The Man Who Would Be King (of Mars)

Summary

The Man Who Would Be King (of Mars)

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick
Date: July 18, 2017
Episode Theme:
A profile of Dr. Phil Davies, an eccentric English country doctor attempting to claim ownership of the planet Mars by "terraforming" it with lasers, and a look at the legal ambiguities underpinning current space law.

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Overview

This episode explores the story of Dr. Phil Davies, a general practitioner from England who is making a real—albeit quixotic—bid to claim Mars as his own. Through entertaining narration and interviews, host David Remnick and New Yorker contributor Simon Parkin investigate Davies’ eccentric quest, the unusual legal logic behind it, and the broader implications for space exploitation and international law. The episode mixes humor and earnest exploration, using Davies’ character as a window onto the rapidly shifting and often ambiguous legal and ethical territory of 21st-century space activities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Is Dr. Phil Davies, and What Is He Up To?

• Introduction to Dr. Phil Davies
  • Dr. Phil is described as a "local eccentric" from Farnham, Surrey, who spends his nights firing high-powered lasers at the planet Mars ([05:17]).
  • He believes that these lasers, aimed via telescope at Mars, are subtly warming its surface, which in technical terms, could be described as infinitesimal "terraforming" ([08:08]):

    “When Phil shoots one of these monster lasers at Mars, he sends a beam of photons through the Earth's atmosphere, across 34 million miles of space, and to the surface of the planet. A lot of those photons spin off into the darkness, but some hit the mark. Those photons heat up the surface of Mars ever so slightly, infinitesimally.” — Simon Parkin ([08:08])

• Legal Justification for Claiming Mars
  • Dr. Phil has researched international law surrounding land claims, notably drawing on portions of precedent that require “intent to possess” and some “early effort to improve” the land ([10:12]):

    “You literally have to show intent to possess and also ideally, show some early effort to improve the land to make it ready for human settlement and trade. And so if you think about it, that's kind of what I've been trying to do with Mars.” — Dr. Phil Davies ([10:12])

2. The Outer Space Treaty and Its Loopholes

• Background on the Treaty
  • The 1967 Outer Space Treaty forms the bedrock of current international space law, intended to keep nukes out of space and prevent sovereign claims on celestial bodies, but it’s only three pages long and vague about many modern scenarios ([13:39]).
• Contemporary Exploitation of Vague Law
  • New private space ventures (e.g., asteroid mining, space tourism) are interpreting the treaty’s ambiguities to suit their interests ([14:35]), leading to global “race to the bottom” risks as national laws increasingly favor their own industries.

    “What we're going to end up with is a race to the bottom where everybody just wants to adopt legislation that is going to spur their own national industry. There's not really going to be much left of the general spirit of the Outer Space Treaty, which is very much one of international cooperation of peaceful exploration...” — Dr. Philippe de Man, space law expert ([15:01])

3. Dr. Phil’s Endgame: Forcing a Rethink of Space Law

• Not About Ruling Mars
  • Despite his affection for the “king of Mars” moniker, the real aim is to expose the weaknesses of current space treaties and force the UN to modernize legal frameworks ([16:21]):

    “If I could develop a claim that actually did have some legal merit and then say, right, look, the Space treaty has too many holes to even stop a claim like that. Now come on. That'll embarrass them and that will make them update it.” — Dr. Phil Davies ([16:21])

• Tactics: Legal Petitions and Selling Plots
  • To bolster his claim and apply pressure, Dr. Phil has sent proposals to the UN and sells “deeds” to plots on Mars—not as novelties, but intended as real legal claims ([11:40]):

    “Given that there are people out there charging guys $25 for one acre of celestial land, which is just a novelty deed, we're actually saying, hey, have 100,000 acres for a dollar or a cent... I've now got nearly 13,000 members.” — Dr. Phil Davies ([11:40])

4. Humor & Humanity Amid the Absurdity

• The episode keeps its tone light-hearted as Simon Parkin observes Dr. Phil’s humble equipment—“a laser that can be defeated by a piece of cardboard” ([17:24])—and muses on what kind of king Phil would be:

  “Dr. Phil will never rule a Martian colony. He will never be crowned king of Mars and he knows this. But I think he would have been a benevolent king.” — Simon Parkin ([18:24])

• Dr. Phil’s bashfulness when holding a rotating Mars globe:

  “So you're holding it in your hand now—you look kind of like a megalomaniac. ‘This is the planet that I own.’” — Simon Parkin
  “That is not the intention. And now that you've pointed that out, I can see how that could be misconstrued.” — Dr. Phil Davies ([19:01])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Elon Musk on Terraforming Mars ([09:35]):

  “Give me the fast way.” — Stephen Colbert
  “The fast way is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” — Elon Musk
  “You're a supervillain. That's what a supervillain does.” — Stephen Colbert

• Dr. Phil on the power of his lasers ([07:07]):

  “I have got, legally, the strongest lasers I can get my hands on. I mean, our strongest laser here is 3500 milliwatts. That's kind of 3500 times stronger than the average handheld classroom laser pointer.” — Dr. Phil Davies

• Space Law Expert on loopholes ([15:01]):

  “There's no single state that's going to adopt a national law that says that their industry cannot go to outer space and cannot mine the natural resources...” — Dr. Philippe de Man

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:39 – 03:39: Satirical piece on the “quitting my job to travel the world” cliché; sets up the episode’s tone.
• 04:15 – 05:17: Elon Musk’s vision for Mars colonization & intro to Dr. Phil Davies.
• 05:17 – 10:39: Simon Parkin meets Dr. Phil; lasers, terraforming, and the legal claim to Mars.
• 10:39 – 11:40: Selling legal “deeds” to plots on Mars; crowdsourcing support.
• 12:09 – 17:14: Legal implications, flaws in the Outer Space Treaty, interviews with legal experts.
• 17:14 – 19:01: Seeing Dr. Phil’s lasers in action; musing on what it would mean to “own” Mars.
• 19:11 – 19:50: Episode wrap-up.

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Tone and Style

The episode balances humor and insight, poking gentle fun at Dr. Phil’s quest without dismissing his underlying concerns about the state of international space law. It’s engaging, wry, and curious—true to the New Yorker ethos.

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Conclusion

Dr. Phil Davies’ quest to lay claim to Mars with lasers is both comic and thought-provoking. His eccentric campaign highlights the increasingly urgent need to update outdated international treaties as space exploitation accelerates. Through the lens of one man’s imaginative experiment, the episode draws out big-picture questions about the stewardship of space and the laws that will shape humanity’s future beyond Earth.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, it's David. Before we get started, just a quick heads up about something on the podcast. We're trying something new. Instead of the single hour long podcast you've been getting until now, we're giving you two episodes every week, a half hour each, give or take. It's the same content, but arranged just a little differently for what we hope is the best possible podcast listening experience. There's a new episode up every Friday and and Tuesday. Here we go.

[B]

You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[C]

Well, on paper, my life seemed great. I had a dream job, swanky apartment, and a loving girlfriend. But I don't know what it was. Someone felt off. So I decided to quit my job and travel the world, bringing only my passport or a small backpack and my enormous, enormous trust fund. My coworkers were shocked, but I don't expect everyone to get me. I'm a free spirit whose father owns a South American rubber empire, so classic me. I set to work throwing out most of my possessions. Think about it. You don't need to own a lot of stuff to be happy. And also in the backpack I was carrying was millions of dollars. Oh, I wish you guys could have been My first few months roaming the world were life changing. I'm talking every day. I updated my Instagram with photos of my favorite sites. Me taking a selfie in front of a pink wall. Me taking a selfie in front of a gray wall. Me taking a selfie in front of a mirror, which is basically infinity selfies. My hand lightly resting on a cafe table near an early edition of on the Road with the pages creased just a little bit to make it feel like I had read it, but I hadn't opened it yet. And I can't believe I'm sharing this with you, but I want you to feel what I felt. One time, outside the train station of a small fishing village, I met a humble man named Grebo. He sold flowers and various cheap trinkets for a living. Grebo was happy to open up to me about his life, his losses, his loves. As long as I kept buying roses and not the cheap ones, Grebo said. Because I was a man of stature. Intrigued by our easy chatter, some of his friends wandered over to join the conversation. All of our superficial differences soon melted away, like when you melt gold to mold into a new necklace that says your name. As I left town, I cast one final glance back at Grebo. One of his friends playfully tossed him to the ground and thumbed his eyes as the other snatched all the money I had given him. I couldn't help but smile. It felt good to make a difference in the lives of these simple, simple people. And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not quite certain his name was Grebo. Listen, maybe this no reservations lifestyle isn't for everyone, but don't worry about me. You know, whenever I start to get homesick, I just remember the old rat race and I go ugh. All those bleary eyed suckers packed into a subway cart like sardines, going to their lousy jobs to afford useless things like rent and health insurance and student loan payments. See, that lifestyle isn't for me. Maybe I'm just a crazy dreamer who also gets a monthly no strings attached 60k deposit into my checking account. But I won't be tied down so easily. His name definitely wasn't Greebox why I.

[A]

Quit My Job to Travel the A True Story or Not by Joe Vikes from the New Yorker's Daily Shouts column. It was performed for us by Ben.

[D]

Schwartz.

[A]

In June, Elon Musk of SolarCity of the Tesla battery powered car and now the CEO of SpaceX, outlined a plan to send a manned mission to Mars. Here's Musk speaking at a conference last year.

[C]

We're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on. We should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025.

[A]

In other words, according to the tech gurus, there's big money to be made in space, and where there's big money, people will do whatever they can to go get it. After all, it's space. Who's going to stop them? New Yorker contributor Simon Parkin went to find out.

[D]

I do quite a bit of cycling around these areas and I have had two rather spectacular accidents on the bike. So yeah, just be careful driving. Country roads are treacherous. Just left here. Nice pub here in Hounds.

[E]

I'm on the outskirts of Farnham, a town a little less than an hour from South London in bucolic suburban Surrey. This part of England is dotted with picturesque villages, each one defined by well manicured hedges, colorfully named pubs and local eccentrics. Sitting next to me is one such eccentric. His name is Dr. Phil Davies.

[D]

You go past quite a delightful little pub called the Bluebell. Stop about here.

[E]

Actually, this is the Alice Holt Forest, which stretches out across Hampshire. Straight ahead, Dr. Phil leads me behind a pub onto a gravel pathway that snakes off into the woods, so it.

[D]

Is on a public walkway.

[E]

A little way along we emerge into a clearing with Trees on three sides, and on the fourth, an arrestingly panoramic view of the English countryside.

[D]

Right, so the land's falling away in front of us, and so you can see right down to sort of 5 degrees really off the horizon.

[E]

The unobstructed horizon is what brings Phil to this clearing. A couple of times a week he comes here at night. He brings a telescope on which is mounted a high powered laser. And with some precision, he then fires that laser at the planet Mars. There are buzzards. Are they buzzards?

[D]

Hey, look, you do get birds of prey hovering around here. Yeah.

[E]

So, yeah, we definitely don't want to be firing off lasers willy nilly setting light to local birds of prey, unless.

[D]

You'Re really hungry and you can find.

[E]

Where it lands there would be spaceacular. Phil is a man with a plan, and I'm here to try to understand that plan. So from the Alice Holt Forest, we head back to his flat, which doubles as his armory. Wow. This is all the gear.

[D]

It's a small room, but I do.

[E]

Sort of a lot of telescopes.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

Phil is a country doctor, a gp. He divides his time between Farnham and his native Belfast, where his wife still lives. In his Farnham bachelor pad, he's laid out a quiver of lasers on a low coffee table. These are not the kind of lasers teachers use to point at a blackboard. They're more like the ones Ernst Blofeld uses to threaten James Bond.

[D]

I have got, legally the strongest lasers I can get my hands on. I mean, our strongest laser here is 3500 milliwatts. That's kind of 3500 times stronger than the average handheld classroom laser pointer.

[E]

So what we've got here is a stubby, fat telescope that looks a bit maybe like a rocket launcher. And it's stood on a tripod that's, I guess, the size of an Oompa Loompa. So about waist height, it's got a big danger sign on it. And then there's a big red button on here. What's that for? Is that to turn it on?

[D]

Yeah. I mean, we started with very trivial lasers, but the first time I had a powerful laser, it was, wow. I mean, it's a lightsaber into the night. It really is. And it looks like it's touching Mars, this little planet at the end of this long finger.

[E]

When Phil shoots one of these monster lasers at Mars, he sends a beam of photons through the Earth's atmosphere, across 34 million miles of space, and. And to the surface of the planet. A lot of those photons spin off into the darkness, but some hit the mark. Those photons heat up the surface of Mars ever so slightly, infinitesimally. But making Mars even a very, very tiny bit warmer technically makes it a very, very tiny bit more hospitable for human settlement.

[D]

They're just coffees. And people who talk about, how would you improve Mars to make it ready for humans to go there, they talk about there being a need for an atmosphere. So how would you get an atmosphere on Mars? Well, you'll see it. I mean, you just go to Wikipedia and look up terraforming Mars, and you will see they'll say, add light and heat because the polar ice caps and actually the whole planet, but mainly in the poles, is full of what's called dry ice, carbon dioxide in ice form. And if you heat it up, what it does is forms a greenhouse effect. Nasty thing on Earth, but actually what would benefit Mars greatly. And it's all a bit theoretical, but what. What is true, though, is we are adding extra heat and light to Mars.

[E]

Dr. Phil may be eccentric, but he's not mad. A few years ago, Elon Musk told Stephen Colbert about the fast way to get more CO2 into the Martian atmosphere.

[C]

Give me the fast way. The fast way is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles. You're a super villain. That's what a supervillain does.

[E]

Yeah. Now, Dr. Phil has a handheld laser and not a thermonuclear weapon. But the idea is essentially the. To make Mars more pleasant for humans. And by preparing Mars for human habitation, Phil thinks that he can make a claim that he owns the planet. He's been reading up on the international law that covers how to claim ownership of a distant, barren land.

[D]

They were thinking Antarctica and some distant islands. The general thought is, no longer for that sort of land. Do you actually have to go and plant a flag there? You literally have to show intent to possess and also ideally, show some early effort to improve the land to make it ready for human settlement and trade. And so if you think about it, that's kind of what I've been trying to do with Mars.

[E]

So Phil filled out the appropriate forms and sent them off to the un. When did you hear back from them and what did they say?

[D]

Well, yes, we did get. Eventually last year, we got a reply from a director at Yanusa, United Nations Office for Outspace affairs, who said, yeah, it's interesting, but we are the secretariat. So this is the difficulty when dealing with the un. We are not the body that can decide for you. We just create the situation for the committee to come.

[E]

In an effort to up the pressure on the UN and to drum up some capital to cover his legal fees, Phil hit on a curious idea. You know how you can buy those novelty deeds to plots of land on the moon? Well, Phil sells similar plots of land on Mars. The difference being that Phil's aren't novelties. They're intended to be legal deeds. And if he's granted ownership of the planet, he'll have neighbors.

[D]

Given that there are people out there charging guys $25 for one acre of celestial land, which is just a novelty deed, we're actually saying, hey, have 100,000 acres for a dollar or a cent, even a cent. And effectively, it's just because we're saying, join us. And in this campaign, then, I've now got nearly 13,000 members.

[E]

Phil thinks that when he gets the right people at the UN to look at his claim, it'll stand up. And you know what? It's not out of the question. I talked to Dr. Philippe de Man, a scholar of space law at the University of Leuven in Belgium.

[F]

Well, I think that his claim as such is treated as a more serious claim simply because of the objectives of the claim and the way that it's actually been backed up. So there is legal document that he has prepared, together with a number of lawyers that do actually present some interesting approaches to the problem that maybe haven't been raised before.

[E]

So, okay, but the question remains, why do this? Why spend your nights shooting a laser up into the sky? Why spend your days grappling with a bureaucracy at the un? What's Phil's endgame here? What's a country doctor in Farnham going to do with an entire planet anyway? To explain the purpose of all this, you need to understand three things. First off, there's something called the Outer Space Treaty. It actually has a much longer official name, but that'll work for our purposes. It was adopted exactly 50 years ago, in 1967, and it's the basis for most of the laws that govern what humans can and can't do in outer space.

[C]

Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister presided at the signing of the treaty banning nuclear weapons from outer space. He pledged Britain's wholehearted support. Without such a treaty, life on Earth would be under continual threat. A nightmare existence.

[E]

The Outer Space Treaty was principally concerned with two things. Keeping nukes out of space and making sure that of whoever made it to the moon first, the Soviets or the Americans, neither would be able to claim the moon as their own. On all other counts, the treaty is pretty vague. It's actually only three pages long. And today all kinds of stuff is happening in space that nobody seriously anticipated in 9th 1967. Orbital construction platforms, space tourism, asteroid mining, deep space industries. Deep space is a new kind of company with a new kind of plan. We don't build rockets. We don't do astronomy. We are explorers and harvesters, makers and suppliers. So the second thing you need to know is that some of these new space companies are looking for ways to exploit the vagueness of the Outer Space Treaty. And nations with space businesses are inclined to interpret space law to favor those businesses.

[C]

As activities in space increase, they will undoubtedly pose new challenges.

[E]

This is the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space Science and Competitiveness, Senator Ted Cruz.

[C]

Therefore, it's incumbent on Congress to use this 50 year anniversary of the Outer Space Treaty to properly determine our actual international obligations.

[E]

Here's Philip de Man, the Belgian space law expert.

[F]

Again, there's no single state that's going to adopt a national law that says that their industry cannot go to outer space and cannot mine the natural resources. What we're going to end up with is a race to the bottom where everybody just wants to adopt legislation that is going to spur their own national industry. There's not really going to be much left of the general spirit of the Outer Space Treaty, which is very much one of international cooperation of peaceful exploration of outer.

[D]

Let's say they rip into the Space Treaty. And if you've only got one thing that stops nuclear weapons going into space, and you've got nations that are credible, like the US ripping into that treaty, then what's to stop a less credible nation, or maybe a more malevolent nation, deciding to send up nuclear components into space and say, well, okay, you're saying we broke the Space Treaty? Well, we're not the first look.

[E]

So that's the last thing you need to understand. And the reason for Phil's projects for the lasering, the theoretical terraforming, the petitions to the un. Phil doesn't intend to take over Mars. Phil's ambition, which is a hair less quixotic, if no less grand, is to protect space and maybe save the Earth as well by forcing the UN to rewrite the Outer Space Treaty for the 21st century.

[D]

If I run a campaign to get the Space Treaty updated, where is that going to get me? We know what the UN's like. But if I could develop a claim that actually did have some legal merit and then say, right, look, the Space treaty has too many holes to even stop a claim like that. Now come on. That'll embarrass them and that will make them update it.

[E]

If the UN receives a petition that legally they can't ignore, they'd have to do something about it. Because if a country doctor from Farnham can lay claim to Mars, then what could a multi million dollar space faring company accomplish? We are deep space. The frontier is coming and our time is now.

[D]

What are you doing now? Just putting in a battery.

[E]

Back in Farnham, I asked Dr. Phil to show me his lasers in action. It's the middle of the day so we need to fire them inside if I'm going to see them.

[D]

That's for you.

[E]

Phil sets up a cardboard box on the other side of the room and aims his equipment. His claim to changing the environment of Mars by terraforming is built around a laser that can be defeated by a piece of cardboard.

[D]

Make sure your glasses are on.

[E]

They're on. Oh, there it is now.

[D]

So again very bright and you can't.

[E]

Actually see it coursing in my glasses. It's showing up as kind of magnesium or brilliant purple. What we need is some dry ice in here and then we'd have the world's most localized disco.

[D]

Start to see smoke and the black and blackening.

[E]

Actually there is a mark is that it's already like got some a charred pinpoint on the.

[D]

After just 10 seconds. Yeah. So there you are. There's a. There's a reason for safety.

[E]

Dr. Phil will never rule a Martian colony. He will never be crowned king of Mars and he knows this. But I think he would have been a benevolent king. This mild mannered country doctor and it feels right. If his plans work and the space treaty is rewritten, we might all benefit from his benevolence. Is this Mars here?

[D]

Yes, it is.

[E]

We've got, I guess it's the size of a large snow globe and it looks like Mars and it's rotating. Is it on a motor or is it.

[D]

It's a globe suspended and fluid and light will induce a rotation.

[E]

So you're holding it in your hand now you look kind of like a megalomaniac. This is the planet that I own.

[D]

That is not the intention. And now that you've pointed that out, I can see how that could be misconstrued. That would be a gift for somebody quite soon.

[A]

Simon Parkin in Farnham, England with Dr. Phil Davies. If you want to buy one of Davies plots of land on Mars, you go ahead and look him up online. I'm not in the real estate business. I'm David Remnick and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time.

[B]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Brianna Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfiel, Mythali Rao and Stephen Valentino, with help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Churina Endowment Fund.