The future never arrives all at once. It ripples through society long before we know what to call it.
At the Berggruen Institute, we know that we need more than prediction to name what’s next; we need invention. Each week, Institute President Dawn Nakagawa introduces us to scientists and philosophers recalibrating our cosmologies, technologists coming to terms with alien intelligence, and policymakers scrambling to design systems for a world in flux.
Join thinkers and doers from the Berggruen-verse as we imagine a future that we can accomplish together, instead of one that we’re all working to prevent.
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The future never arrives all at once. It ripples through society long before we know what to call it.
At the Berggruen Institute, we know that we need more than prediction to name what’s next; we need invention. Each week, Institute President Dawn Nakagawa introduces us to scientists and philosophers recalibrating our cosmologies, technologists coming to terms with alien intelligence, and policymakers scrambling to design systems for a world in flux.
Join thinkers and doers from the Berggruen-verse as we imagine a future that we can accomplish together, instead of one that we’re all working to prevent.
How to Spot an Alien Civilization (with Adam Frank and Claire Webb)
Futurology
1 hour 8 minutes
1 week ago
How to Spot an Alien Civilization (with Adam Frank and Claire Webb)
For the first time in human history, we can see other worlds. Nearly six thousand planets have been discovered orbiting distant stars — and more appear every year. Each one is a reminder that Earth is not unique, and humanity is not the center.
Astrophysicist and astrobiologist Adam Frank joins Claire Webb to talk about what this means for science and for us. From NASA’s search for technosignatures — the fingerprints of alien civilizations — to the planetary traces we ourselves leave behind, Frank argues that the hunt for life beyond Earth is also a way of seeing our own species differently.
Episode Resources:
Vladimir Vernadsky — The Biosphere (1926)https://www.amazon.com/Biosphere-Vladimir-I-Vernadsky/dp/038798268X
Cordwainer Smith — The Rediscovery of Manhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rediscovery_of_Man
East of Eden (1955 film)https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048028/
Frank Herbert — Dune
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)
Kim Stanley Robinson — Red Marshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
The Expanse (novel series by James S. A. Corey)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)
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https://www.adamfrankscience.com/
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Credits
Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, and Jason Hoch.
Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, and Nathalia Ramos.
Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney
Theme Music: Marcus Bagala.
Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli
Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland and distributed by Realm.
Futurology
The future never arrives all at once. It ripples through society long before we know what to call it.
At the Berggruen Institute, we know that we need more than prediction to name what’s next; we need invention. Each week, Institute President Dawn Nakagawa introduces us to scientists and philosophers recalibrating our cosmologies, technologists coming to terms with alien intelligence, and policymakers scrambling to design systems for a world in flux.
Join thinkers and doers from the Berggruen-verse as we imagine a future that we can accomplish together, instead of one that we’re all working to prevent.
