Science behind Social Revolutions the Media Beatles Aliens and more w/ Mark Brake

➡ The text discusses the impact of creativity in music, specifically referencing the Beatles’ innovative album, Sgt. Pepper. It also highlights the importance of maintaining good health as we age, mentioning a product called Blood Flow 7 that improves blood circulation. The text introduces a retired professor of communications, Mark Brake, who has written extensively on the science of communications, focusing on popular culture’s influence on our understanding of science. Lastly, it mentions a product called Sloop, which mimics the effects of exercise and can aid in weight loss and muscle development.
➡ This discussion explores the connection between creativity and science, particularly in popular culture like Marvel, DC Universe, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. It suggests that people are drawn to these stories because they explore the possibilities of science and creativity. The conversation also highlights how artists, like the Beatles, were able to innovate due to their lack of formal training, suggesting that creativity often comes from outside established paradigms. However, it also warns that while creativity can lead to advancements, it doesn’t necessarily equate to truth.
➡ The text discusses the importance of creativity and facts in advancing fields, particularly in science. It highlights how science fiction authors are often invited to brainstorming sessions by space agencies due to their ability to think outside the box. However, it emphasizes that while creativity can inspire possibilities, it’s crucial to ground these ideas in facts. The text also explores the influence of the Beatles, their music, and how their success was tied to historical events and cultural shifts.
➡ The text discusses how creativity and innovation are often stifled by too much structure, using examples from the music industry and healthcare. It also explores the impact of technology on creativity, suggesting that reliance on technology can diminish originality. The text then shifts to discuss the concept of aliens and the evolution of science fiction, highlighting how scientific advancements have influenced our understanding and depiction of extraterrestrial life.
➡ The speaker discusses the intersection of science and spirituality, suggesting that science will eventually be able to explain spiritual phenomena. They also talk about their work as an author, particularly their book on the science of Star Trek, and the idea of exploring history through video games like Assassin’s Creed. They speculate on the future of immersive technology, suggesting it could be a powerful tool for understanding history and other subjects.
➡ The text discusses the intriguing aspects of AI and encourages people to explore the author’s numerous books. The author, now retired, plans to continue writing more books.

Sa Sam that’s absolutely spot on. One of my favorite facts about the Beatles. I mean there are so many firsts. But if you take the example of sergeant Pepper is thought to be one of the first concept albums for good or bad because some of them can be a little bit over the top. But when that experimental kind of music, what you might call Progressive Music started, Sgt. Pepper’s about 67. I remember reading between 68 and 72 record company executives didn’t know what they were doing because they had no idea what would sell next because creativity was to the fore and creativity was like the watchword.

And there were these very progressive bands coming up between those two years. In those four, four years. I’m always looking for products that really help us as we age and make us feel better. So many of us are having suffering from energy brain fog. You know, we’re getting older so we have issues, you know, that just come with age. And we’re taking all these supplements and we’re, you know, I’m always talking about peptides and things that make you feel better, give you more energy. And one of the overlooked areas is making sure that you have the blood flow to get the oxygen and nutrients to all the cells in your body and to your brain.

And there’ a product called blood flow 7 and it is amazing. It increases your nitric oxide by 230% and it opens up your arteries by 62% which really improves blood flow and it gets those nutrients into your cells. It helps with brain fog, it helps with energy, it helps with anti aging, it helps with maintaining a healthy heart. If you’re interested in this, go to blood flow7.com Sarah or or use the link below. Welcome to business Game Changers. I’m Sarah Westdall. I have Mark Brake coming to the program. He is a retired professor of communications, the science of communications.

He’s written over 30 books on the science of communications but he’s focused on aliens, he’s focused on the Beatles. His new book is on Assassin’s Creed. And we’re going to talk about a lot of this and then get into. I really appreciated this conversation because it was more of a conversation than I have. Most of my shows are a little bit more conversation than interview. This one really was a great conversation, one of those. And I got to talk about a lot of my own thinking on some of these subjects and I hope you can appreciate this.

We’re going to talk about the science of creativity, where creativity comes from and how you see it in from a historical standpoint in, in film and in movies and in video games. And he’s an expert in this area. I think you’re going to really appreciate this conversation. Maybe it’ll give you some insight on kind of today’s world. But before we get into that, I’m going to talk to you about Sloop. This is an exercise mimicker. It is incredible stuff because it actually they figured out what the chemical is that’s produced when you’re exercising and how to synthesize that, and they put it into this pill form.

And in pre clinical studies with mice, mice, mice that were obese lost 12% of their body weight in four weeks. And it just burns fat and it builds muscle at the same time. Now, average mice that were not obese, they didn’t lose weight because it doesn’t focus. It focuses on reconstituting your muscle and getting you into somehow. It works on balancing and constituting your body for a lean muscle mass and lower fat content. And so if you’re not overweight, it doesn’t necessarily cause you to lose weight, whereas with obese mice, it did. So it’s really good for weight loss, but it’s also really good for athletes and people who are looking to increase their endurance, their longevity, their ability to get that edge.

In my studies, they saw a 70% increase in endurance. So I like, you know, I’ve been talking about retatrutide and GLP1s and other ways to lose weight. I like taking this with other products like that if you want to lose weight. And even if you’re an athlete and aren’t interested, you’re just an aging person that needs to develop more muscle mass and want to have more energy and endurance. This is a fantastic product. It’s called sloop. It’s slu. That’s why it’s called sloop. Slu. PP332 is the proper scientific term and it is hard to keep in stock.

I started sharing this in January. It was only in stock for three weeks and then it went out of stock and then it went back in stock for three weeks and now it’s back in stock again. This is since January because people are really wanting to try it. It’s not that expensive either. So I will have the link below or you can go to sarahwestell.com under shop. If you use the code Sarah, you can save 10%. Okay, I’ll have the link below or go to sarahwestell.com under shop. Okay, let’s get into this fascinating discussion that I have with Mark Brake.

Hi, Mark, welcome to the program. Hi. Thank you. Yeah, glad you’re here. You are a retired professor of the science of communications. What the heck is that? And what does that mean so people understand that means the way in which science is. Well, most people in the world get their diet of science, if that doesn’t sound too restrictive. They get their diet of science through popular culture, so through film and through fiction. So my job always was to look at film and fiction and say a little bit about the way the kind of science that’s communicated through.

Through culture, I guess. And what do you mean by science? Is it a pattern that you see patterns in film and entertainment that people enjoy or patterns in the way that it affects people or how communication of science to the masses is done, or what, what is it? It’s the third one. It’s what kind of science is in. James Bond, for instance, was one of the books I did. So James Bond is often associated with just spy stuff. But if you look carefully at James Bond movies, most of the, the nemeses of James Bond, most of the villains actually have got a very strong sci fi element to them.

They’re usually mad men, almost always men, of course, mad men who want to take over the world. So I particularly did a book on James Bond which I called Spy Fi. It’s a little bit spy and it’s a little bit sci fi. So what is the science in those books? Like the science of gold, for instance, and how are they communicated? What does it say about science in society? What is it? If you were to make a, you know, synopsis of that, what would you say that was? What, the Bond stuff? Yeah, I mean, what would you can trace the evolution of society’s infatuation or otherwise with science by looking at the way that the films evolved.

So pretty low scale at the beginning, but it tends to get, it tends towards. The Bond villains are more and more like oligarchs. There’s a lot of those around at the moment. Right. So it tends to be more and more oligarchs as, as time wears on through the Bond movies. So it’s more like the, the, the patterns of what people in culture think is evil at this point. So. But in that particular case. Yeah, but if you, if you take Star Wars, I mean, the very beginning of the Star wars franchise, the first movie, you know, the viewer sees that we’re on a planet which is in orbit around two stars that’s made in 1977.

At the time, nobody was sure if a planet could be in Orbit around two stars at the same time. It was only much later that we found out that that was possible. And we’ve since discovered planets in orbit around two stars. So also, you know, Star wars takes place in another galaxy a long, long time ago. Is that possible? How come there are humans in the other galaxy? Is that a thing? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it’s all those kind of questions, but people want to maybe look a little bit deeper into their enjoyment of the movies.

And you see science as being something people really care about. Is it, you know, the masses care about it or are they fascinated by it? But they want to look at it from an entertainment standpoint because. Go ahead. I think the second thing you said. I mean, whether they cared about it or not is a good question. I think a lot of them are probably put off science when they were in school. And yet, when you think about. If you look at the. On, on Wikipedia, at the top 50 grossing, highest grossing movies of all time, you’d be surprised how many of those are science and nerdy.

How many of those? Yeah, because, you know, there’s always this depiction of sci fi people being nerdy and geeky. But actually the top 50 movies is almost, well, a lot. Over 50% of them are sci fi movies. I’m talking stuff like, you know, the Marvel universe, the DC Universe, Avatar, all this stuff, the Star wars stuff, the Harry Potter. It’s kind of related sci fi because it sounds fantasy. Do you mean so all that stuff. I think people are more interested in the ramifications of science or where science can take us than they think that they are.

Because after all, Star wars is, in a way, about space travel. That’s right. Well, and I guess the creativity of that. I like the fact you said nerdy because I always said that I liked what I’m doing now. I liked it when it was nerdy, before all the people came into it and the mammals started getting into it because it was so much more pure. And now I still try to stay true to what I’m doing. That’s why someone like you is on my program. But it’s changed a lot and. But they still like that nerdy element, but they want it more glamorized or something.

They’re certainly very glamorous, isn’t it? I mean, I think the CGI has enabled all those books of the imagination, which science fiction is very much associated with imagination, of course, and creativity and other worlds and other dimensions, and CGI has enabled those things to be visualized on the Screen, which is what’s happened in the last generation of movies, I guess. Yeah. And I, you know, I used to. Back in the college days, I’ve had deep conversations with people. I don’t know deep, but conversations with people that. The people who really forge new science, new creativity, you know, new frontiers in anything new is a combination a lot of times of creativity and science background.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the case of the Beatles, what’s interesting about that, that’s just the latest book that I’ve done. In the case of the Beatles, their lack of formal training in music, their lack of formal. Their education is what made them creative. I think so too. And I taught entrepreneurship in a university and. And one of the things that, when I was studying it was I noticed that the ones who are the most successful at being entrepreneurs aren’t business students, they’re artists. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, absolutely. The artists are because. Why are the artists.

Because they’re not confined in their structured way of thinking. Yes, absolutely. And they’re solving problems from a creative standpoint. They don’t know what they don’t know, so they go and they just figure it out. Yeah. I’m really pleased you’ve asked me this, because even though you would have thought it was a very difficult fit combining the Beatles with science fiction, what you’ve just said to me has made me realize that that’s exactly the case. What does science fiction do that science doesn’t? Science is held back by the parameters of science, the rules and laws of science.

You have to stay within them. Well, science fiction doesn’t care about that. The science fiction just wants to do the creativity associated with whatever narrative they want. You know, what’s it like living on Mars or whatever it might be. So there’s a similarity there. The Beatles are untrained and formally untrained in music, so they go with the creativity. Same with science. Sci fi. Sci fi doesn’t bother about the rules of science. It might, you know, sometimes think, oh, we better make sure things shoot straight. Not bent or whatever it might be, but nonetheless, they’ve got that same disregard for convention, I suppose.

Well, and that’s why I think there was so much more creativity in art or at least in music back in the 70s and 80s, maybe. 60s, 70s, 80s still was there. And then it started to get really commercialized and you just don’t see the same creativity that you saw back then. That’s absolutely spot on. One of my favorite facts about the Beatles, I mean, there are so many firsts, but if you take the example of sergeant Pepper is thought to be one of the first concept albums for good or bad, because some of them can be a little bit over the top.

But when that experimental kind of music, what you might call Progressive Music started, Sgt. Pepper’s about 67. I remember reading between 68 and 72. Record company executives didn’t know what they were doing because they had no idea what would sell next because creativity was to the fore and creativity was like the watchword. And there were these very progressive bands coming up between those two years. In those four years, any, any many, many things sold that wouldn’t have sold earlier and wouldn’t have sold since. You know, bands like. Oh, in Britain we had very weird bands like the Incredible String Band and they’re very, very quirky and very odd and those bands made it and I don’t think they would have had any other time.

Became more formalized and commercial after that. Well, like Led Led Zeppelin. We just watched a documentary on them and they were just this creative force and they somehow, you know, they were able to negotiate a contract where they could maintain their creativity. They would never have gotten that contract today. And so much of their music was just them screwing around, coming up with stuff. I. They’d have probably didn’t say so see it as. They wouldn’t say they were screwing around. But that’s part of the creative process is you’re just. No, I think you’re right. I mean, in fact, the interest.

The interesting link between the Beatles and Led Zeppelin is both of the bands are excellent examples of British people copying an American. American people and remixing American music with a, A British twist. I mean the Beatles are far more British than Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin are almost, you know, okay, there’s a little bit of a mix there. But I think they’re more true to the amount the roots of the American music that they play. Led Zeppelin, because it’s obviously derived from blues and very loud electric blues. In that particular case, David Bowie said something very interesting about British rock music.

He said the British do everything with a kind of smug air, smug self satisfied air. They know that rock music doesn’t come from their soul. Rock music is American nonetheless. They try it on for size and give it a little bit of a twist. So there’s a lot of. If you think about the preening of Mick Jagger or the comedy camp of Elton John or the like the mop top shaking the heads of the Beatles, it’s all a little bit tongue in cheek. And when you see people there’s a great guy, an American YouTuber called Rick Beato who’s a record producer and when he was looking at the Get Back documentary that was out a couple of years back, I can’t even remember how long it is now, he said he was amazed how much the Beatles were goofing about.

How much goofing about there was, you know, that kind of creativity thing. But that’s where the spark is, is when you’re just goofing around and you’re not forced into the structure. Yes. In fact the Beatles producer George Martin, before he became famously the producer of the Beatles and of course one of the most famous record producers. You know, I think he started that trend where the record producer was just as famous as the band that they were producing. Before he produced the Beatles he produced comedy, comedy records and novelty records. So he was used to putting soundscapes, special effects and sound effects in the backdrop to get make a kind of sound collage to enhance the recording.

So and that lend a lot as well towards the creativity of it. So it’s an interesting, very interesting question about the different, the creativity thing, the lack of formal training in the Beatles and in sci fi that lends itself to what they do. But do you know that this is statistically accurate? That most inventions come, most innovations that forge a field forward come from outside a field because once you’re inside a specific area you, you’re locked in a paradigm and paradigm changes come from outside the field because they’re not locked in that paradigm, they’re also blocked.

You know, people don’t want to hear it because it’s not part of. But that’s where the majority of the, the significant advancements in any field usually come from outside the field. Well, that’s it. That’s interesting as well from the point of view of the Beatles have got the Beatles from outside really they do an American music but they’re from outside America and they, you know, I mean they coming into America with that British twist. So that’s also an interesting comparison. Yeah, well one thing though, I think it’s double edged sword. I’m going to talk about it from like a, like healthcare or some other or big tech or something like that.

That. And this is one of the themes that I’ve been saying is that just because you can creatively think about something doesn’t mean it’s true either. So it’s like this double edged sword. Creativity creates these advancements and these paradigm changes. But at the same time just because you can creatively think that Something’s true doesn’t make it true either because I’m dealing with people who like. It’s like, well, just because you can creatively think about it, it’s not necessarily true. And so I get pushback on some of my shows based on that and I’m like, no, that’s.

You still need to have facts behind that. So it’s kind of an interesting phenomena where creativity is what pushes fields forward. But yet you got to have some self checks too when it comes to hard science that it’s actually true. Yeah. And in fact, you just made me think about many of meetings of space agencies like NASA and the esa when they have brainstorm meetings, they often invite science fiction authors because science fiction authors are used to thinking outside the box about something or other. So they’ll use them as part of that meeting, the sandbox area to think about missions of the future and different ways of going about these things, I guess.

But that’s the best way to do it. Go ahead. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. Well, they still, as you said, they’re still constrained by the facts of the matter. It may not be possible to do certain things like fly to the moon or something, but. Yeah, the first one of the first alien fiction stories written in the English language. No, actually it was written in German. Johannes Kepler, the firm’s German mathematician, wrote a book in the 1600s, would you believe? Because early science fiction goes a long way back. Goes through. Sure, yeah. The Arabian Nights had science fiction in it.

And there was a Greek satirist living in about 100 A.D. called, called. Well, I’ll come back to him. I’ve all of a sudden forgotten his name. Lucian. Sorry, Lucian wrote a book in about 100 AD which is basically about a journey to the moon. But in Johannes Kepler’s book, people get to me. He can’t be bothered to think up a propulsion method. So he just says his protagonist just flies there. You know, it’s a little bit tricky for most people, but especially then. But the whole thing is that it shows, okay, the creativity can get us thinking about the possibility, but we have to have some structuring to come back and say what the facts are.

But those facts can change over time to what you think is possible and maybe. But at this point we don’t have it, so we have to. It’s kind of a tug of war, right? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, Serrano de bergerac in the 1600s wrote a science fiction story in which he did come up with a method of propulsion. Again, it was another off Earth Story. And that method of propulsion was essentially what we now call the ramjet, who’s taking a nozzle and pushing a lot of air through it very quickly. And Serrano came up with the idea of that’s how you would.

If you could do that forcefully enough, you’d be able to take off the Earth. Because after all, the Earth is only about 20. Space is only about 60 miles away. It’s only 60 miles into space. Sorry, 60 miles in the atmosphere and then you’re in space. So many places in the U.S. many, many places are closer to space than they are to the sea, which I guess, if you think about it that way. Yeah, no, in fact, in Britain most places are quite close to the coast. So we’re not that particularly. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

You’re not like Denver, that’s high in the mountains. Yeah, exactly. So Denver’s undoubtedly closer to space than it is to the sea. But yeah. Yeah. How interesting is that? Okay, so why did you get into the science like you did the science of the Beatles? How did you become fascinated with these patterns that affect people? Okay, well, I’m very old. That’s the first thing. My mother. Very kind. My mother recently passed at the age of 90. And I was looking through some stuff in the attic, some stuff that had been in the family home for many years, and I discovered a little news book of that I’d written when I was in what you might call kindergarten or first grade.

I can’t remember what you call. Anyway, I was young, I think it was about six or seven. And I’d noticed to my delight that one of the stories in this news book that I’d written at that tender age was a story about the Beatles. It was only that spelling was atrocious, by the way. So much for me being an author, spelling was atrocious. But I had drawn the Beatles in a very kind of crude way. And I was proud to see that I got Paul McCartney as left handed rather than right handed. But that made me think about how far back in my life the Beatles go and how far back in British culture, generally speaking, the Beatles go.

A lot of people in the world have an individual personal relationship to the Beatles. But there’s a relationship that we have as a culture, I think, in the story of the 20th century. And I noticed, for instance, in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012, when they told the story of Britain, which of course began with the Industrial Revolution and so on and so forth, the Beatles were a very strong part of the coming of age of Britain as in the way that that was told. Can’t remember the name of Danny what’s his face.

The film director had directed the opening ceremony I can’t remember his surname now but anyway people will look that up, I’m sure. Well, it is kind of interesting because the Beatles are. They had so many top songs and they’re still catchy today when you listen to them you can. You still like them so what is it about? How did they figure that out? I mean the genius of. I think that kind of genius comes. It’s inspired from outside you it just some. It comes to you but you saw a pattern with their music what would, what would.

How would you encapsulate their pattern? I think it’s a lot to do with. Well, it’s a lot to do with the being influenced by American music There was a lot in the 50s I think there was the idea of the invention of youth as well to some, to a certain extent where. Oh, there’s a great quote by John Lennon I think I’m probably not going to be able to remember it very well but John Lennon talking about the fact that they were the first generation that didn’t go to war they were the first generation that didn’t join an army I thought was interesting.

It’s not quite sad in a way if I. Excuse me just a sec. It’s right in the. Yeah. The Beatles and their elk were created by the vacuum of non conscription we were the army that never was. We were the generation that were allowed to live and I was thinking wow, that’s quite deep. Allowed to live because. Yeah, if you compare like. Well, if you think about it going to war that, that you can unpack that and saying allowed to live. But people died in war but they also. When you go to war there’s a part of your soul that dies.

Yes, absolutely and there’s. There’s. There’s a famous. In Europe there’s a number of famous poets World War I poets that died in World War I A tremendous waste of life of like very creative people But I think it’s to do with that period A lot of the success in terms of what you might call the brand of the Beatles is being suggested that the Beatles came to America in the direct wake of Kennedy’s assassination when the nation was still in mourning because Kennedy was assassinated in November. By February the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show sing it to 73 million people and Martin Scorsese’s Beatles in 64.

That documentary that was out recently on Apple or whatever platform it was. There were people on that, including the film director David lynch, who was talking about the fact that it felt like a reaction or like a release to the morning of Kennedy’s assassination. Like, you know, youthful revolutionary elan and joy of this new music as a reaction to what went before. As, you know, I mean, it sounds like plausible, but so many people have said it, that people were there at the time. I thought. Do you think that we’re primed for something else? I mean, we came out of COVID We’re coming out of all these wars we’re having.

I don’t think there’s been a time in history where we’ve had more turmoil than we have right now. And usually that creates a burst of creativity, but yet we have this commercial control structure over our creative nature. Do you think there’s this conflict that’s at hand right now? I think there probably normally is a lot of conflict in the world and maybe what’s going on is typical. But what I’m saying is there a conflict of this burst of creativity needing to come out, but there’s this commercial control over it? How do you think that will? Yeah, that’s a good point.

Yeah, it’s difficult, isn’t it? Because all these staged reality TV shows associated with talent that you get both in your country and in mine, a very controlled product is completely different to. I understand that The Beatles played 1200 live gigs before they got a record deal. I mean, that’s a huge number. Yeah, in Britain and in Hamburg in Germany. So they really learned their trade before. You know, it’s the complete opposite of just going on a talent TV show you like in that manufactured way that you have now. So it’s a groundswell, almost an organic. It’s the organic creativity that’s lost.

You know, one of the things that I. I taught. I taught at a business school and entrepreneurship and different things, and one of the things that I taught was that depending on the type of business that you have, you have to be. You have a certain amount of structure. The more creative the business is, the less structure you want or need. I mean, you can’t have it otherwise you kill the creativity. All the way to something like insurance or finance, where it’s a highly structured business. So the process has to be. You have to be hands off.

It’s kind of like the way that they manage doctors is too structured. They’re not treating them like professional. There’s a creativity around any kind of professional practice and they’re trying to force a very structured environment and it’s just killing the industry and it’s like hemorrhaging everywhere. It’s. You can see it in. The industry’s collapsing. And it’s the same with the music industry. They’re trying to put these business people want to always insert the strict process around something that’s going to die on the vine if you do it. But what’s going to happen is it’s going to burst out somewhere else, I think is what’s going to happen.

That’s an interesting question about constraints on creativity. I was reading about, there was an interview with Paul McCartney when he was talking about why a Beatles song so memorable. And he said they didn’t have any technology to record their voices. If they were on tour in a tour bus. They didn’t have even a tape recorder to record their voices. And you know, like you might even on your smartphone today, you know, think of a little dick, you record it. They had none of that. And he says that’s why he thought the songs were more memorable, more melodic, because they had to remember them tomorrow to write them down when they had a spare five minutes to do so.

But as these days, wherever you are, however, throw away the idea might be you can record it straight away, it’s not necessarily a good thing. Or you can also apply tools to it. Now the AI tools and the creative, you know, the AI creates your creativity, but it’s so not creative in a lot of ways is just inherently not creative. People think, yes, it’s an illusion of creativity, but it’s not that. Record producer Rick Beato, I remember him analyzing with modern tools analyzing a Led Zeppelin track and counting the beats in the bar and pointing out how many mistakes there were because Led Zeppelin effectively playing it live.

And that, that is more human to the ear than synthesized computer generated music. Because the mistakes are kind of quirky. They add to it. Yeah, absolutely. Personality versus being this perfect robot. It doesn’t work. People shut down in those environments. Well, okay, you also have done the Science of Aliens. What the heck? Okay, what is the Science of Aliens? We’ve always been mesmerized, but the idea of us not being alone, what have you seen as the patterns and the science behind that? Well, one of the, one of the things that amazed me most, most about this is, and I’ve alluded to this earlier on in our chat, is how far it goes back.

So I mentioned Lucian. I mean modern sci fi and modern alien studies usually starts with H.G. wells and the War of the Worlds. But even the War of the Worlds goes back to 1898. So that’s the archetypal alien invasion. But isn’t there even from an alien standpoint, isn’t there even writings and pictures and everything else from early societies? I think those things. I think those things that scientists like myself, anyway, those things are debatable. It may be an alien or it may be, I don’t know, a pig or, you know, I mean, or just a figment of someone’s imagination.

I don’t know. But the pigment of their imagination is the sci fi. It could be, yes, but I don’t go into that kind of stuff. My. I mostly. But nonetheless, if you take Lucien, so he’s this, I think, Syrian, but he’s within the. The Greek cultural world. The ancient Greek cultural world. He’s a Syrian. He’s writing a book about 100, 150 AD it’s called the True Story. It’s actually a Mickey take. Do you Americans use the word, the phrase Mickey take? Maybe. I don’t. I don’t know what it is. Okay. About satire. Okay, yeah. Actually, no.

I do remember a cartoon where Bugs Bunny mentions me taking a Mickey. Okay. Well, I don’t know. We call it satire. I think we love satire. A lot of us do. Anyways, okay, so Lucien’s book is partly a satire, but of travelogues, ancient Greek travelogues, of people boasting, oh, I went to Africa and I saw an animal with. With an arm for a nose, that kind of thing. Right. So he thinks, all right, I’ll get these guys, I’ll go one better. So you write a travelogue which is a journey at sea. The ship hits a water spout and is transported to the moon.

So a lot of this stuff is. It’s like. And I didn’t say that. So there’s a culture on the moon, there’s a culture on the sun, which of course is problematic scientifically. But he even goes so far, and this is 150 AD he even goes so far as to suggest that there is a civilization of light. Okay. A civilization saying ad well, 150ad it starts human creativity on sci fi starts the moment almost. We can think and write stuff down. And these lights, by the way, in space, which is somewhere between a couple of constellations, one of which is Pleiades, I think.

And these lights are essentially people’s lamps from home, from Earth that are somehow transported there and have their own existences in another place, which is pretty cosmic. 450 AD Wow. I was only disappointed he didn’t call that place Lampster Dam. I thought that would be, that would be interesting. That’s, that’s an intuitive thing thing, because so much of our science is starting to go in that direction of how incredible that what was 150 A.D. yeah, we know with portals and all these things where they really think we can walk through a portal and go to be in Peru.

You know, that kind of. That’s our future travel is starting to be maybe doable. Yeah, indeed. I mean, so there’s Lucy in 150 AD. There are some science fiction elements in 1001 Arabian Nights, which is about 800 AD, and then you’ve got a gap until what you might call the Renaissance. So I mentioned earlier Kepler’s book about a journey to the moon. Well, so that’s after Copernicus had suggested that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe. So that got people thinking then, you know, up until that point, the Earth just was the center of the universe and the Earth wasn’t a planet.

All the other planets, including the sun, believe it or not, were planets. But when Copernicus said, no, we’re going around the sun, people started thinking, oh, well, if the Earth is a planet, then the planets could be like Earth. So there may be other places where you can live like Mars or whatever. Every kind of scientific advancement of thought is a burst of new thinking. Absolutely, absolutely so. And Copernicus and Galileo is one example with shift in the position of the Earth. Another example is Darwin, the Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is 1859, he basically comes up with a mechanism of natural selection which allows creatures to evolve in time.

But that mechanism, which he uses a replicator, in our case, it’s DNA, that that mechanism should be able to happen on other planets as well as Earth. So in other words, evolution will happen in other places. And before Darwin, if anybody wrote sci fi, but creatures in other worlds, they’re basically geezers like us on other planets. Right? But after Darwin, then you’ve got the proper alien. The proper weird, strange, psychologically odd alien, no longer necessarily human. Maybe an orange gas called Dave. Do you know what I mean? Different changed people’s paradigm on what it was. It wasn’t human.

Like now it could be a start from a frog or something. Yes, absolutely. So Copernicus and Darwin, two big paradigm shifts which enable science fiction about aliens to be written. But mostly from Aristotle on, and mostly during the age of faith, where the church was predominant, it wasn’t considered Possible to have life anywhere other than Earth. You know, Aristotle refers to it as the unitary earth. It’s the only place where there’s life. So that was a bit of a bummer. But after that, with the advances in science, there’s this idea that, oh, you know, that might enable things to evolve elsewhere.

Well, I think quantum energy is, or quantum physics is putting the science behind spirituality and the woo woo. And it’s now there’s a whole new avenue that’s starting to open up. It’s pretty incredible. That’s fun. I think it’s fun when we’re starting to have real science behind spirituality. And what the heck is that, you know? Well, because I always said if something exists, then there’s science will eventually be able to explain it. We just might not understand it yet. But that doesn’t mean it won’t because that science isn’t. You know, they say that religion and science or spirituality and science is two different things.

I’m like, no, science is just the explanation of what is. And if spirituality is part of what is, science will eventually be able to explain it. We might not be smart enough to get there. We might not know enough yet. But if it is the study of what is then, and if this is, then it will eventually be able. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily give you the entire picture, does it? I’ve often thought doing books like the Science of Love or the Science for Sex and you think it’s not necessary. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

So the whole picture, it might not help in a lot of cases. Well, because it’s so much broader than what we really think. But Science of Love would be kind of cool because it gets. That’s something we need more of. Right. We need to understand. That would be nice. How do we aspire to be more loving beings and stop fighting wars? Yeah, that would be helpful. Mature. Yes. Maybe that’s the book the world needs right now, to be honest. That’s my point. Well, you’ve, you’ve written over 30 books, right? So you, this is what you do.

Can you talk about some of the other books that you’ve done? Yeah, let me think. I will. I did the Science of Star Trek. What I thought was interesting about that was I read a paper, quite recent paper in Scientific American which tried to explain why we hadn’t been visited. Okay, so this is idea. Modern science suggests there are many Earths in the Milky Way and many Earths, many planets like Earth in the universe as a whole. We’re Talking billions. They call them Earth analogues. And whenever we find out, you know, because when your viewers will be doing a bit of even innocent stargazing of local stars, they’re looking at stars that we now know have planets in orbit about them.

Okay. Even like in Ursa Major, the plow, Big Dep, I think you may call it over there, or even the closest start. What’s Proxima Centauri? We’ve discovered planets going around that too. Okay. So planets are everywhere. And given there are so many stars, like between 100 and 400,000 million in the Milky Way alone, there’s going to be more planets than that because most stars will have more than one planet. So anyway, lots and lots of planets, lots of Earths. But the thing is, why haven’t they visited us yet? And in the Star Trek book, I talk about the fact that this research paper compared Mutiny on the Bounty with the situation of Earth not being visited by aliens.

And this is to do with Pitcairn island, which is part of an island archipelago where some islands in the chain had been visited but others not for some reason or another, which I thought was interesting. So these vectors associated with travel, whether it’s space travel or ocean go and travel, they did this kind of comparison, which I thought was interesting. Another interesting thing about Star Trek compared to Star wars is Star Trek gives a reason within its universe or within its galaxy why humans exist throughout the galaxy, whereas in Star wars they never bother. What was the reason that Star Trek, I mean, Star Trek originated at Earth, so that’s why.

But go ahead. What was the reason they were throughout the galaxy? Well, they find aliens beyond the Earth, of course, in Star Trek because there’s a progenitor race. This happens a lot in sci fi. There’s a progenitor race out there in space which seeded the galaxy with a humanoid. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Little bit obvious, but at least they bothered in one particular episode. They bothered. Yeah. Well, this is fascinating. Where can people watch you read your books? I know you do interviews and things, but where can they get your books and learn more about your work? I’m on Amazon.com do you have a website? Oh, just look my name up on Amazon.com and you’ll find me.

There’s about. Well, there’s about 30 books, but also different languages published in about a dozen different languages. What? This is absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for the work that you do and for digging into this. I think there’s something for everybody. I mean, because you have all these different topics, whether you’re a music person, a sci fi person, just all these different areas. What other areas do you get into? Just everything that you see in culture. Yeah, basically, whatever. If I’m watching something and then the coin will drop and think, oh, that’s not a bad idea, because somebody annoyed me about the Beatles.

Somebody annoyed me and said they didn’t see what the fuss was about the Beatles. And I thought, okay, I better do a book to explain this. Which is a bit of a long way of going about things, but nonetheless, I’m currently right in a Science of Assassin’s Creed, the video game. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So I thought, oh, video games, that’s something we could do science books about. Well, the Assassin’s Creed really teaches people about history. Yeah. And I was watching and reading about. I’m like, wow, there’s more history in Assassin’s Creed than you would get almost anywhere.

Yes, absolutely. From a different perspective, because you become the character and you start to understand the emotion of this. I was watching a travel program on TV about Florence, and I’d convinced myself I’d been to Florence on holiday. Then I realized I’d been there on Assassin’s Creed. Oh, wow, that’s. But, okay, now you’re taking me. That’s the idea of being within these video games where you’re feeling like, almost like the Star Trek holodeck merge in this metaverse, being part of some historical thing where you can then really understand it at a whole nother level that you couldn’t have before.

Now. I don’t like the idea of losing our humanity and. Because. Becoming part of a metaverse. But it could be a learning tool to understand history in a way we never understood it before. I. I think that’s. I think that’s basically what Assassin’s Creed is. I mean, there’s. I read some great articles about how it appropriates history. I mean, it’s got its own story about Templars and assassins, but that’s just really a version of social class. You know, the way that they’ve been social classes throughout history in different times. And the Assassins, that’s just Assassin’s Creed’s version of it.

But. And that’s the important thing. It’s their version. Because, I mean, let’s take a step back here. Anytime you’re immersed, immersed in something, it would still be their version of it, which could. There could be another version that’s completely different. I mean, you got at least level set there. Yeah. But it’s a lot Better than just reading a book. Yeah, absolutely. There’s some major scientists in Assassin’s Creed as well. So Copernicus is in there, Darwin is in there, and so on and so forth. Leonardo da Vinci is in there. Yeah. They hire some of the best people to work on.

Some people say that Assassin’s Creed was actually an intelligence operation. Oh, yeah. Did you find that out? Well, I’ll certainly be looking it up now. Yeah, because it’s too good. And they were programming people to understand things differently. Oh, right. There’s an alien race right at the beginning. There’s a first civilization. Alien race as in Star Trek. There’s one in Assassin’s Creed that seeds Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis at the very beginning. And then we’ve been arguing ever since. Apparently that would explain something. We argue no matter what. But yeah, that. That’s what made. That’s why they’re saying it’s.

There’s a lot more to Assassin’s Creed. When I started looking at this, I was. I was pretty impressed at how deep it went. And like you were saying, they have scientists, they have political leaders. It’s not just a bunch of guys creating a video game. There’s a deep story behind this that takes a lot more intelligence. And I’ve been very happy playing Assassin’s Creed when the sun’s going down and I’m walking the streets of Venice. It’s very composing. Yeah. It takes you away from yourself. Yeah. And can you imagine then taking that and then immersing yourself into it like a Star Trek holodeck in an Assassin’s Creed type environment? I mean, that’s where things are probably going to go, is we’ll get to a point where we can be completely immersed in this world.

What do you think of that? I mean, I don’t know what that. I mean, it would be incredibly entertaining, but what would that do? There’s always pros and cons. Right. Double edged swords to all these things. Absolutely. As with AI. Exactly. Yes, absolutely. Well, okay, Fascinating. Thank you so much for joining the program. People need to look and figure out your books. There’s over 30 of them and you’re going to be keep cranking them out now that you’re retired and now you can just explore and do whatever you want to do. That’s right. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the program, Sam.
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