Hey, this is David Eagleman on the Inner Cosmos inbox, and I'm going to answer your questions about the brain.

Okay, Christina from Minnesota asks, what do I think about the claims of the government hiding evidence of aliens?

Okay, we don't really know, but I'll make a general statement from the science point of view and one from

the neuroscience point of view. From the science point of view, it certainly seems unlikely

that we're the only intelligent civilization in the cosmos, given that there are at least

100 billion other galaxies, and every galaxy contains about 100 billion stars and any number of those

may have planets rolling around them. And so the number of planets in the so-called Goldilocks

zone where it's not too hot, not too cold, and could theoretically sustain life, this is a mind-bogglingly

high number. So there's no really good reason to think that we're all alone

in the universe. So I would say that whenever we have interesting data, we should all be examining

it, and therefore, if the government has data, we should be putting that immediately in front

of the scientific community. On the other hand, I want to emphasize a general neuroscience point,

which is that just because somebody asserts something to be true,

doesn't necessitate that it is true.

There are dozens of ways that people can be deluded or fooled

or can pursue opportunities for attention or can

misunderstand what they're seeing, even with the best intentions. And so the media coverage around

this, I often hear things like, oh, this guy is a decorated soldier and this is being taken

seriously by elected officials. And let me just make a general

statement. I hope this is not offensive to anybody, but we all have the same brains and whether you

are a decorated soldier or an elected public official, when you go home and you're lying in your

bed and you close your eyes and you're thinking about life and

...