Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, Big Alien Theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and add free, plus hours of bonus content, check out

go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

This episode is brought to you by Skillshare.

In a world where you have everything you could desire, and everyone else does too,

the one thing you might desire the most is a sense of purpose.

So today we are going to be looking at the more philosophical side of the future as we

contemplate how people and civilizations can maintain or create a sense of purpose in what we

call a post-scarcy civilization, a future where material things are abundant and survival is

a given.

This topic won our Facebook fan poll and it is a rather big topic for many reasons, not the least of which

being that before we can discuss what might give purpose to humans of a very different

future culture, we need to consider what provides purpose for humans of our current one.

And I think that's a good place to begin, because this was a very hard script to write,

and rewrite and rewrite again, simply from the title, creating a sense

of purpose. Creating. Not finding, not discovering, creating. But it's also important to note that

we're talking about a sense of purpose. We can feel something without it being true, and things

certainly can be true and real without all having a sense of awareness

of them.

And really, it's having a deep sense of purpose to our lives that makes us feel right with

the universe, whether that sense is actual knowledge of truth or a pleasant narrative

...