Does It Fly? Putting science in entertainment to the test

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Does the science in your favorite shows and movies pass the test? We'll discuss this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. As space fans, part of the fun of watching our favorite shows and movies is breaking down the science, whether it's surprisingly accurate or wildly off the mark.

This week we're joined by the co-hosts of the Does It Fly? podcast, Hakeem Oluseyi and Tamara Krinsky. Their show breaks down the science in your favorite bits of media to see whether or not it passes that science test. Then Bruce Betts joins us for What's Up and this week's Random Space Fact.

If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.

Science fiction and fantasy can inspire curiosity and teach space science in ways that textbooks often can't. Whether it's that sense of wonder sparked by space epics or the fascination with real world scientific discoveries, media can make science accessible, exciting, and sometimes deeply personal. But let's be honest, TV and movies don't always get the science right and that's okay. Some people can enjoy a film when it plays fast and loose with the physics, while others find the inaccuracies pull them right out of the experience.

Both approaches are valid and enjoying media with bad science can still be a gateway to learning. This week, we're joined by the co-hosts of the Does It Fly? podcast, Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi and Tamara Krinsky. Does It Fly? is produced by Roddenberry Entertainment, which is a media company founded by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek. Does It Fly? is a weekly show that breaks down the science behind some of your favorite films and shows.

It's the expert version of the conversations that you might have with nerdy friends after you watch something together, could a lightsaber actually work? Are Dune's stillsuits possible and can you use science to get Witcher vision or is that just Henry Cavill's intermediate evolution before he morphs into a space marine?

Hakeem Oluseyi is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and educator. He's taught space science as a professor at MIT, UC Berkeley, University of Washington, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He also previously served as the space science education manager for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ. Hakeem is the science expert on the show while his colleague Tamara Krinsky is a media master.

Tamara is an actress, writer and on-air correspondent. You may have seen her on the red carpet during interviews at movie releases, including many of the Marvel movies. She co-hosted Tomorrow's World Today on the Discovery and Science Channels, and she's done correspondent work for PBS's Wired Science. Thanks for joining me.

Tamara Krinsky: Thanks for having us.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yes, thanks for having us.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: People pitch me podcasts that I should listen to all the time, and there's a lot of really wonderful ones that are really specific on science and even science fiction, but as I started listening to your show, I just kept thinking, "These are my people." It's been wonderful listening to it because I feel like I've had these conversations with friends so many times and then I hear it coming out of both of your mouths.

Tamara Krinsky: That is really gratifying to hear because I think one of the things when this podcast was first being talked about and we were brainstorming, was that we really wanted that feeling of starting these conversations, initiating them, but then bringing it out to fan to continue them. So to hear that this is exactly what you would be doing is really gratifying.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, I personally have been, people have attempted to pull me into conversations like this, but it's often from a hater perspective, "Hakeem, tell me, I know, blah, blah, blah. And that's the awesome thing about meeting Tamara because the first thing we realized like, we seriously do love this stuff and we just get to evaluate it from the position of love in it.

Tamara Krinsky: Yeah, it was really important to us that this was not a, this is what's wrong and this is what's wrong and this is what's wrong, that it was very much like, we love this stuff. Here's what they've tried to do. Here's what's cool to talk about it. How great is it that these movies and TV shows inspire this kind of talk for us to dive deeper, whether it's story or the science behind the science fiction?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I think any group of nerdy friends, whether they're scientists or people who work in pop culture and media, have these conversations all the time, but what actually caused you guys to take that next step and turn it into a podcast?

Tamara Krinsky: So this actually, I want to give credit where credit is due. This actually came from the brilliant minds at the Roddenberry company. I had been introduced to them by a Star Trek actor named Armin Shimerman who thought we might have some stuff in common there, and we'd been talking about trying to find a way to work together, and they introduced this podcast idea to me and said, "We've been cooking up this podcast, Does It Fly?" And the origin story, because as we nerds know, everything needs to have its good origin story is that when Gene Roddenberry was creating Star Trek, they came to him with the model of the enterprise and they're like, "What do you think?" And he starts looking at it and he was like, "Wow, that's really cool." And then he looked up and said, "But does it fly?" And everyone was like, "It's a model spaceship for a TV show that's not a real, we don't know how to go to space yet." And he said, "Yeah, but the whole thing is when this show launches, I want that to be the aesthetic of the show. I want the people to believe that if we did know how to do this, what we put on screen would actually work." And context, this is the late 1960s. A lot of sci-fi was very much B movie flavor, aliens wearing what looked like tinfoil. He wanted a different aesthetic. So the team at Roddenberry extrapolated that idea and said, "What if we could apply that idea to all kinds of conceits gizmos gadgets from all different kinds of sci-fi, fantasy, even some horror movies, and have conversations about that?" And so they pulled me in, they found Hakeem, they found Dr. O, and here we are.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Star Trek, specifically of all the different franchises out there, I think has inspired so many people to be into science and into space, not just because it has this wonderful grounding in real science, but because it's showing us this hopeful view of the future. I think so much of science fiction is in this realm of dystopian terror about the future, but Star Trek specifically I think really points to that idea that if we can work together, maybe we can make it fly. And I love that about the show.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, I love that as well. I think that it really fulfills that statement. You have to see it to be it. If you think about when it was created, the America of that time is nothing like the America of today. And that show had the very first interracial kiss, and I just saw a stat that in 2017, 25% of Black men in America who got married were married in interracial relationships. That was, you couldn't imagine that happening in the 1950s, 60s. Unbelievable.

And so they were so far ahead of their time, but also just being a kid at that time, you know how it goes. As a kid, you see stuff you think it's new, but it's just new to you. So I was watching Star Trek in the 70s and 80s, but the thing that I came with was just this hunger for nature and weird ideas. And so it wasn't just Star Trek, it was also the paranormal and Bigfoot and all these things, but people seeing that this hunger exists within us and fulfilling it. And then when they do so they actually show us a future that we could be, that's like the best of all worlds.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It really is. And my mom told this story to me when I was young of her experience of Star Trek as a young person and pointing to Uhura as an example. Uhura was a huge pivotal character for her because her mom was trying to unpack the racial prejudice of their time and instill this idea of equality in her daughter. And here comes this example, this beautiful future displayed for us on television. It speaks to that power of science fiction, not only to inspire us to all kinds of other things, but social betterment and seeing each other through this lens of equality.

Tamara Krinsky: Well, you guys might know this story, you might not, that Nichelle Nichols was actually thinking about quitting Star Trek. She initially planned to quit and it was actually Martin Luther King Jr. who convinced her to stay because he said, "Look, you are a role model to Black women and children specifically to everyone in general, and we need you. We need you to be a part of history to create what we want the world to look like going forward."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, I actually wondered that when I was watching, because I had heard that before and I was watching one of the newer Star Trek shows, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I noted that with the new Uhura that she goes to that moment in that show where she's thinking about leaving Starfleet and Spock takes that role of Martin Luther King in that position and explains to her why she should stay on the enterprise. And I don't know how I'll ever be able to validate it, but for me, I think that was a nod to that moment in history because of that moment with Martin Luther King.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Look, I was born in the late 60s, lived in the Deep South. The person I related to and identified with the most on Star Trek was Mr. Spock. And at a certain time, I got the job title chief science officer and almost lost my mind because I was like, "Spock is the chief science officer." And what I'm getting at here, is that these ideas, even though we're humans and we have that human side, when people sometimes talk to me about being a science communicator, I'm like, "Look, it's the universe. It's this universe out here that's amazing. I'm just amazed with it and I'm sharing my amazement with it, but it ain't me. It's it." But that's the thing, right? sci-fi extends our universe.

Tamara Krinsky: That's right. It's that magic what if that allows us to go, "Well, what if this was happening? What if this was real? What would it be like?" Star Trek strangely holds a pivotal place in my career as well because Star Trek: First Contact was actually the movie I got my SAG card on.

For folks who maybe less familiar with the way some acting stuff work, SAG is the Screen Actors Guild, and that's the union for, we, Actor folks. So I was very, very lucky in that Jonathan Frakes elevated me on set, and that kicked off a lot of my on-camera acting adventures.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: After learning that I actually went back and rewatched Star Trek: First Contact because that's beautiful, and I would've loved to be any part of Star Trek. The closest I get is that we have Bob Picardo who played the EMH on Voyager on our board of directors, and there's also a fun thing in our office that Bill Nye put there actually.

We have the original Jupiter globe from Star Trek, The Motion Picture, the first movie, the actual prop is in our office, and we keep it right next to the letter from Gene Roddenberry endorsing The Planetary Society because it's such a big part of our organization's history and the motivation for all of us to get into this field. And I wanted to ask you, Hakeem, are there any bits of science fiction that you think motivated you to actually take that career into science? Because you've worked on many different missions and topics.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, it's hard for me. The one thing I always point to for myself is learning about Albert Einstein and Relativity when I was 10 years old. But before that, I was hardcore, like I said, everything weird, anything sci-fi, anything nature, anything paranormal. I just loved esoteric knowledge. So I don't have such a direct connection. It's almost as if it came to me after the fact because at nine years old, I don't know anything. By the time I finished college, I knew nothing, right?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's all right.

Tamara Krinsky: He's understating himself a little bit here. I'm just going to prop him up.

Hakeem Oluseyi: No, I'm not. No, listen, there's that saying, "When you think you know everything, they give you a bachelor's degree. When you realize you don't know anything, they give you a master's. And when you realize that you don't know anything and neither does anyone else, it gives you a PhD," that's where it is. And so the actual enterprise of doing science at the cutting-edge level, you don't really get to see that until you're doing it and you do it as an apprentice. That's what a graduate school researcher, undergraduate researcher, that's what they are.

And so when I was all into this world of sci-fi and the first time I looked through a telescope and saw Saturn at the age of 26, suddenly now I'm transported into space. And later, not long thereafter, because of doing astronomy and knowing the sizes and distances between things, one night while looking up at the sky, suddenly I saw it in 3D and it was like, whoa. In that moment, the moon was so big because I knew it was like 65 earth radii away.

And so seeing how big it appears in my sky relative to how far away it is, that made me see it as this massive giant moon. And then looking at Jupiter far beyond on the opposite side of the sun, that thing is humongous. So yeah, so doing science was almost like the fulfillment of the wonder that sci-fi created in me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I wanted to ask you, Tamara, so you are steeped in the world of pop culture. You're the pop culture expert for the show, but also clearly have a passion for science with all the other things that you're doing. What do you think came first because you started acting at a very young age, do you think you had this idea, this passion for science, or was that kind of a result of what you were exposed to during your early acting career?

Tamara Krinsky: No, it was really a parallel path. So my dad is a huge nerd, and to me that's a badge of honor. So he was a big Star Trek fan, Battlestar Galactica, the original one. So I spent my childhood stealing all the Asimov books from his shelves. And so things like I, Robot were seminal in my understanding and love for science fiction.

And what I really loved was that you could read these stories but then reflect on what was actually happening in the world around you by putting distance, by setting something in the future or in a different kind of world, you could almost disguise a question about our world. And I think good sci-fi does that well. So that's what I became fascinated by.

And I would make my parents wake me up at two in the morning to watch eclipses in the backyard in New Jersey, and they would let me blow things up with a Bunsen burner in the kitchen by mixing chemicals and turning flames pink and all kinds of things like that. So I really loved all of that, but at the same time I was singing and trying to dance. I would describe myself as a person who moves well, but not a dancer. Musical theater fans will know what that is.

But I was doing all of that, and then I went to a performing arts high school and I figured out pretty quickly that I didn't have the patience to do the science, but I was constantly fascinated by the what-ifs of it. And I luckily because of my dad, I never grew up with the idea that science and math was for boys and English and storytelling and all of that is for girls. However, what I did grow up with because of just culture at the time was the idea that you're either a math science person or you are a creative person, you're an artist, you're a words person.

And once I chose the arts as my pathway as a career, I very much put the science aside because I had this belief, no, no, you don't get to do both. But then what happened was it all came back together. Once I started working professionally, I found myself constantly drawn to projects that had science themes. I wrote a one-person show about stem cell research and just all kinds of things like that. And that eventually is what led me back to the path of finding a way to combine these two loves of mine.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That explains so much of the heart of this show, I think, right? Because clearly it has the power to inspire people, but you're meshing worlds in a way that I think classically a lot of media hasn't done. You're taking this very thoughtful tactic with these things, but you're not picking them apart, as you said earlier. You're doing it with love, which I think is really key in a lot of these things.

People come at this media with this feeling of it's either scientifically accurate that it's okay for me to like it or it's right out, but I think it's okay to love things that don't get it perfect. And that's what the show does really well.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, one of the innovative things that I love that the producers came up with in the format of the show, if you look on YouTube or somewhere, you're going to find people that are like, "Let me explain this show, what's going on with the science of the show." And having this show in the form of a conversation between two nerd geeks.

And when I first met Tamara, she was already on board. I was the second person to come on to the podcast, so I looked her up and I'm like, "Man, she is smart, which I love." And so I literally forget that we're doing a show every show because I want to pick her brain because she knows all these things that I don't know.

And just in my nature of being a nerd, I like to do that to pretty much everybody, but I'm also performance adjacent. I was a musician throughout my childhood. I was a dancer, and I've always loved to perform. If anybody knows about historically Black fraternities, I'm a noob. So I was also the step master at my college with my cane. But yeah, I love to perform. I eventually got involved in media as a scientist, not as media first, but talking head expert. And now I've come to be more of an appreciator of the art, of the making of media in all of its breadth, which is a lot.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I like the way the show is structured to lay the groundwork for this because you're coming at it from the Does It Fly? perspective, but specifically you start with the science, you go into the story, and then you got to see whether or not it passes the vibes check. Why do you think those are three powerful ways to look at a bit of media when you're trying to gauge at science?

Tamara Krinsky: Well, I think that part of it is the desire to make sure that what people are watching or listening to, because this is both a video podcast and a shout out to our editor, by the way, he does amazing graphics and always finds really fun ways to punctuate what we say and add some humor to it. But it also works really well as an audio podcast.

And we wanted to make sure, no matter what format you were watching it in, that there was a roadmap to follow it through. Because Hakeem is often introducing things that listeners may be unfamiliar with, and I love that he is always very, very welcoming when I'm like, "Wait, hold up. I don't understand that." And vice versa. I really like to bring a lot of the behind the scenes into our talk about the story and how things are made.

I spent a lot of years programming film festivals, and so I've got a deep, deep appreciation, not just for the talent, the acting talent that you see on screen, but all of the craftsmen, the craftspeople that create our sets, our costumes, editing the way sound is used. And so being able to bring that in is a privilege. But there's things I'll mentioned and I can be like, "Wait a minute, what is that?" So in this, like Hakeem said earlier, we get to have a conversation. I love that we've developed this trust with one another that we can each feel very welcome to say, "Wait, hold on, explain that more. I don't get that. Tell me more about that." And we get to delve deeper. So by presenting the science first and giving a grounding of what it is, then we go into the story. And to be really clear for folks who may not have listened to the podcast yet, I'm not saying whether the story works or not, we're coming at it specifically from the perspective of whatever conceit we're looking at.

So maybe that's a stillsuit from Dune, maybe it's a lightsaber, maybe it's the ability to pass trauma from the movie smile and more of a mental health thing, more of a psychological look at something. So how does that work in the story? How does it act as an engine for storytelling? Do they follow the rules, the what if rules that they've set up?

One of the things that I really love as we've recorded more and more of these is in the vibe section, we've been able to really expand what that is. So I think Hakeem, let me know if you agree. When we first started, it was very much like, "Okay, the science maybe works, the story maybe works, but does it feel great? Is it just fun to watch?" And now we've taken it and expanded these questions.

And I always think about when we did our Transformers episode, instead of just being like, "Well, does it work to turn robots? How does that feel? Is it fun to watch?" We actually were like our vibe check here is, is it a good thing or not a good thing to turn children's toys into movies? Does that stifle imagination? We got to have this whole really cool conversation about how to build children's imagination and what is helpful and not.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I think that's really a great way to break it down because I think so often we can get caught up on this idea, the science of this thing is horrible and therefore I shouldn't like it. But there are so many powerful stories that we rob ourselves of. Do you find that there's a line for you where the science can be so bad that you truly can't appreciate a story?

Hakeem Oluseyi: Well, look, sometimes what is the science of the science? So how you frame the science, I'm thinking of it as what strikes me immediately when I see, okay, we're going to talk about this. I'm typically inspired by a couple of directions to look at it from scientifically. And I got a show to do, I got a discussion to create. I'm not going, we can't do that when I'm up to the challenge and you have to make it work. And sometimes if they don't really make it, deliver it within the show in a way that can work in the world, I will go into an analysis of how could you make this work in the world?

And there are some for which you can come to a reasonable conclusion that at some point in the future, this probably will exist, right? And those are cool. But I tell you the other thing that happens more often is that it's a technology that I don't know anything about. And being the nerd that I am, I love to learn. And Tamara just happens to have this trivia in our brain when I ask a question, it's like, "Yeah, that reminds me, and I've been telling you the story." And I'm just like, "I love these moments."

Tamara Krinsky: It's not all in my brain. I do research for each episode just as I know you do as well. And I also have to give props again to our production team because they help support us with some sources for finding behind the scenes stuff and stuff like that. But same thing, there'll often be a movie I know nothing about because I haven't seen it, or maybe I haven't seen it in a long time. And I love going down the rabbit hole of learning how it was made and what some of the inspiration for it was. And then we get to bring those two things together in our conversation.

So as Hakeem said, I was brought on first and then he was brought on, and we did a couple of test episodes before we ever published anything, just to get into the groove, figure out this structure. And when I knew the show was going to work was actually one of our very first test episodes. I think I'm allowed to say this. We did a test episode for Men in Black for the flashy thing that makes you forget your memory. And I was like, "How's he going to talk about this? I'm so curious." And what was so cool was that Hakeem came on and he was like, "All right, how does this thing work in the movies?" Well, they take it and if people remember it's a cylinder-like device with a red light and they flash it in your eyes and that's what causes you to lose the memories, then the folks don't want you to remember the things that supposedly you didn't see aliens. But he approached it as so, okay, so they flash it in your eyes. So that tells me that this has something to do with the connection between vision and the brain. So that's where I want to start.

And I was like, "This is totally going to work." Because he was able to take something that felt very sci-fi, but break it down and bring it back to something that we all relate to every day, which is let's talk about the science of vision, let's talk about the science of memory, and then build it up from there. And I was like, "We got a show. We got a show."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And you guys do such a great job, and there's so many amazing topics to cover. I feel like you guys have, even in single episodes, you'll pick a specific thing within a franchise, say the stillsuits on Dune, but there is so much you can expand on in other shows. And I know you've said in past episodes that you're hoping to come back around to those topics at some point in the future. What is your vision for the future of this show? How many episodes do you think you're going to go for?

Hakeem Oluseyi: Uhh, so we're looking at almost, we come out once a week and we plan a year ahead. So thank goodness we're like, "2025 is going to exist."

Tamara Krinsky: That's right. We did get confirmation that we are going to be doing this again in 2025, and we've [inaudible 00:25:24] that, we've been told the goal for 2025 is 40 episodes.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's fantastic. So I've got a lot to look forward to then. What are you hoping that your listeners take away from the show? Is it just that you want them to know more about the science of the worlds that they're into, or are you trying to inspire them covertly to do more?

Hakeem Oluseyi: I love educating about the natural world, the way things work, the way technology works. And I love that I have a way of speaking, people tell me that doesn't make it all intimidating or make them feel dumb. They feel like they're getting it. So I like to say that people always tell me, "Hakeem, I thought I was dumb until I met you." What they say to me is, "I didn't know I could understand this stuff. I didn't know how cool it was, and now I have an appreciation of it and I think maybe I can even go and do it." So for me, that's been almost a mission for this entire century, all of the 2000s. And not only that, I also feel that I like to reach as many different communities as I can. And science, I've always felt like science communication needs to lighten up. There's a lot of, and it's happening widespread, right? We're in that era now, post-pandemic, it's no longer everybody going to all, I'm so intelligent. I talk funny kind of route. Now people are being themselves and communicating science.

And I feel like one of the things I like to point out to people is that I've never seen in popular media a popular science communicator with a deep southern accent. And so as a Southerner myself, who I did changed the way I speak to be understood, nobody understood me when I left Mississippi. I feel like I represent something, I represent a lot of people who see me in this role.

And again, it's that if you see it, you can be it sort of thing. And I'm helping others. And what I've come to find out is whatever it is about me, it's not as narrowly defined as what a person's minds typically go to. I'm consistently taken aback by someone who I would think of as very different from me, who's tells me how much they relate to me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's a really powerful thing. So often I think people, as you said, they put themselves in this box, Tamara. It's either I'm a science person or I'm an artist, or I've literally, in my experience teaching children in particular had kids walk up to me and be like, "I can't be a scientist because insert reason here, I'm not smart enough. I'm a girl. I don't wear glasses." I've even heard that one. So anything we can do to disabuse people of this, we're all just people, man.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Right, yeah, exactly.

Tamara Krinsky: And I think what as people do, we all have in common stories, every single culture on this planet has stories. And we all have these different amazing grand traditions of storytelling that manifest in so many ways. But it all comes back to telling a tale. And I think for me, I really hope that people take what we put out there in the world and just that it helps it harness their power of imagination. I do really think there is something magical about those two words, what if.

And as someone who grew up loving science but didn't want to be a scientist yet has such an appreciation for the work that is done in science and tech, and then how it affects our culture, I think it's important that not everybody has to be a scientist, but I do think that appreciation for science and for truth and for the pursuit of knowledge is really important.

And look, you're going to have kids who get into physics class and are immediately amazed, and you're going to have kids who fall asleep, but if the kid who falls asleep can go see Interstellar and be like, "That was cool. What was going on with that black hole thing?" And they Google it, and suddenly they're down the rabbit hole, even if they learn just a little bit.

I was watching, we watched The Wild Robot over break, which is an animated film, and it is not a heavy-handed film about science or climate or anything like that, but there are just a couple of shots where it very subtly shows how the world has changed because of some climate issues. And again, it's never even really spoken about, but it just registers. It makes you go, "Why was the Golden Gate Bridge all flooded? What was going on there?"

Hakeem Oluseyi: That's a big flood.

Tamara Krinsky: That's interesting. And then why did that, what happened? What happened? What happened? So if culture can lead you to ask questions about science and become just a tiny bit more scientifically literate, if it can act as an on-ramp for that, that to me is beautiful and important. But underneath all of that, a core belief of mine is indeed that pop culture can be a gateway to greater scientific understanding.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back with the rest of my interview with Tamara Krinsky and Hakeem after the short break.

Asa Stahl: Hi, I'm Asa Stahl, science editor from The Planetary Society. Stargazing is our everyday window onto the universe, but only if you know how to explore the night sky. Join me in a new online course from The Planetary Society where we'll discover the wonders waiting to be seen overhead, no matter where you live or whether you want a telescope.

This how-to guide will transform the stars into a clear view of the universe. You'll learn practical skills for parsing the night sky, get tips on how to see the best possible views and hear the latest from professional astronomy communicators on how to help others fall in love with stargazing. Everyone from newbies to space nerds are welcome. Remember, this exclusive course is available only to Planetary Society members and our member community. So join us today at planetary.org/membership. That's planetary.org/membership.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How many bits of technology, how many space missions, how many of these discoveries wouldn't have been made if people hadn't written the stories that inspired the scientists to go off and do it? Which is why it's so important to look at these stories and what they accomplish and what they can teach people. I think what you're doing is really special, and I want to give people a little flavor of it. So let's take a single topic. I don't want to spoiler the show for people.

So let's throw all the way back to your first episode, your episode about Star Trek transporters. Now, right out the gate, I loved this take on it because you were underlying the basic technologies that could help create this, but also going into the issues with it. So what is your take on it, Hakeem? What is the science behind this transporter? Do you think? It flies?

Hakeem Oluseyi: When we talked about doing this interview, you can tell me, you're going to put me on the spot, but I'm just going to go with it. So I look at it as the obvious one is the fact that you have to put a lot of energy into the matter that constitutes a human in order to render them no longer solid matter, solid and liquid matter, and it's stupendous amount of energy and people have calculated it. But even before you're going to do the disassociation, you need to have a record of what that human is.

And the way I look at that is it's first a data problem. You have to make the measurements of whatever you're measuring at the, there is a phase space, as we like to say, of you can create some vector where you have a description of every particle. You need to know it's mass, it's charge, the way it's moving, the way it's spinning, the way it's orbiting, all of these sort of things. And then you need to say where it's arranged spatially.

And even if you do all that when it comes to the brain, how do you know that you are capturing memory? Because the dynamical process, okay? So just reconstructing the neurons does not give you the actual memory. And the other thing I look at is that, which everybody gets to ultimately, it's like, is this a cloning device? You're not really transporting the person from here and there. That person no longer exists. You just basically rendered them. They've been, E equals MC squared, right? And somehow has been confined. And that information of what they are is transported and reconstituted.

And the other thing about it is, why do I even need their specific energy? Once I do that reading, if I have the ability to reassemble matter any way I want, hell, I'll just do that using the sand. Well, this might not have enough stuff. The soil. The soil and a tree. All right.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I had that thought while I was listening to the episode, two things. One, it's basically an immortality machine if you use it correctly. What's stopping you from just saving that data and then printing someone out as you would with the replicator, right? You made that connection between the two technologies. But maybe the answer therein lies with the data storage problem. Maybe they simply just don't have enough data to store, not just the physical bodies, but as you said, the complexity of the brain and how consciousness works.

Tamara Krinsky: On that, that actually becomes an episode at play in Strange New Worlds in the first season.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Oh, do they?

Tamara Krinsky: Yeah. I don't want to say anything more for people. I don't want to spoil anything. But yeah, that general idea comes up.

Hakeem Oluseyi: But when we did the data problem, when we discussed it, the next thing we talked about is how technology jumps forward. And given the way that computer chip manufacturers and software manufacturers have now gone people or organizations like NVIDIA to keep Moore's law climbing, right? Our computer power increasing now we got the darn Google Quantum chip, willow, what is the actual data limit on data storage that you could think of physically? What does that look like? Is it something like spintronics or photonics of some way?

But even then, I still think we're so clever that we might find a way to have data compression on as fundamental of data as we have, as we can make such that we beat the physical limit. So I'm like, "Man, what we see as a data problem might not be considered anything in the future." A gazillion petabytes, yeah, that's what I have in my little drone that walks around my house eating crumbs. I don't, no, [inaudible 00:35:56].

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I love what you pointed out in that episode, Tamara, about the transporter, not just the science of the thing, but the reason storytelling wise, why they invented that as a conceit in the first place. That was such a wonderful insight.

Tamara Krinsky: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, when you look at what's on screen, there's always, well, what was necessary for the story? But then you have to dig a little deeper and say, well, how are they getting this made? And the reality is that one of the things they looked at was every time, if we're taking these folks from place to place and planet to planet, every time we do, we have to get them there. And that would usually involve a bigger scene with spaceships and models and things like that, which especially in the late 60s were really expensive to do. So suddenly they didn't have to do that anymore. Boom, you're there.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But then why does it need to fly if it's not actually flying into the atmospheres of planets? Does it need to fly?

Tamara Krinsky: Well, it's still going. The ship is still going from planet to planet.

Hakeem Oluseyi: But then it becomes a storytelling device. You were talking about the rules with warp and all of these things. Yeah.

Tamara Krinsky: Yeah. And that gets into the like, okay, well, how do we make this technology something that the audience will actually invest in? What do you do? You give it parameters, you give it rules. When are you allowed to transport? When can you not? And then what that does is that's what helps to create conflict. So there's certain kind of fields that they come in contact with where the transporter doesn't work. So suddenly you have a ticking clock and there's your dramatic tension.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There's so much you can do with these things. And within the realm of Star Trek, there's so much solid science that we can really chomp into. But you also touch on some of the more whimsical realms of science fiction. And I'm thinking specifically of Dr. Who. See, I'm a big Whovian, but now I know that you as well, Hakeem have been a Whovian longer than me, which it's an honor.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah. All the way back to the curly hair, dude.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. You did an episode about the TARDIS and described it in a way that I hadn't really heard people describe it before. You compared it to a black hole or all the different kind of versions of a black hole, white hole. Why do you think that the TARDIS is like a black hole?

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, it just jumped out at me from studying it. I had been studying black holes and thinking about black holes. And so the first one characteristic of the TARDIS is that it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And that's one of the surprising things, facts about black holes. So for those of you who aren't experts on the theory of black holes like me-

Tamara Krinsky: Like me, [inaudible 00:38:33].

Hakeem Oluseyi: ... it's really a theory about geometry, right? That's really what it is. When you plug in energy densities, pressures and you get out geometries, and so geometries tell you the sizes of things, and this damn thing, not only is it bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, it continues to get bigger infinitely, which the outside eventually will start to get smaller via a thing called black hole evaporation, trillions of years into the future. So anyway, the point is that you have that geometrical similarity.

Another one is you can't enter the TARDIS, armies have tried and cannot. Well, one version of a black hole is called a white hole. It's essentially a time reversed black hole. So just like you can't get out of a black hole, you can't enter a white hole just like the TARDIS. Another thing the TARDIS can do is trap you inside. We all know black holes do that. And the TARDIS is actually powered by a black hole. And of course, time travel, right? Black holes have all these weird time travel effects. I'll give you one.

There are weird time effects that have to do with the curvature of space time, just like the movie Interstellar illustrated. And the TARDIS also travels through time. So I see all these similarities and I'm like, "Yo, why aren't people talking about this?"

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Infinite ways to connect it to other things. In all seriousness, it takes me right back to what you were just saying about the quantum computers, right? If we can travel anywhere in time and space, it's very similar to being able to ask a question that takes longer than the age of the universe to calculate it, and yet get that done in a few minutes with this quantum technology. All of that was a dream long before it became reality, and here we are talking about it. It's wild.

Hakeem Oluseyi: It's wild. And you know what? Being the nerd dude I am, I look at deep history a lot and human evolution and the fact that not long ago we were Homo habilis, right? We were stone tool users, and now we're dreaming of a TARDIS and then bringing it to the screen and with a full story. And these stories become our aspirations for us as a species.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I wonder about that a lot, the advancement of human technology and how much of that is our scientific understanding and how much of that is our storytelling and what we value as a culture and what we push forward because of those stories.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Tamara, may I please this one? She just set me up so sweet. I'm sorry. Go ahead. All right, here's what it is. It's that rocket. Okay. When we did Rocket episode, the rocket was first conceived of by Hero of Alexandria in the times BCE, right? I know he discovered the law of reflection in 60 BCE. I don't know when he did his little steam motor and you know how long it took for it to become an actual useful military device? Late 18th century, early 19th century, in the war of 1812s, the first time they were used in European War. Before that it was in southern India.

And then the whole idea of thinking about taking it, using it to go to space didn't occur until the 20th century. So it literally took 2000 years from the inception of the technology for the culture to catch up and see its promise.

Tamara Krinsky: And I'm going to address it from a different perspective. So I just got back from Washington D.C. where I was at a conference doing some script writing and some voiceover work that was all about the future of high school education. And one of the speakers there is Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who he is a performer and he's the vice president for social impact at the Kennedy Center.

And I jotted down something that was part of his piece because I just thought it was so beautiful and it actually dovetails really well with the question that you just asked. But he was talking specifically education. But for me, it looks into this idea of protopia and what's next. So he said, "We're not here to arrive at the impossible educational utopia, but to strategically, lovingly and creatively begin to describe an adjacent possible what is within our reach and also necessary to achieve before we get there." For instance, we couldn't go from methane to the wheel right after the Big Bang. We couldn't go from first utterance to Octavia Butler or from the Garden of Eden to Beyonce, although she is as both evolved and as primordial as it gets. In between these giant leaps are smaller evolutionary steps. And I think storytelling, isn't that beautiful?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's beautiful.

Tamara Krinsky: I think storytelling is something that helps us take those steps.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well said. You guys have been on this journey for the last year. You've got another year planned. What would you say are some of your favorite moments of putting the show together over the time that you've been working together?

Tamara Krinsky: Honestly, I love when we get to see each other in person. We had done some stuff in person during that test period I mentioned, but then we'd been doing this all remotely and we finally got to hang out at Comic-Con this year, and that was a blast.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, yeah. I feel the same way. Getting to know Tamara well, getting to know our producers and writers and those folks well, and they're the adjacent podcasters like yourself, the hosts that we've gotten to know. And it's really just a community of people, right? It's a nerd geek community. The folks at Den of Geek that we've gotten to interact with and see how they do their thing and become a part of it. And that's been really cool.

Tamara Krinsky: Yeah. And then honestly, I get to have my own personal science teacher. So that's been thrill for me. Whenever I'm in [inaudible 00:44:21], it's like, "Dr. O, what's happening? What's going on? Break this down for me."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, hopefully in the future we bump into each other at Comic-Con. I think as fellow, it's quite possible. And thanks for everything you're doing to try to share the joy of science with people through what I think is a really accessible medium. It's really, really entertaining to listen to. I learn something every single episode, and I deeply encourage people to check this podcast out. I don't just mean this as someone who's having you on the show, but I am genuinely a fan now. So thank you.

Hakeem Oluseyi: Thank you.

Tamara Krinsky: Well, thank you so much. Thank you for having us on. Thank you for helping us spread the word about the show. The Planetary Society is so well respected and has so many fantastic listeners, so thank you for bringing us into your community.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much. So this week's homework assignment is to start a conversation about a bit of sci-fi tech and see what happens. I'm just kidding. But science teachers, if you're listening, I think that might be a good prompt. You can find the Does It Fly podcast on their website, apple Podcasts and Spotify.

So last week you may have noticed that we opted to rerun a previous show. As I shared at the top of that episode, our staff was deeply impacted by the fires here in L.A. in January, 2025. Our headquarters is located in Pasadena, just south of Altadena, a beautiful city that was ravaged by the Eaton Fire. I'm sad to share that many of our staff members were displaced and some, including our beloved Bruce Betts lost their homes. It's a difficult situation, but Bruce has been on Planetary Radio for 22 years. He's never missed an episode. And so help us. He's not going to miss this one. Hey Bruce, it's good to see you again.

Bruce Betts: Hi, Sarah. Good to see you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: This is not the topic of the show, but we've had a ridiculously harrowing two weeks, and you in particular, I think you've been through a lot. Do you want to share?

Bruce Betts: Sure. But we lost our house in the Eaton Fire. All of the people and all the dogs, we got them out safely and far ahead of the fire taking everything. But we have insurance and we have people around us supporting us and making our life easier than most people. But there are, it's just stunning the destruction that occurred. So sorry to hit a negative topic, but it's on my mind for some reason. But the neighborhood's just gone. It's just gone. They're 10,000 structures roughly that were burned in that fire alone, the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area.

So anyway, we go on the important things survived, which is the people and the doggies, and we've just had an outpouring of goodwill from those Planetary Society employees. They're just so darn nice. And in this case, it's really nice as well as family and my sons and everything. So it's one of those situations which fortunately I don't wish anyone to experience, but when you do, it's a touching example of the people who are good. There's a lot of good in the world.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I am just so glad that you and the puppies and everyone are okay and that our staff made it through. But I just want people to know out there that we didn't go dark for a week for no reason. It has been really challenging. And there are a lot of people in this area, particularly the space community that have been really hurting during this time. Over 200 workers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost their homes. So while the facility is still standing, it's going to be hard for the space community in L.A. to get back to normal. So bear with us.

Bruce Betts: There's also just a lot of good, happy stuff in space to keep us looking up.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm so glad you're okay. And thanks for being back on Planetary Radio, literally two seconds after all that happened. But we can't break your streak, you've been doing this for 22 years.

Bruce Betts: I know. That was the only work message I sent was since Sarah. It's like, "Don't do a show without me. I can't lose my streak. I can't lose my streak. I got over a thousand shows in a row."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Never, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Someday I may lose my streak and stop doing Planetary Radio, but today is not that day, Lord of the Rings for him.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Total departure, but kind of connected actually, and that you just brought up Lord of the Rings, is that this week we were talking about science in movie and TV shows and how to judge whether or not it is correct, but also about the feelings that people have when approaching media. And I actually think about you in this context a lot because I know you're one of the people that whenever you come at media, it has to have accurate science, otherwise you don't want to watch it.

Bruce Betts: Yep.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Why do you feel that way?

Bruce Betts: I feel that way because science, I am consistent, but maybe a little complicated in my views. So if they don't even try and they're just doing a fantasy thing and Star Wars, I'm in, I can be into that. But when you try to make it realistic and you just don't even bother to listen to the person you hired or hired no one, just say, "If you just tweak that, it's things that just would be so easy to change." And plus, they give such incorrect, we work hard to try to get the word out of how cool science is and how it works. And the fact that that's ignored in so many TV movie media, it annoys me. It's frustrating, especially the little stuff. Again, I get that if you want to do something, you got to make something for light speed. If you want to go beyond light speed and interstellar travel, and that's tricky.

But there are a lot of things that they just took no effort. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars, but can't hire some graduate student or don't listen to the scientists they've hired to just tweak the easy stuff. Anyway, that's a definite pet peeve of mine. And so it just ruins my enjoyment.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: For me, it's the things that try so hard to get just almost there, but then miss the mark on something that is really important. And I'm not going to go into personal examples because I'll infuriate people, but-

Bruce Betts: Well, there are some classic examples of just Armageddon, that was spot on. They nailed the science.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Nailed it.

Bruce Betts: Nailed it. No, all they really had going for it was an Aerosmith song and some fun actors. But wow, they gave a misleading perception of how you deal with asteroids and planetary defense.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But on the other hand, how many people would have no idea Planetary defense was so important without that Aerosmith song and that movie. It's an interesting quandary. I always really value when people get it right, because then they can both share how cool science is while also actually giving accurate information.

Bruce Betts: Exactly. I'm still waiting to see that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right. Well, I'm glad there are shows like Does It Fly? to let us pick apart all this because it is. It's one of my favorite things, debating how some bit of science or technology in a show could work. Because even if they get it wrong, those are the moments that you plant those ideas in people's brains.

And someday, 20, 30, 40 years down the line, now people are trying to make a lightsaber. It might not always work because the science may be absolutely horrible, but also sometimes it puts a spark in someone's mind that might create something beautiful. So I think there's value in both approaches. But I would absolutely love to do a horrible science movie marathon with you, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: You never cease to amaze me your positivity. It's a wonderful thing. And let me clarify. I enjoy a good just out of its mind movie. Sharknado, brilliant.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right? The peak of cinema awesomeness. But on that note, because that's super random, what is our random space fact this week?

Bruce Betts: [Inaudible 00:53:05]. Well, something that's been on my mind, people often ask about Titan, Titan's got natural gas everywhere, methane and ethane. But you know what? You're not going to be able to get that to burn because there's no oxygen essentially hanging out. And so there are literally seas of what we call natural gas here on earth. And those seas, you're not going to get burning because you need the oxygen or an oxidizer to do it. So not a lot of oxygen to breathe either. And freezing cold, so not an ideal place, but it is one that does not have wildfires.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Isn't that a weird thing to think that there might be creatures on worlds if life outside of Earth does exist, living on worlds like that with a full hydrological cycle, but no knowledge of fire, which was really important to the development of humankind. That might be a really important thing to note in the development of other creatures if they do exist.

Bruce Betts: Yes, this is true. I think we have a movie.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I think we have a movie. Let's do it, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: All right. Everyone else here in Southern California is doing a screenplay, so why not us?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Why not? Well, thanks for joining me, Bruce, and I appreciate you.

Bruce Betts: Thank you, Sarah and thanks for, I appreciate you Sarah, and I'm sorry, and well wishes to everyone who's been struggling with the fires here and things elsewhere. And hello to your cat that just poked into the video screen. And everybody go out there, look up the night sky and think about all the people and pets that are most important to you. Take care. Thank you, and good night.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with Matt Kaplan's heartfelt adventure to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the dedication of the Ed Stone Memorial Trail. We had to hold off sharing that this week to see how JPL fared during the LA fires, and I'm happy to report that the facility is still standing.

Our hearts go out to everyone who's been impacted by these fires, and we're so grateful to our Planetary Society co-workers, all of our members and our supporters for helping us during these really difficult times. Love the show? You can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at Planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio.

You can also send us your space lots, questions and poetry at our email at [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment on the Planetary Radio space in our member community app. Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by our dedicated members.

You can become part of our organization to help make our sci-fi space dreams into our reality at planetary.org/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. And until next week, ad astra.