Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions #48

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Daniel and Kelly answer questions about crackpots, hearing meteors, and the age of everything.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. as someone says. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Did you hear the new episode of The Hey Jonas Podcast? We are at D23. So we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Menzel. I audition for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today?

I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that. No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas and the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook.

Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride. Ben Stillard and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a meteor makes a fireball in the sky, is it possible to hear it when it's up so high? People have a lot of crazy ideas and thoughts. What are D&K's favorites from their inbox?

Daniel, I don't know if thoughts and inbox rhyme. How old is the tree, the stone, the air, the air, the air. atoms in each one. What's the oldest thing that's anywhere beneath the stars and the sun? Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's answers will make it right. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's listener universe. Episode number 48. Smith, I study parasites and space, and we've got a lot of great questions today, and they're all Daniel questions. This is a Daniel-run episode. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who loves to think about alien.

and answer questions from listeners. And I'll say, Kelly, that I chose some that also ask for your input. Oh, thank you. That was nice of you. And so I see that we have a question about what are some of our favorite sort of conspiracy theories, let's say, that come across our email box. And so what I want to know from you is, what is your favorite question, period? Not a conspiracy theory.

What question, like, just lit you up when you read it? Oh, wow, that's tough. I could remember lots of moments when I saw a question in my inbox and I thought, oh my gosh, what a fun question. Most often, these are questions from kids, you know, like seven-year-olds with parents who listen to the podcast or something. And they asked a question that the parent couldn't answer. And so then they ask us to step in. That's like one of my favorite moments. But in terms of a specific question, just last week I got a question from a nine-year-old who thought they had the solution to quantum gravity.

They heard us discussing hawking radiation, and they were like, wait a second, that's a quantum effect and it's gravity. Isn't that quantum gravity? Can't you start from there and build a whole theory of quantum gravity? And I was like, wow, this nine-year-old is really paying attention. Yeah, holy cow. I feel like that, I mean, that is a great question, but I also feel like it's a question where at the end you're like, I'm not doing enough. I wasn't that smart as a nine-year-old. This kid is going to be like president.

slash emperor of the universe. And what am I doing over here? Well, only because you didn't have the benefit of this amazing podcast to stimulate your mind, right? You're right. You're right. So what is your favorite question you've gotten over email, Kelly? I get a lot of questions where at the end I realize either, whoa, I don't know the answer and I should have. Or I get a lot of questions that I love that are like, hey, you know what?

Banana slugs. I want the Kelly version of banana slugs. And I'm like, oh, man, I appreciate that you thought, you know, X topic is something I want to know more about. But particularly, I want to know, you know, how's Kelly going to connect that to diarrhea? Exactly. I want the Kelly over-research treatment of this question. That's right. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, those are always like, they're exciting for me because usually I don't know the answer. And so it's an excuse to, like, dive in and do a ton of research. But also it's just very flattering that someone thought, I need to know what Kelly thinks about banana sucks. And that always, I don't know, makes me feel great. All right. Well, let's hear some questions from listeners. Our first question is from John McJunkin, who seems to be having a debate with a friend and wants us to weigh in.

Oh, that's always a little bit dangerous. At least it's not a debate with a partner. Let's go ahead and hear the question. Hey, Daniel and Kelly. I'm John McJunkin, an old guy in Arizona with over 40 years in the music and audio engineering biz, and I think a lot about sound. I was once told by a friend that some meteors have enough mass and energy to create sound that is audible at ground level. He said he'd heard a meteor once make a fizzy-wushy sound. Does this ring true to you? It sort of seems plausible.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa is said to have been audible thousands of miles away, but there's no way that a meteor could produce anywhere near the same massive force as a huge volcano eruption. And considering that it would take sound something like five minutes to travel from the mazesphere down at ground level, it could be a bit of a challenge to correlate a specific whoosh with a specific meteor. It would be super cool if meteors actually are audible, but I have my doubts. What do you think? If meteors are audible at ground level,

maybe we could hear the Doppler shifting rock and roll played by aliens as they zoom by if they have their windows rolled down. Thank you both so much for all you do. Oh, this is fun. On the one hand, I think it would have been really, interesting to have been present for the, what is it, Tunguska? Mm-hmm. Was that a meteor?

Which flattened all those trees in Siberia? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To be able to, like, have heard that or been far enough away to have, like, felt a little bit of the pressure wave, but not been so close that you got, like, absolutely decimated. But, yeah, I totally love this idea of imagining or knowing, like, what would it be like, this thing that I'll never see. Tell me what it might be like. I'm glad that we don't live in interesting times when it comes to things from

space, you know. It's fun to imagine and to wonder what that would be like, but boy, it could be really catastrophic. Instead, we live in AI and geopolitical interesting times. I guess time will tell which one we prefer. But mostly we can go about our days without worrying about death from above due to falling rocks. But John is asking a really fun question, and it turns out to have a fascinating and subtle answer. Basically, he's asking, can you hear a meteor? And so let's first remind ourselves like what is hearing all about, how does that all work? Remember that sound is pressure waves, right? So things moving through the air, change the airflow and make waves. The way that you are hearing me right now is some speaker is vibrating and that is pushing

physically, mechanically on some air. Even if you're getting like a digital signal and it seems all fancy, in the end, there's a speaker with a drum that's vibrating according to those digital signals and pushing the air. And your ear is hearing it because it's receiving those pressure waves in the air. So all of sound is pressure waves. And it travels at around 800 miles per hour, 1,200 kilometers per hour. It still blows my mind that like something that's vibrating in my headphones is able to both make the sound of Daniel and the sound of Kelly. Like, I don't know. I'm impressed. Well, I think we had an episode on sound recently, and we talked about how, you know, voices are a mixture of different frequencies and, like, the thing that makes you recognize my voice or your voice is that

particular mixture of frequencies. Did I tell you about getting recognized by my voice? Oh, yeah. You didn't tell me the whole story. Tell me the whole story. I was on vacation in Yosemite, walking across the parking lot, talking to Katrina, and somebody stopped me and said, excuse me, are you Daniel? I was like, um, do you? Do I know you? And he was like, no, but I listen to your podcast. And this guy, like, drives across the country in a van and listens to us and knows our voices. Hi, Van Guy.

I know. And his brain was just like, wait a second. I know that voice. That's amazing. And he said to me, it's so weird to hear your voice coming out of your mouth. And I was like, that's how it happens, man. All right. So, you know, you can hear things that happen near you.

But the farther away something is, the more. diluted the power is. It's just like lots of other stuff. You have flashlight, the intensity of the light goes like one over distance squared. It's the same with sound. Somebody claps their hands, then the loudness of that sound decreases with distance, actually with distance squared. So, for example, if you're standing next to an airplane, it sounds really, really loud. If you have an airplane flying overhead, you can hear it, but it's not as loud. If you see an airplane flying over you at like 30,000 feet, whatever, you can't hear it. It's too far away. I mean, technically, if you had a super microphone, maybe you could hear it, but the sound is really dispersed because of the distance.

Okay, got it. All right, but we're not interested in hearing airplanes. We want to hear about meteors, right? So what are meteors and how do they make sound? Mediars are just rocks hitting the atmosphere. Remember, stuff in the solar system is moving, and the typical orbital speed is like 30 kilometers per second. That's the speed of which the earth is going around the sun. So if you have something floating in the solar system or moving in the solar system and the earth runs into it or equivalently it runs into the earth, you can expect it to impact at around 30 kilometers per second, maybe more if they're heading towards each other or a little bit less if it's a glancing blow, but that's the order of magnitude. And what happens when rocks hit the atmosphere at 30

kilometers per second, right, is that you get a collision. And people think about this in terms of friction, but actually what's happening is that the air in front of the meteor gets so rapidly compressed that it turns into plasma. Just like how in the sun, you're compressing gas and it gets hot because of the pressure and it starts to glow. That's what's happening in front of the asteroid. The gas in front of it gets super duper compressed and it starts to glow. Then that heat disintegrates the asteroid. That is fascinating, but has no connection to why you hear sound. Is that right? That's just like an illustration of how fast it's going. So that's what creates the visible signature, right?

It's the glowing light. Got it. But the plasma and the disintegration of the asteroid also creates sound, right? Because it's basically an explosion, right? You have this like plasma being created. And just like how you create high density, high temperature, high pressure when you set off a bomb, and the same thing is happening. And the scale of the effect depends entirely on the size of the object.

Okay. And so what you typically see, like, if you're looking up at night and you see a shooting star, you're probably seeing an object that's between a millimeter and a centimeter in size. No. And it streaks across the sky, yes, and makes a visible track and doesn't make it to the ground. It disintegrates before it hits the ground. I was sure that shooting stars were, like, a meter or something. And, yes, they disintegrated before they hit the ground. But, like, bigger than a centimeter or a millimeter, like, the fact that you could see something.

something from so far away that was a centimeter bit. That's huge. Yeah. That's amazing. It's not huge. It's tiny. Yes. We should be very glad that we're not seeing multiple meter size impactors every night.

Wow. Because a meter size impactor leaves about the energy of a nuclear bomb when it disintegrates. That's so good. Okay. So like a centimeter is a shooting star. Up to like 10 centimeter we call a fireball. And some of those fragments even make it down to the ground to give you like meteorites. Right.

look fragments of these rocks left on the ground. If you're up to like a meter, then you can get ground impacts. Like the whole thing can actually hit the ground, like meteor crater in Arizona. Up to 20 meters wide was the size of the rock that caused the event in Chelyabinsk, basically the energy of a nuclear bomb. If you go up to 50 meters, then you get maybe city scale devastation. Something 100 meters wide can wipe out a whole region like, you know, New England. If it's a kilometer wide, you're getting global effects, mass casualties. If it's 10 kilometers wide, then you have a mass extinction event, something like the dinosaurs. Bigger than that, and you're talking danger to the structure of the Earth itself.

Okay. I'm not sleeping well tonight. Yeah, exactly. But fortunately, the tiny ones are very common and the big ones are very, very rare. So a millimeter across is very common. We're talking like millions are hitting the Earth. every day at a millimeter or smaller. Wow. And as it gets bigger, it gets very, very rare. But the question we're asking today is, can you hear them, right? And so absolutely, these make shockwaves, right?

Because we're looking at a collision and a collision is going to create shock waves in the air. The amount of energy released by like a 20 centimeter impactor at like 20 kilometers per second carries like tens of tons of T&T of energy. You know, you can measure energy in terms of like joules or kilo-caler. But those are ridiculous when you're talking about explosions. So they have this unit of tons of TNT, which I think is kind of hilarious and steampunk as a unit, but it's cool. And whether you can hear it on the ground depends on a lot of things. It depends on like the speed, the altitude, the trajectory, and also the composition of it.

It depends on like whether it explodes high in the atmosphere. Does it survive down to the ground? Like a denser iron meteor of the same size survives to lower altitudes, which could. creates a stronger shockwave at the surface. So in order to make something that you can hear on the ground, you probably need something like between 10 centimeters and a meter, what they call a fireball, the kind of thing that will leave stuff that makes it all the way to the ground. But here's the key thing about John's question is that remember that sound is delayed relative to light. So if you see the thing streaking across the sky, then you would probably hear it much later, because

Because it's still like tens of kilometers up in the atmosphere. It's pretty far away. And this is like lightning and thunder, right? Like you see the lightning and then you count to see how long it is until you hear the thunder to figure out how far away that lightning strike was. Exactly. The light and the sound are created at the same time, but light travels much, much faster than sound, almost instantaneously across these distances. And sound travels pretty fast, but much slower than light. And so by measuring the difference in the arrival times, you can actually tell how far away it is.

Because if it's really close to you, they arrive at the same time. So when you see lightning and hear thunder at the same time, like, uh-oh, something close by has been zapped. And if there's a big gap, it means it took a while for the sound to get there. So same story here. This is pretty far away. It's tens of kilometers up. And so if you see something in the atmosphere that's very bright, you should expect to hear it quite delayed. we're talking like minutes later, right?

So the sound and the light should not be synchronized. And John is asking about hearing like a fizzy, whooshy sound that's correlated with the light. Like you're looking up at the sky and you see a streak and at the same time you hear something. Okay. And that sounds improbable, right, because of this whole issue of the speed of sound and the speed of light. Sounds like John wins. No, but actually, it turns out this can't happen. What?

And not by sound like breaking the laws of physics. When this plasma is produced, it can also generate low-frequency electromagnetic waves. So not visible light, way too low frequency for us to see. But those travel also at the speed of light, and then they can hit stuff nearby, things like leaves or hair or glasses and induce vibrations in them. Oh, no, John is wrong. So these things can act like tiny speakers. So essentially, the information is transmitted at the speed of light, just like if you were sending it along wires, and then stuff around you acts like speakers.

And so this is called electrophonic sounds. It's rare, and it's hard to study. But experts now generally accept that this is a real phenomenon. Wow. In order to generate these kind of electrophonic sounds, you need an impactor that's like probably several tens of centimeters across. So a pretty big one. Okay. So it's rare.

It's unusual, but it's not impossible, John. Whoa. All right. Sorry, John. That's probably not the answer you were hoping for, but it's an interesting one. So let's hear what John has to say. Thanks, Daniel and Kelly. So I'm okay with the answer, Kelly, because I learned something.

I had never heard of electrophonic sound, and it's certainly not a phenomenon that would typically come up in conversations with my music producer and audio engineer colleagues. We tend to talk about things like the inverse square line sound propagation, and the effect of things like temperature, atmospheric pressure, and humidity on the speed of sound. But you can bet that now I'll tell my advanced live sound students about electrophonic sound.

It's a treat for this extraordinary to get a carefully measured response from his absolute favorite podcast. Thanks so much. Hey, I'm Ruby Carr, the host of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry.

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This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is the Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. If you know me, you know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.

You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts. You go with it. And Sean Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure.

Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our town is small taters by most standards, right? but to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life.

Stop right there. Is that normal? A podcast about what happens. when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube.

They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to our town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, and the next question is a very fun question from Grant. Hello, Daniel and Kelly. I grew up in a scientist and science communicator household, and my dad gave some Popsie interviews in the 70s on topics like animal cognition and magnetic field sensing

that brought out the weirdos. As such, nut letters were a regular part of our family life through the 80s with the best of America's exuberantly amateur theoreticians writing to us to explain why quantum magnetic ESP is being suppressed by fluoride. I've always had a nostalgia for that age of more innocent crackpottery. Do you have favorite crackpot theories? The ones that are just too much fun to get upset at? Is Daniels secretly rooting for the electric universe cranks?

Or is Kelly an unacknowledged enthusiast of deep-hot biosphere, abiogenic oil? Is the next podcast guest going to be Gene Ray or Ludwig von Plutonium? Yours and not taking anything. too seriously, grab. Oh, my gosh. Okay, where do we start? Let's start by talking about how much we love getting emails. I do love getting emails.

You know, I think that science is by the people and for the people, and it's especially important now to emphasize that. And I think that academics shouldn't be walled off in universities and unavailable. And so I think it's important that we break down these barriers and that everybody feels like they can access and a little bit participate in science, at the very least, communicate with people who are being paid by them through their tax dollars to do science. So I love getting emails, not just from listeners, but from anybody out there who's thinking about the universe and wants to, in good faith, participate in this joyful exploration of how

things work, right? Well, can I ask you a kind of Kelly's grouchy question? Do you have another kind? No. So here it goes. So I've been seeing an uptick in emails from high school students. And I love getting emails from high school students out of the blue. But I've been seeing an uptick in emails from students who essentially say, I am required to write an essay on whatever I want.

And part of my requirement is I have to interview an expert. And it needs to be a Zoom call. Can I have an hour of your time? Have you been getting those kinds of what and what do you think of those? Because I, here, can I, real quick, what I think of those is that I feel like if you're trying to teach students how to do research, having them learn that it's okay to reach out to experts is good. But I don't think that the system can handle, I don't want to call it a burden because, again, I love talking to high school students. And every once in a while I have a high school students say, I read your book, I've got some questions. Can we have a Zoom call?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I would love to talk to you. But I get students who definitely don't care about the topic, but have to have to have to have a 30 minute book. You know, they didn't read the book clearly. Yes, this is an assignment they have to do. There's really no joy you can see in their eyes when you're talking about this topic. And so, yeah, what do you think about that being an assignment? Because I do want people to feel like they can reach out to us, but I also can't say yes to every invitation like this I get because I wouldn't be able to. write my next book. Yeah, I agree with you. I don't say yes to those. I offer an email exchange. I say send me a list of questions and I'll write back to you.

Because face-to-face chats take a lot of time. They're hard to schedule. They're very inefficient. And I prefer asynchronous stuff that I can squeeze in responses whenever I have a moment. You know, I use email, especially with the public, as a break. I'm working on something. It's hard. My brain is tired.

oh, let's see what's in the inbox. And there's always something fun in there to read. And so I try to answer every email. And I also get a lot of random theories. You know, here's my theory of how physics went wrong in the beginning of the 20th century. And I read all of those. And, you know, I know this question from Grant is in good faith. And there are folks out there who are crackpots, but they don't always know that there are

crackpots. You know, they're operating in good faith. They're trying to explore the universe. They're trying to figure it out. out. And as long as it's in good faith, then, like, I welcome it. And so I give everybody, you know, 15 to 30 minutes. I'll read your theory. I'll write back and I'll tell you what I think and here are the flaws and here's what you might work on. And often people are not happy to get that feedback because it's not always, you're right. And let's meet in Stockholm to chat with the King of Sweden about it.

It's often like, oh, you didn't think of this or here's a concern or whatever. But I think that there's an important role for outsiders, but I want to clarify this question of being in good faith. You know, there are definitely lots of people out there who want to understand the universe and want to come up with a theory or find the current theories of physics unsatisfactory. You know, like, I don't like that there's no local realism or I don't like this idea of the fabric of space time. And that's cool and that's totally valid if you go off and then build your own theory, but there's also a growing population with an unfortunately large platform that I think is not operating in good faith. You know, people who are out there and are pushing conspiracy

theory, spreading misinformation for clout, trying to convince you that academics are fraudsters and we're just wasting your time and tax dollars while padding our fat wallets and everything we're doing is nonsense. And like, yeah, I know you're laughing at the fat wallets, right? But there's a lot of people out there who are very receptive to the message that, like, elites are dumb, actually, and or lying to you. And here's the secret truth, which you can know. Right, right. And even if those theories really make no sense and don't survive any level of scrutiny, you know, I'm talking like Terrence Howard's total nonsense, one times one equals two level stuff. There's a big audience for it, and a lot of people buy it because they're primed to

believe that elites are dumb actually. And so that's what I mean when I say like people not operating in good faith. You know, folks we've talked about in the pod before, you know, Ashton Forbes and this whole crowd of folks who are out there just to build clout and get your attention and your clicks and your ad dollars, not really trying to figure out how the universe works. My equivalent is that it seems to me like there's more people out there these days trying to sell remedies for parasitic infections. And in order to sell those in the United States where there's not a lot of parasitic infections, you need to convince people that they're infected but they don't realize it and that they could be feeling better. And the reason that they're tired isn't that you

got five kids or, you know, like kids and plus work is exhausting. It's because of the parasites. And so I'm getting more and more, not through the DKEU email, but I'm getting more and more of folks reaching out saying, like, I found this in my body. And what do I do? And it used to be that I would say, hey, look, I'm really sorry. I can't, I can't try to diagnose based on a picture. Like, that doesn't look like a parasite to me. Very often it will be like, it looks pretty clear to me that's a piece of thread or microplastics or something, but it looks nothing like any parasite I've ever seen. But on the other hand, I don't know what their other symptoms are. And I'm not a medical doctor. And so I always tell them, like, you should talk to a doctor and maybe you should be

open to the idea that it might be helpful to talk to another kind of medical professional. It might be helpful to talk to someone with, you know, an emphasis in mental health, which is, you know, like the nicest way to say, like, look, we all have times. I mean, the number of times I've thought I had cancer was crazy. Oh, man, I have diagnosed myself with toe cancer so many times. Yes. Well, and the solution for me, I needed to go on anxiety medications for a little while and talk to a therapist. And I think for Some people, their stress manifests as maybe I'm infected by a parasite, and that's what they focus on instead of do I have cancer. Yeah. And so anyway, it used to be that I would tell people, I'm sorry, I'm not the right kind of medical professional.

It's not ethical for me to tell you what I think based on a photo. You need to talk to someone. But now the responses that are coming back aren't, okay, well, thanks for at least responding. The responses are your community is suppressing the fact that there's a lot more parasites. Oh, no. And so now I'm getting these conspiracy theory. Are you in bed with big parasite, Kelly? I'm not even sure I understand what the argument is.

Why would, I mean, the parasitologists are always complaining there's not enough jobs for us. We should be trying to, like, you know, get the word out that there's everyone's infected by parasites. You need to hire us to solve all these problems. But like, anyway, I'm getting a lot more people who are aggressively responding to me saying that I am part of a, like, movement to cover this stuff up. Those are my least favorite emails. Those conspiracy theories never make any sense to me. And they strike me as odd because they don't survive, you know, even just like meeting one scientist. Like the ones where they tell you, physicists are suppressing the truth.

They don't want to change the textbooks or like archaeologists don't want to rewrite the narrative. Like, have you met an archaeologist? Have you met a scientist? You can't get them to shut up about their new ideas, how everybody's wrong. And I have a theory or whatever. and like, that's the dream. That's what everybody's trying to do. I want to disprove the standard model more than anything else.

My personal scientific fantasy is to find something that makes no sense and requires us to, like, throw everything away and start over. And that's not unique. Like, everybody feels that way. So there's something pervasive and sinister about these conspiracy theories because they mean that, like, the people who are hearing them have no contact with scientists. And that's one reason why I want to be available. I want to be like, hey, look, I'm just a person being curious about the world like you are. Yep, absolutely, same. I've seen an uptick and a new kind of communication, which isn't too surprising, which is AI-assisted theories of everything.

It used to be people would write to me and say, I have this idea, this intuition, but I don't know how to express it with the math. Can you help me? And now instead it's, I have this idea. I fed it into Claude. Here's what Claude wrote. I don't understand it. Can you read it? Okay.

And that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm interested in talking to people about their good faith ideas. I'm not so excited about talking to people's AIs about the AIs expression. Because if people produce something with AI, they can't read and they don't understand, then they can't tell whether it's nonsense. And 99% of the time it is. It's shiny nonsense that the AI produced to satisfy the user and makes no sense. And so it's unfortunate. But I'm not interested in reading other people's AI output.

Yeah, I'm not getting, I don't get a lot of AI output. Okay. Thankfully. But I have friends who have gotten literal bags of feces sent to them in the mail, which maybe is worse. I think that's definitely worse. Yeah. I can just hit delete and it's cleaned up. Right, right.

Yeah, no, this mess took a little bit more cleaning up afterwards. And it was, you know, came with a note. Like, I think I have parasites. Can you take a look? It was like, oh, absolutely not, friend. Absolutely not. So back to Grant's question. what are the favorite categories of theories?

So I happen to be spending this week at the Aspen Center for Physics in beautiful Colorado. I come here every summer. It's wonderful. It's me and a bunch of theorists. And we all talk about crazy ideas and whatever. And so I did a little informal survey and I asked folks like, hey, what kind of emails do you get? What theories do people tell you? What are your favorites?

And unfortunately, most of them said, I don't read them. I just delete them. They're all the same. Yeah. And I understand that. A lot of academics, you know, are overwhelmed by email and they don't respond to emails from colleagues. I have lots of colleagues who I will email and I never hear back from.

I'm like, what's wrong with you? Right, yeah. But if they can't even respond to emails from, like, other physicists they're working with actively, then, you know, how could they respond to the public? So I think there's not a broad appetite among physicists for these theories. And it's true we get a lot that are very similar. You know, physics took a wrong turn in the beginning of the 20th century. Einstein was wrong.

this kind of stuff. So there's a commonality to them and definitely patterns. And so I think a lot of is this just don't read them. To be fair to your colleagues. So like I, you and I both got an email once that was really long. And it contained a long PDF. And I looked at it and I immediately was like, this would take me hours. I can't, I don't have hours. I don't know what to do. And I wrote to you and I was like, I want to respond, but I don't have time. What do we do? And You had a really good response, which was, what, you give everything 15, any email you get gets 15 minutes and you give your initial response based on 15 minutes. And I thought that was really nice because, like, you know, 15 minutes is actually still a lot of time from someone who gets a lot of emails. Yeah.

And you then, you know, we share the same email box. And so I saw what your response was. And you gave a like thoughtful response based on those 15 minutes. And I thought that was really nice. And so I don't know. I wonder if maybe if everybody had like a policy where it's like, you know, you know, you. You know, once a month I'm willing to spend an hour and however many emails are in the box, I'll get to, you know, I'll give each of them 15 minutes and some might have to wait till the next month or, I don't know.

Like some way to respond, I think would be nice if you can. Yeah, I think I hope that people prefer an imperfect response to no response because those are the options, right? Because I can't spend a week on every single one coming up with alternatives and et cetera. But, you know, that's the whole context. And Grant's question was really like, which are your favorites? And I'll say that, you know, I like any sincere, good faith attempt to understand the universe. If it came from your brain and it's really your way of making sense of the cosmos and our experience in it, I love to hear it. My favorites are geometric ones. Like, I really like geometry. I like visual explanations. I like things that click together. I'm the kind of person if you like remember back when you're learning algebra. burning you like solving a system of equations. I don't like thinking about it as equations on the page. I like thinking about it geometrically because two linear equations are the same as two lines and the solution is where they cross. And to me, that solution is much more appealing than like substitution

and manipulating symbols on the page. So I like theories of everything that come from geometry. Like people who think there's some hidden underneath geometry and out of that comes the electron and all the corks and whatever. That's probably true. Cool. You know, I think there is something deep down out of which comes all the complexity we see. So that's my favorite category. I don't think I have a favorite category. Like, I love, I get a little bit intimidated sometimes when I get asked a question,

for example, about how the immune system works. And if I get a specific medical question, I have to pass on that. I'm willing to give like broad strokes about like, this is what this parasite tends to do, but I can't get into super specifics because that doesn't seem ethical to me. But I don't know, in general, any time anyone is like more about banana slugs or more, you know,

I get a lot of like, here's this natural thing I saw or heard about. I want to know more about it, but I don't really know where to go that is like sort of trusted where I can be sure that I'm getting good information. So can you tell me about it? And I don't know, I love,

I really appreciate the trust. And I really appreciate the opportunity to get to dig into more natural stuff because I love reading about it. Well, I also consulted our informal third co-host, Katrina. Nice. And I asked her about it. And she said she really loves when listeners have like changed their diet, for example. Yesterday we got an email from somebody who said that because of the podcast, they're now a big fan of beans. And they even joined the Rancho Gordo Bean Club because of the podcast.

And I'm thinking, all right, may the fiber be with you. Oh, no. That's, do you really say that? I'm writing down the name of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club, because I've been meaning to ask you guys the name of that so I can join it too. But anyway. Absolutely, yes. So we love emails from listeners.

We love thoughts from listeners. We love theories from listeners. Please write to us. We will write you back. We will. All right, Grant. I hope that answered your question. Thanks for that question, Grant.

Thank you, Daniel and Kelly. That answer took an unexpected turn that really hit a nerve for me because 35 years ago, I was one of those kids, emailing a prominent scientist with a question for a high school research paper. I got a cruel blow off from the secretary that still smarts, and I ended up choosing engineering over physics shortly after. Thank you for your heartfelt and, frankly, touching answers, and keep up the good work. of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf for raids, I'll believe

in anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon. Stream Oncore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality. Welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and

your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to pro society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotbbe. If you know me, you know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.

So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time into space. You're hired to fill the space with you. You have something in your guts. You go with it. And Sean Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood.

He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia.

But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back.

Do not use my hard work to sell your bull-h-h-h-hue. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to our town on the I-Heart radio app, Apple. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right.

Next up, we've got a question from the United Kingdom. Let's hear what Liam has to say. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. My name's Liam and I'm a research technician from the UK. My work takes me to a lot of old-grove forests and ancient woodlands. And being around the old trees all the time kind of got me thinking, how old can something get? How old can the trees get?

How old could the carbon in the trees get? how old can the atoms in the trees get? What is the oldest something can be? Looking forward to your answer. Wow, doesn't it sound like Liam has like the best job? I was just thinking that. Like if I could, you know, roll back the tape of my life and start again, working in old growth forests and ancient woodlands is like top tier awesomeness.

Being around old trees all the time, gosh, it just puts everything in perspective. It makes me wonder like, what is this tree seen? Yeah. Like, my life is a blink. I was just in the redwood forest of California and, like, saw the sequoias and, like, wow, it just makes all your problems seem really minor, you know? Yeah, that's right. You should live in a sequoia forest and then be constantly blist out.

That would be great. Maybe. So, Liam is asking about how old these trees can get and how old the stuff in them can get and how old is everything anyway? Wonderful question. And so remember, we have an episode from last year about. about old trees. It was from May 2025, and Kelly did a great job researching it and, of course, acknowledging that the best trees and the oldest trees are in California. Oh, my goodness. I'm not sure I said that. There were some competitors. I don't remember exactly, but you're right. The bristlecone

pines are pretty old. Yes. They're amazing. They're like almost 5,000 years old. It's really incredible. Though at risk of toppling California, I will say that there is a contentious competitor, right? Not an individual tree, but there's this Pando network you've probably heard of. These are 47,000 aspen trees in Utah that are connected by a single root system and considered by some ecologists to be a single organism. And I think they have like a subtle genetic relationship. Do you know something about this? Yeah, it always felt a little bit like cheating to me. Yeah. Because like, you know, the initial tree could have long since died, but it spread out and produced other trees that share the same root network.

But, you know, trees have a totally different way of living than humans do. That totally blows my mind. So maybe this works for trees. But yes, I do know. And I've seen some patches of aspens. And holy cow, there are fewer more beautiful things on this planet than looking at a big patch of aspens, especially when they're changing colors. And I'm like in Aspen this week.

I'm like looking at my window right now I see Aspins. They're gorgeous. So lucky. And I love the idea that this like community of trees. is the single biggest organism on the planet. That's amazing. It has a name, right? They call it Pando.

And they think that it's 14 to 16,000 years old. What? Right? So like, what has Pando seen? Wait, I thought there was a huge patch of fungus under Oregon or something that we thought was the biggest organism on the planet. All right. I think we're going to have to do a whole episode on what's the biggest organism on the

planet or something, a ranking. And I think we should also answer the question, what counts as an organism? Like, does the, you know, know, 47,000 trees that make up the Aspen stand count as one individual. Is that fair? Right. Yeah. Yes.

Exactly. Okay. And if we could connect humans by root systems, would we all be one? No, thanks. I'm going on record as no thanks. All right. So these are some examples of really old trees. And more generally, as we talked about in that episode, there's like 25 species of trees

that can live more than a thousand years. Wow. There are also lots of trees that don't live very long. Like dogwoods live, you know, 20, 30, 40, 40 years. years. And the science is still out on this. You know, why do some trees live really long and some don't? How is it an evolutionary benefit? Check out that whole episode for a deep dive by Kelly, as usual, on the age of trees. That was so fun to research. Trees are fun to be around and to think about.

And to sit under and, yes. So how old are carbon molecules? Yeah. So one of the most amazing thing about trees is that they build themselves out of air. That's crazy, yeah. Right? Like, think about how you plant a seed in the ground and a tree grows out of it. And you might think to yourself, well, where does the stuff to make the tree come from? And your first instinct might be the ground. It's like pulling stuff out of the ground and assembling it. But no, it is pulling carbon out of the air. Trees literally are biological machines to build themselves out of air. It blows my life. It's crazy. Yeah. Yep. We have a palm tree that we planted 15 years ago. One time we were going to go to CERN for like nine months, and we had this potted plant that we got from Akea,

just like a little potted palm tree. And we're like, oh, this is going to die. Let's just put it outside. We put it in a corner of our yard. And then we just left it there. And now it is taller than our house. Wow. And I look at the thing sometimes.

I'm like, that's just air. It's just air. It's unbelievable. Anyway, so the point is to answer Liam's question, like trees have carbon in them, and this carbon is in several forms, and there's a very complex carbon cycle on earth, where you have carbon in the atmosphere, and then trees can take that carbon in, right, to build themselves up, and trees are about 50% carbon, often stored in cellulose, but then they die, and then those trees return that carbon to the soil, and it can get washed

out into the oceans, where the carbon is mostly in the form of, like, H-C-O-3 and CO3, and And sometimes marine organisms can take that carbon in and make calcium carbonate. And if enough of that builds up, then you can get like limestone. So sometimes this carbon cycle can take like 10 or 100 million years before the limestone on the bottom of the ocean gets like subducted by tectonic activity back into magma, melted and then like burped up back into the atmosphere by volcanoes. It's an incredible cycle. And I'll mention that our plant friend, Manuel Lurdao, wants to come back on the show to talk about carbon cycle and stuff. That's a lot of what he works on. So there'll be a lot more about this coming soon.

And, you know, I have to throw space in there whenever I can. Well, you know, one of my favorite examples for why it would be hard to live on the moon is that the moon doesn't even have a lot of carbon. Yeah. And so it's like, how are you going to imagine growing things when you just don't even have carbon to start with? It's just so important. Okay. Anyway, back to trees. And so these cycles can be short, right?

Like something can die and then decompose, and then its carbon is back in the atmosphere. Or if like a forest fire comes through and burns the trees, the carbon is released back in the atmosphere. So carbon can go into trees and back into the atmosphere in years. Or it could be like 200 million years, you know. And a single bit of carbon can be like a hunk of coal for a long, long time before it returns to the atmosphere. So individual carbon molecule that now we're talking about can be in one form for a long time or a short time.

This fascinating, many, many loops. And I'm really looking forward to that episode digging into the carbon cycle. But so is this, are we really answering Liam's question? Because like, does it matter where the carbon has been? Like, I guess he wants to know when did that carbon start? Yes. Okay. Right.

So while I was thinking we talk about the trees and we talk about the molecules and now let's dig into the atoms. Because you're right. Okay. If it changes from CO2 to calcium carbonate, whatever, it's the same carbon, right? Is it the same carbon? And the answer is yes, that the atoms are not changing, right? Chemistry is mostly clicking together things, but not changing their elements. So the carbon, the oxygen, the nitrogen, all that stuff is just being rearranged.

And that stuff is very, very old. It's all older than the Earth, right? Because anything that's here on Earth could not have been made on Earth. You cannot make carbon or oxygen or nitrogen on Earth. It requires fusion at the heart of stars. Wow. So remember that the universe began and we mostly had hydrogen and then a little bit of helium. So the universe begins almost entirely hydrogen.

And then to make this heavier stuff, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, you need fusion at the heart of stars. And we have it here on Earth because it was fused at the heart of some earlier star, which then exploded and spread its ashes through space, and that became part of the gas cloud which formed our solar system. And any carbon atom that's in you or in a tree was created in that other star and survived that explosion and floated through space and survived the formation of the Earth because none of these processes are powerful enough to break up carbon. So it's been around for billions of years.

We are all star stuff. We are star stuff. Actually, we're mostly Big Bang stuff, right? Because the hydrogen that we're made out of is not Star Stuff. It was made during the Big Bang. And so, like, if you get into the protons, right, all these elements, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen are made of a bunch of protons stuck together from the heart of stars. But where do those protons come from? Those all come from the Big Bang, right? So as the universe is cooling, we're talking 13.8 billion years ago. Then quarks and gluons come together and cool, and instead of being a big soup, they fall together into mostly protons. And protons are stable. Protons, we think, will live forever. Unless you, like, smash them together at the Large Hajon Collider or actually impact the Earth like a super tiny little meteor, then they will live forever.

Like you have a proton just sitting in space, come back in 100 trillion years, we think you'll still have a proton. We don't know because we've only been able to make. measure protons and look for them decaying for, you know, a little while. But best measurements are that protons have a longer lifetime than the current age of the universe. Okay, first, I think we're all just bang stuff. Doesn't have the same flow as we're all just star stuff. But I see your point and I'm glad you corrected me. But, but so when you are working at the LHC and you're destroying protons that otherwise would have lived forever, do you feel bad?

Well, is it a proton genocide? I don't think protons have rights, no. So I don't think they have emotions. If they did and they, you know, if I was a pan-psychic, somebody who believed that like consciousness is inherent in the universe and that electrons have a little bit of consciousness, then yes, I would feel bad. And now I'd have to feel very, very bad because we're doing it all the time.

Right? Like every 24 nanoseconds, we smash together like 10 to the 12 protons. So if I'm bad, I'm extremely. extremely bad. That would be a lot to weigh on your conscience. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, the protons are definitely not voting me their favorite person.

So, you know, to answer Liam's question, trees are thousands of years old. The carbon molecules that are in them have probably been in that form for maybe longer, you know, up to millions of years old. The carbon atoms that are in those carbon molecules are definitely billions of years old. In the end, everything is made out of protons, which have been around since the universe was very, very young. It's all really, really old stuff. We're talking about the very beginning of time. So even when you're not here anymore, the bits that were a part of you will go on living.

Though they won't be in such a charming form again. Yes, you will have always been their best configuration. However, they'll go on to do other things. All right, Liam, what do you think? Hi guys, thanks for answering my question. While it's not too surprising that the molecules and particles and trees are probably going to be around for much longer, it's pretty cool to think about all the combinations and configurations

they're going to be in past the Earth's cell by day and beyond. I'm sad you think it's the best job in the world. It really is the best job in the world. I've just moved on to hydropathy, though, so less trees, more water, but should still be quite exciting. Thanks for answer to my question. Also, I'm going to start a society for the protection of protons. Anyone is free to join, especially you, Daniel.

Okay, thanks, guys. All right. Thank you very much, everybody, for sharing your curiosity with us. We really do love hearing from you. We love answering your questions. We mean it right to us. We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts.

Share your ideas. Share your curiosity. You'll hear back from us. Yes. Daniel writes back in about 30 seconds. It takes me about a week. Write to us at Questions at Daniel and Kelly. Or you can share your questions with our amazing discord community by going to

Daniel and Kelly.org and finding the link to our Discord channel. Thanks very much, everyone. Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman. He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X.

and K Universe. Come engage with us. You can email us at Questions at Daniel and Kelly.org. We really do want to hear from you. And you can find our website, www. www. danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe. And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an I-Heart podcast.

Thanks for joining us. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Mansell. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably want. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that no way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists

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