Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking 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.

There once was an intelligent young lady named Miss Bright.

She traveled far faster than light.

She left one day, in a relative way, and arrived home the previous night.

When I was younger, the big debate in science fiction was if you were a fan of Star Wars or Star Trek.

And personally, I quite liked both, as well as lots of unrelated and independent sci-fi.

But I loved when the movie Stargate came out and loved the series Stargate SG1 when it made its way into syndication.

This episode isn't about that show, or even that specific titular Stargate SG1, when it made its way into syndication. This episode isn't about that show,

or even that specific titular Stargate, but to me it moved quickly into a competitor

for a best sci-fi franchise with Star and its title, and remains a personal favorite,

and one with a far greater sense of realism than Star Trek or Star Wars often had.

The show was set on modern

Earth, and one of the problems that had to tackle in later series was how they kept the

program secret and dealt with all the new technologies they encountered and tried to integrate

to Earth's economy quietly. But one point of heavy on realism was you could only have one

operating Stargate on a given planet, and perhaps

a backup, and yet these were often entirely abandoned and unguarded. For story purposes,

it explains why a four-person team could casually stride through, but of course, realistically,

you would expect that portal to be the center of a local civilization and guarded heavier than Fort Knox.

...