Fermi's Paradox

1. Prologue- Ira Glass and David Kestenbaum open the show up by introducing the idea of the Fermi Paradox, while David struggles to find words while trying to describe his feelings about the paradox and how nobody else wants to talk about it in depth with him.

Act One- David begins the first act by visiting his old physics teacher, Melissa Franklin and she tries to console him like every other person David talked to. She begins to ask questions to counter David’s questions, which is something David says physicists do. They then discuss multiple different theories and possibilities about life in the galaxy, like saying that we are like a zoo to aliens, or that intelligent life destroys itself. They then went to talk to Paul Horowitz. Paul believes there is life, and that maybe space is too dangerous for life to travel through it. They then go back to Melissa’s office and look at the Drake equation, which calculates the average number of other civilizations that might be out in the galaxy. Melissa ends with a message with two sides, saying, “Yeah, we're in the sweet spot. We're not dead, and there's still hope.” David Werthimer is then introduced as the chief scientist at SETI and says that they have looked at less than one percent of the radio waves they could possibly listen to.

Act Two- Ira Glass then introduces a new idea, that marriage is one of the loneliest experiences one can have. Esther Perrel is introduced as a marriage therapist and gives two things she tries to do when a couple walks in. Then, we listen to the audio playback of one of the sessions. The husband has been cheating on the wife, and the wife states that she lost trust in him. The husband says he never loved these women, but admits he threw away his life. The wife then says that her family and friends all are mad at her for not leaving him after throwing him out. Esther acts as the mediator between the two and informs the man that he is being self-absorbed and not caring about her experience, so then the man looks at it through her eyes and feels the pain. She then questions how he could love her since he’s been cheating on her so long. This makes him revert back to his old, selfish ways and he begins defending himself. At the end, Esther says she always asks clients to name a happy couple they’d like to be like, and she notes that very often many only come up with one couple and sometimes none, showing us that there is no model for the ideal couple.

I believe that all three of these parts were under one podcast because they all have to deal with loneliness and people dealing with that in separate ways. This can be seen, as David goes to talk to his former teacher about his feelings of loneliness due to the Fermi Paradox, the couple getting counseling, because the husband couldn’t console the wife, causing her to feel lonely, and lastly, little Rosie felt alone, because she moved to a new city, a new school, and her father was always busy.

I think I would ask my parents questions about their lives growing up, because every time they tell me a story about something they did, I find it so strange, like, “this is my mom?!?!” I think they would be able to answer these questions, as they are their own experiences.

I don’t feel scared that there isn’t life beyond Earth, because the observable universe is so massive and there are so many other pseudo-earth planets out there that have the possibility of housing life, that the probability of us being alone, in my opinion, is probably low to zero.

My favorite Rosie asks is, “How do you know what’s true?” This is because, you don’t, as truths of society are constructed based on how society has been forming for centuries, but we don’t know what can actually be considered true.