Im thrilled. This is my first video listening to Sean Carroll's podcast and I'm already pumped. Listened to so many Joe Rogan pod casts and that's where I heard of Sean Carroll. I am about to listen to every single podcast my Sean Carroll that exists in this world, or any other of the meant world's that exist. 😁😁
I love his answer to the Fermi paradox. Another potential answer could be that life is so different out there that we wouldn’t recognize it to begin with. Imagine how many species are non existent but possible with our own evolutionary tree. Now imagine how different these results would be with evolutionary trees from different planets with different initial conditions than earth. I bet that the first steps of evolution would not be identical to ours and that would result in a completely different tree with non overlapping species. I doubt that we’d ever see them if we keep looking for ourselves out there. We have more in common with trees and slime mold than we do with them.
Best quote ever: "Life is a layer on top of geology; it alleviates chemical disequilibrium in the environment to accelerate the increase in entropy...[to give free energy to do work]" - Kevin Hand. I wish I had said that!
This is probably one of the best out of the entire series so far. I thought it was great, but since in the past I have expressed points off for the person's speaking style (some being hard to listen to) here for the last half of the podcast I pondered If I should mention this topic, today. Well, Kevin Hand does not express any of the major negatives in presentation that I've brought up previously with other speakers. For example he doesn't "machine gun on full auto" shoot words as fast as they can be fired... no, just the opposite, he's a good example of pacing such that we can relax and enjoy the discussion. There's this strange thing though... he pauses quite a bit on almost every question or point so I spent the second half of this presentation thinking about that while also listening. I interpret all of the delays as Kevin Hand sort-of checking his answers before he speaks and in almost every case i have this guess he was trying to remain 'scientific.' In other words you're careful and you don't want to say something that would cause other scientists to criticize your answers. The answers have to a fully acceptable to his peer scientists. That slows him down a bit, but this is perfectly understandable. In contrast, i could get away with wild speculation tossed out as soon as a question is posed because I'm not working in science right now. Kevin Hand is a true expert and so he has to just slightly 'stifle himself.' Ha! I really feel I should give Kevin hand an "A+" but I have that nagging sense that his performance would improve if he (over the years) came on this podcast multiple times. I'm imagining I need some headroom for my scoring system so my nagging feeling is reminding me to only give him an "A" for now. I hope he gets more practice in being interviewed and I hope to hear an even smoother presentation from him in the future. That's a complex way of saying "he's great!" Cheers!
A lot of the conversation reminded me of an article I read about, “Dissapative Adaptation”. Trying to find some dispassionate theory for life would be great. Unfortunately, we currently only have one datapoint. This was very interesting. Thanks to the both of you.
Dr Hands view of life as an emergent property of entropy was certainly thought provoking, although im not quite sure why he would consume a bottle of xanax before an interview.
I loved the guest and the subject, but could not finish the podcast, because I get the very distinct feeling that Sean was very impatient with his guest, so it was uncomfortable to listen. There was a very subtle air of passive aggression from Sean in this episode.
I'd like to correct what the guest said (11:26) that Galileo's discoveries were heretical and got him into trouble with the Spanish Inquisition. Ignoring the fact that this was Roman Inquisition (as opposed to Spanish or Portuguese), which is not really relevant, here's something more important as I care about the science-and-religion history: Galileo's discoveries were not heretical. He was never even sentenced as a heretic. In 1633, he was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", a step away from being a formal heretic. But the thing is that the Church actually celebrated his discoveries. What got him into trouble were other things and it was never his discoveries themselves. I quote from the historian of science and expert on Galileo, William R. Shea: "Galileo's Sidereal Messenger, published in 1610, was an instant success, as was his trip to Rome the next year, when the Jesuits publically confirmed his telescopic discoveries and Prince Frederico Cesi (1585-1630) made him a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. So great was the applause that Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte wrote to the grand duke Cosimo II: "Were we living in the ancient Roman Republic, I have no doubt that a statue would be erected in the Campidoglio in honor of his [Galileo's] outstanding merit." (Shea, in Lindberg, Numbers (eds.), God and Nature, 116) The church had no problem with his discoveries and actually celebrated them. For the next 5 years, he had no problem with the Inquisition and then it had to with the interpretation of them (1616) and then in 1633 whether he broke the agreement set up in 1616 (yes, it was triggered by Galileo's offensive language against his friend which happened to be the pope).
Loved this episode. The search for life continues. I was wondering how we would manage several KM of Ice drilling. maybe a controlled nuclear meltdown and let gravity do the work?
no, controlled nuclear meltdowns are just called highly energetic power sources. even though it would melt. down. which is the entire goal. no better way to cut through kms of ice
1:52:00 re: the fermi paradox--what's the probability a randomly selected logically possible civilization would live through time in the same order as us?
two things, it seems that pluto could harbour life, it appears to have huge underground ocean, so the goldilocks zone got bigger, but, exo planets - do they have magnetic fields because watching a video about earth's magnetic field seems to imply a lot of these exo planets might not actuallyy be (easily) habitable after all..anyway...on the subject of anti-freeze, i believe we humans have a gene in common with an arctic fish, the fish has anti-freeze in it's blood, if we had enough time maybe we could have anti-freeze in our blood too? but my question is, would it be easier to engineer humans to the environment, or is it easier to engineer the environment to humans? i recall a book called "the seedling stars" james blish about the subject.... 1:12:30 for the fine tuning freaks this is an interesting part of the conversation, cos what you're saying is "for a methane based life form this universe is not fine tuned".
Life is a community of unique physicochemical identities that actively seek to preserve and replicate those identities! Wouldn't this be the most succinct definition of life? I've never heard anyone say it on all the podcast? I mean Sean asked for a definition of life and they went into a discussion of Gibbs free energy without giving any basic definition. Clearly what seems unique about life is that it has a unique identity and it actively seeks to maintain and reproduce this identity. This is the defining characteristic of all organisms. Anyway just curious. I mean their are other interesting chemical reactions like the sun and fire but they don't actively seek to replicate any sort of uniqueness. I've heard a lot of discussions on life and they never seem to get at this... but of course they do get at slightly longer version of metabolism and reproduction and survival you know the standard biological definitions. All right hit me back let me know what you think
1:12:52 Zippy Turtle? Zippy Turtle is going to head a mission to Titan? Is that the Kerbal space agency? Life gets weirder all the time! I think he meant Elizabeth Turtle.
41:00 tldr:I Despite my germinating idea of supporting your channel, I then stumbled upon this moment: I will never again send you money, for any reason, for as long as I am alive. What an amazing, pure example of what selling out means. I will forever more be a proud anti-Patreon-sub-particle, because holy shit I wish so strongly that you read this message and - until you die- bore this concept into your skull: the concept of (I know it's hard, you can do it!) sharing content for free(!) with the world.
I love and appreciate your video thankyou. Please though let your guests speak. Somtimes I feel you are telling them what to say.. they are your guests let them speak. Too often I feel you prompt and put words in their mouths a little to strongly. Please take this little criticism constructively as I really do appreciate your work and effort. 🙏
Oddly on THIS occasion the gentleman just COULDN'T stay focused without constant prodding by Sean.. Meaning NO disrespect, I can say he's easily distracted.
that depends on what the guest has to say, and how condensed his thoughts are and how pointed his speech is. this one was a bit hard to listen to. I prefer guests who take a pause to think, but then answer in a less cloudy way.
Im thrilled. This is my first video listening to Sean Carroll's podcast and I'm already pumped. Listened to so many Joe Rogan pod casts and that's where I heard of Sean Carroll. I am about to listen to every single podcast my Sean Carroll that exists in this world, or any other of the meant world's that exist. 😁😁
These extraterrestrial life podcasts are always my favourite, please do more! :)
I love his answer to the Fermi paradox. Another potential answer could be that life is so different out there that we wouldn’t recognize it to begin with. Imagine how many species are non existent but possible with our own evolutionary tree. Now imagine how different these results would be with evolutionary trees from different planets with different initial conditions than earth. I bet that the first steps of evolution would not be identical to ours and that would result in a completely different tree with non overlapping species. I doubt that we’d ever see them if we keep looking for ourselves out there. We have more in common with trees and slime mold than we do with them.
This episode contains some of the best content I've ever watched online. Thank you!
Kevin: Says something profound about the universe.
Carroll: "Alright, let me talk to you about car insurance".
One of of your best episode Sean!
Best quote ever: "Life is a layer on top of geology; it alleviates chemical disequilibrium in the environment to accelerate the increase in entropy...[to give free energy to do work]" - Kevin Hand. I wish I had said that!
My favorite podcast to date!
This is probably one of the best out of the entire series so far. I thought it was great, but since in the past I have expressed points off for the person's speaking style (some being hard to listen to) here for the last half of the podcast I pondered If I should mention this topic, today.
Well, Kevin Hand does not express any of the major negatives in presentation that I've brought up previously with other speakers. For example he doesn't "machine gun on full auto" shoot words as fast as they can be fired... no, just the opposite, he's a good example of pacing such that we can relax and enjoy the discussion. There's this strange thing though... he pauses quite a bit on almost every question or point so I spent the second half of this presentation thinking about that while also listening.
I interpret all of the delays as Kevin Hand sort-of checking his answers before he speaks and in almost every case i have this guess he was trying to remain 'scientific.' In other words you're careful and you don't want to say something that would cause other scientists to criticize your answers. The answers have to a fully acceptable to his peer scientists. That slows him down a bit, but this is perfectly understandable.
In contrast, i could get away with wild speculation tossed out as soon as a question is posed because I'm not working in science right now. Kevin Hand is a true expert and so he has to just slightly 'stifle himself.' Ha!
I really feel I should give Kevin hand an "A+" but I have that nagging sense that his performance would improve if he (over the years) came on this podcast multiple times. I'm imagining I need some headroom for my scoring system so my nagging feeling is reminding me to only give him an "A" for now. I hope he gets more practice in being interviewed and I hope to hear an even smoother presentation from him in the future.
That's a complex way of saying "he's great!"
Cheers!
I watched Europa Report last night because of this episode, and *loved* it. Thanks
my consumption of this podcast has changed to youtube in this quarantine time, even though it has no video. thanks for making it available
This is one of the most fascinating conversations I have ever heard. It has reignited my old love of biochemistry. Thanks guys!!
One of the finest conversations.
Great great great
loved "Europa Report"!
I hope I'm alive to see the Europa submarine in action. (plus people walking on Mars)
I'm 58, I may not see that happen
I would remain optimistic. Biotech progress is advancing quite rapidly in longevity each year.
I've always found it notable that the search for intelligent life is always looking away from the earth.
A lot of the conversation reminded me of an article I read about, “Dissapative Adaptation”. Trying to find some dispassionate theory for life would be great. Unfortunately, we currently only have one datapoint. This was very interesting. Thanks to the both of you.
I'm here looking for life. Cheers, Sean!
Dr Hands view of life as an emergent property of entropy was certainly thought provoking, although im not quite sure why he would consume a bottle of xanax before an interview.
Bring David Deutsch please! :)
What about the methane oceanus on Triton?
I loved the guest and the subject, but could not finish the podcast, because I get the very distinct feeling that Sean was very impatient with his guest, so it was uncomfortable to listen. There was a very subtle air of passive aggression from Sean in this episode.
I'd like to correct what the guest said (11:26) that Galileo's discoveries were heretical and got him into trouble with the Spanish Inquisition. Ignoring the fact that this was Roman Inquisition (as opposed to Spanish or Portuguese), which is not really relevant, here's something more important as I care about the science-and-religion history:
Galileo's discoveries were not heretical. He was never even sentenced as a heretic. In 1633, he was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", a step away from being a formal heretic. But the thing is that the Church actually celebrated his discoveries. What got him into trouble were other things and it was never his discoveries themselves. I quote from the historian of science and expert on Galileo, William R. Shea:
"Galileo's Sidereal Messenger, published in 1610, was an instant success, as was his trip to Rome the next year, when the Jesuits publically confirmed his telescopic discoveries and Prince Frederico Cesi (1585-1630) made him a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. So great was the applause that Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte wrote to the grand duke Cosimo II: "Were we living in the ancient Roman Republic, I have no doubt that a statue would be erected in the Campidoglio in honor of his [Galileo's] outstanding merit."
(Shea, in Lindberg, Numbers (eds.), God and Nature, 116)
The church had no problem with his discoveries and actually celebrated them. For the next 5 years, he had no problem with the Inquisition and then it had to with the interpretation of them (1616) and then in 1633 whether he broke the agreement set up in 1616 (yes, it was triggered by Galileo's offensive language against his friend which happened to be the pope).
this is really informative.
Loved this episode. The search for life continues. I was wondering how we would manage several KM of Ice drilling. maybe a controlled nuclear meltdown and let gravity do the work?
no, controlled nuclear meltdowns are just called highly energetic power sources. even though it would melt. down. which is the entire goal. no better way to cut through kms of ice
1:52:00 re: the fermi paradox--what's the probability a randomly selected logically possible civilization would live through time in the same order as us?
Its not are we alone but how alone are we. The shy aliens remember?
Is it possible that there could be life that would not grow on an agar plate?
Amazing!
two things, it seems that pluto could harbour life, it appears to have huge underground ocean, so the goldilocks zone got bigger, but, exo planets - do they have magnetic fields because watching a video about earth's magnetic field seems to imply a lot of these exo planets might not actuallyy be (easily) habitable after all..anyway...on the subject of anti-freeze, i believe we humans have a gene in common with an arctic fish, the fish has anti-freeze in it's blood, if we had enough time maybe we could have anti-freeze in our blood too? but my question is, would it be easier to engineer humans to the environment, or is it easier to engineer the environment to humans? i recall a book called "the seedling stars" james blish about the subject....
1:12:30 for the fine tuning freaks this is an interesting part of the conversation, cos what you're saying is "for a methane based life form this universe is not fine tuned".
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
Great episode, thank you! Would the aliens from Europa be called Europeans? I knew they were onto something :)
Europans lol
Life is a community of unique physicochemical identities that actively seek to preserve and replicate those identities! Wouldn't this be the most succinct definition of life? I've never heard anyone say it on all the podcast? I mean Sean asked for a definition of life and they went into a discussion of Gibbs free energy without giving any basic definition.
Clearly what seems unique about life is that it has a unique identity and it actively seeks to maintain and reproduce this identity. This is the defining characteristic of all organisms. Anyway just curious. I mean their are other interesting chemical reactions like the sun and fire but they don't actively seek to replicate any sort of uniqueness. I've heard a lot of discussions on life and they never seem to get at this... but of course they do get at slightly longer version of metabolism and reproduction and survival you know the standard biological definitions. All right hit me back let me know what you think
"all these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no Landing there". Just a kind reminder ;)
Life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest.-Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Albert Szent-Györgyi.
If you want minute block PDF of the transcript
MS
drive.google.com/file/d/1zwGx27mThh9C9FY6gLerEH8aGwCiF3RM/view?usp=drivesdk
1:12:52 Zippy Turtle? Zippy Turtle is going to head a mission to Titan? Is that the Kerbal space agency? Life gets weirder all the time!
I think he meant Elizabeth Turtle.
Why haven’t Sean and Eric Weinstein talked about Eric’s Geometric Unity theory?
He hasn´t published a scientific paper on the subject.
I miss Mars with oceans and rivers.
My guess is around our galactic center it's busy (:
41:00 tldr:I Despite my germinating idea of supporting your channel, I then stumbled upon this moment: I will never again send you money, for any reason, for as long as I am alive. What an amazing, pure example of what selling out means. I will forever more be a proud anti-Patreon-sub-particle, because holy shit I wish so strongly that you read this message and - until you die- bore this concept into your skull: the concept of (I know it's hard, you can do it!) sharing content for free(!) with the world.
The Hand of Kevin? Maybe. The Hand of God? LOL 😂
I love and appreciate your video thankyou.
Please though let your guests speak. Somtimes I feel you are telling them what to say.. they are your guests let them speak. Too often I feel you prompt and put words in their mouths a little to strongly.
Please take this little criticism constructively as I really do appreciate your work and effort. 🙏
Oddly on THIS occasion the gentleman just COULDN'T stay focused without constant prodding by Sean.. Meaning NO disrespect, I can say he's easily distracted.
21:02 shotgun
podcast are too long
It's good 👌
@Douglas Sirk 1 hr is sufficient i think.
that depends on what the guest has to say, and how condensed his thoughts are and how pointed his speech is. this one was a bit hard to listen to. I prefer guests who take a pause to think, but then answer in a less cloudy way.