Welcome to this month's Space Policy Edition.

I'm Casey Dreyer, the Chief of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society.

And I am joined by, and I should say in person, literally, standing in front of me right

now is the Planetary Society's Director of Government Relations, Jack Curly.

Hi, Casey. Good to see you in person.

Yeah, I guess I've, to all of our listeners, I have successfully confirmed that Jack is not an

advanced AI that has been representing itself to us via computer screen over the past three months

working here for the Planetary Society. He is, in fact, real and has been doing a great job here

in DC. Jack, it's great to be here. Yeah, it's great to be here with you, Casey. It's been a great

first few months on the job and really hit the ground running with the budget process in February

and now on, onward and upward for fiscal year 2024. It's been an exciting time, let's say,

to say the least. Yeah, yeah. In addition to my special co-host this month,

I should say that our guest that will be joining me here in just a few minutes on this month's show

is Jacob Hock-Misra. He is an astronomer, very interesting thinker and writer on particularly

issues of SETI and techno signatures. And I was particularly struck by a paper he had written

a few years ago that examined the variety of policy implications based on the fact that

the consequences of meeting another extraterrestrial civilization are fundamentally unknowable.

And that may sound almost almost trite as a conclusion, but he actually breaks down this three

really interesting consequence of this about how we then approach not just SETI, but the concept of

active SETI, of basically broadcasting our existence out there in hopes that we catch the attention

of another civilization should it exist. And again, this is such a just a fun area of discussion

and Jacob is, again, a very deep thinker on these topics has written extensively on it

...