretty sure I remember having to think, like,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: what is a one word or one phrase expression for
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: what I am trying to talk about here? And I
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: think it took me while to get to lgibargie because
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: argibigi is not a word that I would normally use
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: in conversation. It's probably a word that I had never
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: written out in my life before. It's not a word
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: that you hear come up that much, but it is
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: one of those English phrases with a specific meaning that
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: it's some combination of sort of fuss, commotion, disputation, hassle, argument,
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: you know, all those kinds of things, but none of
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: them quite capture it. And then if I remember rightly,
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: it comes up when you know most of the book
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: is about like Australians and Europeans in Europe, that bit
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: is a English character talking about something that happened in England,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: and it's in in England, which has kind of gone backwards,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: so it felt appropriate there to use a quite old fashioned, quaint,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: very English words.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: But for example, is this something a married couple might
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: do when they're, you know, disagreeing about whose turn it
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: is to have to do the dishes? Or is this
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: something kids? This is the description of kids arguments on
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: the playground Or I'm just I'm lacking a concrete like
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: understanding of what it means.
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: If you said, like, oh, I had a bit of
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: argie bargie with the wife or whatever, that would sound
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: condescending or at least kind of inappropriately jovial, because it
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: slightly implies a sort of annoying, somewhat inconsequential obstacle or
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: friction that you just have to get past. You would
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: have to say, like, during last night's argie bargie, my
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: wife expressed some very real concerns which I listened to
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: and took on boards like that simply wouldn't be compatible.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: What about your kid for the one thousandth time didn't
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: put their underwear in the hamper and you had a
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: bit of an argi bargie with them about it? Would
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: that be appropriate, Like it is sort of inconsequence.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Oh again, it's it's so hard to articulate why. But
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: it doesn't have that sort of kind of intimate, interpersonal context.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: I think it implies more to something that happens at work,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: or I'm kind of imagining. I don't know, this is
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: a random example, like if a policeman tells someone to
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: move their bike or something, you know, or policemen don't
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: carry guns, So I'm imagining like a slightly more benign
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: version of that than might happen else are in the world.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, I do think it implies two people who
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: don't really know each other kind of snapping at each other,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: not really succeeding in communicating. But ultimately it doesn't matter
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: and it may as well never have happened.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: Oh so like everything on the internet.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but no, not really that I really am. I
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: know it makes it sound like argie bargie is as
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: hard a word to define as personhood or extinction. And
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: when I'm thinking about personhood or extinction, I am thinking
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: about like you know, vik Enstein famously said, no one
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: can define a game. A game is just a kind
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: of tangle of associated things. So that's why it's slightly
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: upisaid whenever we try and define anyone, because any word
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: basically is a tangle of associated, semi continuous things, And
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: I think personhood is definitely like that, and I think, unfortunately,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: argie bargie is like that. Like that's how I'm so
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: struggling to define it is. So it's so English, so contextual,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: and so hard to pin down exactly. It does have
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: some implication of like bureaucracy, misunderstanding, someone trying to exert
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: or authority, maybe a vague sense of impending physical scuffle,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: but the scuffle doesn't quite happen.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: This sounds like a faculty meeting.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but a faculty meeting would be unlikely to rise
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: in RGI bargie in that way. I don't know. But
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: this is also maybe why I never use this word,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: because it's so hard to grasp.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Well. I think it's delicious how difficult it is to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: understand where the meanings of words are. Maybe we'll find
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: somewhere a philosophy thesis on the topic of the rgbargie.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: But thanks very much for joining us today and digging
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: into these tricky questions. We really enjoyed the book and
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: we really enjoyed our conversation with you. Thank you.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to say thanks a lot for having me.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: And before we let you go, can you tell us
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: anything about your upcoming projects or your next book.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: I have such another novel which is about how the
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: most evil institution in world's history that has existed for
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: hundreds of years is still in operation and thriving just
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: west of London. But it is too early to reveal
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: what that anician is. But people, welcome to guys.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Wonderful sounds delicious. We look forward to seeing it. All right,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: thanks very much for coming on the program. All right,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: so that was a super fun conversation with Ned. I'm
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: glad that he wouldn't consider that conversation an RG bargie.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: I cannot wait to use that word on zach And
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: because he like loves old English stuff, and I can't
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: wait to see if he knows what that word means.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: And I am going to use that word like five
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: or six times a day until I personally feel like
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: I know where it belongs in my life.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I hope it doesn't cause any RG bargies. I'm
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: going to use it on my brother who moved to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the UK and might have heard it and actually have
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: like a native understanding of it while remembering his American roots.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: So perhaps he can translate it for me.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Oh here, yeah, here's hoping. Keep me posted.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Here's hoping. All right. Well, we had a lot of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: fun reading this book and talking to the author and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: talking to you about it, so I highly recommend the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: book A Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Bowman. Go ahead and
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: get it, read it, enjoy it. Thanks very much Kelly
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: for reading this with me and talking about it.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. You were right when you said
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: you read that passage and it made you think of me.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: This was the perfect book for me. I enjoyed it
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: so much. Thanks for the invite.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: All right, Thanks everybody for listening, and tune in next time.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, instance,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: and now TikTok. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 1:04:31
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• 1:04:35
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