Dr. Douglas Vakoch, Part 2 – “To Work Without Guarantees” – TWP048

The Well

Anson Mount & Branan Edgens

Society & Culture, Comedy

4.9 • 821 Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our species cannot comprehend the time and distances inherent in interstellar communication. But noone understands this conundrum better than astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch. A year and a half after our first interview we catch up with his METI project to find out what it is like to dedicate one’s life to the longest term project in the history of human endeavor.

Episode Links:

METI

Georgina Torbet

Sonar Calling - The organization that collaborated with METI to send music to a distant solar system.

His Master's Voice by Stanislav Lem

Carl Sagan's hysterical but brilliant description of Flatland.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	you know sometimes uh people talk about interstellar communication as an attempt to join the galactic club
0:07.7	the thing i find so strange is no one ever talks about paying our dues um or or even submitting an
0:13.4	application that's what many does or or the idea that maybe we you know curiosity is this is a
0:20.0	species specific thing it may be you know, curiosity is this species specific thing.
0:22.8	It may be. You know, we assume that the extraterrestrials are going to be curious,
0:28.7	and maybe the ones who we encounter are, because remember, there could be highly intelligent
0:36.1	whale-like creatures creating these great symphonies.
0:38.5	They sing to one another.
0:39.6	But if they don't create radio transmitters, we're not going to know about them.
1:15.8	Music Welcome to the Well, I am Brandon Edgians.
1:17.0	And I am Anson Mount.
1:21.5	And for those who missed the setup last time, set the scene.
1:22.7	What is this noise?
1:27.3	Well, first of all, if you missed the setup last time, it means you didn't listen to the last episode, which you should.
1:28.3	You definitely should.
1:43.8	We are in my screened-in porch with the outdoor fireplace hosting a fire for the first time for the Mount family that Brannon built, and the tree fogs are going insane.
1:46.8	Yeah, it's finally warm enough they woke up.
1:49.0	The spring peepers are... If you'll remember from last time,
1:51.3	the frogs are currently using the 2.9 kilohertz bandwidth
1:54.9	for communication, so I'm going to have to cancel that out right now
1:59.1	with a notch filter.
2:00.2	Last time, we talked about finding them, right?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Anson Mount & Branan Edgens, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Anson Mount & Branan Edgens and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.