Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The SF Universe of Essa Hansen's novel "Nophek Gloss"

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

Daniel and Jorge break down the science in the science fiction novel "Nophek Gloss" by debut author Essa Hansen. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy,

which is more effortful to use. unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials is easier. Complex problem solving. Takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the Iheart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. and I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is 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, Jorge, I've always wondered, how did you learn to draw so well? Oh, well, thank you for saying that I draw well. But I would attribute it to practice. You know, I spend a lot of time doodling on my notebooks when I probably should have been paying attention in class. Well, did you ever wish you could just like skip all that practice?

Like if the 20-year-old me could draw like the 40-year-old me? Yeah, like accelerate your skills. Yeah, but then what would I have done in class? Like, pay attention? Which class are we talking about here? Well, I'm a little embarrassed to say, but it was mostly physics. Well, then I'm glad one of us was doodling and one of us was paying attention. Wait, you were doodling too?

I was paying attention to my doodles. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I usually paid attention in physics class. They're paying attention now? Do you pay attention when you teach physics? That's what I want to know. Or are you sort of an autopilot at this point? No, in fact, when I lecture, I solve problems I haven't seen before. I put fresh problems up on the board and solve them on the spot.

No kidding. What if you can't do it? I think that's actually really valuable for the students to see me get stuck and then have to back up and go another direction. And also, after 20 years, I'm pretty much able to solve any freshman level physics problem on the spot. Even how to retrieve a homework from a dog's stomach or something like that? That's an engineering problem. Oh, right, it'll bioengineering, I guess. All right, well, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of Our Heart Radio,

where we like to talk about everything in the universe and we try to explain it all in about 50 minutes. Everything is fair game to this podcast, from what's going on in the inside of black holes, to how many dimensions there are of space and time, to what is the smallest, tiniest particle. out there and how does it all fit together to make this incredible bonkers, glorious, delicious and mysterious universe that we are sharing.

Yeah, because we are all in the same universe together and we're all looking out into the stars wondering what's it all made of, what's going on up there, what is possible in this crazy cosmos that we live in. At least we're assuming that all of our listeners are in our universe. Maybe this podcast leaks out somewhere into the multiverse. What? Wait, you mean we might have listeners from a, different universe. I check the email

just of everybody who writes to me, but I can't actually trace it. It might come from another part of the multiverse. Like another part of the internet or the dark web perhaps? Or are you talking about like the dark universe? Who knows? Who knows? Who knows what's possible? And that's

the subject of this podcast, trying to figure out what's real and what's possible. And can it all be explained? Yeah, because we like to talk about the real science that's out there and all of the knowledge we've gotten about the universe. and the great work that scientists are doing. We also like to talk about what's possible

and what might happen in the future. And I at least like to read science fiction, which means I'm always getting my brain deep into some alternate fictional universe and trying to figure out what are the rules of that universe and could our universe actually have those same rules? Yeah, I don't read a lot of science fiction, but I do love listening to podcasts that talk about science fiction. Or hosting them, for example.

Yeah, or listening to them as they're being recorded. That's pretty exciting too. Yeah, so sometimes we like to talk to science fiction authors out there who are coming up with the next great ideas that scientists might pursue in the future. Because sometimes it's fun to solve the mystery of this universe, but it's also fun to liberate your mind and let it play around in other universes and think about what the rules could be over there. And that's not just playing around intellectually to dip into another pool and figure out what it's like to swim over there. But sometimes the ideas in science fiction really do leak into our universe. universe and help us reveal what's going on over here. So I consider science fiction authors to be at the extreme edge of theoretical particle

physics. Yeah, because that's a lot of what you do as a physicist, right? You sort of sit around and thinking about what could be, what kinds of crazy explanations could help us understand what we're seeing in experiments and things like that, right? Yeah, and the universe is literally stranger than fiction. And sometimes to think up the explanations to understand why we're seeing these weird stuff we see, we need a lot of creativity. So as usual, we borrow it from other places. Yeah, so today we're talking to a science fiction author who has one book out. How many books out does she have?

This is her first book, but she is working on the sequel. Great. So today on the program, we'll be talking about the science fiction universe of Essa Hansen. That's right. Essa Hansen is the author of the book No Feck Gloss, a super fun book that I just finished reading. And Esa, like many of the folks who are interviewing, is a debut author. So congratulations to her on breaking into this field. Oh, that's great. How did you hear about this book? How did I hear about this book?

Man, that is a hard question. Do you read every science switching book that comes out? No, don't be ridiculous. Only 99% of them. I don't have time to read all of them. You reserved that 1% for... Sleeping for sleeping. Oh, good.

Doodling while you're reading. It may have been an Amazon suggestion, or maybe a... The listener said it to me, I don't even remember. But this is her debut novel, and she's a pretty interesting author because she has another job, which is also pretty exciting, sort of in the world of science fiction as well. Yes, she is immersed in science fiction because she is the sound designer for movies, and she has worked on lots of the Marvel movies, like the Avengers. Wow. You know, I feel like a lot of people don't appreciate sound design, but it's so important in movies. Like, it really makes the world come alive and feel real.

Absolutely. I talked to her about it. It's super fun. She has to decide, like, what does it sound like when Iron Man punches Captain America's shield? Or what does it sound like when Loki punches Captain America? Like, every single combination has to sound different to sort of orally supplement the story and give the viewer a sense of like what's going on. This is a really rich sound texture that I think a lot of people aren't consciously aware of, but is really enhancing their experience. Right. We need a sound designer for our podcast, Daniel. Like, what does it sound like when Jorge makes a bad pun in front of thousands of people? That's 90% of the podcast. That's already rich in awkwardness, perhaps, the sound of awkwardness. And she's a really interesting person because she has synesthesia, which means that she experiences sounds slightly differently from the way we do. She told me that she sort of feels their texture. Like as she's listening to something, she can tell whether it feels right. Right. So for her, sound is more tactile, I think, than it is for most people. I see. Did you ask her what sound Robert Downey Jr. makes when he rolls his eyes?

Or how often does she have to cut and pace, I Am Groot, for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies? I did, but unfortunately, there's some ironclad NDAs there that prevented her from spilling any details. Oh, man, that's exciting. But she is a debut science fiction novel author, and her story is pretty cool. You really liked it. I really liked it. I also found the writing to be really unusual and very creative. The visuals in her book are really incredible. They're like cinematic in a way that they create this impression in your mind.

You can really see this stuff happening. It was really different from anything else I'd read and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. I wonder if her synesthesia sort of affects that, you know? That's when sort of your different sensations kind of mix together inside of your brain, right? Like you hear colors or you... field textures and things and things like that exactly so that sort of mixture of sensations and so i think it's different for every person but it might be that or might just be that she's immersed in these movies and so she has a very like visual sense of how the action should play out but while she

describes in her book a very alien and weird universe i had no trouble picturing it in my mind and lots of the action scenes were really incredible i really felt like i was watching a movie sort of in my own head oh interesting all right well let's get into what the book is about, and then we'll talk about kind of the science of it, which you said deals in the multiverse, this idea that there are more than one universe out there and maybe an infinite number of universes. And then we'll hear an interview that you had with her. Yeah, I had a lot of fun talking to her. All right, Daniel, so what is the book No Fecloss about? So it takes place in a very different universe from our own. It's not like one of these near future

almost earth novels. This is a totally alien situation, but they are. humans, the main characters are humans, but it's sort of in a very far future scenario where there are civilizations all over the galaxy and on lots of different planets. And the story follows the main character who's born a slave, lives on a planet, helps sort of tend these very dangerous, terrible creatures called the Nofeck. Interesting. So you don't know if it is the far future or not. It's just sort of like this sort of like Star Trek. Maybe it's the future, maybe it's an alternate universe scenario. Yeah, or maybe it's the deep past, right? You never really No, like in the Star Wars.

But we follow a main character who seems human and he raises these creatures, these no-fek, and they produce these weird sort of blobs called gloss, which are like a pearl sort of you could hold in your hand. It's this shimmery substance of great value. Now, these creatures are spelled N-O-P-H-E-K, No-F-E-K, and what are they like? Are they like the worms in Dune? Are they sort of like, you know, cows or dogs? What do they look like? We don't see them for very long because the first scene essentially is the entire colony being slaughtered.

But my mental image of them is sort of like a cow-sized super spider with an incredible array of sort of slicey teeth and little appendages coming out of its mouth. Oh, my gosh. They're pretty horrible. That sounds terrifying. I know. You just gave me nightmares for the next couple of months. Well, you should read her descriptions of it. She's a better writer than I am.

Oh, man. Like, it makes it go down easier or it's more terrifying? Yeah, exactly. It's a crisper image, though. I don't know. Either way you like it. Oh, I see. So they're dangerous, but they produce something really valuable, which is this gloss.

And the slaves are the ones taking care of them. But in the very first scene, the entire colony is sort of liquidated. By, like, a spaceship or by a death ray from the sky? Yeah, so I don't want to reveal too much. But basically, everybody he knows is killed in front of him. And he just barely escapes and some. band of explorers that happens to be coming by, scoops him up and whisks him away. So he's like the only person from his planet to survive this crazy calamity.

Oh, wow. And then he has to, I guess, figure out what was going on and why his colony was wiped out. And I imagine that's kind of what sets off the plot. Yeah. And then he's on a journey of discovery, both self-discovery, like to figure out who he is in this larger context. And also now he's understanding this larger context he was living in but was unaware of. So he meets all these crazy aliens in this band of explorers, none of whom are human, of course, and have all sorts of really weird biology.

They also sort of take him around from planet to planet and show him the structure of the multiverse that he lived in without realizing it. Oh, interesting. Like everybody knows they live in a multiverse, except maybe him because he was stuck into a planet as a slave. Yeah, exactly. And so these aliens, they look humanoid or? So the aliens are a sort of humanoid, right? mostly they have like two arms, two legs, and a head. But each of them has a weird characteristic.

Some of them can change shape. Some of them are literally gender fluid, like they go back and forth between different genders. Other ones have features of their skin that constantly reveal their internal thoughts, like their internal emotions. Each one is really very creative and really unusual, like stuff I hadn't imagined before, but I could easily picture in my mind as she's describing it. So it was super fun to meet all of these aliens.

and they all have like, you know, crazy personalities and a backstory, and he's sort of thrown into this cast of fun characters. Oh, interesting. It's like he was rescued by Serenity, the ship from Serenity or something, like a rat-tag crew of explorers. Exactly. But none of them are human. They're all sort of like near human.

And so he learns sort of the context of his universe, meaning that he lives in the multiverse. How do they know this? Everybody else seems to be aware that they live in a sort of set of universes, where each universe is not an infinitely large thing, it's like a huge bubble. And apparently there used to be just one huge bubble, which was the single universe that existed,

but then other smaller universes started bubbling off of it. So each multiverse is like a bubble. Some of them are really, really huge and some of them are much smaller. Interesting. All right, well, let's get into the science of multiverses a little bit later. But tell me what sort of happens then. Then what's the overall plot of the book? So he understands finally that he's been,

a slave and he figures out who was running the slave colony and tries to understand why they decided to liquidate it essentially. And he discovers this larger socioeconomic structure that fuels the economic incentives for somebody to have like a planet of slaves raising these no-fax producing these glosses. And then he's on a crusade for justice. He wants to take those folks down. He wants to expose them and he wants to get revenge. Interesting. He joins Antifa sort of. He's like, let's take down the man. he does or alien i guess alien aliens yeah they're all aliens and he's sort of young he's like you know in his very early teens so he's not really equipped to take this on so they take him to some nearby

space station where they have this really cool machine that can accelerate your body it can like grow you up by five years or 10 years so you get bigger stronger and you accumulate skills interesting it's like a shortcut kind of it's like a shortcut yeah you can get in this machine and come and you're five years older as if you've been training and now you have like martial arts skills and you know how to fly a spaceship and all sorts of stuff sort of like in the matrix how you know they could just download skills into your mind but it's a bit more physical interesting but you can choose what you learn in that sort of accelerated time like I want to be a kung fu master or I want to be a competent cartoonist yeah or I want to be an online doodler or whatever you can pay for

what you want but it doesn't grow up your mind you don't like become more emotionally So then this is this really interesting conflict within him where he seems older. He now has the skills of an older person, but he's still 12 years old at heart. And so it doesn't make great decisions. I think you're assuming that if he had grown up normally, he would have matured. Which as humans, I'm not sure that's always the case, you know. I'm still a 12 year old at heart, right? Well, that explains a lot.

Maybe somebody accelerated you. But it's really fun because it helps you as the reader. you're also getting introduced to this world and he is getting introduced to the world so he's growing up rapidly and trying to climatize into the world and you're getting thrown into it as a reader and trying to understand how this world works

so sort of makes you be like you're on this journey together a little bit makes you feel like a 12 year old stuck in the body of a 20 year old all right well let's get into the science in the book the multiverse accelerating your body and aliens and then we'll get to your interview

with science fiction author Essa Hanson, author of No Fag Clause. 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 place. in sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, My boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him?

Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his boyfriend? 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 Honey German. 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 because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash, because, At the end of the day, you know, I'm me. Yeah. But the whole pretending and cold, you know, it takes a toll on you.

Listen to the new season of Grasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just wanted to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation,

a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know.

I got blown up on a lot of life. on a React mission, I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and the traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of The Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Now, Daniel, let's talk about the science in this book. And you said a big part of the plot is the multiverse. But it's not sort of like the quantum multiverse that maybe we've heard about. It's more like the bubble multiverse. It's sort of like the bubble multiverse.

And as you're referring to in current cosmology, we have several ideas for what we mean by multiverse. All of which are totally different. And all of which are totally different from the idea she has in her book. So I think it's worth sort of unpacking. Oh, I see. She has a whole new different idea for the multiverse. She does. She has an idea for the multiverse, but it's not one that cosmologists are currently imagining for our universe,

though it's, you know, sort of related maybe to one of them. So the simplest idea for the multiverse here in our universe is the idea that we can't see everything in the universe. There's a limit to like the observable universe. You can't see everything just because the speed of light is limited. And so it takes time for stuff to get here, which means that we can't interact or see or observe. anything past a certain distance. It's more than the age of the universe times the speed of light because the universe is also expanding, but there's still this finite sphere around us, something like 93 billion light years across that we can interact with and can influence us. So the idea of the

multiverse is just that there are multiple observable universes sort of like near each other. And if somebody is really, really far away, a trillion light years away, they would have a different observable universe. And so the multiverse is then that set of observable universes. Oh, I see. Interesting. It's like we're all in the same space, but because of the distances, you might as well consider them different universes because we're so far away. Yeah. It's kind of like where I am in South Pasadena and you in Orange County. We're both sort of in L.A., but since it takes three hours with traffic, we're basically in different universes. And culturally, it feels like another universe. You're all aliens.

I used to feel like an alien when I got down here. Now it feels like home. You've been accelerated and assimilated. Now you're a slave then. Maybe I'm the master. So that's the idea here of this multiverse is that there are sort of like pockets of universes. That's one idea of a multiverse. Another idea of the multiverse is that we don't know how our universe started.

We know that it began with some really, really rapid expansion of space, but we don't know what caused that. What hypothesis is that it was caused by the decay of some really weird field, we call an inflaton field, which filled all of space, and sometimes randomly sort of decays into normal matter which creates a whole universe. And it's like a pocket universe. And so then you can imagine that maybe somewhere else far away in this inflaton field, another pocket universe was made. And this would be different from the first level multiverse, because these different

multiverses might have different physical laws. Like, they might follow the same fundamental rules, but it might be that the Higgs field ended up at a slightly different place in our universe and in the other universe, which would make particles have different masses and have really very different physics and chemistry and biology. Interesting. I see. So we're all still in the same kind of, you know, continuum of this infloton field, but like our

space, like what we call space, it's its own little bubble. Is it's its own little bubble? And there are different laws of physics in that bubble and in our bubble. So it might be like really impossible for us to even imagine what it's like or to ever communicate because we think that this inflatan field is also expanding super duper rapidly faster than the speed of light, which would make it literally impossible to ever send or receive a message to any of these other multiverses in this inflaton field. But like if two bubbles, you know, bumped into each other, would they connect or was there some sort of barrier in between? A great question.

We think that couldn't happen because the Inflaton field is constantly expanding. And so it's creating new space, new Inflaton field space between our universe and the other ones, faster than our universe could ever move through it. But there are some people who think that maybe there are some scenarios in which they bump into each other. And then you get some clash, you know, like space where the Higgs field is this, another space where Higgs field is that. And that would cause one of the two Higgs fields to collapse to the lower value. And there are some people who think that maybe that could leave like an imprint on the very early universe.

And so they look for these sort of imprints on the early universe by looking for the cosmic microwave background. Nobody's ever seen anything like that. But it's a fun thing to think about. I see. Like if you looked at the cosmic microwave background and noticed like a big dent in it, you'd be like, oh, it looks like we had a little fender bender with another universe there. Yeah, there are these rings in the cosmic microwave background radiation that people look for. All right. So that's another idea for the multiverse.

What are some of the other ideas and what's the idea in the book? Yeah, so the last idea for the multiverse that people really do think about in terms of current cosmology is the quantum multiverse that you mentioned. And this is a way to sort of understand why the wave function in quantum mechanics, which describes what might happen every time a quantum particle is doing something, why it seems to pick one thing or another? Like if an electron can go left and it can go right, why does it seem to go right or why does it seem to go left? And the way we answer that question are some people like Sean Carroll and other Everettians who proposed this multi-world's interpretation of quantum mechanics, the way they answer it is they say that the universe splits. And every time a quantum particle can go left or right, it goes left.

And there's another version of the universe created where it goes right. So it tries to avoid answering the question of why does the electron go left by saying it doesn't just go left, it does everything possible. We just happen to be in the left branch. And the consequences there are that the universe is constantly branching. And so you have like an infinite, infinite, infinite number of these versions of the universe, each of which are different by one quantum particles decision. Wow.

That's pretty mind-blowing. And that's kind of like this idea that maybe there's a version of the universe that's just like ours, but a little bit different or a lot different, you know, one where the dinosaurs didn't get hit by the asteroid or one where JFK wasn't assassinated. That's where this idea of like the multiple versions of the universe comes from. Yeah, where you became a professor of physics and I became a cartoon. You know, crazy things like that. And where that's right, the podcast would be called Horan Daniel explained the universe. Yeah, and for some people this isn't a metaphor.

This isn't like a hypothetical thought experiment. They believe that this is real, that those universes actually exist and they are out there. I personally find it ridiculous. I don't think it actually answers the question of the colloquium. lapse of the wave function because we still have to answer like, why are we on this branch? You know, it tries to avoid answering the question of why one branch feels special by saying there are all these other branches. But one branch still feels special because I'm in that branch and I'm not in the other branches. Well, the other Daniel thinks he is special also.

Yeah, well, I didn't know that the other Daniel exists, so I can take his data seriously. Anyway, those are the ideas of the multiverse that are sort of existent in current cosmology. Essa's multiverse is quite different. She imagines first. of all that the multiverse started as a single bubble universe and then new universes were created like sort of nucleated off of it like at the edges of our universe or like in the middle of our universe there's a bubble or what does that mean both she imagines these bubble universes created at the edge and so there's this transition between the universes she calls it the rind like you know the peel of an orange where you go from one universe to the other but you can also have a new

universe created like as a sub-universe within your universe. This rag-tag group of explorers, for example, has a spaceship that's capable of creating its own sub-universe to wrap around itself. And they can use that as a sort of like method of propulsion and also protection. There's this awesome scene where it wraps itself in this new universe and then it dives into the heart of a star and they literally fly right through a star. It's sort of like going underwater, but they're like under star. They're flying through it, looking at the interior of a star.

It's super awesome. Wow. And so you can create universes too? Like you can somehow manipulate this inflotone field and like create a layer of universe between you and other stuff. Mm-hmm. I asked her all about it in the interview. You can hear it.

She doesn't go as deep as like understanding how you could possibly influence the inflatant field. She totally admits to hand waving her way around that. But in her universe, yes, you can create new universes and new universes are being created all the time. And the cool thing is that you have different laws of physics in each of these sort of bubble universes. And when you transition from one to the other, things get like translated. It's sort of like if you go to another country and suddenly become, you know, like French Jorge or something.

George. There you go. Yeah. Danil. Cool. That's pretty awesome. And so then I guess one question is how do they get around so well in this universe? Do they have like faster than light travel?

They have spaceships that can essentially propel them. themselves using these like relative universe laws of physics. So you're like wrap yourself in this bubble and then you can move through this other universe and sort of pop back out. Oh, I see. Like you take shortcuts through other universes. Yeah, you can take advantage of the fact that different universes have different laws. So then that's the universe in her sci-fi universe.

It's like a universe with little neighborhoods here and there. And how does that affect, I guess, the, you know, cosmol politics of how people treat each other? Yeah, well, it means that there's a lot. to explore because there are a lot of different universes out there for people to discover. And she's thought a lot about like the economics of this situation. Like how would a huge, diverse, interplanetary multi-species civilization actually work? Who would want to go and explore? Who would pay them to do that?

And she very specifically chose it to be sort of like a little bit of an anarchy. You know, no tight central government with a single set of laws because she thought that was going to be unrealistic. So there's this whole collection of folks called. called cartographers that essentially incentivize exploration, pay people to bring back information about what's going on in this other multiverse, we're more created. And there's this whole layer of mystery because they don't really fully understand the physics of it.

Some of the technology needed to create and traverse these multiverses is left over from an ancient now past civilization that seemed to have a better handle on the physics than the current set of aliens. It's sort of like magic to them, kind of. Yeah, it's sort of like magic. or at least it's like treasure when you find a little piece of this leftover technology

from that lost civilization and they can do things that you can't understand and couldn't reproduce. And now as a physicist, how does this idea of the multiverse sound to you? Does it sound plausible? Does it fit within some of the theories that you have?

It's a little hard to imagine how it's plausible. I mean, having different laws of physics in these bubbles and then the transitions between them is pretty hard to get your mind around. You know, people wonder like, how could you have different laws

of physics in different places. And it depends a little bit on the semantics. You know, we talk about different laws of physics. We mean the rules by which the things around us operate under. You know, like what happens to an electron when it flies through a magnetic field or, you know, how does the Higgs boson decay? Those aren't actually what we think are the most fundamental laws of physics. Those are the laws of physics that we have here today in our current temperature and our current time after the birth of the universe. We don't know what the real fundamental laws of the universe are. We're trying to figure that out, right? We don't know how the universe works when it's hot and dense like in the original Big Bang. But we think that what we're looking at is what we call

an effective theory. So as things cool down, they sort of crystallize into the laws that we have now. But we think it might have gone differently. We think that like some random fluctuations in the early universe might have led the same fundamental laws of physics to turn into different effective laws of physics we have today. So it's possible to imagine different parts of space or different parts of the multiverse having different effective laws of physics, but it seems like

the fundamental rules really have to be the same because in the end, the source code for the universe has to just be one thing. It can't like change from here to there. Right. Well, it could have the same source code, but as you said, it could have maybe like different initial conditions, right? Like maybe, you know, you could have a

black hole with a universe and the side of it and somehow, you know, the very value of the mass of the electron is a little bit different inside of it. Yeah, that's totally possible. And then you have to worry about these transitions. Like at the transitions, what happens? You know, we know that if the value of the Higgs field is different in one place and another, that it'll cause the place with the higher field value to collapse to the lower field value.

And so that kind of thing will spread. Like, if you created a machine which collapsed the Higgs field value locally to zero, that would spread throughout the universe and basically change the. the universe's effective laws of physics to something else. And so, you know, not recommended. Yeah. Although it sounds like you considered it, Daniel. It sounds like you thought about what happens.

I keep an open mind, you know. Yeah, exactly. Try not to just reject things out of hand. And I think about it's sort of like analogous to phases. Imagine that the universe was like a huge pool of water and some parts of it had gotten cold and some parts of it had gotten hot. Then aliens or humans who had evolved under those circumstances, would imagine that those were the fundamental constraints of the universe and would understand

the way things work in that phase or in this phase and wouldn't understand like the fundamental overall rules. So we'd think that we're sort of stuck in one phase of the universe, this temperature, this pressure, this age, and we've learned the rules of this universe, but you could have different, you know, phases of space in other parts of the universe and still follow the same fundamental rules. But what would happen at the transitions? That would be pretty tricky. I mean, sometimes transitions are stable, right? You can have like a frozen lake and it doesn't all sublimate into the air. Depends a little bit on the details.

But sometimes you have transitions that are unstable where things do sublimate and there's a tension there because of the conflict and that can't survive. So he asked like, what's wrong with the universe? You can just say, hey, it's just going through a phase. Don't worry, you'll go through puberty soon and then things will get really crazy. Unless it just accelerates its way through puberty, right? There you go. I feel like that happened to my son a little bit because he spent all of his middle school in the pandemic.

So he just sort of like skipped middle school, which is either like wonderful because middle school wasn't my favorite time of the universe or terrible because he had to spend a year and a half inside. But, you know, there's two ways to look at accelerating past life events. Right. Yeah. Middle school is its own pocket universe of hormonal torture for everyone, really. All right. Well, let's get into your interview with science fiction author Essa Hansen, author of the book, No. fad gloss. I think you asked her about this idea of the multiverse where she got that idea, this idea for aliens, being interesting and this idea of accelerating your growth and your cognitive development. So she had answers for all of these questions, right, Daniel? She did indeed. She did indeed. I'm always amazing, grateful when an author is willing to talk to a

physicist about how they built their universe. Right. That must be a little terrifying, like running into a no effect book, perhaps. I try to be friendly. Yeah, you can try pulling all your mandibles and spider-like appendages before you shredder science a bit. It's like that scene when the monster smiles. All right, here is Daniels' interview with science fiction author, Essa Hansen. So it's my great pleasure to welcome to the podcast, Essa Hansen, the author of the book, No Fet Gloss. Essa, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks for inviting me on the show. Wonderful. Well, before we dig into your book, we'd love to hear a little bit about your background, how you ended up being a science fiction author. Yeah, I've been reading and writing since I can remember, which is a really boring origin story. But there wasn't really one experience or piece of media that kicked me into it. I grew up with a lot of the popular sci-fi shows and movies from the 80s and 90s, like Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, when so many seem to have star in the name. I also devoured nature shows like National Geographic and spent most of my time outdoors exploring nature since I've lived in or very close to backcountry areas and national parks in the western U.S. and Canada. So combined with studying science, mathematics, and philosophy for pleasure, everything started to kind of come together in writing science fiction and fantasy, which is such a great playground for an overactive imagination to test concepts and explore fun what-if questions.

And you use your imagination a lot in your other job, don't you? I do. I'm a sound designer for science fiction and fantasy films like Marvel and Disney and Pixar. So I definitely spend a lot of time in other worlds. Wonderful. Well, we have a series of questions we ask all of our science fiction author guests so we can compare and contrast them. The first one is about Star Trek transporters. Is it your opinion that these devices kill you and recreate you somewhere else or that they actually transport you from one place to another?

I love this question because to me it's asking about the nature of consciousness. Like, are we assuming that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from the structure of the physical system and that recreating it exactly from the quantum level up in some new location will generate that same consciousness without interruption? I personally think there's something more fundamental going on with conscious being, so I'm more likely to believe that the atoms are transported instead and the consciousness gets transported with it as a unified system. you think that an exact copy of you wouldn't be you?

Yeah. I would actually love to see an episode where they explore, you know, the early testing and theories of the transporters what worked and didn't work. You know, does the clone appear, but it's not the same person or, you know, doesn't have any brain function. Star Trek Research Division. I definitely want to see that whole episode. So then it sounds like you would be willing to get into a Star Trek transporter because

you think that they actually somehow move your same atoms from one place to another. Yeah, I think so. Although, if something went wrong, would my consciousness be stranded in some other dimension? That's another question. So then what technology in science fiction would you most like to see become reality in our universe? What would you like scientists to make real? That's tough since there's so many mind-blowing pieces of technology that could just change our understanding of the universe. But actually, my mind goes right away to the really practical things, since they could change so many aspects of life and the environment.

So I would probably pick a replicator from Star Trek, you know, to be able to synthesize food and drinking objects without needing the material to print them. And I think it recycles too, doesn't it? Yeah, environmentally would be fantastic. It would change a lot of our infrastructure. All right, well, then let me pivot and ask you about aliens. I'm sure you're familiar with the Fermi paradox. Why haven't we been visited yet if the universe is so filled with wonderful planets? What's your personal thought on that question?

Why do you think we haven't yet been visited by aliens? I like the theory that intelligent life will or may have interacted with Earth's life forms in ways we cannot detect. Most people's default thinking when they hear aliens is intelligent biological life that's using spacecraft comparable to something humans might do with more advanced technology. I think it may be more likely that conscious beings exist in domains or on a scale that we still struggle to measure or perceive with our current technology and science. So I feel like a non-physical alternative is feasible, which means perhaps they have visited us or are constantly in communication range waiting for us to catch up. So you're imagining that consciousness and intelligence might be broader than our peripheral imaginations have considered

that it could be just something we can't even imagine or understand or interact with? Yeah, like I think a lot about how limited the, you know, humans and two organs actually are compared to other animals and compared to the instruments that we've created to measure like the quantum world and things that we can't actually perceive, even ranges of light that are outside of our natural spectrum. So I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that there may even be more beyond that that we do not have instruments for yet. No, I'm with you. I'm a big believer in the idea that we've only begun to explore the universe, that we're seeing a narrow and probably unrepresentative slice of what's out there. And we know from history that discoveries have revealed the universe to be a very different place from the way we imagined it.

Exactly. It would be shocking if intelligence was exactly the way we expected it to be, which is why I love reading creative science fiction and seeing people explore these ideas and other concepts. But it's hard. Yeah, like if you compare what we understand now, if you explain that to someone as historical scientists they might think, you just sounds too bonkers. I would totally believe that there's things in the future that will understand that now just seem inconceivable. Well, it seems bonkers to me today. And so I'm looking forward to future bonkers discoveries. That's the whole motivating premise of my research.

All right, but let's talk about your book, which is super fun and congratulations on it. Thank you. I really like the questions that your book raised, you know, about like how a young person navigates through life and grows up, how he finds his place in the world, how he finds his justice. And, you know, the world that he grows up in the universe that he grows up and or the multiverse that he grows up in seems to be very different from our own. but the themes, you know, are familiar, you know, these questions of how you find your place.

What drew you to these questions, these themes? What made you want them to be sort of at the heart of the journey of your character? Yeah, so science fiction is so fun because, you know, we're taking a human angle on it and often telling very human stories, but, you know, something else is very inhuman, whether it's the setting or aliens or worlds are interacting with. And I tend to write about outcasts like me, you know, protagonists who feel a bruising, and struggle with belonging in identity, you know, people that don't have a culture or community who are too mixed to have roots or were cut off from them by loss. And people who think or perceive

atypical, who might feel like they're on the wrong planet. Being outcast or unmoored is such a relatable struggle for so many different intersectionalities of people. It's a story that I feel can be told a lot in different ways, and there will always be something to take from it, you know, no matter how wild the sci-fi setting or situation is, it'll always sort of have that human heart to it that readers find relatable. I think it's really interesting to see what's common, what's human in these stories, you know, what we can identify with.

And it tells me something about what you think is sort of going to be constant in the human experience, even if the world is very different. And you have built a very, very different world from the one that we experience, but there are also like a lot of similarities. And I'm wondering if you built those in to be the same. same as the world we experience because you think that they're going to be persistent. For example, in your book, there's a lot of economic disparity and a lot of political maneuvering.

You know, other novels like Ian Banks' culture novels, there's no more scarcity and everybody has exactly what they want. Do you think that these sort of like economic power struggles will always be with us? Are there always going to be the super rich and the poor? I think creatively, I'm not so much assuming that, you know, these worlds will be just like what we understand from our human perspective, but more that if I'm going to present the reader with a bunch of, you know, sort of wild ideas, I do need some things that are familiar and relatable so that they feel grounded. You know, if you make absolutely everything in the world's

new and weird, the reader will just feel unsteady. And in the case of my multiverse, I feel the sheer volume of planets, species, cultures, and resources is too unwieldy to have a perfectly peaceful and balanced multiversal society, you know, everything is going to have a different material and moral value depending on perspective. So with trillions of unique planets, all with their own variety of cultures and governments, it didn't seem feasible that one set of needs, laws, or rights could apply equally to every potential species and belief system. So, you know, the nature of a complex, diverse, and poorly interconnected multiverse will be an ecosystem that involves power struggles and mismatched value systems, I think, by nature.

So there's always going to be a struggle even in the future. That's what you're telling me. There's no federation or, like, unifying organization in this multiverse besides the cartographers, which is a neutral group that maintains a database of knowledge and unifies much of the multiverse with a goal of exploration and of safety through shared knowledge. But they also provide free basic needs to anyone without discrimination, the food, shelter, education, health care, and so on, which I think is far more useful than a space police or a multiverse.

laws trying to mesh together so many civilizations, you know. Right, right. But then you also have populations that are, like, raised in slavery and mistreated basically for economic gain. Mm-hmm. And it's not explored in this first book, but the central and largest universe, unity, is a utopian world more along the lines of banks, culture, novels. And so a later theme in the trilogy will be the pros and cons of a utopian world where potential has been limited for safety versus this, you know, chaotic. multiplicity of worlds with a lot of variety of experience, but with the overarching sort of pirate

culture where everyone takes responsibility for themselves. Right. Well, I'm excited to hear that there are more books coming in this same universe. Can't wait to dig into those. One thing I really liked about your book is that I had a concept I hadn't seen in other science fiction novels, which is always exciting for me. And those are these bubbled multiverses where they have this distinct transition between one universe and another that you call them Rines. Can you tell us a little bit about the nature of the idea here, what was going on in your mind, while you decided to build these into your story? Yeah, so the bubble multiverse concept was what kicked off this whole story. And I don't think I read it or seen anything exactly like it in sci-fi before.

Most multiverses involve a shift in dimension or time, whereas my multiverse is a bunch of spherical universes like soap bubbles, all on the same timeline, each with unique physical laws inside and all stuck together like a huge foam cluster. And they can range in is be so small they fit in the palm of your hand or they can contain entire galaxies with some universes nested inside other ones. And like you said, the walls meet in energetic membranes called rinds that aren't a physical barrier, but whatever passes through is translated from one set of laws to another and maybe almost unchanged or might be destroyed or transformed in the process. I got the idea initially while looking at macro photography of bubbles and

instrumentally extrapolating that out to massive scale, you know, containing galaxies, the sort of world you could fly a starship through. And the fact that physics itself might be different from one universe to another has a lot of fun implications to think about, like, what it might mean for trade and economy, you know, an element that is inaccessible in one universe might become usable or malleable in another. All right. So this is a lot of fun and I got lots more questions for Essa. 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 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.

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

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now hold up, isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. 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. Hello, it's Honey German, 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 because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio 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 at. 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. All right, we're back in my interview with science fiction author, Asa Hansen, author of the debut novel, No Feck Gloss. I was really interested in exploring an economy that operates on information. information as currency, you know, where exploration is incentivized and maps and knowledge hold the

most value. In order to be able to explore, more worlds, you need a ship with technology that's able to withstand different rhymes, meaning you can make more profit to afford a ship that can go even more places to get more profit and so on. You know, exploration and curiosity is such a staple motivator in science fiction from a human perspective, like Star Trek's to Boli go where no one has gone before. So I think this bubble multiverse allows for that, but with some new elements, while also feeling different from so much science fiction that focuses on war between factions and planets. Wow, you've basically written the first paper on multiverse economics.

That's pretty awesome. It's really cool and it's really interesting to visualize them. In my mind, I was definitely sort of imagining a series of soap bubbles. But one question that I had, which probably doesn't have an answer, is if you have all these bubbles and they're connected to each other, are they all sitting in some larger sort of super space in which they're embedded? Is there anything outside of these universes? Does that not have any meaning?

I thought about this because, you know, if you think about an outer edge, what's beyond that outer edge? And I know a lot of similar theories have the actual content. If it's a bubble universe, I have the content of the universe on the surface area of it. Whereas mine, the content is all inside. And my idea is sort of more like the rind contains, sort of holographically stores the information of all the content. But as for the edge, I haven't thought deeply about what is beyond it, because that's the, well, that's really chewy. But the lore is that there was originally one singular universe with stable physical laws like our own,

inhabited by among others an advanced civilization called the Graven. And an unknown event caused daughter universes to start to bubble off of the outer border of this one universe, inflating and continuing to bubble off. New universes at the outer edge is the entire mass continues expanding. Very cool. I love the idea that there are different physical laws inside each universe, and the concept of how you translate an object from one or the other is super cool. So is it explored in the book, like how these new universes are created? Because I know there's, for example, one particular ship that's capable of creating its own universe as it flies. Yeah, the protagonist's ship has weird, graven technology in it with the power to expand and collapse a brand new universe of its own out of nothing, which allows it to travel one. harmed in places in situations. It would be too destructive otherwise. And the next books in the trilogy will explore more of what that technology actually is and what the formation of the multiverse could have been and why it happened. Well, I think one of the real strengths of your novel

are the incredible visuals. You know, it seems to me like maybe not a surprise that you've worked on a lot of movies because I felt like I was almost watching a movie in my mind with these incredible visual descriptions. And one of them was when this ship died. into the heart of a star protected by its own little universe and just imagining like what it's like to fly through the heart of a star. Really fantastic stuff. Yeah. And that's what I love too, like trying to describe the impossible in a way. Like we know a lot about the insides of stars, but, you know, we can't actually go in and experience it. So I love, you know, kind of researching what's involved in like a situation like that. And then how am I going to try to convey what the

experience might be like if it were safe to you know fly well i wish it were i'd love to take that trip but i feel like i already have a little bit in your book another thing that was really richly imagined were all the aliens there are so many really interesting creatures with weird behaviors and capabilities that i'd never heard of before but one thing they seem to have in common is that most of them were humanoid in your book do they have like a single origin where they've all branched off evolutionarily or are they evolved in parallel or is that not something you were about too much in detail. I actually love non-humanoid aliens the most, but this is one of those, one of those things

where I knew I needed to balance the story with familiarity and grounding for the reader, especially since there's not just, you know, one first contact with one species, but so many different species of aliens, along with other concepts and technology to wrap our hand around and flying into stars and creating universes and whatnot, I figured some humanoid aliens would help the reader connect a little better. So the actual humans in the story of which there's a broad variety had a single origin in the central universe. And for the other aliens, I did struggle with whether to assume there's something fundamentally superior about the general design of the human body. I'm not convinced there is.

Plus, the evolution of that design is inextricable from the features of Earth. So if we assume humanoid aliens evolving on other planets, we're assuming some Earth-like features of those planets, right? which is definitely true and feasible in this multiverse. So I think the answer is a mix. Like humans have a single origin and would have colonized outward and differentiated as a multiverse inflated, but there are also Earth-like planets where a humanoid design or similar will have evolved on its own. Wow, very cool.

So tell me, did you come up with this world first, this idea that multiverses and these aliens and then sort of find a story to tell that takes us through that world? Or did you want to tell this story about this young man and his journey to through life and to search for justice, and then you built a world around that story. The world definitely came first, but the main character in his ship came closely after, and they developed in parallel from there. And at the time, I did a lot of my world building as I was drafting, rather than developing all the features of the world up front, and then writing within that framework.

So, like, I would find I needed a technology or new species, and would pause to create it on the fly and fit it logically in the world, which I think the author creates a greater sense of wonder, from discovering things on the go like this, because the act of discovery and excitement gets put right on the page, but you're way more likely to have inconsistencies and elements that don't quite hold together. Hopefully there's time during edits to shore that stuff up, you know. But a spontaneous story will definitely have a different feel to it, I think, than a book that was developed over many years. Well, I'm a pretty close reader, and I didn't find any big logical

flaws, so congrats to you and your editor. I'm careful, I think, to handwave when I need to and sort of not mention something that might be a stitch to pull up, yeah. So how important do you then in your sort of final story and final universe that the science is plausible? Are you imagining that this is something that could happen in our universe?

Or are you creating another universe with its own laws and then trying to follow those strictly? Or are you just sort of like navigating your way through the story and making it up as you go? For this trilogy, I'm definitely focused more on creative ideas

and interesting implications than on presenting a world that's plausible compared to our own universe or our current scientific understanding. There's already so much well-done, plausible science fiction and hard sci-fi. But I feel like there's a lot less blue-sky-thinking science fiction that plays with things like massive cosmological scale or the implications of quantum mechanics on reality or metaphysics and the nature of consciousness as it relates the fabric of space-time. Not all those ideas are in this particular book, but those are the areas of science that I love thinking about.

the science that is still theoretical or cutting edge where all the creative thinking is happening to try and solve the problems and unknowns we still face. But one thing that was really fun was I didn't research the bubble multiverse kind of idea because I thought it was so unplausible that there probably wasn't real physics that would describe this. But then afterwards, I stumbled on, I think it was the 2017 World Science Festival videos for all online. And I went into a rabbit hole of black hole research and the information paradox and all these different multiverse theories and, you know, holographic principle and inflationary multiverse theory. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this actually does sound maybe plausible that we could be in a bubble multiverse. And, you know, the edge of our one universe is so far away that we'll never prove or disprove because we can't measure out there.

Maybe it's more plausible than I thought when I came up. We will see in the future. Yeah, and I actually think that science fiction plays an important role in the development of those theories because a big part of the development of the theories is just having the idea of what to consider, what could be real about our universe. And since we know that the universe is probably very different from the one we imagined, we have to stretch our creative minds and consider these other alternatives. And reading science fiction is a critical element of that. So I think, you know, it's more than just you're exploring this universe. I think you're helping push forward the ideas that scientists themselves should be thinking about. Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of what I love. Like there's, you know, it's fun to play with the science we already have, but, you know, we may not learn new things because we're only working within the constraints of what we know now.

Whereas, you know, stretching imagination and creativity, you think, what about this, what about this? Or, you know, picking, all often, you know, hear a theory and it will inspire me to like, oh, what if that means this? Or, like, what if, you know, we expand that a bit? I think that kind of thinking is really inspiring for not just the reader, but, you know, I like to think that it can go beyond the book and beyond what we understand right now. Absolutely. It's fascinating to me to see how you walk the line, though, of like letting your imagination unspool into crazy other ideas of universes, but then still grounding it in a way that we can identify with some of the characters. We can follow the story because as much as I'd like to believe that there are crazy aliens out there following rules we can't even imagine, weird society. I'd probably have a hard time following that book. Yeah, it's a tough balance. Although, actually, I'm not sure readers will kind of know what concepts are ones that I've pulled from actual science and which ones I just, you know, came up with out of the blue.

The theoretical science right now is so exciting that, you know, the two are kind of the same, the bonkers ideas and the actual, you know, possibly plausible. Welcome to our bonkers reality. Exactly. I love it. All right. Well, thanks very much for chatting with us about your book. And again, congratulations. We look forward to reading the next novels.

When are they coming out? Thank you. The sequel, Azra Ghost, is out December 7th of this year, 2021. Does that mean that it's all written and in the hands of the publisher and the editors? It's very close. We're putting on the final polish. And I'm already starting on book three. Wonderful.

Well, we look forward to that. And maybe we can have you back on to talk about the crazy bonkers ideas in the next book that you're right. That'll be some more dimensions than a lot of bonkers ideas. Wonderful. Well, thanks again for joining us. Thanks. This was so much fun. All right, pretty cool. She sounds really amazing and so multi-talented being a sound designer for big movies and also a science fiction author. Yeah, she's super creative. One thing I really loved about her book that I forgot to ask her about was how every scene in her book, which is in like really diverse locations, really feels different. She's done this great job of like giving each location its own texture, its own sort of like feeling so you can keep track.

of where you are in the book. I'm not a synesthete in any sense, but I feel like I was there, like I could touch these places and hear what they sounded like. Interesting. Now, does reading her book make you excited to kind of meet other aliens

and discover more of other universes, perhaps? Or does it make you happy to just have a couch at the end of the day in Orange County? Well, I think it's a positive experience mostly because when he meets aliens, they're like a fun rag tag month to educate him about the universe. And boy, I would love for that to happen to me

a bunch of aliens come down to Earth and tell me all about the larger context of our lives, how things actually work. It'd be great if that didn't mean that everybody else on Earth had to die, but, you know, don't make me make that choice. You're like, that would be great. But if it had to happen in order for me to gain knowledge about the universe, you know, too bad. If it has to happen, it has to happen, right?

Wait, no, not necessarily. According to the quantum multiverse, that's just one possibility, Daniel. There you go. So I don't have to feel bad because in another multiverse, the Earth. Earth survives. In an infinite number of universes, we all die. And in an infinite number of universe, we all survive. So it all washes out in the end. So therefore, there is no morality. All right. Well, thank you to authoressa Hansen. Again, her novel is called No Fed Gloss. That's N-O-P-H-E-K-Gloss. And it's out now. You can get it wherever you get your regular books. You can. And she's just

turned in the sequel and working on the next book. So everybody out there who enjoys this book and look forward to even more zipping around the multiverse. All right. 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. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of N.

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

Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive stress. which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials easier. Complex problem solving takes effort.

Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.