Who Else Is in Our Cosmic Neighborhood? (Avi Loeb, PhD)

Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

Lemonada Media

Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“I think that we are most likely to benefit from such an encounter than to suffer from it,” says physicist Avi Loeb, PhD, who describes himself as an optimist in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Today, Loeb shares: What astronomy and dating have in common. His theories on the three interstellar objects that have been observed (including 3I/ATLAS). Why it’s likely that other intelligent civilizations exist. And why he thinks it would be wonderful to meet them—and imperative for the future of human beings that we do so. For the show notes, head to my Substack. Get 50% off Monarch, the all-in-one financial tool, at monarch.com/thread. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada.
0:05.7	Hi, it's Elise Luna and host of Pulling the Thread. Today I'm talking to astrophysicist
0:11.3	Avi Loeb about the search for extraterrestrial life and perhaps the largest question of our
0:17.7	time. Hiya, Julia Louis Dreyfus here from the Wiser Than Me podcast, among other things.
0:24.4	And I've got a bit of a hot take. Our relationship to our food can feel disconnected. We don't
0:32.7	always know how or where our food is grown. And if we throw food scraps in the garbage, we don't
0:40.0	think about where it's going, or at least we try not to. One way that I get back a little of
0:46.0	that connection is by using my Mill food recycler. Sure, Mill has totally changed my home life
0:52.8	in a lot of practical ways. It works automatically. You can fill it for weeks. It never, ever smells. But this is also really important. When I use Mill, I'm participating in a circular system. All the food I don't eat is helping to grow the food that I do. It makes me feel like I'm part of
1:12.9	something bigger, and that feels really, really good. And it's all so ridiculously easy. I just drop
1:19.8	my scraps in my mill, and it transforms them into nutrient-rich grounds overnight. I have mine
1:26.1	sent to a small farm, but if I wanted to, I could use them in my
1:28.9	garden or for my backyard chickens if I wanted backyard chickens. And I don't know, maybe I do now,
1:35.6	maybe I don't. Anyway, maybe Mill is transforming me too, just a little. If you want to feel more
1:42.1	connected or you just want your kitchen to feel less gross,
1:45.2	try Mills risk-free trial and just live with it for a while. Go to mill.com slash wiser for an
1:51.5	exclusive offer.
1:57.4	Hey there, it's Julia Louis Dreyfus. I'm back with a new season of Wiser Than Me, the show where I sit down with remarkable older women and soak up their stories, their humor, and their hard-earned wisdom. Every conversation leaves me a little smarter and definitely more inspired. And yes, I'm still calling my 91-year-old mom, Judy, to get her take on it all.
2:24.0	Wiser than me from Lemonada Media is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.
2:28.8	Music Hi. Hi, it's Elise Loonan, host of Pulling the Thread. On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand
2:51.9	who we are and why we're here. My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance
2:57.3	and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.
	...

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