EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,018 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Five, four, three, two,…
- JRJoe Rogan
Five, four, three, two, one. (audio cuts out)
- AFAdam Frank
Boom.
- JRJoe Rogan
Boom.
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Adam, what's up, man? How you doing?
- AFAdam Frank
Hey. It's good to be here today.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's good to be here too, uh, with you and to talk- (glass clinks) Ooh. Whoa. Look, I'm already knocking shit over.
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Can't be trusted. Um, your book, Alien Worlds-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... And The Fate of the Earth.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. All about it.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's deep shit, man. Just the, just the title alone, you're like, "Whoa."
- AFAdam Frank
I love aliens. Everybody loves aliens.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everybody does, but what are your thoughts on actual aliens and whether or not they've ever visited here?
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah, it's interesting because, uh, you know, sorta two things. So first of all, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
We should tell everybody, you have a background in science.
- AFAdam Frank
I do.
- JRJoe Rogan
An actual scientist.
- AFAdam Frank
I'm an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're not-
- AFAdam Frank
I run a research group that studies like stars and planets and shit.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're not a crazy person I brought on here?
- AFAdam Frank
No, no, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
I'm a card-carrying scientist. I got my card and everything. Um, so yeah, I've been doing research on, you know, astronomy, astrophysics for a long time, but I also do all this popular writing, like for NPR and New York Times. Uh, and the genesis of this book came, A, because I love science fiction. I've been reading science fiction since I was a kid. Uh, but also I do a lot of work on climate change, and so I deal with a lot of climate change denial. And what I realized was that like there's this way we talk about it that is like completely forgets ab- about the fact that like we're probably not the first, you know? And, uh, that led me to a whole bunch of research that eventually led to this book, you know, including one paper that we did that showed, uh, that the odds that we're the only time it's ever happened, on- only, you know, the only civilization in the entire history of the universe, uh, the only way that that could be true is if, uh, the odds per planet are one in 10 billion trillion, right? That's pretty low, right? So, you know, the, you know, uh, the odds of anything being one in 10 billion trillion, that's pretty fricking low. So, um, it's probably happened before, you know? There's been other civilizations before ours. And once you realize that, man, that is like, you know, it changes everything about how we think about ourselves, you know, and what's happening to us right now.
- JRJoe Rogan
So oth- other civilizations before ours that have fucked things up?
- AFAdam Frank
Well, that's kinda the premise, right? So that's what-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
You know, when you look at climate change, right, basically what we, it is, is civilizations are giant machines for turning energy into work, right? You know, New York City, right? You sit over, and you look at Manhattan, you're like, "Holy shit," right?
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah. And if we…
- AFAdam Frank
Like, is that common or is that never, ever, ever happen? So that's the question we wanna, you know, we wanna answer. And I, you know, I mean, like, you know, that argument I was giving before is I think from the probable arguments, I'm saying it's like, you know, it's al- it's almost overwhelming that yeah, it probably happened somewhere. Again, doesn't mean anything's here. But we need evidence, right? It's science. So we gotta build that evidence.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And if we do find something, the, the, the, one of the weirder things would be if we found something and there was a way to get there.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, if we, we find something and we're like, "Yeah, we found something, but it's, we're pretty sure there's some kind of life and it's three billion light years away." You're like, "Well, that's cool."
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. What do we do? Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It's nice to know that we're not the only ones.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And-
- AFAdam Frank
Well, you know, it's interesting, like how much would that, that change? You know, even if we found like evidence for ... This, because this is a debate, like if we found evidence of a technological civilization, we saw like alien mega structures, like that star they thought about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. What was that nonsense?
- AFAdam Frank
Uh, it wasn't really nonsense. It was, I, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
It was something floating around, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Right. So here's what they saw. So that, you know, the way we discover planets is we look for when the s- the planet passes in front of the star, you get a little dip in the light, right? It blocks out a little bit of light.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AFAdam Frank
It's like a little eclipse. Um, and so, you know, we've now, that's how we know that every star in the sky has planets. But there's like, they found one that just made no sense. Like, the light would dip, then it would stop dipping, then it would dip again three times, then it would stop dipping. Sometimes it was lower, sometimes it was higher. Um, and, you know, for a year or so, people were like, "What the fuck is this?" (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AFAdam Frank
You know? And so, you know, um, uh, Jason Wright and others, uh, Jason's a friend of mine, you know, they wrote a paper where they were like, "Hey, you know, at least ... Because this is what the future's gonna look like. We can't say, we can't ... We have to at least consider the possibility that these are artificial structures that are like orbiting the star or, you know, and it's a-"
- JRJoe Rogan
It would have to be ungodly huge.
- AFAdam Frank
Ungodly huge. Alien mega structures. Like, that's the best word ever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Like, like the size of a country, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah, yeah. These things would be huge, right? But that's what people think, like, you know, when people think about advanced alien civilizations, the idea of building large scale structures is, you think that may be the next thing you do once you reach a certain point. Like, um, you know, the Dyson sphere, the idea that you could collect all of the sun's energy and use it for yourself by building a giant sphere around the sun with solar panels on the inside. People think like, that goes back to Kardashev, the idea of this Kardashev scale back in the '60s where he is like, "Look, there's gonna be a natural progression of civilizations that goes first you collect all the energy you can from your planet, and then you use that to do amazing things. And then you collect all the energy from your star, and then you do that amaz- you know, you do amazing shit with that. And then, you know, the whole galaxy." So he, you know, Kardashev thought there was a scale that, that civilizations naturally progress through. So-
- JRJoe Rogan
And you hopefully don't blow yourself up along the way.
- AFAdam Frank
Well, I think that's the question. I mean, I've criticized the Kar- the Kardashev scale in one of the papers I recently did, because what it fails to take into account is the fact that like, you know, on your way up to the type one. Type one is when you harvest all the energy from your planet, which basically means somehow covering your planet in, in, uh, uh, you know, solar panels or something. That neglects what we've learned since Kardashev wrote his paper in '64 is that, you know, planets don't like that shit. Like, planets, the planet's gonna feedback. You try and build-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- AFAdam Frank
... you know, massive shit on your planet, the planet has its own, you know, biosphere is pretty powerful and you gotta take the biosphere into account or you get climate change, you get, you know, the, the planet being pushed off in another direction. So, but whatever. So for the, um, for the alien mega structures, people thought like, oh, maybe this is like a piece of a, uh, of a Dyson sphere, right? This is like, you know.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AFAdam Frank
And so, you know, when he proposed this, people went bonkers over this, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
He was just saying, he's like, "Look, here's the 15 different things could be, and I'm gonna have to at least consider the possibility that it's artificial."Um, but for me, and some people got really angry and everything, but I thought like, "This is ... look-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Why'd they get angry?
- 30:00 – 45:00
Is this what your…
- AFAdam Frank
you know, with the stuff that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are doing, man, that's real. Like, that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is this what your number one concern is, climate change?
- AFAdam Frank
My cli- I'm a single voter, yeah, climate change. 'Cause it's like, it is an existential dilemma, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AFAdam Frank
And I- because of all the writing I did for NPR and The New York Times, I have dealt with a lot of climate change denialists, man, and it drives me bananas.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is their big... What's the big... 'Cause I, I recently had a discussion with someone on the podcast that didn't believe in climate change.
- AFAdam Frank
Ugh.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was, it was a weird thing. It's- 'cause I kept pulling up all the different scientific consensus studies, all the different studies that show that we were having an impact. It's an undeniable impact.
- AFAdam Frank
Undeniable.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
I mean, 30 years of science. Uh, yeah. No, I saw that. And she was-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
... like, you know, "Well, that's what you say."
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I don't think that she's really thinking about the... In her case it was, uh-I don't think she really thinks about it. I think she-
- AFAdam Frank
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
... just has this stance that she believes that that group that she's a part of-
- AFAdam Frank
That's what it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
... subscribes to, so there's an ideological-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... uh, b- aspect of it-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... where you, you kinda... You have a predetermined pattern that you're supposed to follow-
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... when you're on one side.
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have to be pro-life. You have to be pro-S-
- AFAdam Frank
All this whole-
- JRJoe Rogan
... Second Amendment.
- AFAdam Frank
... bucket of stuff that you gotta-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's a bucket of stuff.
- 45:00 – 59:29
Yeah. …
- AFAdam Frank
uh, you know, environmentalists too-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... because, um, I think at one of your shows I was watching, uh, you know, the whole idea of eco bros, right? And you get eco bro-ed by people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AFAdam Frank
And I've... You know, so I have a piece in the New York Times today, an op-ed, where I'm basically saying like, "Look, man. The planet's gonna be fine." Like, you know, long term, there's nothing we can throw at the biosphere that is gonna kill it. We're... It's not about saving the planet. The Earth is not a fuzzy little bunny, you know? The planet is powerful and it's really about saving us. Let's be honest about what's going on and there's gonna be all kinds of ethical choices that go on that... You know, the polar bears may not be able to come along with us on the ride here, you know? We need a healthy biosphere with div- you know, a lot of biodiversity, but, you know, we're part of it and we're gonna have an impact. There's no such thing as no impact. And, you know, already I'm getting eco bro-ed. People are like, "Hey, man. Dude, you just... You don't, you don't care about life. Yeah, what about..." I just like, "Oh, come on, man." And I just put it in the thing. I said, "We need to be wise and compassionate," you know? But they're like, "Man."
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, people have convenient opinions. I mean, this is, this is one of the, the things you get involved with when you start talking with people about really important issues. I mean, it's like what we were talking about earlier. They wanna be right.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they wanna be on the side that's righteous and with virtue and ethics.
- AFAdam Frank
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they find anything that, that you disagree-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or that they disagree with what you're saying, they don't ask you questions. They don't go, "What do you think the-"
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... implications are?"
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or like, "How do you... How do we minimize the effects and the negative consequences-"
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... of our..." They just immediately wanna say, "You are-"
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... insensitive."
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"You are an asshole."
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"You are the problem."
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. Y- you know my way around that? And that's what the whole book is about, is to like... When you've got a polarization, right? You know, where, you know, you're either this or you're that. The thing that... And this is like a mathematical idea, is to go orthogonal, you know? When you d- when you, you know, you go... Because, you know, it's a line basically, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AFAdam Frank
You're either on this side or that side. Go 90 degrees to it, now you're in a whole new space, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Now you're up and down instead of left and right.
- AFAdam Frank
Exactly. And now, like, the questions that... So, you see this in, like, revolutions in science, right? So, you know, look at Einstein and what happened when Einstein came up with, uh, relativity. Everybody at the time was like, you know, um... They were all concerned with what they called the luminiferous ether that... You know, light needed... Light's a wave and everybody thought it needed something to propagate through, right? Radio w- or, um, water waves go through water. Soundwave goes through air. So, you know, the whole thing was about this ether, the luminous ether. Is this... Does it exist? Does it not exist? Blah, blah, blah. Einstein was like, "You know, I'm not really interested in that problem. I'm not even gonna do it." He just like changed the whole thing and he just said, "Look. Here's two new ideas. They have nothing to do with the luminous ever- ether." And like, all the old questions, all the old battles kinda just fell away and they didn't even make sense anymore. So, that's what I'm trying to do in the book, is say, "Look. When you look at climate change as a planetary transition, a predictable planetary transition, the whole idea of like environmentalism versus, you know, business interests and, uh, you know, right, Republicans versus Democrats, it just doesn't... You know, it's not even relevant anymore." What matters is that this is gonna happen. We should have expected it to happen and now the question is, do we become a cosmic winner or a cosmic loser? And we have to think about the biosphere differently. We have to think about our place in the biosphere differently. And the old arguments... So, that's why, you know, sometimes (laughs) with climate change deniers, I'll throw this stuff at them and it's really kind of fun to watch 'em be like, "Bleh," 'cause they're expecting me to say like A, B, and C, and they've got D, E, and F in response. And I throw this stuff at 'em and they're just like, "Eh." You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
Episode duration: 2:23:49
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode MfHk_93x8_0
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome