Selects: How Extinction Works
Josh and Chuck explain how extinction works, distinguishing between slow background extinctions and rare but catastrophic mass extinction events. They walk through the history of scientific ideas about extinction, the Big Five mass extinctions in Earth's history, and evidence that we are likely entering a human-driven sixth mass extinction. The episode also touches on de-extinction efforts, ecological cascades from species loss, and a listener letter about how interrogation settings can make innocent people appear guilty.
#2401 - Avi Loeb
Avi Loeb discusses the anomalous interstellar object 3I Atlas, arguing that its unusual trajectory, mass, and composition warrant serious consideration of technological or otherwise non-standard explanations rather than automatic classification as a normal comet. He contrasts the scientific community's resistance and institutional inertia with the high potential stakes of discovering alien technology, and describes his own efforts such as the Galileo Project and an expedition to recover fragments of an interstellar meteor. The conversation also explores AI-driven societal risks, philosophical humility about humanity's place in the cosmos, and concrete proposals for systematically searching for extraterrestrial intelligence and technosignatures.
#2400 - Katee Sackhoff
Joe Rogan talks with actor Katie Sackhoff about her career-defining role as Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica reboot, how that show reshaped science fiction television, and what it was like to gender-swap a beloved male character amid early internet backlash. They dive into the emotional power of sci‑fi and entertainment as escapism, the rise of AI in art and media, parenting in a social‑media-saturated world, and the profound perspective she gained from her young daughter's rare cancer diagnosis and the broken pediatric healthcare system. The conversation widens into AI as an emerging life form, homelessness and addiction, underfunded education and pediatric medicine, the possibility of extraterrestrial life and strange objects like 31 Atlas, and why strong female characters in sci‑fi mattered so much to her.
[Insert Your Own Catchy Title About Younger Dryas Here]
The hosts explain the Younger Dryas, a sudden return to near-ice age conditions about 12,900 years ago that interrupted the warming after the last glacial maximum. They describe what Earth was like during the preceding ice age and the brief warm Bølling-Allerød interstadial, how the Younger Dryas abruptly cooled the Northern Hemisphere while warming much of the Southern Hemisphere, and how this affected humans, megafauna, and early agriculture. They then walk through the main scientific hypotheses for what triggered the event and close by noting how its abrupt end opened into the Holocene, when agriculture and complex civilizations emerged.