Carmi Levy

Did they feel less lonely?

Did they feel less anxious, less distress when it came to dating?

Were there any ways in which it didn't really work?

Well, Haida Hassan is a psychology professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Haida, I have enjoyed this chat.

Thank you so much for sharing your research with me.

I appreciate you being on the show.

Coming up next, the new blockbuster movie, Project Hail Mary.

In it, energy-eating microbes that feast on the sun.

Turns out that idea might not be as ridiculous as it sounds.

We'll have an expert who researches this stuff join me, and I'm going to ask, could an alien like that actually exist?

The sci-fi blockbuster in theaters, Project Hail Mary, has star-eating microorganisms in it.

They start mowing down on the sun, dimming it, and potentially sending the Earth into an ice age.

Sounds totally implausible, right?

But it might not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

I'm here to discuss what life could look like out there in the cosmos with computational biologist at Argonne National Laboratory, Nick Chia.

Nick, welcome into the show.

I got to ask, I know the word computational and I know the word biologist, but I smack them together and I get a bit confused.

Like, what does your day-to-day job look like?

Do you look, I mean, maybe not you personally, but does your field look to sci-fi for creative ideas or is it kind of the other way around?