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Just a heads up, this episode discusses the eight-part series Three Body Problem, and it has spoilers. We also discuss war and death so please take care

while listening. You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hey Shortwaavers, Regina Barbara here. We've been in the midst of our weekly Space Camp series on Shortwave,

but way before Space Camp and actually way before I ever studied the stars, I was a lover of science fiction.

And one show that really satisfies my sci-fi craving is this Netflix series that begins with

a space mystery. In it the world's leading

physicist began dying and physics itself seems to stop working. It was adapted

from a best-selling book by Leo Cich Singh, translated by Ken Leo.

And the first time Michael Wong encountered it, he says he was captivated by the plot,

partly because of his background.

He's an astrobiologist and studies planets, but partly because at the end of the day he's just a huge science fiction lover like me.

In a nutshell, the three-body problem is basically the story of an alien invasion. The reason why the aliens

are on their way to Earth is because they've evolved on a chaotic planet, one

that experiences random climate extremes that causes civilizations to come and go.

They basically collapse when the climate gets too hot or too cold.

And they find present day stable Earth. Because way back in the 1970s, these aliens, called

the saunty, make contact with the scientist. And she told them we existed.

Which, okay, there are no aliens in real life that we know of,

but there is a lot of other stuff the book gets right,

which is a big reason for Mike's love as a scientist and a sci-fi

...