Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you think a lot about aliens visiting us, right.
Speaker 2: I do, Actually, I fantasize about it happening.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Well, what science fiction depiction of alien arrival
Speaker 1: do you think best matches what you hope and dream about.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think the most fun scenarios are
Speaker 2: when we get to talk to the aliens and like
Speaker 2: learn secrets of the universe from them, you know, like
Speaker 2: in Star Trek.
Speaker 1: Not the kind where it's like an action movie and
Speaker 1: there's a big war.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably much more realistic that the Aliens
Speaker 2: show up and just zap us from orbit or they're
Speaker 2: so weird we can never talk to them.
Speaker 3: Mmmm.
Speaker 1: That sounds like less of than a happy ending there
Speaker 1: or exciting movie.
Speaker 2: I do think in reality it's more likely to go
Speaker 2: badly than well. When have two civilizations come into contact
Speaker 2: and then happily lived ever after.
Speaker 1: I think there are lots of examples in human.
Speaker 2: History, physicists and cartoonists for example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go to totally alien civilizations still working
Speaker 1: together after all these years.
Speaker 2: We're a beacon of hope in the universe.
Speaker 1: There you go, But do you still want aliens to
Speaker 1: come down? If you think it's going to turn out badly.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to know that they exist.
Speaker 1: That's just better for you, not for the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Everybody benefits from this kind of knowledge, man, not.
Speaker 1: As they get eaten. I guess you. Just please don't
Speaker 1: run for world president.
Speaker 2: Not's going to happen, and I have no chance of
Speaker 2: winning anybody.
Speaker 1: Hi am Jorge Amrick, cartoonists and the author of Oliver's
Speaker 1: Great Big Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 2: at u C Irvine. And please don't vote for me
Speaker 2: for world president. That's the best campaign slogan I've ever heard. No, then,
Speaker 2: please do vote for me, I gues I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a real president.
Speaker 1: Just don't run. Just don't run, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You never know, you never know how people. They're crazy
Speaker 1: voters out there.
Speaker 2: There are crazy voters out there. But I have enough
Speaker 2: politics in my department and my collaborations. I don't need anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's enough drama, I guess in our everyday lives,
Speaker 1: which is why it's good that we have things like
Speaker 1: science fiction and TV shows.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, so we can watch other people's drama.
Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: In which we sit back and enjoy the incredible drama
Speaker 2: that is our universe, all of its deep mysteries, all
Speaker 2: of its mysterious functioning, all of the mysterious beings and
Speaker 2: critters that might live out there in the universe and
Speaker 2: might one day come to talk to us about their experience.
Speaker 2: Our goal is to understand the entire universe. We think
Speaker 2: it's possible, and to explain all of it to you.
Speaker 2: We are sure that part is possible.
Speaker 1: Yes, because it is an amazing universe, full of things
Speaker 1: beyond our imagine and things that are actually maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit within our imaginations, which can be pretty wild
Speaker 1: for some people.
Speaker 2: And part of trying to understand the universe is expressing
Speaker 2: it in our terms, is getting answers to our questions
Speaker 2: like how did it all begin? And what's going on?
Speaker 2: And what are the rules? Questions that help shape the
Speaker 2: context of our lives, that help us understand how we
Speaker 2: should live and why we should live, and what we
Speaker 2: should do with this time we have on Earth. So
Speaker 2: it can be a fundamentally human experience, even if we're
Speaker 2: digging into the nitty gritty of how reality works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thinking about reality and the universe is the
Speaker 1: job of scientists, but it's also the job of everyday people.
Speaker 1: Lunch is people who consume science, but also artists and writers.
Speaker 2: And a super fun way to explore these issues is
Speaker 2: to go beyond the questions of science and into the
Speaker 2: realm of science fiction, to imagine what might be out
Speaker 2: there in the universe. How could the universe work, what
Speaker 2: other critters could it be filled with? And what do
Speaker 2: they want for lunch?
Speaker 1: Hopefully not us, hopefully somebody else, or hopefully they're vegan.
Speaker 1: Has anyone ever made a movie where the aliens are vegan?
Speaker 4: Hmm?
Speaker 2: But maybe they consider us plants?
Speaker 1: Oh maybe they are plants.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, they're here for revenge against the vegans.
Speaker 1: Maybe the ethical thing for them is to eat animals.
Speaker 2: Or maybe they come and kill all the vegans and
Speaker 2: leave only the carnivores. What if their plants, then they're
Speaker 2: out for revenge against the plant eating vegans. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see what you're saying, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone eats, you know, some kind of plant.
Speaker 2: I guess there are microbes out there that just eat sunlight.
Speaker 2: But I think the point of the comparison is that
Speaker 2: a lot of times these questions about aliens where they want,
Speaker 2: what are their values, who would they eat if they
Speaker 2: came are really questions about ourselves. How do we feel
Speaker 2: about the choices we're making in our lives? And is
Speaker 2: our experience typical? So I love watching science fiction and
Speaker 2: reading science fiction to see people push those boundaries, to
Speaker 2: try to think outside the box of what the intelligent
Speaker 2: experience might be Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it's useful to think about what we
Speaker 1: would do if we went out into the stars or
Speaker 1: if we landed on the moon. How would things change
Speaker 1: for us. It's kind of a useful exercise, right to
Speaker 1: prepare us mentally and maybe socially as well.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And so I'm a big fan of science fiction,
Speaker 2: And on the podcast, we have a whole series of
Speaker 2: episodes where we read science fiction novels or watch science
Speaker 2: fiction television shows and then talk to the authors about
Speaker 2: how they built their science fiction universes and what it
Speaker 2: means to them.
Speaker 1: And by we, Daniel mean said he does, and he
Speaker 1: tells me about it on the podcast for the benefit
Speaker 1: of everybody.
Speaker 2: That's right. I have Kelly on some of those episodes
Speaker 2: and she actually reads the book.
Speaker 3: Mmmmm.
Speaker 1: So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the science
Speaker 1: fiction universe of invasion.
Speaker 2: Right. Invasion is a show on Apple TV. They have
Speaker 2: a whole season out already in season two is just
Speaker 2: now coming out, and as you might expect, this basic
Speaker 2: topic is invasion by aliens.
Speaker 1: Didn't they have a couple of alien invasion shows Apple TV?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to watch this. There's so many alien
Speaker 2: invasion shows, you know, there's like War of the Worlds,
Speaker 2: but that's not on Apple. So there's a bunch of them.
Speaker 3: Mmm.
Speaker 1: How come there are on any alien like alien visitation shows,
Speaker 1: you know, and just like hey, they're coming by for
Speaker 1: a visit.
Speaker 2: Put out some cookies, make the good coffee. Aliens are coming.
Speaker 1: Or like alien science shows, you know, like they come
Speaker 1: to study us.
Speaker 2: Mm wow, we are part of alien science.
Speaker 1: It's like a documentary.
Speaker 2: Exactly narrated by David Attenborough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe there's a alien David Attenborough out there with
Speaker 1: a soothing voice and a cool British accent.
Speaker 2: The humans all gathered around the television once again.
Speaker 1: To watch more television about aliens visiting.
Speaker 2: Well, there are lots of depictions of alien invasion on television.
Speaker 2: This one I thought was kind of unique and sort
Speaker 2: of fascinating in lots of respects.
Speaker 1: Mmmm, so you watched the whole first season.
Speaker 2: I watched the whole first season and I'm caught up
Speaker 2: on season two.
Speaker 1: Well, how is it different this show?
Speaker 2: Well, this show is a little bit less of like
Speaker 2: an action show. It's not really like a video game
Speaker 2: where you're seeing ships blast each other. Really more from
Speaker 2: the point of view of people on Earth, and it
Speaker 2: tries to describe like how confusing and disorienting and weird
Speaker 2: it would be if aliens arrived, because you're not always
Speaker 2: having perfect information about everything that's happening across the planet.
Speaker 1: Mm. Sounds a little frustrating first of all. So no,
Speaker 1: no laser blasters.
Speaker 2: No laser blasters, no Will Smith, Yeah, no Will Smith.
Speaker 2: No like zapping the White House and then everybody knows
Speaker 2: exactly what to do. It actually kind of reminded me
Speaker 2: a little bit of how we felt in the early
Speaker 2: days of the pandemic, when like, clearly something was going on.
Speaker 2: Nobody liked it, but nobody exactly knew how bad it
Speaker 2: was and what was happening and what was dangerous and
Speaker 2: what wasn't. You know, information gets distorted and propagates slowly
Speaker 2: and weirdly.
Speaker 1: Hmmm. I wonder if that was partly inspired by the pandemic.
Speaker 2: I think probably it was. And it makes Her a
Speaker 2: really fascinating show because it tries to give you a
Speaker 2: little bit of a preview of what it would be
Speaker 2: like for you if aliens invaded. They don't like come
Speaker 2: to your home or like appear on the television and
Speaker 2: explaining everything that's happening.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess maybe it depends on how the aliens
Speaker 1: come and visitors. Right, they might do all any kind
Speaker 1: of thing when they come visit, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they might. Absolutely. This explores one particular kind of experience,
Speaker 2: and it's fun as a viewer because it forces you
Speaker 2: to sort of put the puzzle pieces together and figure
Speaker 2: out what might be happening and what the aliens might
Speaker 2: be like. And they don't show you the Aliens until
Speaker 2: very close to the end of season one.
Speaker 1: You have to wait a whole season to see the Aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, because you know, most people don't get to
Speaker 2: meet those foreign visitors immediately you're just on the ground
Speaker 2: trying to survive with your family or get home from
Speaker 2: your field trip that went awry because of the aliens attacked.
Speaker 1: You know, what's the basic premise? Are they here for
Speaker 1: good reasons or bad reasons or I guess if they're
Speaker 1: being sneaky about it, it must not be for a
Speaker 1: good reason.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not for good reasons. I mean, they're killing people,
Speaker 2: they're terraforming the planet. When they arrive, it definitely looks
Speaker 2: like they're set up for colonization. But the basic story
Speaker 2: follows like five different threads from around the world, people
Speaker 2: what they experience, what they see, and then as a
Speaker 2: viewer you're trying to put it all together.
Speaker 1: Sounds interesting. Who are these main characters?
Speaker 2: So one group is a bunch of kids on a
Speaker 2: field trip which goes horribly wrong. You know, their bus
Speaker 2: is like bombarded with metal shrapnel and it falls into
Speaker 2: a quarry and have to like survive. It's a little
Speaker 2: bit of like a Lord of the Fly situation. And
Speaker 2: one of the kids has a bit of a neurological
Speaker 2: issue already, and he gets these weird visions which later
Speaker 2: we understand are him sort of weirdly communing mentally with
Speaker 2: the arriving aliens.
Speaker 1: Wait, what, like he can he can think with the aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns out the aliens have really interesting and
Speaker 2: creative way of communicating with each other, and some neuro
Speaker 2: atypical humans can sort of pick up on those signals.
Speaker 1: WHOA interesting they can somehow think aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not so much that they're thinking in the
Speaker 2: alien language, is that they're like receiving the transmissions. And
Speaker 2: it's not a whole lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's not fun.
Speaker 2: It's not fun to get alien messages beamed into your brain.
Speaker 2: According to this TV show.
Speaker 1: Does it depend on what the aliens are thinking or
Speaker 1: it's just not a pleasant experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a pleasant experience for this kid.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Well, there's another really cool thread about an engineer who's
Speaker 2: in contact with an astronaut on the Space Shuttle. The
Speaker 2: Space Shuttle gets destroyed when the aliens arrive, but then
Speaker 2: they keep getting messages from the potentially dead astronaut. So
Speaker 2: then there's a mystery there of like is she really
Speaker 2: alive or has she been absorbed into the alien mother
Speaker 2: ships somehow? It's a fun puzzle.
Speaker 1: WHOA, wait, so the space shuttle out there in orbit
Speaker 1: and they think it got destroyed or do you see
Speaker 1: it get destroyed?
Speaker 2: You definitely see it get bumped into by the arriving
Speaker 2: alien ship. Whether the astronauts survive is sort of the
Speaker 2: question I see.
Speaker 1: So what else is going on around the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a few threads like that. There's another
Speaker 2: group of school kids who all get spontaneous nosebleeds except
Speaker 2: for again, one neuro atypical kid. Then he goes home
Speaker 2: and his neighborhood is like weirdly bombed, except for his
Speaker 2: house is left standing and his neighbors are a little
Speaker 2: bit suspicious. But how that might have happened?
Speaker 1: Wait? What like somehow his house was spared?
Speaker 2: Yeah, somehow. So he's like a little bit of a
Speaker 2: weird kid. That's something of a feme in the show
Speaker 2: that certain humans get treated differently by the alien invasion,
Speaker 2: and that of course causes tension among the humans, like, hey,
Speaker 2: how come your house didn't get blown up and mine did?
Speaker 1: Is because they're tastier or because they taste bad?
Speaker 2: It's not clear.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for season fifteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it's a lot of fun and they're
Speaker 2: definitely creative, and they're doing their best to show us
Speaker 2: aliens we haven't seen before. I think I can talk
Speaker 2: about it without spoiling it too much because season one
Speaker 2: has been out for a while.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, maybe you should give a spoiler
Speaker 1: warning though. I mean, if you have to wait for
Speaker 1: the whole season to see these Aliens, you're basically spoiling
Speaker 1: the whole season.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so maybe I won't spoil it. I'll
Speaker 2: just say that the Aliens.
Speaker 1: No, just give a spoiler alert, then you can spoil it.
Speaker 2: That's how it works, all right, Skip forward fifteen seconds
Speaker 2: if you don't want to hear this. But the Aliens
Speaker 2: are these weird black blobs that can sort of grow
Speaker 2: legs in any direction to move. So the way they
Speaker 2: move is this really strange kinetics sort of dance. They're
Speaker 2: like constantly growing legs out in front of them to
Speaker 2: touch stuff and move forward. It's very weird. They're sort
Speaker 2: of like microbes blown up to the macroscopic scale.
Speaker 1: WHOA sounds a little bit weird and scary. Are they
Speaker 1: friendly looking or are they sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: like the alien movies, terrifying.
Speaker 2: They're not like the alien movies. They don't look like
Speaker 2: a predator, but they're definitely not friendly. And they get
Speaker 2: this sort of like creepiness from being so weird, from
Speaker 2: being so different from anything you've ever seen before. Like
Speaker 2: there's no face there to even like try to connect with.
Speaker 1: Do they have like a mouth?
Speaker 2: At least they do have a sort of kind of
Speaker 2: orifice that they used to gobble people up.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, they do gobble people up.
Speaker 2: They do gobble people up, like eat them whole. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you could describe it as digesting. But
Speaker 2: yet people definitely get killed and consumed.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, at least the tasty ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I really like this show, and the
Speaker 2: science of it is interesting.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: They have these new ways for the aliens to communicate
Speaker 2: with each other, which might weirdly overlap with human brain patterns.
Speaker 2: The ships that arrive are these incredibly huge, like of
Speaker 2: Star Wars size destroyers, and they have really interesting terraforming
Speaker 2: technology to try to convert the atmosphere to something that
Speaker 2: the aliens could naturally breathe.
Speaker 1: Interesting. All right, Well, let's get into the science of
Speaker 1: the Apple TV show Invasion. And then later on Daniel
Speaker 1: has an interview with some of the writers from the show.
Speaker 1: So let's dig into those things. But first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, welcome back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the science fiction universe of Invasion, the Apple TV show,
Speaker 1: which is about an invision of the alien kind.
Speaker 2: Finally something that's well named.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it takes a writer to do that.
Speaker 2: They did not have a physicist in charge.
Speaker 1: Maybe all those tracking writers should go work for science
Speaker 1: help give better names.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we had funding, we would definitely hire more writers.
Speaker 1: There you go. So we're talking about the TV show Invasion,
Speaker 1: which has a new season out right now. You can
Speaker 1: go watch the first season, I guess if you're subscribed
Speaker 1: to Apple TV, right, mm hmm. And we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about the tone of the show and what's
Speaker 1: going on. It's kind of a big mystery box. But
Speaker 1: why the aliens are here? Are though? It's pretty clear
Speaker 1: they're not friendly.
Speaker 2: It's pretty clear that they want what we have.
Speaker 1: They're not here to do science with the physicists. You're
Speaker 1: here to do dinner with the.
Speaker 2: Physicists exactly, dinner of the physicists.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's physics for dinner. So then you're saying
Speaker 1: there's some interesting science or at least science fiction in it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always looking for a science fiction that creates
Speaker 2: new rules and then follows them that gives us a
Speaker 2: new sort of mental space to play with, because the
Speaker 2: fun part for me in a science fiction show is
Speaker 2: the mystery and trying to solve it and trying to
Speaker 2: figure out like, huh, if the aliens can do this,
Speaker 2: then maybe this is the rule they follow, and trying
Speaker 2: to uncover what those rules are, just the same way
Speaker 2: we're trying to uncover the rules of the real universe.
Speaker 2: And so it's important to me that they're actually following
Speaker 2: some rules so that the detective game is fair in
Speaker 2: some respects. And this one, I think is definitely creative
Speaker 2: and follows those rules.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, what are some of the rules?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the aliens have some weird way of communicating supposedly
Speaker 2: with each other, and one crucial aspects of the plot
Speaker 2: is that some of the kids on the planet can
Speaker 2: sort of overhear it or can understand that they get
Speaker 2: these visions of what the aliens are seeing. So what's
Speaker 2: the science of that? Like, Well, you know, there's lots
Speaker 2: of waves you could communicate invisibly between brains all sorts
Speaker 2: of electromagnetic waves or sound waves you know infrasound or
Speaker 2: whatever you could use to communicate.
Speaker 1: Meaning, Like the aliens talk to each other telepathically to
Speaker 1: each other, I guess they don't speak. Somehow they're transmitting
Speaker 1: information between their brains.
Speaker 2: Somehow they're transmitting information between their brains.
Speaker 1: Which could just be like an electromane and the signal
Speaker 1: or like a radio signal.
Speaker 2: Absolutely the same way that our phones talk to each other.
Speaker 2: You don't hear them speaking, but they're definitely passing messages
Speaker 2: back and forth. And the question is, like, is it
Speaker 2: plausible for the human brain to be able to pick
Speaker 2: up those messages and interpret them as images. I mean,
Speaker 2: android and iPhones can't even really talk to each other.
Speaker 1: Right, that seems pretty unlikely. It's almost like you could
Speaker 1: overhear yourself your cell phone, right, like you could somehow
Speaker 1: envision what picture you're sending one person is sending another
Speaker 1: person through your brain, like somehow that seems unlikely that
Speaker 1: it would resonate in your brain.
Speaker 2: Somehow, it seems unlikely that your brain would know how
Speaker 2: to interpret that. You know that those signals could be
Speaker 2: assembled by your brain into an image in your mind
Speaker 2: it seems pretty hard to imagine, but you know, it
Speaker 2: stretches the bounds of plausibility but doesn't quite break it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is possible that there's just sort of
Speaker 2: like the natural way for a brain to represent images,
Speaker 2: and aliens in humans happen to have it in common.
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's not impossible.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, like maybe they map it out in
Speaker 1: a similar way or something.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are studies that show that when you
Speaker 2: think about a memory, you have an image in your mind,
Speaker 2: there's a physical representation of that in the neurons in
Speaker 2: your brain that have a similar physical relationship. Like see
Speaker 2: images in people's brains of what they are thinking if
Speaker 2: you scan it in the right way. So it's not
Speaker 2: impossible that an alien image could you know, tweak your
Speaker 2: neurons in a certain way to make you see something.
Speaker 1: It's possible, all right, what else do we have in
Speaker 1: this world?
Speaker 2: The rest of the world is pretty straight up, like
Speaker 2: huge ships. Yeah, sure, aliens could probably build huge ships.
Speaker 2: Would they have terraforming technology? Yeah? Probably. Terraforming is pretty
Speaker 2: challenging if you want to do it on a short
Speaker 2: time scale, If you need to replace the atmosphere of
Speaker 2: an entire planet. It's a pretty big project. You can't
Speaker 2: just like have one pump to create methane or whatever
Speaker 2: it is you need to breathe. You need pretty massive,
Speaker 2: industrial sized converters. But they bring those along and so
Speaker 2: that is totally plausible that the Aliens could convert our
Speaker 2: atmosphere to theirs in a fairly short time. They do
Speaker 2: have these very powerful pumps.
Speaker 1: One thing about huge ships is I always wonder how
Speaker 1: they land and how they stay afloat. Now do these
Speaker 1: big ships of the Aliens? Did they land on Earth
Speaker 1: or did they stay hovering above the White House and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: No, they just hover above. Then they send down little
Speaker 2: landing ships.
Speaker 1: Like are they in orbit or are they actually just floating?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I hadn't considered the orbital mechanics
Speaker 2: of it. They're pretty close to the surface, so I
Speaker 2: think it'd be pretty challenging to be in orbit. So
Speaker 2: they must be hovering someway.
Speaker 1: Just magically floating. That's one thing that always gets me.
Speaker 1: It's like the amount of energy you need to hold
Speaker 1: something up that big would be huge unless they have
Speaker 1: some sort of like anti gravity.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you're right, and that would be applying a
Speaker 2: force downwards on the ground, and so you'd be able
Speaker 2: to see them on the ground if they're not just
Speaker 2: like manipulating gravity somehow.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, we need to manipulate gravity. Cool. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting things to think about here, and
Speaker 1: to check out the Apple TV show Invasion. Now, Daniel,
Speaker 1: you got to interview a couple of the writers from the.
Speaker 2: Show I did. I got in touch with Tatiana Suarez
Speaker 2: Pico and a DT Brendan Kapil. Both of them are
Speaker 2: writers on season two of the show, and both of
Speaker 2: them have really interesting stories about how they came to
Speaker 2: become science fiction writers. They both started as playwrights actually,
Speaker 2: and one of them was an actor before becoming a writer.
Speaker 1: Interesting. All right, Well, here's Daniel's interview with Invasion writers
Speaker 1: Tatiana Suardrez Pico and Aditi Brennan Capill.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to
Speaker 2: the program the writers Tatiana Suarez Pico and Adit Brennan Capil,
Speaker 2: who are both science fiction writers. Extraordinary. Thank you very
Speaker 2: much for joining us today.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 2: So first, tell us a little bit about your background,
Speaker 2: how you guys got into writing, how you got into
Speaker 2: science fiction and television. Tell us the story I am.
Speaker 3: This is a dit speaking. I am originally a playwright,
Speaker 3: and I drifted into TV and film writing the way
Speaker 3: that many playwrights do. You know, TV and film actually
Speaker 3: got really really exciting at one point, and oddly, possibly unusually,
Speaker 3: my plays tended to have a little bit of a
Speaker 3: genre twist to them, like I actually wrote things that
Speaker 3: were like epic, metaphoric sci fi ish work or you know,
Speaker 3: mythologically inspired work, Like there was always some kind of
Speaker 3: something in there, which when people ask me about it
Speaker 3: back then, I think I might have attributed it to
Speaker 3: being Indian, because I feel like Indian people have like
Speaker 3: a really specific like if you look at the like
Speaker 3: the Ramayana, there was a spaceship like I think we
Speaker 3: have very very old school sci fi cred and when
Speaker 3: I got here and started writing TV and film, I
Speaker 3: think a lot of what I ended up doing was
Speaker 3: in the genre space, and specifically in the sci fi space.
Speaker 3: For me, I think it has a lot to do
Speaker 3: with the fact that if you want to tell radical stories,
Speaker 3: oftentimes it's both more fun and easier to tell them
Speaker 3: if you're in another world in a way, so that
Speaker 3: you can sort of take the pieces of it that
Speaker 3: may have been too close to home that there might
Speaker 3: have been resistance to in terms of oh, I'm uncomfortable
Speaker 3: with that subject matter, or I'm feeling a little you know,
Speaker 3: preached to or something. You put it in a grand adventure,
Speaker 3: you put it in space, and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: you can talk about really difficult topics and people are like, yeah,
Speaker 3: but it's just a yarn and I'm having a good
Speaker 3: time and I get to sneak more radical content and
Speaker 3: on people that way. And that was true when I
Speaker 3: was writing plays, and it's true for writing TV and film.
Speaker 2: It's amazing to me how many people don't realize that
Speaker 2: Star Trek is like deeply political and progressive. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, it's about aliens, so it's no reflection
Speaker 2: on us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can get really feminist too when you get
Speaker 3: into like, yeah, it's really interesting, which you can get
Speaker 3: away with that. There would be serious resistance too if
Speaker 3: you were like in a more grounded space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Tatiana, what's your story?
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't know it was my dream, so
Speaker 5: I was an actor first. Then I went to grad
Speaker 5: school for that, and then I went to did a
Speaker 5: POSTCRAD program for playwriting, and so I did that for
Speaker 5: a little bit, probably not as extensively as I would
Speaker 5: have liked to, because as soon as I graduated from
Speaker 5: that program, I ended up working in television. And that's
Speaker 5: just because I wrote a play that an agent liked
Speaker 5: and said, I think I can get you a job
Speaker 5: in LA And I said, what do I have to
Speaker 5: do and he said, just be yourself and I said, okay,
Speaker 5: I got this.
Speaker 2: So you were discovered.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean sure, the way that any agent will
Speaker 5: look for material that they think they can market in
Speaker 5: some way, because at the end of the day, it
Speaker 5: is a business. So that's how I ended up doing this.
Speaker 5: And like I said, I really didn't know it was
Speaker 5: a job. I loved movies and I thought there were
Speaker 5: actors and producers, and I never thought about writers. I
Speaker 5: don't know why, and I certainly, even though I wrote
Speaker 5: for a long time before, I consider myself myself a writer,
Speaker 5: I never thought anyone would pay me actual money to write,
Speaker 5: And somehow I thought people would pay me to act.
Speaker 5: So it's kind of silly, but that led me to
Speaker 5: a variety of jobs in the genre space. And what
Speaker 5: I realized is that the things that I wanted to
Speaker 5: do as an actor, which was be able to pay
Speaker 5: a play a variety of characters and actions and places
Speaker 5: and people and things, I actually gravitated toward that and
Speaker 5: writing like that, the ability to create worlds seemed really
Speaker 5: really exciting and really will suit it to me, Like
Speaker 5: I was able to jump into that, into whatever the
Speaker 5: space is with I think with a spirit of play.
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, go, so I think that that's how
Speaker 5: I ended up here.
Speaker 2: It's incredible to me how important it is to sort
Speaker 2: of know what the possibilities are in order to get
Speaker 2: access to them. Do you think there are still like
Speaker 2: jobs out there you don't even know exist that it
Speaker 2: might be well suited to you, Like, oh, I didn't
Speaker 2: know you could be a studio head and control entire
Speaker 2: production budgets or things beyond that.
Speaker 5: I think there are less jobs now that I know,
Speaker 5: just because of the experience, But I am certain there
Speaker 5: are things that I'm like, wow, who does that? I mean,
Speaker 5: even when when I think of science, I'm like, maybe
Speaker 5: I should have studied science that that's actually changing the world.
Speaker 5: And you know, sort of forgives in humanity in some
Speaker 5: very tangible way. But I'm sure there are jobs out
Speaker 5: there and possibilities. I should say that I have yet
Speaker 5: to explore and understand and know.
Speaker 3: I have a very limited skill set.
Speaker 4: I think I managed to find the exact right groove.
Speaker 1: For my skill set.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm so glad that happened.
Speaker 4: As am I there was a possibility of just what
Speaker 4: are we gonna do? I don't know. It's a really
Speaker 4: good thing. I was able to monetize the.
Speaker 3: Thing I do.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. So we have a set of questions that
Speaker 2: we ask all all science fiction writers that we bring
Speaker 2: on the show to sort of like put them on
Speaker 2: the spectrum of concepts. So these are generic questions, not
Speaker 2: necessarily about your writing. And the first one is a
Speaker 2: little bit of philosophy. Do you think that Star Trek
Speaker 2: transporters kill you and clone you on the other side
Speaker 2: or actually transport your atoms somewhere else? Is it a
Speaker 2: murder machine or a teleportation device.
Speaker 3: I need to believe that it's a teleportation device. I'm
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable with a murder machine.
Speaker 4: Because there's those times when they get like lost and
Speaker 4: they have to be found and.
Speaker 3: If they were in fact death No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm going with teleportation.
Speaker 2: Machine because you think it's true or because you need
Speaker 2: it to be true.
Speaker 3: I would never travel by that means if it wasn't, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know why any of them would get on
Speaker 3: that little like thingy if it wasn't I don't yeah, no,
Speaker 3: uh huh.
Speaker 5: I think that that would be it might be a
Speaker 5: selling point for people if they were actually killing you,
Speaker 5: like you you know, cross and to the other side,
Speaker 5: and that you're new, you're born again. You know that's
Speaker 5: a thing.
Speaker 4: Hey, why disassemble? Could you actually take out this thing
Speaker 4: that I don't like? That would be great.
Speaker 5: Could you make me a little taller.
Speaker 4: It's like a really in depth colonoscopy here. We're just
Speaker 4: going to disassemble. You will take out the stuff that's
Speaker 4: not great, we'll put you back together. Not to worry,
Speaker 4: but but I do.
Speaker 5: I do think that it would be sort of like
Speaker 5: a selling point if you were actually dying, like what
Speaker 5: what happens? And that are you conscious in the between
Speaker 5: and the in between? You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like what I don't even take roller coasters? Like, no,
Speaker 4: you can have trouble.
Speaker 3: I think convincing certain types of people to ever be
Speaker 3: transported would be in a shuttle every time.
Speaker 5: That is there and trained to get there. Exactly could
Speaker 5: I row If anybody piloting thing.
Speaker 4: Give me one of those little like rocket packs, I'll
Speaker 4: just he'll be there.
Speaker 5: I like the deav in between, But I don't think
Speaker 5: they're actually killing you. It feels like it's like some
Speaker 5: sort of three D printing something, something that transports you.
Speaker 4: So now you're being cloned.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I'm thinking, opened up a whole thing
Speaker 3: where there are several of me existing on several different
Speaker 3: places because I've been killed and reassembled so many times,
Speaker 3: And what if I wasn't really dead?
Speaker 4: What if that big transportation device.
Speaker 3: Now has created these theories of alternate We're so screwed you.
Speaker 2: Guys, which one is really you?
Speaker 5: That would be really interesting, like what happens, But.
Speaker 3: It's a fundamental flaw in the construction, Like, you do
Speaker 3: not want that machine. You want a simple machine that
Speaker 3: guarantees that you're the same person on the other.
Speaker 2: Side, like a robot. Yeah. No, that's the advantage philosophical
Speaker 2: advantage of a rowboat right there, all right? So second
Speaker 2: general question is what technology in science fiction would you
Speaker 2: most like to see become reality.
Speaker 4: Well, frankly, teleportation really excellent. That would be super convenient.
Speaker 3: I really don't enjoy the time it takes to travel places.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's a version of time travel, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, I think we do it in the like
Speaker 5: in the present when you get on a plane and
Speaker 5: you end up in the future someplace else in the world.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's also like the ability to I don't know,
Speaker 5: fly at the speed of light. I don't know, like
Speaker 5: travel is whatever that is. But the idea that you
Speaker 5: could go back and forth in time and somehow effect
Speaker 5: your future and then know at what point in your
Speaker 5: future you could show up.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm learning so much about Tatiana right now.
Speaker 3: I feel like just the fact that your brain is
Speaker 3: like the little is fascinating.
Speaker 4: Also, time travel is an airplane.
Speaker 5: It is it is. I mean, I als would make
Speaker 5: a joke about this, but I'm like, how is the future?
Speaker 5: Because they are technically in the future eight hours and
Speaker 5: hours eighteen hours ahead, You're like, how you know?
Speaker 2: Time slippery? All right? Last general question is what's your
Speaker 2: personal answer to the Fermi paradox. If the galaxy is
Speaker 2: vast and old, why haven't we been visited by aliens?
Speaker 5: I think we have Okay, I don't have any tangible
Speaker 5: scientific proof, so I you know, other than it's a conjecture.
Speaker 5: But I I mean, maybe those videos that you see
Speaker 5: on the internet of UFOs are made up, right, those
Speaker 5: like where you see an aircraft going, Maybe they are.
Speaker 5: Maybe they're just a trick. But who says that they
Speaker 5: have not? And maybe we're not very interesting, Maybe we're
Speaker 5: too primitive. Maybe it's just a couple of people who
Speaker 5: visited or I don't know, and you know the way
Speaker 5: that you would visit a foreign country and be like
Speaker 5: maybe not there.
Speaker 2: They stop by, they didn't like the coffee, they left.
Speaker 5: These people are doing, I mean, they're you know, they're
Speaker 5: they're gonna end up killing each other anyway, So can
Speaker 5: we just like observe and then leave. So that's what
Speaker 5: I mean. Who's to say that they have a visited?
Speaker 5: I think that's my take on it.
Speaker 3: I guess I think, what if we're just a blip,
Speaker 3: you know, what's to visit? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like it's such an insane accident of biology and evolution
Speaker 3: and cosmic dust, that we even are like this, you know,
Speaker 3: and that we have a planet that's like teeming with
Speaker 3: life and perhaps that weird cosmic accident is and then
Speaker 3: at some point, which is maybe soon in a cosmic sense,
Speaker 3: will no longer be and uh, that's just kind of
Speaker 3: there is to it. And maybe there's a blip of
Speaker 3: some kind elsewhere, but is that something that we're really
Speaker 3: privy to given what a blip we.
Speaker 2: Are, you know, meaning that we don't live for very long,
Speaker 2: and so our civilizations just might not overlap with other blips.
Speaker 3: Sure, and we're not very important, so why like it's
Speaker 3: sort of it feels like, though, why haven't we been
Speaker 3: visited and why haven't we encountered? Is such a human
Speaker 3: centric way to think to begin with. If we're not
Speaker 3: the center of the universe, then it's just a it's
Speaker 3: an accident of whatever what we do encounter and what
Speaker 3: we don't encounter and what we'll never encounter, and we'll
Speaker 3: just sort of like live our weird little ephemeral existence
Speaker 3: and that'll be that and whatever we get to see
Speaker 3: that that's cool, I guess, But I don't know, like
Speaker 3: something you know, I work in theater. I used to
Speaker 3: work in theater where things are and then they aren't, Like,
Speaker 3: I'm all about the ephemeral. Yeah, I guess I just
Speaker 3: don't think that the universe versus organized around our experience.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's fascinating in science fiction how a
Speaker 2: lot of it really is the projection of the human
Speaker 2: experience to say, well, if we were around for long enough,
Speaker 2: we would explore the whole galaxy, so therefore other aliens
Speaker 2: must also be doing that. But really we're just thinking
Speaker 2: about what we would do, and it's impossible to really
Speaker 2: put ourselves in the minds of aliens and.
Speaker 3: Our desire to encounter something that we can understand so
Speaker 3: that we can interpret it. I mean, I also think
Speaker 3: that if we do presume alien life, which I'm totally
Speaker 3: fine with presuming alien life, what are the odds that
Speaker 3: we would even understand it, you know, that it would register.
Speaker 5: Or they even want to understand us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or have wants, I mean wants seem like a
Speaker 3: very human thing.
Speaker 2: Well, that brings me to a question I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you. When you're writing science fiction and you're portraying aliens,
Speaker 2: seems to me like there's a bit of a choice there, Like,
Speaker 2: you can make aliens extremely alien, which I think is
Speaker 2: probably more realistic, and it makes them emotionally totally inaccessible.
Speaker 2: Right we can't see what they're thinking, we can't know
Speaker 2: what they're feeling, we can't even talk to them. Or
Speaker 2: you can make them less realistic and more human, but
Speaker 2: then you can know what they want and there's motivations
Speaker 2: and you see their internal politics. What do you like
Speaker 2: to write on that spectrum? More realistic but inaccessible, or
Speaker 2: less realistic but more understandable.
Speaker 3: I guess Philosophically, I think the exploration of the something
Speaker 3: that is completely other is really interesting and can reflect
Speaker 3: interestingly on our humanity and how we perceive the world,
Speaker 3: how we think about ourselves in the context of the universe. However,
Speaker 3: pragmatically speaking, if you want to have scenes with said aliens,
Speaker 3: it really helps if they have a face.
Speaker 4: Like it really really.
Speaker 3: Helps if they have a face. It is incredibly hard
Speaker 3: for us with our human brains, because ultimately, here's the thing.
Speaker 3: We are writing and filming and communicating and acting for
Speaker 3: a human audience. So ultimately we really really have to
Speaker 3: gear what we're doing to a human brain and how
Speaker 3: a human brain receives information. It is really hard to
Speaker 3: have a scene with something that doesn't have a face.
Speaker 3: It's hard to invest it with emotion, intent, it's hard
Speaker 3: to give it any of those things. So I enjoy
Speaker 3: the inscrutability of you know, cosmic dust, I guess. But
Speaker 3: I think depending on the nature of the show, if
Speaker 3: it is a show that wants to actually interact and
Speaker 3: have conversations, then you need to anthropomorphize just a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I think that.
Speaker 5: You know, my dad used to watch Star Trek, but
Speaker 5: I grew up in Columbia, so I used to watch
Speaker 5: it in Spanish, soa he Lesstrades, that was I think,
Speaker 5: and I think what he was most excited about, and
Speaker 5: what I got most excited about, by proxy, was that
Speaker 5: there were all these aliens, right, these other planets, and
Speaker 5: people that lived inhabited these other planets, that had wants
Speaker 5: and needs and whichever way they were using them to
Speaker 5: this because a variety of themes and topics that applied
Speaker 5: to humans and humanity in our world, those other people,
Speaker 5: those other creatures or beings were being used to reflect
Speaker 5: our own wants and needs and things. But I think
Speaker 5: that in order to have actual drama. Like Aditi said,
Speaker 5: you do need them to want something. And that's not
Speaker 5: to say that you don't relish some degree of alertness, right,
Speaker 5: Like via the invasion, they were like lizards, right and
Speaker 5: there was scary and hard to look at, and Diana
Speaker 5: was evil and all of that, and I think, but
Speaker 5: I think that that's their otherness. Was scary and interesting,
Speaker 5: and I think you can make a meal out of
Speaker 5: that in any scenario, in any sort of sci fi
Speaker 5: show or world. But yeah, I agree with ideally you
Speaker 5: want them to want.
Speaker 3: Something, like you feel like it's Wars where they had
Speaker 3: kind of a medley. You just need eyes, Like if
Speaker 3: you just have eyes and maybe noise, you're okay. You
Speaker 3: can get emotion like Chewy. And honestly, the robots are
Speaker 3: like some of my I get. So they make me
Speaker 3: emotional as emotional, if not more, as you know, the humans.
Speaker 2: Even Jaba the Hut has needs.
Speaker 5: We're gonna say that Jaba Hut. I mean, I said
Speaker 5: so little, but yet so much. You know, like you
Speaker 5: understand which side Jaba is on.
Speaker 2: So then what about on invasion? We see the aliens
Speaker 2: very briefly, but when we do see them, they're very other.
Speaker 2: There are no eyeballs, there's no faces. We get some
Speaker 2: sense of like, you know, malevolence. Tell us about writing
Speaker 2: with such weird aliens.
Speaker 3: Actually, I should say neither of us worked on the
Speaker 3: first season of Invasion. We both worked on the second
Speaker 3: season and for the second season because we're in the
Speaker 3: middle of airing. In addition to the fact that we're
Speaker 3: on strike and not promoting, we also Canton shouldn't spoil,
Speaker 3: so there's that component. But I think what I in,
Speaker 3: you know, what I'll talk about the first season. I
Speaker 3: think what I enjoyed about the aliens on Invasion, and
Speaker 3: also about the slow burn of the kind of invasion
Speaker 3: approach to sci fi was the very, very creepy, eerie
Speaker 3: unknown of what is happening to us, which feels so
Speaker 3: radical in a kind of in a filmography where we
Speaker 3: are accustomed to we're under attack, how do we fight back?
Speaker 3: We fight back, and usually it's literally DC fighting a
Speaker 3: mother ship. Like you know, it's like the White House
Speaker 3: is blown up, we shoot the thing. You know, it's
Speaker 3: very binary and very literal and very linear, and who
Speaker 3: is the enemy is very clear.
Speaker 2: It's like a video game.
Speaker 3: Usually, yeah, very much so, and it's nice, it's very
Speaker 3: convenient for storytelling, like you got your hero, you know
Speaker 3: where to point your hero. But there's something so disruptive
Speaker 3: and disturbing about not about something is happening to us,
Speaker 3: to the planet, to us as a humanity, and we
Speaker 3: can't quite figure out what and how do we go
Speaker 3: about that? And how does the information reach the various
Speaker 3: pockets that it reaches when it reaches them, and how
Speaker 3: do you interpret the weird fragments of information that you have,
Speaker 3: And that includes what the aliens look like. I mean,
Speaker 3: they're incomprehensible, They're like, well, they don't have eyes, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, they have a mouth, which is
Speaker 3: good and scary or like something that feels oritificy anyway,
Speaker 3: But it's that sort of I think that the game,
Speaker 3: especially in season one, and I shall refrain from spoiling
Speaker 3: season two, the game that season one plays is very
Speaker 3: much that's sort of like down to the ground realistic.
Speaker 3: How do you figure out from the rapnels of information
Speaker 3: that you have what is happening? And how terrifying is
Speaker 3: it to not even be able to identify the nature
Speaker 3: or the source of this threat that is clearly killing you.
Speaker 3: You know, it's scary in a human way. It's scary
Speaker 3: the way disease is scary, which I think is fascinating
Speaker 3: and I take no credit for because I didn't work
Speaker 3: out season one.
Speaker 5: I think there was also an effort to make those
Speaker 5: particular creatures unlike any human or anything that you've ever seen,
Speaker 5: because the less they look like you, the less you're
Speaker 5: able to think or imagine that you can relate to
Speaker 5: these things that are in front of you. And I
Speaker 5: think the little bit that I can say of a
Speaker 5: season two is once again because it's airing and strike stuff,
Speaker 5: I feel like the joy and the Jews and that
Speaker 5: story is that it's discovering how they are unlike us,
Speaker 5: or how they are like us, you know, where and
Speaker 5: how could we possibly communicate with a language and a
Speaker 5: language that we don't understand. So like the way that
Speaker 5: you know, what's your name, Amy's the language a specialist,
Speaker 5: the linguist tries to communicate with beings that do not
Speaker 5: communicate the way that you do. So I think that
Speaker 5: there's a joy in that and an excitement and a
Speaker 5: fear for the characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wonderful. Tell me a little bit about what it's
Speaker 2: like to work on a project like this where the
Speaker 2: universe has been somewhat set up already, because I know
Speaker 2: the season one was written basically by the creators of
Speaker 2: the show, and then you guys got brought in for
Speaker 2: season two. Do they like read you in in all
Speaker 2: the secrets that are coming down the roads to make
Speaker 2: sure that your writing is consistent with it? What's that
Speaker 2: like to sort of operate in somebody else's universe that
Speaker 2: they've begun to build.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I would say that yes to what
Speaker 5: you said. I believe they had like a writer's room before,
Speaker 5: and that was done a way, and that was for
Speaker 5: season one, and then there was a fairly mostly new
Speaker 5: writers from for season two, and I think the spirit
Speaker 5: of that season two room was We're going to let
Speaker 5: you in on all the secrets, but also we are
Speaker 5: so open to you bringing in ideas and also your
Speaker 5: ideas as a viewer. Right. I think by now I
Speaker 5: watch season one like six times, you know, and there's
Speaker 5: you know, because of all the clues and the things,
Speaker 5: and where can we grow the story? So there was
Speaker 5: a spirit of openness and what else can you bring
Speaker 5: to the table, How can we make this exciting? What
Speaker 5: was exciting for you as a viewer watching the show
Speaker 5: in the first season.
Speaker 2: I mean, ye, all right, I have lots more things
Speaker 2: they want to talk about, but first, let's take a
Speaker 2: quick break. Okay, we're back and we're talking to the
Speaker 2: writers of the TV show Invasion. Compare what it's like
Speaker 2: for us working on a big studio project like this
Speaker 2: with a lot of your other work you both worked on,
Speaker 2: you know, as playwrights, where it's just you and the
Speaker 2: blank page and nobody's giving you notes. I'm assuming to
Speaker 2: working on a project like this with this many levels
Speaker 2: of review and discussion, And what's that like? Which one
Speaker 2: is more fun for you? Or are the pros and cons?
Speaker 3: Oh they're such wildly different beasts. Kind of the beauty
Speaker 3: of TV writing. But also the biggest difference for me
Speaker 3: between it and writing a play, or even writing a
Speaker 3: screenplay or you know, an audio play or anything that
Speaker 3: is just mine is that in TV, the showrunner is
Speaker 3: the lead artist, and everything you do in a really,
Speaker 3: really fantastic, gorgeous I love this aspect of it, wait,
Speaker 3: is in service to the lead artist's vision. So it's
Speaker 3: like in the case of Invasion, Invasion is Simon Kinberg's
Speaker 3: show and the case of the show I did for
Speaker 3: Netflix years ago away the showrunners were the really really lovely,
Speaker 3: amazing Wise Andrew Hinderocker and Jessica Goldberg. And when you
Speaker 3: come into any TV room where you're inventing together, and
Speaker 3: you have to invent together, and you have to all right,
Speaker 3: and you have to all live in the same world,
Speaker 3: and you have to somehow get into that space where
Speaker 3: you're all inhabiting the same world. But what's helpful to
Speaker 3: always remember is that ultimately that world is the showrunner's creation.
Speaker 4: That's their baby.
Speaker 3: That's who has in their gut the knowledge of what
Speaker 3: this needs to be and wants to be. And you're
Speaker 3: playing in that sandbox. So the really stark difference for
Speaker 3: me is when it's mine, it's all my sandbox. It
Speaker 3: is mine like I am. I'm not even the showrunner.
Speaker 3: I'm just like the god of that little universe. My plays,
Speaker 3: they are mine, they are my universe. I create them,
Speaker 3: I make them go any which direction I please. At
Speaker 3: some point I might be in service to someone else,
Speaker 3: but not even really Like I'm in dialogue. I love collaboration.
Speaker 3: What's fun about a writer's room is it's like improv
Speaker 3: all day long with your friends, and then thankfully there's
Speaker 3: someone who invented this world who can go, yeah, I
Speaker 3: love that. Now let's not do that. Yeah great, go
Speaker 3: that way. No no, no, no, I don't like that
Speaker 3: at all, and you're like, cool, I'll go that way.
Speaker 3: And when it's my world, I spend quality time thinking
Speaker 3: really hard about what it is I'm trying to communicate
Speaker 3: to the world. I spend quality time thinking about, you know,
Speaker 3: like what the truth underneath a scene is that I
Speaker 3: have to excavate in order to make it the most honest, profound,
Speaker 3: insightful thing that I can say. And it's hot, and
Speaker 3: it's like taking your innerds and smearing them across a
Speaker 3: page and it takes forever, and it's agonizing writers' rooms. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's like that when you're writing, because you want to
Speaker 3: give them your best work, but it's not quite that painful.
Speaker 3: It's like play with your friends, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Because you have buddies. I can be like Gadiana, I
Speaker 3: hate this scene so much, tell me something and she
Speaker 3: tells me a.
Speaker 4: Joke and I go, okay, wait, I think I got it,
Speaker 4: and I go, you.
Speaker 3: Know, it's just a visceral difference in terms of process
Speaker 3: and also in terms of whether you're in service or
Speaker 3: whether you are the artist who is just stating a thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's also a degree of community work, right,
Speaker 5: because theater is community work once there is a project
Speaker 5: and a creation on the table, right, And then you
Speaker 5: bring in a designer, and you have a director, and
Speaker 5: you have the actors, and you have a sound designer,
Speaker 5: and you may have a theater. An artistic director of
Speaker 5: a theater is also chiming in. And it feels like
Speaker 5: TV is very much a community effort from the get go.
Speaker 5: You know, even even with the creator slash showrunner, a
Speaker 5: creator and a showrunner that work together, having those people
Speaker 5: as people who are have created or given birth to
Speaker 5: quote unquote given birth to a project in a world
Speaker 5: it's very community oriented from the get go. And it
Speaker 5: also depends on how flexible your creators or showrunner and
Speaker 5: or show runner are and how willing they are to
Speaker 5: stretch and open up the world in different ways that
Speaker 5: they could have ever imagined. Some people are like, no,
Speaker 5: it is this way, this is the only way I
Speaker 5: want it, and that is completely fine, and then the other,
Speaker 5: you know, the other end of that spectrum is like,
Speaker 5: I'm very open to shaping this and taking it to
Speaker 5: a place where I never imagined it could go.
Speaker 2: Well. I'm wondering also about the process of like setting
Speaker 2: up the rules for the world. Is it more like,
Speaker 2: here's the universe we created, let's figure out what the
Speaker 2: natural stories are, what it's like to be human in
Speaker 2: this world, what it's like to live through this experience.
Speaker 2: Or is it more like, here are the stories we
Speaker 2: want to tell. You know, we'll figure out the rules
Speaker 2: as we go along, which is a sort of more
Speaker 2: natural process for you.
Speaker 5: It's a very personal question, right because and it also
Speaker 5: depends on the story. Some stories require that you have
Speaker 5: rules from the get go, even this tell Transporters, right like,
Speaker 5: I know that they added like a machine that control
Speaker 5: the tele transporting device and Star Trek, and then they
Speaker 5: were like, oh, this falters. Here's a problem, you know
Speaker 5: if you mess with it. But I think that there
Speaker 5: are rules like maybe we never see the in between.
Speaker 5: That's the rule, you know, because we don't want people
Speaker 5: to go there. But I think it really depends on
Speaker 5: the story that you're telling. I tend to do characters
Speaker 5: and wants and needs and then go like, well, they
Speaker 5: can't have it because, or they can't have this, or
Speaker 5: they can or they want something forbidden because and why
Speaker 5: is it forbidden in that world? And the rules Store
Speaker 5: is sort of populating the world. But I've certainly worked
Speaker 5: on shows where it was like the rules are you know,
Speaker 5: I worked on the second iteration of this is in
Speaker 5: sci fi, but it's genre certainly in period Penny Dreadful,
Speaker 5: but it was in la and the rules were very clear.
Speaker 5: You know, it's like it's period and the level of
Speaker 5: horror is this, and this is what the person who's inhabiting,
Speaker 5: the who's being inhabited were possessed by the devil. This
Speaker 5: is what they can do. You know, they can't walk
Speaker 5: through walls, but they can get into your head, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. But they can't. So those rules
Speaker 5: were very clear, and they were set by the showrunner,
Speaker 5: by John Logan. So as an example of rules are clear,
Speaker 5: you cannot break them Otherwise, you know, you're sort of
Speaker 5: pulling apart and tearing apart the fabric of the world
Speaker 5: in the show.
Speaker 3: It's so particular, it's so particular the creator, I think,
Speaker 3: just search for the story and the perfect vessel to marry,
Speaker 3: like I is my thing, Like I feel like I
Speaker 3: can meander through bazillion thoughts in my head. But unless
Speaker 3: I come across one where I go, ooh, this story
Speaker 3: inside this vessel look like a perfect marriage to me,
Speaker 3: then I don't. I can't start, like I need the
Speaker 3: vessel too in order to begin. So I think I
Speaker 3: tend to have structure and some rules a universe in mind.
Speaker 3: That there's to what degree is your project, your story,
Speaker 3: accountable to rules?
Speaker 4: How much do you care about them?
Speaker 3: Because I think about I think about really geeky sci
Speaker 3: fi stories where they clearly care so much about the science, right,
Speaker 3: that's what gives them that tingle in their spine, right.
Speaker 3: And then I think about others where it's really just
Speaker 3: there to be a metaphor, it really truly is, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I remember, I might get in trouble for this.
Speaker 3: I remember when I saw gravity. We got to the end,
Speaker 3: and I was like, it was just a metaphor. There
Speaker 3: was no space travel.
Speaker 4: As far as I'm concerned, it was entirely a metaphor
Speaker 4: about coming out of.
Speaker 3: Grief, how one comes out of grief. When she walked
Speaker 3: out of that water.
Speaker 4: At the end, I was like, how she even alive?
Speaker 3: That's right, Oh, it's just a metaphor, just a metaphor,
Speaker 3: And that's great. As long as the thing knows what
Speaker 3: it is, I think it holds up as a narrative.
Speaker 3: And I'm completely fine with the story existing in space
Speaker 3: and just being an emotional metaphor. And I'm completely fine
Speaker 3: with the meticulous math of you know, Chris Nolan figuring
Speaker 3: out exactly how many layers of reality he needs his
Speaker 3: characters to drop through.
Speaker 4: Where I'm like, oh my god, I can't. So it's
Speaker 4: like those rules, also, I think are so particular to
Speaker 4: the individual, and I think probably both Tatiana and I
Speaker 4: have worked for people who fall everywhere that spectrum of
Speaker 4: what it is they care about for the purposes of
Speaker 4: their story.
Speaker 3: And I find that it takes me a minute to
Speaker 3: calibrate my brain to oh, I may be more obsessed
Speaker 3: right now with the science than you are, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to have to just go icee ice, Ice. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's a different vibe. This is a different vibe of story.
Speaker 3: This is where this hangs out. Let me step back
Speaker 3: and try to place myself there, because again, I am
Speaker 3: of service, right, But it's so particular. It's it's such
Speaker 3: an interesting thing. It's voice. It's the artist's voice.
Speaker 5: So DT and I worked on Invasion for like eighteen
Speaker 5: months straight without break. I feel like add you were
Speaker 5: keeping us. You were like keeping us on track in
Speaker 5: terms of the whatever rules we had created for the world.
Speaker 5: You were like, but the rules, but but wait, why
Speaker 5: are we how could they possibly? No? I just remember
Speaker 5: a couple of times in ways from where you were like,
Speaker 5: my mind is exploding because how could possibly do this
Speaker 5: when we've said this about the world. So I think
Speaker 5: it was a very good You were great to have
Speaker 5: in the room because when we thought about it, we
Speaker 5: were like, she's.
Speaker 2: Right, I can't.
Speaker 5: They can't.
Speaker 4: It's true, they can't.
Speaker 5: Do what we want him to do. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: That's actually a really good thing.
Speaker 3: Also, in a TV writer's room, you can sort of
Speaker 3: have a variety of people who care about a variety
Speaker 3: of things, and they will give voice to those things,
Speaker 3: and then the showrunner, the lead artist, whoever the lead
Speaker 3: artist is, can be like, yep, I care about that.
Speaker 4: I don't care about that.
Speaker 3: I have care about that, And yes, I think my
Speaker 3: jam On actually probably a couple of shows I've worked on.
Speaker 4: Is but guys, the sciences, the rubles.
Speaker 5: I want to say that that's really important. And this
Speaker 5: is why, because whenever I've watched the show just as
Speaker 5: a viewer and the logic just doesn't add up with
Speaker 5: the rules that you've given me, I'm like, check out.
Speaker 5: I'm like, doesn't make sense. I stopped watching and start
Speaker 5: judging because I can't engage any longer because I've suspended
Speaker 5: my disbelief and you've given me rules, and I'm like, okay, great,
Speaker 5: I've got the rules of the world. I'm now going
Speaker 5: to you know, and the moment those things are start
Speaker 5: to fall away, you start to check in with reality
Speaker 5: and suspend your suspension of disbelief, is going like, oh
Speaker 5: shut up, that would never happen because you told me
Speaker 5: this before. So I think that that it is really important.
Speaker 5: And once again, as a ditt said, the showrunner will decide,
Speaker 5: you know, whether that's a rule that we want to
Speaker 5: sustain for a particular scene or not. But I think
Speaker 5: it's really important to keep that and you definitely did
Speaker 5: that for us in that room. So on behalf of everybody.
Speaker 2: Thank you, yes, thank you very much. Personally, as a scientist,
Speaker 2: whenever I see science fiction, I'm always trying to solve
Speaker 2: the puzzle. Why is it this way? What's going on?
Speaker 2: And if I feel like the rules aren't being followed,
Speaker 2: then I feel like it's the puzzles unsolvable, and then
Speaker 2: it's like I feel betrayed.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's just a metaphors, just a metaphor.
Speaker 2: So my last question for you is, having spent eighteen
Speaker 2: months working on this show and thinking deeply about Aliens
Speaker 2: and arrival and all this kind of stuff. If you
Speaker 2: heard that Aliens were arriving, would you think, ye, good
Speaker 2: news for Earth, We're going to learn secrets of the universe,
Speaker 2: or a bad news We're going to be lunch.
Speaker 3: Definitely bad news.
Speaker 5: I was going to say the same, but only because
Speaker 5: we did spend that amount of time being like, you know,
Speaker 5: all these horrible things happening on Earth, and there were
Speaker 5: so many downsides to that. How that ends up in
Speaker 5: the story is a different story altogether. But you know what,
Speaker 5: it's also because of so because so much sci fi
Speaker 5: depicts the other the visitors as evil, I think my
Speaker 5: first thought would be nothing good could come out of us,
Speaker 5: But I want to be proven wrong. I there everybody
Speaker 5: out there if they could listen to this podcast to pen,
Speaker 5: I love for you to come and have coffee with
Speaker 5: us and prove me wrong that there is much to
Speaker 5: learn from other people and beings and that they may
Speaker 5: possibly could learn something from us, if I could be
Speaker 5: so arrogant to say that.
Speaker 3: So this probably falls back into my but we're cosmic
Speaker 3: dust thing. Have you guys read this really really kind
Speaker 3: of fascinating thinky sci fi novel called The Sparrow. It's
Speaker 3: Mary Doria, Maria Doria Russell. Mary's something Doria Russell apologies,
Speaker 3: I should fix that. So I think colonialism is why
Speaker 3: I think it's bad news. Not because they come here
Speaker 3: because they're determined to wipe us out with their amazing
Speaker 3: super weapons, necessarily because that feels again very human centric
Speaker 3: to me, but because is there a story of first
Speaker 3: contact that we know that hasn't resulted in some couldn't
Speaker 3: have foreseen it disaster.
Speaker 2: Not with humans involved.
Speaker 4: Now, I don't know if.
Speaker 3: We're going to be bad for them or they're going
Speaker 3: to be bad for us. But if they're coming, I'm
Speaker 3: going to say they're the colonizers. But even if they
Speaker 3: come with the best of intentions, you know, that the
Speaker 3: smallpox are coming, you know what.
Speaker 2: I mean, like cosmic smallpox.
Speaker 4: I don't see how that's not the case.
Speaker 3: And that was sort of the kind of inner workings
Speaker 3: theme of the well intentioned space travelers in the Sparrow,
Speaker 3: which I thought was a really clever novel, really kind
Speaker 3: of like well etched story.
Speaker 5: So what do you think, Dan, would you think if
Speaker 5: you know they came to visit they what's your take
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 2: I think there's an incredible opportunity there to learn about
Speaker 2: the universe from a really alien perspective. I think so
Speaker 2: much of our science is probably colored by our humanity
Speaker 2: in a way that we can never unravel, in the
Speaker 2: way that you can never really see your own cultures
Speaker 2: imprint on your choices and your values. So I think
Speaker 2: there's an incredible opportunity there. But I think it's much
Speaker 2: more likely that if they do come, they will be
Speaker 2: so alien and so other that we will never be
Speaker 2: able to communicate with them and learn those secrets if
Speaker 2: they do have them, and probably, you know, we'll end
Speaker 2: up like in that Far Side cartoon where they look
Speaker 2: like a hand and some farmer picks them up and
Speaker 2: shakes them and dooms the earth to devastation, you know,
Speaker 2: some simple mistake of miscommunication, disaster. You don't know every
Speaker 2: Far Side cartoon by heart that it depicts aliens. Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, But I'm an optimist at heart, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to it. If aliens come, then at least
Speaker 2: we will have learned one thing about the universe, which
Speaker 2: is there are aliens. So before we get zapped from orbit,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll have gained a tiny bit of knowledge.
Speaker 5: So somebody can ask what to kiss a long exactly?
Speaker 3: Do you think we'd accurately be able to identify them
Speaker 3: as Like? Do you think we even have the ability
Speaker 3: to identify life as life?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like, we don't even know what life is. We can't
Speaker 2: even define it very well. So part of that learning
Speaker 2: would be understanding what kind of things we can discover
Speaker 2: and we can't discover, and you know where those boundaries are.
Speaker 2: The more we learn about life, the more we realize
Speaker 2: we should be looking for it in all sorts of way.
Speaker 5: Your places, it assumes that they are, like there's some
Speaker 5: sort of degree of consciousness, right, So we just don't
Speaker 5: know what package it would come in.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 3: Earlier today I was walking around in my backyard, and
Speaker 3: I think I stepped on an alien and wept out
Speaker 3: an entire species.
Speaker 4: And that's the end of that. It looked like dust.
Speaker 4: It was dust.
Speaker 2: How many times have you done that without even knowing?
Speaker 4: So many?
Speaker 2: All right, well, thanks very much for sharing all of
Speaker 2: your thoughts about your process, about your experience and the
Speaker 2: philosophy of Star Trek. Really appreciate your time and your
Speaker 2: jokes and for sharing your gift of writing with us.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having us this, Yeah, thank you?
Speaker 1: All right, pretty invasive conversation, sort of are they actually aliens?
Speaker 1: Do you think? Is that how they know so much?
Speaker 2: Well? On the video, they seemed like humans and they
Speaker 2: definitely had a human sense of humor, and you could
Speaker 2: tell that they really enjoyed working together. They spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time in that writer's room together, hammered a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff out, and they got pretty deep and philosophical.
Speaker 2: So this is a pretty thoughtful group.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, the show is called Invasion. It's on Apple TV.
Speaker 1: You can check out the second season right.
Speaker 2: Now, that's right, And if you are a fan of
Speaker 2: science fiction and you like these episodes, right to me
Speaker 2: to send your recommendations. For authors and writers we should
Speaker 2: talk to. Send it to questions at Danielandjorge dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that, and next
Speaker 1: time you look up to this guy, you think about
Speaker 1: who might be out there and what might happen if
Speaker 1: they come visit us or if we come visit them. Eventually.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time.
Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media,
Speaker 2: where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter,
Speaker 2: disc Word, Insta, and now TikTok. Happy holidays from everyone
Speaker 2: here at the podcast. If you're looking for a science
Speaker 2: themed gift for someone in your family, or just to
Speaker 2: treat yourself, please consider buying one of our books. Our
Speaker 2: first book, We Have No explores all of the things
Speaker 2: science does and doesn't know about the world, from what
Speaker 2: is mass to what happened before the Big Bang. It's
Speaker 2: essential reading for fans of the podcast, and it's filled
Speaker 2: with lots of hilarious cartoons drawn by Jorge, which you'll
Speaker 2: miss if you only listen to the pod. And it's
Speaker 2: available in dozens of languages, from Greek to Korean to English.
Speaker 2: Of course, and this is an audiobook read by me
Speaker 2: so check out. We have no idea our second book
Speaker 2: frequently ask questions about the universe answers many of the
Speaker 2: common questions we get from listeners. Where's the center of
Speaker 2: the universe? Why can't we travel through time? What happens
Speaker 2: if you fall into a black hole? Frequently Ask questions
Speaker 2: about the universe is also available in audio and in
Speaker 2: many many languages. So treat yourself for your family to
Speaker 2: a dose of science and humor this year. If we
Speaker 2: have no idea or frequently ask questions about the universe,
Speaker 2: available at reputable and disreputable booksellers everywhere. They make a
Speaker 2: wonderful gift for you, and it's the best way to
Speaker 2: support your favorite pot. Happy holidays.
Speaker 6: Hi, this is Kelly Wienersmith.
Speaker 7: You may remember me from such dju conversations as that
Speaker 7: one time Daniel said something that would scare my kids,
Speaker 7: or that other time Daniel said something about how we're
Speaker 7: all gonna.
Speaker 6: Die, which would probably scare my kids.
Speaker 7: Anyway, my husband and I wrote a book about the biological, psychological, technical, legal,
Speaker 7: and ethical issues we still need to solve before we
Speaker 7: settle space. The book is called A City on Mars,
Speaker 7: and the bottom half of the expanses.
Speaker 6: James sa Corey liked it, so we think you should too.
Speaker 2: Thanks, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explain The Universe
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: into your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Hey Tore from the podcast. This holiday season, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a great gift for your kids, give him
Speaker 1: a copy of Oliver's Great Big Universe, my new book
Speaker 1: filled with signs, cartoons, and a hilarious story. It's a
Speaker 1: big hit with kids and curious adults who love to read,
Speaker 1: so check it out at Great Big Universe dot net.