Sean Carroll

And we just have to worry that future generations don't go in there and break it for fun or cannibalize it for spare parts.

Do you know of any other projects for machines or artifacts or things that are supposed to hopefully keep moving for that length of time?

All right.

That's good.

Maybe we'll figure out how to do maintenance on human beings to make them last that long eventually.

I'm not sure.

It's a tough area to have discussions about because there are respectable scientists who are thinking about longevity and things like that, but there's also a lot of somewhat flaky people out there who will sell you a line of goods if you're not too careful.

So let me just ask you, maybe as one of the final topics here, what are we ignoring in terms of maintenance?

Like you say, we have this idea of infrastructure.

We have all sorts of these technological systems that we're now pretty dependent on, whether it's the power grid or the internet or whatever.

Having thought about maintenance now for an extended period of time, is there something you're just shaking your head in disbelief that we're not doing maintenance-wise?

You know, I always like to wind up the podcast on an optimistic note.

And I think that you've just given us a wonderfully optimistic note.

So I'm not going to press my luck and ask any more questions.

Stuart Brand, thanks so much for being a guest on the Mindscape podcast.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Frequent listeners to the Ask Me Anything episodes here at Mindscape will know that I am a fan of a good cocktail. It's not something I bring up very often, but it does happen.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Frequent listeners to the Ask Me Anything episodes here at Mindscape will know that I am a fan of a good cocktail. It's not something I bring up very often, but it does happen.

In fact, I think I did a holiday message one year about cocktails, and certainly we've had plenty of AMA questions thinking about cocktails one way or another. And there's something fascinating about the idea of a cocktail. I mean, if you like wine, which I also do, what do you do? You look for a good wine and then you open it and you drink it. There's not a lot that you do to the glass of wine.

In fact, I think I did a holiday message one year about cocktails, and certainly we've had plenty of AMA questions thinking about cocktails one way or another. And there's something fascinating about the idea of a cocktail. I mean, if you like wine, which I also do, what do you do? You look for a good wine and then you open it and you drink it. There's not a lot that you do to the glass of wine.

Maybe you decant it or something like that. You make sure to serve it at the right temperature. But mostly it's just about finding the wine unless you're the one who's actually making it. Whereas a cocktail, there's a certain amount of effort and even perhaps ingenuity that goes into it. You can make good cocktails and bad cocktails out of the same ingredients. There's something you need to know.