Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at 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 Brilliant.

There is a school of thought that says our bodies are little more than a vehicle and life support

system for our brains. If that's true, we might be able to transplant the brain into some much

cooler vehicles. One of the more popular notions in science fiction is the idea that you might separate

a person's head from their body and keep it alive, or even just their brain, and today

will be looking at this idea, how it differs in form, function, and implications from a digital

copy of a mind, mind uploading, and what reasons and motivation

we have for doing this, such as life extension, extreme emergency medicine, resource scarcity,

or even punishment.

This is going to be one of our more food for thought fun episodes, but as we'll see today,

it's not likely to be something we only see in sci-fi.

It's actually quite plausible we'll see this option used in the future, especially if

digitally copying minds turns out to be harder than we expect, or even practically

impossible.

Speaking of Fruit for Thought, you might want to grab a drink and a snack and hit the like

button while you're at it.

The idea of brains and jars has mostly fallen into the realm of more humorous science fiction

like Futurama in favor of the notion of mind uploading which tends to seem the better

...