Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The science fiction Universe of "Constellation"

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Daniel talks to Peter Harness, screenwriter for "Constellation", about the quantum rules of his fictional Universe.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice. Welcome to Season Listen to the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Daniel, when did the latest run of the Large Hadron Collider start? Ooh, a few months ago. Ooh, does that mean we've shifted into another timeline in the multiverse?

What are you talking about? Well, you know, people say that the Large Hadron Collider somehow caused something called the Mandela Effect, which is this weird sensation that maybe we're in the wrong universe. I think I want to be in the timeline where nobody believes in the Mandela Effect because that's just silliness. But isn't this an established physics theory, kind of, the multiverse? I'm just going to keep running the LATC until we end up in a universe I want to be in. Is there a universe you want to live in? This one's pretty good.

So stop running the LHC then. Because it could get worse. All right, you convinced me. Good. Press a button. Press that big red button. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.

Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at U.S. see Irvine, and I'm a big fan of this universe. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of this universe, especially because it made me and everyone I know. And despite that, we're all fans of it as well. I'm not a fan of the universes that didn't make me. It obviously didn't know what it was doing. What if blueberries in those universe taste twice as good?

You still think that those universes are not worth knowing? Well, you mean, can we visit them? Yeah, if we go visit those universes and they have amazing pastries, we never. ever even thought about before, but there's no Jorge Cham. Are you going to be like, nah, this isn't worth visiting? Well, it's worth visiting, but I still like my universe. Could we import these amazing blueberries? I mean, it sounds like a market opportunity, if you ask me.

Yeah, that's a startup idea right there. Wow, multiverse pastries. Let's do it. Yeah. I think we need a new economics term for multidimensional trade benefits. It gives a whole new meaning to import, export. Multi-import, multi-export. Quantum importing.

Or quantum exporting. Yes, exactly. Oh, my goodness. Finally, I use for the word quantum that means something. We're going to be quantum rich. But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, explain the universe, a production of Our Heart Radio. In which we explore the fundamental meaning of reality and the laws that govern it.

We dig our way down to the bedrock of nature and try to figure out what the rules are for this universe, how they come together to make this amazing, creative bonkers universe that features both blueberries, pastries, and Jorge Chams. That's right. We try to explore this universe, other universes, all the universes, and what it all means to maybe have different universes and how we're ever going to find out what the true reality of nature is. One way to explore the reality of nature is to do experiments

and to test our universe and force it to reveal its laws. But another very important way is to think about the possible universes we might live in, to be creative, to imagine the ways that the universe might be. That's something that theoretical physicists do, but it's also something that science fiction authors do. They create whole new universes in their minds and think about what it means to live in those universes, what the consequences of that fictional science might be. That's right. Science fiction has a long and interesting history of thinking about possibilities for technology, science, and what those changes and those possibilities might mean for the universe we live in and the way that we live in.

Because one reason why physics is so important and so influential is because it has great consequences. The things that we learned about the nature of reality tell us a lot about the meaning of our lives. If you discovered that we lived in a multiverse with infinite numbers of copies of you, would you feel more valuable, less valuable? It certainly would change your perspective on the meaning of your life and the ways that you make your choice. choices. Science fiction authors are often very clever at exploring the ways that understanding the universe affects the meaning of our lives. Or I guess at least looking at current theories and then maybe exploring them, maybe before they're established or not, just kind of wondering if this theory was true, what would that mean for our everyday lives? And sometimes even

coming up with new technologies that might be consequences of those theories that could change the daily pattern of our lives. So on the podcast, we're normally talking about, actual physics of our actual universe but we have a whole series of episodes exploring the science of fictional universes so to the end of the program we'll be exploring the science fiction universe of constellation yeah this is a new tv show right on apple tv that's right constellation is on apple tv and it's a science fiction show written by one of my favorite screenwriters and it's a lot of fun Ooh, one of your favorite screenwires. I didn't know you followed screenwriters.

Well, I watch a lot of TV, so I do pay attention. This guy's written detective mysteries that I've seen and also wrote the adaptation for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norel, a famously fantastical book. Oh, yeah. My wife watched that show. Is that a good show? I guess you liked it if it's one of your favorite writers.

The book is absolutely astounding and incredible, really just a work of genius, but I thought it was going to be unadaptable. so complicated and intricate, but he did a great job with the TV show. The TV show is a different thing than the book, but really well adapted. Well, now this writer called Peter Hardness now has a new show on Apple TV and it's titled Constellation. That's right. And this one's solidly in the science fiction category. And there's a lot of quantum physics in it, Bose Einstein condensates, space travel, multiverse, all this kind of stuff. Whoa. So I guess what's the TV show about?

So it starts on the International Space Station. There's a bunch of astronauts up there, and they're doing a science experiment. They're making a Bose-Einstein condensate on the space station. Which is what? So Bose-Einstein condensate is a weird state of matter. Remember that particles fall into two categories, fermions and bosons. Fermions like electrons and other matter particles have this rule that you can't have two of them in the same state. So if you try to cool down a bunch of electrons, for example, that won't actually all fall down to the lowest.

level, they'll each find their own place on the ladder, so the whole thing won't really cool down as much. But if you play with bosons, like photons or some kind of atoms, they have no compunction against occupying the same energy level. So you can cool them down much, much lower. And if you take a bunch of them and you cool them all down, then their wave functions overlap and they form this new state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, which is cool because it's sort of macroscopic. It's like big enough you can see it. And it has quantum properties, like an interface. fears with itself and all sorts of cool stuff. So it's like a macroscopic piece of matter that has quantum properties.

It was first discovered in the 90s and now they've replicated it in lots of situations, including in real life on the space station. Whoa. Don't you need a lot of equipment for that? Like a giant machines or can you do this in your desktop or your spacetop, I guess? You don't need giant machines. It's not like the Large Hadron Collider. Mostly this is done with atomic physics and so you need like an atom trap and you need magnets,

maybe lasers. It's not enormous. Okay, so then the scientist in the show did this in space, and then what happened? So in the show, they do this in space, and then weird stuff happens. There's an accident, and they come back to Earth and discover that it's not really the earth they're familiar with. You know, some details are different, and people have different memories, and everybody thinks maybe they went crazy up there.

And as you watch it, you discover that you're actually watching two stories in parallel, like two different elements of a multiverse that have come to interact when the scientist did that experiment in space. Whoa. So the show is following this group of astronauts, and when they come back, things are different, and it's because they're not in the same universe, or are we going back and forth between the two universes? Both. Some of them have switched over to another universe, and so now they don't, like, have the memory of the correct history anymore. They disagree with people like, did we buy that red car?

I thought our car was blue. this kind of stuff and there is still some interaction between the universes like the same person from two universes can now talk to each other under some circumstances and so it's like these two universes have come into contact and changed both of them wait like the people in the two universes swap places in some cases yes not everybody but in some cases yeah oh interesting now I guess as a quantum scientist Daniel do you watches and you're like that's a lot of BS or do you find it interesting. I always find it interesting. And what I'm looking for is consistency. I treat each of these shows the way I treat our universe like I assume it's following some rules and I want to figure

out what the rules are. It's like watching a murder mystery. You're gathering clues. You're trying to figure out what happened. And so when they do experiments and get weird results, I take that as the writers communicated to me some information about the way their universe works. And so I want to try to figure it out. I'm not insisting that the science in that universe obey the same rules as the science in universe of course it's called science fiction for a reason and it's really fun for me to try to figure out what are the rules of that universe okay so then what are the rules in this universe it sounds like maybe it's getting into the multiverse and the the quantum multiverse in particular yeah this leans a lot on things we're familiar with in quantum mechanics you know superposition

the idea that a particle can have the possibility of being in two places at once that both possibilities can exist simultaneously before you look and that only when a classical object interacts with it does universe have to pick one or the other like an electron can have a possibility to go left or right and it's not that it does both but that it maintains the possibility of having done both until you've measured it the idea of entanglement the two particles with these possibilities can have their possibilities like tied together in complicated ways ideas of interference that these possibilities can cancel each other out all this kind of stuff is used to pretty good effect in the show.

But the fundamental concept they're dealing with is actually not a multiverse. It's something else. It's called a mirror verse, which is like a multiverse, but with only two universes in it. But two is multi, though, isn't it? Yeah, but I think the more common idea of a multiverse

has an infinite number of universes in it, or at least an enormous number. The most typical idea of a multiverse is the one that exists in like the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics that says that when an electrical, has a possibility to go left and to go right that both things do happen

that the universe split into two branches and both of those universes then exist and those are different elements of the quantum multiverse. Right, and that's supposed to happen with every single like particle that exists in the world like each time any of the bazillions

electrons in the universe does something or picks a possibility you split off a new universe. Yeah, so every bill of second all the 10 to the 90 particles in the universe are creating new universe. So there's an enormous number, many more than just two. In this show, he's operating a much simpler sort of multiverse

with just two universes in it, which he calls the mirror verse. But why only two? How did these two get created? Yeah, it's a good question. And as you'll hear in my interview, I asked him about that, and he didn't want to reveal it because he's got secrets he wants to reveal in season two. But there are something. That's like I decided to saying, I'll do this in my future work.

My second Nobel Prize will explain all of that. Yeah, exactly. But there are some legit theories of the mirror verse out there. I'm not exactly sure what Peter Harness has in his brain, but there are scientists that talk about the mirror verse. Really? Like, why too? Well, our universe is weird in some ways.

For example, our universe does not respect parity. Parity is like if you flip the universe so that everything looks the way it would in a mirror, you're like reflected through the axis, then the laws of physics would operate a little bit differently. Our universe is sort of weirdly left-handed. You've reflected it in a mirror, it would look a little bit different. We have a whole episode about parody violation in our universe.

But there are some ways in which our universe has made one of two choices. And so you can imagine that there might be a mirror of our universe out there in a mirror verse where the opposite is true, like the right-handed version of our universe. And this is just like one choice you can make? Aren't there like a bazillion of these choices? Yeah, that's a good point. you know there are other basic symmetries parody is one that's violated maximally though and so it's the one that seems most ripe for flipping you know like time invariant symmetry is also not

respect in our universe but it's violated less dramatically than parity but you're right you could have another universe where that's flipped there's also charge invariance but that one's actually respected in our universe but yeah there are other ways you can imagine flipping the universe where it's made one choice or another like you could have another universe where what we call antimatter is the the dominant kind of matter in the universe. Right. I think what you're saying is maybe, you know, there are certain rules in physics

that maybe apply to there being two versions of a universe. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And time is an especially powerful one. There was a theory that bounced around a few years ago that at the Big Bang, two universes were created, one flowing forwards in time and one flowing backwards in time.

Right, the Big Bang and then the Big Bong, right? Yeah, pass it over, man. and another hit of the big bomb. That's how they came out with this theory, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And there were even those crazy events from the Anita experiment at the South Pole that we just talked about on the episode with Harry Cliff

that received a lot of silly buzz in the press for NASA discovers a parallel universe right next to ours, which was totally scientific misinformation. But there are those theories of another universe going backwards in time. In none of those cases, though, would you be able to interact with that universe? Like, in none of those cases, could you do an experiment, which is then going to interfere?

Because the quantum mechanics of it is quite crisp. Like, these universes, when they branch, they call them another universe because you cannot interact with it. That's sort of what it means. Like, you have the big wave function from the multiverse, and then it decoheres into separate wave functions. Those wave functions don't interfere with each other, can't interact with each other at all. That's sort of what we mean by another universe.

So the idea that you could do an experiment, even a weird quantum one with Bose-Einstein condensate in space that would somehow bring those universes together, that's science fiction. That's not something we see in our kind of science at all. That doesn't mean Peter Harness can't write it into the fiction of his universe, but it's not something that exists in our theories in any way. So you're saying the whole show is just a bunch of BS.

I mean, that's kind of what you just said, Daniel. I didn't say it. No, I'm saying it's fiction, and he's allowed to create new rules for his universe. And as you'll hear in the interview, I ask him about this, whether he's operating by the rules in our universe or some speculative physics theories. I'm guessing he just said, yes, I'm going to reveal the reason for that in the next season. That's exactly what he said. See, I can predict things in our universe as well.

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Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, well, here is Daniel's interview with screenwriter Peter Harness, creator of the new Apple TV show Constellation. All right, well, then it's my great pleasure to welcome the podcast, Peter Harness, an English playwright, screenwriter, and actor. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you very much. I need to update Wikipedia.

I haven't done any acting for a very long time, but it's nice. It's nice. It still believes that I have more. Once an actor, always an actor. So tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into writing for television and science fiction writing, starting from playwriting? I think that I always wanted to write for TV, really, more than anything else. And if I did a little bit of playwriting earlier in my career, I think it was a bit of a, I can't really say means to an end because

both careers are pretty difficult to get into but but i i think i kind of did it in the absence of writing for tv because really that's what i've always wanted to do that's my first love rather than film or or the stage or anything like that so it was um yes i was always trying my best to get into tv from from the get go and why is that why were you so excited about writing for television. What about that medium excited you? I think that I grew up watching so much television. I hate to say it, but the majority in my childhood was spent watching TV. And I was a big fan of, I was a Doctor Who obsessive when I was small. And there's something about that program and the kind of level of scrutiny that fans go into on it.

It's it kind of brings you into an awareness of television's actually made by people and that it has writers and producers and other people who make it. I found that fascinating and I found the whole, like the history of television, fascinating. And I kind of started doing a PhD on an English TV dramatist called Dennis Potter who wrote The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven and Blue Rememned Hills and things like that. And he was very well known in his day. And he was one of those people who just, you know, expanded the boundaries of what is, what's possible with storytelling on the small screen. And I've always, I've always wanted to get into it and be able to tell those biggest stories

over a longer period of time that you can't do in a, in a movie or a play. It's really, It's really a luxury to have seven or eight hours to play with or 15 hours or something like that. You can essentially tell a whole big novelistic story and it can go anywhere and do anything. And I still find that incredibly exciting. Well, you've done such a diversity of work, including original stuff like Constellation and also really challenging adaptations like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norel, which I watched and loved congratulations tell us about the various challenges of that adapting an existing complex

work and inventing a whole new world yourself um it's very nice that you mentioned jonathan stranger mr norrell because i i think um actually other than constellation it's the thing that i'm most proud of i really i wouldn't change a single second of that i really love that show and i have to say watching that i was very skeptical because i thought who is going to adapt this wow this book is insane. So congrats. I was really impressed by it. Well, I mean, it's a challenge to get hold of one of those unadaptable books. It is a challenge to adapt it. And I like that kind of challenge. I like that kind of mental puzzle. And it's an interesting process adapting a book. And it's different with every book, actually, because some authors have strengths or weaknesses in certain areas.

and you have to be quite sensitive with them. I mean, I think maybe this isn't the right way to do it. But whenever I adapted a book, I always wanted it to feel something like the experience of reading the book, you know, to preserve not just cherry-pick the ideas and the characters and some of the plot and just do a kind of radical throwout of everything and put all of my own ideas into it.

Perhaps naively and foolishly, like I say, I always wanted to preserve the tone and the soul of the original book. And that varies obviously very much from book to book. And with something like John and Stranger, Mr. Norrell, which has such a distinct voice and such a distinct sense of humor and world. And I love that book myself. And I really wanted to make it as magical and funny and excels. to watch as it was to read. The challenge usually is to just basically take the book to pieces and find out what all the component parts are

and what makes the characters tick and which images and which scenes are important. And then I tend to kind of build a dramatic structure underneath it if you see what I mean. A lot of novels don't really, they're not really according to like a film, or TV structure of storytelling. They've got their own pace and they expect you to spend 10 minutes with them on an evening

or kind of a couple of hours with them on a train. So they're not hooking you in in the same way. And so I always kind of get inside and make the architecture a little bit different and then layer the bits of the story that we remember back on top of that. So it's quite a delicate and surgical procedure. But it's a lot of fun.

And like I said, I was always interested in adapting books that maybe people had had a go at before and found difficult or found not easy to tell in a movie or something. And I enjoyed that very much, but I kind of found myself doing more and more adaptations. And that's not surprising because most things are adaptations these days. But really after Strange and Norrell, I made myself a promise that I wasn't really going to seriously focus on anything else until I'd gotten an original idea over the line. That's why I got into writing. That's why I wanted to be a writer. I have stories that I want to tell and it's easy to get sidetracked into not telling them. So I promise myself that for good or for real, I would, I'd focus on trying to get an original thing over the line. Constellation is definitely a very original story.

And so we want to talk about that. But first, we want to orient ourselves sort of where you stand in the science fiction universe. So we have a few questions. We ask all of our science fiction authors. So the first one is, do you think that Star Trek transporters kill you and clone you or actually transport? or atoms somewhere else? That is, are they teleporters or actually murder machines? I think that's such a depressing thought.

I'm always much more on the Doctor Who side than the Star Trek side. So I always feel a little bit kind of adulterous thinking about Star Trek. But they used that technology in a Peter Capaldi episode, and Stephen actually made a kind of play of that that he'd been broken down into atoms and essentially killed and recreated. And I just think that's such a disturbing and horrible thoughts. But I think that kind of has to be how it works, right? That has to be how it works, but it's just the most hideous thing that I've ever thought about.

It looks so beautiful and graceful. But yeah, they're just being butchered. No, I think horrible as it is to think that. I think that that is what happens. So as difficult as that is to embrace, what technology in science fiction would you most like to see become reality? What should us scientists actually be working on? It's hard to think of anything that I'd like to see become a reality because usually the potential uses of it are also disturbing. I don't know, I'm a bit of a Luddite, really.

I'm kind of anti-technology. It's not a great place to be in if you're writing science fiction. I'm more horrified by the potential frontiers of science than I am excited by them necessarily. I can't actually think of something. I mean, I'd love to see time travel happening. I'd love to see interstellar space travel. Actually, in terms of constellation, it would be very interesting to get to the end of quantum physics or get even half an inch further along the line because the suggestions that it makes about the universe are.

are so tantalizing and interesting. But I just generally think we're probably, it's very hard for us to cope with the technology that we've got. It'd be great if we could invent a machine which would just put some of it back in the box and then ration it out again a little bit more, a little bit more slowly so we could actually cope with it without driving ourselves mad as a species. Well, maybe we should see science fiction as warnings rather than inspiration. Then our last general question is, what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox?

If the galaxy is so old and there's so many habitable planets, why haven't any aliens visited us yet? It's another depressing answer and I'm obviously not the first one to come up with it. It's because civilizations tend to wipe themselves out before they manage to achieve that. And also, it might actually be impossible crossing such vast levels. of space might be something which just stumps any science. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure that aliens haven't visited us either. So yeah, I think it's probably that they can't start fighting each other

for long enough to concentrate on getting off the planet. So then let's turn to Constellation. The show, which is a lot of fun, features a lot of themes of quantum mechanics, the superposition, multiverse, entanglement, etc. Tell me what drew you to these themes, What excited you about these themes from a storytelling point of view? Well, I didn't start out by wanting to write something about quantum physics. I started out really from the idea of astronauts returning to Earth

and feeling that something was amiss. And also this little ghost story of a little girl lost in the forest and hiding in a cupboard in an old abandoned cabin. And that was what really just came out when I sat down to write the pilot. And so the whole development of the show was working out how those two things fitted together and how that mother got back to that child and what had happened up there and what was causing the things that she was going through back on Earth. And I think the quantum physics ideas just started to slot in

and started to give it some degree of organisation. And I'm very interested in the frontiers of science and that quote by Arthur C. Clarke about any science sufficiently advanced being indistinguishable from magic. I find it very interesting to seed science at the edge of itself and how many things remain mysterious and unexplained. And one of the things that the people who work with quantum physics keep on saying about it is that if you think you understand it,

you don't understand it. I mean, Einstein called it spooky action at a distance, didn't he? And there is something tantalizingly spooky about it. And I like thinking about how you might explain, you might explain things like ghosts or fairies or historical UFO encounters in terms of science and how they collide and whether there's actually any difference between them or whether we're just describing the same thing in different terms if you see what I mean. It's very interesting to play around with where science interacts with mythology or madness or consciousness

or other things that we don't really understand about the human condition. And I wanted to write something which took you through those steps and also had the feeling of each of those things. Well, the show feels almost like it's written in the style of a thriller or a mystery, but you know in a science-fiction-y sort of universe or in context. And I know it's often said that you can't write a mystery in the science fiction universe because for a mystery, the reader has to know what the rules are, and in science fiction, the rules can be almost anything.

And you've written mystery and detective shows yourself. So for you, how important is it for the viewer that your universe follows a coherent and consistent set of rules, even if those rules, you know, are not the same as the rule of our actual universe? I think writing something like this, it's very important. I think that it's no good if you can just, switch things out at the last minute and say

and now she can grow another head or it's all about time travel I think it's very important because obviously part of the interest for some members of the audience is figuring out

those rules and part of the fun of making it is dropping hints to that and trying to ration the ration the information or allow people a little bit more information here and there and let them work out what's happening. But within that, I think you've got to be very, the audience has to feel confident that there are rules. I think you've got to present it with enough confidence

to say, okay, you know, maybe you don't know what's happening yet, but that's all right because none of our characters do either and they're figuring it out alongside you and you'll probably actually get there a little bit ahead of them. So it's fine if you don't know everything at the beginning because, you know, trust me, we're not making it up as we go along, things will start to fall into place.

I think it's very important to do that and I think it's also very important within that to give, to have characters which are, which are living and breathing in real characters and real situations. So even if the lore of the series or the background of the series isn't in focus, you have clear emotional investment in the characters. You know what they're going through. And with Constellation, I really tried in each of those situations

that Joe or Alice or Henry and Bud find themselves, I wanted to kind of present them like, everybody knows what it's like to go through a breakup or most people have an indication of what it's like to live with someone who's suffering from mental illness everybody knows what it's like to have a difficult relationship with a parent or a child and so I tried to get at it through those things

and give the emotional journey of it, the emotional backbone of it a real strength so it would carry all. the weirdness along with it and be understandable of itself well i'm definitely the slice of the audience that likes to figure out what are the rules of this universe that i'm watching um to me that's the fun of science fiction it's like a big detective mystery it's like what are the clues how does this world work i'm trying to piece it together and that's a parallel to what we're actually do in reality like that's what science is we're all trying to solve the mystery of the universe and we're getting a bunch

of clues and trying to figure out how it all makes sense and i completely agree with you We have to trust the writer that it does make sense, that there is some sense. And here in our actual universe, I'm hoping that there really is some sense behind everything. And we do wonder sometimes if there is a coherent explanation, if they're just making things up. So tell us in your universe, the universe that constellation takes place in, in your mind, is it following the same rules of physics as our universe? Or have you sort of departed from it and created your own laws that that universe follows? Yes, I would say yes, yes, it is.

But those, the laws of physics that it's following are perhaps interpreted in a slightly kind of artistic way. They're not necessarily kind of literally interpreted. I think the various quantum elements are probably slightly, I just, I just, I just, just found analogies kind of from life or illustrated them in a way which is not kind of replicatable in an experiment. But I'm kind of obviously not a scientist, but from what I've read and researched and understood, it coheres to certain theories about how physics might work and whether they're provable or proved or possible in the way that I present them. don't know but it's all it's all to my mind possible and and to the kind of scientists that I've

spoken to it's it's possible perhaps it not likely but but it's a there's a world in which it's possible I'd love if you could go into more detail about your process here you mentioned that you've spoken to scientists you've done some research what is it like when you're writing on a topic that as you say you're not an expert in and you want to get right um do you call up a bunch of old friends? Is there some like bank of scientists you can refer to? Do you just do a bunch of reading yourself, some combination? It's a bit of a combination. I read up on it as much as I could, and we had a very, a really brilliant scientific advisor called Michael Brooks, who used to, I believe he used to edit new scientist. And he writes a lot about the quantum universe and research into the

quantum universe and he was very helpful at looking at how the plot was taking shape and suggesting ways in which it could more closely mirror the research or or certain theories or certain branches of it and that was really helpful he was he was very good about suggesting the the actual physical circumstances in which, you know, a consciousness might porously go somewhere else and chemically what that might look like in terms of how the brain is working. I mean, I asked him quite a lot about consciousness because I think as well as all the quantum stuff, I think that it's really about how the human consciousness works and how we process reality and and to what extent consciousness is is a thing that can that can bleed between

different places and so and so we have rules for all of that those things that Henry writes on the board in episode four hinting at it but there's um he was just very useful at filling in gaps where I maybe was just wondering how how could this work if this was a thing. How might it work? And he was very responsive and helpful in saying, well, it could work like this. And I'd say, does that sound likely to you? And he saw it sounds as likely as anything else. What do I know? He was great. And for the space stuff, I mean, we were very keen that everything that could be made authentic about it was felt very authentic. Like the design of the ISS is extremely authentic and the space procedure and the space jargon is is as authentic

as we could we could make it we had Scott Kelly who spent a year in space and is also an identical twin whose brother also spent a year in space and he was extremely helpful we had a couple of consultants from ESA and I did a lot of research about it You buy yourself a luxury to invent these weird and crazy happenings by telling a story which otherwise seems very plausible and very authentic. Well, congrats on doing so much research. I respect that. So I asked our listeners if they had questions for you about the show, and many of them

are watching it and enjoying it. And some of their questions were about the multiverse. It struck them that it seems like in the story, there are basically two universes. interacting. And they were wondering why these two and why you decided to have two universes interacting rather than like many, many universes, you know, of the potentially infinite in the multiverse. I'm not going to tell you everything that I could because I want to give us some grounds cover in the event that we get to continue telling the story. It's a mirror verse rather than than a multiverse. I think and there's also a kind of physics related reason for that

too that I'm not going to kind of say much about for now. But I think if you get into a multiverse situation where suddenly everything is possible and you're suddenly branching off into bubble universes at every decision point, that's a different kind of story and that is a world in which theoretically everything is possible. And I wanted it to feel rather more closed

and consequential than that. You know, there are two, realities. They're extremely closely mirrored for reasons, but there are only kind of two versions of our characters who may or may not meet in the middle somewhere. And I think that that somehow seems a bit more dangerous to me and a bit more important than a multiverse, where someone can die and it doesn't matter very much because there's another version of them there and someone can choose to wear a pink hat one day and someone can have, you know, several noses and 85 sisters in one different universe and 84 sisters and the other. It just suddenly becomes kind of weird

and baffling. And I wanted to make something about a very tight particular constellation of people. And I think the mirroring and having another one of you, that's something that we can understand and that's a notion that we have in us. We have, you know, we've got mirrors all around us. We've got reflective surfaces. I think that that's a much more, to me, that's a more interesting proposition really than a multiverse, which is also fascinating, but I wouldn't know how to begin to organise the rules of telling that story. And, you know, you get into a kind of everything everywhere all at one situation, which is utterly exhilarating,

but I'd soon feel totally out of control of that, you know. So it's a mirrorverse, and there's obviously some sort of meeting point in the middle, some sort of limit space or some, you know, super positional space where things are not quite decided in the middle. And that just seemed to be eventually, the right way to tell the story. I'm sure I'm sure I did tinker around with there maybe being other versions, other realities, but it would have just, uh, yeah, it would have driven me even more insane than writing it with two realities already drove me. So I didn't do that. Oh, this idea of

a liminal space, the connection between the two universes, I thought was really fascinating. as you're writing it, what are the sort of rules for how the two universes can overlap because sometimes they seem separate, like two characters can't hear each other, and sometimes they do seem connected, they can hear each other. Other times it's through a tape recording. I don't want to ask you to reveal too many secrets, but sort of what are the rules you have in your mind for how these two universes interact? What can I say?

I don't want to seem coy about it. I'm a bit allergic to shutting everything down in terms of spoilt. but I know if we carry on telling the story, there's a lot of this to reveal, and I don't want to spoil it in advance for anybody because I know how much people enjoy figuring it out. Yeah, there are rules to it, and perhaps it's got something to do with the cow,

and perhaps it's got something to do with being in space, and perhaps it has something to do with a particular emotional state or brain chemistry, or something like that. That's very vague, but it's kind of in that area. It's vague but intriguing. Thank you very much. So then my last question for you is, do you have a full idea of the whole story before you sit down and write?

Do you outline the entire plot and then you sit down to write it or you're sort of discovering it on the page as you write it? And is that also true for like seasons two and three? Do you already have those worked out? I completely don't do it like that. I wish I did. It would be a lot more efficient, I think, but I tend to work things out on the page and I tend to write a lot of different material and then look at it because it all it all kind of comes from the same place. If you're dreaming up a project, your brain is very clever and good at working things out subconsciously and generating these things without you.

having to instruct it too much. So I tend to write quite a big bunch of stuff and then work out how it all fits together and how the stories fit together and how the characters' journeys and personalities merge and give it forward momentum. And I don't know whether that's the most efficient way of doing it, but I know that if you're outlining something,

something, properly outlining it is almost as difficult as writing it. It's a peril of the job that you do have to do outlines and things. But I'm not that great at sticking to them all the time because you just find that if you're writing an outline of something, you're kind of writing in shorthand often because you're not seeing how, ideally, if you're writing scenes, of characters just lead you off in a different direction or they lead you somewhere a bit surprising and you think oh well I actually kind of can't tell that scene next because because the

characters you know decided against that and we and we have to go somewhere else and I'm a big believer in going down rabbit holes and exploring blind alleys because you'll always you'll always find something of interest down there and even if it's just a line or a thought or even if it's just the knowledge that the path that you, that you didn't take, you were right not to take. So it is a big period of exploration for me. Having said that, I've been living with this world and these characters for such a long time that I do have, I've got a good, broad idea of where it all goes. I've got a good idea of their history and their backstory and the stories that they can tell.

and I've got an end destination so so really I've kind of I've got the broad brushstrokes of it and many specific happenings and events along the way but I could I couldn't tell you what's going to happen at the end of episode three in season four because I mean I've got to leave myself somewhere to go as well you know if you know exactly what you're going to write then then you can't surprise yourself and it's stops being so interesting to sit down and do it if you just feel you're inking it in, as I say. Well, congratulations on season one.

It was a lot of fun to watch. What are you working on right now? Is it Constellation Season 2, or do you have some other project cooking? Well, I am, I can't answer that. Okay. Undisclosed project. Undisclosed projects, yeah. No, but I'm fairly busy just now.

I wish I was having a holiday, but I'm not. Yes, so I'm keeping myself busy. All right. Wonderful. Well, congratulations again, and thanks very much for talking to us. Thank you so much. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandt, and in session 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Ophia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity

mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled.

We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community. The pressure to always look put together. and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss Session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino to the show, and we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more.

Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk.

We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar AZ Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about exploring human potential.

I was going to schools to try to teach kids these skills, and I get eye rolling from teachers or I get students who would be like, it's easier to punch someone in the face. When you think about emotion regulation, like, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome as a result of it, if it's going to be beneficial to you. Because it's easy to say, like, go you go blank yourself, right? It's easy. It's easy to just drink the extra beer.

It's easy to ignore, to suppress, seeing a colleague who's bothering you and just, like, walk the other way. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials is easier. Drinking is easier. Yelling, screaming is easy. Complex problem solving. Meditating.

You know, takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land?

Jeopardy truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in... I guess they would be conspiracy theorists. That's right. Are there jeopardy truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, blur light. They gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like. They gave you the answers

and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of the Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, pretty interesting interview. I noticed you were sort of fanboying a little bit. Yeah, I really respect what this guy has done. I like his writing. I like what he's done with his career. You know, he's taken chances.

I think it's just awesome. I love getting to talk to people in other paths in life and hearing about their experience and the risks they took and what it's like to be there. because, you know, we only choose one path in our life. And so it's sort of fascinating to imagine other paths in your own life. And one way to do that is to talk to people who have taken those paths. The mirror verse of your life, yeah. Did you ever think at some point of being a TV writer?

Sounds like maybe you did. I have written for television, dude. So have you. We have a TV show together, remember? I mean like science fiction, physics stuff. Yeah, that's right. We don't have any science fiction in our show. Yeah, I would love to write science fiction.

I'm not sure about for television, but I read a lot of science fiction. I think about science fiction, just like I think about science. It's a lot of fun, maybe one day. So what else do you feel you learned from Peter, harness about the process of writing for science fiction for TV? Yeah, I was really curious what his process was and he took it pretty seriously. You know, he's not a physicist, of course, but he reached out to some scientists.

He did a bunch of reading. He tried to write something which was respectful of the ideas of science, but also he took some liberties, you know, in order to tell a story. And so I respect what he did. Cool. Did you give him your business card? Are you like, call me? Let's collab, man. Yeah. Is that how they say it these days? Let's find ourselves in a universe where we work together. That's right. I want to interfere with your next project. I want to entangle myself in your career.

That doesn't sound like something you would want in your life there. I want to superimpose myself on your writing process. That's right. I am superimposing myself onto your contact list. Yeah. I think he wants to keep my spooky action at a distance, actually. Yeah. He wants no entanglement to do it. Exactly. I respect that. I respect that. No, it was very nice of him to take some time to talk to me. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Thank you very much. Peter Hardness. And please check out his new show, Constellation, available on Apple TV.

Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media where we answer questions. and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Insta, and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Death World 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. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hoon of you. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing,

where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No Such Thing.

I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can. feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Neil Barnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do, the things that you were meant to do. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.