New Research on The Evolution of Intelligent Life

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The guests today are co-authors of a new paper in Science Advances titled: “A reassessment of the ‘hard-steps’ model for the evolution of intelligent life.”

Jennifer Macalady is a Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research is focused on microbial ecology and evolution, and interactions between microorganisms and Earth materials like minerals and water through geologic time.

Daniel B. Mills is a postdoctoral researcher in the Orsi Geomicrobiology Lab at The University of Munich in Germany. His research focuses on the co-evolutionary history of Earth's surface environment and eukaryotic life—a topic he approaches by studying modern marine organisms and environments. He also applies this research to the ongoing search for exoplanetary biosignatures and technosignatures.

Shermer, Mills, and Macalady discuss the Hard Steps model of the evolution of intelligent life, the Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, the Great Filter, and the Great Silence. They also cover the Rare Earth hypothesis, major transitions in evolution, the uniqueness of humans, and the search for biosignatures and technosignatures.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to The Michael Shermer Show.
0:16.1	Today's subject is, well, aliens, sort of.
0:20.0	Not the UFO-UAP stuff. We've covered that already,
0:22.7	but the actual search for extraterrestrial intelligence, techno signatures, biosignatures,
0:28.6	the real science stuff. This was triggered, this episode was triggered by a paper I read that came
0:33.7	out in science advances called a reassessment of the hard steps model for the evolution of intelligent life.
0:42.0	Hard steps model is that it's hard to get from bacteria to big brains, and so there's too many steps,
0:47.6	so we're probably either alone or very rare.
0:50.7	My guest today begged to differ, and they wrote a long piece on this. There's Daniel Mills,
0:56.0	co-authored by Daniel Mills and Jennifer McAleady. Is that right, Jennifer McAleady? Did I pronounce that?
1:01.6	I should have asked you that before he started recording. Okay, good. The St. Louis branch would approve.
1:07.1	Okay. So Daniel Mills coming to us from Germany. He's in Munich, Germany. He has a bachelor's in science and geobiology from Penn State and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Southern Denmark. He's currently a postdoc researcher in the Orsi Geo Microbiology Lab at the University of Munich in Germany.
1:29.3	And his research primarily focuses on the co-evolutionary history of Earth's surface environmental
1:35.1	environment and eukaryotic life will get into what the difference is between prokaryat and
1:40.3	eukaryat in a moment, but this is a complex life, the cells that you and I are made out of.
1:48.4	A topic he approaches by studying modern marine organisms and environments, he also applies this research to the ongoing search for XO planetary biosignatures and techno signatures.
1:55.2	And then Jennifer McElady has a BA in geology from Carlton College and a PhD inD. in soil microbiology from the University of California, Davis.
2:04.3	She's currently a professor of geosciences in the Penn State University lab there, and research focuses on microbiology, ecology and evolution.
2:15.3	Sorry, I'm reading too fast. And interactions between microorganisms and
2:19.1	earth materials like minerals and water through geological time. My old job. Okay, both of them are
2:24.8	affiliated with the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center. This is how I got interested
2:29.3	in talking to them because we love this subject, which is dedicated to advancing the search for
	...

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