Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - PART TWO: Why 3I/Atlas, an Approaching Comet, Could Carry Alien Technology, Why Your Spirituality Doesn’t Conflict with Extraterrestrials, & Why UAPs are A National Security Concern

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Aliens Incoming?! Harvard Scientist Dr. Avi Loeb reveals the astronomy behind why 3I/Atlas could cancel your Halloween plans… On October 29th, just two days before Halloween, a mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is set to make a highly unusual approach to our sun and it’s raising MAJOR red flags! Could this be a disguised alien mothership on a secret surveillance mission to Earth? The trajectory coincidences are so bizarre, they defy all known statistics. In this explosive episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, Dr. Avi Loeb (Harvard professor, astrophysicist, and bestselling author of Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars) dives deep with Mayim & Jonathan into what 3I/ATLAS might really be…and how it ties into everything we thought we knew about life beyond Earth. Dr. Avi Loeb also breaks down: - Did the U.S. Government recover four types of alien biological entities from UAP crash sites? - Evidence that human life may have been engineered by another species - Was Mars home to life before Earth? - The chilling reason you should NEVER shake an alien’s hand - Why Loeb says extraterrestrial life is a national security issue - The new “Loeb Scale” to evaluate interstellar object encounters - Why the discovery of alien life could be the only thing that unites humanity - His urgent call for a global organization to defend Earth against threats like aliens, AI, and climate change - The plan to build a DNA ark using artificial intelligence — a “Noah’s Ark” for Earth’s survival! - How science and spirituality can coexist, and why believing in aliens shouldn't conflict with faith - Why the hidden black holes theory doesn’t prove the multiverse - How we can finally pressure governments to reveal the truth about extraterrestrials Whether you’re a skeptic, a believer, or just curious about all things alien, this is the video you can’t afford to miss. Tune in to MBB now before October 29th possibly changes everything... Dr. Avi Loeb's latest book, Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars: ⁠https://www.harpercollins.com/products/interstellar-avi-loeb?variant=41641513418786⁠ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm I am Bialik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. Avi Loeb. He's the Frank B. B. Baird, Jr., professor of science at Harvard University. He's a best-selling author. We've been discussing in part one, Interstellar, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars. Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist, and he is literally one of the people who testifies in Congress about asking the government to release unidentified objects and equipment for an individual.

He is a deeply, deeply thoughtful and also very, very rigorously grounded in science, astrophysicist. And we're so excited to get to talk to him in part two. We have so much more to tackle, including issues of religion, issues of where we fit in the cosmos, and what it might mean to actually make contact with extraterrestrials. So here is our part two conversation with Dr. Avi Loeb. Break it down. You mentioned that in one point, 1.6 billion years, the sun will boil off all the oceans and we will have to go somewhere else.

But you dropped it very casually. Do you want to expand on that? Yeah. So the sun is just a nuclear reactor, okay, a fusion reactor. And it has a limited amount of fuel. Okay. So once it starts burning a significant fraction of the fuel, it will start dying. And within a billion years, it will become brighter, actually, to start with, and then it will boil off the temperature on Earth will rise and all the oceans will evaporate, the Earth will become a desert, just like Mars. You know, Mars lost its oceans because it lost its atmosphere, but the Earth, in the distant future, will lose its oceans because of the sun getting brighter.

And, you know, when Elon Musk talks about saving humanity by going to Mars, you know, I don't see that as a great vision because Mars is just another rock nearby. So we go from one rock to another. You know, just like if you are in the jungle, you go from one tree to another and then it's a big success story. No, you just found another tree. So who cares? Like the real advance of humanity was to go from those trees in Africa to a high rise in New York City or somewhere else, a big city. That's a big transition. We are not dependent on the bananas that are happening to grow in our environment. We actually can have agriculture that makes the amount of food that we need. You know that. So the next transition is actually to build a habitat in space that can support us. And by the way,

I see that less of a jump than going from the jungles of Africa to a high rise in New York City. going from a high rise in New York City to space is less of a transition as far as I can tell and I see that as the future of humanity. I do think that we need to go to space. I don't think we should just target another rock that happened to be next to us like the moon or Mars because that's very narrow-minded.

So the moon will also be inhospitable in a billion years and we should build some habitat in space that supports us. and then we can go places. I mean, I don't know that you want to go to Mars. The radiation is very bad there. There's a lot of things that seem very inhospitable that I would not want to go there.

If we think about the interstellar gardener theory and Earth like an experiment or like a recipe that was created and potentially many, you know, you make a lot of muffins that fail before you make your first great muffin that has all the good things in it. So if Earth is this amazing recipe that was created,

potentially there's a bunch of failed ones before, potentially there's a bunch of failed attempts at humanity to evolve, some of the conflict maybe, are we going to destroy ourselves through potential nuclear annihilation? Yeah. And by the way, related to what you just said, there is a question, suppose you dig down in Earth,

could there be any, we haven't found any computer terminals in digs, right? So, you know, it's reasonable to assume that we are the first technological civilization on Earth. But that should not be taken for granted, because if it happened, let's say, 200 million years ago, the surface of Earth was mixed with the interior as a result of geological activity. So, you know, so far we haven't found evidence for a technological civilization that predated us. But if you go 200 million years back, it's just 5%.

of the history of earth, going back, you know, when it was 95% of its current age, it could have been that there was intelligent life back then and it was wiped out. And that's another thing that would make Mayam a little bit uncomfortable. It's too... I think Mayam really wants to stay on Earth and not go anywhere. Is that true, Ma'am? Well, I mean, it's interesting because a lot of what we talk about on our podcast is Cy Phenomenon.

We talk to a lot of scientists who are delving into things like collective consciousness and things like, you know, remote viewing and telepathy and, you know, trying to understand sort of the scientific basis of these things. So I guess I'm interested in the mind. You know, I'm interested in what we can conjure and what we believe. So I'm very interested in intrancental phenomenon. I'm interested in, you know, the similarities between, let's say, ancient mystics and, you know, modern Buddhists, you know, I'm interested in the sort of things that unify us and specifically interested in, you know, the substrates of the brain and the nervous system that allow us to experience these things. You know, I think for a lot of people, the fact that there might have been intelligent life that I'll never be able to detect doesn't feel like the highest priority. But when, you know, something like the telepathy tapes goes viral saying that nonverbal autistic children all meet in a virtual collective consciousness place, Like, that's kind of interesting to me.

Like, what? I should say we now have some new tool that didn't exist in the past that would actually revolutionize the way we think about the mind. And that's AI. It's an artificial neural network. And my point is we might realize that what we call consciousness, these are just states of a very complex neural network. So once we reach the number of parameters in AI systems

that are, equivalent to the number of parameters in the human brain, it will exhibit all the phenomena. And when you ask what is free will, for example, I would argue it's actually a result of the human brain being so complex and so unpredictable because of its complexity, and the environment that influences it being so complex as well, that makes our actions unpredictable. So we call it free will, but in reality, it's just, you know, we can imitate that by building a neural network that is artificial, that is as complex as the human brain, or even more. And when we build AI that is more complex than the human brain, we'll see superhuman intelligence,

something that our brain cannot comprehend because, you know, it was limited by biological constraints. And the question is, will we meet a superior intelligence because we developed it in AI, artificial intelligence, or because alien intelligence visits us? You know, that is my question, which one would be first? Always with the aliens, Avi. Always. It always comes back to the aliens. I see a connection between what you're both saying. If Earth was an experiment, a recipe that was created, and we think about the creation of Earth, not from a Big Bang, but from some external source, which I think is really interesting

because it touches on what people are fascinated about with simulation theory, not that we can't control things, but that there's some larger creator outside of our environment. Isn't that the theme of religions? Well, that's what I was also going to say is that we have this fascination. So what I'm really interested in how the through line and narratives, even from disparate sources, have a commonality that may point to a universal truth of some kind, even if the detail of the story is wrong. But maybe what the fact that everyone is fascinated by something may point to something else.

So in your theory of the interstellar gardener, the creation of the earth from an outside source, then the question is, well, why create it? So the purpose of creating life then goes to the purpose of us being here. We're all cute and funny and we like to make jokes and have, make babies and write books. But then the question a lot of the spiritual people ask is, well, what is the larger purpose? Is it simply to propagate the species or are we here to evolve in some capacity?

My view is that we are completely insignificant. We have no purpose. We are just, you know, so we tend to think that we are important. That's what my daughters thought, you know, when they were young, they thought that they're important. But once you realize the cosmos at large, you know, it's not about us. You know, we are late to the party.

We arrived in the last few, million years of cosmic history. So, and we are not at the center of stage. So if you are going to a play and you are not at the center of stage and you are late to the play, the play is not about you. Okay, I'm sorry to break it down. And that is, you know, going against what we want to believe. And we think that even if aliens visit us, it's because we are fascinating. They want to do something. They realize that we are interested. No, they may be just like, you know, someone that walks on the street and happens to step on an ant in the crack of the pavement and the ant thinks it's all about itself. You know, like I say, forget about us being important. We don't have a

purpose. I think we should just enjoy the show. You know, we are in this beautiful show that the cosmos is giving us. Instead of looking up, we keep reading the news every day that are depressing. We look down on other people. I say, you know, there is a much more uplifting story going on in the universe at large. And we are not a central part in it. That's the amazing thing that we can actually realize that we should be humble. Imagine that. We can be humble. We can realize that there is something bigger than us. I 100% agree with you. And the experiment could be totally insignificant, yet still an experiment with a potential outcome, which is, will this toy species that was created be able to make the leap?

outside of the end result of when the earth will end. And in the process of doing so, it may be that we have to use extrasensory capability. We have to expand the notion of what we believe. We have to avoid only becoming sheep and learning how to question. So what do you think, how do they view us right now? Is a success story or is a failure? No, I think they're like,

how is it that they possibly have been so blind for so long, continuing to fight amongst themselves, continuing to believe that they're so important when the larger opportunity is so much greater than they can potentially see. That's exactly my point. That's exactly my point. And, you know, that's one reason I'm really studying interstellar space and looking for someone else out there because I look at the party that we have here on Earth and I don't enjoy it so much, you know.

So I'm looking through the window to see if there is any newcomer to the party that will improve the quality of the party, you know, like, and you just look at world politics and people fighting each other in conflicts. We are, you know, we are wasting resources on killing each other. You know, we could do much better. There is a better, we are not the pinnacle of creation. There is room for improvement. And perhaps by seeing someone who survived for much longer billions of years, we will get a role model that is better than our politicians. I completely agree. And to tie this back again to what you're saying, saying is what Maim's perspective is on sci phenomenon and looking at expanding consciousness

in the more specific human interaction, is there a collective consciousness? Are we actually bridged by something non-material that we may otherwise not have realized, although the mystics point to it, that can also increase our ability to feel more connected to one another, have a more unified feeling, have more awe, wonder, joy. So I had the two interesting events six months ago. One, there was a group of scholars from the organization Christianity today that came to visit me at Harvard and they asked me whether if we find extraterrestrials, whether it will, you know, do any harm to their religious belief. And I said, look, I have two daughters. And when the second one was born, it didn't take away from the

that I have to the first one. So imagining that God is like a parent that can attend only to one child is very demeaning. You know, like God can have as many civilizations as we want out there in the universe. And God should be able to deal with all of them. Now, of course, if we have siblings, we might get jealous because, you know, just like in a family, if your sister or brother happens to be more successful than you are, you might be jealous. I mean, so if we find extraterrestrials that are more accomplished than we are in science and technology, we might be just. But that will not take away your religious belief that there is apparent.

And they accepted that, actually, and they were happy with that answer. Now, the second event was a Jewish gathering where I was asked about the same issue. And again, I think science is not in contradiction with religion, the way many people, people portrayed in the sense that, you know, if you have a universe and you don't want to study it and you want to believe in God, you actually are losing something because when there is an object that is very delicate, in fact, the best expression of love to someone else is when you want to know everything about that person. That's the most sincere expression of love. You want to know everything about the subject of your love. And so if you want to believe in God, you know,

doing science is the best way to express your love because you want to know everything possible about the universe, right? Anything, any detail that will fill you up with oh. And it's much better to know the details because you don't appreciate the universe as much if you don't know the details. And science is doing just that. It's getting as much data as possible and improving the view of how the universe came about and what it includes and so forth. So the way I see it is science is an enhancer of religion rather than in... Now, of course, religions make statements about how the universe started that are not consistent with the Big Bang theory that we have right now,

but all of these statements about things that science can explore about the physical reality should not be held as absolute truth because science is work in progress. But in general, philosophically speaking, I think science can enhance your religious O. And science, you know, if you study the universe, you should be modest because you realize that you are not that important. You're short-lived. You have such a small body compared to the rest of the universe. You know, like it's inappropriate to have this eubris that people often have about our importance. My NBi Alex breakdown is supported by Superpower.

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Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiotics breakdown to help support the show. I wonder if you feel like that's sort of just part of our machinery, meaning, you know, when you look at the variety of experiences that people have, and we talk to some really interesting near-death experience, people who, you know, have these incredible experiences.

and what the kind of unifying emotional content of it is, even if we remove the God kind of concept, the sort of unifying experience that people in near-death experiences talk about people in transcendental experiences, psychedelic experiences, deep meditative experiences. People describe love. And what many people say is, like, that word is not even sufficient to describe the feeling inside,

right, when you feel protected and it's different than anything on this human plane. Do you think that that's just sort of part of the machinery, in which case religion would be a way to sort of create, you know, this sort of structure that allows us to seek that? Is that just sort of part of the machinery? I think fundamentally, here is my take on this. Fundamentally, we realize since the time that we are born that we will die. that's a devastating piece of news. And we work throughout our life to get meaning to living, you know, because what's the meaning of life if you know that it will end and nothing will survive?

It's just like unplugging a computer from the power and then the computer is dead, you know, even if it has a superhuman intelligence, you know, all of these AI machines, if you stop the power, there will be nothing. and you can think of the human body just like that. You know, when we die, nothing survives. And if you realize that, then, well, you can take two takes on this. One, you can say, oh, actually death doesn't exist. You go to some other world. And in fact, even if, you know, if you commit suicide, you know, there are these terrorists that are willing to die just for the sake of the promise they're given.

They never come back to sue whoever promised them that, of course, and that's the trick here. But the other approach, instead of believing that death is not really the end, is to say, well, I can get a meaning by belonging to something bigger than myself, by feeling a connection. And in fact, because I have a connection to something bigger, that's something bigger is actually, will survive even my death. Okay. So that's a way of getting some meaning because there is something bigger than our short life. And, you know, I see myself in a much more lonelier place. I don't get meaning by connecting to other people with the same devastating fate. If all of us will die, then the connection I have to other people would also disappear.

I see myself as, you know, I would be really happy if there was a way to use AI-assisted medicine to live forever. I would be really happy to live forever to simply eliminate this catastrophe that we imagine where we will die and that's why we do work throughout our life to fulfill some kind of a meaning. Instead of that, let's avoid dying. Okay, we can do that with AI assisted medicine.

If we can avoid dying, then that would be amazing because there is so much that we don't understand about the universe and I would like to understand it. and that could take me millions of years, billions of years. I'll be happy to live for that long. Of course, I'll give up my tenure at Harvard because I want younger people to also hold this job.

That would not be the issue. But I really want to live forever instead of saying, okay, I will die and let's all believe in something else. Instead of that, let's accept that, you know, we would die if we let biology dictate our fate, but we can avoid biology by, you know, understanding why we die and preventing it. And it's sort of like fixing a car.

You know, the car, the engine might not work after a while, but you realize that you can fix the engine and then it will work. And then the car would drive forever. And that to me is the actual meaning. The meaning is to find a way to live forever, really to live forever, not by having babies or writing books, but you yourself. And just think about the wisdom that you will accumulate in, million years. You'll accumulate an enormous amount of wisdom, but you'll then face the oceans boiling

off and have to leave anyway. Oh, no. You go to space, as I said. You don't rely on this rock that we were born on. It's just like going from the jungles to a high rise. The next step is going from a high rise to a space station. Tell us about hidden black holes. We don't know what most of the matter in the universe he is, you know, and that's 85% of the matter in the universe. You know, the things, the atoms that we are made of, that our body is made of is ordinary matter, but apparently there is six times more of something else, some stuff that we don't know. The only reason we know about it is because it gravitates, it affects gravity, it binds galaxies together, and the visible matter is unable to do that. So we call it invisible

matter. We call it dark matter. It's just a way of encapsulating our ignorance. And, you know, one possibility is that in the early universe, early on, there were tiny black holes that were made. And black holes would not produce any light. Those black holes that have roughly the mass of an asteroid, you know, like similar to three-eye Atlas. And if it's an asteroid, we don't know what it is. But then those black holes, small black holes, will behave as dark matter. That's one possibility. Just to explain what a black hole is, that's a structure of space time. As I mentioned, gravity is the curvature of space time. And if you condense matter to a point, then you get such a major curvature of space time that you get a region of space that nothing can escape from.

So it's sort of the ultimate prison. Another way to think of it is like Vegas. Anything that happens inside a black hole will never go out of it. Everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. In the case of a black hole, it's definitely the case. Even light cannot escape from a black hole. And by the way, I was the founding director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University. And Stephen Hawking came to my home for the inauguration.

And my wife made him, he came for Passover. actually. That was his first experience. And he ate everything that my wife made for him and loved it, actually, and gave a speech about it. But coming back to Blackhors, he was one of the people who actually studied them in great detail and realized their properties. But he also realized, you know, that's a funny story that back in around 1972, there was a graduate student at Princeton named Jacob Beckenstein. And he said, well, it looks like black holes might have entropy because when you put two of them together, you get more surface than the sum of the surfaces that each of them had. And that sounds like entropy that is always increasing.

And the entropy should be proportional to the area, the surface area of the event horizon of a black hole. That was a revolutionary idea. and his mentor, John Wheeler, said it's such a crazy idea that it might be true. Coming back to you, my name, sometimes crazy ideas are true. Anyway, so Stephen Hawking thought that's a stupid idea. And he said, I will demonstrate that it's wrong. So he did a quantum mechanical calculation and realized, in fact, Beckenstein was right. Black holes not only have an entropy, but they actually.

actually emit thermal radiation, and they evaporate as a result of that. So small black hole, very tiny black holes would explode. And that's the most important result derived by Stephen Hawking by trying to prove Beckenstein wrong. So what does it teach us? It teaches us first that scientists can change opinions. Okay. And that's accepted because if you realize new results or new evidence, you're allowed

to change opinions. It's not politics. You can change opinions because you realize something you didn't realize before. It's work in progress. And the second thing is, even, you know, black holes that you would think are the blackest things that you can imagine that do not emit any light, even they emit light. So what does that mean to our understanding of the fabric of the universe? What are these black holes doing in terms of our world? So every galaxy, like the Milky Way, so the universe is organized to stars forming in the core of galaxies, and there are about a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way

in the observable volume of the universe and many more beyond. So we can see only out to some distance, which is called the cosmic horizon. that's the distance that light traveled since the Big Bang. We cannot see beyond that because light could not have bridged the distance farther away. And within that distance, we see a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way. Inside each of them, there are about 100 billion stars like the sun. And so at the center of each galaxy, there is a supermassive black hole.

There is a black hole that must have been the result of, you know, it's just like water going down the drain. some gas and stars, you know, went to the center of the galaxy and made this black hole. And then you see it in every galaxy. Our galaxy has a black hole of four million times the mass of the sun at the center. And every galaxy, I mean, there are black holes that exist all the way back to when the universe was just about 5% of its present age that have black holes that are up to 10 billion times the mass of the sun. And so these are giant black holes, by the way. If you wanted to make a black hole, one way with ordinary matter,

you know, if you were to pour water into the orbit of Jupiter, if you fill the orbit of Jupiter with water, you will get a black hole of about 100 million times the mass of the sun. You just need a huge swimming pool where you pour water. There is not enough water in the Milky Way galaxy to do that. But I'm just saying, if you pour water into the, fill this, orbit of Jupiter with water, you get, you know, this would be within the event horizon of a black hole of a hundred million times the mass of the sun. And these black holes, these supermassive black holes

exist at galaxy centers, you know, and we don't know what happens at the center of black holes because, again, Einstein's theory breaks down. And my advice to, you know, some string theories who have conjectures about what, you know, how to unify quantum mechanics and gravity is, a journey into a black hole and figure it out. And they blame me for having an ulterior motive for sending them into a black hole. There's like some way out there theories, though, that like we are in a black hole or black holes are the way that you go through to multiverses. But that's not substantiated by what we know as of now. Because the, what happens close to the singularity of a black hole is very different than the type of universe that we have, that we are observance.

The universe is pretty much uniform all the way out to the cosmic horizon has the same conditions everywhere. And these conditions go out to distances that are at least 4,000 times bigger than we can see. So it's just a huge volume that has the same conditions. By the way, there is this question of how were these conditions arranged across such vast scales to be the same? because if you look in one direction, the light arrived just now to us from that cosmic horizon. You look at the opposite direction, it arrived to us just now. There wasn't enough time for light to cross the diameter of the cosmic horizon.

So from that point to the other point, and there must have been something especially in the way the universe was prepared early on, and there are theories about that. I do think it's strange that all these galaxies have these garbage disposals as black holes in the middle of that just like we don't know what's happening. Think of it as an amusement park because if you get close to the horizon of a black hole, time is ticking more slowly. So it would make sense to have a beauty salon there. Another thing, because you will age more slowly than anyone else far away. And if you look straight,

light, if you go to the right place, light goes in a circle around the black hole so you can see your back by looking forward. And you can dump your trash into a black hole and get a lot of clean energy in return. You know, that's the ultimate source of clean energy. It's very environmentally friendly if you're not burned by the burst of radiation that comes from that. But if you wanted to use your trash and convert it to energy more efficiently than a nuclear reactor can, a black hole is the best location for that. So having a civilization close to a black hole is a great, you know, perk. I want to ask a question that is not necessarily political, but it does involve sort of, you know, political entities in that. You know, one of the things that's so maddening to me is that there may actually be debris, artifacts, you know,

unidentified materials that the government has. And obviously there's an entire universe, for lack of a better word, of conspiracy theories around what the government doesn't want us to know and what the government already knows and what the government is covering up. What's the best way to sort of approach this? I wish that there was some kind of way to just say, you have to release this information, but if we can't get the Jeffrey Epstein papers, I don't think UFOs are going to come easier. First of all, let me mention an anecdote because a few days ago I participated in the podcast where I was asked, you know, some of our audience members are saying that you floated the possibility that 3-Ey Atlas is alien technology in order to distract us from the Epstein files.

And my response to that is go to Amazon right now and purchase a half a meter telescope because that would allow you to see the old. object in the sky. I cannot really fake it. It's not something I can create with a Jewish laser. And because it's so far away, it's like four times the Earth's sun separation. And the Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb Telescope are looking at it and it's in the right direction. It has to be very far. And it's real. It's something real in the sky. And you can see it yourself. So that's the difference. You know, one difference between a conspiracy theorist and a scientist is a follows. I was asked how to tell the difference. How do you tell the difference between a conspiracy theories and a scientist? It's very easy. You just give them more data. The scientists will be

delighted, even if it contradicts their previous views on the subject. But the more data we have, the better knowledge we have. And if a scientist is not too attached to their ego, you know, they should be delighted with more data. But the conspiracy theorist will be upset, especially if the data violates their conspiracy theory. And so that's the simplest way to tell the difference. If you have a friend and you don't know whether that is a conspiracy theorist or a scientist, just ask them this question.

Would you be happier if you had more data? And so coming back to your question, how do we tell that, you know, the government holds secrets, it's by seeing the data. You know, I don't believe, I don't believe stories that people tell me. I don't care about stories. I want to see the evidence, okay? And if I see it, I'll believe it. You know, if the government has something that they know about,

and by the way, Tulsi Gabbard just expressed herself a few days ago, saying that, you know, she knows about objects that, may be interesting. She didn't really get into details. And then, you know, that's interesting. I would like to see that data and maybe help government figure it out. But without seeing the data, I don't care what stories people tell me. Because I was burned many times before when people would say something, it turns out to be wrong. And, you know, it's wishful thinking. Sometimes people illusion themselves. They want to believe something. And as a result, they believe in it. But it turns out to be unsubstantiated.

So, you know, the judicial system, I mean, if you go to a courtroom, the decision is made by people, okay? And very often there is no hard data, and they have to make a judgment. But look at how many times people on death row were exonerated as a result of DNA evidence. And that tells you that not only the jury, but also, you know, but also the, the people who testified against them were fully convinced that they're guilty, and it turns out they're not guilty. And so why believe people?

I mean, frankly, that's why I don't like social media, because you can be liked. Everyone would believe the same story, but the story is completely fabricated. And by the way, I should say one more thing. Over the past few days, I was interviewed maybe on, I would say, two dozen, over the past few days, two dozen television stations. And the one thing that struck me,

it was including Fox News, CNN, newsmax, a lot of, from all stripes of politics, of the political spectrum. And what was remarkable to me is they would invite me to join 10 minutes before the interview. So I would hear other stories before my segment, And I would hear the same stories on the same day.

And I would see how the same story is being told in different television stations. And it's remarkable how different the narrative is. It's, you know, our society in the U.S. right now is so polarized. I got a first-hand look at that by hearing those segments before mine on the stories of the day, being told in completely different ways. And that's supposed to be professional reporters, right? Well, they are very biased, I must say, because these stories were not compatible.

You mentioned earlier in the interview that you weren't finding much intelligence in academia. Can you speak to academia and the nature of these institutions which have the largest amounts of research happening? What are you seeing there in terms of their approach to breaking down siloed narratives or status quo to find, you know, more interesting truth.

You see, when I entered science, I was under the illusion that it's all about merit, that it's not about showing off. It's about, you know, discovering something substantive. And then once you discover it, everyone will accept it. And it will be a great contribution to our knowledge. that was the narrative that I got from reading books, textbooks about how physics went through early on. But now, in retrospect, you know, more than 40 years after that, and by the way, I lived through about half of modern physics, the history of modern physics. So I started modern physics when it was half its current age, which makes me a good spectator, you know, being.

able to gauge what really is going on. And what I see is that, you know, academia was initially constructed in a way that you give tenure to individuals based on their accomplishments, and that would free them from the burden of, you know, being liked or everyone agreeing with them. They could explore new territories of knowledge that are very often foreign. to most people. They feel uncomfortable when you tell them that not everything in the sky is rocks. You know, because they are still in the Stone Age where everything in the sky must be stones. We know that we send space probes out there. And so other civilizations might have done the same. Why is that a heresy? And so the point is that academia was constructed to allow the

freedom to think outside the beaten path. And that's the idea of tenure. But what you find in reality is that once, you know, people get tenure, they are all about virtual signaling, about showing off, showing that they are smart because they need to get funding to their students, postdocs. So they need to build echo chambers that repeat their mantra. And they expect the people that work with them to repeat their mantras, not to violate their dogma or doctrine. And as a result, what you end up is in a situation where you have these silos, as you mentioned, that, you know, people belong to a narrative that was known for a while and they feel that their ego is tied up with that narrative and that, you know, they want to promote that narrative with everyone they work with so that they will get more funding, they will get honors and awards. So it's all about showing off and demonstrating to your peers that you're smart. But that's not really the reason to do scholarship. The reason should be to understand, especially in context of physics, to understand the physical reality in the context of science.

So how can you have the mainstream of theoretical physics for nearly 50 years working on a concept of exodemensions, you know, on supersymmetry and so forth? these are ideas that are the foundation of string theory, and we have no experimental test to validate the path that we're taking. There is nothing that says you're taking the right path. You know, you can go on this path forever, but you want to know whether this path leads anywhere or should you have taken a different path. And the fact that it's celebrated in academia,

that people have got honors awards for just showing that they're smart without actually explaining nature. To me illustrates, you know, the unfortunate fate of academic life that is all about showing off and demonstrating that you are smart, but it's not about understanding nature in the context of the sciences. And so I feel that we're missing the point. Now, on top of that, I mean, I belong to Harvard University. You know, I have three narratives to my identity. One is I was born in Israel. Second, you know, I'm Jewish. And third, you know, I'm a scientist. And finally, I'm a member of the Harvard

University professor's sort of club, so to speak. And all of these facets of my existence, my identity were under attack over the past two years. You know, and I'm entirely proud of my roots. I will not apologize for any of these traits for being born in Israel, for being Jewish, being a scientist or being at a Harvard university. And I believe, and I

actually criticized, you know, the politics in Israel, I criticized the politics at Harvard. And I spoke with who is now the president of Harvard and after October 7th and said, here are the ways that Harvard should improve because

what happened was that politics and the far progressive left ideas were introduced to campus. And that is not a good way to maintain scholarship. Politics should be out of campus because you are getting students that come from homes that represent half of the country that is conservative. And you should not introduce a political narrative into scholarship because you alienate those students, even if they don't tell you that. The same is true about faculty hire.

And I think what Harvard suffers right now is the result of this unfortunate approach that was taken over the past decade or two. And we shouldn't have gone this path. And so just to summarize my answer to you, in the context of science or scholarship in general, we should care about the subject that we are studying, not about showing off and demonstrating that we are smart. That's not objective. And in the context of scholarship more broadly, we should not bring politics into the camp. Of course, we should listen to each other and respect different views. And there should be diversity of opinions. And there shouldn't be a political narrative that favors, you know, one extreme of the political map.

And I think all the problems we have right now in academia result from those two roots. and the public is losing some of the trust in our academic institutions because of that. Avi, before we let you go, tell us a few of your most out there ideas that get you in hot water or get people maybe doing a double take at a dinner party. You should ask them about that because to me all of the ideas sound completely natural. You know, I'm not trying to be provocative. For example, with respect to three-eye Atlas, I did not reach out to any news agency. I did not.

I just wrote my papers, and then the New York Post didn't interview me. They just wrote a big sensational story, and that was picked up by other journalists, and then it became viral. And then, you know, so I'm sorry, but, you know, the one thing about my life that I don't fully understand. is to me, everything I say makes sense. It sounds like common sense. And I don't expect it to be unusual. And in fact, when people tell me that it sounds strange or unusual, I'm surprised. But on the other hand, it was a benefit for me because otherwise I would not get tenure at Harvard. I got tenured within three years. And I got my PhD at age 24. Now, if you ask, how is that possible? It's because

for some reason, other people do not have these ideas. I'm not good at computers, for example. When I finished my PhD and I came to visit the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a person there that offered me a five-year fellowship, John Bacall, he asked me, what computer languages are you using? And I said, well, I'm just using programs that can allow me to solve ordinary differential equations. And otherwise, I don't care much about computers. and he said, how do you think you will have a career?

That was 1986. And the only reason I managed to have a career is because I think of ideas that other people do not think about. Now, you ask me, how is that possible? You know, if other people had the same ideas, then nobody would care about me. You know, I would never be reported about by the New York Post. I would never get the attention that I get, like, you know, a dozen TV stations over the past few days. I would never get to appear in, you know, a 4,000 podcast over the past five years. But, you know, miraculously, it doesn't come up in the minds of other people.

I don't know why. I think they gave you tenure because they didn't want you to keep asking questions. They were like, let's just give them tenure. He'll stop asking questions. Who is this person in the Haggadah of Passover who asks question? How is that person regarded? Oh, are you the wise, the simple, the wicked or the one who does not know to end? ask. No, asking questions is the wise, isn't it? Yes. Well, there's different kinds of questions.

I think they gave him tenure to protect him. They're like, if you don't have tenure, so they're going to throw you right out of here. We better make sure you're safe. Well, let me say the following. I had the same flow of ideas, the same rate of new ideas since I was young. I'm jogging every morning at sunrise for three miles. I'm in very good shape. And then, you know, nothing much changed. And if at some point I stop having ideas, you know, I told my students, you can shoot me. That's no problem.

Because what's the point of living, you know? You grew up on a farm. And I wonder if you can tell us maybe three things that you learned as a child that you feel created the scientists that you are today. I loved going on a tractor to the hills of the village to read the philosophy books. And that gave me sort of the peace of mind away from people. And that's one thing that I'm practicing now. I don't care how many likes I have. It's really irrelevant.

And philosophy gave me a sense of the bigger picture, thinking about the big picture, not about the technical details. Because, you know, in science, most scientists are nerds. They just dig down the path that they took early on, and they reach sometimes the bedrock of the subject they work on, and then they can't discover anything new. And I'm very different. I'm broad.

You know, I look at it philosophically. That makes me quite different. And the only reason I ended up as a scientist is because of circumstances that I was recruited to the Israeli military, and I thought the best way of passing through those years would be to pursue a degree in physics and mathematics. And that was possible in a special program that I attended. And actually, the reason I'm in the U.S. is because President Reagan

started the Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s. And the first international project that they funded was led by me and an experimentalist. And that brought me to Washington, D.C., and after that, I was offered a position at Princeton. And so, you know, it was all a chain of circumstances. And later in life, I realized that it was an arranged marriage, but I'm actually married to my true love because I can pursue philosophical questions using the scientific method. And that's what I'm doing.

And the last thing that I learned from childhood was the connection to nature. You know, nature is so beautiful. When I jog every morning, I see. you know, wild turkeys, ducks, bunnies. It's just beautiful. I enjoy that. Much more rewarding than speaking with people. Okay.

And this connection to nature came from my childhood on a farm. And so three things. Having the philosophical outlook, you know, and being connected to nature. And, you know, not. The style of being on a farm is also, you know, you want to get the job done. That's the kind of people I work with. That's the, you know, the father that I have.

He wouldn't say much. He would solve problems. He would not, you know, show off. It's a very different tradition of actually doing things than talking about them. And what you find today on social media is people talk and talk and talk and not do anything. Even if they care about the cause, they use it. it to signal their virtues rather than actually solve the problem, they would put something in the backyard, a sign that says that they care about the problem, but they wouldn't do anything

to solve the problem. This is not the way, and the right way is, you know, that what my father taught me, which is, you know, just do it, you know, and do it in a way that is not bragging. It's just doing the right thing. Our final question for you, what do you want people to think about when they think about the future of humanity, our species, or our planet? Okay. First, you know, I thought that you will ask a question that I was asked recently, and that is how do I want to be remembered? And the answer to that is by my future work, I don't care about what I did in the past. I want people to remember me by what I will do in the future. Okay? And it will always be true, because I always want to get better. But in terms of the future of humanity, it basically follows from what we discussed.

And my hope is that first of all, we will realize, let's say, if 3i Atlas happens to be alien tech, or if some future object happens to be alien tech, we will come together. We will realize that we are all in the same boat and it will start a sort of a messianic age of cooperation here on Earth. that's my hope that instead of looking down at each other we will look up and then and then once we realize there is much more real estate out there and you know the stage is so big and and offers so many resources my hope is that within the next few hundreds of years humanity will move on to have groups of people living on on platforms the space platforms that is the next transition you know

as we went from trees in the jungle to high rises in cities, and the next step is going to space in a habitat that will support us. And that's the way I see it. Now, my hope is that before I die, we will find a way to extend life. And I want to live forever. If I can do that, you know, then the priorities will change, of course. Avi, we have the solution.

Believe in God and you will live forever. It could be an illusion that you convince yourself of some story. As I said, I don't want stories. I want actually AI-assisted medicine to extend my life. I don't need a story because the problem with this story is that once you die, you can't go back and say you were wrong. I'm going to come back and tell you, Avi. I'm going to be like, Avi, you were wrong.

Thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure talking with you, Interstellar. The search for extraterrestrial life and our future in the stars is absolutely delightful. And there's even some funny stuff in it if you couldn't tell Dr. Loeb was a funny guy. So thank you so much. I should say that's what my wife says, that I'm funny. And she says, the funny thing about you is that you don't mean to be funny. You're just funny because you believe in what you say, but then it's funny.

I think you missed your calling. You should not have been an astrophysicist. You should have been a comedian. Really? No. No. Okay. Thank you so much.

We really appreciate it. You know, the thing about people who study astrophysics, they take a lot of things for granted that they think people understand. It's been a minute since I have had to think about quantum physics. And it's hard. Like, I just want to sort of touch on this dark matter notion because, you know, I was not raised a scientist, meaning I didn't kind of discover science as a passion of mine until, you know, high school.

So I had no idea. I mean, like zero idea about a lot of the other kind of scientific stuff that many people who were into science knew about. Like, sure, I like had known that Carl Sagan existed and like, oh, I've heard of these things. But it wasn't until, honestly, I took a deep, you know, dive as a scientist in college, you know, in my 20s that I understood, like, what does it mean to say that 85% of the matter out there we don't know what it is? Like, that's a really big concept. And to say, like, well, of course, it's not really gravity. It's just the bend of space time. Like, these are big concepts.

So in case you got lost, there are wonderful resources. You know, Richard Feynman's great. And, like, there are great resources to try and, you know, sort of like get a handle on these things. And also the question is also how much, and I'm thinking of you, Jonathan, like, how much do you need to know? Meaning, like, I'm trying to think about what is going through Jonathan's brain when he's like, well, the bend and the black hole and like, nothing can go in and life can't reflect out. And if it happens in there, everything stays in there. Ha, ha, ha, ha, little Las Vegas joke. You know, I'm looking at you and thinking, you know, that's not the best way to explain to

Jonathan where 85% of the matter in the universe is. It's hard. I think about Deepak Chopra, who started our interview with him, our second one, that talked about simulation theory and extrasensory abilities, where he talked about how the hard problem, one of the hard problems in science is the fact that they don't know what this dark matter is, what it's made out of, what it actually does. and it actually showed a lack of, you know, finishedness to our exploration of our existence, the world around us and what we are each capable of. You know, Dr. Avi didn't lean into the sci phenomenon, but there was sort of a moment where we were trying to put it together because I do believe that as he explores outer space, we're exploring our capacity here on Earth.

And I do think that there's an evolutionary process that we are all in. and in the sort of scope of time of humanity, we are still just coming out of this space where our perception of reality is so focused and has been so focused on getting food, replicating the species, and continuing to propagate that we don't even see what the larger reality around us is.

I mean, please, I was afraid to ask Avi if he really loves his wife and his children. Maybe he doesn't believe in love. I was afraid. He was getting so binary on me. I was like, I don't want to poke this too much. How do you even know you like your children? It's just I got nervous.

What do you think about the potential space rock that may be an intergalactic spaceship heading towards Earth? The October 29th situation? I mean, look, he definitely identified components of it that I also find very, very, I don't say troubling, interesting, surprising, you know, in terms of coincidence. I'm mostly interested in the path that it's taking. Not crazy about, you know, I made a headlight joke.

I'm not crazy about this notion of like, if there's interstellar space equipment, do they really need headlights? Like, do they need the kind that stay on all the time? Do they switch them on? But there could be other things that are emanating. You know, it's just, I mean, I'll be paying close attention. I'm not making any big Halloween plans. That's for darn toot and sure.

That's where you go, your Halloween plans. He said October 29th. I'm like, it's all Hallows Eve is waiting to happen. Jonathan, please remind everyone of all the fun things they can get over on Substack. We're really, really trying to encourage people to join our community over there, which is growing. It's a growing community of breakers. You can get exclusive content that you cannot get anywhere else. Deep Dives with Miami and I.

Special episodes happen there. And Miami recently released a handful of Big Bang. specific material. So if you're a big bang fan, you are going to get a lot of awesome content there. Join us on Substack. MyN. B. Alex breakdown on Substack. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's Miami Alex breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.