Our continually expanding, 14 billion-year-old universe is riddled with planets that could potentially sustain life; so, where is it? Economist, prolific author, and founder of "The Great Filter," Professor Robin Hanson, offers a possible explanation. In today's episode, we take a deep dive into understand “Grabby Aliens,” and the future of humanity.

There are two kinds of alien civilizations. “Quiet” aliens don’t expand or change much, and then they die. We have little data on them, and so must mostly speculate, via methods like the Drake equation.

“Loud” aliens, in contrast, visibly change the volumes they control, and just keep expanding fast until they meet each other. As they should be easy to see, we can fit theories about loud aliens to our data, and say much about them.

Using these parameter estimates, we can estimate distributions over their origin times, distances, and when we will meet or see them. While we don’t know the ratio of quiet to loud alien civilizations out there, we need this to be ten thousand to expect even one alien civilization ever in our galaxy. Alas as we are now quiet, our chance to become grabby goes as the inverse of this ratio.

*Warning: Slight audio quality decrease early on

Shortened Bio: Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, and research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in social science from California Institute of Technology, master's degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago, and nine years experience as a research programmer, at Lockheed and NASA. Professor Hanson has 5173 citations, a citation h-index of 35, and over ninety academic publications. 

Professor Hanson has 1100 media mentions, given 400 invited talks, and his blog OvercomingBias.com has had eight million visits. He coined the phrase "The Great Filter", and has recently numerically estimated it via a model of "Grabby Aliens".

Website - http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/home.html

Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art

To watch visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ 

The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway

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Thank you Don Grant for the Intro/Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm

Intro guitar from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s

*The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*

*There's a hidden clever pun in the title*

To watch the visuals with the audio go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ or follow on Instagram or Twitter @podcasttheway

Rwanda has been heralded as an African success story by the international community: its people, ravaged by genocide, have become unified and prosperous under Paul Kagame’s regime. The conventional narrative of Rwanda’s post-conflict development is challenged by today’s guest, journalist and author, Michela Wrong. Her book, Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad, tells the wild story of Patrick Karegeya, as she reveals the dark and compelling reality of a regime that is extensively commended by the Western World.

Shortened Bio: 

Half-Italian, half-British, Michela Wrong grew up in London. She took a degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge and a diploma in journalism at Cardiff.

She joined Reuters news agency in the early 1980s and was posted as a foreign correspondent to Italy, France and Ivory Coast. She became a freelance journalist in 1994, when she moved to then-Zaire and found herself covering both the genocide in Rwanda and the final days of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for the BBC and Reuters. She later moved to Kenya, where she spent four years covering east, west and central Africa for the Financial Times newspaper.

Whether fiction or non-fiction, Michela Wrong’s books on contemporary Africa aim to be accessible to both members of the general public and experts in the field. Backed up by nearly three decades of experience writing about the continent, they have become a must-read for diplomats, aid workers, journalists a{and strategists and regularly feature on the “required reading” lists of International Relations and African Studies courses at university.

She was awarded the 2010 James Cameron prize for journalism “that combined moral vision and professional integrity.” She is regularly interviewed by the BBC, Al Jazeera and Reuters and has published opinion pieces, features and book reviews in the Observer, Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Standpoint, Foreign Policy magazine, and Conde Nast’s Traveler magazine. She is a consultant for the Miles Morland Foundation, which funds a range of literary festivals, workshops and scholarships for African writers, and an advisor to the Centre for Global Development.

Website - https://michelawrong.com/

Book - https://michelawrong.com/books/

Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art

To watch the visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ 

The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway

(Subscribe and Follow on streaming platforms and social media!)

As always thank you Don Grant for the Intro and Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm

Intro guitar copied from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s

*The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*

To watch the visuals with the audio go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ or follow on Instagram or Twitter @podcasttheway

I had a lot of work this past week and was unable to edit the episode. The show has grown a lot these past few weeks so S.E.O. wise this is a poor time to miss an episode but... the next two already recorded episodes are really fascinating so you're not gonna want to miss them!

Don't forget to follow on https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheway/ and https://twitter.com/PodcastTheWay and share the show!

Audio from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5NSSIHY9f0

Dr. Jay Lemery, Professor of Emergency Medicine at The University of Colorado School of Medicine, joins me today to discuss the relationship between climate change and human health, the growing field of climate medicine, as well as the advocacy required to affect realistic, positive change for our planet and ourselves.

Bio: Dr. Lemery is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and is Chief of the Section of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. He is a Past-President of the Wilderness Medical Society and has provided medical direction to National Science Foundation subcontractors operating at both poles, most recently serving as the EMS Medical Director for the United States Antarctic Program. Dr. Lemery has an academic expertise in austere and remote medical care as well as the effects of climate change on human health. He serves as a consultant for the Climate and Health Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and sits on the National Academy of Medicine’s (IOM) Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is the co-editor of Global Climate Change and Human Heath: From Science to Practice (2015) and co-author of Enviromedics (2017). He serves as an advisor to the organization Climate for Health (ecoAmerica) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. From 2005-2012, he was the Director of Cornell Wilderness Medicine and a member of the Global Health Steering Committee at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Lemery was an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia and received his MD from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. From 2003-04 he was chief resident in Emergency Medicine at NYU & Bellevue Hospitals. In 2017, Dr. Lemery became the Director for the Living Closer Foundation physician GME Fellowship in Climate and Health Science Policy– the first of its kind in the nation.

Website - https://www.coloradowm.org/blog/teachers/jay-lemery/

Book - https://www.amazon.de/Enviromedics-Impact-Climate-Change-Health/dp/144224318X

Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art

To watch the visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ 

The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway

(Subscribe and Follow on streaming platforms and social media!)

As always thank you Don Grant for the Intro and Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm

Intro guitar copied from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s

*The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*

To watch the visuals with the audio go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ or follow on Instagram or Twitter @podcasttheway

Reddit has 52 million active users a day, and 1 in 4 people ages 25-29 use Reddit. Today, I chat with social media researcher and author, Dr. Elliot Panek about his recently published book, Understanding Reddit. We covered the evolution of social dynamics within this understudied network of communities.

Bio: Elliot Panek studies the uses and effects of digital media from sociological and psychological perspectives. He is the author of Understanding Reddit, and has published research in top-tier academic journals on the social dynamics of online communities, social media and narcissism, texting while driving, media addiction, and media use and political polarization. His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Time.com, and The North Korea Times. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama, where he leads the Alabama Reddit Research Group, mentors Ph.D. and undergraduate students, and teaches courses on social media, communication research methods, content creation, and film history.

Website - http://www.elliotpanek.com/

Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art

To watch the visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ 

The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway

(Don't forget to Subscribe and Follow on streaming platforms and social media!)

As always thank you Don Grant for the Intro and Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm

Intro guitar melody copied from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s

*The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*

Nice

To watch the visuals with the audio go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ or follow on Instagram or Twitter @podcasttheway

Did you know Russia likely has more sleeper agents in America today than during the cold war? I was glad to welcome Filip Kovacevic on today's show to talk illegal KGB agents. Where are they? What is their goal? And what is life like for one of these agents?

Bio: Filip Kovacevic is an adjunct professor in the Departments of Politics and International Studies. As a Montenegrin author, social justice activist, and geopolitical analyst, Prof. Kovacevic has lectured and taught across Europe, the Balkans, the former USSR, and the U.S., including two years at Smolny College, the first liberal arts college in Russia, operating under the auspices of St. Petersburg State University. He received fellowships from the Open Society Institute and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Prof. Kovacevic is a board member of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE).

Prof. Kovacevic specializes in Russian and Eurasian intelligence history and spy fiction and his current research includes the publications of Soviet and Russian intelligence authors and historians. He is also involved in the analytic study and translation of documents from the KGB archives.

Blog: https://thechekistmonitor.blogspot.com/

Background: https://www.usfca.edu/faculty/filip-kovacevic

Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art

To watch the visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ 

The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway

(Don't forget to Subscribe and Follow on streaming platforms and social media!)

As always thank you Don Grant for the Intro and Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm

Intro guitar melody copied from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s

*The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*