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 ad-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 World Anvil.

Ancient alchemists dreamed of turning lead into gold, potentially creating tons of it,

massive riches, but here on SFIA, we would say that lacks ambition.

Why settle for tons of gold when you can make whole planets out of it?

So today's topic, nuclear transmutation is continuing our informal trilogy on useful things

you can do with nuclear explosions, that we began back in January with our look at the Orion

project, a spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs, and then with

nuclear terraforming, seeing how bombs could be used to make places like Mars or Venus habitable

to humanity.

It's weird to think of nuclear weapons as useful tools, but just as anything might be used

as a weapon, any weapon tends to be useful in some other fashion, too. As it says in Isaiah,

they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruding hooks. And while the usual

post-Cold War notion is to dismantle nukes to use the fissile material for power generation,

or maybe to keep some back for emergency use against an asteroid or alien

mothership, the notion here is more that you might start mass-producing them for peaceful

ends instead. If you're new to the show, welcome to SFIA, where nuclear bombs get the

overdue praise they deserve, and we regularly talk about devices that make them look like

me or firecrackers.

And don't forget your drink and a snack, we'll be here for a bit.

...