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.

The future can sometimes seem a bleak place, or one so strange that even when in

awesome, it's not a place we're sure we really want to live, but there's a lot of reasons to think

it's a destination worth traveling to.

So this episode will air on Thanksgiving and is being written on my birthday in late September,

and for me that day is one given mostly the quiet reflection on the year that's gone by,

its highlights, and when I am thankful for, and what I want the upcoming year to be about,

and that's not a bad way to spend a birthday or Thanksgiving,

but it struck me that since we always have a Thursday episode on every Thanksgiving,

and I always write them early, some time around my birthday, that it's not coincidental that

they tend to be more philosophical episodes. Today we'll be looking at technologies that will

help us solve problems like energy

and clean water and living space and nature preservation and restoration and a ton of others

impacting the human condition, and I hope to demonstrate there's a lot to be thankful for already

and that what we can glimpse on the horizon leads lots of reasons to be optimistic. For my part, I tend

to think that the future is hard to see precisely because it is so bright. On the one hand,

we should be grateful to live in an era of such prosperity and technological might, standing

on the shoulders of many billions who have lived harder lives in our past to help us get to this

point.

...