Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Do Aliens Speak Physics, with Andy Warner

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Daniel and Kelly are joined by Andy Warner, the co-author and illustrator of Daniel's new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics, and talk about how we might chat about science with aliens.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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world, or they stumble across some new species or an ancient artifact. If you've been listening to this podcast, then you can guess my scientific fantasy. It's, of course, first contact. I want to meet the aliens. But wait, you might think, Daniel's no biologist, we know that, and he's admitted to having no knacked for chemistry either. So what's Daniel's scientific interest in aliens? Well, the reason I got into physics was because I thought the topic was bigger than biology or chemistry. It doesn't try to solve just the puzzles of life here on Earth, which might only be relevant to life on Earth. Physics tries to understand the laws of the whole universe. Its questions are so much bigger. They literally span the whole cosmos. How did the universe begin? What

is it made out of? So alien contact is my scientific fantasy because I long believe, that physics is something that should be cross planetary and cross species. I believe that somewhere out there was an alien Daniel working on particle physics, and I'd like to meet him and to make a mental connection over our common interest in the mysteries of the universe. Physicists don't need any bigger egos, but it's quite a boost to think that you're studying something that could be the topic of a galactic science conference. But is that just fantasy or is it on solid ground? actually happen? I just wrote a book exploring this juicy topic. The book is called Do Aliens Speak Physics? And it's out now. Please pick up a copy. Today's episode is just a little

taste of what the book dives into. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary alien universe. Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, and I am so excited that I finally get to meet Andy Warner on today's show. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I want to meet aliens and talk to them about the nature of the universe or find out that they're bored by that question. Either one, I'm excited about it. Daniel, none of us are surprised to find out that you want to meet aliens. So here's my question. Since we are chatting with an amazing cartoonist today, do you have any artistic? skills at all? Where do you stand on the art spectrum? I do doodles, actually. They're embarrassing, so I would never show them to anybody, but I do enjoy doodling. I used to play this game with Hazel where she would pick a random object and then we would both draw it without looking at each other's page and then compare. And you learn a lot about how people imagine things and how they

portray things. It's a lot of fun. And for this book, I did a bunch of doodles. Sometimes you're trying to explain an idea and you need the visuals. And so I would do what are kind of embarrassing basic drawings to share with Andy. And then he would come back and he would like, oh, you're talking about this? And he would do this incredible sketch, which really just captured all the ideas and conveyed them beautifully. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of art. I do a little bit of art, but it's all private art. I would never show it to anybody except for my close collaborators.

Excellent. My art skills are like, I don't even get the proportions right on stick figures. I am awful. And it was so embarrassing because I took parasitology and we were supposed to draw what we saw underneath the microscope. Yeah. And that was a big part of our grade. Oh, wow.

And all of my parasites were just blobs. This blob has a uterus over here that I put an arrow towards and, like, you just have to believe it was there. And then it got worse because I married an artist. And at one point, he was like, well, let me teach you how to draw. And I realized that I had just decided, well, I don't need to know it. Because this is your job now. And I'm offloading this to you.

And so. You're like, I got the fish stuff covered. You got the drawing stuff. covered. That's right. Equal distribution of labor. But luckily you and I found people to work with who are good artists. Absolutely, yes. It's a joy to collaborate with artists, isn't it? It is. It really is. I mean, especially because I think you and I really like to dig deep into topics and really get into the details. And it's hard for people to follow you on that journey sometimes. And partly it's hard for them to follow, you know, one, because it's complicated

material. But two, sometimes it just gets kind of exhausting to be like trying to understand topics for too long. And so it's nice, one, to have an illustration that clearly shows it in case you're not imagining it right in your head. And two, to give you a second to laugh and be like, huh, okay. And you know, if you get the joke because you got the science, that feels good too. It's like a nice payoff, you know? And then also, like, I love that artists will show me that they're, you know, seeing things in a different way than I am and it makes me think about things differently. And anyway, it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And it's one reason why, like, this podcast is fun because it's not just like one person talking about science, it's a conversation. And you help me explain

the physics and I help you explain the biology. And, you know, there's a back and forth there. And in these books where you have like a scientist and a cartoonist, there's also a back and forth between the dialogue, the written word and the cartoons, right? They make fun of each other. They refer to each other. And you're right. That's much more interesting and relaxing because you need those little breaks. You need the back and forth. So it just doesn't seem like such a monologue. Yep. Absolutely. Well, today we're going to hear a little bit more about the process. Andy's going to describe what it was like, so we don't just have to take your word for it. And we'll hear what it's like for the poor cartoonists working with us. And so today we're

talking about your book, Do Aliens Speak Physics? That's right. The greatest book ever, sure to be a New York Times bestseller, now available in all fine bookstores. And so we asked our audience to get this conversation started. Can we use physics to communicate with aliens? And let's see what our audience thinks, given that Daniel talks about this all the time. And we always love hearing about it. Physics is the basis of absolutely everything. We can't have a conversation just between two people without physics.

So absolutely physics is the only way we could communicate with aliens. Physics and math are probably the most universal languages. So I would say probably yes. I think that if we make an experiment where the outcome, is different from what the aliens expect, that would be interesting. What else would you like to use magic or worse? Chemistry? General relativity and the speed of light mean our conversations are more likely pen-pal exchanges over centuries than a phone call.

I'm actually of the mind that we probably never will encounter aliens. I'm pretty sure if we contact aliens. Physics will be involved in some way or another. I don't see how it couldn't be. I would think so because the only thing I can think of is using the bands of the electromagnetic spectrum to encode or entangle to send out communications. I don't know if we can use physics to talk to aliens, but if you figure it out, please let me know because I'm pretty sure my stepmother is an alien and she is impossible to communicate with. Yes, because there must be some values or formulas which are universal, and we could base our communication on that.

Communication requires some kind of shared experience or a viewpoint, and I think physics could provide that, yeah. Because the distances are so great that they exceed human lifetimes, can we even use physicists? I think we can and probably should. We can depict things like one thing and another thing equals two things numerically, and then we can display the Pythagorean theorem. Once we get the units of measurement figured out, yeah, using physics to talk to aliens would probably work. It's the one common thing that we can discuss.

This is how fast light goes, and then that gives us their units of measurement, and we figured all out, and everything's wonderful. I'd rather a physicist was doing the talking rather than a politician, but it's obvious that the best scenario for humanity would be to let me moderate. I think so. In fact, I think we're using basic physics on the Voyager probes, the records, that will allow us to, you know, and not communicate directly, but at least give an alien civilization a starting point on how to communicate with us. As always, amazing answers. I had a good laugh at the stepmom comment. And the chemistry joke, of course. And the chemistry joke, of course, yep. But this is a question you have thought about a lot, and your co-author, Andy, has thought about a lot.

So maybe we should just jump right in and hear more about it. Okay, so then it's my absolute pleasure to welcome my co-author and collaborator and new favorite cartoonist to the podcast, Andy Warner. Andy is a nonfiction cartoonist. He's the author of The New York Times bestselling and hilarious book, Brief Histories of Everyday Objects. He was a contributing editor at the Nib and teaches cartooning at the California College of the Arts at Stanford and at the Animation Workshop in Denmark. He works in South Berkeley and comes from the sea. What does that mean, Andy? What does it mean to come from the sea?

Well, I actually, I grew up on a series of small islands. First, San Blas in Panama, then St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. That's where my sister was born. And then we also spent a lot of time in Corsica. My dad is a marine biologist. store was he's retired now. And he studied sex-changing fish while I was growing up. So for a summer job sometimes, I would be floating above a reef with a snorkel, counting off how many blue-head rass there were. And there was always tubs out back where he and various postdocs were

removing their gonads. It was a fun childhood. Yeah, I have two siblings. And so we kind of grew up running around on these islands. I was a fish person when I was a baby scientist, and I love fish so much and blue-headed rass. I read all about sex-changing and what we know about the mechanisms behind that, and your childhood sounds absolutely amazing to me. So I don't even need to talk to you about sneaker males.

You already know the drill. Totally know about sneaker males. Fantastic. Old news. That's my party story. I'm like, let me tell you about sneaker males. Awesome. I mean, it does sound like a lot of fun,

but I noticed, Andy, that you didn't grow up to become a marine biologist. What does that say about your experience? Yeah, much to the sorrow of my dad, he definitely was like, he'll be the one. But, you know, what it did teach me is how to talk to scientists, because I grew up with him, with all the people who was working with, his friends, my parents' friends, in these, you know, somewhat isolated environments where there weren't a lot of other kids around. And so in the absence of that, I would talk to these grownups.

And talking to scientists is a really interesting thing because they are very fascinated by things. And so it taught me how to be interested in things that maybe I'm not specialized in, absorb their fascination, get fascinated by it in a similar way. And then, you know, you go and swim and you see these fish that they were talking to you about. And it makes the science very real. And so, you know, I ended up making a lot of comics about science. I'm a nonfiction cartoonist, and I do history, but I also do science interpretation. And I like to think, or at least I like to tell my dad that his influence is there. Well, so how did you learn to translate scientists? Because you're right with like we as a group get really excited about stuff. But we're not always really good at explaining that to other people. You know, we like jump right to the mechanisms and we're talking about gonadotropin releasing hormone or something instead of like, yeah, how did you learn to communicate science to non-scientists?

It's all about the asking questions, right? Like these people know things. It's not just somebody at a party blathering on about something that they know nothing about. These are really specialists that have devoted their lives to, you know, maybe it's somewhat esoteric knowledge to, like, the general public, but, like, they can break it down into its little parts. And so if you just sit there with somebody and you kind of probe them and you question them, and if you don't understand something, that's what you ask about. And then that leads you into a new direction. It's that technique that really gets me a lot of places, is being nice and interested in what

people are talking about, and then asking them questions about it, you know, not just, like, absorbing it. Because that also demonstrates to them that you're actually interested. A lot of people who have specialized have this experience where they talk about what they do to somebody whose eyes glaze over and they realize partway through, oh, I've lost this person. And so just not being that person they've lost, being that person that's like, oh no, like, tell me more. It takes you along for the ride with them. And that's been a really fun part of my entire career. I mean, even with Daniel, Daniel was explaining a ton of stuff to me. And as we put this book together. It's one of my favorite parts about being the kind of cartoonist that I am, frankly.

I love how you talk about talking to scientists, the way we think about talking to aliens, as if scientists are the aliens. And so you're saying that this whole time we've been writing a book about talking to aliens, you've been practicing on me this whole time. That's awesome. Absolutely. First-hand knowledge. It is really interesting because scientists are often used to talking with each other. And this kind of specialized language develops. And so as a layperson, like, I'm sort of a professional lay person in a lot of ways. Like, I talk to people and I get them to talk to me about what they're interested in and then break it down. And yes, Daniel, you're absolutely on the examination table. So I'm interested in how this collaboration came about.

And so maybe Daniel, so I know Daniel is the one who initially had the idea. So maybe Daniel, you can tell me about how you came up with this idea initially, and then we can talk about what it was like collaborating. Yeah. So, you know, I'm, of course, interested in physics and, like, how does the universe work and all that kind of stuff? But anybody who listens to the pod knows that I'm also really interested in philosophy and not like weird abstract philosophy, but the context of the physics questions. Like, what does it mean that the universe is made of strings or springs or sproings or whatever it's actually made out of, you know? To me, the reason physics is exciting is because of the philosophical implication,

of what we've learned. Space is curvy or it's not or whatever. The universe is infinite or it's finite. All those things have meaning. But, you know, they have meaning if you think you're discovering the truth. They have less meaning if you think, this is just our description of the universe. And maybe it's telling us just about ourselves and not the universe. I wanted to write a book about that, but figuring out, you know, is physics the map or is it the territory itself? Also because a lot of physicists deeply believe that it's the territory and can't accept the concept that it's the map. And I was a little bit more skeptical. So I pitched this idea for a book to my 14-year-old at the time. And he was like, boring. Gone, I would never read that book. I know. I was

totally crushed, honestly. I was like, this is my passion project. But I also really respected his honesty. No better editor than a 14-year-old. I know, right? Exactly. Your kids will make you humble. But then I thought, well, how can I make this more fun? Well, maybe it's more fun if you think about why it matters. You know, like, does it matter at all? Is it only of interest to philosophical, interested people who smoke banana peals on the roof? And I thought, well, it matters if our description is human or if it's universal, if somebody else has a different description. And like, who else might have a different description? Well, you know, alien scientists. And so it was fun to imagine what might happen when aliens arrive and we get to talk to their scientists and learn like, oh,

are we describing the universe or is it just our description of our experience of it? And I went back to my 14-year-old and I was on pins and needles. And he was like, oh, yeah, I would read that book. And so, boom, I was off to the races. Has he read the whole book? He has read the book, actually. Yeah. He and my daughter read it and they both contributed some jokes. What? That's awesome. Yeah, I know. Katrina has not. yet read the book, though. Oh. I know, yes.

She's on spouse probation for that. But, you know, I also wanted a book that was really accessible. And, you know, I know a lot about physics. And you guys know the translating physics to what everybody else out there can understand is not always easy, especially when you're really close to the topic. And it's sometimes hard for me to remember, like, which of these concepts are intuitive and which ones are really a struggle to get over. And what is the journey to really incorporating them? So it's important to me to work with somebody who was good at translating ideas who knew how to speak to aliens or physicists or alien physicists. And so I was a big fan of Andy's work.

I knew about it already. I'd read his book. I followed his comics. And so I just cold emailed him to see if he was up for this kind of collaboration. And so what did you think, Andy, when Daniel pitched this alien idea, were you like, oh, my gosh, a crackpot has sent me an email? Or were you like, what? This is a great idea. Well, of course.

I was into it from the immediate second I popped up in my email. inbox. I'm like, hello, I'm a physicist that I want to write a book about aliens with you. It's a dream. I'm a cartoonist. As long as it wasn't like a fishing scam, I was on board. Oh, it still could be. It still could be. It's a really elaborate. Exactly. I do the long con. Yeah. You need those bank account details for the book tour writing. That's right. This is pretty standard, Kelly. In the industry, that's what I'm told. Yeah, yeah. That's what I tell my husband also. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, right. A very elaborate fishing scam about one. That's right, yes. I'm committed.

So, yeah, I responded as quick as I could before I emailed some other cartoonist. And I said, yes, of course. This sounds really interesting. Let's get on the horn and talk more about it. And so I think we did a Zoom meet up and just kind of discussed back and forth. And it immediately became apparent to me that, you know, this wasn't just a guy who was interested in aliens. and knew some stuff about physics, which obviously Daniel is. But, you know, he was approaching this project using it as like a framing device as a way to look at all these really interesting, really profound,

sometimes frankly unsettling questions that are just out there in the air around us. And if you care to look at them, you can have a pretty crazy time digging deep into them. It's just most of the time you choose to focus on other things. And this book really digs into the fun. fundamental pieces of how science came to be, what we consider science, the paths of it. I mean, one of the things I love that Daniel brought to this with this notion of, rather than the progression of science being this sort of like path, this river moving ever forward, it's that it's this kind of, you know, it's a river system. I'm sure there's progress, but there's these dead ends, these streams come out and then they rejoin. You know, it's this really braided thing, this braided object rather than this just like path up.

the mountain to the peak, the summit. And, you know, I'm really interested in how people frame things, because it's how you tell a story. It's how you get across information. And so the fact that Daniel was able to take this very high concept idea of the fundamental nature of the universe and marry it to this, like, really grabby idea of just talking to aliens. I mean, I was sold. And then the more we were working together, it just never wasn't fun, which is a great thing about working on a book. There was always a new thought experiment and a new way to consider the idea. We get into our perceptions of the world. And one of the things that was fun about working with Daniels is he's as excited to learn new things as I am. And so we would

say, you know, we need to learn how dogs do it. We need to learn how cuttlefish do it. Like, what were the Mayans up to? And so, like, there was this, like, exhilarating collaboration where we were just continually bouncing stuff off of each other until the book went to print, frankly. And, you know, and I think we got somewhere interesting with it, too. It's this, it deals with pretty profound ideas in a very silly way, but that doesn't make them not profound. Awesome. Yeah, and we really wanted the book to be accessible and to be fun, because, yeah, it does deal with pretty weighty issues, but we didn't want people to feel like this is a dry academic text about philosophy.

or even one of those like popular science books that from a great famous person that you read and you feel like I'm in the presence of great ideas, but I don't really get them. You know those books. You know, our style is sort of like in the tradition of like your book, Kelly, a city on Mars and, you know, Randall Monroe's book, What If? And like all the way back to like logic comics where like you're touching on deep, abstract, philosophical, fundamental stuff, but you're making it fun and accessible. And I think the key to that is cartoons because they are fun. And they make you feel. feel like, hey, how serious could we be anyway? We're like making dad jokes and there's, you know, silly drawings here. And Andy, I think, is really underselling himself because he did a lot of the translation. Like, I, you know, I tried my best to make these ideas understandable. But the way you ask great questions, Kelly, so does Andy. And he's like, what does this really mean? And I'm not getting it and keep explaining it until it makes sense. And then, of course, the cartoons really bring it together and add that note of levity that you need is a break. You know, you're like, whoa, I really swallowed a big concept here. Okay, I need to laugh, right? You know, nobody can think hard for like 20 pages

straight. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why the New Yorker has gag cartoons. Yeah, exactly. It helps the medicine go down easy. Well, and you were clearly having a lot of fun with the comics, Andy. And so tell us about what was your process for like figuring out what the aliens would look like? I mean, I gave myself a lot of leeway because one thing that was fun about this book is that from the get-go, we're just like, we have no idea what it's going to be like. Not even any guess, right? Like, anybody that says they have a guess is putting you on. And so we were always interested in breaking stuff down to its constituent parts.

And because we were doing that with history of science, with philosophy, I felt complete artistic license to do that with anatomy, and especially goopiness, kind of dripping blobs and things like that. And so what I would try to do is just, make them as different from the last one that I had drawn, which was a fun experiment. And it's very similar to how I sketch. I kind of sketch naturally these little monsters in my sketchbooks. And so as an outgrowth of that, it was just like, make these little monsters.

Maybe this one is a floating orb. Maybe this one has a thousand limbs. Maybe this one has a bunch of eyes. What do alien eyes look like? Let's dig into that. And then, you know, what are these aliens doing? Usually they're in conversation with a human in some sort of humorous way. And that was a fun thing to me because it kind of demonstrates one of the powers of cartooning,

because the whole book is about how difficult it is to connect with aliens, right? To find this common ground. Is it even possible? Maybe it's not. And so then almost every cartoon in it is this human speaking in English in a bubble to an alien, right? It almost works counter to the concept. But because that's a cartoon, it acts instead as a commentary. And so often these little characters are like a little Greek chorus,

or something like that, where they're comic on it, they're adding a joke, they're undercutting the authors, they're making fun of us often, and the reader just takes it in stride. It's funny to them, and it then maybe hopefully deepens the experience because, you know, they're reading about aliens.

You might as well get to see a few. Absolutely. So what was the hardest comic you had to do for the whole thing? Because I know, for Zach, there's always like an image where he just can't draw the thing the right way. And so was there a particular one that you got hung up on? Well, I mean, a lot of the diagrams and stuff like that, Daniel, Daniel will help me with them. And that's a very fun thing is that Daniel, you know, using whatever graphics program he does,

will put together these little cartoons. Embarrassingly clodgy. They're not embarrassing, Daniel. They're beautiful. And then I'll draw over them. And so having somebody around to really help me out with kind of nuts and bolts of what I need. to get right was good. But in terms of the difficulty, I mean, I really had a lot of license because we start every chapter with sort of a science fiction fable, almost, a hypothetical scenario.

And so most of the time I was drawing the comics, I was drawing aliens and humans, interacting sometimes in a fictional setting with the hypothetical scenarios. So I could get as crazy as I wanted to. You know, I wasn't like having to get every single part of a diagram right as I would and, like, say in a city on Mars, if you mess up the way that it looks, somebody's going to call you out on it. Yeah. Nobody saved the aliens. A little bit of that happened, but that's all right.

And that was one of my favorite moments is getting the first draft of Andy's drawings. Because, you know, we have this text we've been working on, and then it's time for him to illustrate it. And I get to be the first person to see these. And, like, they always just added so much humor and levity and clarity to the work. So I was really glad for how the whole thing went. I had a great time. We also ended up cutting a bunch of them, too.

I mean, I overdrew. We also overwrote. Oh, my God, Kelly. The original draft, was it like... Kelly knows because she read the first draft. She read the whole first draft, which is like two books worth, yeah. I loved it. I wish you could have kept it all.

It was all great. We were having a lot of fun. There was like an extended sequence about Harvey Wallbangers that we really got into. We had to cut a lot of jokes. But we also, you know, it's good, I think, in writing humor to overwrite and then cut. down. You end up with a stronger product. But, you know, some of my favorite little gags ended up on my cutting room floor. But I'll always remember the aliens. So how did the co-writing process work then with you, too? Well, we would put together an outline just to make sure we were sort of

aligned with where the book was going, what topics are we going to cover? What is the big idea? And then I would write a first draft and send it to him. And he would cut a bunch of stuff and ask me questions and revised a bunch of stuff. And then also add a bunch of stuff because Andy's not just a cartoonist. He also knows a lot about the history of science and history in general. And so he wrote a bunch of the chapters on, like, you know, the path of science and where things have gone and added a bunch of wonderful details. And then we would go back and forth. And then when we thought the text was in shape, Andy would do a draft on the comics. And then I would comment on them, which meant like, wow, I love this one. No, I love this one. Ooh, this one's amazing. Ha, ha, ha, ha, L-O-L. I had really sharp comments. Yeah, you were very critical always. I was trying to be. I really was. I was like, what can I add?

I don't know. I could just tell them which ones I laughed at. It helps. It really does. It was such a collaborative process. Yeah, I don't know. We would go through maybe like three to four ping pong backs over each chapter. Because we ended up, again, we, you know, we would cut a bunch and then add a bunch back in.

And it's hard at this point reading through it to remember, I mean, you know, I did all the hard physics. Yeah. But aside from the stuff that I really just can't wrap my tiny little brain around, a lot of the style has sort of melded into this hybrid of Danandi, the fusion of our two dad-joke styles. I think we have a similar sense of humor that made it easy and a similar urge to kind of meander around. It was fun.

Amazing. Well, thank you both for sharing information about the process of working on this. Let's take a break. And when we get back, let's talk about how do we know aliens even do science. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an awesome. author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture.

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all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. I was going through a walk in my neighborhood. Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house. Okay. The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen. Oh, what? No way. I died laughing. I'm like, I have to know.

You are lying. You, my guess, y'all. They had some time on their hands. Listen to reasonably shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We're back. I am grilling den Andy. What did you say that? Yeah, yeah, okay.

Dan Andy about do aliens speak physics. So let's jump into some of the science here. So why do we even think that aliens do science? I think we hope that aliens do science. And that's part of just like, human projection, you know, the question of like, are we the only intelligent species in the universe, which is an ancient question and one that resonates with everybody, the fact that we ask that question says that we think intelligence is important, right? We're not just out

there looking for like slime molds on other planets. There's a specific kind of alien we want to meet, and that kind of alien is similar to us because the important thing about us is that we're intelligent. But also, for me, the important thing about us is that we're trying to unravel the nature of the universe where this weird part of the universe that looks inward and tries to understand. And so I think we are very curious about whether aliens are like us. And so that's what we want to know. Like, do they think about the universe the way that we do? But, you know, part of the book is trying to make the strongest case against those assumptions so that we can really figure out, like, how do we know? And so even though there are some things that seem obvious,

It's like, well, if aliens are technological and they figured out how to travel the stars, then obviously they must know how, you know, space works and how to bend it or how to curve it or how to create wormholes and they can explain it to us. But, you know, that's an assumption. And so in the book, we dig into that very question, like, is it actually necessary to do science, to think about the universe as a puzzle that you're trying to unravel in order to master technology that lets you navigate the stars? Right.

And we have so many examples, even in just human history, of humans developing wildly complicated technologies with very little conception of what's going into those technologies on a fundamental level, like what makes them work. We're very willing to then improve, iterate on those technologies. I mean, think about blacksmithing, metallurgy, right? I mean, it's or breadmaking, you know, these things that are not necessarily intuitive to the human brain. we're able to harness and derive incredible complexity from with really no knowledge of how it actually works. And so that gives you this idea that maybe you could have this very technologically advanced alien species that just kind of iterate it there and doesn't have that curiosity that makes them wonder, what is the fundamental basic part of the universe? Is there a fundamental basic? Maybe they just don't care.

Maybe they just sort of iterated their way into warp drives and ended up on our front door and they just want to sample our food. We have all these assumptions because we got there and because we're curious in this very specific way. And one thing that we do over and over again that's kind of fun in this book is sort of a rug pull where we get people hyped up about a possible connection. Then we say, oh, no, no, no, no, pull the rug out. And then we dig deep into why maybe it's a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult to connect in that way than you would assume. So I've got a question for you then, Andy. So when Daniel was, you know, answering the question, it seemed pretty clear to me that what he was saying was that if he ended up on a planet

and they made sourdough bread, but they didn't understand why, and that was where they maxed out, he would be really disappointed. If you got to a planet and the aliens made sourdough but didn't know why it worked, would you still be excited about meeting those aliens? I'd still eat the sourdough. I mean, we actually have a hypothetical situation. One of our little chapter starters has this hypothetical situation where we have this group of aliens that arrives and everybody meets them and they explain some stuff and the physics meet them. And, you know, there is this communication and they're just not interested in and what the physicists are interested in.

And the physicists kind of walk away disappointed while everybody else is having a party. So we have that. We imagine that exact scenario where I'm kind of chilling, eating the sourdough while Daniel's weeping in a corner. Do you think there are going to be alien cartoonists? I mean, I would say that cartooning is simply a fundamental act in the universe. I cannot conceive. Why live in a universe without cartoons? I agree.

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

And they're more alien than we can imagine. And that's sort of what the book is exploring. But I don't think that that's a negative outcome. You know, that's really interesting. That's when we learn about ourselves, when we learn like, oh, wow, there are assumptions we've been making in this whole time we didn't even realize we were making. It's sort of like the, you know, the equivalent of traveling to another country and discovering that they don't have coffee for breakfast.

And you're like, what? You have spicy fish soup or this other weird thing for breakfast or like what? That's fascinating, right? How disappointing would it be to go to another country and just discover Starbucks everywhere, right? And so yes, you get your Starbucks on when you're in Thailand or whatever, and that's nice, but it's more interesting in some ways to not get that because that's when you learn about yourself and you learn about what's possible out there. You must be so good at writing grants. Whether I get the answer I want or I don't get the answer I want, it's interesting either way. And I would fund your grant, Daniel. Oh, thank you, yes, yes.

Well, you know, that is the case in particle physics. We publish no matter what. Find something published. Don't find something published. Yeah, and that's how you have thousands of publications. Job security, yeah. That's right. Exactly.

So we got a question from a listener, Sarah. So let's go ahead and listen to that question real quick. And I'll see what you two think about the answer. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. This is Sarah from Louisville, Kentucky. My question is, are opposable funds necessary for the the development of tools and technology. Would aliens need to have fingers and thumbs to make spaceships to visit us?

Thank you and keep up the good work. All right. So I love that we got a biology question, sort of biology adjacent. I think the, what are the only other organisms that have opposable thumbs? Is it pandas and they use it to hold bamboo? Raccoons. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Garbage monsters. No, raccoons are the future, dude. I love them. They're still spreading, you know. Yeah. That's just because raccoons are your neighbors in Berkeley, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah, there's alleyways you can't go through because there's signs posted about how they'll beat you up and take your lunch.

Oh, my gosh. That's great. Yeah, yeah. They're made of much sterner stuff in Berkeley than they are out here. They definitely run from us out here. Maybe we should send in the National Guard to clear out the raccoons. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, don't give anybody any ideas.

But in all seriousness, I mean, an interesting aspect to this book, actually, is that biologists. just have actually spent a lot of time already thinking about aliens. It's this part of the thought experiments that people have already engaged them that we turn to to write this book. Actually, there's already books about, you know, how humans evolved and how unique our evolutionary path may be compared to other environments, you know, ammonia-based life forms, things like that. And so we actually already had, you know, this sort of rich tradition of thought experiments, of writing to look to for this book? And the answer is, of course, no.

Like opposable thumbs, they've developed a few times. It's great. They're super useful. But there's a lot of different ways to articulate things in the world and engage in tool use. I mean, dolphins attach a sponge to their nose as they dig around in the inner title. Or I guess it's in the sand. But, you know, we have all these examples, even just on Earth, of pretty complicated tool use, developing and being engaged in with animals

that don't have these opposable thumbs. Don't get me wrong. They'd be really useful, and it's certainly fun to meet aliens with opposable thumbs. Yeah, and I want to give kudos here to the biologists because they really have done their homework much more than the physicists have. Well.

You know, imagining like what's beyond the box of our Earth assumptions. You know, what could alien life be like, as Andy says, you know, does it have to be based on carbon? Could it be silicon? That's exactly the kind of thinking I think physics hasn't done enough of. you know, looking back inwards and saying, like, well, where are we making assumptions? Where could things have gone differently? And so, yeah, biologists have done a lot of this. But this is a great question. And I think, you know, there are examples of like fairly intelligent

critters on Earth like octopus. They're very smart. And they obviously can interact with their environment. They have these grippers, et cetera. But they don't have opposable thumbs. But I think the heart of Sarah's question essentially is, like, do you need some way to manipulate the environment so you can, like, build up on stuff and interact with it in a sophisticated way? And I think that probably is required, but I wonder if that's possible underwater, you know, if it's possible to develop as complex tools underwater, you know, like can you do metallurgy? Can you extract minerals? You know, I think that might be required as some sort of land-based thing. But again, you know, that's just our one experience. Who knows? Great question, Sarah. Yeah. So are you ruling Enceladus out then as a place where we'll find intelligent life because there's just too much water? I'm looking forward to having my mind blown by being wrong about that.

that when we discover alien technology under the surface of Enceladus. Well, okay. I mean, one interesting thing that we, while we're on the subject of hands and thumbs, that we get into with this book, and Daniel kind of was probing at this, is how much of our own, the way we do science and what we're curious about is literally our structure, how our bodies are the 10 digits on our hand that form how we count things, the fact that we're bipedal. And so our neck cranes up to look at the sky pretty easily.

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

And I know that the, like, typical pop-sci explanation is, like, well, Galileo and Francis Bacon decided to do experiments about 500 years ago, and then science began. And we've been doing science ever since. And, you know, that's like true maybe at the very zoomed out level. But when you look at it, like most stories, it's much more nuanced and interesting because people have been doing experiments for much longer than Galileo and Bacon. You know, even the Greeks, like they tested stuff out. I think this simplified cartoon version. Hey there. Ooh, watch it, watch it.

I do mean cartoon in a derogatory way there, unfortunately. Wow. I just realized I said that. this over simplified version, there you go, it doesn't tell the true story because people have been, as Andy said earlier, they've been doing stuff for a long time, but they've also been sometimes wondering why does it work and how does it work and what is the mechanism. They haven't always figured it out, and the technique for figuring that out has definitely evolved, but also it's evolved since that, you know, moment of the scientific revolution.

The way we do science today is not the same as the way we did science 500 years ago. We don't just have experiments anymore, for example. Now, we have, like, simulations. Here's a whole, like, new category of scientific investigation that didn't exist before, you know, in vivo, in vitro, in silico. You know, so we don't know, like, what the future holds also. So, science is, like, a gradually evolving process. The science itself is not a static idea. I just love the idea of science not being a static idea.

I think that was one of the things that really drew me to the book was Danielle R. articulating that in the first email he sent to me. And the idea of, you know, a lot of concepts that we have being these kind of living things that are re-examined and evolved and maybe had a few different times that they were, quote-unquote, invented and then fused together. I think Daniel's ability to perceive that is frankly what drew me to the project in the first place.

And I think it's fascinating because it lets you imagine how aliens might be doing science. And, like, maybe they don't do science at all, as we talked about, but also maybe they do some super crazy advanced version of science. You know, we've added to our technique for building knowledge about the universe. There's no reason to imagine aliens a million or billion years more advanced than us have developed some new technique. And they look back at ours and they're like, oh, my God, y'all are so primitive. You're still doing that.

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

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

But we can't, you know, we find actual communication with these other organisms very difficult, if not impossible, right? Like, people, you know, on TikTok, they have those boards where the dog presses the buttons, the talk. Like, come on, give me a break. And we basically made dogs. Like, dogs are a human project. You know, that fundamental issue that we deal with here on Earth with all of our species, client or not, is something that would immediately come up with aliens. It's just, you know, where is that point of connection? What is communication?

How does it actually happen? And so that's why, you know, we go down this Carl Sagan route of finding the most basic things you could talk to one another about. But, you know, that dream, that Star Trek dream where everybody's got the communicators and stuff like that. Like, we don't have those for dolphins. And they're right there. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we don't have a concrete answer to this question, of course, because we haven't met the aliens,

which is why we have to do this biological game of like, let's look around on Earth and try to imagine what the most difficult communication scenario is on Earth and then make it ten times harder to imagine what it's like for the aliens. And as Andy says, we've already stumbled, right? We can't communicate with whales. We know they're talking to each other, but we don't know what they're saying. But also, we have trouble communicating with humans, right? Like, translating human languages is possible when you have like two existent populations who can like point to stuff and say this is an apple that's an apple but when you have when one of those populations is gone but they've left a bunch of written writing behind we really struggled to figure out what they're talking about

even if we have enormous numbers of examples even if we have a lot of culture in common obviously the same biology without like crazy cheat sheets like the rosetta stone we may not have even ever translated Egyptian hieroglyphics and there are still ancient human texts that we don't know what they mean. And so if we don't know how to do it for humans, if it's like too hard for humans, then like one of the chances we're going to be able to decode an alien message. And you know, like we've received weird messages from space. I don't know, messages, but signals from space. Like the wow signal, right? What did that mean? We don't know. We don't know how it translated. Is it encoded? How is it encoded? How would you know if you

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

Can you have one by Tuesday? So he did a great job for, you know, the time constraint. But in the end, what he drew on the pioneer plaque, and, you know, it's like a, again, cartoon-y version of the hydrogen atom. You mean the best of what we're able to do when you say cartoony version, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Done by good-looking people, you know. It's our sort of mental image. And of course, he avoided any English and even avoided math. He was just trying to come up with pictograms that he thought would inspire in alien minds the same idea. But, you know, I showed the Pioneer plaque

to a bunch of grad students here at UC Irvine to get a sense for like, does this work? Even on the same, like, biological construct for physics grad students? And they had no idea what this thing was. You know, they were like, I don't know, they came up with clever interpretations, but nobody got anywhere close to what Carl Sagan was thinking.

And it just highlights, like, how difficult it is to invent a communication system that really is universal. You can't do it. And there's whole linguists and philosophers of language who've worked on this, and they've concluded it's essentially impossible to translate a language without those people around to like point at stuff. Wet blanket club. But you should still buy our book.

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

contextual, right? Like, comics is the art of simplification, like down to the dots of the eyes. like a triangle for a nose. Somebody unfamiliar with comics does not recognize that as a human face necessarily. Or like, you know, the sweat beads going like this. Like this is contextual stuff that people familiar with the language are like, oh, I understand that. Somebody unfamiliar needs to be taught in, right? You extrapolate that out to the universe and my God, good luck. I think there are these Japanese comics where when they're sleeping, there's like a bubble coming out of their nose.

Yeah. And I had no idea what that was. I was like, Ada, why do all, why do they all have snot bubbles? And she's like, why do they all have snot bubbles? And she's like, but I don't get snot bubbles when I'm sleeping. Right. Do you have the frog thing? I mean, I don't know, like, sweat definitely does erupt from my head whenever I'm nervous, but that's, that's just. I see, that's the equivalent of like a string of z's coming out of somebody's mouth, like not everybody's right? Exactly, exactly. You might be like, what? Yes. Fascinating. So the wet blankets need

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Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. All right. The wet blankets now have our tea. We've run ourselves out. That's right. That's right. We're back. And so in the book, you also deal a lot.

with the question of how do we know aliens will do math? Because, you know, often people will be like, well, we'll just communicate in math because it's like this most basic thing. We must all share it. But, you know, as wet blankets, you have to critically examine that. So what do you think? I think that's a really fun idea. And it is a powerful idea.

And I actually got to talk to Noam Chomsky when writing this book. What? Yeah. Because he famously answers all of his emails, which is incredible. And one reason why I tried to do the same thing. I'm not nearly as famous as Noam Shkomsy. I'm sure he gets more emails about aliens than I do. But I wrote to him and asked him what he thought would be a good protocol for beginning a conversation with aliens.

Because, like, very smart dude, obviously thought about language. And he actually wrote back. And I had a conversation with him. And his basic argument was aliens will do arithmetic. And so we can connect with them on the concept of like one plus one equals two, which he thought was universal. And we can argue the other side of this in a minute. But it is really fun to think through, like, how do you go from 1 plus 1 equals 2 to, like, explain to me how you build a warp drive?

There's some really interesting and fundamental concepts there because over the last 100 years or so, mathematicians have been digging into the basis of math, and they've been wondering, like, where do the rules of math come from? How is it all connected? What are the smallest number of axioms you can begin from and then build up all of human mathematics? What are the foundational rules? and they discovered something really cool,

which is that it's all based on arithmetic. Like, if you start from, I know how to add numbers and have a recipe for going from smaller numbers to bigger numbers, from putting them together, then you can derive like calculus and linear algebra

and differential equations. All of the cool, amazing, fantastical math we have comes from arithmetic. And I think this is where Noam Chomsky was coming from. He's like, you start there and you can build up to everything else. That is really the foundation of how we think and express ourselves

and, of course, all of modern physics requires fancy math, but in the end, it's all just arithmetic. But has arithmetic always been the same? Like if you go back to ancient cultures, do they do arithmetic the same way that we do? Is it really that basic? Yeah, that's a really cool question because obviously people have been doing arithmetic for thousands of years, right? But it's only like a hundred years ago people formalize what the rules are. Like before that, arithmetic was more like a bunch of examples. Like, I can write down 30 plus 31 equals 61. How do I do? do arithmetic for some new set of numbers I've never seen before. You need like a rule that applies

always. So yes, people have been adding numbers the same way, but only recently have they like found those fundamental rules that underlie all of it. And it's really cool because those rules are kind of computational. They're like a little recipe. Like if you have a number, how do you get to the next one? And you can build up from there. And so the next thing Chomsky said was, yeah, you start from arithmetic and then you go to computer programs. because if arithmetic is like a little bit of computation, then you can go from there to like the simplest kind of computer. And this is something Alan Turing figured out like almost a century ago

is that there is a basic computer, a way to describe like the most simple way to do computation to like manipulate information. It's called the Turing machine. And you can go from like how does arithmetic work, thinking about that as computation to building up to a Turing machine and then if you can exchange basically computer programs

with the aliens, then you can encode really complex ideas and you can go from there to like, here's the Lagrangian of quantum field theory, you know, or here's why sleeping people have snot bubbles or whatever, right? Basically everything. And so

this is the idea. It's like try to find the fundamental ideas, start from there and use that to build up to the more complex because incredibly the world is organized that way, or our ideas are. They're built on these few foundational concepts from which you can extrapolate. So could you help me understand how we get from understanding arithmetic to explaining, you know, for example, the endocrine system? So I can sort of understand how math helps you explain physics. And biology absolutely has math. I don't want to imply it doesn't. But how does math help you understand something like the endocrine system?

How would you explain that to an alien once you have math as a foundation is the idea that the computer program lets you do it after that? Well, to answer that, I'd have to understand the endocrine system. No, I actually do understand it a little bit because of Katrina's diabetes. But fundamentally, the endocrine system, as you say, there's a mathematical model for it, right? You know, these things create those things, and you put insulin in the cell and the sugar goes across the barrier. And though we have a very rich sort of experience with it, fundamentally, it is a mathematical

description, right? We're talking about a number is going up and down, and their relationships with it. each other, the differential equations. One of the reasons the endocrine system is complicated because it is a bunch of differential equations. And so if you can go from arithmetic to computer programs, you can use those computer programs to describe models, right, to build models of an endocrine system. Then you can be like, oh, this is my model of the endocrine system. This connects to this part and this connects to that part. And so you can make those links between your mathematical model and what's happening in reality. Clearly you should be one of the delegates on the first

group that gets to talk to the aliens? I want to be the second group, actually. Because the first group might get eaten? Yes, exactly. We'll send in the biologist and the cartoonist for the first group. Hey. But, you know, all this assumes that aliens do math the way that we're talking about, that one plus one equals two on alien planets.

And nobody's being Terrence Howard here. We're not suggesting that, you know, one times one equals two or something crazy. but that there are human assumptions even in arithmetic, you know, the idea of oneness or two-ness. And here we're going to sound totally like bonkers philosophical for a minute. But these are the questions we're asking, you know, like would aliens come up with this concept of 1 plus 1 equals 2? It's not that 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 2 around some alien planet, but that they might never arrive at that mathematics because they might not like care about the distinctions between things.

You know, saying 1 plus 1 equals 2 requires a few. basic assumptions, like saying that a thing is a one thing, which means it has an edge, right? You're distinguishing it from the rest of the universe. And where is that edge anyway? Like, where does an apple end and the universe begins? Or where does my body end in the universe begin? These are cultural dotted lines we're drawing around stuff because it makes sense to us. And as Andy says, that's our context. But it doesn't have to be, right? If you, like, grew up in the atmosphere of a star and everything is sort of fluid and constantly merging into itself, maybe you're never like drawing those dotted lines. Maybe that seems totally made up. And like, yeah, maybe you can invent

weird mathematics based on those arbitrary dotted lines, but maybe their mathematics is based on real numbers instead of integers. You know, it's all continuous and fluid. All right, so let's say that we do, we meet those aliens and we find a way to communicate with them through math and computer programs. Do you think that they would have made some of the same discoveries as us? Like, would they have gone on the same path that we went on? One thing that is really fascinating, about science as the way humans practice it, at least, is how dependent it is on our own very human fascinations, right? Our preoccupations, like my dad with the sex-changing fish, right?

He devoted his life to that. And now we all know that much more about sex-changing fish, and it's great. But had he not fallen in love with a blue-head rass, maybe that wouldn't have happened, and we would know that much less. And so science, as humans, practice it, you know, it doesn't, you don't get an assignment, or rarely, I mean, maybe in Soviet Russia, but, you know, it's usually based on your preoccupations, your fascinations, and then that kind of drives the whole thing forward because somebody else gets fascinated by what you were fascinated by and what you found and what you explained to them and they get preoccupied by it. And then they develop it and make it more complex and it compounds and la-di-da-da-da. But it all comes down to the this very human brain becoming interested in something. And what humans become interested in is very human, right?

I mean, we evolve to protect ourselves, to pass on our genes, and to, you know, exit, right? And so whatever works and service of that is probably what we're preoccupied by, what we're fascinated by, in some way, you know, there's arts, there's all these things that you can get into that aren't, you know, the basic things that help you not get eaten by the lion. but the circumstances that aliens evolved under are by necessity going to be different. I mean, it would be so, it's unlikely enough we're going to meet aliens. Having an alien walk out of the alien ship and it looks like Andy would be, you know, it's unimaginable. And so whatever you're dealing with, you're dealing with an organism, something intelligent that has evolved to survive a completely different set of circumstances. And so therefore has a completely different set of interests that have just shaped the path of its science. And so from that level, I mean, it's going to be pretty wild and woolly compared to ours.

I mean, maybe there's these questions that are fundamental they can dig down into that preoccupy them. But what gets them there, what gets them to that fundamental question is going to be a different path than the one that took us there. And so it's going to look different to an outsider, i.e. us. And even if they are like biologically identical to us, like take the most extreme versus. of this where there's just humans on planets all over the galaxy, right? Even in that scenario, how similar would their science be to ours? Because if you want to imagine like we're meeting these folks, we're having an interplanetary science conference, we want to see if we're at the same place. Are we asking the same questions? They have answers to our puzzles, right? And even if they

are humans, then they're very likely going to have taken a different path through science. And as Andy suggests, like if you look back to the history of our science, you can find all these moments when science pivoted on a happenstance, like an accident. And we talked about some of these on the podcast, you know, somebody leaving something in a drawer over the weekend and then coming back and developing it anyway, even though that doesn't really make sense, and discovering radioactivity and x-rays and all these things were discovered accidentally. And it could have happened 100 years earlier or 100 years later. And the path of science depends on these things. And so even alternate Earths, we think probably would have a very, very different path through science.

Even if you believe that there's one fundamental explanation to the whole universe, that there is an answer out there, that is discoverable, we're probably all climbing different sides of sort of physics mountain, which is fun to think about, you know, if you imagine what would it be like to meet all those folks. But we can also do something more concrete, which is to look back into the history of the Earth before we had sort of one global, scientific community, you know, when we weren't as connected. And so like the Mayans and the Chinese and the Greeks, they all developed sort of initial proto-scientific mathematical approaches to understand the universe independently. And that's sort of like the best we can do without actually meeting the aliens to try to figure out like how universal is it, at least, you know, in the human biological brain to begin on the same path or, you know, is it vastly different? And so in the book,

dig deep into what the Mayans were up to and how the Chinese mathematical structure was different. It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about history. That's one of the things I love about this book is that it's so interdisciplinary. You get a lot of history and a lot of philosophy and a lot of science. And I learned a lot also while reading it. That was also a terrifying part of the book because there's a long tradition of physicist writing books outside their discipline and embarrassing themselves. And I did not want to add to that canon. So I sent each of these chapters to, like, an eminent scholar in that field. Like, did I misrepresent this? I'm reading this way. Is that right? And so I was always on pins and needles when we got those

reviews back. Your humility will pay you back, I'm sure. That was a good thing to do. I mean, you'd rather hear you're wrong about it before you publish the book than after, right? Yes. Yep, that was absolutely my attitude. We also sent our chapters out to experts. And I'm like, Please, like, be as brutal as possible. I want you to tell me that I'm wrong in secret. Get the knives out. That's right. That's right.

Exactly. And can you spoil the ending a little bit? Were the Chinese, Babylonian, Mayans approaches to these things super different? Or were they pretty similar? They were similar in some ways and different in others. Like, everybody started from, wow, the sky is really interesting and there seemed to be patterns. And let's describe those mathematically. But they were also different.

like the Greeks are very geometric, you know, everything, the answer to every question in Greek astronomy is like, where are things in 3D space? Whereas the Chinese were more like algebraic. They had like tables and patterns that they would use. And to them, that was an answer, which is really fascinating, even though like the Chinese sort of early model of the universe has sort of geometric inconsistencies. And you can see in the early literature, some Chinese scholars were like, hold on a second. If you're saying this and that, then how do eclipses happen? Well, maybe let's just not think about that. And so there are different ways of thinking about it.

The tradition of sweeping things under the rug goes a lot better than you think. You know, because to them the answer was in geometry, it was algebra. Also, we see, like, the different cultural importance, like, to the Babylonians, which became the Greek tradition, this is, like, foundational and became, like, really the core of modern intellectual thought. Whereas to the Chinese, like, this was useful. and it was important politically, but then they got really interested in things like, you know, material science and gunpowder and astronomy didn't play as deeply important a role in their culture. So it's really fascinating to see sort of the similarities and the differences.

All right. Well, I highly recommend the book. It's amazingly well researched. It's super clear. It's funny. The comics are amazing. I highly recommend that people should go out and get, do aliens speak physics? And you two are amazing little collect? Little. Little. You two. Sorry. You two are amazing collaborators. I'm sorry. I talked to my kids too much. I'll take it. I'll take it. Well, you two are my favorite two collaborators. I've been working with both of you for years on fun topics. So it's a joy for me to talk to both of you. Yay. It was an honor to be on the show. And it was an honor to make this book with Daniel, too. This was such a fun time. And it was also so fun to talk to you about it, Kelly. You had such good questions. Well, that's because Daniel weren't being outlined. But it was, it was. I know how it is. Well, it was great to meet you, Andy. Thanks for being on the show.

One under the first thought. Thanks very much, everybody. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by IHeart Radio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you.

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