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.t.v.tv slash Isaac Arthur.

This episode is sponsored by Auduble.

It is quite likely that before this century is out, we will be mining our moon and asteroids

for resources.

It is almost beyond conception how much resources they contain, and yet they are but tiny moats

of dust compared to what the galaxy offers.

So today we'll be continuing our look at Galactic Domination.

We started a few weeks back in Eternal Empire and I mentioned there that we wanted to look

at possible motivations

for trying to take over a galaxy. The big ones that tend to come up in discussion for any

empire, be it earthly or galactic, are a desire for empire for its own sake, to be king of the

world, a desire for resources, or desire for defense from hostiles, which might include preemptive attacks.

Today we'll be discussing that desire for resources, why someone might want or need a whole

galaxy's worth of them, and how they might go about doing that.

We'll be drawing from discussions in science fiction along with what is right or wrong

about the pictures they paint, but this is likely

to be an issue we will encounter in real life as we had it to the stars, and maybe sooner

than we might expect.

And when I say we, I do mean you and me, because some of the associated technology

...