This Week in Space 206 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Tariq Malik [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this week in space, Artemis II's heat shield made the grade. SpaceX is one more step closer to that version 3 Starship launch. And what happens when we actually do find alien life? How do we explain it to everyone else? Well, our guest, Brianne Suldovsky, associate professor at Portland State University, has some ideas. Tune in, check it out.

Rod Pyle [00:00:25]:
This is This Week in Space, episode number 206. 6. Recorded on April 17, 2026: I Want to Believe. Hello, and welcome to another episode of this Week at Space, the I Want to Believe edition. I am Rod Pyle, believer and editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine. I'm here with Tariq Malik of Space.com.

Rod Pyle [00:00:51]:
hello, old friend.

Tariq Malik [00:00:51]:
How are you? Ahoy. Ahoy. Hello. It's a glorious near summer day. It's great. How are you?

Rod Pyle [00:00:57]:
Have you settled back in from our sojourn to.

Tariq Malik [00:01:00]:
I have not even unpacked yet, Rod,

Rod Pyle [00:01:02]:
that is so embarrass.

Tariq Malik [00:01:03]:
I know. I'm not even unpacked from the moon mission and I'm going on another trip soon. So it's like, oh, he's going to

Rod Pyle [00:01:10]:
get rickets in those dirty clothes or something. Well, this week, to elevate ourselves above this conversation, we'll be chatting with Dr. Brianne Suldovsky of Portland State University about how we might communicate a discovery of extraterrestrial life.

Tariq Malik [00:01:25]:
That's right.

Rod Pyle [00:01:25]:
To the mass public. And this is going to be an interesting one because it's a subject that, that isn't researched a lot. It isn't spoken of quite very much. And she's done some kind of, and at least in my opinion, groundbreaking research in an area that really isn't covered much. That's right, which is the area I went to grad school in. So of course I'm very interested in it. So that'll be great. But first, of course, we need to go to a space joke.

Rod Pyle [00:01:51]:
This one came in from Hart Smith.

Tariq Malik [00:01:53]:
Hart Smith.

Rod Pyle [00:01:54]:
Hey, Dark.

Tariq Malik [00:01:55]:
Yes, Rod?

Rod Pyle [00:01:56]:
What did the hummingbird say to the alien?

Tariq Malik [00:01:59]:
I don't know. What?

Rod Pyle [00:02:00]:
Take me to your feeder.

Tariq Malik [00:02:03]:
I love it.

Rod Pyle [00:02:07]:
Now, we've heard that some people want to feed us to the birds when it's joke time in this show. But as always, you can help by sending us your best, worst, or mostly different space joke to TwistWit TV and we'll put it on the air and blame it on you.

Tariq Malik [00:02:21]:
I haven't seen a hummingbird in a long time. You know, we used to. We used to get them all the time. Climate change then. Well, no, my azaleas died. I gotta get new ones, so.

Rod Pyle [00:02:29]:
Sounds like a personal problem. I, I, growing up in Southern California, have not seen for probably 25 years red ants or caterpillars of any kind.

Tariq Malik [00:02:39]:
Oh, wow.

Rod Pyle [00:02:40]:
Now I know. The red ants were out competed by the little black Argentinian ants, which is one super colony that extends from where I live all the way down the tip of South America. If they ever get mad at the same time, that will make an alien invasion look like nothing. But I don't know about the caterpillars, but I guess we have other stuff to talk about.

Tariq Malik [00:02:57]:
Yes. Including, yes.

Rod Pyle [00:02:59]:
Artemis II heat shield. Which worked.

Tariq Malik [00:03:02]:
It worked. It worked. By the way, this is just the story that was so annoying because the astronauts last time you and I. Oh my God, what's happening? Did you forget something?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:03:13]:
Headline.

Tariq Malik [00:03:13]:
Headline news. Headline news.

Rod Pyle [00:03:17]:
It's time for headline news. Thank you.

Tariq Malik [00:03:19]:
I didn't do it. We didn't do it last week. No, we didn't do it last week.

Rod Pyle [00:03:23]:
Okay, that's why. Yeah, but still, despite that. Thank you, John. The heat came back in good shape.

Tariq Malik [00:03:29]:
It did. There was actually like a lot of social media Internet sleuths this week who saw the pictures of NASA pulling it up out of the water. There's a big white scuffle thing. Yeah. And they're like, oh my God, they almost died. It had burned through. Blah, blah, blah, this, that and the other and no, like yesterday, the day that we're recording this, as of yesterday, the crew said that they've checked it out themselves. And Reed Wiseman, the commander says we leaned, I quote, we leaned under and looked at the bottom of that thing.

Tariq Malik [00:03:59]:
And for four humans just looking at the heat shield, it looked wonderful to us. I've seen some side by side comparisons from the Artemis. One he shield that did have a lot of that charring and it does look better. Like it, like it, like it withstood it. And it sounds like NASA is going to take some, some, some good look and investigations about how it did. But overall it seems like everyone freaking out on the computer and social media armchair, you know, whatever, that they could all just sit down a little bit. It's okay. It's okay.

Tariq Malik [00:04:28]:
You know.

Rod Pyle [00:04:29]:
Now my understanding is for Artemis 3 and forward, which they, they've already said they're going to quote, change the heat shield, unquote. I don't think they're going to change the primary structure any. So the Apollo heat shield, same material basically, but done in a honeycomb Very labor intensive, thousands of cells. The Artemis heat shield looks more like the bottom of the shuttle. So it's got blocks about an inch and a half thick of this ablative material. But I believe what they are talking about is changing the formulation of modern Avco, which is not as robust as the old Avco. And this is not me making stuff up, this is talking. The experts are saying, yeah, we had to change the solvents, we had to change the chemistry because of EPA regulations.

Rod Pyle [00:05:15]:
And it's been real challenging because it outgasses differently and it's not as permeable and blah blah, blah. So are there going to be any structural changes or is strictly formulation?

Tariq Malik [00:05:24]:
I think it's like a mix of that plus the approach for the reentry. So one of the things that they did change for Artemis II was they changed the angle of reentry in a way so that the blocks did not get the high heating for as long as as they got because they can get hotter. They just, in Artemis 1 they were hot for a lot longer than thought and that's led to the charging and the debris loss, et cetera. And that's where they're worried about burn through and whatnot. So they're gonna, they're gonna upgrade like the applications like what you're talking about and then they're gonna modify that re entry attack so that they can get hotter. But it's not gonna be as long of a period of that extreme heat which therefore like the, the heat shields built to be able to withstand that over time. So. So it'll be very interesting to see how it, how it evolves and what if any.

Tariq Malik [00:06:09]:
And I don't think there's gonna be much extra tests they're gonna. Before they fly Artemis 3.

Rod Pyle [00:06:16]:
Yeah. And there were concerns about not testing the heat shield another flight. But you know, if you, if you really look at it, they've got a lot of test facilities including the, I think it's called the ARC Plasma Lab at the Ames Research Center. Yeah, yeah. Where they can basically do a re entry test and burn the hell out of this stuff.

Tariq Malik [00:06:35]:
And we should point out also Artemis 3 is not going to be doing a lunar reentry. They can simulate with the game, but depending on what orbit they choose, they're, they're staying in an Earth orbit, be it low or high, depending on what they're going to do.

Rod Pyle [00:06:48]:
They'd have to go pretty high to get a 25,000.

Tariq Malik [00:06:50]:
Really high. They'd have to go really high. Yeah. So but to that point they did say that the space bullet was fine. So they loved it despite the glitches that they had. So that was another thing that the astronauts said during their first press conference after returning to Earth.

Rod Pyle [00:07:07]:
And we saw some activity at Starbase testing the static fire of the upper stage of the version 3 starship. Because you wouldn't want to fly a number version two, right?

Tariq Malik [00:07:17]:
That's, that's, that's right, yeah. So Elon Musk has been touting this version 3 Starship for a long time, that it's better and bigger than all the previous ones. NASA's banking on it for, for their, their moon lander. Now it seems like they're actually getting closer to launch. But it sound like that for a long time. It's been nearly what, five, six months since the last one that they launched. It's been a long time. And Elon during the Artemis mission did say that they've pushed it back again.

Tariq Malik [00:07:43]:
It was supposed to launch in March, then they said in April. Now it seems like it's going to be in May, but at least the hardware is getting there. And I think that they did a static fire for those who were heavy earlier, or at least they're doing the final testing for it all. So these pieces are in place now and they just have to do integration and likely get ready for flight itself.

Rod Pyle [00:08:00]:
And gosh, I don't see anything on this version of starship that looks a bit like a lunar lander either, do you?

Tariq Malik [00:08:06]:
Well, it is the lunar lander. The whole thing is, you know, I guess it needs legs. That's like what it needs. I don't know. Yeah, it needs a big giant engines

Rod Pyle [00:08:15]:
up around the top because they're not going to use the lower engines to land on the moon. They're going to use propulsion system up by the hatch.

Tariq Malik [00:08:22]:
But I don't know, Rod, I don't know where it's, where it is. They have to launch 16 of them. They know they only need one lander. They got to launch 16 others just to get the other ones done. I don't know.

Rod Pyle [00:08:32]:
Okay, well, let's move on to happier news. We have a new visible new comet, visible to the naked eye. And we have the clearance meteor shower coming in with only a 40% moon.

Tariq Malik [00:08:41]:
That's right. Also there's going to be, if you live in the northern states like Oregon, like our guest later, there's a chance for the auroras if you have clear skies too, because there's a solar storm going on. But it's a big convergence There is this comet, comet Pan Starrs and it is visible to the unaided eye right now. But you do need dark skies and it's making its closest path to the sun. So right now is the best time because who knows if it survives the pass around the sun or if it brightens up or not. We don't really know. But our experts over in our skywatching team, Anthony Wood and others say that like around, around, like the pre dawn hours today also tomorrow this is like your best chance to see it. It's low on the eastern horizon so you need an unobstructed view.

Tariq Malik [00:09:26]:
And it is, it is just a brilliant comet discovered last year in 2025 and by that Pan Starrs agency. You know, that's that big telescope out in Hawaii and, and you know it's, it's probably a once in a lifetime deal. It's probably not going to be back for a long, long time. So, so you know, get up. It's magnitude 4.7, kind of on the edge of perception. I think we can see magnitude 6 positive 6. So but it'll be pretty cool. It'll be a little bit blur, a smudge in the, in the eastern, eastern horizon.

Tariq Malik [00:09:59]:
And the layers of course just look

Rod Pyle [00:10:01]:
up overnight so toward towards Lyra, which is the radiant. And this is known for larger rocks with lasting trails. So if you haven't seen a fireball, the asteroid Phaethon, you might see one from that. And after being heralded by our very own NASA administrator, NASA Force was rolled out. I got a press release and I thought, oh, this is cool. Clicked on it. Nope, can't find the website, can't resolve the address or something. So I thought well it must be Firefox.

Rod Pyle [00:10:38]:
So I loaded it in two other browsers. Nope, you can search NASA Force to get to a website but the press release they sent out didn't work. So if you're looking for a job at NASA, you can go there or what's the other one? USA Jobs Gov.

Tariq Malik [00:10:55]:
And did you force it though? Because you're supposed to force it because it's NASA Force. Did you force it?

Rod Pyle [00:10:59]:
I don't force anything.

Tariq Malik [00:11:01]:
Okay, that's good.

Rod Pyle [00:11:02]:
And finally a mea culper from me. I got an email from somebody saying, love your show, don't ever eat on air again. I was snacking a bit because I was starving. I hadn't had a chance to eat since like the middle of the day before. So apparently I was doing that, trying very hard to be quiet. But I wasn't So I will not eat again. I will merely drink coffee.

Tariq Malik [00:11:31]:
You've already made the sound, though, man. So now it's like another episode in a row.

Rod Pyle [00:11:36]:
You're harsh. All right, we are going to be back in just a moment with Brianne Soldovsky to talk about life in the big black beyond. Stay with us. This is a good one. And we are back with Dr. Brianne Suldovsky, who's an associate professor at Portland State University in Mass Communications, my favorite school major, which is more scientific than you think. There's a lot of science in mass comm. I can't tell you how many people when I was teaching University of La Verne would say, oh, so you just teach kids like that? Easy class? I said, no, actually, we do research, and it's very grounded in the social sciences, and it's really hard, so back off.

Rod Pyle [00:12:19]:
A pleasure having you here. Thank you for coming.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:12:21]:
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Rod Pyle [00:12:23]:
And, Brianne, you've done some really interesting research on how we're going to communicate the discovery of extraterrestrial life, among other things. But first, and most importantly, before Tariq gets to his trademark question, I heard somewhere that you had a space joke.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:12:42]:
I do have a space joke.

Rod Pyle [00:12:43]:
This doesn't happen very often. Let's hear it.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:12:45]:
And I love a dad joke, so it is a bad dad space joke. So when I was in school, I thought that I was studying to be an astronaut because my teachers just kept saying I was taking up space.

Tariq Malik [00:13:02]:
I love it. I love it.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:13:04]:
Thank you for the laugh track. Thank you so much.

Rod Pyle [00:13:07]:
No, that's real.

Tariq Malik [00:13:08]:
That's good. That's the game.

Rod Pyle [00:13:09]:
That's the game. Kicking. Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:13:13]:
Better than most of our jokes, right?

Rod Pyle [00:13:14]:
Well, that's not.

Tariq Malik [00:13:16]:
That's not the ones that we come up with.

Rod Pyle [00:13:19]:
All right, Tariq, over to you, sir.

Tariq Malik [00:13:20]:
Yeah, well, Brianne, you know, one of the questions that we like to ask everybody when we start the show is kind of what they're path to space. Or, like, you know, with Rod's introduction, you know, we know that you're all about mass communication, but how did you get into, like, the space arena? Was it something that you were already interested in as, like, a kid, or did you find it later, through the course of your adult studies? Like, what does that path look like for you?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:13:46]:
Oh, that's such a good question. So I am a social scientist, right? So I study public understanding of science. In the past, I've looked at issues like climate change and GMOs. I like to focus mostly on controversial Science because frankly it's more fun to study public opinion surrounding controversial science. And it was a couple of years ago and I hadn't looked at research in the search for life in space or public perception. And NASA sent out a call for experts and they wanted to convene a panel or a working group to look at how we can better communicate the search for life in space. And it dawned on me that I had never heard of researchers looking at that. Right.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:14:26]:
And I've been in science communication for more than a decade and so I had never heard that researchers were even looking at that. And so I did a lot of digging and found out, oh, a lot of science comm. Researchers aren't looking at that. Right. So a lot of the social science research that exists is mostly in psychology and mostly it looks at like, particularly for people that have like report direct experiences with UFOs and things like that. Most of the research just looks at how their, like they look at kind of their parapsychology or like what kind of delusions they have and their conspiratorial thinking and things like that. And there wasn't a ton of research that took a science communication approach to how the public thinks about the search for life in space. And so I applied for this working group and I fortunately was selected.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:15:12]:
And I got to talk to astrobiologists and philosophers and journalists and a whole bunch of other people in this sphere. And it really just increased my interest in understanding better how the public thinks about this kind of stuff.

Tariq Malik [00:15:27]:
Wow, that's great. So it's a recent thing. That's really fun.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:15:31]:
Yeah, in the last couple of years.

Rod Pyle [00:15:33]:
Yeah, that's a really interesting path. And now I read an article about you. Well, I read a number of articles about you before the show, but one of them was a public radio piece that you were interviewed for that talked about your background growing up. And like me, you grew up in a fairly religious household. Mine was very counterculture. Yours sounds like it was pretty traditional, which put you, I guess, as you were heading into college. You know, you have one mindset going in and some people shift and some don't. It sounds like you took a pretty, pretty radical turn.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:16:10]:
Yeah, radical turn is I think, a kind word for it. So yeah, I was raised in a fairly, you know, conservative religious household. I was raised as a young Earth creationist. So, you know, the earth is 6,000 years old. I heard things in my church like scientists planted fossils to confuse Christians about the age of the earth and things like that. And so I never really Saw science as a friend. Right. I always saw science and scientists as something that, like, had nothing to do with my life, certainly had nothing to do with the truth, and in some instances, might even be an enemy to my worldview.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:16:49]:
And, I mean, members of my church actually at one point prayed over me because I was in public school, and they were concerned that if I took science classes in public school, that it would take me away from God. So, you know, I was the kid that argued with my Earth science teacher about the age of the Earth and took up, like, a whole class period where we were supposed to be learning about carbon dating to explain to him that that can't be correct because Jesus says so. And then I read a book called Sophie's World, and it's a philosophy book of all things. I read it in an English class in my junior year, and it completely changed. I shouldn't say changed. It completely destabilized my worldview. Right. I thought I had a sense of what the world was and how it worked.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:17:35]:
And then I was exposed to all these different ideas that weren't consistent with Christianity and the religion I was raised in, and I had no way to disprove them. Like, I kept comparing those ideas to my religious ideas, and my religious worldview really quickly fell apart. And it was an existential crisis, I think, to say, you know, I should be dramatic about it. But it was really destabilizing and really hard. And then I wanted to get out of my small town, and I was really good at school, so I rolled the dice and went to college and then ended up majoring in philosophy and in communication. So I have a background in both and got really, really interested in how our philosophical perspectives. Religion, too, but mostly our philosophical perspectives and our beliefs about knowledge and where it comes from and how we're supposed to know the world influence the way we interact with science.

Rod Pyle [00:18:27]:
Wow. I just have to say two things. One, if the scientists planted the fossils to confuse us, where did they get them from? I guess is one question, because they're clearly fossilized things. But okay, that is.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:18:40]:
I mean, that's a great question. My understanding, anyway, what I was taught was that it was a satanic, Right. So the devil's involved. So I don't know if they manufactured the fossils in hell. I'm not really sure logistically how that would work, but I want to work

Rod Pyle [00:18:54]:
at the fossil factory when I get down there.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:18:57]:
I hear the pay is great. I hear the pay is really good.

Rod Pyle [00:19:00]:
I hear. I hear it's a pretty hot thing. I wish I had my son on here, because he was raised. He grew up in Pasadena, California, where I did. And we had a good school system in the early 60s, and then it kind of fell apart. So by the time he came along, it's like, okay, we got to send you to religious school. So he went to an Episcopalian school, and things went pretty well until that very discussion you're talking about came up. And he, of course, at the age of, I don't know, eight or nine, decided to tell the teacher how the world really was.

Rod Pyle [00:19:32]:
And I got an awful lot of phone calls, but I was, but. But I was proud of him for thinking for himself. Anyway. Tariq, I'm sorry, please.

Tariq Malik [00:19:39]:
Well, no, that, that's a, that's a very interesting, like, approach. And, you know, one of the things that you, you mentioned about, you know, how you were contacted NASA was getting the team together, right, the gang together to try to figure out, like, how to, how to do this communication. I'm curious, just based on your experience, why you think that there wasn't a lot of thought at least, going into how scientists communicate this search? Because SETI's been looking for, like, a long time, right? I think we've all been looking for, you know, the search for extraterrestrial life at least since E.T. right, Rod, if not before that. But, but why not think about how you're going to talk to people about it? Because especially now, I guess, when who knows what's real anymore that we're seeing.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:20:29]:
Yeah, I mean, I think there's two primary reasons for that. The first is the disconnect between researchers and practitioners. A lot of the people who are communicating about the search for life in space are professional communicators, Right? There are people who work for places like NASA and they do mass comm work. And so there's a big disconnect between, between folks who actually do the communication and folks like me who study public understanding to inform the communication. And so while we've been communicating about it publicly for a really long time, really the connection just to the research side just has not been there. And second, you know, I think that from a research perspective, we've been focused a lot on timely right now topics, so things like climate change and genetic modification and things that are affecting society right now. And I think that there is a tendency to not ignore, but kind of kick the can down the road a little bit of like, well, you know, we haven't found life in space yet. Yeah, we're gonna, but we don't really know when.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:21:28]:
And so, you know, most science come, researchers just end up working on other things. But I'm sure, as you all, you guys would agree, like, preparing to communicate about a finding when and if it happens is now. I mean, the time we should be doing that is right now.

Tariq Malik [00:21:47]:
Is that because, you know, the inside story? Brienne, like, is a discovery imminent? All right, hey, just say. I'm just asking, like, I wish. No, I guess the question there is, if the time is right, right now, is it to have something in our toolkit because the technology, our exploration is at a point where we could make that discovery soon, or to have that, that plan in your toolkit to combat, like, what I was talking about before, the fact that there's a lot of disinformation, maybe a lot more now than there ever has been in mass media, and you need to have that ready to be able to combat that.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:22:28]:
Yes, it's both of those things, and I would add a third, which is establishing and building trust with public audiences takes a lot of time. And especially in a space like pun intended, the search for life in space, you know, conspiracy theories are really common, and there's not necessarily a ton of trust in government and institutions to provide us with reliable information. And so distrust in institutions is high enough in the general, you know, for like, your average person that institutions like NASA are aware that they should be working right now to establish those lines of communication, to get the public comfortable with where they should be looking for information, and to increase overall trust in institutions ahead of a big discovery.

Rod Pyle [00:23:17]:
All right, well, the aliens are calling us upon us to take a break. So we'll be right back. So stand by while we decode the message. So I think it's very tempting when having these discussions, and I confess I sort of fell into it when I was first research researching this, the episode to think about aliens, right? Tentacles and three eyes and starships and all that kind of stuff. But most of what you were talking about in the stuff I read anyway was about the discovery of extraterrestrial life, but that begins with microbes, that begins with complex organic compounds, that kind of thing. So, yes, there is a scenario in which NASA has to get up on a podium with the president and whoever else and say, hey, there's a alien gunships orbiting overhead and they're angry at us and they're going to come down and tell us to stop fighting amongst ourselves. David stood still and all that. More likely, however, is something that kind of equates with the Allen Hills meteorite Announcement back in.

Rod Pyle [00:24:18]:
What was that tark, the mid-90s, was

Tariq Malik [00:24:20]:
it 97 or 94? 94, right, 94.

Rod Pyle [00:24:23]:
Okay. Where President United States got up and said, hey, we think we found fossils in this Martian meteorite. Isn't that cool? And they look like worms, but they weren't, I guess. So, you know, taking it to the extreme of we just see some little critters that happen to have reverse chirality in their DNA or something, how do you see the challenge to science, to the media for communicating it? But also, and this is, sorry, a very big question, philosophical notions and theology, which is the big one for me, because that's going to be very challenged.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:25:03]:
Yeah, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind, thinking about microbes and those kind of signals for life is clearly communicating what we found and what it might mean. Right. So, fun anecdote. When I was working with NASA in this workshop, one of the public opinion data points that they were talking about was that much of the American public believed that we'd already found life in space. And the astrobiologists were shocked, right? They were like, how could someone possibly believe, like, if we found life in space, that would be like the biggest news story. We would absolutely, you know, how could they possibly believe that this already happened? Clearly it hasn't already happened. And I was sitting in the room, one of those people who thought that we did find life in space already. So I was like, oh, learning.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:25:51]:
Okay, so we haven't. That's good for me to know. But then, you know, when they were expressing how they couldn't believe the public would believe that, I said, I mean, if you had asked me 10 minutes ago, I might have said, yes, we found evidence of life in space. Right. Or we found life in space. Because I see headline after headline after headline that talks about signals consistent with life with a term consistent with is really important, which most people perceive as, oh, we found life. And so I think the number one recommendation is to be incredibly clear and to not assume the public. Public is going to pick up on the minutiae of language like consistent with life.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:26:33]:
And finding life is going to sound basically the same to most people. And for a long, you know, science generally relies on minutiae in language, right? We use it all the time. And that's not necessarily how the public is perceiving it. It's the first thing that comes to mind and communicating uncertainty. Right? So if we find evidence of life being clear that that doesn't mean we found life and maybe even having some kind of Scale where you can say, you know, scale from 1 to 10, here's how confident we are. This actually indicates life. Yeah, I think that that's a good place to start.

Tariq Malik [00:27:10]:
Wow.

Rod Pyle [00:27:11]:
Well, and. And I guess they would usually add the term potential evidence of life. So for instance, the discovery of venous phosphine in the atmosphere, was that. Do I have that right?

Tariq Malik [00:27:22]:
Phosphine? Oh, yeah, no. Well, there was the, there was the other one, the arsenic one. Right, the arsenic life.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:27:28]:
Arsenic life, yes.

Rod Pyle [00:27:29]:
Yeah, yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:27:29]:
So, so.

Rod Pyle [00:27:31]:
But in any case, you know, you, you get these indications that could mean something but don't necessarily mean something. And how easy is it for that to be created with geological processes and all that? And I think for the public, that could be very confusing all the way back to the Viking life science experiments where three said no and one said maybe. And of course, the maybe stuck in the public mindset and it's still part of an active conversation.

Tariq Malik [00:27:56]:
Those experiments were never put to bed, Rod. Right.

Rod Pyle [00:28:00]:
And so you ask.

Tariq Malik [00:28:02]:
Well, you know, I should, I should correct myself. Earlier I said that the, the Allen Hills meteorite, like, thing was 94. I suppose I said 97. It was actually 1996. So not there in the attention box. I know I would have been in high school back then, Rod. So, you know, I was curious too, because one of the, one of the big questions, I was on a pan Brianne about five, 10 years ago, and it wasn't about, like, how to communicate light, like the discovery of life or alien life, but it was about what if we found an asteroid that was headed to Earth? And I was like one of the media team that was like, what do we need to communicate and how do we do it? Because there were a lot of scientists about how do we verify? But this was, how do you get it to the, the public so that they trust it? And the big thing that stood out was from the media side was you just want to know everything up front so that you can trust where the information is coming from. But kind of like what you were talking about earlier about, there's, there's a lot of, like, religious foundations that different people have because they have different beliefs.

Tariq Malik [00:29:08]:
There's a lot of different, I guess, trust levels with how people engage with news in general. And it seems like the decision to make that announcement about it has not just like the trust issues that you were talking about earlier, but also like making sure that you're being ethical about how you share it or, or that, that, you know, there, there's. You're taking people's morals into account. And I'm curious how in, in the, the discussions that you had, you were seeing, like, that line has to be walked. I mean, is it really just get the facts out there and nothing but the facts? Like in, was that dragnet and Dragnet, right. Or, or, or will there have to be things like, like the ethics of sharing the information? Is it just for the U.S. or do you share it with everybody? You know, like that kind of a thing that. That's going to have to be ironed out?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:29:56]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, there's lots of factors to consider. You know, even though we don't have a ton of research looking at public understanding of space science and the search for life in space more specifically, we do, though, know a lot about communicating risks. And so one of the really great things about communication as a field is we study lots of things that can be applied to lots of other things. So, you know, in risk communication, right, we know a lot about how to communicate risks effectively. And so if something that we're detecting in space constitutes a risk to public safety or public health, we can pull from that research to tell us how to most effectively engage. And in terms of, like, do we just provide the facts? A. Yes, obviously, right.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:30:39]:
You want to provide the factual information that we have. But good risk communication practice also includes being very clear about what we don't know, Right. So where the uncertainties are. Because science is always uncertain. Always. And so not only is it, here are the facts, here's what we know, it's also here's what we don't know. And then even perhaps equally as important from a risk calm perspective, is that you also tell the public how they can protect themselves. Right? So whenever you are communicating about a risk, you don't just want to tell someone, oh, this thing's bad and scary and dangerous, and then leave it at that.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:31:15]:
Even though those are quote, unquote, the facts, you also want to say, and here's what you can do to protect yourself or to mitigate harm, or in the case of an asteroid, where the individual person probably can't do much, you want to communicate. Here's what we're doing to make sure that you are safe and that you are protected, or that we are going to kind of mitigate how harmful this thing is going to be.

Rod Pyle [00:31:38]:
Well, we're tracking an incoming commercial break, so stand by, everybody under your desks, and we'll be right back. So we talked about a number of things that interested me. I have a dozen more, but I just have to ask when you're talking about communicating to the public. And of course, if it's a big asteroid, you know, that's a hard conversation to have because it's like, well, frankly, there's nowhere you can go. But let's say that the message that you have to convey is, hey, the aliens have just landed on the White House lawn. They're a little pissed off. They want to talk to all the world leaders. Maybe our world leader said, no, you'll talk only to me.

Rod Pyle [00:32:15]:
I mean, who knows what happens? But if you want to talk to the public about this potentially threatening moment, even if it's just a SETI contact that says, hey, we're coming down to

Brianne Suldovsky [00:32:25]:
visit, you know, just a SETI contact, you know, just, just that.

Rod Pyle [00:32:30]:
Bring your own seasoning sauce.

Tariq Malik [00:32:31]:
Just something that we've been waiting for for 50 years.

Rod Pyle [00:32:35]:
Just that little old thing, but some advanced ET thing. So, because, because, I mean, realistically, this conversation is more about microbes and germs and stuff, but let's just say, you know, if it's the big one, have there been many studies done on how the heck you handle that?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:32:51]:
No.

Rod Pyle [00:32:52]:
Have there been any?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:32:55]:
So I've been researching this for two years, so doing my own original research on public perception, but also looking at the literature, and there is very little. I'm not confident enough to say none, but there's very, very little research on what that should be and what that looks like.

Rod Pyle [00:33:12]:
That's interesting because you think governments would, like, you know, as paranoid as they can get, would have some kind of a stake in looking at that and a plan.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:33:20]:
I mean, it might be similar to my risk communication parallel. It might just be. We have protocols for communicating any number of risks, and so we are just going to follow that format. I have no idea from a government perspective what those plans look like, but I can say from a research perspective, we do not understand sufficiently what that might look like and how that we should handle that.

Rod Pyle [00:33:45]:
In my inglorious brief career with the History Channel back in the 90s and early 2000s, one of the things that came up often if you were working on UFO files or something, was what does the government say they're going to do? And it's really hard to find anything that doesn't later get debunked and shot full of holes.

Tariq Malik [00:34:02]:
So what if it's not the government?

Rod Pyle [00:34:04]:
I was hoping for a big answer here, but that's okay. What?

Tariq Malik [00:34:07]:
Tariq Brianne, you know, one of the things that's happened in the last 20 years at least just in space exploration has been like this push into privatization, commercialization, right? Where you've got SpaceX, you've got Boeing, you've got all these people that are building private spaceships now, private space stations to do all of their own science, yada yada yada, they're going to have their own customers. It's all proprietary now and it seems like, and I haven't heard this, so I'm really wondering what would happen if there is a private mission like rocket lab is trying to do to Venus to go look at something and then rocket lab in this private mission discovers the arsenic eating bacteria or the phosphine life, you know, that we've been talking about. They find it and it's theirs, right? It's their discovery, it's not the world's because this private company did it. Or a meteor falls in SpaceX's, you know, spaceport. So they own the meteorite and they have it and they say we found life. Or they say no, no, it's fine, but there is something there. And that is a scenario that I have never thought we'd have to think about because you always think about governments and I don't want to say big science, but like you know, governments and like the science, what did you call it at large?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:35:29]:
Public science.

Tariq Malik [00:35:30]:
The public science. Yeah, that they, they've all got like the best, the best in mind about how to treat information. But I haven't thought about what would happen if it was a, it was considered proprietary because it was a company owned discovery now and I know you see that a lot in science fiction. It's like the whole reason why the company in the Alien franchise exists is to exploit the discovery of alien life there. And they keep it all secret and everything. But we don't have that kind of thing just yet. And I'm just wondering if we need to start thinking about that too and how that message could get out.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:36:12]:
Oh absolutely. Because I think public perception of government is one thing. And when I looked at Americans beliefs in a cover up, Right. So whether or not they trusted institutions, I only asked about government scientists in the military. And so most research tends to look at those kind of public serving institutions. Far less looks at the role of private institutions. I think it's incredibly important because as you note, more and more companies, more and more billionaires are interested in looking for life in space and taking people to space and doing space tours and all those things. And I imagine what we're going to end up with is a similar communication environment that we have with GMOs where the public's perception of science and technology isn't necessarily about science or the technology, it becomes about public views about corporations and corporate control.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:37:05]:
So similar to how the public thinks about GMOs. And many people jump to Monsanto and their beliefs about GMOs are related to companies like Monsanto. I think we risk it becoming really similar where the public starts thinking about space research not in terms of what does the science tell us, what do we know, what don't we know, but rather what is SpaceX doing, what are they hiding and how are they trying to profit from this? Right. So you're going to have an even more complex communication environment than you would from if we just considered public science and public facing institutions.

Tariq Malik [00:37:40]:
I feel like, Brienne, that people are already asking that question right now for their starship. Their starship?

Rod Pyle [00:37:46]:
Well, I think they're wondering what planet Elon came from, frankly. So there's this stretch, you know, there's the polled number of Americans, let's forget the rest of the world for now. There was just a poll on this, but of Americans that believe that there is extraterrestrial life in some form somewhere. And I think the way the surveys are generally structured, that kind of biases towards thinking critters out there versus just is there a microbe under a rock on Mars?

Tariq Malik [00:38:20]:
65%. 65% of Americans say that intelligence of

Rod Pyle [00:38:26]:
that cadre, or including everybody, I guess. How many of those people think that the government is covering it up and that there's a conspiracy here and all that because there's this weird tension. I go on coast to coast AM every now and then to talk about space science. But of course you get calls if you've ever heard the show about, well, what you know, you work for NASA. No, I don't. You're covering up the truth. I'm not smart enough to cover up the truth. I mean, how does that equate with the trust in NASA to be a responsible reporter?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:38:56]:
Oh, this is such a good question. Yeah. So in my own research of Americans, so I got a quota sample of American Americans and what I found in terms of their belief that life exists, I mean, the overwhelming public belief is. Yes, right. The vast majority of the public believe that life in some form exists outside of Earth. But I think to point to the distinction between microbial life and like intelligent life, I found that 45% of my sample of Americans believed that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth. Right. So which to me points to the SETI versus microbe distinction.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:39:35]:
I mean, unless they were thinking that microbes visited Earth, but I don't think that's how they would interpret that question. And only 22%. So only about one in five were confident that ET Life hasn't visited our planet. So that means that about 4 in 5Americans either aren't sure or think that it is likely that extraterrestrial life has in the past, visited our planet.

Tariq Malik [00:39:59]:
Wow. That's so much more than I thought.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:40:01]:
It's so much higher. And so it was also so much higher than I thought. So one of the things that I measured was direct experience with extraterrestrial life. So I.

Rod Pyle [00:40:13]:
Wait, wait, explain that.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:40:15]:
Yes. So one of my driving. One of my driving questions was, if we don't know a lot about the way the public thinks about this from a science communication perspective, but we do know a lot about how they think about it from a psychological or parapsychological perspective. Right? So if you look at research on public perception of intelligent life, the vast majority of it is psychological research that looks at people who report that they've had direct experience with extraterrestrial life as somehow kind of crazy. Right. Or not. Not in touch with reality, rather. And so I.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:40:47]:
One of my driving questions was, how can we differentiate these audiences? So it is not necessarily unscientific to have the opinion that extraterrestrial life or intelligent extraterrestrial life might or likely will exist. Right? It's not necessarily unscientific to have that belief. But we've largely bifurcated these audiences into, you think little green men exist, and that's crazy, and you support science looking for life in space. We've largely kind of not really seeing these audiences as related at all, but we also haven't really studied them sufficiently separately. And so I really wanted to do some research to understand what do these audiences look like. Right. So how many Americans have the scientific support or scientific view for the search for life? And how many have the kind of conspiratorial I've been abducted view? Because it seems like that differentiation is really important, especially from a science communication and engagement perspective, because those audiences are likely to have incredibly different needs from a communication perspective.

Rod Pyle [00:41:49]:
Yeah, indeed.

Tariq Malik [00:41:51]:
Wow.

Rod Pyle [00:41:52]:
All right, well, let's jump to a break, and we'll be right back. And I got another question. We've touched on the religion conversation a little bit, but I'm still fascinated by this. Having grown up in a household, as I noted, that was. We should say, alternative religion bound. That was My upbringing, you know, this is a bit, especially if you're talking about higher intelligence, but even microbes. You know, if you are a person who believes that God created man and woman and Earth as this unique, one of one population, it's going to be challenging theologically to be told that, no, it's over there. And it may even be more challenging to be told, hey, we're Martians and we rode to Earth on a piece of rock.

Rod Pyle [00:42:41]:
You know, I would love to hear that, but I think a lot of people are going to be bothered by that. So with the work you've done, where do the beliefs fall in that spectrum and how are they held?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:42:54]:
Yeah, so I think that it depends on the type of religion you have. Right. And even if you, if you're, even if, if you look at like Christians, there are lots of varying beliefs about the role of humans in the universe from a Christian perspective. So thinking about the way that I was raised, it was very human centric. So it was like, you know, God created the planet for humans. We have dominion over the Earth. You know, it's very much like everything is created for us. And if you introduce the idea that maybe we are one of many like forms in the universe, that is going to be incredibly hard for folks who think that, you know, folks who have that view, that religious view that God created the planet, created the universe for humans specifically.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:43:46]:
And it is likely that religious perspective is likely going to have a really big influence on how they interpret that news and frankly, whether or not they accept that news. So, you know, we see this with evolution fairly frequently. When science clashes with religion, more often than not, religion wins. And so, yeah, I think depending on how one's religion informs them about the positionality of humans, it's going to have a really big impact on how they are interpreting finding life in space, especially intelligent life.

Rod Pyle [00:44:21]:
Yeah, the way you convey that makes me feel like being the only person in Shanghai, a city that now holds, I think, 36 million or something, and deciding that this whole place was built for me.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:44:35]:
And, you know, I think there's, there's some comfort in that though, right? Like, there's some comfort in the belief that I am special, we are special. And it also gives us purpose. Because if, if a divine creator created everything for us, not only are we special, but we also have a purpose. Right. And I think that that is, I don't want to say a basic human need. Right. Because that's extreme. But we humans do, we like purpose and we like feeling safe and comfortable and we like feeling like we know what's going on and why we're here.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:45:04]:
And it's really destabilizing to not have that belief. And, I mean, it can also be comforting when you're facing really scary things that science is telling you. So when climate change became a big talking point in the 90s, I remember in my church, them talking about how climate change couldn't be as bad as scientists were saying that it is, because it is. But human arrogance. It's arrogance. It's human arrogance to assume that we could somehow mess up God's creation. Right? That God is so powerful and he created this beautiful universe that he's ultimately in control. And so there's no possible way that human activities could damage it to the extent that science is saying that human activities are damaging it.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:45:48]:
And one way to look at that is, wow, that's really. Science inconsistent with what we know about greenhouse gases. Right. And how pollution. But another way to look at that is, wow, that's a really comforting worldview because not only am I special and a creator put all of this here for me, but also he's ultimately in control. Right. I don't have to worry about how. Whether or not my car is damaging the planet, because ultimately I'm just a person and something else is in control.

Rod Pyle [00:46:17]:
And another way to look at that would be how much money the oil companies are pouring into the church to convey that worldview, to comfort people so they'll keep driving big, thirsty cars. Okay, Tariq, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Tariq Malik [00:46:28]:
Well, no speaking about. I have to say, about being comforted by your worldview. You know, we get a lot of deniers in the space arena about whether or not we landed on the moon. Astronauts just flew around the moon. No, they didn't. I know, right? So this is the thing. So, you know, I've been doing this for 25 years, Rod. You know, a bit longer.

Tariq Malik [00:46:48]:
We've been to our share of launches, and there is. I woke up in a sweat in the middle of the space shuttle program, wondering, what if. What if it. What if. What if they were right? You know, what if these people were right? I've been there, and I've watched them launch that. But what if that was like, the scam? And that was like, I'm part of it now, and. And there. And, you know, I went back to sleep, and I'm like, it's okay.

Tariq Malik [00:47:10]:
It's all right. They see this stuff. It's okay. But then it's like, well, but what if you Know, especially with AI Anyway, that's like the kind of thing that, That I worry about in this AI world, about all that. That's not my question, actually. But I just. You got me thinking about that. Right, right.

Tariq Malik [00:47:24]:
Well, what if. I mean, I would. I don't. I don't know, because all they got. It just has to.

Rod Pyle [00:47:28]:
Moving on.

Tariq Malik [00:47:28]:
Anyway, I'm. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm starting to spiral about it now.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:47:33]:
We can spiral. I'm here for it. I like it.

Tariq Malik [00:47:37]:
It's just. It would change everything for me, you know, and then I wouldn't know what was real or not. But we've been talking a lot about the discovery, and then how do we relate the discovery to the public in a way that it can be trusted and not spark panic? But that's like a serendipitous. Like we have either, like we've either stumbled across microbes on Mars or Titan with Dragonfly. That's going up pretty soon. Gonna go see that next week. Pretty exciting. Or, you know, we have definitive proof, like these, these UAP things that have been going around where they, they say, like, we've, you know, we've.

Tariq Malik [00:48:15]:
We've got them, they're here, we found them, or they've contacted us or whatever. So that's, that's like one whole thing. But there is this whole messaging extraterrestrial intelligence effort which is actively trying to. To get somebody to pick up the phone. And I guess you could say that it started with the Voyager putting, you know, in the Pioneer probes, where you put the plaque on them and said, this is where we live, you know, and come on over, because we don't have any doors that are locked on our planet, you know, so. And I'm wondering what ethical questions the active search like that for intelligent life, I guess we're talking about in this case, because you can call for microbes all you want and they're probably not going to say anything back. Right. But, but like.

Tariq Malik [00:49:03]:
Because it seems like that raises different types of moral and ethical questions of saying that we're going to actively search public institution or private for alien life and then speak on behalf of the entire planet to say, come on over or we come in peace or whatever that I haven't seen talked about about as much other than, I'm sure it's going to be fine, you know, from, from, from the general science consensus there. I know that, but Stephen Hawking was concerned about that. Right. But I'm just curious if that's been talked about at all.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:49:36]:
Yeah. I mean, your point makes me think about models of public engagement. So when we think about science communication, a lot of times we just think about factual dissemination. So you just, you have science and you're handing it over to the public. Right. And that is not the only available form of engagement. And in fact, a lot of times is not effective or can sometimes make things worse. If the science is particularly controversial.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:50:02]:
In climate change, for example, we find that giving people more information actually makes them more polarized. And so information dissemination and that model of engagement is important, but it's certainly not the only one available to us. And in the situation like you're describing, where we're trying to figure out, not only are we trying to find intelligent life, but we're trying to design our approach to communicating with that life, alternative models of engagement ahead of that are key. So not only do you want to engage the public in dialogue. Right. Like you want to know public perception, which is the piece that I'm working on, is how can we better understand public opinions about these things? But you also want to hear from the public and listen to them, but you also want to, in a lot of cases, especially like this, involve them in decision making. So this is not just a scientific question. It's an ethical one, it's a moral one, it's a philosophical one, it's a religious one.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:50:56]:
And so as a collective, we as a society need to decide how we're going to approach this. And that has to be, I'm so sorry to say, a group project. It has to be right, because this is about so much more than the science. It is about who we are and how we see ourselves in the universe. And that fundamentally has to be a collective decision. And so engagement, public engagement needs to. To move beyond just sharing information or even hearing public perspectives. It also needs to include collaborative decision making surrounding what this kind of science looks like and how we respond when we actually end up making contact.

Tariq Malik [00:51:38]:
Wow.

Rod Pyle [00:51:40]:
Can you tell us what the Extraterrestrial Belief Scale is and how that factors into the kind of work you do?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:51:46]:
Oh, yes. So I don't have the authors of the scale in front of me. Unfortunately, I have it on my computer. But.

Rod Pyle [00:51:53]:
But.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:51:54]:
So the Extraterrestrial Belief Scale is one of the scales that I used in my survey, and let me just open it up really quickly on my computer so I can be really accurate in

Rod Pyle [00:52:03]:
describing what the questions are if I interpret it correctly. It covers everything from ancient or contemporary visits to Earth, crop circle origins, ancient monuments. It's the whole semantics. Right?

Tariq Malik [00:52:14]:
Yes.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:52:14]:
Okay, so the author is Swami and the publisher's paper, the paper was published in 2009. So the extraterrestrial Belief Scale looks at, not only it asks the public, have aliens visited Earth? It also asks is there a major cover up? So are the powers that be covering up evidence of that of aliens visiting Earth, but it also assesses public support for the scientific search for life in space and then kind of general beliefs about whether the public believes life in space exists. So I was really excited about using that scale in my own research because it does what I'm hoping to ultimately do do, which is can we differentiate these audiences and is there overlap between these audiences? Right. Is it possible for someone to be incredibly science consistent to know the scientific consensus surrounding the search for life in space, but also maybe have conspiratorial beliefs or believe that they themselves have had kind of direct contact with extraterrestrial life? Right. And so the, that belief scale allows us to measure those different components of public perception.

Rod Pyle [00:53:24]:
Tar.

Tariq Malik [00:53:24]:
Awesome. No, my questions, man, I'm done. That's, that's.

Rod Pyle [00:53:28]:
Okay. Well, I have one more though.

Tariq Malik [00:53:29]:
My, my, my world, my world view is shattered about whether or not we're really ready to discover. Research says we're not.

Rod Pyle [00:53:40]:
But in this topic line and, and Brianne, I asked you about this earlier because it's, it's a little, little, little waffly, but I got a ping from Yahoo News that, that paragon of journalistic integrity, which was a piece that was from Fox News which talked about, hey, there's been this disappearance, disappearances of eight UFO scientists with research ties to extraterrestrial life and it must mean something. So I put it through a couple of AIs because they're smarter than I gave the credit for a couple of years ago. And the analysis I got was they said, look, there's nothing unusual here. The UFO/ET connections weak. The population of people working in this area is pretty large. Only one was directly related to UFO work, which was, I think General McCasland or Colonel McCasland, who walked out of his house in Las Vegas and didn't come back. And a lot of the rest of them, interesting. We were hiking around Southern California, which just tells me it's dangerous to live in Southern California because we have rattlesnakes

Tariq Malik [00:54:48]:
and human predators and mountain lions.

Rod Pyle [00:54:50]:
Do you have any thoughts on this?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:54:52]:
Yeah, you sent me the story before the show and I read it and I was smiling the entire time I read it because it is such a Perfect example of why communication in this space is so hard.

Rod Pyle [00:55:03]:
Yes.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:55:04]:
So the first thing that came to my mind obviously is motivated reasoning. Right. So humans, we are not great at grasping objective reality, right. So we do a really good job of filtering what we see through our own preconceived notions of how the world works. And given that belief in conspiracy theories is fairly high when you're talking about UFOs and the search for life in space, it is not at all surprising that a story like this would gain traction and be convincing. Because if you start from a place that they're lying to us, and then you read a story about people that are supposedly trying to give us the truth in quotes, you know, it's really, really tempting. It fits with our kind of mental model of experts aren't to be or like the powers that be aren't to be trusted and they're silencing people who are trying to give us the real answers. The other thing that came into my mind from that story is Michael Shermer's concept of patternicity.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:55:58]:
So as humans, we tend to see patterns even in data that, where there are no patterns and our brains, they argue that it's a kind of evolutionary trait where if we ascribe intentionality and we see a pattern when there isn't really a pattern, that's actually safer for us than not seeing a pattern when there is one. Right. So the example that they give is if we see something, if we see the grass rustling, evolutionarily speaking, if we assume it's a predator and we run, if it's not a predator, we're still alive. If we don't assume it's a predator, if we don't give it intentionality and we don't assume there's a pattern there and there is one, then we could die. So we've kind of evolved this trait where not only are we motivated to take in information and make it fit with our existing worldview, but also to ascribe intentionality and to see patterns when maybe no such pattern actually exists.

Tariq Malik [00:56:49]:
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Right?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:56:53]:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Tariq Malik [00:56:55]:
That's really funny because in the mid, like the early, the late 2000s, there was like this slate of reports. And I think it's just the rise of the Internet news and everything about, about, about what we're talking about here, about, about sightings and cover ups. And the pattern at that point was to just get NASA to weigh in because people were watching these NASA live streams of like astronauts working on the space station to build it. And then they would see something and they would say, oh my gosh, look, it's aliens and NASA's not saying anything. And then we would call NASA and then NASA says no, it's, it's, it's like just, it's just debris or whatever. It's, it's, it's fine. To the point where they actually called me and they said stop calling us for comment because like this is getting tiresome.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:57:37]:
But yeah, if we, if we actually find something, we'll let you know, just exactly.

Tariq Malik [00:57:43]:
So, so it's, it's that, it's that, it's that tendency. It's just interesting to think about. So.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:57:48]:
Yeah. And you know, it makes a really, really challenging communication environment.

Rod Pyle [00:57:54]:
Well, and we do have to go for headlines in business and Tariks are a little more aggressive than mine, but you know, he works in a.

Tariq Malik [00:58:02]:
But not as aggressive as some.

Rod Pyle [00:58:04]:
No, and you work in a minute to minute news environment. And I publish a quarterly magazine so it's a lot easier for me because you know, once they bought it, they bought it and they're stuck. But, but it is interesting to see how this is used by the media or by social media because brand a lot of what you're talking about just sounded like the algorithms that we're surrounded by every day. Oh, you like this? We'll give you more of this. You don't like that? We won't talk about that anymore.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:58:28]:
Oh yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:58:30]:
And the next thing you're, you're all inundated by the Silurian invasion, you know, of whatever that's been there the whole time. So.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:58:37]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually speaking of social media, something that I will give props to NASA for, you know, there were a lot of AI generated images of the recent moon launch. So a lot of fake images like oh, look at our planet and look at the moon that weren't actually just, they were just AI generated and not real. NASA did a really great job counteracting that and saying if, you know these images have our label on it, they are not ours. If you want our images, they're all available on our website. Here's one place you can go for our legit images that are not fake. And that is another thing to consider in the social media environment is dealing with misinformation. Especially in an age of AI.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:59:14]:
You have to be proactive about that. And in order to be proactive you have to be in exist a space that the public already trusts and so you can just direct them to you or your institution as an information source.

Rod Pyle [00:59:28]:
Well, we're going to direct people to you because we want to thank you for joining us today for episode 206, which we're calling I Want to Believe Brianna.

Brianne Suldovsky [00:59:38]:
Oh, I like it.

Rod Pyle [00:59:40]:
Where can we see more of your work on this topic?

Brianne Suldovsky [00:59:43]:
So, you know, I got off social media a few years ago, so unfortunately you can't follow me there. But I publish and you know, Soldubski is a very unique last name. So if you just put me into Google, you can connect to all my work. And I'm hoping to publish the results of the study where I'm looking at people who have report that they've had direct experience with extraterrestrial life. Hopefully that will be published this year. So, yeah, other than Googling me, I'm so sorry, I don't really have any particular media channels you can follow me on.

Tariq Malik [01:00:16]:
How did we live like that?

Rod Pyle [01:00:18]:
That's the first time we've gotten that answer, Tariq. It's like, well, you can find me

Tariq Malik [01:00:22]:
on Twitter when their study is published, you should let us know because we'd love to have you back to talk about it.

Brianne Suldovsky [01:00:26]:
Absolutely. We'll do. Yeah, I'd love to be back anytime.

Rod Pyle [01:00:29]:
And where's a good place to find the Extraterrestrial Belief Scale they want me to ask.

Brianne Suldovsky [01:00:33]:
Oh, also, if you're, if your viewers are not familiar, Google scholar is fantastic. Scholar.google.com, it's basically Google, but for researchers and frankly, dorks like myself. So if you Google the, or if you Google Scholar, rather the Extraterrestrial Belief Scale. And Swami S W A M I is the author's last name that will pop up for you.

Rod Pyle [01:00:55]:
All right. And Tariq, where should we look for you shooting up the aliens when they arrive?

Tariq Malik [01:00:59]:
Well, you can shoot. No.

Rod Pyle [01:01:01]:
In your video games.

Tariq Malik [01:01:02]:
A peaceful person. No, you can find me at space.com as always this weekend, looking forward to New Glenn's reused booster launch by Blue Origin. Also hopefully winning the Pinewood Derby with the local Girl Scout chapter with my daughter. That'd be really exciting to see. And then like I, like I mentioned, next week I'll be at the Nancy Grace Roman Update from NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center. I'd love to talk to you about that next week, Rod.

Rod Pyle [01:01:28]:
Okay. Because you get to go to all those cool things. And of course, you can find me at pylebooks.com or at adastramagazine.com and on the occasional news rerun for Artemis II flights. Remember, you can always drop us a line at twis@twit.tv. We do welcome your comments, suggestions, questions and ideas, and space jokes. And we want to thank Brianne for bringing her space joke today because that's a rare treat. New episodes thank you. New episodes publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher.

Rod Pyle [01:01:57]:
So make sure to, like, subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews, tell the world. Brianne did a great job. Whatever you got, we'll take it. 5 stars A thumbs up are fine. You can also follow the Twit Tech Podcast network at TWIT on Twitter and on Facebook and TWIT.TV on Instagram. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Brianne. It's been a real treat for us and we'll see you all next week!