Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The SF Universe of Cadwell Turnbull's "The Lesson"

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Daniel and Jorge talk about the connections between science and art and discuss the science and politics of Cadwell Turnbull's "The Lesson" Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Daniel, I know you're a big fan of aliens. Well, I haven't met them yet, but yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Right. I wonder if you've really thought it through, though. What do you mean? I'm all set. I have an aliens-have-arrived go-bag already packed.

Oh, really? What's in it? An emergency kit and some bottled water and toilet paper? Ooh, toilet paper. Good idea. Hold on. I'm going to put that in my list. You're going to need that if the aliens come. I guess all I'm saying is that you don't really know how friendly these aliens are ever going to be. Well, that's why I want to meet the aliens, but I don't want to be the first human to meet the aliens. Oh, I see. You want to wait until even the first group of humans. Then you want to talk to them when they're full. That's my plan.

I want to be dessert, not appetizer. You don't want to be the aperitif instead? I want to be the post-dinner conversation. That's my plan. So you can be the dessert. I'll be the one that chills out with them. Sounds good. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD.

the comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I'm happy to be any part of dinner with aliens. I think you're just very sweet, Daniel, so you make a good dessert. I can be salty. Watch out. Well, it could be one of those desserts. It's savory and sweet. That's right. Would you like to meet Daniel? He's a particle physicist and he's umami flavored. And they're going to be like, ugh. No thanks. Get me some cartoonists, please. They're much more out of shape than physicists. They're softer. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, Explain the Universe, section of iHeart Radio. In which we take stock of the shape of the universe. How squishy is it? How firm? How fit is it? And how deep is our understanding of the fundamental nature of this reality?

We take you on a tour of everything that's out there from the very biggest, oldest, most ancient questions about the nature of this bizarre cosmos we find ourselves in to the newest, freshest exploration of the tiniest particles that make up this reality. That's right. We'd like to talk about all the delicious and amazing facts about physics that are out there for humans to discover and wonder about and feel amazed about. But we also like to talk about the possible theories, the maybes that are out there, the amazing possibilities that are waiting for us to discover. That's right because exploring the universe requires a lot of creativity.

We don't just go out there and ask the universe, hey, tell us how things work. We have to discover it. We have to put together a story that explains all of the clues that we have found. And that sometimes requires a lot of mind-bending creativity about what might be going on. Yeah, Daniel, I wonder if there's a job out there where you have to just think of possibilities about the universe and think of interesting scenarios and what could happen. That's called theoretical physicist. That's exactly the job.

You just make stuff up? Yeah, you go, I wonder if the universe works this way. What would that mean and how would we check? Or like, how can I tell a story about the universe that weaves together all these weird, experiments that we've seen. It's all about coming up with a narrative. I think that narratives are a deep part of the way the humans think and that's essentially what science is trying to tell a story about all the experiences we've had. And you get paid for it? If you can get the job, you get paid for it. You're also welcome to do theoretical physics on your own time as an

amateur. Oh, interesting. Like a non-paid theoretical physicist. Can I put that in a business card? I think that almost everybody who listens to this podcast is a non-paid theoretical physicist because you guys like to think about the nature of the universe and you email me lots of fun ideas about how the universe might work. So at some sense, we are all theoretical physicists, paid or not. Yeah, even children, I guess.

You know, children are trying to figure out the world and trying to figure out what the rules are. And that's basically what physicists are, right? Children. Physicists are children that never stopped asking those questions, exactly. So on the podcast, we like to talk about the theories that are out there and also the facts that scientists have discovered. But we also like to delve into,

the fictional side of science, in particular science fiction. That's right. I'm an avid reader of science fiction because while I do enjoy our universe, I also like thinking about other ways that the universe might be. And I think it's really important for a scientist to sort of stretch their minds a little bit and imagine that the universe might be quite different from the ones that we think it is today. Because lots of times in the history of science, we have had to do exactly that to toss out our conceptions of how the universe works and accept a completely different story. that makes us feel really different about the nature of humanity and our context and what it means

to be alive. And one great way to do that is to have somebody else do that thinking for you, my reading science fiction novels. Yeah, and sometimes they're right, sort of, right? Like, sometimes they posit crazy scenarios and they turn out to be true, right? Like the internet, wasn't the internet or satellites, one of those technologies? Didn't those come from a science fiction novel? Yeah, I think there are lots of examples there. And they're not independent, right? I'm not the only scientist who read science fiction. And so if you're a scientist and you read science fiction, you go, ooh, that's a cool idea. Let's make that real. Then sometimes that happens. And people start to work on projects because they read about it in a novel. So science fiction authors out there,

you may be controlling the future direction of human progress. Are they technically theoretical, theoretical physicists then? Or imaginary theoretical physicists? How would you name them? They are creative directors of theoretical physics. Oh, there you go. The most important job, obviously. Yeah, so we like to talk about science fiction and we like to interview science fiction authors on the podcast and to talk about this unique combination of physics and art. And speaking of this interesting interplay between physics and art, Daniel, you recently had a great conversation with some physicists and an artist that are collaborating on a special project. That's right. As you may know, I think it's a great idea for a scientist to reach out and collaborate with people

in the artistic creative community, not just to benefit from their ideas, but to work together as a way to communicate science, as a way to sort of make science more accessible. You and I have had a lot of fun doing that, and I recently ran across another pair of physicists and an artist who used to be a mechanical engineer working on a fun project together. Oh, my goodness, it's like an alternate universe version of us.

Should we write a science fiction novel about that? It's pretty implausible. Are they the anti-version of it? Are they like the cool, funny, attractive versions of us? And if we touch them, we're all going to annihilate each other? Well, they're definitely younger than we are. I won't comment on our relative attractiveness. Yeah, so you talked to him, and they have a great project that's going live pretty soon.

That's right. So here's a short conversation I had with Sophia Gad-Nasar, a physicist and Catherine Machen, a space artist. So then it's my pleasure to welcome two friends to the podcast, Sophia Gad-Nazer and Catherine Machen. Welcome. Can you guys begin by introducing yourself? Tell us a little bit about you and how you guys got to work together. Sophia? Yeah. So I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California in Irvine. So I know you very well, Daniel. And you're like one of the most awesome professors at the school. What I do is like cosmology, sort of like astroparticle theory type stuff with simulations. I work on dark matter particularly, although I'm interested in many other things like, you know, dark energy and stuff like that.

And inflation also is something that I'm interested in. But like my current project is working on taking dark matter halos and using them to explain how the seeds for supermassive black holes were formed in the early universe. Whoa, very cool. So do you think that dark matter halos can explain how we got supermassive black holes so early in the universe? It really depends on the model. It's highly dependent on the model. Certain models would not be able to do it. And so if you have self-interactions, that's a consequence of it.

And so it's entirely model dependent. Very cool. Very cool. And Catherine? I'm Kat. I'm a deep space artist currently based in Sydney, Australia, but I get around a little bit. And I've been making basically anything related to space artwork for the last five years. But prior to that, I made video games.

for a living. My real job, I like to call it. And I actually studied mechanical engineering as a degree. And that definitely didn't suit me because, yeah, I was too creative in a way for the rigidity of engineering. Well, I am a big fan of collaborations between physicists and artists, especially artists who were once engineers, as Jorge was a mechanical engineer once as well. But tell me how you guys starting working together and what you guys have in. store for us. We've both been prevalent in the online science steam community as far as like putting out content. Yeah, get some steam on the go. I just getting people excited about space generally. I'm trying to get people to connect to the universe in the same way that Sophia is trying

to pick it apart. And we're just trying to share it as much as possible. And our paths inevitably crossed when I joined Twitter a couple years ago. And I just found Sophia and it just was enthralled by all her content. I mean, I've been doing this for about five years now. And a couple of years ago, I reached out to, actually, it was it a year ago I reached out to you, Sophia, and said, I'd really like to draw some dark matter stuff if you can tell me how it works. And then try and visualize some of her research. Yeah, it was about a year ago. That's right. Happy anniversary, babe. But you just can't find, you know, I mean, unless you go to very specific space artists, of which there are not that many.

If you go into any store, any gallery, you know, the one thing you won't find is beautiful pictures of the cosmos or beautiful pictures that describe, like, you know, dark matter and its interactions and nothing, you know, you'll find a lot of abstracts and landscapes and bowls of fruit. And that is obviously some people's cups of tea,

but there's a lot of us out there that we want stuff on our walls that actually means something to us and gives us the change. because it reminds us that we're part of this incredible phenomenal universe. I mean, maybe someone gets that from a bowl of bananas, but not me. Don't discount bananas. So what do you guys have planned?

What are you guys putting together? Can people expect to see? We're basically putting together a series of really high quality, like very luxurious artwork prints based on Sophia's research and other aspects of dark matter that, you know, she's very fascinated with. And also this. also involved in my research. They're also involved in my

yes. That's awesome. So we're creating a series of these artworks and then making them available to the public to purchase and obviously they can go into the store and order them but it's only open for three days so it's a very short

span but you know we hope to maybe do something like this again in the future because I think what I realized is the overwhelming amount of support from the public that like I have been desperate to get something like this. No one's doing it. And even if there is a visualization available, it might not be guided by science. It's really special because it's not a simulation. A simulation

is based on literal fundamental equations and so it'll turn out. Like if you have everything right, as you think, you know, I mean, at least right with whatever model you're using, it will turn out a certain way. But this is so much more beautiful because you get an extra a touch of creativity from the art that goes into it. And so what I want people to take away from this is I want them to take away the science and the creativity that it takes to put together something that is abstract that you haven't visualized before where you're using like physics and then you're trying to sort of use an interpretation of what that would look like and put it on paper.

And it's a really beautiful thing. So what I want people to take away from that is that, as well as to support and bring, you know, to the forefront steam, like the merging of science and art together. Because I think it's super important that we move in that direction. Wonderful. Totally agree. So I know that you guys had something open in June. By the time folks are here in this podcast, that will have closed already. Let people know where they might be able to find your future works and collaborations.

If they go online, which they type into Google. I think that it's pertinent just to go to all our social media channels because everything is really linked there. And obviously the specific URLs do change every time we run something. So, but I would definitely head over there, um, Astro Party Girl and at Catherine Machen, which is dreadfully hard to spell. So probably just Google it and it'll try and be corrected for one of those names when my mum was like, I would like you to be unique and I spend my whole life trying to spell it to

people. You know that. Well, we'll put links to your social profiles in the show notes so people can find it there. Thanks to both of you for coming on and telling us about it. And congrats on your awesome new collaboration. Can't wait to see what you guys put together. Thank you so much for having us. All right, pretty cool.

I like that she's a space artist. Does that mean she does art in space or her art is spacey? Well, she had a Zoom background. So I couldn't tell if she was on the International Space Station at the time or just in Australia, which I think it was equidistant for me anyway. So, I don't know what really matters. It's just as alien, really. Who knows, maybe she was in her art space.

Yeah, but it was pretty cool. She told me that five years ago, she didn't even know how to paint. And now she makes a living as a space artist. She used to work in video games. She has a background as a mechanical engineer. So it just goes to show you that people's lives can take turns and you can start out in one field

and end up being quite successful in another, as you well know. Yeah, anyone can be a space artist. You just need a little space and some art. But anyway, it's back to our conversation about science fiction and how they really expand our minds about what's possible and what could be out there in the universe and what would happen if we run into some of these amazing things. We have today a pretty interesting interview with a new author, right? That's right. This is a science fiction book by a debut author, just broke into the scene and a really fantastic book. And it takes a sort of a new look at the idea of first contact, what it would be like if aliens came to Earth.

Right. And does it have a happy ending? I'm not going to ruin it for you. But there's definitely a lot of suffering along the way. You know, that's what makes it feel real. All right. Well, then today on the podcast, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe of Catwell Turnbulls, The Lesson. That's right. It's a super fun book. And I don't want to give it away the ending, but I guess I'll just say that it's unlikely that Disney is going to option this for a family movie.

What about Disney Plus? I think Fox owns Disney now, right? Can it be like a Marvel movie? I don't know. It has to be Disney like Plus Plus Plus, I think. Disney X. Disney Max. Yeah.

So the book is called The Lesson. And it's a science fiction novel. And the author's name again is Catwell Turnbull. And it's a pretty interesting novel because you're saying it kind of reimagines first contact, right? Because I guess usually first contact stories are either really good or really bad, right? There's the ET version where the aliens are friendly, and then there's the Independence Day version where the aliens are just here to destroy it. Yeah, exactly. And it reimagined it in several ways. You know, usually when the aliens come, they like land on the lawn or the White House or attack New York City or something.

Here, instead, he centers the aliens in the Virgin Islands, not in like the financial or population or political center of the United States or the world, but in this sort of like off the beaten path place. He does something really cool with it, which is that he uses the arrival of aliens that sort of cast a light on or make us think more deeply about something that already exists in our society. And that's the sort of colonial power structure. And he's from the Virgin Islands. So he knows a lot about the history and the, you know, colonial mistakes that were made in the waves of the, you know, the Spanish and the Danish and then the Americans sort of coming and taking over and making use of it for themselves. And so he imagines this alien arrival sort of like the latest in waves of colonization. of the Virgin Islands. That's pretty cool.

I guess if I was an alien, I would also land in a tropical paradise, probably. Why go to New York City? It's terrible there in the winter. Well, maybe for an alien, New York City is a tropical paradise, right? Maybe they like to lounge on beaches covered with snow, you know? Who knows where their alien planet is like? Right. I guess New Yorkers are pretty exotic.

They are, in fact. And the cool thing is that he imagines this spaceship itself also sort of looks like a shell, You know, it's not like some weird mechanical object or even like a tic-tac like we've seen in those Navy UFO videos. It looks like a shell. It's like a massive seashell descends and hangs out on top of a mountain and the Virgin Islands. Interesting, like a giant clam shell? No, more like a nautilus shell, one of those like round ones with the many loops in it. Like the kind of spirally.

Oh, that's pretty cool. And that's how they land. It's like it floats. It lands, it crashes. What does it do? It gently floats and lands on the top. And then the aliens come out and they greet humanity and they come bearing gifts initially. Obviously, these aliens are much more technologically advanced than we are because they can get here from where they came from.

And they have very powerful technology. And initially, they're just like bestowing gifts. You know, they cure diseases and they give us technology and they solve our energy problems and all sorts of stuff. Interesting. They bring good things at first. They do. They're like dinner party guests. You know, they show up with chocolates and wine and everything.

They have very good manners in the beginning. And these aliens have a name, right? The aliens have a name. They're called the INA. It's spelled Y-N-A-A and pronounced the Ina. And they sort of can look like humans. Underneath, there's something different, right? But they can sort of like put on this facade so they look more human.

But they're never quite human. They're always like a little bit weird, a little bit different. You can tell when one of them is around. They don't blend in perfectly smoothly into the human population. Like New Yorkers, basically. I'm going to leave that alone. Yeah, but it's like a costume, like a hologram or like, are they like piloting, you know, human-like, you know, bio-robots? So they have this technology in them called reefs, which are like little nanorobots, which they can use to, you know, repair their bodies or make their bodies look different or control their bodies in all sorts of ways and they're sort of under mental control.

And so they have this technology where they can basically sheath themselves in these nano robots to give themselves another appearance. And Catwell, I think, is more interested in the emotional and intellectual response and the relationship that is built rather than like the details of the technology of how this works. So he glosses over that a little bit. He glosses over how the technology works. All right. So they come bearing gifts and they solve all of our problems. But soon things are not quite what they seem. Yeah, they are more powerful than we are.

And they are here for a reason, right? They're not just like on a tour of beaches of the galaxy. They came looking for something and they have their own interests. And, you know, when a more powerful visitor comes to your shores wanting something, your resources or something from your civilization, then they do what they need to to get it. And that's sort of the history of the Virgin Islands. You know, people come and they take advantage of the resources and the opportunities that are there. And so when the interests of the humans and the ENA conflict, then the humans find out what happens, which is. that the ina respond with casual but overwhelming violence.

Wow. They're salty. They are salty. They're sweet and salty. That's right. As we meet more of the ina, we find some of them are less interested in being friendly with the humans and even like casual disrespect, you know, stepping in front of them or brushing against them can be met with violence like being torn in half. And it becomes pretty clear that the ina don't see the humans as equals. They see them sort of akin to the way we see dogs.

or cows. You know, they're like, there, they're fine. You want to keep them happy if it's convenient. But as soon as it's inconvenient or annoying, you know, you don't think about their rights. We're just like means to an end for them. We are means to an end. And again, there's a really nice sort of parallel here to colonial structures, right? You know, when colonists come, sometimes they have a very patronizing attitude like we're going to bring new technology and we're going to bring our culture and this is going to be good for everybody. But really, it's just good for the colonists. Right. They think they're there to save the people. that are already there.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's meant to sort of mirror the colonial history of the Virgin Islands, kind of. Yeah, as a lot of really good science fiction does, it's written in a way to make us think about what's already going on in our society

by exaggerating it, by accentuating it, by throwing a light on it, you know, from a science fiction point of view. And so he does a great job of doing that. And it's really interesting. He's a great writer. And a lot of the characters respond in interesting ways. You know, some of them like rebel against the INA

and some of them are collaborators. They work with the ina. Some of them even form like romantic relationships with the aliens. Whoa. So I guess there's variation, not just in the humans, but maybe also in the aliens. Like some aliens fall in love with the humans and some are maybe more sympathetic and some less. Yeah, just like in every colonial story, right? You have a whole spectrum of people with different attitudes and different responses.

So it's quite realistic and really quite engaging. I stayed up late reading this book. All right. Well, let's get into the science of the lesson by Catwell Turnbull. And then let's get to your... interview with the author. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.

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

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

So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's HoneyGerman. And my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure. and success.

You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing Vibras you've come to expect. And, of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash

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or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're talking about the science fiction universe of Catwell Turnbull's The Lesson, a debut science fiction novel, kind of about colonialism, but more like space colonialism. Exactly, galactic colonialism. Galactic colonialism. Colonialism, yeah. I think

anytime you use that word, it doesn't sound great. And this is sort of a topic that is in the conversation right now in our culture, right now, when we talk about going to Mars and maybe colonizing Mars, there's people sort of on both sides of the issue in saying that that's a good

thing or that's a bad thing, right? Yeah, exactly. People talk about the need to move humanity off of Earth, so we have our eggs in more than one basket. But other folks think that we shouldn't just treat the rest of the galaxy as like baskets for the taking places to put our eggs you know there's a long history of human colonialism and a lot of it has led to a lot of pain and suffering and a lot of

mistakes were made sort of in the interest of capitalism or the interest of spreading our culture so there are folks out there who want us to take a pause and think about like should we let private companies like SpaceX lead the way to Mars and build colonies on Mars and sort of structure it in an explorational, colonial, capitalistic way, or should we take a more measured approach? So there's a lot of discussion on both sides of this issue. Right. And it's not just sort of about whether there are aliens or Martians there on Mars that we will be taking over. So I think it's more about sort of preserving the marsiness of Mars also, right? Not sort of like going there and just completely, you know, turning it into Earth.

Yeah. The question is, you know, are there Martians on Mars? And if we come and we aggressively terraform it, could we be wiping out? Martian life, which would be scientifically a tragedy, of course, but also from the point of view of like the value of life could be effectively genocide of an entire new, potentially independent form of life. And then there are people who take it a step further and say, even if there isn't life on Mars now, there could be life on Mars in a million years. And if we go and we turn into Earth, that could be preventing independent life on Mars. So there's a whole fascinating spectrum of ideas there. There's a lot of interesting subtleties there in real ethical and moral decisions. We

We should sort of make consciously rather than just sort of like steamrolling because it sounds cool. Rather than just letting Elon Musk do whatever he wants. I don't know. Do you want him to be president of Mars? I mean, he's done some cool stuff. I think he's president of his own little planet right now anyways. Another really interesting question is whether the same issues apply to exploration of the solar system and the galaxy as they did to exploration of Earth. You know, a lot of colonialism and conflict on Earth is born from limited resources.

Everybody wants gold or people are looking for places to grow crops or et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, when it comes to the solar system, it is so rich with resources. There's so much water out there and platinum out there and so many planets. I'm not sure we necessarily need to fight over resources. Well, I think that's the dream, right? The dream is not just to get more to get more. The dream is to get more so that we stop fighting over more. Yeah.

And one question that Cabell raises in his book is whether that's possible, whether species that sort of came into existence out of conflict, out of this struggle for survival on the gravity well of one planet can ever break free from that and live in a post-scarcity society. In science fiction, this is a whole set of books that deal with like a post-scarcity society like Ian Banks' culture novels where everybody has everything they ever want and can get it instantly. What is life like in that kind of utopian society? And then folks who think that that's never going to happen and the humans are humans and we will always be fighting even if, if we have, you know, planet-sized blobs of platinum, there still will be people who want more or want it all for themselves. Right.

Like, are humans inherently greedy? Like, will enough ever be enough? And maybe not, right? Like, maybe there's something about humans that will always want more than the other person. Yeah. Jeff Bezos is an argument that humans will always be greedy and want more. Whoa. Well, he's going to be an astronaut soon.

And he might be president of Mars, Daniel. He might be. Watch out. Watch out about what you say. Well, I don't know if he's a listener to this podcast, but if the president of Mars is a race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, I might not even vote. Daniel, it's your galactic duty. Well, back to the novel. You know, that's something that he focuses on.

The name of the book is The Lesson. And the lesson, without spoiling in the book, I can tell you that the lesson the aliens come to teach us is that there is always struggle. That every society has to fight and struggle to survive. and that's just sort of the way of life. And as you hear me talk to Cadwell about it in our interview, he thinks that humanity will never be able to throw off those shackles and change and grow into a utopian society, even if we have mountains of platinum and entire planets of water for everybody.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess, you know, we like that what life is, right? It's a struggle, it's competition. That's how it evolves. And it's hard to turn that off. It is hard to turn that off, I suppose. But, you know, we live differently now than we did. a thousand years ago and 20,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago.

And I have hope that humans can evolve that we can change the way we live, that we won't always be struggling and have massive economic inequality. You know, I don't want that if we become a space-faring species, that way have one person owns nine of the planets. And, you know, the rest of humanity is crowded onto one little one. You know, that's sort of an extension of the Jeff Bezos-style gathering of resources. I hope that we can, you know, lift everybody out of poverty. That's the idea.

but we'll see. Whoa. I think the lesson I'm learning here is how much you hate Jeff Beggars, Daniel. I had no idea. You see the sort of the pit of me of evil these days for you? No, I don't know the guy at all, but I don't understand what anybody needs that much money. Well, that's because you've never had it, Daniel. I have never had it, exactly.

And in that situation, I don't know how I would act, so I shouldn't judge the man. All right, well, let's get into some of the science in The Lesson by Capwell Turnbull. There are a couple of interesting science technologies here that he has in a this book, there's this idea of nanobots called reefs and whether or not aliens can even get here or whether, you know, first contact is a possibility for us. And if they come, would they actually be superior to us or not? Yeah, I think there's a lot of really interesting science here. One of the coolest science fiction things he has in his book are these things called reefs. So these are like little nanobots that the aliens can control with their minds.

So they basically, you know, they tell them to enter human body and repair it. For example, So when one alien wants to help a human, they can just like send these reefs in. They fix this problem. Or that's how they cure a lot of human diseases. They share these little nanobots around and have them like go inside the body and do little repairs. And that's pretty awesome. Of course, it also has other consequences.

I mean, if the aliens have filled your body with nanobots under their control, they can do things like, you know, kill people at will because they basically are in total control of your bodily functions. So not something I would necessarily sign up for. Yeah, don't drink the nanobot Kool-Aid. Exactly. But, you know, is it realistic? Could you actually do this?

I mean, I think this is the kind of thing people are working on, you know, synthetic immune systems, things like that, tiny little robots that can find and attack cells. I don't know how you would accomplish, like, actual like mind control of these robots, telling them, coordinating them somehow to do things. But it doesn't seem impossible to me. I mean, you're the engineer. Tell me, do you think nanobots are the future? Well, I was wondering with anything with robotics is like, where do they get their power? Like, what, you know, it takes energy to move these things, for these things to do things? Like, do they have little tiny nanobattaries?

Do you see that as being possible? Or how do you recharge? Do you know what I mean? Or how do you build them? That's another thing I always wonder about. Like, I guess if you have nanobots, then you can have them build other nanobots. But how do you build the first nanobots? Maybe you need like a microbot to build a nanobot.

and you need a millie bot to build a microbot. There you go. You just get smaller and smaller. Then why I start with nano? Or I guess maybe at nano you start getting into atomic limits. Like are these like robots with individual atoms? Yeah. Yeah.

I suppose you could build them out of individual atoms. But that would limit their complexity. In terms of the power, I always figured, you know, they could power themselves the way our cells power themselves. Our cells don't have little batteries. They, you know, live along a flow of energy from our blood. So I figured, you know, nanobots. could, like, sip energy from our blood just the same way everything else does.

I mean, that's how I would design it. That's even more terrifying. They sit inside. You sucking up your blood. No, it's like a diet. Now I can eat as much as I want because the nanobots are using all the calories. Yeah, but if the aliens want to eat us, wouldn't that be counterproductive? Oh, that's true.

Yeah, exactly. Maybe. Well, I guess the other part is the mind control. Like, how would you transmit your thoughts to these things? And I guess you need like an amplifier and then how would you decode your thoughts? Does the book get into any of that or is just sort of magical? It's just sort of left unspecified. I don't think it's tended to be magical, but I don't think Cadwell's interest was like

figuring out the technical details of how that worked. But you know, you could imagine you have nanobots in the brain that can read your signals and maybe they don't have to be all directly controlled. You can like pass messages from nanobot to nanobot. They have effectively like our network. And so they can communicate sort of. like in lots of little leaps, perhaps, sort of the way the intranet works. So, I mean, I don't have a solution to this, but I imagine that it could be possible.

When I was reading this, I didn't think, oh, that's implausible. It didn't take me out of the story. I just thought, well, that would be pretty cool. I guess as a physicist, you're like, sure, why not? But maybe as an engineer, someone might be like, how do you make that work? Exactly. How are we going to fix these things? How are we going to repair these things?

How are we going to do software upgrades? You're like, I'll leave it to the lesser beings, the engineers. Thanks. Your words. All right. Well, the other little bit of science here is about aliens coming to Earth, and is that realistic or not? Yeah, and this is a question that really has popped up a lot recently because we've seen these alien UFO videos and people are wondering, like, is it even plausible for extraterrestrials to come to Earth? You know, we know that there are a lot of other planets out there that might potentially harbor life like on Earth, but we don't know if there are any near enough to come visit us because even the nearest stars are.

pretty far away. The closest star to Earth is almost four light years away. And any reasonable kind of travel that's not FTL would take decades to get here. And so exploring the galaxy feels like it would take a long time. So without some sort of FTL travel like a warp drive or a wormhole, it does seem sort of implausible that aliens would come here. Because how would they even know that we are here? Our signals have been broadcasted very far. We haven't put out very powerful signals. So you'd have to be really nearby our solar system to even detect us to know we are here. But FDL, you mean faster than light, right? Yeah, exactly. Because the galaxy is pretty big. The distances between stars are large and we have this

speed limit of light speed. So without being able to go faster than light, FTL, it seems pretty difficult to explore the galaxy and find all the glorious beaches for aliens to hang out on. Right. I guess one question I always have is, why would they come here? I mean, like if the solar system is so full of resources and water and metals and minerals and materials like why even make a stop on earth with these you know locals why not just like take what they need from the solar system and leave yeah that's a great question and i can't answer that question about this book without spoiling it but these aliens are hunting for something specific and they have been exploring the galaxy for a long time without finding it and they think they might be able to find it on earth and that's

the reason they are here which isn't revealed until late to the book and super fascinating and pretty creative, so I don't want to spoil it for our listeners. But it might be that Earth does have something rare. You know, what if life is pretty rare in the galaxy? Then Earth represents something like a jewel, you know, billions of years of evolution working to solve a problem of highly evolved complex little biological machines that are maybe otherwise difficult to figure out. You can look at evolution as sort of like a big computation, you know, solving a problem very slowly over billions of you're finding a solution through all this repeated mutation and evaluation. In some sense, it's extremely valuable information just to know, like, here's a potential

solution to the life problem. Yeah, and potentially delicious as well, which is maybe the problem in this case. I don't know. I haven't read the book, but it sort of seems like that's where you're maybe leaning. But I guess folks will have to read the book to find out. Yes, folks will have to read the book. All right. Well, then let's get to your interview with author Catwell Turnbull, who wrote the book

The Lesson. Available now, wherever you can find books. Here's Daniel's interview. All right. So then it's my absolute pleasure to welcome to the podcast, Cadwell Turnbull, author of The Lesson. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, yeah, I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Thanks very much for joining us. I really enjoyed your book. Congratulations. And I'd like to hear first about how you got into science fiction writing or speculative fiction. Tell us a little bit about your background where you came from, how this happened for you. So I grew up in the Virgin Islands. and my mom was a science fiction nerd but mostly films so she watched we had like a collection of star trek films i had not watched any of the show just the movies and a bunch of other like

science fiction um movies so you know she had time top so i would watch that with her and serenity um wait hey oh geez i'm trying to i'm spacing on the name of this movie and i watch it like like a million times when I was a kid with my mom. It's Dennis Quaid, the guy that played Jesus. Is it the time travel one where they communicate back and forth? Yes, yes. I think that was called frequency or something.

Frequency, yes. So frequency was, you know, another one. And then we also, with TV, we watched Stargate together. And so when I was, you know, in high school, I was really into Stargate, SG-1. And that was the thing that I watched a lot. And, you know, I was the one that was watching it, and my mom was sick and watch it with me.

So, yeah, that's how I got into, you know, science fiction, you know, in a general sense. But at school, you know, in high school, they would occasionally assign us to read things that were science fiction adjacent. So, like, you know, 1984, Great New World. And I always found those stories more interesting than the more literary stories. And so I would actually finish those books and be able to, you know, talk about them. I would write about them for school.

And then once I got to college, I just started reading a lot more science fiction on my own, you know, getting recommendations for friends. In fact, on St. Thomas, it wasn't really like a community of science fiction readers. And so it was whatever I stumbled across. And then once I, like, you know, went to Pittsburgh for undergrad, just met some other people that was into it. and they gave me books to read. And so that's how I got into the literature. You know, one of the earlier books that a friend handed me was the loss of heaven by a maliquin.

And I loved it so much. And I just continued reading her books. And now she's like my favorite author. She remains my favorite author to this thing. Wonderful. Well, then I'd like to ask you some questions to sort of orient you in the universe of science fiction authors. These are questions we ask all of our science fiction author guests so we can sort of

calibrate. So you're very familiar with Star Trek and the technology. there. What's your opinion on the philosophical question of whether a Star Trek transporter kills you and clones you, recreating you somewhere else, or actually transports your very atoms to another location? Oh, wow. Okay, so this makes me think of, it's not like the transporter, but it makes me think of, think like a dinosaur by Jim Kelly. It was a story that he wrote in response to an older story called The Cold Decretions. It's about a teleportation machine. sort of.

You are transferred to another place, but I'm going to spoil the whole story. What happens is the machine actually because the aliens are created don't believe in like creating more stuff. You'll be copied and transported to that new place where you'll be recreated and then that original version of you

will basically be murdered. You know, it's like the prestige. I just love that story because it asked that same question, right? It's like, is the person that is recreated on the other side of you or is that another you? And would it matter to me being copied if my copy lives on? I'm dead, you know? And I think, you know, Star Trek, I think, tries to, you know, hide that fact by the fact.

It's like, it's the same particles. But like, even if you are split apart into particles and recreated in another environment, my suspicion is you died. You know, that's where my mind goes. I have a pretty dark reading on it. I don't think you can just, like, be blown apart and pull back together. And that's the same context. That's the other year.

Right. So then would you be willing to step into a Star Trek transporter? Somebody shows up and says, hey, no more commuting for you. Would you be willing to do that? Or is that essentially signing up for your own murder? I think it's signed up for my own murder. I think I like the idea of a portal more than a teleporter, you know, like two areas in space being connected by some kind of device you can walk through.

That makes me feel like I'm not dead. But the teleporter, I think if it requires me to be blown apart and pull back together, I am not for it. So then what technology and science fiction would you like to most see actually become reality? What should us scientists be working on? What's our number one priority? I mean, I feel like the first question sent me off this, the portal.

Like, I really want to be able to, like, so right now, suppose I can talk about this. So I just got a new job at North Carolina State University, you know, teaching creative writing. Awesome. And thank you so much. Thank you. And my wife is a scientist and she's finishing up her PhD at Harvard and basically had to, you know, separate for, you know, for me to take this job or for her to do her work. And she's coming down at the end of the summer. But it would have been really great. If there was just a door in my apartment that I could open up and walk through and I can meet up there, hang out with, you know, my wife and go to work, that would just be fantastic. And so I think a lot about it is I just finished the edits to my second book and there's

something like that in this book because I've been thinking a lot about it. Yeah, it's like the next step in Zoom technology, right? You could actually just go through and be in a room together without having to commute. That would be great. So then let me ask you one more generic question. before we dive into your book, which is, what's your personal answer to the Fermi paradox? If there are so many amazing planets out there that seem like they could harbor life and the galaxy is quite old and doesn't take that long to get across, why haven't we been visited by aliens yet? Okay, so two thoughts for this.

The first thought is that maybe we have, and I remember, it was just earlier this week. I opened my phone, I went on Twitter, and I just saw trending that the Pentagon is going to release, you know, declassified documents about UFOs. And it was all of the legitimate news sources. I was just blowing my mind because I'm like, I was like, we're in the middle of a sci-fi story right now with, you know, what's going on. And then I'm reading about UFOs and it's being taken seriously. It's news.

Obama is talking about it, right? Right, right. Obama is talking about it. You know, high, high-up officials are like, this is a concern. I was like, is it, though? Seems like they've been chilling out. So maybe they are, and we just can't even understand it. Like, they are visiting us, but they're like, well, why even bother trying to have a

conversation with us? We clearly can't talk to them. And we're clearly not even, you know, remotely close to us as advanced as they are. They probably just kind of just hang out and then they go back and they're like, well, you know, there are things are doing okay, I guess. And that's pretty much it. The other answer I have is that. I really like the second book.

Well, like it's the wrong word for it. But I really enjoyed the second book to the Remembrance of First Pass by Sexton Loo, the Dark Forest. And that book posits that the reason why no one's talking is because everyone's smart and we're quite dumb. We're trying to talk to aliens, aliens. I'm like, yo, you should shut up, man. Because, you know, we might not kill you. But there's some super advanced, you know, aliens somewhere else. are going to just be like, let's just take care of that problem before it becomes a problem.

You know, if we're advanced enough to try to communicate with aliens, I imagine aliens being, other aliens being self-protected, you know, might preemptively respond to that in an aggressive and negative way. And that's a nice marriage, but it seems plausible. Sort of like we moved into a dangerous neighborhood and we're inviting everybody over for brunch. Right, right. The analogy that the book uses is that, like, it's a forest and there's hunters in it and where the ones that let the fire. We lit the fire and now everyone knows where we are, you know, basically. Yeah, oops.

So I think both of those answers boils down to they're being careful. That's why we can't really confirm it because aliens aren't establishing first contact in a way that we might imagine being. Either they're laying low or they're researching us. They're just like checking off out. Awesome, thanks. All right, wonderful. I have lots more questions for our guest author.

But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. The explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.

Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't think it's a problem. don't trust her now he's insisting we get to know each other but i just want her gone now hold up isn't that against school policy that sounds totally inappropriate well according to this person this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age and it's even more likely that they're cheating he insists there's nothing between them i mean do you believe him well he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet so do we find out if this person's

boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not to hear the explosive finale listen to the okay Storytime Podcasts on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going

to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now.

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For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, we're back and we're talking to Cadwell Turnbull, author of The Lesson. So let's turn to the subject of your book, The Lesson, which is an awesome first contact. story. When I read a really good science fiction, I love when it sort of shines a light on something that already exists in our world. It makes us think about something we're living, but not really paying attention to by accentuating it. And in your book, something you highlight is the power dynamics of society and the structures that enable it and support that and categorize people into sort of different classes of rights and privileges, especially in a colonial setting. And so when the aliens

arrive in your book, they sort of fit in at the top layer of this power structure. Did you write it in this way on purpose intentionally adding this new alien layer to sort of shine a light on the colonial and historical power structures we have here on Earth? Their answer is yes by the end of it. Like, eventually the book was doing that on purpose. But I don't think I started that way. So the novel as a whole was inspired by a dream that I had several years back at this point because it took me several years to write this thing. And it was set in a small town and there were aliens in that small town, but they looked like people. There was something off about them, and you could just tell that they were aliens pretending

to be people. And they acted just like the ENA in a book. You know, Ena is the alien race in the book. And they, anytime they felt threatened or disrespected in a way that made them worry for their safety at all, they would respond with like, you know, egregious acts of violence. That dream had a character very much like the ambassador. her character in the book, Mira. And she was starting to feel guilty about her specific responses to threats because

she was living among humans long enough to kind of incorporate some of human morality. And there was a character that was very much like the Derek character in the book. And the dream was so memorable to me that I thought, I should definitely do something with this. When your subconscious gives you something that good, you know, I feel like you're obligated to at least try. And so that first, the very first thing I tried was that story transplanted to the US Virgin Islands and having, it was pretty much the same kind of set up. But the more and more I worked on it, the more I had to change it to fit the context because the dream that I had was like

middle America somewhere. It was somewhere in some small town. All the characters were white. I don't know why. That's just what came to me. And so when I transplanted it into the context that made sense to me, St. Thomas, you know, mostly predominantly black, all of these other themes started coming up. You know, it's like, if this is transplanted to the Virgin Islands, this is how the Virgin Islands people will read this thing. You know, if the INAs show up and they're super powerful and they have all of these great gifts, but they respond to any, you know, threat with, you know, this kind of, like, violence, that will be memorable, that will remind the Virgin people of colonialism, things that have happened in the past, you know,

like how the Danish treated, you know, the slave society of that time, right? And so it seemed to me that as soon as I made that transplant, it became about colonialism as well as power. So the dream was about what do you do with power? And, you know, how do you challenge beings more powerful than you? But because I made this decision, it also became about how does that also map on to, you know, things that have happened in our past? How does it map onto colonialism and powerful, you know, societies on our own world going to new places and subjugating the people there or bringing people to be subjugated? So then when you wrote this story, is it necessary for them to be aliens?

I mean, could you have written a similar story with like some overwhelming human army that comes and decides to be colonize or subjugate the people there. What about it makes it necessary for them to be aliens? I mean, I love aliens. I'm glad they were aliens. I mean, and that would be my most basic response. It's just like, I love aliens. That's fine.

But I think it would be a really different story if it was just another empire. You know, I wouldn't be able to do to map it so closely to our present and, you know, have the Virgin Islands remain the same. I would have to create a justification for why there's a new empire somewhere on Earth coming. and subjugating the Virgin Islands because the Virgin Alice is it belongs to the U.S. And so we're in a pretty stable state of colonialism. You know what I mean? It's like the U.S., if we misbehave, shows up.

You know, and they're like, what are you guys doing? Otherwise, we're kind of like left to, you know, to the most part our own devices. And our structure is pretty much like any American state. And so I would have to create a context for to make that possible for another human, nation to come there and subjugate the U.S. Virgin Islands without the U.S. saying, hey, no, that's ours. But the other, the other answer to that is I just think that there's some really interesting things to do with aliens that are not just colonialism. And so the book plays with that question of colonialism. But I also wanted to ask more existential questions about like, how far would you go to make

yourself impervious to harm? It's like the whole motive for the ENA. It's a really important aspect of their culture and their belief system, that they believe that the universe is this, like, you know, ancient enemy that they have to vanquish the universe itself, you know, to imagine the humorous of a species like that. Their goal is to become more and more powerful so that nothing can hurt them. And that to me seems like something that I think is also true of humanity. Like, I would argue that any person seeking power, you know, if I look back at, like empires of any kind, I think that there's a fundamental insecurity that motivates great men or great people to be the most powerful thing in the world, in the environment around them,

so that maybe they might be spared is what I think. And so I think that ENA are kind of embodiment of that thinking. They're like, if we make ourselves impervious, we will be spared. And I think that that aliens needed to come and represent that ideology. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And I understand where it comes from here on Earth. We are all competing for resources. There is something of a survival of the fittest. You know, not everybody makes it.

Not every society makes it. Not every person survives. I wonder, though, about whether that really maps onto the situation of a interstellar, galactic empire. You know, if you can conquer space, if you can travel through space, isn't there enough room for everybody? Aren't there enough planets? enough asteroids filled with platinum, enough frozen water, enough resources, enough stars for everybody to have whatever they need.

Isn't it possible we could end up in a post-scarcity society? Is it colloquial to imagine that we'll have the same sort of conflicts on the galactic scale that we've had on the planetary scale? What do you think about the future of society in that way? So there's two answers to that, right? I think that sure, that should be true, that everyone can live and that if we have a universe worth of resources at our disposal, we should all be fine. But I do think that cultures are built before realities change and that cultures are slow to change in the face of new realities. You know what I mean? And so my feeling is that right now, if we wanted to, we could be okay on earth. You know, like everyone could have

all the resources that they need. We could live, you know, in relative peace and security with some measures taken. You know what I mean? But I think right now we could do it. But cultures are slow. And there's a lot of conflicts and tensions that create, you know, it's not just the resources. It's ideologies, it's interests that create this kind of scarcity. And so my thinking with the ENA at the very least is that their core motivation isn't that they need more resources to be more secure. Their motivation is fear. They worry that there's something out there, bigger and stronger, that will take whatever

they've gained from them, you know? And so their response is reactive. It's like we continue to look for these, you know, solutions to our insecurity so that we can be completely secure. I don't think it even occurs to them that, you know, there's enough for everyone. It's like they believe that the universe, and some of this has to do with the history that I imagined for them. They believe the universe pits different sentient beings against each other, that it's like you have to strike first in order to be the one that maintains. And it is not a very utopian, idealistic vision, you know, and there's characters in this book that try to challenge that belief because they think differently.

But, you know, because the ENA have a long established culture, it's really hard for them to shape that. Yeah, it sounds like they have had a bad experience in the dark forest, and now they're more careful. So then let me ask you, if you don't mind to weigh in on some of the current debate about human plans for colonization. You know, Elon Musk wants to do private colonization of Mars, and a lot of folks in the science community are saying, hold on, that's built on a colonial structure, which has led to like all sorts of terrible things in human history. Maybe we should take another approach? What do you think? Should we let Elon Musk be the new Dutch East India company and colonize Mars? Or should we leave Mars for the Martians?

I would say no. I think that we've seen on our own planet, you know, what runaway, you know, capitalism has done. And I think that it's dangerous to just extend that outward without thinking about regulating it. You know, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong or harmful about space exploration. But I do think that, you know, it's legitimate when people talk about, well, there's problems here that we haven't solved. Why are we doing that? And I think that at the very least, these things should be moving at similar paces or space exploration should be slower than the work that we're doing on our own. planet. If our own planet is a mess, why would we extend that out to other planets? Like, why would we

make other messes? And so that's my feeling. I don't think that it should be Elon Musk. If we do it, it should be the public. It should be a collective process. And it should be subject to a lot of slow, collective decision-making. So I like to imagine a scenario talking about power structures about what happens when aliens come to Earth. And, you know, in your book, the aliens, for example, they don't see any difference in the value of a human life and an earth dog's life. So we're in sort of like a second category below the aliens. And, you know, for me as a human, this feels shocking when I read it. But it's sort of a natural extension of our own moral structure here on Earth.

We don't value the lives of pigs and cows the way we do humans. We raise them for meat. So do you think if aliens come to Earth and they're vastly superior to us the way we imagine we are to cows and pigs, that we'd really have any right to object being treated like farm animals, being, you know, raised for human bacon, et cetera? I mean, do we have a moral leg to stand on there? What do you think? This makes me think of a really good story from Octavia Butler called Blood Child, where

we are cattle. It's complicated. We're not exactly cattle. We're kind of like birth sacks. So like the aliens, they use us to help nurture their young. And they live inside our bodies and then they burst out of our bodies. And hopefully, you know, the more progressive aliens try to make sure that the humans are not egregiously harmed in the process. But they're kind of like, well, whatever, if they get hungry, if these worms get hungry, you know, they have to eat, they have to eat.

But I think there is a right to object. I think that we'll have no choice but to object because it's us, you know. And I think if we can make the argument, we can make the argument. You know, if we can convince the aliens not to just eat us, that that would be great or not to just use us. their birthing pots, that would be great. But I think that in the same way that we make the argument, you know, we talk a lot about all of us becoming vegetarians and not all of us will agree. I think that we can't expect aliens to all come to the same agreement on this. Some of them might, we might be able to convince some of them. But if it's to their advantage to use us in

some way that we feel is degrading to who we think we are, I think the same rules apply. We'll have to convince them or we'll have to fight. And we'll likely lose, but I think that there's something to be said about gradually moving the ethics of another group by continued engagement with that group in whatever form. Right. Well, there's lots of reasons to be vegetarian, environmental, ethical, et cetera, but I suppose one of them is to gain moral standing when arguing with our future alien overlords. So let me ask you a last question about the sort of the science and the physics of your novel. In your book, these aliens, they can travel great distances between the stars. How much did you think about, you know, how that travel happens and

how to make it plausible? How critical is it to you that the science of your universe be plausible, even if it isn't the science of our universe? That is a very good question. And the answer to that is it was not a huge concern, to be honest. Some of the ways that I kind of like convinced myself that it was okay is because they're very old. And even if they travel, you know, slowly, they can do that just fine and they won't really, you know, affect them because they live for thousands of years already before the events of the book. But I'm pretty sure in the back of my mind, I justified it the way that a lot of, you know, really tropey, soft science fiction justifies it. There's the ring gate or they have FTL, you know, they jump. I did not think about how far away their home world

was from Earth even. I was much, much more concerned with the history. of the Virgin Islands and how the people were responding to them and what it made them think about and questions of faith and all of these things that they brought up for the Virgin Islanders. And I was also really interested in what the ships look like and modeling them off of like reefs and coral and seashells because I thought, this is me in the island, you know, an island culture seeing a seashell in the sky. So I just thought about the imagery of that more than. even the physics of how that would work, you know. So I'm ashamed to say, not a lot of thought.

That's all right. It was very compelling. Great. Well, tell us, if you can, a little bit about your upcoming book, your next project. So the title of it is No Gods No Monsters. It's coming out on September 7th, you know, pretty soon. And it's fantasy. I even less consideration about how things work, you know, it's magic. So the way that I would pitch it, although how I've talked about it in the past. It's imagining the civil rights era, but modernized and with monsters from popular culture and Caribbean folklore and, you know, other cultures. So, werewolves, vampires. I have a monster in the book called a Sukuoyant, which is like a, you know, local Caribbean folklore monster, you know, a bunch of different islands have it. It's kind of like a vampire that

removes its skin. It's kind of like a mix between a vampire and a salki. All of these different monsters that we recognize and then some made-up monsters that I created. And, And they're all advocating for their human rights in a world that has just learned of their existence. I very much see it as like in conversation with the lesson. So the lesson is like, how does humanity respond to a threat from without? And this one is like how does society respond to a threat from within? Our darkest nightmares are real. And how do we deal with that?

And are they really that nightmarish? Wow. It sounds like a lot of fun. Well, congrats on the lesson, a wonderful book. And best of luck on no gods, no monsters. And thank you very much for coming in on the podcast and answering our awkward physics questions. Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.

All right. Pretty interesting interview, fascinating author and book. I like how he said that the story came to him from a dream. He had about a man who has a relationship with an alien. Sounds like a pretty racy dream there. Yeah, I'm not sure every dream you have about like that should turn into a novel. But this one, he told me he started writing it as a short story and then just sort of grew and grew and grew and he sort of fought the idea that it was a full novel and eventually

he just gave in he was like all right let's turn this whole thing into a novel and i'm glad he did because it's a really good book interesting yeah i guess you never know right like if you have a dream it could turn into a book yeah exactly if you can do that if you can turn one dream into a novel then you're a good writer but hey take notes of all your crazy dreams they are your creativity and i also like the discussion you had about colonialism and it seems like he thinks that you know, we shouldn't maybe colonize Mars. Like, he thinks maybe we should leave Mars for the Martians. Yeah, well, as somebody who grew up in the Virgin Islands,

I think he has a different and very valuable perspective on the question of being colonized. So, yeah. Right, yeah. Leave Mars weird. It would be maybe the T-shirt slogan. Keep Mars weird? Keep Mars alien.

There you go. Yeah, exactly. Send one of those to Bezos and Elon Musk. And as excited as I am about exploring the solar system and getting answers to questions. and it just seems super fun to get out into space and build this technology. I think we do need to think carefully about how to make these decisions. Right, yeah, because they're planetary in scale, right?

They're galactic in scale, right? We don't want to be like, hey, Mars seems really comfortable. It's our new home, but then it turns out that there are maybe, you know, there's life kind of brewing under the surface. Yeah, and do we want the head of some technology company to make those decisions on behalf of the entire human race? You don't get to unmake them once you've made them. Right.

We definitely don't want, we definitely want maybe like a physicist making those decisions because they're really in tune with humanity and struggle of everyday people, right? I'm not running for President of Mars, for sure. Definitely not. Don't vote for me. Maybe just could be the first gentleman. Who knows, right? Who knows?

All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that and we hope you check out the lesson, the debut novel by author Catwell Turnbull. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. 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. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

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

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