Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Is there an explanation for the Universe, or is it random?

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Daniel and Katie explore the anthropic principle and whether it can provide some understanding of why the Universe is the way it is. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind someone. of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The U.S. Open is here and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain and IHeart Women's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network.

Hey, Katie. Do you feel lucky to be who you are? I guess so. I don't really know how to be anyone else. So I guess being me feels pretty good. Well, do you ever think about all of the other possible katies out there? Like maybe a Katie who became a snake wrangler instead of a podcaster? Yeah, you know, out there in the Katieverse.

Wow, the Katieverse. I like how that rolls off the tongue. I think it's better than the multi-Katy. The multi-Katy cinematic. Universe. Good luck at the box office with that one. But something I wonder about if you're thinking about all the possible instantations of you is whether they all feel lucky to be where they ended up, or if you know, you're unusual, if you're an outlier. Well, I feel like Katie the beekeeper and Katie the accounts receivable manager probably aren't on a podcast, so you're not

getting a representative sample. Until physics gives us a way to travel through the Katieverse. I have to warn you, though, before you visit, 90% of the mass of the Cadyverse is obscure trivia about parasites and also pictures of my dog. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist in this universe and probably also in many other. of the Daniel Verses. I'm Katie Golden. I'm the host of Creature Feature in this universe and the CEO of Beekeepers Anonymous in some other universe. Do you mean that to be a negative somehow?

You put beekeepers up there with like accounts receivable as if being a beekeeper is a horrible fate. It sounds wonderful to me. You have like thousands of pets. No, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying if I'm busy keeping bees, I'm not going to bother with them doing a podcast. It's an all-encompassing kind of job.

I think it is. It's hard to keep bees alive. Well, was there a time in your life when you thought about being a beekeeper? Was that an alternative version of you? I think so, because I like the idea of it. When I was a kid, I never got stung by any bees. Actually, I only got stung by a bee once in adulthood. And it was a complete accident, and it didn't really hurt that much.

So, yeah, no, I think me and bees have. have some kind of nice vibe. It sounds like beekeeping might also be in your future. But it makes me wonder about like the path of our lives, you know, how we ended up where we are, how many decisions led to us being just right exactly where we are. And how common that is, you know, out there in the Danielverse, how many of us really did become particle physicists and how many of us are unemployed writers sleeping under highways. I do like the idea of having sort of a big conference either in the Daniel verse.

or the Katie verse or listener name verse where you get to meet all your various other selves and just kind of have like the Daniels or the Katie conference and all the various Katie's and Daniels, you know, just meeting together, swapping notes, you know, kind of thinking like, oh, these life choices ended up here and you somehow became a dictator. That's interesting. Well, welcome to the podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, because all of your life choices has led you to be right here, right now, listening to this podcast about everything that's happening in this universe, the way it is, the way it might have been, the way it turned out, and the way it

cannot be. On this podcast, we seek to unravel the very nature of space and time, to reveal the truth about the universe if it even exists, to drill down into the deepest foundations, the very bedrock of reality and understand the universe at its core. We talk about the things that we do understand and all the things that we do not understand. We make a bunch of jokes. We make fun of beekeepers and we explain all of it to you. My friend and co-host Jorge can't be here today. He's on a well-deserved vacation. And so as usual, we've invited Katie to step in and make a bunch of jokes. Maybe I'm just an alternate universe version of Jorge. But you two exist in the same universe, don't you? Have you guys ever spoken? I've never been in the

same room with him. I've never spoken to him directly. How do I know that? That's true. I've never been on the call with the both of you. Maybe that's impossible. Is one of you Clark Kent and the other one, Superman? It's the glasses. Only one of us wears glasses.

That's right. Are you saying if you take off your glasses, you look like Jorge? Yes. That's my secret. The glasses really change my entire facial sort of structure. But, you know, this kind of thinking, wondering how you got to be where you are and whether you could have ended up in a different place in your life extends well beyond you and your life choices. It extends also to humanity. You know, think about the various things that

had to happen for humans to even be on this planet. Beyond just that crazy asteroid that wiped out our competitor 65 million years ago, there were so many branching points where life could have gone this way or that way. The chances of humans evolving on Earth itself seem sort of infinitesimal, and yet here we are. What do you make of that, Katie? I often wonder about if the chemistry of Earth was just slightly different where it was more of a water planet, if we would have had a species of super intelligent cephalopods of some kind of underwater society, or if that just wouldn't be possible if their tentacles would get too tangled to ever be able to make tools. And could you have podcasts? You know,

through the muffled sounds of water or would we be communicating in some other way? What kind of jokes do cephalopods make? Do they have a sense of humor? Yeah, like, hey, where did I put my hat? I guess I left it on the mantle and it's on their head because that's called a mantle. Is that good?

I feel like that's a dad joke in cephalopods. Well, that's like eight times funnier than human jokes. Exactly. And that's the right way to think about it, to wonder whether we are the only species capable of having these thoughts and so it's sort of amazing and incredible that we are here wondering it or if it's inevitable if whoever had evolved on this planet would have those kinds of thoughts and find themselves special like each one of us are special and unique and improbable you know the combination of a sperm and

egg at just the right moment to develop you and yet here you are asking why am i here if some other sperm had fertilized that egg then that person would be asking why are you here but we can push this even further, not just the development of you or humanity or life, we can also wonder about the universe itself. What? Yeah, it seems like the universe is hospitable to life. You know, so many things had to go right in the very beginning of the universe. So many constants of nature needed to be set just the right way to make life possible in this universe. Sort of makes you wonder. Yeah. You know, there's this quote, I believe it was Douglas Adams, where a little puddle of water will always think smugly to itself, wow, this hole was made perfectly for me. And that's how sometimes I feel about

the universe like, wow, the universe was made perfectly to sustain life. Are we sort of a puddle fitting into this perfectly shaped hole for us or was the hole made for us? Exactly. And it's a deep question in physics because when we look at the universe, we don't just want to understand how it works, like what are the mechanisms of it. We want to understand why the universe is the way that it is. Could it have been different? And we are just lucky to be in a universe that supports life? Or are there reasons that it has to be this way? That no other universe is sort of logically consistent. And what does it mean for there to be a universe without someone to view it? Like it doesn't have to be a human, but something that

can observe the universe, like without that thing that is observing it, feels like the universe's existence almost doesn't even matter in a way. If a universe exists in the forest by itself, doesn't even exist? Well, that's a great question, but we think that the universe existed before there was any humans in it, probably before there was any alien life in it. You know, there was probably nothing alive and observing the Big Bang, but we do think that it happened. Right. Right, but it happened and that past of it happening is based on our observations now.

So it's just, it's a hard thing. And maybe this is extremely egocentric of me, but it's hard for me to imagine there being a universe just humming along with no consciousness within it to perceive it. Yeah, on one hand, that sounds kind of sad. On the other hand, it's probably less sad because there are no like mopey depressed people. people in it, wondering about what their point of the universe is, right? It just sort of is. Yeah. It's like the most Zen universe possible without any Zen philosophers in it. But this is a deep question in physics and in philosophy. And people have wondered about whether we can conclude anything about our universe, whether being alive and intelligent and observers in our

universe means something or whether we're just lucky or whether there's a deeper explanation to all of it. And today on the podcast, we're going to dive deep into one particular idea that tries to explain all of it. It's called the Anthropic Principle. So on the podcast today, we'll be answering the question. What is the Anthropic Principle? So are you familiar with this explanation for the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, Katie? I am not, but it sounds like something I could guess if I might dare.

And I know our listeners are going to guess as well. But it sounds like it has something to do with human beings, sort of being very full of ourselves. It sounds like the hubristic principle, huh? Yeah, yeah. The me, me, me principle. Well, it's funny you say that. It is sort of about placing humans at the center of everything. On the other hand, we do sort of feel like the center of our own universe.

right? As you say, we are observing the universe from our perspective. We're not observing it from like weird, squishy octopi, intelligent beings in Alpha Centauri, right? We can't observe it from any other position other than inside our own skulls. So we are limited to that perspective. Yeah, the only perceivable universe that exists is the interaction of our neurons inside our brains. Like that's what it is. It's like whenever you try to take a look at anything in the universe, that is a result of chemical reactions inside a pile of meat inside a dome of bone. And there is a limit to what we can observe in the universe and therefore the questions we can ask. Sometimes in the podcast, we talk about things that you cannot observe, you know,

like predictions of the multiverse, other universes you could never interact with and whether that's really a scientific question because if you cannot observe it, if you cannot prove it exists, how do you know that it's real? And so in that, sense we are definitely limited to what filters through our few senses into our little meat computer and gives us the experience of it. So as you said, I did go out and ask some of our listeners to volunteer to answer a question without any preparation at all. And I'm as usual eternally grateful to those of you who volunteered to play this fun game. If you would like to give answers to random physics questions without the chance to prepare and hear your

speculation on the podcast, please don't be shy. Send me an email to Questions at Danielanhorpe.com. It's fun, it's easy, it's low stress. So think to yourself, do you know what the anthropic principle is? Here's what our listeners had to say. Anthropic principle seems like something to do with human beings and actually the anthropology as we know it. So sort of like having the consciousness of what we feel.

I believe that is that we see everything as a reflection of ourselves, so that when we think of aliens, they have two arms, two legs, two eyes, they're symmetric, and that's because that's the way we are. So when we look at different things in the galaxy, we are looking for things that look like what we think life should be, in other words, another Earth-like planet, and are kind of dismissive of alternatives. Because if that's the way we are, that's the way it must be. Anthropic principle? Is it related to anthropomorphism somehow? I don't know. I feel like the anthropic principle kind of relates to all the numbers that seem to crop up time and time again when we're studying the universe, like the value of pie or the speed of light or the plank length.

Like they seem arbitrary, but also so deeply ingrained in the universe, it's kind of like, is it a totally random kind of roll of the dice that we happen to have these values? Or are they saying something intrinsic about the nature of the universe and that we couldn't have a universe without these numbers exactly as they are? The anthropic principle is basically the universe was made for intelligent being like us to be seen by. So the universe made us to look at it. If I remember right, which I probably don't, the anthropic principle has to do with how we describe the universe in terms that. make sense to us and we tend to assume that everything works the way that our intuition says it would. Oh, tricky, tricky, tricky. I have no idea. So I was just going to say. I'm just going to leave this one as a shrug.

I liked the guess about it may be being related to anthropomorphism because this touches my little biology heart where this is a big problem in biology where when we see animal behaviors we try to reframe it even subconsciously even without intending to we reframe it in terms of human emotions and human behavior so it's a constant thing we have to struggle against and with physics i imagine it's also a huge problem because you don't even have a competing consciousness uh well i guess i can't say that for sure but we're very limited in our observation of the universe in terms of it has to be something we can fit inside our little human brains. That's right. And I hear people anthropomorphizing physics sometimes. They talk about particles and they're like, the electron, it doesn't want to go hang out with other electrons because it's a fermion, you know, or protons don't like to be together. And I'm like, they don't like or dislike anything. They don't feel anything unless you subscribe to Max Tegmark's idea of comprehensive. butronium how the whole universe is somehow self-aware none of these electrons are making decisions they

have no free will but it's just sort of the way that we think right we take our choices and our frame of reference and our ideas and we project them to the whole universe and i don't mean that critically that's basically what physics is right we are trying to build a model of the universe inside our head to understand our experiences so yeah we've got to put ourselves in it also and we got to use the language that exists in our head to explain it to ourselves. That's why we talk about particles sometimes as tiny little balls of matter and sometimes as waves of stuff because that's the language that we have and what else can you do, man? Yeah, I mean, how can you think as not a human?

It's impossible not to think like a human because every human that is thinking is a human. So it's literally impossible until we've figured out some way to avatar our brains inside of a galactic squid like we have to think as humans and so everything we think about we're going to think about in terms of you know of our kind of human experience which is why when there are minds that work on these big problems sometimes you have someone who contributes greatly to science by thinking about things in a different way than people have thought about things before but even then even you know the outliers who think about things in different way they're still thinking with their human meet brains. So, you know, we can't think like a solar system because that doesn't

make sense our brains are not solar systems. Our brains are brains. Until we meet those galactic squids and we get to talk science with them and then we learn how differently they view the universe. Although, you know, I worry that when we do meet the aliens, either they'll be so alien that we can't talk to them, which means that that fascinatingly useful, incredibly different perspective will be lost on us, or they'll be so similar to us that we can talk to them and they'll have nothing really to add to the conversation because they'll basically just be other squishy humans. I think they're probably going to shove one of their space tentacles up our noses and plug it

directly into our brains and just kind of create a new sort of like duo brain for us. That's my theory. Well, it'll be interesting when we meet those galactic squids if they are also asking the questions that we are asking, if they are looking around to the universe and wondering why is it the way that it is? You know, you hear people in theology sometimes making the argument like, if you find a watch in a desert, then that's evidence of, you know, some sort of design.

You would never conclude that the watch assembled itself randomly. And I think, you know, that's cute and it's clever, but a better question is sort of like, if you find a watch in a pile of watch parts, that's like almost infinitely big and jiggling around for a long time, would you be surprised to have found sort of a watch eventually self-assemble in a big soup of watch parts. And then to bring it home for today's episode,

you know, what if you are that watch? You know, you have discovered yourself made out of these watch parts and a big soup made out of these watch parts and a big soup of similar bits. Should you be surprised to find yourself existing and self-aware surrounded by all the things necessary to make you? Well, you know, I don't have the answer to that question, Daniel, but you know what you season watch soup with, right?

No, I don't tell me. You season it with time. I can't believe I just walked right into that one. So Daniel, this anthropic principle, right? Like, I feel like I'm starting to get a sense of the direction we're going. But what is it really? Like, what is this principle as it's defined in physics? So this is an attempt to try to answer the question of why we seem to be lucky to be here,

why the universe seems to be sort of like fine-tuned forward. life and maybe even for intelligent life. And the answer that it offers is a little bit controversial and somehow unsatisfying. It's an argument that sometimes coincidences don't need explanations, that you are biased in the way that you look at the universe because you exist. And so it might just be that the reason you are here asking questions about why you got so lucky is because you are the one who is here asking those questions. You know, like the watch example, if a pile of watch parts self-assembles itself into an intelligent, self-aware robot, and that robot asks, hmm, why am I here? Who made me? It might just be that it only asked

that question because it's here. And if it hadn't self-assembled, it wouldn't be asking that question. And so there is no sort of like deeper explanation. There's no designer of that robot. There's no reason why the robot had to exist. If it didn't exist, if it hadn't assembled itself out of watch parts, there would be nobody to ask that question. And I think speaking of anthropomorphism in our conversation earlier, I think this is a difficult concept for us to wrap our brains around because human beings are very like our way of thinking is usually cause and effect or motivation and effect. So we think about things in terms of I want to do this so I do it or I need something

so I make this thing to accomplish this thing. It's this kind of directional thinking of. I put on this sweater because I was cold or I put some time on my soup because it didn't taste like anything. So we have this type of thinking that when we look at bigger concepts or patterns, even in evolutionary biology, we'll think about things like, well, how could an eye have possibly evolved? It's too complicated.

The eyeball is kind of like that watch in the desert, right? It seems like it just kind of self-assembled. But the answer that kind of is unsatisfying is like it evolved because it evolved. Like it evolved because the things that evolved, the earlier versions of it survived. And they survived because they had these benefits. And so things evolve just because they survive. And that's it. Like they survive pass on their genes.

There's no creature that thinks about wanting something and then evolves into it. And so with the universe, it seems like we have a similar problem, right? where it's like, okay, so are we lucky or are we here just because we're here? And then that's why we feel lucky. Exactly. And physics is a drive, as you say, to understand that cost and effect chain. To go back to the very, very beginning and find the simplest explanation and derive everything from that. And it's worked so far.

You know, sometimes we've looked at the universe. We've said, we don't understand it. Why is it this way? And we've struggled to find explanations. But then we have found them. We have figured out like, oh, why are there a hundred? elements. Is it just that the way it is? No, it turns out it comes from a deeper organizing principle. It comes from the way quarks fit together and electrons link around them and build those elements.

There is an answer. But that doesn't mean that there always will be an answer because we are observing the universe from a sort of biased perspective. You know, the anthropic principle says that some things that seem like coincidences that are needed to make observers, to make people around to ask those questions might not need further explanation that the answer might just be hey it's random but when the coincidences don't happen they just don't make observers so there's nobody there to notice nobody to ask the question you know it's like if you said why have we survived all of these calamities is there somebody protecting us if we hadn't we wouldn't be here asking why we survived that meteor why we survived all those ice ages and all those pandemics and everything in the past

And if we get wiped out by one in the future, nobody will be around to sort of count that against our luckiness. So we feel lucky because we are alive, but we only notice that we're lucky because we are alive. It's like you never question, why wasn't I born? It's always the question, why was I born? Exactly. So you have to balance a couple of things. On one hand, you want to keep a skeptical mind. You want to look for explanations.

You want to dig deeper and understand the true meaning of the universe if there is one. On the other hand, you also have to recognize that you are biased in how you observe the universe, that your perspective indicates that you are not in a random sampling of the universe. So this is why we have science, right? We understand that human beings are biased. So we have scientific experiments to try to remove that bias. So why can't we just remove that bias through some really good, scientific experiments that we run, like with the Hadron Collider.

Oh, yeah, it's no big deal. We can totally run those experiments. They consist of starting the universe over again a million times and observing what happens and seeing if there are intelligent observers in those universes also. I feel like I detect some sarcasm here. But the answer is that we just have this one universe. We have this one example. And from this example, we have to draw all of our conclusions.

That's it. We're limited to that, you know? It's sort of like, you know, say that you're put on a firing squad and there's like a thousand people shooting at you and they all miss. What can you conclude from that one experiment? Can you conclude, well, they're all terrible shots or can you conclude that they intended to miss or can you just not at all estimate your chances of survival because you're only there to answer the question if you do survive?

And so that's essentially the argument of the anthropic principle that you can't accurately estimate the chances of the kind of thing happening if you need that to happen in order to be around to ask those questions. Right. So when we're studying the universe, you know, we can think of this universe like an individual. So when you do a study on, say, mice or something, if you did some kind of medical research on a single mouse and they're like, hey, this mouse is weird. Look at how its heart works. And everyone would laugh you out of, you know, the journal because you only did that study on one mouse. You're like, hey, this mouse has a tiny planet inside its stomach. It must be that all mice have these planets inside their stomachs.

But in this case, the mouse is our universe. And it's like, well, this universe is the only one we can look at and we can look at it because the universe is such that we can be. and so now my mind's a pressel again. Inside the Unimouse with Katie Golden. Exactly. And, you know, I want to dig into how this might explain things and the questions that it helps answer.

But I also want you to keep in mind before we get there that there's also another side to the anthropic principle. There's a danger. The danger is that the anthropic principle tells us that there are no answers to our questions, that there is no deeper explanation. And it sort of discourages us from digging. And digging is what?

physics is all about is pushing hard to try to find that answer. So it would be a tragedy if there was a deep explanation for why the universe is the way that it is. And we didn't find it because we gave up because we thought, hmm, I guess it's just chance and we got lucky. But before we get into lots of examples of how the anthropic principle can be used, let's take a quick break. LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy. emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop.

Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up.

Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?

To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Imagine that you're on an airplane, and all of a sudden you hear this. the pilot is having an emergency, and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, until this. It's just, I can do it my eyes close. I'm Manny.

I'm Noah. This is Devon. And on our new show, no such thing. We get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what?

Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition.

I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talked all.

about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasasas Come Again as part of my Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

All right, we are back and we're talking about how amazing it is that I'm here and Katie is here and you are here listening to us and we hope that you don't regret it. So we were talking about how the anthropic principle can be. potentially dangerous right and discouraging more exploration but for me it's kind of it makes me want to know even more because it seems really mysterious how you could have a universe relying on totally random chance leading to us being around and it makes me wonder what's behind these rules of the universe that allowed such incredible seemingly random chance and such a large scale we just don't know right and it's the kind of thing that we want to

wonder about. We wonder at the very core of the universe if some of the numbers that control the universe were set randomly and what mechanism sets those random numbers. I think that's what you're getting at. And if it's even possible to imagine other universes with different values of like the speed of light or the charge of the electron or the mass of the muon, you know, whether it even makes sense, whether it's possible to have those different laws of physics or whether there's some deeper explanation that sort of links them together and says there can only be one value. Right. That's the thing that really makes me go cross-side is why are physics rules the way that they are and not another way. Is that a problem that we run into with this anthropic principle

where we obviously can't observe another universe that maybe has different rules? So could we never really answer something like, hey, could a universe have different rules? Like, are these rules arbitrary? It's a tough question because if it's true that the universe could have had lots of other values for important constants that control the way the universe is, you know, the strength of gravity, the expansion rate of the universe, the speed of light. If it's true that those universes could have had other values, and we are just one among a huge landscape of multiverses that have this value, then there is nothing we could do to discover why our universe has these values and not other values. And it could be that many of those other universes just don't have intelligent creatures in

them because they're not hospitable to life. On the other hand, if there is a reason, if only certain values of those parameters are allowed because of some deeper laws of physics that we have not yet discovered, some rules about how the universe has to work. And, you know, we are certainly not finished understanding the deep nature of space and time and quantum mechanics. We have a huge journey ahead of us. We've only just begun. So you've got some job security. That's good. In the case that there is a deeper explanation, then we could potentially discover it. We keep doing experiments. And that's sort of the history of physics, is that we have peeled back layer after layer of reality and understood the way it is and why it has to be that way.

You know, like we understand how chemistry emerges from particle physics now. You can't just say, well, chemistry of life is the chemistry of life and we wouldn't be here to ask about it if it wasn't this way, so it just is. No, there are deeper explanations for biochemistry. You can explain it in terms of the atoms and the quarks and the electrons and the other smaller particles. You don't need to stop there and throw up your hands and say, well, anthropic principle says that we wouldn't be asking this question if it didn't exist and therefore we shouldn't be asking any more questions. And that's the danger about the anthropic principle is you never know when to apply it. You never know when to say there is no further explanation. It's just random.

We're just lucky because it describes what you don't. No. And so to me, it's fundamentally disappointing and scary because it encourages you to stop asking questions. Are there cases in which it would actually encourage you to ask questions though? Or it's like where we realize that something must be happening in the universe for us to be able to observe the universe? Yeah, there are some really great examples of how the anthropic principle does help steer us towards better understandings of the nature of space and time. And And one of them has to do with something we talk about on the podcast a lot, which is the rate of the expansion of the universe. So we know, and we've known for about 100 years now, that the universe is not static.

It's not just a bunch of stars and galaxies hanging in space, but that it's expanding. And in the last 20 years, we discovered that that expansion is actually accelerating, that galaxies are moving away from us faster and faster every year. This is something we call dark energy. So something out there is sort of tearing the universe apart, is pulling things apart, is creating new space between us and other galaxies. And we think that this is controlled by some parameter. It's called the cosmological constant. It's just a number. You put it in Einstein's field equations for general relativity.

And if you crank it up, then it expands the universe really, really, really fast. And if you crank it down, it expands the universe more slowly. So it's just sort of like a number that controls how quickly the universe expands. But that number has to be within a certain range for the universe as we know it to have formed. If that number was way too high, it would have torn the universe apart before, for example, even atoms could have formed in the very beginning of time before electrons and protons found each other to make hydrogen, right? And so that sort of sets a limit, an upper limit on the expansion rate of the universe.

If it expands too quickly and too rapidly, then you just don't get interesting structure. And so that's fascinating. It's super interesting. and it's helpful, actually, because when we go to calculate the cosmological constant, when we try to figure out, like, what is that number? How do we get what that number is? We can try to calculate it because we think it's related to the energy of empty space. We add up the energy of all the quantum fields and empty space, and we get a number,

and that number turns out to be really big, like way too big. Like, if that number was the cosmological constant, that if we started from first principles and quantum fields and tried to calculate the energy of empty space and how much it was expanding the universe, it would be too big by like a factor of 10 to the 100. The anthropic principle there tells us that our calculation is wrong, that if the universe was expanding at the way, the we predicted that we calculated, that it would have torn itself apart much, much earlier and we would not be here to ask about it. So in that sense, it is useful. So the fact that we are even here, we know that our calculations have to end up creating a universe that allows us to be here.

Is that kind of what you're saying? Exactly, because you can't observe a universe that doesn't lead to observers. And we are here observing it. So it has to be hospitable, right? You can't argue that the laws of the universe are such that they don't create the universe that we see. It's just really as simple as that. And so the calculations that we do now that try to predict the expansion rate of the universe is their way off.

And just knowing that the universe exists and is hospitable to life tells us that those can't be right. And so that's sort of like, you know, it's a weak application of the anthropic principle because you could imagine deducing that otherwise, just saying like, well, that number is different from what we observe and so it can't be right. Couldn't we sort of use the anthropic principle to help guide our questions without it stopping our questions? It's kind of like, I mean, it reminds me of like the famous Descartes thing of,

I think, therefore I am, where, you know, being conscious is sort of your only proof of existing. But that doesn't mean you can't keep asking questions about your consciousness of like, well, why do we think? How do we think? You know, those kinds of questions. Could we do the same thing with the anthropic principle where, you know, okay, so we're here because we're here. But how did we get here? And are there any deeper mechanisms behind, you know, the laws of physics of our universe that allows us to be here?

I agree with you. And those questions are really important. The issue is that the anthropic principle sort of suggests that there is no deeper explanation. That the reason we're here asking these questions is that we got lucky. And the folks that didn't get lucky aren't here to ask those questions. So it's sort of a way of saying, look, we don't need to explain this weirdness. We see something strange that seems really unethical. likely, but maybe there is no deeper explanation. So it's sort of like stops that chain of inquiry

by telling you that there is no further explanation to find. There is no deeper level of reality that explains the way things are that is just random. And we are here asking that question because we're the ones who got here. I guess thinking from since I'm still stuck in my sort of anthropocentric or I guess even just like animal centric point of view, when I'm think about randomness, I think, well, things can just be random, but then when you have huge systems, there's usually some kind of pattern that emerges from randomness. So I feel like even if we determine something is maybe in our universe that things just randomly happen to allow life to occur to be able to observe the universe, could there be something even bigger

behind that randomness. Does that make any sense? It does, but I think that what you're actually talking about is not randomness, but chaos. You know, sometimes we see things emerging from swarms of tiny little buzzing particles. You know, for example, chemistry, right? Chemistry is like a coordinated dance of lots of quantum particles following the laws of physics. And you don't need to use the weak force and the strong force and particle physics to talk about life and biochemistry because these other rules do emerge, the rules of organic chemistry.

So sort of like sense and mathematical reasoning does emerge out of the crazy swarm of what does seem like an insane amount of particles all moving together. The way, for example, like weather patterns emerge from water droplets. And I think that's our minds making sense of the universe. It's not necessarily randomness. It's more like turning chaos into mathematical stories. say, look, I can tame this. I can find some sort of simple explanation for that describes the higher level effects. You know, the way like human psychology is, right? Human psychology is not

fundamental to the universe. It's not written in the standard model, but people are predictable. You can describe how people will buy things and sell things and talk to each other and break up and feel in response to certain situations. That's not a fundamental law of the universe. It just sort of emerges. And so we can describe that. So I think that's trying to grapple with something else, not randomness, but chaos. But I think it is important and it goes to our desire to tell stories about the universe to find these explanations. And for me again, while the anthropic principle is hard to refute, it's hard to say, no, that can't be because it might be just that we are lucky in random. It's frustrating because I always want to find that story.

To me, the story, the universe is random. You just sort of like got lucky to be here. It's not really an interesting story because it doesn't tell you anything deep about the universe. And we're not talking about sort of a higher power here. We're not saying like, well, then there is a galactic squid pulling all the strings, but more that maybe there's something, like as we chop the universe down to its smallest parts, like maybe there are sets of rules that are behind the rules that we can use to understand our situation better, right? Exactly. And let me give you an example. We look at the particles that we see in the universe.

for example, the electron, and we notice that it has charge minus one, and the proton has charge plus one. The proton is built out of quarks, which when you combine them together, they give you charge plus one. The amazing thing, though, is that in our theory, those two numbers are independent. Like if you're at the control panel of the universe, then you could set the charge of the electron to be, you know, minus one and the charge of the proton to be plus one. You can also set the charge the electron to be like minus 1.00001. There's no like rule in physics that says you can't. Those are two independent numbers. They're like different knobs on the control panel of the universe.

Now, if you don't set them to be exactly opposite each other, then you don't get neutral atoms. You don't get chemistry. You don't get life. You don't get ice cream. You don't get podcasts. No. And so you can ask like, well, is that a coincidence? Is it random?

Are there an infinite landscape of universes out there where those things don't balance and you don't get neutral atoms and you don't get chemistry? And we're just lucky and we're here asking those questions about it because we're in the one where they balance? Or is there a deeper explanation? Is there a reason why these things are exactly opposite? For example, maybe they're built out of even smaller things we haven't yet discovered. And the reason the electron has the opposite charge as the proton is because they come from the same fundamental units just arranged in a different way. they're a fundamental string vibrating slightly different frequency or something, right? Maybe they are linked in a way that we just have not yet discovered.

So the anthropic principle says, eh, don't worry about it. It's probably just random. But my physics brain says, no, it's a screaming clue that there's something going on, something deeper we haven't yet discovered. Well, right, because you can have chaos on one level that leads to something more organized on another level. it's usually it goes up right like the smaller the particle the more chaotic it is and then when you have a bunch of those small units in a large amount they lead to something more organized more of a pattern could you ever have something going in the opposite direction where you break apart the smallest particle you have and you discover something behind it that actually becomes more organized or is somehow explaining some of the chaos of that larger particle that it It creates. Wow, that's a deep, deep question.

Super awesome. You know, it is fascinating that we notice that organization sort of emerges at larger scales, right? Like, as you say, a baseball has, you know, 10 to the 30 buzzing quantum particles in it that are impossible to predict. And yet, I can throw a baseball across the room and predict its trajectory pretty accurately without knowing anything about those little particles, right? That's the sort of organization principle that you mean.

And the truth is, we don't really know why. that is in our universe, why it's possible to tell these cute, simple mathematical stories about big things that involve intractable mathematical stories about the thousands and billions and zillions of tiny things inside them. We don't really know. It's called emergent phenomena, and it seems to be sort of a miracle in our universe that it's possible. You know that you can describe the path of baseball without understanding quantum gravity. We're actually having a whole other podcast episode planned just on that topic to try to understand why stories seem to emerge in layers from the chaos of the universe. Not something we currently really understand. I don't want to spoil

the episode, but I will make a prediction. I think it is little tiny gnomes, little teeny tiny gnomes. Well, let's investigate Katie's theory of the gnomic universe. But first, let's take another break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass.

The injured were being loaded into ambival. is just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up.

Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?

To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Do this.

Pull that. Turn this. It's just. I can do my eyes close. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devon. And on our new show, no such.

thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then, as we try the whole thing

out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. See? Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Music Festival. Presented by Capital One is coming back to Las Vegas.

Vegas. September 19th and 20th. On your feet. Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade.

Glorilla. Jelly Roll. John Fogarty. Lil Wayne. L.L. Cool J. Mariah Carey. Maroon 5. Sammy Hagar.

Tate McCray. The offspring. Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. All right, we're back and we're talking about why the universe is the way that it is and could it have been other ways.

And in those other universes, are there better flavors of ice cream available? Are we missing out? Yeah, I went on Amazon and ordered a really powerful magnifying glass to see if I could try to find the tiny gnomes inside the electrons. But so we cannot observe other universes, right? Because we're sort of like fish in a bowl. We're stuck in ours. But can we think about other universes?

Like can we sort of project sort of what we see in this universe and think about other possibilities? We absolutely can. And that's something that we do all the time as we sort of unroll the story of our universe. As we ask, could it have been different? At various points, could other things? things have happened. And that's really the deep question we're trying to ask. And, you know, we have made a lot of progress in understanding the universe. We have these basic fundamental

particles. And we've even gone deeper. There are people, for example, who have developed string theory, which is this idea of where all these particles come from. They say maybe all the particles we see are actually these tiny vibrating one dimensional strings. And when they vibrate in one way, they look like an electron. When they vibrate another way, they look like a muon. And And this comes out of a beautiful mathematical structure. And everybody I know who does string theory is constantly calling it beautiful. Like there's some elegance to it. Like there's some like when you see it, it's like, wow. You're like looking at a work of art. It just sort of like clicks together for them. They have a deep appreciation for it. Problem with string theory is that when they put it together, they realize there are some choices to make. Like when you put string theory together together, you can put it together this way and you can put it together that way. And there's a bunch of different choices to make. And they, sat down to calculate, like, how many different string theories are there? You know, it's not like it just, there's only one way to put it together. And so they came up with a number, different string theories that you could assemble.

And the number is 10 to the 500. So each of these represents, like, a different possible theory of a universe. I tried counting that on my fingers, but I think I ran out of fingers. It's a mind-bogglingly big number. Like, the number of years the universe has existed. is only like 10 to the 12. The number of atoms in a mole is like 10 to the 26. The number of particles in the universe is 10 to the 80.

We're talking about a number much, much, much bigger than any of those numbers. Definitely more than the number of jelly beans that I got in this jar. So don't guess 10 to the 500. And you might ask yourself, well, why is that important? Why is that relevant? Well, it's sort of like different configurations of the string landscape. And it sort of seems like when the universe started, if string theory is correct, we rolled a big dye. And that die has 10 to the 500 sides to it.

And we just happen to end up on this one. And so it makes people wonder like, well, geez, that seems pretty unlikely. Is there a reason why the universe ended up on this one spot out of 10 to the 500? You know, is there a deeper explanation? Like, that's the only one that can work somehow? Is there some other rule we haven't yet figured out? or are there 10 to the 500 universes out there? And we are just in this one.

So to answer your question, like this is the kind of thing that helps us think about maybe are there other universes out there that have different values? If we can't figure out a reason why the universe chooses one value and not another makes us wonder if there are other universes out there where those other values have been chosen.

So when we talk about other universes being out there, I think that can be hard to visualize because one way for me to think about it is so this universe plays out over billions of years and then at some point spreads apart completely and then somehow dies and then restarts into a new universe or the other way I think about it is like we're sort of in a bubble amongst a bunch of bubbles of other universes but I realize this is probably not accurate ways of thinking about it How does someone like me try to conceive of there being multiple universes? It's difficult to sort of hold this in your mind.

The easiest way is the second description that you gave, which is to imagine that there are other universes sort of really far out there. So far away, we could probably never travel to them, but sort of in the same space where we live, there's one view of how the universe started, that it began as infinite, and it started with this sort of like permeable universe material which is even before like the kind of stuff that makes up our universes.

And then little bubble universes sort of popped out of that. And in one spot you got our universe, another spot you got another universe, another spot you got another universe. And that maybe if the laws of physics do have some randomness to them, that maybe those different bubbles like got different roles of the dye and ended up with different, you know, effective laws of physics, that an electron is more massive over here and less massive over there and, you know, Strachitella has more chocolate in it in that universe and less chocolate in it in this universe. No. Poor saps, exactly. And so that's one way to imagine it, that you can sort of fit them in the same space as our universe. That's a bit tricky because it requires you to have some moment in the universe when, like, these

decisions happen, when those big bangs begin, that those numbers are somehow set into stone. That's so strange to me. I mean, first of all, it seems like the beginning of life or the beginning of the universe. the beginnings of things are always sort of a soup for some reason. And the second thing, I mean, so you, how much could we, because you're saying there's 10 to the 500 potential possible multiverses, right? How much could we tweak the rules of our universe and, like, create a universe that could potentially support some form of life or consciousness?

or is like it's something like in computer programming where you just move one decimal point, you ruin the whole thing. It's a super awesome question. And people have looked at these numbers and tried to think about that exact thing. And it's hard when you start from the 10 to the 500 string theory landscapes because we don't really know how to do string theory yet.

We just sort of like have discovered the framework and we see its beauty and we seems cool. But we don't really know how to go from string theory to like predicting a universe. So we start from a. another level, we say, well, let's look at the standard model. Let's look at the particles we know and the numbers that seem to control the universe as we see it. As we talked about earlier, like the cosmological constant that controls the expansion of the universe, or also like the strength

of gravity or the strength of the various forces or the mass of the electron. These are things we don't have explanations for. And we can wonder about, as you say, if the universe would be really different and inhospitable to life if they were changed. And how do we discover these constants in the first place, right? Because we don't look up at the sky and there's not a constellation that tells us, you know, what the gravitational constant is. So we discover these through some other means. Yeah, well, actually, we do discover them by looking at motions of things in the sky or by looking at chemistry and understanding the strength of the electromagnetic force. This is the product of, you know, thousands of years of investigation is assembling these explanations of the universe,

boiling down our ideas into the simplest equations possible, and then noticing in those equations that there are these numbers. And we don't have an explanation for why these numbers are. Why is the speed of light what it is and not twice what it is or a quarter of what it is? Now, we have noticed that if you change some of these numbers, the universe seems suddenly very inhospitable to life. You know, if you make, for example, the electron much heavier, then you don't get atoms in the same way, You don't get chemistry the same way because chemistry is dependent a lot on the ratio of the masses of the electrons to the nuclei, for the electrons to do all the things they do that let chemistry happen, you know, to interact with other nuclei and have their various atomic

levels. Things suddenly shift. And you can't really get chemistry the way we expect it and life the way we know it. Now, of course, the really hard question is, does it lead to other interesting forms of life as we don't know it? Certainly it's true. that if you tweak these parameters, you don't get our universe and it might not be hospitable to our life. But what it's really hard to do, as you said earlier, is imagine that there might be other interesting complex phenomena that emerge in that universe that are so different from ours that it's impossible to even imagine. And maybe those folks wonder, you know, like are we in the best universe with the best ice cream? That's really difficult. So we've got our universe and we've put it in

the character creator and we've got all of these sliders where we can change these. aspects about the universe. How messed up can we make our universe? Like, if we start playing around with these sliders, what is the extent to which we can create something completely different from our universe? Well, if you have your fingers on those sliders, please lift them up very gently and step away because our universe is very sensitive to those values. Like, if you change the mass of electron, even a tiny little bit, all of chemistry changes. If you make gravity even a little bit weaker, then you don't get things like stars and planets, right? If you make gravity a little bit stronger, then you get a lot more black holes and you get stars that are formed, but they're much

smaller and they're colder. They don't haven't had a chance to accumulate as much stuff before they collapse. And so you don't get life as you know it. If you tweak the value of the strong force, then you change how fusion operates at the heart of stars. And you might not get like nucleosynthesis. You might not burn and fuse and create things like carbon and oxygen that are essential for life. And so really it seems quite sensitive. We know that if you change the values these parameters, even a tiny little bit. We're talking about fractions of fractions of a percent. The universe is very, very different. We're kind of a souffle universe, right? We are very, very particular, very hard to bake. And so the anthropic principle looks at this and says, well, maybe

there's just lots of universes and this is the one that we are in and that's why we are asking this question. We have survived this firing squad, but we can't estimate the chances of surviving a firing squad because we're the only ones who have survived it and that's all we can do. And to me, that's frustrating and I don't like that at all. I like thinking there is an explanation that in 100 years, physicists will have a better theory of the universe. And instead of having 26 numbers, so we don't have explanations for, maybe it'll only have five numbers. And from those five numbers, we can predict the 26, right? They're controlled by five deeper numbers.

And in 500 years, maybe we'll have a theory of physics with just one number in it, or zero numbers, right? We'll discover the logical principle that is the only way a universe could be put together. And so it has to be this way. That's sort of my deep fantasy scientifically. So if you were to go up to the great council of the anthropic principle, and argue against them, what evidence do we have, if anything, that we may find deeper, further explanations other than, eh, life happens, you know?

That's a great question. I think the answer is that so far we have. That's so far when we have rejected the anthropic explanation and said, let's keep looking that we have found deeper explanations, that we've peeled back layer upon layer of reality and found explanations for our current layer lying within the deeper one, that the mechanisms that emerge from the smaller chaos do explain the larger phenomena that we see. And so we should keep digging. It's like you found a huge vein of gold underground.

Do you keep digging and keep mining it? Or do you say, well, that was probably lucky. It's probably going to end there. Let's just stop digging. For me, I'd say keep investing, right? Keep digging and keep pulling that intellectual gold. out of the ground. I mean, I would be sipping my lemonade and going like, yes, businessists, keep digging, go for it. You'd be writing a comedy play about particle physicists trying to operate

a mine to not a great effect. Yeah, it'd be called, wow, that sure looks hard by Katie Golden. Subtitle, I need a refill on my lemonade, please. And so one of the deepest questions in physics and in philosophy and in science and in the human experience is why is the universe this way and not some other way. And until we can operate the universe simulation machine and run a million other universes to see how many of them end up looking like ours with biologists sipping lemonade while physicists do the real work, we can't really answer that question, but we can look at the patterns of the answers that we have uncovered and we can ask ourselves, could have been another way, is this the only way that a universe could be organized? Is there a deeper explanation waiting for us,

or have we run into the bedrock, the place where the universe is just random and there are no more explanations to be found. Yeah, but Daniel, if we run that universe simulation machine, maybe that's what creates new universes. And what's the theory of the universe simulation machine? And what explains that? See, there's an endless cycle of questions to be asked.

Well, thanks, Katie, for joining us and asking such great questions about the nature of the universe. Thank you so much for having me and for answering them and refilling my lemonade. And thanks to all of our listeners who supported us over these years and whose questions drive this podcast and all of science itself. Keep thinking deeply, keep asking questions, and keep listening. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I.

for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam.

Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure. And, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart, Men's Sports Network. This is an I-Heart podcast.