Hey, StarTalkians, Neil here.

You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives

to serve your cosmic curiosities.

Check it out.

Welcome to StarTalk.

Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

And this week is a Cosmic Queries edition, the always popular Cosmic Queries, and the topic, the always

popular, search for life in the universe. And I've got with me as my co-host, Matt Kershyn, Matt.

Hey, hey, Neil, how you doing? I spent all day yesterday trying to memorize the name of your

podcast, it's probably science. Did I get it right? I always mangled it. I was going to go for another variant. I stumbled in my efforts there. I found a podcast called sometimes or mostly science. It's a whole other podcast. Oh, we hate them. No, we've got a running rivalry with them. You totally have rivalries. I got to make sure I get your stuff right.

It's going to come to violence at some point. Probably violence.

So I know a little bit about the search for life, but not as much as our guest today.

Our guest today is Sarah Seeger. Sarah, welcome to StarTalk.

Thanks for having me today.

Yeah, so Sarah, let me get your full title up here.

So you're a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, physics, and planetary science at MIT.

Is that what?

No, they left out a few categories.

No, no, no. It's because exoplanets and the search for life is an incredibly interdissimilarie topic. Okay. And it draws upon all those different fields. Excellent. But between you and me, can I call you a planetary scientist, right? That's really. Yes, yes. I mean, my home is really an astrophysics. Okay. So you can call me an astrophysicist or a planetary scientist or both in the club so uh i guess the search for life in the universe

has to necessarily include the search for exoplanets right they they go together but is But is that part of our bias? Not necessarily. We do. I mean, we're definitely terra-centric. We definitely are narrow-minded. But at the same time... Terracentric, like Earth-centric. Yeah, like Earth-centric. You know, and on Earth, we believe that for the origin of life, we need a place for ingredients to concentrate.

And it's hard to imagine ingredients just concentrating in the vastness and that low density of outer space.

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