The Real Science of Project Hail Mary. Andy Weir - #544

You know, one of the questions I ask most on the show is, what makes us human? The curiosity to explore the cosmos, invent new ideas, and push the boundaries of our understanding of what's possible. That's why I created Into the Impossible. And you know, it all begins with a healthy brain. That's why I was so intrigued when I was approached by Tonham Health, a new science backed wellness company focused on brain and body optimization.

Their cognitive formula called neuro was developed through nearly a decade of research at Duke University. It combines natural compounds shown to support memory, focus, and long-term brain resilience. Ingredients like alpha, GPC, and parazanthine help improve alertness and working memory, while berberine and nicotinamide support healthy cellular energy and metabolic functions.

It's a fascinating blend of neuroscience and nature, the kind of translational research that bridges the lab in real life. I know if you're like me, someone that thrives on curiosity, problem solving, and pushing your own limits, whether that's in the lab, in the gym, or just in your own mind, Tana might be worth exploring. I'm gonna be tracking my journey with Nero in the next couple of weeks.

So stay tuned to learn more about my neuro journey. And if you're looking to try neuro for yourself, you can use my 10% discount code impossible at tonum.com. That's ton-um.com or check out the link in the description. Now back to the episode. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast.

It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed Data. Sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. The brilliant mind that brought you the martian. In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option. I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this. And the smash follow-up hit Artemis.

comes a spectacular new work of fiction. That can only be described. as his best work ever. Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation and survival to rival the Martian and Artemis, A gripping tale of survival. Humanity, our galaxy. Gripped in the throes of battle with an invisible interstellar enemy ravaging our sun. Our earth hangs in the balance. And only one man awakening from a coma.

In the midst of interstellar space, is charged with a suicide mission. Save Earth, save humanity, sacrifice himself, and do it all. A propulsive adventure, s a yarn spun the way only Weir can do. Once again proving Andy Weir is a singular talent. is indistinguishable from magic. Today's very special guest. It's Andy Weir joining us from a location I assume up north in California, Andy? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I'm in Saratoga, California.

Kind of um near San Jose. It's in the San Francisco Bay area. It's a pleasure to welcome you back. We met uh a couple times when you were back. Uh I can't say it's your alma mater, right? Uh there must be some word for for uh when you didn't graduate, but uh you know, I think

You uh y y you've done okay, even though you didn't graduate. I do want to talk about our relation your relationship to UCSD and stuff like that later, but I wanna introduce you, Andy Weir, uh author of uh of many, many wonderful um works. Art and science fiction, including Artemis, including The Martian, The Egg, and this book.

Project Hail Mary, which I'll have my producer hold up on the screen. I listened to it. I read it in uh digital advanced copy form. And uh it's a it's a book about a teacher uh who turns into an astronaut. and then wakes up on a spaceship with amnesia and realizes it's up to him to save the world from an algae that's eating the sun. Now Andy, I don't wanna give away a spoiler, but it's almost impossible not to, so I'm just gonna say

You don't want the spoiler, just you know plug your ears for one second, but uh Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And Leah is the sister of Luke. I'm so sorry to give it away, but um it's it's actually you know, I love this book. I think it's your best book. I I know you're probably you know tired of hearing it, but uh but you write.

But the thing that that really I love about this book I've listened to all you know all three of your bo uh all three of your most famous books, the Martian, Artemis, and this book. Um I think the spoiler grace period is at least a year. So people, you know, um uh they haven't listened to the to the uh Red Artemis or the Martian, too bad for you guys, but um'cause we might we might spoil those books really thoroughly.

But I love listening to the books. So the last uh before this one I listened to this one. This is phenomenal. Um and actually I think this one you almost have to listen to it. So even if you buy it, please buy the audio copy too. Because Yes, buy both kinds. I And the hard copy. Hard copy. And then also just mail me some cash. Venmo to Andy Weir. Andy Weir. Um, so what was the process like of the audiobook this time? I'll just say that there's

an incredible uh amount of of audio engineering. And I want to talk to you about that, about um communication, because that plays a huge role in this book. Not only the science, but also linguistics plays a huge role in it. I've had on uh Stephen Wolfram who played a big role in arrival. And um and the uh the linguistics behind that. Um, how hard and challenging was it to record the audiobook this time? You didn't read it, but you were deeply involved in it.

Yeah, I was involved in Audible uh they went through a whole bunch of clever stuff, uh, figure it out. Uh it's narrated by the incredibly talented uh ra rape. And um yeah, they they came up with uh you know, after going back and forth and trying out a few things, they came up with um what I think is a pretty good way of dealing with that challenge. that the story presents in the audio retelling and I think they did a a great job in how they approached it.

I'm trying not to get too spoilery. I mean I know that we're I mean you're probably gonna warn But there's kind of, I would say, two layers of spoiler in this book. There's the normal spoilers that, okay, well, you're gonna learn about Of chapters, anyway. And then there's like an you know epic spoiler that happens uh about 120 pages into the book that you probably don't want to have.

Yeah, exactly. The um the main character of course in this book is a teacher, and the first place I want to start off uh after moving from the uh from the very multi talented uh narration of the audiobook, which narrates not only, you know, there are female characters, male ch characters, of course your previous book, Artemis, was narrated by Rosario Dawson. Uh which was just uh delightful. I've had a run of really good narrators Like that um R C Bray was the original Martian narrator and then

as the narrator. And that was just because the um the rights to the to the Bray recording expired and so Audible needed to make a new recording. Um then uh then of course Rosario Dawson narrated Artemis and then, you know Reporter for the first time. The main character, uh who is it astronaut uh uh Grace, who becomes a um who becomes an un unwitting and uh a hero in the story uh as an astronaut, as you'll find out.

Um, and uh and he has amnesia. I don't think that's too much of a spoiler that comes in very early in the book. Like right away. That's right. I don't want to spoil page one, but uh there you go. I feel like, you know, there's this canard that those who, you know, who can do do and those who can't do teach, and here I am a college professor at your former

What w d did you ever have a teacher, you know, in what you did and and and uh that taught you what you do or uh do you feel like you're pretty much self-made in in a lot of what you're become successful at? Well, I mean I guess I'm self-taught on the other. But um I had I certainly had teachers, especially in high school, that were really influential and kind of fostering my interest of that. So I'll make a special shout out to Mr. Fong from Livermore High School. His name is Nelson.

And uh Mr. Nicola, who is actually uh my history teacher, but he just made it really interesting. Yeah, I think the depth of uh scholasticism here in the book, you know, I I was actually just teaching my cosmology, upper division cosmology class, and I was telling them, you know, again, I have struggled, you know, coming up with the name for what you are and how you relate to this.

unifine university besides Epic Donor and I want to thank you for for the weir uh for the weir airport. Uh we needed that the weir Spaceport. Sorry, spaceport. Oh sure. We'll take that. Yeah. Um But it was uh, you know, really ripped from from a lot of modern headlines. And we're talking about things today in my cosmology class that you can measure the distance to an object.

using many different ways. You can measure it using a ruler, you can measure it using the angular diameter that it subtens, and you can measure it using the luminance that it emits if it's emitting luminance and the inverse square law. And of course all these you know, uh our tools are used in cosmology. But I think what I love about your books, including The Martian, which I made

you know, required reading for my students, my graduate students when they go down to Chile in the Atacama Desert at 17,000 feet, which makes a tiny appearance in this book, by the way. Yeah, yeah, they meant the the Atacama observer. Yeah. That's right, that's right. And I wanna invite you, by the way, I wanna invite you to the Simons Observatory at seventeen thousand two hundred feet in the Atacama Desert. Probably not doing that, but okay.

A little bit middle of nowhere ish for my tastes. Well, it's one of the places NASA does go to simulate the Martian environment. Uh but anyway. the resourcefulness of the characters. And I know that you're a tinkerer, you you're reputed to have

Still have all of your digits, even though you have a circular saw that you use to make uh different objects in your in your home workshop. I think there's some kind of 3D printer maybe behind you. I don't know. Okay. So still that even more impressive you have all your eyeballs. Yeah, you have your eyeballs and your fingers. I have a rule in my lap, I have a sign that says don't look into the laser with your remaining eye, yeah.

So was this always natural to you? Were you exposed to to not to lasers, but were you exposed to like curiosity, tinkering spirit, building clocks, building stuff were you exposed to that by uh by these mentors that you just gave shoutouts to or did it come naturally? Uh that came naturally to me. I've just always had the I really like mechanics. But um uh yeah, yeah, just just the way Have o has always been really fascinating.

Um and so uh thinking about the book, you know, I heard an interview with my friend Matt Kaplan, who's a member of the Planetary Society. Does planetary radio. He's actually coming to interview me next week here at UCSD. He's a friend. Um, and he was saying, you know, that uh What's remarkable about you is that you uh you have this confidence, you have this thorough, you know, research ability, which would make a great graduate student or, you know, uh research scientist.

But you also are not afraid to just say, you know, eff it, I'm just gonna make stuff up. and have neutrinos or you know, energy and uh how do you balance how do you balance the like The hard science where you'll get the exact because I looked these things up, Andy, you know, I looked up the the the wavelength and I actually have these memories, you know.

What wavelength lines of in the infrared does CO two absorb at? This is pertinent to the book. That's not a spoiler, right? There's two of them. We talk about those in the Petrova line, you know, which which which it doesn't exist but but anyway. But then the neutrino story, how do you balance that as a hard science fiction author? How do you balance the realism with the like just sometimes I'm gonna say eff it and just just make it up? Well, I mean

Usually I have to make something up. Usually I have to do something, but I want it to be as inobtrusive as possible. I want it to be I don't want to I want to minimize the violations to physics that I have to do. In the case of Project Alemary, it's like you have to go all the way down to the quantum level, literally, before you find where I was hand-waved.

And actually you can use neutrinos to store mass. The problem is you can't store neutrinos. Um and so that's the part that I made up. You you could use neutrinos and the neutrinos really are their own antiparticle. If you do manage to get Then they would create Right. Yeah. Of course, uh, you know, neutrinos were proposed. They were almost in the nineteen thirties, Wolfgang Powelly proposed them.

And then for a string of years there were Nobel prizes whenever these new particles would be awarded. And then famous Isidore Rabbi said, Uh I propose that a Nobel Prize goes to the man who does not discover a new particle this year.

Yeah. Um so when we're looking at yeah, so there there has to be some level of plausibility, but is there ever, you know, some where I think in the back of your mind You know, like, uh, I might be going too far, or do you feel like you've earned enough credibility with just your sheer dogged, you know, research ability that it doesn't matter, basically. Well, I mean I ho I I hope I haven't gone too far. But yeah, I I always try to keep it pretty minimal.

So I never really think I've gone too far because I kind of if anything, I spend too much time and effort going further down the rabbit hole than I need to, where I could have just hand-waved much earlier and You know, this book as I said in the very beginning, the only a minimal kind of uh intro to it that I can't you know, basically there's some form of life that uh is is afflicting

uh s the sun and it's causing massive destruction. Now, this not only taps into our global pandemic that we're experiencing, it has resonance, no pun intended. with global warming, et cetera. Um, were all these things, you know, kind of going through your mind? I mean, did when did you start this project? Was it pre-COVID nineteen on the horizon or did uh how how how was it with regard to the pandemic? And certainly global warming has been around for a long time.

Um right. So I cum I finished the entire book before COVID nineteen struck. So any any correlation between the book and the pandemic. Um so you know it there are some things that seem to be paranoid. I'd finished the whole thing before the pandemic. So there's nothing like that um intentional. As for global warming or climate change, um I never have any sort of meaning or or method.

Um in this case it's not climate change it's not like man-made climate change. It's not CO two emissions. It's literally an alien algae growing on the surface of the sun that is now absorbing enough that Earth itself is in danger because it just is not getting enough energy from the sun. And if anything, the there's even just a weird thing in the book that

Now what they want to have happen, like because the Earth is not getting enough energy, so we want to retain the energy that we are getting, make it make it stay a little longer. And so they're deliberately doing things to increase global warming. This episode is brought to you by Focus Features. Would you let AI pilot your plane, raise your child, decide your future? On March 27th, Focus Features presents the AI dock or how I became an apocalyptimist.

Critics and audience at the Sundance and Southwest Film Festivals call it the most urgent movie of our time. The AI Doc, or How I Became an Apocalyptimist, rated PG-13, only in theaters March 27th. Right. And uh when you look through the the scientific method plays a huge role.

in the book and the many of the heroes in the book are scientists and and uh and and even you know sort of the military industrial complexes playing a role because you have to mobilize, you know, kind of planetary resources to do this. Um to what level suspension of disbelief would come in there? Do you feel like

such a thing could be mobilized. You feel like we saw that in COVID-19 at all. And do you come out of COVID-19 thinking that your the scenario outlined in Project Hair Mary is more plausible or less plausible after what we've seen in the last 16 months? Would say more plausible because it it kind of validates my my beliefs that we can pretty much come together pretty significantly. And uh yeah, I mean of course, you know, i i it's a little bit different because

in in uh Project Hail Mary, it's a global systemic issue. It's it's like everybody dies if we don't solve this, right? You can't it there's nothing any one country can do to protect

And that's not the case with COVID. Each country can make its own rules and implement its own strategies for trying Whatever else. So it's a little different. Um but I do see an awful lot of cooperation. I mean obviously we weren't perfect about it, we humanity, we weren't perfect about it and there was some sloppiness there, but uh Um so in this book I find that there's either it's something hilarious Um some juicy science nerd nugget on every page.

Uh even the the the table of contents, you know, it brought me to tears. That that library of contents donation. I was weeping. Andy, that was And actually Beatles played it. The ISBN is just hilarious. Yeah, that was I played the lottery, that number that that was not a spoiler, but you dedicated to John Paul, George, and Ringo. Why is that?

Um I'm just a big Beatles fan and there's a lot of like little Beatles um references in the book, so I thought it Oh yes, yes, there were Stooges' references as well. So that's delightful. But I love personally, whenever I get a shout-out, you know, it's like, uh, Andy's talking to me. He knows me. He understands me. He knows that I was an amateur astronomer and amateur astronomers play a role in this book.

And I I think it's it's remarkable. I talked about this name drop alert, name drop alert. I talked to Neil deGrasse Tyson about a month ago. And he was saying amate astronomy is one of the few fields where amateurs play a significant role, where amateurs are actually doing useful science. They're doing variable star research, they're doing binary star research.

In this in your book, they're saving the universe. But also I find with you, amateur writers. You turned you weren't a professional writer. Now you become you went from amateur to uh do you see commonality between are there other fields of amateur science or amateur engineering uh that seem to convey, you know, a certain type of skill set that's transferable to writing or or some other field? I mean, uh, I think a lot of amateur uh software

quickly turn into a profession. And a lot of a lot of like um really good software comes out of people just doing it. Um what else? Um Um professional companies are getting very good at it, but it was the amateurs with their little home kits that kind of worked the kinks out of the system, figure out how those things worked. That's cool. Yeah, so there's a lot of things. Also any anything related to the same thing.

'Cause you can just be, you know, good at this stuff. You could be like just a really good artist and you like make a good sculpture or a painting or something and you could e start a trend in the art world and there you're an air. Yeah, and and this uh YouTube economy, you know, my I've become a creator and my uh you know my subscriber really appreciates.

Uh well uh hi hi Brian's mom. How you doing? She's my toughest critic, you know. They say don't read the comments and I don't. Whenever she leaves a comment, I do not read it. Um Converse of of this, you know, of the amateur community is is now prominent and it's kind of adjacent to your field and my field in some sense, and that's ufology. You know, there's tons of uafologists out there nowadays, and there's a big data dump coming in uh in just about three weeks.

From the time of release of this, uh the Pentagon is gonna release all this data. Um you must get it. harassed by, you know, tons and tons of of of media requests or or what have you or uh asked about a Do you think that there's there's like almost the problem of too much data or garbage in, garbage out, uh uh danger, or or do you think it's good and healthy that so many amateur ufologists are out there? Well, I mean I don't believe that we've

So let's be clear. Um, but I mean if people want it anything that people do and take seriously as a science expands humanity. Even if it's just to say like, yeah, I've confirmed that that thing wasn't a UFO, it was an airplane or that

So there's you know, negative results are just as good as positive results in terms of um advancing humankind. However, I do feel like ufologists like sciences um tend to not really follow the scientific method very well and they tend You know, you'd never get away with that. Right. Yeah, and that's one of the contexts that you know.

I was hoping we turn to next and and you actually spoke recently, we saw each other recently. You spoke at the SETI Institute virtually and I'm one of their, you know, minor contributors. I I haven't reached the weir level of the the we're airport at the SETI Institute. Right. The the Jill Tartar helipad. Yes. Uh but the um but I gave a talk there a couple of years back and I said, you know, if one of my students handed in the Drake equation, I would fail her.

or him because it's never presented with error bars. You know, it's like If you hand it an equation or a plot and it's it's funny because it's like here's this equation and it's got 100% uncertainty. If you estimate something, infinite uncertainty has a hundred, it could be zero, it could be an infinite or ten thousand aliens.

And so it shouldn't be so surprising. But one thing I love about this book Well you could easily make a version of the Drake equation where uh You have to specify error ranges and then you can derive the error range. So I do that at my SETI Institute talk. Maybe I'll put a link here, somewhere over there in the video. Uh and I do that and I say, here's an example'cause one of the solutions to the to the Fermi paradox is that

just as you and I go to the zoo, I take my kids to the zoo, that I don't let them bang on the gorilla cage and you know, and say, like in other words, the aliens might not want to disturb us, right? So they might be here

But they don't disturb us. So we don't know that they're here because we don't um we uh they're not observable because they cloak themselves for some reason. And um so I did an estimation. I said, I'm from San Diego, as you used to live here. We have the world famous San Diego Zoo and wild animal.

And if you remember we had this sculpture here on campus with this netting that's at about seventeen feet tall, and I always say that's the catch escaped giraffes in the San Diego Zoo. Well, we always called it the koala catchers when I was in. I always give it as a quiz for the visiting string theorists that come here. What is that thing here? Uh but anyway, um so I gave an example in my SETI institute. I said like how many

Um how many people are at the San Diego Zoo right now? And you can go through the math and if you don't give an error bar, it could be zero or it could be eight thousand. And it's actually close to about eight thousand, but uh but yeah, so I think I think you're right. If you can do something that expands human knowledge, that it reduces the Bayesian confidence interval and tightens it up.

And that's a good that's a service. And one thing I love about your um your your your book and and all your books is that you you think Kind of like an alien. Like in other words, you're gonna come in uh and one of those Thank you, fellow human. I know that you are speaking in jest, for I am a human like you. I love metabolizing. I I love breathing oxygen. Uh we too sh exchanged long protein strands to communicate.

Um uh so uh one one thing I've thought about and that's been in the astronomical community is how where should we look? So one of my colleagues upstairs, uh Professor Shelly Wright, she studies optical sense. And one thing in the book that you make quite prominent use of is that these these algae you know have a signature and that you know perhaps other civilizations might also know about that signature.

Do you think we've been going about SETI the wrong way? In other words, like should we look for extraterrestrials using some kind of universal signature of that we are aware of? I I mean or or are we, you know, should we look uh as broadly as possible? I mean well, I mean I'm hardly qualified to comment on that and much smarter people than me have

mean. Yeah, there's a twenty one centimeter line, but of course that's a radio line and it's you know not as powerful perhaps as an optical line or you know something like that. Or as the Petrova line perhaps. Oh yeah. Um but yeah oh by the way But I also believe we will never be able to go faster than light nor transfer nor transfer. Faster than light. So I think that there m you know, if it turns out that the nearest intelligent life form is a thousand light years away.

looking at us with a super advanced telescope right now, they're seeing like the way things were in the year, you know, ten And if we said hi right now, it would take two thousand years to get a response, you know? So I'm just um I just that my answer to the Fermi paradox is the inviolability of the speed of light. Yeah. Yeah, that is uh certainly not only a good idea, as Einstein said, but the law as well. Yeah.

So uh yeah, maybe while we're still on that topic of aliens, I know that's not not really a focus of the book. Well, you know, in in in a large scheme of things. Let me just say have you thought about these, you know, kind of epic battles between, you know, the Stephen Hawkings and the and the Elon Musks of the world in in terms of like the great filter and and, you know, should we should we respond if we get a message, you know, tomorrow?

Uh just because they won't know about us, you know, it doesn't mean that there isn't a beam of light coming towards us right now with some information. Should we respond or as Hawking said, you know, that would be like ringing the dinner bell saying, uh I'm I'm ready for I'm ready for you now for dinner. I have no idea how to answer that'cause it's all just wild speculation. Um but I I would think if if I mean I would want to answer.

So uh we talked a little bit about uh some of the connections uh in the book between um your or rather in your past between your your upbringing, et cetera. I think you uh I read some of your father was a particle physicist, is that right? Yeah. Well I mean uh my mom was an engineer. Um I say particle physicist gener He was a linear accelerator physicist. Um so he worked with electrons a lot. But I mean he didn't But yeah, that's what he did. And he's not...

I presume. What's that? Was that was that Slack, I presume? Up up in the base. No, it wasn't at Slack, it was an ATA. Oh really? Oh, very interesting. Okay. Um so I'm gonna talk about language. I've had on um as I said, Stephen Wolfram and also Noam Chomsky. And in both of those gentlemen, we talked a lot about alien communication. And how how one would communicate with an alien. Of course in arrival, uh there's an alien species that comes to Earth.

And uh and and uh actually communicates directly through the spaceship with Amy Adams character and Um in the not wonderful novel by Ted Chang. And uh and then of course Noam Chomsky has thought a lot about communication, but always there's a gestural aspect to it. And in fact As you probably know, Nome Nome thinks that there is a basically a component of language communication that is inherently

um kind of uh physiosomatic or something like that. That you that you basically need some way of communicating using your hands or or some what do you think about communication? How would you communicate with an alien species?

If you just got a a beam of of Morse code, could you communicate with an alien species, do you think? Or how how would you how would you crack that particular nut? Or how did how do you resolve such things? Well any communication you have, you would have to send something that able to um identify

Right. And so uh I don't I I I don't know exactly how you would go about doing that. But And working out a common language requires pretty much near instant communication like Your little one grew three inches overnight. Also, expensive. Sell their pint-sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees because somewhere.

A dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow, and he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth spurt budget secured. Start selling on deal. Where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. You and the other party, like if if you you know if you don't

Day have a little bit of a shared language. But you you work that stuff out with communication. You point at yourself and say your name. You point at the you point like that. And so it has to go back and forth and back and forth. If there are two species communicating across a thousand year gulf, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of years before they even start getting

Right. That's the so called Chinese room argument that says the digital computer in another it's a version of a little different than the Chinese room, right? The Chinese room argument is just um you can't tell the difference between understands something or is just regurgitating a preordained list of responses. Um this is like aliens actively attempting to understand and still take a really long time if the conversation takes you know has to have

Uh I wanna turn now to the craft of writing and that uh will take us to maybe some rapid fire and then we'll uh move into some other other domains if you have uh if you have the time and then we'll wrap up with my Yeah. Before we do that Sure, yeah, let me pause. Sorry. Zoom that. Okay, great. Okay, so now we're gonna get into the practice of writing. All right. Okay, so um first of all, I'll do one I'll do one rapid fire.

Um true or false or yes or no is the best way to sell your nth book to write your n plus one th book. Sorry. Let's say you you wrote you wrote the uh Project Hail Mary and you want to make a really uh great success. Do you write I've heard that the best way to to to you know kind of get attention and Um yeah Okay. Uh next question, semi rapid fire, is um, do you always write a book now with kind of the idea of a movie production coming down?

No, I uh I I and I think that w now my style of writing tends to be kind of cinematic cinematic because I see it in my head like that, but I'm not deliberately trying And um that's because my job is to write a book. If I wanna write and this is what I tell other writers If you want to write a movie, write a movie.

No problem. But if if if if if what you really want in the end here is a movie, then write a movie. Um if you're gonna write a book, write a book. Don't sacrifice good plot ideas or good narrative techniques. And what about uh Artemis? What's the status of the movie Artemis? Artemis is um uh the the screenwriter, uh Geneva Robertson Voretz.

Uh she's already made a few revs and sent them to um the directors. We have the directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller attached. Um and uh that's kind of the status of where it is right now. And we And I understand that uh Ryan Gosling is attached in some way to uh Project Hail Mary's movie adaptation. Yeah, that's right. Um for Project Hail Mary Ryland Grace. Oh yeah, yeah, sorry. So the lead character's name is Ryland Grace, not to be confused with Ryan Gosling, who is gonna play him. Also, like

Uh we have Drew Goddard working on the screenplay. He's the he's the guy And uh uh MGM is really seems pretty excited about it, so I feel like it's got a good chance of being green lighted, we'll see. And is that pretty hands off? Like would you be in b would you go down, would you be involved in it or would you just be working? So yeah, uh uh but uh it the the reason I'm a producer is um so that I could have some some of the front end gross.

Money wise and so uh I'm my main objective is to stay out of the way of the real producers. But the end result is I am involved in a lot of these decisions. I'll offer my opinion. Right. Um next up I have uh Let's see. Um okay. Do you write every day? Do you have like a writing target, thousand words a day? Do you have any kind of writing schedule, daily habits, rituals? When I when I

The system I came up with is like by the end of Monday I n I need to have a thousand words written. By the end of Tuesday I need to have two thousand words written for the week. Wednesday three three. That system uh I kind of worked out over time. That way if I'm if I'm uh if it's like a Monday and I'm plugging

going and say now I'm working off Tuesday's debt, you know. So um that's that's the system I came up with. Although right this moment I'm just kinda free form messing around working on the research for my next book. So I'm not writing yet. Do you have any other rituals, mm meditation, exercise, uh nothing sport, biathlon, hunting, big game? Big game hunting. Not no not quite so much. Uh no no big. No rituals. Just doing the work, huh?

Yeah, no, that's that's uh that's well it comes comes across but it's a good thing I think. It's uh better than you're like uh living like Hemingway and then uh you know Meeting an untimely end. Uh okay. Best part and worst part about being a writer, a professional writer. Well the best part of course is that you're your own boss. You get to Yeah, and also it's one of the few creative jobs

I mean aside from aside from your editor, you know, giving you notes and stuff, you are the sole arbiter of what does and doesn't go into the story. If you're in film, well, there's a whole bunch of things. The screenwriter, the director, the performers often have things to say, the studio and so on. But when you're a writer of a novel, it's just you. So that's kind of cool. The downside is is you have And I also miss having a little bit of a little bit of a little

software originally and I miss like going to work. Uh I miss well of course everybody does right now, but even before the pandemic I I missed going to work. I I really enjoyed my job as a software engineer and the last uh engineering job I had before I left. hung on there much longer than I needed to just cause I liked the work. I liked my coworkers. I think one of the most surpr surprising things in the book is how prominent and important the role of Microsoft Excel is in this book. It's true.

Yeah. Go ahead. Uh yeah. Uh Ryland ends up using Excel a lot to keep track of a bunch of data. Yeah. It made me think of uh one of the dirtiest secrets in the publishing business, I I I assume for you too, uh, is that uh much of publishing is accomplished by emailing Microsoft Word documents across the country with track changes. Is that true?

True or flight. Absolutely. Absolutely. No doubt about it. There's gotta be a better way. Uh come on, Andy, we gotta figure out a better way. I'm not sure there is a better way. Because like it's a really efficient way. Uh track changes is track changes in the comments and the notes and stuff like that. That's a really good way of of doing uh editing paths. Yeah, it's just a file and it's a very good thing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then real-time updating or collaboration or something like that. I don't know. I mean, you could do that with Google Docs. But I don't need to see each individual letter show up, you know, at the moment my editor is writing a message on the thing. It's okay and and also It's best if I don't see anything until he's done and reread them and sent it along. Right. But I've already seen the comment.

I guess in the nonfiction world, you know, where you're like writing a chapter that's standalone, you w you wanna like compile, you know, and just separately write chapters and then compile the whole thing. I don't wanna email, you know, eighty thousand words every time I change a word and Uh that's a small thing. What about you narrating an audiobook? Any any inkling to do that ever? No, I don't think so. Um I'm a you know, I I

And also um the the narrators that we've been getting from my books are just fantastic. I mean, so why would I ever want to displace any of them? I mean like these are top I hope that trend continues. Yeah. Okay. Uh next. Um best and worst writing advice you've ever uh received. Well the best writing advice

I think the best writing advice is a piece that I came up with, which is um don't tell your friends and family your story idea. Well, you can tell them the basic idea, but don't tell them the details of the story because it's at write it. So that's that's a good piece of advice. Um Bad writing advice. Um Yeah, I don't know. I I'm having a hard time thinking of any bad writing advice. I I do know some people who are like, Oh I like to write

and then backfill in with the intermedi with the connective tissue kind of scenes. And I think that's a terrible idea because you'll write all the fun scenes and then you have nothing but miserable work ahead So you'll never finish. That's what I always tell my students. Whenever they like solve something, I go, Congratulations, now you've earned your ticket to an even harder problem.

Exactly. Um Do you feel like you've achieved what uh Neil deGrasse Tyson and I d we discussed as like niche fame? Like he in COVID times says he can't even go on the subway with a mask. You know, like like he's too famous. You you are you just famous enough? Do you feel like you get recognized your trademark chapeau, uh glasses and uh Thank you. No, I mean I don't get recognized that much. That's the cool thing about being a writer.

Um yeah, if I'm at a convention or something like that, I'll get spotted all the time, you know. But if I'm just out in the wild I mean, maybe once a month someone will recognize me. That's about it. And that that's Do you like or hate getting feedback on bugs like a uh do you give a bug bounty when someone one of your readers, say one of my undergraduates, finds an error in your book? Um I like it. I I I like that my readers are engaged in a

level. And uh, you know, I bring it upon myself because I I tell everyone, hey, I write scientifically accurate science fiction and they're like, Really? Let's see about that. And so I I certainly can't whine if they do hit All right. Well I got some truth for you, Andy. You ready? Yeah, yeah. I know a few All right, well you messed up the uh countries that use the imperial system. United States, there's not two. There's the United States, there's Liberia.

There's uh not you do you do have I think you say Liberia, but it's Liberia, and then there's Myanmar and Burma. Okay. Now I'm jumping. Myanmar and Burma are the same thing. There's one more typo that so my undergraduate Ben found that one. Uh but I found one that the Earth you talk about magnetic fields in a planet when you're talking about a certain planet that shall not be named. Right. But you talk about um planets need a liquid

uh m uh core, a molten core like the earth, but the earth has a solid core. Yes. So there's the only two months in the whole book. Well there's more. Um there was uh an alert reader on uh Twitter sent me that at one point he powered But a watch battery doesn't have enough voltage to power. Hm. I have to think about that. The red ones can be lower, but the white ones I guess

Voltage. Huh. Uh yeah. Or or something like that. I mean obviously I don't know what I'm talking about here. I'm just going off of um what the If only there was a kind of a a worldwide web we could look that up. No well I Three point six volts. Um th uh yellow is two point one volts. Um now with the home. Receive 12-month special financing and free basic installation on carpet projects with LifeProof, LifeProof with Pet Proof Technology, Home Decorators Collection, and Traffic Mastercard.

Or give them a Watch battery. I'm sure my audience is gonna love it as soon as we says Hi, I just finished Hail Mary and promise a nice five star review. Uh it needs three point six volts minimum. So three ser three cells in series would do it. So I guess a watch battery has like a little bit over a volt, like one and a half volts. Yeah, it has yeah, it has watch battery. It depends on the Going to the Apple a kid have the Apple one.

Or C R uh has three volts. Yeah. Anyway, tell'em to stuff it. Tell him to stuff. No, what are you talking about? This is what I'm talking about. I know I know you're joking, but I'm like these are exact I I I open myself up by being meticulously accurate everywhere else and claiming that I'm accurate. That's right. I bring this kind of uh this

You are thinking in public and you are doing what a good scholar should do, which is to be intellectually honest, which is why I knew I could bring up those two faux paws. Those faux paws. Okay, we're coming to the end here, Andy, I promise. Uh and the last thing okay, so we talked about teaching. We talked about um before I get into okay, so would you ever want to be a professor? Would you ever want to teach writing? No, uh no, I wouldn't want to

Um but I might want to teach a science field. I I really like I I don't know, there's something I So I I but I'm not I'm not deeply despite what it appears to be when you're reading my books, I'm not uh I'm not really qualified to be like a, you know, upper division professor, but I could probably One A, two A, that sort of stuff. I could I And those are the names of our physics classes here at UCSD, which brings me to my last, you know, major set of questions.

So I wanna ask you about that. Um I don't think uh we've ever really communicated about this if it's not uh too painful as a I had a reader I had a reader, I mean I had a viewer, a subscriber in addition to my mom. And uh he went to UCSD and I'm not using his name. Uh he didn't say if I could or couldn't, so I'm just not going to. But he said he didn't have

And he said he wanted to come on my show anonymously to to talk about why he didn't have a good experience. He was a physics major. Um and and he said, you know, why don't you ever have on somebody like me? And I said, well, you know what? I'm gonna have on someone who dropped out of UC. I'm gonna ask him the following question.

And I'm gonna ask you, Andy, what what could we have done differently? You know, is there something that we could have done? We have vast resources. I don't care. We're a public universe. We're building forty story dormitory with ocean view and everything in there. We have resources. Just because we're a public university, I'm a public servant.

I believe it's my responsibility to the taxpayers to to teach and educate California's students. Um what could we have done better for for a student like you to I I think it would it's not I think um basically I was at a point in my life.

Willing to put out the effort. I had like a lot of semi smart people, I breezed through high. without really having to do any work at all. Like it was so easy for me. And then you get to college and it's like it's real work and I never learned good study habits. Any of that stuff. And so it was just really hard for me. Now, ostensibly the reason I left was because I ran out of money. And that's true. I did. I ran out of money.

Um but I mean if I i if I had been good grades and was feeling like I was making progress then I probably would have found a way to make it happen. So I guess for me I just didn't feel like super directed. I d I didn't feel like um I just wasn't Also, remember I was in computer science and at the time the tech boom was just beginning. And so there was also an Or I can immediately right now start making a decent salary because no one in the tech industry seems to care.

Um also uh so I I don't think there's anything UCSD could have done differently. Although one thing uh you know, at the time I was there, I'm sure things are different, it's been a million years, but at the time I was there, um the the CS department in terms of what it taught. Like on up to COBOL. Yeah, no when I was excellent. Excellent. No, but when I was there, um in a world that was all Plus and Java. Um, at UCSD, they didn't have any classes for C, no classes for Java. They had one class.

It was an election. And um mainly they taught Pascal. Very proud of having invented Pascal, so they kept teaching it waiting Um you know, and so those are those are some factors. Al also I I I also think that um in general And it's so expensive to get one. It's just like don't go horribly into debt that it's gonna take you half your life to pay off just to get an art that where you don't go to college, you go to a trade school. And these are not

parts of society. I mean, we need mechanics, we need locksmiths, we need plumbers, we need all these things. And you don't go to college for those. So you don't I don't know. notion that college makes you a properly educated And I guess finally I would say and this is not nothing direct. For me, higher education should be I am investing in my future. I'm paying

money so that they will teach me the skills I need to go out and be able to demand a higher salary in the job market. Like I'm gonna learn I'm gonna learn how to do something most people don't know how to do so that I can get paid a good salary Right. But colleges are still stuck in frankly this s you know, eighteenth century gentleman mode of not really being focused on

skills as a potential worker, but on giving you this comprehensive education. And I'm like, I can understand that happening in high school where you get like a big broad education because they're trying to bring you An adult in our country. But for college, I'm paying you to teach me stuff. So I don't want you if I'm paying you to teach me how to program computers, I don't want you to say I don't get a degree until I write

You know? So I I just uh and I know a lot of people disagree with me on this, but I don't buy into the comprehensive education thing. I honestly think all Yeah, very good. Yeah, I agree. And I think colleges are maybe uh shooting themselves in the foot because You know, eventually it's gonna dawn on people that just as you know, Harvard doesn't teach, you know, so there's not some special brand of physics that Harvard's learned.

You know, I haven't learned yet. You know, like some there's a fifth Maxwell's equation that hasn't made its way to the West Coast yet. No, we all know the same things, we all teach from the same textbook. And uh and that means it's very vulnerable to disruption via, you know, technology like into artificial intelligence. Like who would you rather learn uh electromagnetism from? Brian Keating or from uh James Clark Mac?

well. And I think as we get more and more like that, we're the colleges have to differentiate themselves by the perks and that's why we have ocean view dorms here and we have the Andy Wear Natatorium. You know We have uh you know, that's the only way we can differentiate ourselves and and the um you're absolutely right. It it should have elements uh of of this, but you know, it's uh

It's a tough nut to crack. But I think if colleges don't wise up to this you know, kind of serving a customer rather than just like what this ideal system is, as you call it the eighteenth century British gentleman. Um which which is kind of the modality. It's been stuck in, you know, maybe even longer. I mean, I looked up the first college ever, it was like in Bologna in eight and one thousand eighty. And it's basically some old dude standing up on a stage scratching a piece of

m rock on another piece of rock and you know, I have a whiteboard now and a and a marker and that's it. That's the only thing. Tech Empire. Yeah, that's right. And and almost nothing has changed. There's just, you know, different different uh disciplines and well, I mean they don't do sacrifices anymore. Oh They still do. If you go to the pitch. You'll get uh Sir Roger Penrose, frequent guest on the show. All right, last question just before we go to the final thrilling three.

If you could adapt any science fiction novel into a movie other than your own, Andrew, uh what would it be and why? This is from my friend Jacob Kuhn. Of Steel by Isaac Asimov. Um, first off, it's a really good book. It's in the robot. like that and it's the first book in a series, so it'd be cool if they made that Uh-huh. Wow. Okay, Andy, we are now in the final section, the so-called thrilling three, where I ask the thrilling three patented questions.

Which I patented just a minute ago. Please do subscribe and like and comment on this and go to my website, Brian King dot com. You'll get notes and resources and get a chance to maybe even win and Copy of Project Hail Mary, this wonderful new book by today's guest. UCSD attendee. Uh Mr. That's a good one, right? UCSC attendee. UCSC mega donor. Okay. I know. I think I think Donor Relations is gonna come and get me. Okay.

The first one it has to do with your near future when you reach the so called biblical age of a hundred and twenty years old. What ethical wisdom do you want to put? Not your material wealth, not your earthly possessions, but what material wisdom or values do you want to articulate to give to future generations as an inheritance? For the future. Hm. Um I don't know. It it's like I g I guess

pass along like not everyone in the society can relax and kick back. Like you you have to pull your own weight, I guess. You have to do your share of have to I guess it's an old thing, what what um give more than you get, I guess. Fun fact in the in the Bible, there's a commandment to take a day off every week, but people forget that the other command part of that commandment is you have to work six days a week.

It says you must work six days a week, which uh some of my kids don't recognize no, I'm just kidding. Um involves an up-and-coming science fiction writer by the name of Arthur C. Clark. Oh is he just just getting started, is he okay? You might you might hear of him someday. Um, you might remember uh two thousand one a space odyssey, there are these monoliths, these menacing vehicles or capsules or whatever.

that are built by some unseen extraterrestrial species which are eventually discovered by our solar system by human beings. And the response of the characters to these messages or warnings kind of encourages humankind to progress. First they're seen on the savannah in Africa, then on the moon and floating around. In other words, I want to ask you, Andy, if you had an opportunity to make your monologue.

And have it last as a billion year time capsule. What would you put on it or in it to kind of maybe triumphally declare what humankind had learned um uh in our existence? Not fort jokes? You know, that was the oldest joke ever. Okay, there we go. There we go. Yeah. No, I don't know. I mean, to people a billion years from now So I guess I Mm-hmm.

Right. Uh lastly, now we're going backwards in time, and as you know, this Arthur C. Clarke personality had many laws, one of which was uh for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. Uh any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that's how I open the show every week on the show. I'm gonna open with his actual voice.

It's pretty cool. We got him to read it from Beyond the Grave. No, we found it somewhere here at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. But his third law states the only way of discovering the limits of the possible. is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. And that's the origin of the name of my pocket.

I want to ask you, Andy, what mysterious aspect of life might have perplexed you as a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, but now makes sense because you had the courage to go into the impossible? In other words, what life advice would you give to your 20-year-old? Well I was a real screw up at twenty, so I mean I've got I would probably have reams and reams and reams of things to say to my twenty year old self, but I guess um You have

then your life's gonna get a lot better. So go do that now. So I guess just identifying that I had that problem was I wish I'd been able to identify How did you do that actually, Andy? How did you how did you achieve that um betterment of yourself? Well, um, you know, my main problem is anxiety. I mean I had real problems with depression when I was in my twenties, but as

something like that, which is kind of like bringing a bucket of water to a forest fire. It's just, you know, useless. Um or or just suck it up, you baby, you know, kind of advice. But then um it's actually And I was s horribly afraid to fly. Uh I I'm still am, but whatever. Um But the NASA invited me to Johnson Space Center for a week of VIP tours. And I'm like, I have got. And um she said, Okay

And so she she she sh she ultimately gave me pills that let me fly and she's like, that's great, but I also want to deal with the long term anxiety. So I guess what happened You have this other problem and let's work on that. And so she did, and she gives me uh now. Manageable, you know? And um I do therapy every week, which is if you broke your leg, you wouldn't be

Exactly right. I just started doing therapy as as part of the podcast. I have a sponsor now who does therapy and I was like, yeah, much. I don't need to do therapy. But I was like, I don't sponsor something unless I actually try it. So that's why I'm doing these Roman blue pills. I'm taking these blue pill I'm just kidding, I'm not doing those. But I decided I'm gonna do this online therapy and I had resistance to it'cause I can solve my own problems.

But I've been doing online therapy through through this. I'm not gonna mention it because this isn't an ad, but um but I but I said to myself You know, I go to a trainer on occasions. Tell from this massive physical specimen you see before you. But you know, we have trainers for we have coaches, we have you know all sorts of things. Why not do that? As you say, if you hurt your leg, you'd go to a freaking doc.

And and this is just like a coach. So I I I I think you're incredibly, you know, courageous, but but I think it's in your self interest to do it, right? But this is my I guess to try to desigm destigmatize anxiety and depression and just just if you tell if you tell somebody, Oh man, I broke my leg people are like, Oh that's depression or anxiety, there's a little bit of a stigma still to it. And so I you know, if I Like, hey everybody, I've got this problem. One of the Uh

Wishful drinking is what it's called. And she's hilarious. Her her the book is funny as hell, but also it's just it makes problems with like bipolar disorder and it showed me, Oh hey, you can be kind of a little bit broken on the inside and still be incredibly successful and and beloved by everyone, you know, that's Carrie Fisher. Yeah.

I came within two weeks of meeting her and I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her how much her book affected me and but she died um um about two weeks before a convention with Yeah. That's that's awful. Yeah, I o I once got to meet almost got to meet Herman Woke, who lives not far from here, and I always wanted to be I'll meet him. He died like a couple weeks before I got to meet him. But it's it's interesting that you mention all this.

Because May, our month right now is Mental Health Awareness Month. I didn't know. And I think this is a huge service that you do. And, you know, I've always uh loved. Hard to believe that you know you could have even more appreciation and respect than I already did. But Andy, I want to thank you so much for your uh for sharing your time and being a friend of the Arthur C. Clark Center here in UC San Diego. You're you're always welcome here. Your money's always welcome here.

I'm just kidding, Andy. Um your Bitcoin I thought that's what you were gonna say is on your monolith, your blockchain. Your chain. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be first. Um anyway, Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show. I wish you all the best. And and serenity too. Take time for yourself and I I hope we can get together I always love being in your presence. Someday after the apocalypse. Best of luck, Eddie. Take care. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and You can bundle your auto and home and Up to ten percent. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at USAA.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. It's tax season, and at LifeLock, we know you're tired of numbers. But here's a big one you need to hear billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud.

Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, We'll fix it guaranteed. One last big number, save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for the threats you can't control.