From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Just the fact that we exist is the magic of statistics. It's an infinitismally small chance that you and I can exist, so don't wallow in negativity. Be happy.

This is your host, Scott Bertrand. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour,

part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Gad Sad, author of the new book,

The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets for Leading the Good Life. We'll talk in depth with

him about his new book in just a little bit. First, we're

joined by Dr. Tim Dolce. He is Associate Professor of Physics here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Dolch,

thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Scott. We talk occasionally here on the program

about some of the research that you're involved with and a very neat presentation and some papers written in the last couple of months on a topic

involving your research with nanograv. And again, we have talked about nanograv before,

but for people who didn't join us previously, what is nanagrav? What is the kind of research

that happens through that, through that organization? Well, Nanograv is an abbreviation for North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves.

Now it has the word observatory in it, but what it really is is a group of people at many institutions that have been working together for about

15 years, and I've been on it for about 12 years. And what this group does is that it uses

three of the largest radio telescopes that we've had here in the U.S. And it's been observing collapsed stars called pulsars.

But those pulsars themselves are actually a galaxy-sized telescope.

And that galaxy-sized telescope has finally shown evidence for something called gravitational waves.

This is what the presentation was about.

This is what these papers are about.

The evidence of the existence of slowly oscillating gravitational waves.

So why is that important?

How long have we thought they might have existed?

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