At BP, we're not just talking strategy. We're making it happen, growing our upstream business

with six major new projects in 2025. Four already live. Two more scheduled this year,

expecting to add 135,000 barrels a day to peak production, helping drive long-term shareholder value.

For more on our growth plans, visit BP.com forward slash strategy at work. This is somewhere in the skies.

It's my pleasure to be here.

Pleasure is all mine, man.

I had the amazing opportunity to read a advanced copy of your new book, the little

book of aliens, and I knew I had to talk to you, man, because not only do you cover one

of our obvious favorite topics here at somewhere in the skies, but you cover it in a very hopeful, optimistic,

but most importantly, scientific way. So that's really what I want to break down with you

tonight is what are aliens. What could aliens be if we do eventually somehow make contact? You know, there's many people on

this planet who believe we have already. That's not really what this conversation is about today.

I really want to dig into a lot of what you believe, as an astrophysicist, I might add, what these alien

intelligences could be how they could possibly get here, how we can search for them, all of that.

But obvious question, before we even get to all of that, origin story time, how did you get interested in astrophysics?

And yeah, if you don't mind, give us a little bit of, I guess, your resume, if that's cool.

So I got started in astrophysics as a five-year-old. I found my dad's, I have this really clear memory of this. I found my dad's, or wandered into my dad's library. And he was a big science

fiction fan. He was a writer. And he had those pulp 1960s science fiction magazines like Isaac

Asmanoff's, you know, amazing stories. And, um, I remember looking at the covers of those things,

you know, like, and they had pictures of like guys bouncing

around on alien planets and Michelin Tireman space suits and rocket ships, you know, with flame

blasting out the back and bug-eyed monsters. And that was, that was it. I was done. Like that was,

...