Something You Should Know - What Every Traveler Must Know Today & Is There Intelligent Alien Life Out There?

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Here’s some good advice: SLOW DOWN! This episode begins with a list of things you do every day that you would actually do better if you did them slower. Source: Debbie Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress https://amzn.to/45kCGDc Traveling today can be difficult. Still, people like to travel. So, if you are heading off on vacation or taking a trip of any kind, you will enjoy hearing my guest, Patricia Schultz. She is a veteran travel journalist who has accumulated a knowledge base of travel hacks and tricks and otherwise great advice that she joins me with to share with you. And a lot of what she has to say, you probably haven’t heard before. Patricia is author of the book Why We Travel: 100 Reasons To See The World (https://amzn.to/45twsAW) Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? People have been asking that question for a long time. And the answer seems to be – we just don’t know. Still, the idea of alien life captures our imagination. If it has captured your imagination, you are really going to like listening to my guest, Jaime Green. She is a science writer, editor, and teacher, and author of the book The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos (https://amzn.to/45iVumb) How many times have you heard that you should never wash your good kitchen knives in the dishwasher? Why? What’s the worst that could happen? Actually, that’s just one of several pieces of kitchen wisdom that I tackle in this episode and the explanations may come as a surprise. https://www.consumerreports.org/dishwashers/things-to-never-put-in-dishwasher/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. The Dell Technologies’ Summer Sale Event is on, with limited-quantity deals on top tech! It’s the perfect season to power your passions during Dell’s Summer Sale Event. Save today by calling 877-ASK-DELL. Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match If you own a small business, you know the value of time. Innovation Refunds does too! They've made it easy to apply for the employee retention credit or ERC by going to https://getrefunds.com to see if your business qualifies in less than 8 minutes! Innovation Refunds has helped small businesses collect over $3 billion in payroll tax refunds! Let’s find “us” again by putting our phones down for five.  Five days, five hours, even five minutes. Join U.S. Cellular in the Phones Down For Five challenge! Find out more at https://USCellular.com/findus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, some good things that happen when you take time to slow down. Then, if you're planning to travel, you have to hear these great travel hacks from a very experienced and savvy traveler. I have a lot of things printed out, which seems very old school. But what if you lose your phone? You know, everything's on my phone.

But what if it's stolen or you misplace it and you go into your desperate mode? So I print out copies of visas and passports and credit cards. Also, is it okay to wash your good kitchen knives in the dishwasher? What's the worst that could happen? And is there life elsewhere in the universe? I've gotten the sense that some people think we've found life on Mars or, you know,

there are a lot of headlines about an Earth-like planet has been found. Oh, whoa, there are other worlds. There are other planets. That must mean they also have life. That's a big stretch. All this today on Something You Should Know. Mama, look at me.

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The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. I'm Mike Carruthers. Hi. This is Something You Should Know, and I'm really glad you're here listening today. How often have you heard the phrase or phrases like this that we live in a very fast-paced world and we like to do things fast. We like to get things done. But here's some advice that just about everybody could use and that is to slow down.

A lot of us rush to get things done and that actually could make it harder. For example, driving. Not only will you save gas and reduce the odds of an accident when you slow down, you'll actually feel more relaxed when you get to where you're going. Talking. When we slow down our speech, we come across as more intelligent and thoughtful. Eating. By slowing down when we eat, we eat less, have less indigestion, and absorb more nutrients. Slowing down while you're working is good advice because rushing or multitasking bottlenecks the brain and can result in more errors and wasted time in the long run. And chores. Washing the dishes or folding laundry can actually be therapeutic if we slow down and focus on the task at hand. We'll also do a much better job.

And that is something you should know. I don't think I know too many people who don't like to travel. There's just something about going somewhere other than where you are, to go to a destination, to do something fun and different. It's just something people love to do. And if you're traveling or thinking about traveling, I invite you to listen to my guest, Patricia Schultz. She is a veteran travel journalist who has written for the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler,

Fromers, and a lot of other publications. And she's author of a couple of books. One is called A Thousand Places to See Before You Die. And her latest is Why We Travel, 100 Reasons to See the World. Hi, Patricia. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. Thank you very much, thanks. So what is that urge, that drive to travel? Because especially now, I mean traveling by air in particular, I mean it can be so frustrating and so daunting and so not much fun.

So why do we travel? Why not just stay home? I think that it opens us up. It exhilarates us. To me, it's a sense of energy and a sense of wonderment and a sense of education and growth. It's many things to many different people. But I think at the end of the day, it just opens our world in a way that, you know, even the best day at the office or the best Netflix binge just simply cannot do. One of the things that happens when I travel, because I don't travel all that much, I don't travel anywhere near as much as you do, I find the whole experience to be very stressful from the minute I wake up and dread going to the airport.

And I suspect you, well, do you feel that or are you past that? Do you have a whole different mindset when it comes to that? Well, you know, there are two answers to that question. And yeah, it's kind of a hassle. I mean, certainly if you listen to what's going on, you know, as we sit here and speak, because now that we can travel and countries are open and encouraging and welcoming tourism all over again, maybe in ways they hadn't in the recent past, it's the lines are long, things are sold out, what you expected to just be a, you know,

fly by the seat of your pants, let's wander around, get lost and have a good time. Now you need to be better prepared. You need to pre-book lines for museums. You need to be ready for congestion and craziness and delays and even cancellation. So that, yes, is daunting. And I acknowledge that. And I try to be as ready and prepared as possible and not think that, you know, stuff isn't going to happen or that monkey wrench isn't going to be thrown into the works. But I also know that at the end of it, on the other end, once you arrive, that the rewards and the satisfaction of, you know, being immersed in a place, whether it's in your backyard or,

you know, here in the U.S. or someplace exotic and wonderful and totally unfamiliar and unknown to you on the other side of the world awaits. And the excitement of that just is worth everything to me. Every last delay and cold cup of coffee and chatty person at the airport next to you. And I mean, all of that stuff kind of fades away. And in the minute that you're experiencing something magnificent in a museum you've always wanted to visit makes it all worthwhile, and then some. Given your experience, your extensive experience traveling, could you please share some of your most favorite and most effective travel hacks that help you get from here to there and home again? Well, there are a couple thousand of them,

but what always appears at the top of my short list, I'm very prepared. And a lot of it is preparation that, you know, is pretty much built into my pre-departure, wherever I'm going to, if it's away for the weekend, or if it's, you know, on a three-week trip around the world or to someplace, you know, remote and difficult to get to, but I'm always prepared. I have, you know, on a three-week trip around the world or to someplace, you know, remote and difficult to get to, but I'm always prepared. I have, you know, duplicates of everything, of all the tech stuff and the chargers and the cables. And I have a lot of things printed out, which seems very old school, but what if you lose your phone? You know, everything's on my phone, but what if it's stolen or you misplace it or you go without it for a few hours because it's back at the hotel and you go into your,

you know, desperate mode. So I print out copies of visas and passports and credit cards. I have everything in triplicates. I have a whole set of all of that stuff with somebody back home so that if everything disappears when I'm on the road, I have one phone call to make to a family member who doesn't mind me waking them up at 2 o'clock in the morning to help me start canceling credit cards or to get a copy of my passport to me at the hotel or wherever I'm staying so that I can bring it to the embassy or the consulate to get a second passport in the works. So, you know, I'm always prepared in that way. And hopefully, and knock on wood, nothing has ever happened to me in all of these years. But I also have the peace of mind and knowing that should it happen, that, you know, the Girl Scout in me kicks in and I'm as prepared as I can be. And one of those things also is to bring cash. And there are countless situations that I've run into where you really need cash. And the number of times I've needed to dip into it assure me that you always need to have a little bit in your suitcase, a little bit on you, a little bit on your bag, whatever. And it's gotten me through a number

of times. Well, you really do prepare. I mean, that's a lot of preparation that I think, you know, so many of us would never do, but probably should. Because when things go wrong, it's a nightmare. Oh, it is. And you think, you know, you think, oh, there goes my trip. And it doesn't have to be that way. You know, maybe there goes your afternoon or there goes your day, but everything is solvable and everything, you know, if you're resourceful and if you're prepared, nothing really stands in the way between you and a great trip. So just be, you know, prepared, like I said, and those, all of those copies and those, you know, copies of

visas and passports and whatnot, I just always have a set ready for me, and it's the first thing that goes into my suitcase for the next time around. What about some ideas that start at the airport, through and onto the airplane until you get to your destination? Things that make that process, which is probably the worst part of the process, that might make that process, which is probably the worst part of the process, that might make that a little easier? Yeah. So a lot of it comes down to window versus aisle. I'm a window person. I've seen the northern lights from my window. I've leaned against the

wall of the cabin and slept many a moment in a way that I never could have if I was in the dreaded middle seat or the aisle. So make sure you always have the seat assignment. And a lot of airlines now are charging you for that. And that's horrible. But the nickel and diming has kind of gotten out of hand. And also to be open, you know, if you're sitting next to a chatty Kathy, who's, you know, either a nervous flyer, or, you know, can't wait to tell you where they're going and what they're going. You know, to just first impressions are always wrong. I've really written off a lot of my seat mates or, you know, plane mates when I sit down and look at the person next to me thinking, well, this could go either way. And they turn out to be some pretty fascinating people that share with you a lot of incredible experiences or addresses of where you're going to that you never would have thought to check out once you got there. And, you know, just take it all with a grain of salt. It's a lot

of rushing and congestion at the airports. Be there. You know, my husband likes to get there the night before. And I used to think he was a little bit, you know, of an alarmist. He was always, you know, anything can go wrong, but stuff does go wrong. And the TSA lines are sometimes twice as long as the regular lines and all of the check-in windows are not always manned or, you know, open for business. So they tell you to get there a number of hours beforehand. And these days you really need to. So eliminate any kind of stress when you can. What about food? Food's always an issue when you travel because, you know, it's so expensive at the airport, often not great, though it seems that it's gotten a lot better over the years. But

how do you handle that problem? I bring a lot of snacks. I try to eat healthy. I never drink coffee or alcohol. I always man myself with a lot of water that I buy before getting on the plane after you've gone through security and TSA. And then once you arrive, food can be expensive. It can be a very large chunk of your budget. But I always go to the open air markets. For me, that's as visual and cultural and exciting as it is practical. A lot of the markets have prepared foods or a lot of the surrounding stores around the periphery of the markets are great places to buy a takeaway for either an easy kind of self-done picnic on a park bench or back in the hotel room if you're jet lagged and you

need to kind of crawl back at an early hour, enjoy some TV and crash until the next morning. So you don't need to eat out three times a day. Breakfasts are often not always included in the hotel. That's one thing to check out before you even maybe book. And some of the hotel breakfast buffets are pretty impressive. I do like to choose restaurants in advance, especially if they're destinations like Italy or France or Bangkok or, you know, Marrakesh. There are destinations whose cuisine are very much to me a part of the experience because the quality or the deliciousness merely of the cuisine is something you want to make very much a part of your experience. So I check out in advance the restaurants, but I also talk at length with the

people behind the counter or the people behind the desk, I should say, at the hotel, because they will tell you where they eat and they will often tell you what to avoid, that it's too touristy or it's not worth your time or your dollars. That's good advice because who would know better than them, right? And they always usually have a neighbor or a cousin or a family member who is somehow involved in a local neighborhood trattoria or bistro or whatever, who, you know, tell them their cousin, you know, Mike sent you and you'll get a good table or you'll get good service.

And you pretty much usually do. We're talking today about travel and getting some really good advice from veteran travel journalist Patricia Schultz. And the name of her book is Why We Travel, 100 Reasons to See the World. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not.

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Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So, Patricia, one thing I've never really done very often, taken advantage of, is the concierge at a hotel. Because I never really know what to ask them, should I tip them? What can they do for me?

Am I missing out on something? Oh, I think so. I've gotten some incredible guidance and I've gotten, you know, people who have gone out of their way in ways that are just astonishing to me that I remember decades later, including this one lovely gentleman in Istanbul, I couldn't find a cab and he was out in the rain for, I mean, he came back drenched. He finally found me a cab and then somehow, you know, kept apologizing for the weather as if it was his fault. So, you know, people are lovely. And usually if you're in the hospitality business, you want to believe that they're there

because it's an environment and a workplace that they enjoy and that they're happy to give back and engage with their clients and with their guests. But I'm not sure I would know what to ask them. I mean, what is it they can do for me? It's usually for eating. If I want someplace, you know, sometimes you go online and the volume of information is daunting and you go down these rabbit holes and it's seven hours later, you're starved to death and you still don't know where to eat. So if you want someplace that's very casual, that's very local, that you don't want, you know, a hamburger and a pizza, but that you want to experience the cuisine of the destination you're visiting, you know, you explain to them what you're looking for, and I'm very straightforward. I don't want to spend a lot of money, or, you know, it's my birthday tonight, and I'm alone, but that's fine with me. It's just that I would like a decent restaurant,

and, you know, what would you suggest? Or, you know, you have just arrived, and you don't want anything imposing, because you're doing that the next morning when you're better rested. But you would just like, you know, a neighborhood park to kind of sit and, you know, people watch or to walk around the block and should I go left? Should I go right? Where should I go? What do you suggest? They're usually just fountains of information and they're ready to impart or share that as long as they see that you're interested in visiting their home. You know, if they're proud and they usually are of the city or the destination that you're visiting, though, you know, sometimes you can't stop them. So never underestimate a concierge, whether it's, you know, you're suddenly invited to a wedding,

where do you get your shoes polished to, you know, my suitcase is lost, they're telling me to call this 800 number, I can't get through, can you help? I mean, I've also had concierges track down my luggage when everybody else said it was a lost cause. So really, from A to Z, if you have a question, and you just don't know where to go to other than the internet, you know, go to a human who's there in the three-dimensional who probably can be a lot more efficient in problem solving than the internet. When you travel, particularly if you're alone or just a couple, safety is always a concern. You're in a strange place, these are strange people, who do you talk to, who do you not talk to? How do you handle that? I mean, it's a tough question, I guess,

to answer because there's a lot to it. But in general, what's the sense of you want to immerse yourself in the local whatever, but you also want to be careful? I do use my sense of judgment always. You know, the older you get and the more you traveled, or merely the older you get, you like to think, you know, you accumulate wisdom along with time and years and decades. So I don't, you know, talk to just anybody, but certainly if you're at, you know, a cafe and in the table next to you, somebody strikes up a conversation and they want nothing more than to practice their English. Or they just, you know, see that you're alone. I often travel alone or that you're, you know, with a friend, there are

two of you. Of course, if there are three or four of you, people don't approach you as much. But I think you need to leave yourself open to options and possibilities, but with caution and with respect and with, you know, a certain degree of distance. But I've been invited to weddings and bar mitzvahs, and I've been invited to a teeth filing ceremony in Bali. Did you go? Yeah, it was remarkable. And it was like the highlight of two weeks in Bali. It was the owner of a B&B, not an Airbnb, but it was a small inn. There I did with him, just a down-to-earth, nice, lovely individual gentleman who was welcoming people from around the world on a

regular basis. And his daughter, it was a coming-of-age kind of ceremony that the Hindu people do on a regular basis, not unlike their maybe confirmation in the Catholic Church or even a prom. You know, there are moments that really are the standout moments for me where you make a new friend and you learn all kinds of stuff that you simply would not have had you decided to, you know, go back to your hotel room and call it a day. Do you use a travel agent? Well, I am my own best travel agent. And I've become a kind of travel agent for all

of my friends and total strangers. But travel agents can be indispensable. And if it's a complicated agenda, if you're coming up empty handed, if you've waited too late, and it's high season and you can't find anything, if you've heard horror stories about people being stranded at airports or ports of call, whatever, with cancellations or delays, or you're just a nervous traveler and you don't even know where to start,

then by all means work with a travel agent. They often pass on to you savings and experience that you simply cannot have unless you make it a profession or a career or a job to travel yourself on a regular basis. So I would not by any means write them off. and some people have travel agents they've been working with for years and years and years and if wherever you're going to is not their specialty they have a network that they tap into that is just assuredly better than anything that you could come up with yourself but what is the the one thing indispensable advice or destination that everybody must see, or just from all your years of experience traveling all over the world,

if you could impart to people, particularly maybe people who don't travel a lot, what's the one thing or the one place that you think people should go? The one question I always get, which is a kind of synthesis of a synopsis of what you were saying maybe, is what my favorite go-to, can't go there often enough, and it's always just better than the time before because there's so much to see.

You could go a million times and never see it, is Italy. I think for a small country, it just offers so very, very much. And you can go back to the same museum or the same restaurant, and it's always wonderful, but there's always, always something new to see. Places also that, are they worth all the hype? I've actually heard people that have been to Paris that don't like it, especially like this past spring and as we speak, because it's so overwhelmed with crowds and lines etc but Paris to me is just one of the most incredible cities anywhere and it's always easy to walk down a side street and be in your own movie because it's empty and just quintessentially

Parisian and everything you had hoped for. And the same goes for Venice. I've heard so many people that have had bad experiences in Venice, and I just don't know how that can be. And yet, of course, I do, but it shouldn't have to be that way. People who have been around the block and think most welcoming and the most hospitable people I have ever met anywhere. And something I've, an area of the world that I just generally love, an entire area, is Southeast Asia. I was talking before about Bali, but Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, even Japan and Eastern Asia, Singapore and Southeast Asia. It's an area of the world where the gentility and the graciousness and the food and the antiquities. And you're just so clearly far from anything that is familiar to you. And once I went, once I knew I'd go back a dozen times. And in fact, I have.

Well, given all the traveling you've done and all the writing about the traveling you've done, I really appreciate you sharing your advice and insight that can help us all be better travelers. I've been talking to Patricia Schultz, veteran travel journalist and author of the books 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and her latest book, Why We Travel, 100 Reasons to See the World. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes.

Hey, thanks, Patricia. This was fun. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mike. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill

about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new

ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Based on the popularity of science fiction movies and books, TV shows, comic books and everything else, the idea of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe really captures our imagination. And given the vastness of the universe and the number of planets and stars that are out there, it certainly seems plausible, just by sheer chance, that there is life elsewhere. Some people believe there's actual proof that alien life exists, and other people say no.

If this is a topic that interests you, you need to hear my next guest, Jamie Green. Jamie is a science writer, editor, and teacher, and she's author of a book called The Possibility of Life, Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos. Hi, Jamie. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. So I guess before we get into the meat of this discussion here, it would be important to know where you sit on this topic. Do you think that there is alien life out there or not?

Oh, this is, I hate starting with this one because it puts a real damper on things because it's a super valid question. It's just unfortunate that over the course of writing this book, I came to think that complex, intelligent, technological life is probably rare, which is not what I want the answer to be. I try not to think about it too much because it bums me out. Oh, really? So you wish there were more aliens, but you're not sure there are? I want the universe, the galaxy, our immediate neighborhood to be full of life because I want to meet all of these other versions,

these other experiments of nature. I would love to be wrong. We really don't know and no one knows. And any human guess at the odds or the likelihood is just based on one example. And extrapolating from one, it's like trying to triangulate from one point. You can't. How long have people looked up at the stars and wondered? I mean, I would I would imagine that, you know, ever since we've had some sense of astronomy and planets and stars and things that and we have that knowledge that

ever since then, people have wondered, well, maybe there's other planets like ours out there maybe there's other creatures is this a forever human kind of question or is this something more recent like since science fiction sparked imagination i think in some ways it's a human forever question. When we're talking about imagining other planets, like other versions of Earth, other different sorts of worlds, that really depends on your worldview. And so the idea of there being other planets really came to us from Copernicus and Galileo. Like the Aristotelian view of the cosmos has the Earth at the center and the Earth is the only planet. And the things that we called planets with the naked eye just look like points of light that we know are different from stars because they don't move with the stars and they don't twinkle. But it wasn't until Copernicus figured out that the Earth is not the center of the solar system and that the solar

system is not the center of the universe. And then Galileo, with advances in telescopes, was able to look at the planets and see that they are spheres, that they're worlds. Then that opens up the possibility of imagining life like earth, but different in whatever way on those other worlds, that instead of points of light in the sky, they became places that we could imagine life being. I would imagine that if you took a poll of people, that most people are open to the idea that there probably is life elsewhere in the universe, wouldn't you think? I would guess that most people do, because I also think that there's some confusion or vagueness out in the general population about what's actually already been discovered. I've gotten the sense that some people think we've found life on Mars, or, you know, there are a lot of headlines

about an Earth-like planet has been found. And just like in the Renaissance, when we were like, oh, whoa, there are other worlds, there are other planets, that must mean they also have life. I think that those sorts of imaginative extrapolations and sort of taking for granted that if a planet is like Earth, it has life. I think that happens now too. And even just saying there are Earth-like planets, that's a big stretch. I don't think any astronomer would say we have found planets that are like Earth. We have found planets that are roughly the size of Earth, that are maybe of similar composition, that are hopefully in the right distance from their stars, that they get the right amount of energy, what we call the Goldilocks zone, to not be too hot, not too cold, but have the ability to have liquid water on the surface. But that's all that we actually know about these planets. And so I think the combination of overzealous headline writing, the desire to really get the public excited about astronomy and exoplanet discoveries, plus a lot of false starts. You know, there was big, there were big headlines when we thought that we might have detected phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus and that that phosphine might have been a sign of life. You get a lot fewer news stories saying, oh, it turns out that's probably not a sign of life and there probably isn't phosphine there to begin with. So, you know, you think about what's louder and what people notice.

It's the announcements rather than the, well, actually, maybe not. It does seem one of the arguments you hear often is, you know, the universe is so big. There are so many stars and planets that just mathematically, it's almost impossible to imagine that there isn't another Earth-like planet that has life on it. That's not proof that there is. It's just saying the odds are there is. Right. And I think that, you know, when you said it's hard to imagine that it's not, that's totally true. But any figuring of odds is just guessing and intuition, because we only have one example. You know, there's been research that's like, well, the odds of life on a planet would have to be, you know, less than one in 10 to the 26th or some absurdly high number. And so then we feel, oh, surely the odds

can't be that small. But we don't know that. We have absolutely no idea, no way to deduce what the odds are of us being here. And so you will see extremely reasonable scientists arguing odds are there must be life and extremely reasonable scientists arguing, look at all of these odds that make it unlikely. And that's why in my book, I didn't want to focus on odds because those debates are ongoing. Those debates are hot and those debates are impossible to reconcile without finding life on other worlds or like doing a survey of other planets and finding out that they don't have life, which we are completely incapable of doing. And maybe for decades, for centuries, you know, it's not like we can go to every exoplanet

and check off. Nope, no life here. Yeah, that's what I like what you've done and why I wanted to have you on the podcast, because rather than focus on is there or isn't there life elsewhere in the universe, you focused on like, well, so what are the possibilities? And so what are the possibilities? One of the possibilities that I think is really interesting is that it is not scientifically absurd to imagine life on another planet looking a lot like life on Earth. You know, we can see this through science fiction. This happens in science fiction a lot. On Star Trek, we've got all these alien races that look like humans with different ears or

different foreheads, you know, and practically that's really constrained by the constraints of making television. You have human actors and a limited budget. You don't want people to be in the makeup chair for eight hours. But you can actually make a scientific argument that life on another planet would look like life on earth. And that's because of the principle of convergent evolution. Convergent evolution is the idea that distantly related organisms on Earth often converge, like their paths that start distant meet up through evolution because they independently evolve the same features. They come up with the same solutions to the challenges that their environments throw up at them. So,

for example, human eyes and octopus eyes are structurally extremely similar. They use lenses to focus light. They've got a big nerve that catches all the information. And they evolved totally independently. Plants have evolved the ability to make caffeine something like three or four separate times. Bats and birds, sharks and dolphins, we see these examples all over. What's fascinating is we don't know if convergent evolution is the rule in evolution or if it's an exception. If these are just a couple of very noticeable examples, but if evolution is mainly random and it's just a fluke that, you know, we are bipedal and have, well, your multicellular organism forms by cell division. You're likely to have bilateral symmetry.

So maybe that part's not so weird. But like having five fingers, totally random. Then there are things we don't know, having a head on top of your body, having a lensed eye, having plants and animals. Is that just how life found success on earth? Or is that the best solution for life anywhere? And so if there is multicellular life on another world, is it also going to specialize into plants and animals and fungi and birds and fish and land animals? And how similar might all of those manifestations look to earth we don't know but like you can argue scientifically that you should see similarities in function in form well

your theory certainly makes sense it seems possible logical that life would develop elsewhere in the universe in similar ways to the way it developed here but it seems like it's also possible that it would develop in completely different ways it's so much so that that it would be hard to understand them or even perceive aliens if we ever met them right and this also opens up the question of if we ever met them, right? And this also opens up the question of, if we met an intelligent alien, would we be able to communicate with them? Is language something that is converged upon?

Or would trying to learn an alien language require years and decades of study, like trying to figure out physics? I find these questions really exciting. Yeah, kind of mind-boggling. But when it comes right down to it, until there's some real objective proof that at least most people can agree on that this indicates that there is life out there somewhere, it's all guesses. It's all maybes. Right. And so when we talk about what could we plausibly hope for, it's not someone showing up on our doorstep. If we're talking about finding signs of intelligent life, the things we can actually reasonably hope for would be catching a whiff of a radio signal or a laser signal that they might send out. You know, there's work. We've been searching for radio signals on and off since 1960, but

scientists are now starting to look for laser signals that we might catch as well, whether that's eavesdropping or a directed message. We can also search for evidence of their technology. And, you know, some scientists actually argue that even though, you know, if life evolves from biology to having technology, that's going to be some sort of a funnel, right? There's probably more biological life than technological life. But signs of biology might be so amorphous, so hard to interpret, whereas signs of technology are pretty definitive. You know, if you find a rocket ship, if you find a Dyson sphere built all the way around a star, that's a lot harder to argue with.

And so that could be, even though those signs might be more rare, they also might be the easier way to find a clear answer, to be able to actually know, not just, oh, maybe there might be, we hope this could mean, but to find definitive proof. Has there been anything that might likely be some radio signal? Some, is this all just someday maybe? Or has there been some signs that, hey, this is encouraging? There's one signal. You know, There have been lots of false alarms. There have been lots of spans of a few hours or weeks or months where we have found some sort of

technological signal and haven't yet figured out what it was. But there's one signal. It's called the wow signal. And this was detected in 1977. And it's called the wow signal and this was detected in 1977 and it's called the wow signal because the person who was going through the literal printouts from the telescope from that night circled the spike that indicates the signal and wrote wow exclamation point in the margins that signal has never been explained but it has never been replicated. It's never been found again. And normally when you're listening for signals, you have two telescopes in different places going so that if you catch what seems like a promising signal, you can sort of triangulate. And with another telescope, you not only are ruling out interference but

you're triangulating and you can tell if the source is from somewhere other than earth like how far away it is the second telescope was offline that night so we're missing a lot of data this was also like i said 1977 so this wasn't a very data-rich observation. I think it was sort of taking an observation every 10 seconds. So if there was a faster modulation, we don't have it. We don't have, it doesn't seem like there was information encoded in that signal, but it was a weird, unexplained little radio shout that we picked up once. And again, could be, maybe not, maybe so, never know. That's true. Yeah. It is not anything other than a could be, maybe not, but it's our only radio

could be that we still have open. But I don't think that we'll ever get resolution on that one. It just seems like a weird mystery that we have to live with. Doesn't it seem though, and I think this is the concern of many people, that if there were intelligent life out there, that it wouldn't be this difficult. You know, they don't land in Times Square. It's always in the swamp in Arkansas. And it's like, if they were there, we would know. We would be able to find something that would say, hey, look. I think that's really only the case if they knew we existed and they wanted us to know they were here. In terms of our search, we have barely scratched the surface in terms of listening, in terms of searching.

They could be hanging out in the outer solar system and we wouldn't know. They could have a base under the surface of Europa, we'd have no idea. There could be a probe orbiting Jupiter, we might have no idea. Like we don't have extremely high resolution cameras pointed out 360 degrees through the whole solar system all the time. There is so much, there's so many blind spots in our observations and that's just in the solar system. they were here. That rests on a lot of assumptions like that they are explorers, that they are colonizers, that they're spreading throughout the galaxy. Maybe their kind of advancement is some

kind of spiritual enlightenment that doesn't require travel. Maybe they're very sneaky. Maybe they don't want us to know that they're there. Or space is very big. You know, they just might not have made it here. They might not care about us. An astronomer I talked to once told me that she poses a thought experiment to her students when she teaches. And she says, imagine that there are two they both have civilizations. One is 500 years more advanced than you. One is 500 years less advanced than you. You have the budget to go to one planet. Which one would you choose? The students always choose the more advanced planet. And if we're looking at a hypothetical group of advanced civilizations, Earth is definitely the least advanced. We've only had technology for a century or two. So why would anyone come visit us? There's stuff to learn from other more advanced civilizations if they're out there. We also don't know how similar alien life is going to be to us. Are they going to develop technology like ours? Do

they care about space travel? Would we recognize recognize them would we be able to communicate with them maybe they're sending out signals that we just have no ability to even conceive of let alone detect and translate there's just there's so much unknown that we are nowhere near being able to say well we've looked and no one is there. Well, it doesn't seem like we're getting real close to finding any definitive answer here about alien life, but it is so much fun to speculate and imagine what that would be like, and you never know. I've been talking to Jamie Green. She is a science writer, teacher, and she's author of a book called The Possibility of Life, Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Appreciate you being here, Jamie. This was fun. Thanks so much for having me. It's been really great. Some people wash their kitchen knives in the dishwasher, and other people don't. Who's right? Well, according to Consumer Reports, if you put good knives in the dishwasher, they will die an early death. It's the high heat of the dry cycle that's the problem. That high heat will cause the blade and the handle to expand and contract, causing the blade to warp and the handle to crack. It is best to wash kitchen knives by hand.

Here are a few other common kitchen things you should know about. For example, you should never use non-stick cooking spray in a non-stick pan. Over time, a gummy film will build up that cannot be removed. Now, it's okay to put oil or any kind of fat in the pan as long as it's not delivered by an aerosol can. And you should not cook in non-stick pans over very high heat. It can break down the coating and release fumes that reportedly can kill pets, which means it can't be very good for

you either. And that is something you should know. People love recommendations when it comes to podcasts, and I hope as a listener of this podcast, you'll recommend this one, Something You Should Know, to your friends and ask them to listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro,

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and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness,

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