Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - Alien Encounters with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson joins Chelsea to talk about what little green men might actually look like, how to prove alien life exists, and disclose what Area 51 is REALLY used for.   * Need some advice from Chelsea? Email us at [e-mail] * Executive Producer Catherine Law Edited & Engineered by Brad Dickert * * * The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees.  This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all.  Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Bell. Connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by.

The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it.

Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, guys, here are my dates for the High and Mighty Tour. In June, I will be in Saratoga Springs, New York,

Port Chester, New York. I'm coming to Boston at the Wang Theater. I'll be in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and then Hyannis, Massachusetts, and then two shows in Nantucket. In August, you can find me in Red Bank, New Jersey, Montclair, New Jersey, and Calgary. That's Canada. And September, I will be in Santa Barbara, San Diego, New York City, Philly, and New Haven, Connecticut. October is Atlanta, Baltimore, Saginaw, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Boise, Idaho, and Spokane. And then in November, I'll be in San Francisco.

I'm coming to Salt Lake City, Austin, Houston, Dallas, babies. I'll be there. And then in December, I am closing out my tour in Denver and Vancouver. So get your tickets at ChelseaHandler.com for the High and Mighty Tour. Hi, Katherine. Hi, Chelsea. It's almost Thursday. It's Thursday.

It is Thursday. It's Thursday. It's our podcast. Today is Thursday. I have to tell you, I don't know if anyone can hear in the background. That's my new dog. That's my new dog, Ray J. I have to tell you.

He's pissed, as usual. I asked you, like, oh, why'd you pick Ray J for the name? And Brad, later that night, like 10 p.m., he was like in the other room. He texts me. He goes, just so you know, Ray J is a rapper. And I'm like, I know. I'm familiar. I saw this dog, and I'm like, that's Ray J.

That dog reminds me of the name Ray J. It's a perfect name. Yeah, it is. It is. Well, our guest today is a very exciting one. Okay. He's an astrophysicist, best-selling author, host of Star Talk, and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

Please welcome Neil deGrasse Tyson. Oh, lovely. Easy. Oh, Neil deGrasse Tyson is here today. Hello. Yay. Look, this is your babe cave here. Is it?

Oh, I like that. A babe cave. That sounds better than a man cave. No, that does sound like it. That does sound better. We need something like that. We got all parts of you up there on the wall. Uh-huh, we do.

When was the last time we... I'm going to take some medication since you're here. So you waited for them to start filming. I need it for when I'm dealing with you. It's nothing too exciting. Otherwise, I'd be happy to share. When was the last time I saw you? I was on your show.

It was the Netflix show was the last time. But before that, I had... Or Chelsea Lately. I don't think I've seen you since then. No, no. It would have been the Netflix show was the last time. But I interviewed you before then also. I think so.

On Chelsea Lately. But it's been too long. Pre-COVID. BC, before COVID. Oh, sure, sure. How did COVID treat you? I was novid until like a couple of Octobers ago. So yeah, I didn't get it at all.

Yeah. Oh, you know, I want to do that too. Can I do that? Yeah, yeah, get it. It's called crisscross applesauce. Get into it. If I can still do that. I'm like, oh man.

If you can get into this position, that would be pretty impressive for a man. Oh, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Look at this. I got you. Your knees didn't even crack. Do you need a pillow to secure the area? No, I need a tone. Okay, okay, okay.

We'll do it. We'll do it with you. Look, we're all sitting like that. But I used to dance. I was a performing member of three different dance companies. I did not know that. Yeah, so there's nothing like being in dance shape because you're nimble and strong and flexible.

So I would just fold up whoever I was and chill. Yeah, well, I'm glad to see that's still working. I'm embarrassed this doesn't come. Well, that's okay. Okay, I think you're doing a good job. It's good. But it's accounted for that purpose. Yeah, yeah, it is.

Congratulations on your new book. It's called Take Me to Your Leader, Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter. When is this going to happen? I can't wait. It's overdue. First of all, there's a really, I mean, everything you, I'm fascinated by you, as I've always been,

because I don't understand anything that you understand. I know you're an astrophysicist, but you also are, you are able, you have a nice knack for kind of explaining to a layman what i try i mean i'm an educator yeah any educator should have some kind of knack that's right otherwise they're just pontificate they're lecturing rather than educating exactly you know you can lecture and if people are paying attention maybe that's okay but consider that after college any time someone lectures to you you say no stop lecturing me you're lecturing me It's a bad thing after college because I think it implies that you have to meet them all the way where they are to learn what they're trying to teach you.

But I think if you're a real educator, you think about what's going on in the brains of the person who you're talking to. And you should be taking the biggest journey to them. Well, I mean, that's what you do in this book. I try. is you try to take on the perspective of alien invaders and all of the different realms of possibility that they could choose to arrive in. It's a love letter to our fascination with aliens.

That's really what that is. And to our assumptions about aliens. I just want to challenge some assumptions. The biggest assumption is that it looks humanoid. Right. You know, most life on Earth does not look human. And we have DNA in common with it. I talk about bananas.

Yes. Okay. That we have 45%? No, between 20% and 25% identical DNA. As a banana. With a banana. So I'm thinking an alien coming from another planet should be, it either has no DNA in common with us

or no DNA at all, right? Who says DNA is the molecule in the universe? Right, right. So it should look at least as different from us as we and bananas look from each other. that's what i'm thinking about anything that's on the bottom of the ocean like thank you that's where alien like thank you it looks alien i got it i got one for you maybe i'm jumping ahead i don't know what your agenda is here but let's suppose only a few dozen people had ever seen

an octopus just just picture this and now they testify in front of congress under oath you gotta believe me there's this squishy thing in the ocean it's this big it has eight legs and each leg has suction cups on it and it's got big eyeballs and it's really smart and it could change its surface pattern to blend in to disappear in its environment and it's you just say this they'll look at you like okay draw it and no one can draw these things right so you look at the drawing it's like what and so they would parade forward and until someone brings forth an octopus it will always be about do you believe in octopuses right to believe in them do you believe those testimonies do you believe it so i'm saying now that high-ranking people have

said they've got aliens in the back 40 or in the shed is it too much to ask them to bring out the alien and who's to say that an octopus isn't an alien well yeah well because we can check the dna so so it's of it's of this earth so based on an octopus's dna it's of this planet so we know it's not correct correct so that's that's a good check okay that's a good check that's good to know like and and you open this book talking about bananas and chimpanzees about our dna makeup with chimpanzees yeah yes almost basically the same thing yes yes what's the difference a chimp is perfectly comfortable sitting as we are you know resting an elbow you know looking around and they like bananas just the way we do it's 98 plus percent identical dna and what are the what

is what we say here's what we tell ourselves we say well the chip a smart chimp does what they can stack boxes and reach a banana suspended from the ceiling that's a smart chimp can do that and whereas we have poetry and philosophy and and science and art and and the james webb space telescope so if you're prone to think highly of us as a species you'll say what a difference that makes but i just i pose the thought experiment in the book imagine an alien species that's that two percent different from us that we are from chimps just in the same vector just put them up there But doesn't that, wouldn't that have the same DNA too, if you're saying 2%? I know, I know.

So it's hard. It's a thought experiment. It's whatever it is that separates us from chimp contained in that 2%, give that same separation to some other species, however that separation can be manifested. What would we look like to them? We would be squawking idiots in their presence. Just the way, I don't want to call a chimp an idiot, but a chimp is not doing long division. A chimp is not building skyscrapers or airplanes.

Or lithium farms. Or lithium farms. So, very good, lithium farms, that could be in our future. So that's only 2%, what would a 5% difference be? So when we have the audacity to say, let's go out in the universe and find other intelligent life that presumes we're intelligent.

Well, who said we're intelligent? So would an alien consider us to be intelligent if we are today what chimps are to us? And so it's an important thought experiment. The aliens should be way smarter than us. Well, also with the argument that is also in the book, they're the ones that are visiting us. We're not visiting them. So they got here, and we only just weeks ago left low Earth orbit for the first time in 56 years. So, yeah, if they visit us, they're going to be smarter, they have better technology, might even be better looking.

And they might have, I mean, and we have no idea how many, first of all, let's go to the basics, first of all. Can you define what a light year is for me? Oh, sure. Just for layman's terms. Oh, yeah, so, yeah, it's not a year with fewer calories, no. So a light year, it's a convenient unit of distance to talk about how far away something is. So the nearest star system to the sun

is four light years away. You just turn on a beam of light. Four years later, the light arrives at that location, and light is very fast. And that's kind of like when you see a shooting star, the same thing, right? Oh, no, shooting stars are in our own atmosphere. Okay, so light year's not in our atmosphere.

No, no, shooting stars are not actually stars. That's the problem. they're just it's particles of dirt and and meteoroid we call them meteoroids that they're the size of a pea typically but they slam into earth at 10 miles per second and they just burn up in our atmosphere that's the streak of light you see some are big they'll make it all the way down and if you find it make it all the way down to earth's surface oh okay and if you find on the earth's surface then it's a so if you see it streak it's a meteor uh-huh it hits the ground meteorite oh you didn't know that no no no i don't know anything about any of this stuff

so if it hits the atmosphere then it's meteor and then if it hits the actual land of earth meteorite okay got that oh that's good yeah and really big ones the really big ones don't really get burnt up at all and they'll leave a big crater so in arizona has a huge crater that was left by a meteor uh 50 000 years ago oh hey have you been thinking about writing into Dear Chelsea? Well, now is the moment. We're taking advice questions on anything that pops up. It's wedding season. Are you having wedding drama? Write in about that thing that you can't seem to agree with your spouse about, but you absolutely know you're right. Chelsea can tell you who's right and who's wrong. You can write in about a big life decision or just something small.

Dating drama? Write in to DearChelseaPodcast at gmail.com. behind every night spent making the kids lunches there's a lot of suspense will they finally eat the veggies will the pesto survive the first bite will the lunchbox come home empty half full or come home at all and will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything.

When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt

he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz,

and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show we've had a lot of great guests like sarah sherman not that great actually can you help me can can you help me shape this yeah how about we flip it on his head right how about we flip this around okay what is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird adam scott this entire time you've been expecting adam sandler to come to visit the show i i would never let go of that i have i would never set expectations for something like that if the universe allows for something like that to happen i'm open to it i'm always

going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity yeah ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like they're like oh what's the state everyone's so dumb and fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio

app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so when people talk about area 51 this is the area that we are historically america has used to research or study any sort of alien life or other extraterrestrial life i would word that differently okay do you go ahead and word It's a secret Air Force base. Okay. And it doesn't- And they do secret stuff. They do secret military stuff.

They'll test aircraft. And that became a convenient place for UFO and alien enthusiasts to say, the government is hiding aliens there. Now, let's make sure we understand the difference between a cover-up, which would be a thing that happened and no one wants you to know, versus just something that's top secret. If something's top secret, it's not a cover-up. It's just top secret.

You're not going to learn about it unless someone leaks it. So it's been the supposed place where the government is stockpiling aliens. But that's never been... People have declared it. Again, you have to believe them. But no... I want the janitor.

Get the janitor. Right. Everybody's got a smartphone. High-resolution video camera. just take pictures of the alien and then stream it out the janitor would lose lose his job immediately but it'd be the richest most famous janitor there ever was well yeah because he wouldn't really need a job after that that's correct and i think once you've been a janitor you shouldn't have to work that long anyway well and it is kind of a catch-22 now because everyone

says like why aren't we seeing all these ufos everybody's got a camera phone now but then when you do see a video of somebody catching something strange it's like oh well that's fake like no so So we're living tough times now because Photoshop was the first to be able to just toss in a little saucer in your picture. But now you just, it's a command line in an AI chat bot, you know, produce a picture.

So it's really hard now to bring convincing video of an alien. So that's why you got to kind of bring out the alien. So you would say that in your opinion, or you tell me, so Area 51 is just an area that has been designated to study this kind of extraterrestrial life.

No, no, I'm saying it's to study secret Air Force stuff. Right, but are they- If you want to think they put aliens there, okay. But unidentified flying objects, UFOs. The Air Force has studied UFOs since forever. I mean, there's Project Blue Book was one of the early, there's several, but that one is perhaps the most famous of them.

And what it did, it studied everybody's account of things in the sky that we didn't understand. And remember, this is the Cold War, all right? And so just think of governmental motivation for this. If you crowdsource stuff in the sky because you can't look at every square inch of the earth and you get people to report it to you, they're your radar. They'll find stuff that the Russians might be working on. So what a brilliant way to collate what everybody thinks. Oh, you might say, oh, they could be aliens that boost the interest.

that people would place in participating in such a thing and in reporting what they find. But in the final report, they said they found nothing that couldn't otherwise be explained by natural causes, and that which couldn't be explained, there was no strong evidence that it was extraterrestrial. And so, but there have been other studies. But meanwhile, but kind of none of that matters now

because we have high-ranking people testifying in front of Congress, whistleblowers insiders former military former intelligence officers telling you standing there flat-footed with an honest face after swearing in that they got alien bodies alien crash saucers that they reverse engineered the thing and so so okay it's not just the farmer right you know in the back 40 i mean obama admitted it on a podcast recently and that was big news well Well, he's scientifically literate, so he said the correct thing. He said he has no reason to doubt that there aren't aliens in the universe. And everyone said he's thinking aliens on Earth or in the, you know.

But think about it. If there was a government cover-up, surely the president would be in on it. So deciding whether a president is speaking the truth often is only a matter of whether you agree with what the president is saying. and then you say it's the truth, right? And so for me, I just bring out the octopus. Right. Bring out the elephant. Bring out the elephant.

Describing an elephant would be just as weird as describing an octopus. Think about it. Well, when you frame it like that, I mean, you frame a lot of things in this book which makes it so interesting. Like, say we all have this idea because of all of the movies we've seen

that have aliens in them and the way that aliens have been- I think we're ready. We're ready for aliens. Do you think we're ready? all the movies we are so pumped bring out the

you know show me the aliens sitting in the corner smoking a cigarette we are so pumped but we're not ready because we don't have I don't think

based on everything you say in this book I don't think we have a clear representation of what an alien would even fucking look like that's correct that's correct

like Donald Trump could be an alien he could be he could be dressed as a human but he's not a human I comment on that in there

not Trump specifically but if an alien were masquerading as a human, as they did in the movie Men in Black. You could do that, but you would not survive a medical exam, okay? Your heart is in the wrong place, or you're... Well, what if they're able to mimic being a human being? If you mimic it, then what does it matter at that point?

If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, walks like a duck, then just call it a duck. Right. If it looks human, and you put all the organs in the right place, and it's got bad breath in the morning, it's a human, right? I mean, if something else happens weird, like its tongue comes out and it's this long, you have some evidence. But what if it was operating on behalf of a whole other culture? You know, like, say like Bugonia. You saw that movie, right?

Yes, I did see Bugonia. Okay, so say that's what's happening, right? They come down. You know what I didn't like about Bugonia? Which part? No, no. It's fine. Okay?

I didn't have a, one part I didn't, she finally meets, she goes back to her alien friends in whatever is their spaceship. Yeah. And so they're there, and they're surrounding an illustration of the flat Earth. It's like, no, I'm going to give you an alien, but I'm not going to give you the flat Earth. Okay. Okay? Yeah. We have NASA.

That's interesting. Why do you think they did that? Because I think they wanted to bring together multiple conspiracy theories into one narrative. Yeah. I don't know if you noticed that at the end. I didn't. Yeah, they're around a circle. I wasn't thinking about it that way.

Yeah. Yeah, no, I caught that immediately. because the flat earthers say there's earth and then antarctica is the edge of earth and it's around so you can see that in there so i think they just they had a catch bin and they put everything in it but that's a spoiler alert well i'll put in a spoiler alert and audio so like i don't have time to accommodate these people if they haven't seen that's their fucking problem but i like the way you posited in the beginning of the book where you're like if aliens were to come to earth and say okay take me to your leader we might confuse we might think

that leader is donald trump we might think that leader is taylor swift we might think that leader is you oh no no no we know our leader is our official leaders the pope the prime minister but the alien might not right because they're seeing our leaked radio signals and they're seeing who we worship and there's taylor swift there's beyonce there's people the dalai lama filling the airwaves and they're thinking those are the important people right who these so they might expect to be taken to taylor swift is my only point so what do you believe because the radio waves are escaping at the speed of light so we're in the middle of a radio bubble which is the the broadcast signals of our culture

expanding at the speed of light. And it's gone out, it's about 80 light years across. And each light year is 1,000 years? Or each light year is one year? Each light year is six trillion miles. Six trillion miles. Miles, that's how far the light has gone. Okay.

So. Write that down, Colin. If you've only ever been on cable, you're not in those airwaves. If you did anything on TV, they'll get a little piece of Chelsea coming by their way Chelsea lately is not going out

right it was on cable wasn't it yes that was on cable that sounded like a dig Neil no I'm just you know what else is not out there is Beavis and Butthead I think we should be perhaps thankful for that if the aliens first encounter with humans

are these shows it would be just a little weird behind every night spent making the kids lunches there's a lot of suspense will they finally eat the veggies will the pesto survive the first bite will the lunchbox come home empty half full or come home at all and will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything.

When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations,

or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus

or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people

and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself so whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip i hope you listen to solita on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

after studying this stuff for as long as you have been what do you think really with regard to aliens so you look at life got started pretty quickly on earth like almost as soon as it could how old is it planet earth 13 no four that's the universe 13.8 billion years earth came much later uh four and a half billion years four and a half billion and we spent a half a billion years very hot because we're getting slammed because the solar system is forming and so you don't want to start the clock yet so nobody's alive no but no you can't there's no molly you can't even have big molecules then start the clock when we're cool enough to have big molecules life got underway within 100 to 200 million years sounds like a long time but it's five percent of the timeline

of the earth so it's almost as soon as it could have so so a b we are made of the most common ingredients in the universe hydrogen oxygen carbon nitrogen peroxide yeah so so peroxide is i think peroxide is oh what is peroxide you're not asking so we got underway quickly and we're made of the most common ingredients in the universe but did we get underway quickly i thought you just said no no life life humans humans are much later okay So if that's the case, you would be inexcusably egocentric to suggest that we are alone in the universe. Because the universe is vast.

There's hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. So don't run around here saying you're the only thing happening. If we were made of some rare ingredient, you could say, we're special. Something special happened here.

But we're not, and so you can't. And so, yeah, no one is gonna deny that there's life. That's a separate question from whether we have been visited. And what I do in the book is I just ask other sets of questions that other people aren't. I say, all right, if we've been visited by aliens, why are they only showing up in restricted military airspace?

Why are they only coming into the grips of our government? The government is not everywhere. We have the whole surface of the Earth. Why isn't there a crash flying saucer in some place where there isn't a government that's gonna cover it up? They're just questions I'm asking. Okay, I've asked these questions too

because I thought Area 51 was just stupidly, unless this is also what you're saying, I assumed, wait, why is extraterrestrial life only going to this one area in Arizona? That's my point. You would have to, the alien would have to land, they'd have to secretly grab it

and take it to, with no one seeing this, they'd have to take it to the, now they solved that in Men in Black because they had that little light that you look at and then it takes away your memory of what just happened.

So they needed that solution. Or is it this, or versus alien life and extraterrestrial life happens and is rampant and then they just put everything in Area 51 to study it in that little center.

You have to somehow get it there. no matter where it landed right so but what's the problem with that oh you have to get there with no one noticing it okay okay okay and the number of people who would be in on it there's a quote from somebody's gonna leak the quote from benjamin franklin in his almanac three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead he wrote that in 1785 the boy knew something about people's inability, especially juicy. You can keep a secret. If it's not juicy, then no one cares.

You don't have these urges to say, you want to hear a secret? So that's why I don't have a problem imagining we're stockpiling aliens. But since we've had insiders saying that they're there, and so it's no longer a cover-up. You can't say you're covering something up if insiders are telling you you're covering it up.

It's no longer a cover-up. So is it too much to ask to bring out the aliens? Yeah, bring it out. Because I don't feel like, I don't think anyone, well, actually, I don't know what people think. I mean, people are about to vote for Spencer Pratt for mayor of LA. So I don't know what people are thinking.

But as a general idea in the world, I think like, you know, extraterrestrial life and aliens, it's more like of an understanding now. Like, of course, something else must exist. Of course, we're not the only people. That's why those who said the reason why the government doesn't want to show because they're afraid the public would freak out look at all the alien movies we've been treated to yeah out of the creativity of our own species

just look at uh like i said what the insiders are saying i i i think it might even be anticlimactic the alien will come and say hey we got better aliens in the movie spielberg came up with better aliens than that you know so yeah i'm just sitting back eating popcorn waiting for the presentation of the alien and what are your firsthand experiences like that you've heard of from other people in your community that have lent like that have stayed with you okay so none of my colleagues have ever seen anything they could not explain i spent my whole life looking up i was a geek kid from age nine i had a telescope at age 11 age 12 and so so you didn't have sex for a long time it's okay you're able to give back in other ways always marry an

astrophysicist because you know where they are at night like that uh and we used to have these geeky things the bumper stickers nobody uses bumper stickers anymore um speak for yourself i love heavenly bodies you know this sort of thing black holes are out of sight there's like the geek bumper stickers so i care about observing the night sky so i know about the sun moon stars and planets and i you know what else i know about weather because it gets in the way of me looking at the night sky so i know all kinds of weather patterns cloud patterns uh what what twilight light can do how it can deceive you so i would say a few percent of the things that i've seen that were really weird i only knew what they were because of my extensive background

in the subject telling me that other people would just report that right to the police whatever so lower than average reporting of UFOs among people who spend their whole lives looking up. And that's the astronomy community. Because you understand what you're looking at. Like I just, I recently went to Finland and saw the Northern Lights. Beautiful. And so once that was

broken down. Was that your first time? Yes, it was. Imagine if you didn't know. I would think that was alien. Yeah, completely. And in fact the very name Aurora I think through that's the official name of the Northern Lights Aurora Borealis.

And in the south, it's aurora australis, if you didn't know that. I think it was, is it in Greek mythology? There's an aurora, a colorful, yeah, so it's beautiful, and it's fully explained. Yeah. Yeah. And another one, there are clouds. So I have to be Professor Neil for a moment, okay? You have warm, moist air going horizontally across the ground, and it hits a mountain.

And then the air goes up the mountain. it's cooler on mountains than it is at the bottom if you have moist air that moist moisture condenses out of the air and makes clouds that's why it's common to see no clouds anywhere in a mountain it clouds right on top of the mountain those are called orographic clouds and depending on how they're made they can look like a a disc like a cap on top of the mountain Because they get stuck? Well, because that's the only place they form. Because it's cold enough there to take the moisture.

Because right near this humidity in the air here, but it's not a cloud. If you take it high up, it'll condense and make a cloud. Wait, hang on. Right at the top of the mountain. Now, the sun sets for you. So you're in darkness, but the top of the mountain still sees the setting sunlight.

And so the cloud takes on this reddish orange hue. and you're in darkness and there's this glowing cloud at the top that's the mothership of course but that my book i have photos of this just so you can see if if if but if also here's your book but why is the cold air gets stuck there when heat rises yeah so what happens is that sun doesn't heat the air this sun heats the ground and the ground heats the air and that air will rise and so rising air if it has any moisture at all eventually condenses out and makes clouds that's why clouds are generally well above your head and not down here a cloud can form at ground level we have a different word for that isn't that great a fog that's just a cloud that's

like it on the ground and when you're in a fog you're never hot fogs are always kind of dank and a little cool. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. I like the word dank, actually. We need to be using that more. Dank, it's a great word.

Yeah, dank is a good word. But if heat always rises, why are mountaintops so cold? Oh, because... We're going to find this part for you. Yeah, there's less ground around you to be heated. It's the ground that heats the air. You've been in an airplane.

Have you seen the temperature? You know, where are you in the rude and what's the outside temperature? It's 40 below zero outside. Uh-huh. This is the same Earth where you were just down here and it's 75 degrees.

While you go up a little, you're closer to the sun. How does it get 40 degrees below zero? The sun is not heating the air. The sun is heating the ground. So the hottest part of Earth's atmosphere is just above the ground. Is the ground.

Oh. Yeah. Okay, this is good. Take a look at these clouds. Okay. Sorry, it's just in black and white. Well, it does look like a flying saucer. But those are called orographic clouds.

Okay. Now imagine that twilight lit from below because you're lower down. Your sun is set for you. It sets later for people higher up. now on the previous page so that cloud was made by a by a rocket in twilight because its rocket plume is high enough it still sees the sun evidence that earth is curved because you're high up you see please don't point at me when you say that i wasn't the one who i didn't push that

theory okay thank you for that i think that was sherry shepherd i was just being articulate with my finger, my hand. So that's still in sunlight and you're not. So it's just glowing against a darkened sky. People freak out when they see that. That's a SpaceX launch, by the way. Oh, okay. I mean, it makes a lot of sense what you're saying

is because you have an eye, a keen eye, that has studied this, so when you're looking at these things that another, a lay person may look at and say, oh, what is that? That's gotta be an identified flying object or whatever, identifiable, blah, blah, blah. You know because most of the time, most. I know more than most people when I look up.

Right. But that doesn't mean that some of them may have no explanation at all. I'm not denying that. But even UFO enthusiasts recognize that most people, when they identify most things, will have a natural explanation. They want to sift through all of that and get to just the bottom, the few percent that might have no obvious explanation. That's all. And if those are aliens, I would then ask other questions. And, but do you have, like, have you heard either in person?

Not from any of my colleagues. Nothing. You've never heard anything that you were like, oh my God, this is my, this is blowing my mind. Yeah. No, I have a cousin who, while in Puerto Rico, said that there was a spaceship that was hovering over the nearby homes and it stayed there for a while and then it shot off into the distance.

And I don't know him to hallucinate. He did like drugs at the time, but not. to that extent yeah so do many people but they're not talking that way right and so and he said someone else saw it with him so okay okay that was the early 1970s you realize there only two kinds of people who carry cameras back then tourists and journalists we didn't have cameras in fact most people were you're in show business most other people are photographed once a year for the school picture okay that's it so access to camera so all i'm saying is if that happens again take out your smartphone video it i have a colleague who's head of a

committee who said he appointed by congress by the way he he wants to set up a a a do i call it a task force an app that everybody has on their phones if you see something you go inside the app And when you take pictures in the app, all the metadata is preserved. What direction you were looking, the elevation, the altitude, the color balance, all of this. So if multiple people do it, you can triangulate on the thing that you saw and establish its authenticity and not being something in your head. Even without that, everybody's got a high-resolution phone. We don't have pictures of people getting abducted. Why not?

It was all the rage in the 70s. everybody's getting abducted through stories written about in the papers in the national inquire that's half their sales we're talking about abducted people getting abducted by aliens so show me the alien walking towards you abducting you and live stream it that'll go viral kitten videos go viral for less right i feel like though if there is are if there are aliens and they are so much more intelligent than we are since they're the ones studying us not the other way around then they would be able to make sure that that footage never was released that's what they said in the days when they had cameras they said oh i did take pictures but they blanked out

right right right but if you're live streaming okay you see it and you start live streaming that's and the app would probably make that easier by the way so here's here's another thing uh there used to be these flying saucers along the roadside that people had pictures of it again And why would you have a picture of it? Because no one had cameras. But let's say you did happen to have a camera. And so there's a flying saucer there. It was clear as day.

There it is, usually dark against the light sky. And all those went away when cars stopped using hubcaps. There are no roadside flying saucers, pictures of roadside. Hubcaps, these were separate things from your wheel that you'd hammered on and they were kind of decorative sometimes. And every road is guaranteed to have a pothole. you hit the puddle hub you lose a hubcap you don't even know it and you're so the hub cops were strewn along the freeways and so if you find one and fling it take a picture you've got a ufo

we don't have those anymore since cars don't have so then what is your rate what do you think i think picture people took pictures of hubcaps but what do you think now so do you think there is not an intelligent life like other and other places or sure in other places but we just haven't witnessed it like what do you what's your assessment of bring out the aliens they're people who say they've witnessed it and so we've taken away the surprise factor because of that and people of high rank there's a two nearly two hour documentary on this the disc the day of disclosure just came out like last year uh on the end of last year uh a whole parade of people including government officials so i'm tired of hearing people ask do you believe in aliens bring out

the aliens and then no one has to ask that question again you don't have to believe in octopuses you don't have to believe in elephants do you believe we have aliens that we're holding or hiding in this country i don't like to believe in things that i have to believe in to believe okay copy that okay let's pivot that sentence makes sense yes yes it actually did while i was saying yeah it did it did and it's gonna have a lasting impact that sentence okay A reverberation, if you will. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies?

Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, Shut up. Don't say anything. every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive

Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show we've had a lot of great guests like sarah sherman not that great actually can you help me can you

help me shape this yeah how about we flip it on his head right how about we flip this around okay what is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird adam scott this entire time you've been expecting adam sandler to come to visit the show i i would never let go of that i have i would never set expectations for something like that if the universe allows for something like that to happen i'm open to it i'm always going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know

what a circle is you know what i mean like you're like oh what's this state everyone's so dumb and fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts chelsea i feel like you need to go home with neil no i don't mean in a romantic sense i meant for like a learning song but i feel like you need to dive into quantum theory we've got weather i cherish adults who are curious so let's talk about quantum

physics break it down bring it on bring it on break down what that means okay so you want a little a little primer on yeah i want yeah to make it digestible for our audience and our listeners this has been an ongoing kind of curiosity of mine because i can't really seem to wrap my head around it so i was looking forward to okay so let's start out with the i forgot who said this famous physicist might've been Max Planck, uh, who said the day you understand quantum physics is the day you can be sure that you don't. Okay. Because it, everything about it is weird. You know, how do, what, to you, what makes sense? What, what makes sense to you? We were forged in the planes of the Serengeti trying to not get eaten by lions. So that's how we evolved. So

So we have a certain sense about that. Something with big teeth is chasing you, you run the opposite direction. You pretty much don't have to think about that, all right? That's what forged our senses. When the microscope and the particle accelerator got us to very small form manifestations of nature, whole other laws of physics revealed themselves

that we didn't evolve under. Yes, it matters in us, in our molecules, but in our sense, our sensory system does not experience it. And so it's not part of what we call common sense. I just wanna start with that, okay? Common sense. It's not common sense. It's common sense that I'd let something go and it drops.

Okay. Gravity, you push something, it moves. And it's also common sense is an understanding that we all share. Yes, because we're all growing up in the same world. Right. All right. So, here's what we find. You're sitting there.

If I shine light on you to take a picture, you're still sitting there, okay? That's because you are much bigger than the photons of light that are striking you, okay? So they hit you, they reflect off, they go to my camera, there's Chelsea. And Chelsea and Chelsea and Chelsea, seven times on your wall, okay.

what happens if I make you smaller? Half this size, a hundredth this size, a billionth this size. Here's what happens. The moment you're the size of particles, and I say, is the particle sitting there on the couch? Let me find out. And I shine light on it.

The photon hits the particle, the particle pops to another state of existence. You don't have access to matter on that scale because to even know what it's doing requires shining light on it, popping it into some other place, some other state of its own existence. And so what it means is when we describe matter at its smallest scales, we describe it statistically. The particle is somewhere there.

And you want to find out exactly where it is? You can shine light on it, but it's going to be somewhere else. If you just keep doing this, you can create a statistical understanding of nature at that scale. And Einstein hated that. He said on multiple occasions, God does not play dice with the universe. Statistic. And so it turns out Einstein is wrong. What the universe doesn't play is poker.

It'll play dice. The universe doesn't play poker. So that's one feature of very tiny particles. We are so big, it doesn't do that to us. It just doesn't. Okay, another thing. That particle can behave as a particle and as a wave. That's kind of weird.

We have no way to wrap our brain around that. We tried. We tried inventing a new word. Wavicle. Never caught on. You ever hear that word? No. Never caught on.

I thought it had a chance. I thought it back in the 70s maybe. I thought it had a chance. Never caught on. Wavicle. because you now have to put in your head the existence of something in two completely different manifestations of itself simultaneously. That's not how everyday life works.

You're not sitting there as a human being one moment and a candle in the next moment, not knowing which you are at any – no, you are persistently this. But a wave-particle duality is fundamental. to quantum physics meaning that the two things can be happening with your person at the same time or with any matter to the particle to the matter matter i feel bad my foot came off the couch well how about that here we go you feel bad for your foot or your foot that is a particle so uh other things it does you can create two particles at the same time you because matter

and energy are interchangeable so you can take energy but e equals matter and energy are interchangeable. E equals mc squared since 1905. Right. We've understood that. Okay. And so one just, so that's another duality thing. It's just the same thing, different sides of the same coin. Matter and energy.

So, a particle, you can take energy and create a pair of particles that are complementary to each other. A matter-antimatter pair. There are other ways you can create particles in this way and then separate them.

they know about each other. They, I don't want to call them the same particle. I'm going to say they're entangled with each other. Because of proximity. Because of how we made them. Right. How we created. Now we can put one here and the other one across the room.

If I make a measurement on this particle, I will immediately know the properties of the other particle with which it was entangled. Because it has complementary properties. And so, was there a limit to this distance? No. They can be quantum entangled across the universe. And when you measure one, the other one gets known instantly.

So this is something moving faster than the speed of light. In the vacuum of space, there are what we call virtual particles, pairs that come in and out of existence. And they're entangled. I spoke with a colleague of mine who studies this. He said there's emergent thought that the entangled particles are connected via wormholes and that those wormholes are the stitching in the fabric of space-time. So it's like, whoa, okay. So again, this is quantum physics just being out there.

by the way there is no creation storage and retrieval of digital information without the quantum the entire it revolution exists because we figured out how quantum physics worked 100 years ago in the 1920s watershed decade in science oh my gosh the 1920s 1920 oh my god if you have to pick a decade in the history of our species that's the decade because in that decade we discovered that the whole universe is not just the stars and the night sky. There are whole other galaxies

that have stars of their own. But aren't we still discovering? I mean, I don't want to throw any shade to the 1920s. It's not a matter of the number of these things. It's the nature of the truth. Okay.

Okay? The nature of the truth is the stars of the night sky are not the entirety of our universe. There are other groupings of stars out there that are galaxies

just like ours. But they're far away. that just looks like fuzz. And there are billions of those. Hundreds of billions of those. And we haven't even discovered all of them, right? Well, we've seen them, but we don't go there. Okay, so there's that.

That was 1923, in the mid-20s. Then, 1929, Edwin Hubble, the man, discovers that these galaxies are flying apart from each other. So we're in an expanding universe. And in the 1920s, we discover what particles do when poked and prodded.

And we came to finally understand the atom. That is quantum physics. And all of our electronics depends on it. It exploits it. It understands it. It uses it. And so... So what is the particle to the atom?

Oh, right. So you have an electron in a traditional atom. And then you have the nucleus, which will have protons and neutrons, typically. Okay? Nucleus. Protons have a positive charge. Electrons... Negative.

So you'd think they would, you would think the electron would just collapse into the nucleus because it's got opposite charges attract, right? But no, it stays out here. And we so desperately wanted the atom to look like the solar system. It was, wait a minute, there's a nucleus and there are electrons going around it. Maybe it's the solar system all over again, but just on a small scale. And so you look close, it's like, no. The electron is not orbiting.

It's like hanging out in these clouds described by the wave that it also is. Okay? But so badly did we want to analogize it to the solar system that we called it not an orbit but an orbital. So electrons are in orbitals around the nucleus of the atom. So now you have an atom. Electrons can come and go. but the atom is the nucleus and the electrons

then the electrons can share their orbitals with other atoms they can give one, donate, share then you make a molecule so a molecule is more than one atom joined and here's what's completely

mindfuck hydrogen is a flammable gas oxygen promotes fire okay no smoking near oxygen tanks you put them together

it makes H2O which is water which extinguishes fires wow take sodium a metal that's soft enough to cut with a knife

that's explosive if you put it in water In fact, labs are always immersed in oil. It would explode if you put it in water. Chlorine, a deadly poisonous gas used in chemical warfare in the First World War. Chlorine gas, okay? You take sodium, combine it with chlorine, and you get table salt. Sodium chloride.

so the behavior of molecules is so different from the individual behavior of the atoms themselves it's like a it's like a circus yeah of and this is why chemistry is a entire field unto itself and all that is enabled empowered and manifested because of rules of quantum physics so when we talk about something like i think what we've been talking about more on this show has been like simulations right with regard when we talk about i think we kind of missed we think we're talking about quantum physics but we're actually not because when people talk about time travel or space travel like what what purview does that fall under yeah i mean you can travel forward in time using einstein's relativity and do you believe in that oh no no no we can we that's real it's

we're doing it right now it's well we're traveling forward in time one second per second Yes. But we are prisoners of the present, forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our unknowable future. And so the holy grail in there would be to step out of that prison cell and access your timeline, either forward or backwards. I talk about that in a book as a possible alien power where their relationship with time is different from ours and if they're living like a fourth a higher dimension then you know how you can move around in this room up down left right and you can repeat that all right you're not a prisoner in any given spot imagine your timeline stepping out of it and then rejoining it and then you can someone says well

when were you born no i'm always being born right then when did you die i'm always dying right here and I'm always doing all these things at all times. So it changes how you think about time. Now, with Einstein's relativity, if you go fast, time will tick more slowly for you than people back here on Earth. So that when you come back,

you might have aged, depending on how fast you go, you could age a year and Earth would have aged 10 years. This was famously shown in the movie Interstellar. Did you see that film? I did, but I don't really remember that film. Yeah, it's a lot of really crazy science-y stuff.

But his theory of relativity means that you can travel to the future. Yes. But you can't go backwards. No, you can't go backwards, right. You can travel into the future of the people who you were hanging out with. Okay. Okay. How?

Because when you're traveling fast, time ticks more slowly for you. But traveling fast at the speed of light fast? Well, speed of light time stops. So you don't want to go that fast. Okay. You want to go... Oh, 99%. You don't even just have to be greedy.

You have to speed of light. But how are you traveling like that? You're in a spaceship. You have to be in a spaceship or a rocket. I presume. Otherwise, space is not very good for you. But, I mean, people in space aren't time traveling when they're in space. They traveled.

So astronauts moving five miles per second. That's how fast they are in the International Space Station. Oh, okay. They're small compared to the speed of light, but you can calculate when they come back how much younger they are compared with a twin that they might have left on Earth. No way.

And so you can say, well, is it just a theory? How do we know? Wait, wait, they're younger than their counterpart. Because they didn't age as fast. So therefore they're younger. Yeah, they're not younger than when they left. They're just not as old as they would have been had they stayed on Earth.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. But if you can go forward, then you should be able to go backward. Well, except... Scott Bakula did promise us this in Quantum Leap. I mean, but every... The issue is going back in time,

because, so, suppose you go back in time and prevent your parents from meeting each other. That would be a great idea, by the way. Or, as was shown in at least one film, and I forgot which one it was, might have even been Arrival. If you go back in time and delay your parents for having sex for 10 minutes,

probably a different sperm would have fertilized the egg and you would be someone else. You'd be one of your siblings, but not you. But I bet I'd still have a podcast. So it doesn't require the gore of the Terminator to kill people to prevent someone from being born. Just prevent two people from meeting. Now watch.

If you did that, then you'd have never have been born to have gone back in time to prevent them from meeting each other. Oh. Just think it through. Yeah. Think it through. So there is a paradox of backwards time travel that is not entirely resolvable unless the universe splits into a whole other world.

And so there's a multi-universe people who think this way. They did talk a little bit about that in Dark Matter. blake crouch's novel and then there was a show that came out last year last couple years where you know he is sort of it's a multiverse thing he's like well in this other universe my wife and i conceived our child a few minutes different and it's like a boy instead of a girl or it's you know a totally different case so in that way whatever timeline you disrupted It became its own timeline and its own future. So because you would have prevented your parents from meeting and therefore you would not have been born to go back in time to prevent your parents from meeting,

the only real way out of that is to have the universe split and you create a whole other timeline of events. But why does going back in time necessarily preclude you from being born? Only if you happened either on purpose or by accident prevented your parents from meeting each other. But isn't it a scientific theory, and maybe it's not, you tell me that for every thought or every action, there's a reaction. Well, in forces, yeah, there's a force. There's an opposing force. Correct. Right.

So if you could go into the future, you could go to the past. Yeah, except it's not so much that you're stepping out of your timeline and then rejoining the future. Your time is just going more slowly. Oh, okay. It's going forward for everyone. I get that. I understand that. But just at a different rate.

So that's not the same thing as stepping out and rejoining. Okay. Yeah, because to your point, if you could do that, then why not go to the past? But if you go back to the past, you're going back to a predestined event that has already happened and you're not going to change it. Okay. So now Stephen Hawking came out with a chronology protection conjecture, which is he's suggesting that maybe one day in the future we will discover a law of physics that says why that's impossible

to happen and what is that called a chronology protection correction protection erection yeah i didn't say erection i said erection did not come out of my mouth no i know don't worry i won't pin that on you okay so so this time travel thing is it's no end of storytelling in science fiction, people love it. Now, here's a scenario that I just want you to think about. There's a hypothetical particle called a tachyon from the Greek root tachios, which is fast, like tachometer measures how fast your engine is turning.

So we invented that word for this hypothetical particle that lives faster than the speed of light, okay? If it did that, it would live backwards in time. So let's look at what that world would be like. And let's assume one day in the future we harness these tachyons. And I can send you a text with tachyons. You would then get the text before I sent it. That's kind of cool.

So watch what happens. You're my friend. I care about you. You're walking down the walkway. And you slip on a banana peel and get hurt. And I say, okay, I can prevent that from happening. All I have to do is text you with tachyons. So you get a text before that happened.

Okay, so watch what happens. I send you the text and I say, Chelsea, watch out for the banana peel. While you're reading the text, you step on the banana peel because you weren't looking where you were going. so the banana peel fate is built into that timeline okay because it already happened because it already happened because in a way i made it happen i created that loop yeah and there's something called a gin particle since you're going there i'm going to take you all the way okay can you go all the way you got the river okay a gin particle is a something that was never

created nor destroyed it only exists in a time loop and that's it's freaky to think about this do you remember the movie somewhere in time there's a love story that christopher reeve in it okay if not let's go to um message in a bottle uh no uh well let me describe this somewhere in time just because it's so romantic uh he's a professor at a university and an elderly woman comes up to him and hands him a beautiful jeweled locket and says, come to me, come back to me. And then she disappears. And he gathers some information, like, what is this? He goes to a physics professor, friend of his, and said, she was around 60 years ago, and she is asking you to come visit her when they're in their 20s, okay?

But I don't know how to time travel, but this professor has a way to time travel. So he time travels, goes back, and meets her. She doesn't know who he is, but she said, come back and meet me. So he meets her in this, like, beach hotel, and they befriend one another. They fall in love. and he so much feels for her he gives her this locket that she had given him

in the future and she cherishes that until she hands it back to him 60 years later it's a beautiful love story no action or anything no chase scenes it's just a

you know it's and so that locket was never created nor destroyed it only exists in this loop you see what i'm saying okay and the the back to the future michael j fox version of that is we i presume we remember this movie yes okay he's at the school dance yeah and he's he's

performing johnny be good and the person who was hired to be the band that night is the cousin of chuck berry okay and so he hears michael j fox's character marty perform this and and he he calls up chuck berry it's chuck chuck this is your cousin marion or whatever not marion marion berry was your mayor here uh whatever guy's name was marvin thank you i was close chuck chuck this is your cousin marvin this is that sound you've been looking for and he puts the phone out to the stage and he hears johnny be good played by michael j fox there it is johnny be good was never written it exists in this time loop right but you've only given us two examples in movies i know because because it's a more subtle but for me highly interesting

example of how a time line can trap something in a loop so that would be a time warp right No? Next week I'm seeing Rocky Horror on Broadway. I was going to say, that's not your kind of time warp. Anyhow, so time, it's fun to talk about time. And in the chapter Alien Powers, I explore the powers that aliens have had in famous movies and mind reading.

And I look at what's the physics of it, how would that manifest, what you should be cautious of. If they can put a thought in your head, game over. Well, it feels like that's already happening, but it's not aliens. It's just computers and algorithms. I mean, so we've already displayed our susceptibility, right? But if they can do that neurologically game over.

So do you know what can prevent electromagnetic penetration of your head? A metal shield over your head. because electromagnetic energy can't pass through the metal. Okay. Okay? Which is... A tinfoil hat. A tinfoil hat.

All right. Well, I guess you're going to... Did you bring some of those before you leave? I mean, we only had an hour, but it feels like I talked to you for 30 seconds. I think I'm in a time warp or a time loop. So the tinfoil hat would resist penetration of electromagnetic energy, which is what they would need to use to read your mind

because your mind is creating electromagnetic... We know we generate brain waves because you have electrochemical activity in the brain. And in principle, that's readable. In principle, an advanced alien technology, why wouldn't they just be able to read it like that? But you can't cheat physics. In the physics, you can't send waves through metal.

So the tinfoil hat, which of course in the old days was made of tin, now it's aluminum. Aluminum foil hat is what you would need in order to not have an alien either read your mind or implant your mind with their thoughts. Well, and also it's confusing now because artificial intelligence, AI, has become such a big part of our culture and our future.

And that's what our, it's like AI is being blurred or blunted by other AI. Like now we have self-made artificial intelligence. Yeah, AI is AI-ing itself. Yeah, right. So in there I talk about a sufficiently intelligent alien would chuckle at our AI because for us, our great measure of our AI was

can you simulate our intelligence? But an alien that's much more intelligent than us would just laugh at that. Right, because why would you want to do that if we're so dumb? I'm way beyond you anyway. How charming that is, yeah. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches,

there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

Bell. Connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo,

and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman.

Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? how about we flip it on its head how about we flip the script what if the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird Adam Scott

this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show I would never expect I would never set expectations for something like that to happen if the universe allows for

something like that to happen i am open to it i'm always going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like they're like oh what's the state everyone's so dumb except for you fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told

us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts well the book is called take me to your leader perspectives on your first alien encounter by neil degrasse tyson blessing us with another work of his well thank you for your interest yeah i'm always interested in talking to you i like the way you explain things thanks for coming and talking to us enchanted by your curiosity it's uh it's it's an educator's dream to be surrounded by people who continue to ask questions well into adulthood long after childhood because the real dip is coming out of elementary school you go into middle school and high school the kids have

such charming curiosity and then it goes i think gonads kick in you know and it's like there's a gap yeah maybe it resurrects again i think it does in college i think the classroom isn't always the best place for learning for so many people it is you're right just the environment like sometimes you just have to like there's so many other social aspects and like things that can distract you that you really like i know like i yeah i think a lot of my friends also feel the same way where you become curious when it's not when you're not being forced to oh okay because then it would naturally gurgle up within you and it's not being suppressed yeah you're like social reasons or anything about this yeah now i have the patience to learn whereas before i was like trying to get

a boyfriend in school i had other things going on you know there's a pecking order i was trying to get to the top of it so there was other distractions right right that's what i'm saying so so i think a person who retains their curiosity through there and into college i think they're primed to become scientists because then the world is your oyster right and and if you care that other people are as excited as you then you become an educator on top of that love it so yeah love it there it is great awesome girl i love your work i love your work right back at you you are you are just stay stay stay

on top of things I'll stay on top of things stay irreverent I will no problem there we need that yeah we do need it we do

we do it'd be great if I mean I'm actually looking forward to aliens coming and rescuing us and just being like listen we're so sorry about all of this and we're actually gonna take over

I'd be like thank you thank you if you want advice from Chelsea write in to dearchelseapodcast at gmail.com Dear Chelsea is a production

of iHeartMedia. Follow Chelsea on all socials at Chelsea Handler and find Catherine on TikTok at Flashcadabra. Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert, executive producer Catherine Law. Find full video episodes and minisodes now on Netflix and get tickets to see Chelsea live at ChelseaHandler.com. i survived nine months in captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The

Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.