How to talk to aliens

Summary

Unexplainable Podcast Episode Summary: "How to Talk to Aliens"

Release Date: March 26, 2025
Host: Vox
Episode: How to Talk to Aliens

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Introduction to Extraterrestrial Communication

In the "How to Talk to Aliens" episode of Unexplainable, hosted by Ann and Thomas, the discussion delves deep into the complexities and nuances of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligences. The episode explores the historical attempts humanity has made to reach out to alien civilizations, the challenges inherent in such endeavors, and the emerging field of xenolinguistics that seeks to bridge the communication gap between humans and potential alien species.

Historical Attempts to Communicate

The conversation begins with a reflection on humanity's longstanding efforts to send messages into space, highlighting notable attempts such as the Arecibo Message and the Voyager Golden Records.

Arecibo Message (1974):

Ann introduces the Arecibo Message, an interstellar broadcast sent from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Ann [04:16]: "Scientists have been trying to message aliens for decades. The first one I want to tell you about is the Arecibo message sent in 1974."

The message was a binary-coded transmission intended to convey information about Earth and humanity, including images of the solar system, DNA structures, and human figures. However, as Thomas points out, the message's vast distance of 25,000 light-years poses a significant challenge:

Thomas [05:07]: "Wait, so they're sending a message that will take 25,000 years to get there?"

Ann acknowledges the impracticality of expecting a timely response:

Ann [05:07]: "Exactly. And then another 25,000 years if we were to get a reply to come back. So for a total of 50,000 years."

Voyager Golden Records (1977):

The episode then transitions to the Voyager missions, where both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft were equipped with Golden Records containing sounds and images representing life on Earth.

Ann [06:14]: "In 1977, we sent two spacecraft into space as part of the Voyager missions... They used long play records with binary information."

Despite the ingenuity, the lack of a universal playback mechanism renders the message akin to sending a "message in a bottle" into the cosmic ocean:

Ann [07:50]: "It feels a little bit like writing a little message, sticking it in a glass bottle, sealing that glass bottle, and then just throwing it into the ocean."

Modern Approaches to Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Doug Vakic, a former SETI Institute researcher and founder of METI International, discusses more intentional methods of sending messages closer to home to increase the chances of interaction.

Doug Vakic [05:28]: "It was really just a demonstration that we can create a message based on some ideas of math and science."

In 2017, Vakic spearheaded a project to send a targeted message to a star just over 12 light-years away, significantly reducing the potential wait time for a response.

Ann [09:07]: "In 2017, this is exactly what Doug did. We sent a message from a radio transmitter north of the Arctic Circle to a star just over 12 light years away."

This method aims to establish a "round trip interstellar pen pal" relationship with the possibility of receiving a reply within approximately 25 years.

Thomas [09:46]: "Yeah, 25 is a little shorter than 50,000, for sure."

Challenges in Communicating with Alien Civilizations

The episode meticulously outlines the myriad challenges in establishing meaningful communication with extraterrestrial beings:

1. Understanding Alien Perceptions:

   • Sherry Wells Jensen, a linguist collaborating with METI, emphasizes the importance of recognizing that alien perceptions may differ fundamentally from human ones.

     Sherry [15:55]: "A lot of my job as a blind human being is... to think about what blind aliens might be like or how their language might be different from ours."

2. Language Evolution and Decoding:

   • Languages evolve over time, and the sheer time scales involved in interstellar communication could render our messages obsolete or incomprehensible.

     Ann [16:30]: "Language changes over time. 900 years ago, English was totally different. If something takes 25,000 years to get to an alien, our language is going to change a lot."

3. Assumptions and Biases:

   • Humans often anthropomorphize aliens, assuming they might share similarities with humans, such as appearance or sensory modalities.

     Thomas [15:15]: "One big issue is that people often assume aliens would look like us. Like the little green people with bigger eyes."

4. Intention vs. Interpretation:

   • There's a significant risk of miscommunication where the intended message might be interpreted entirely differently by the recipient.

     Ann [18:29]: "We have to make sure that our intentions are clearly communicated, but without a shared context, it's incredibly challenging."

Xenolinguistics: A Framework for Alien Communication

To address these challenges, METI International and experts like Sherry Wells Jensen advocate for the development of xenolinguistics, a theoretical field dedicated to understanding and creating languages that could be comprehensible to extraterrestrial intelligences.

Sherry Wells Jensen [19:27]: "Xenolinguistics is the attempt to study a hypothetical alien language and to meet ET somewhere in the middle."

Key aspects of xenolinguistics discussed include:

• Building from Universal Concepts:

  • Starting with fundamental concepts like counting, frequencies, and wavelengths to establish common ground.

    Thomas [10:00]: "They started with the basics of counting, and then they increased that to the basics of frequencies..."

• Creating Multiplicity in Messaging:

  • Sending multiple variations of messages to increase the likelihood that at least one form will be understood.

    Sherry [20:27]: "Maybe I need to make not one message, but a jillion messages... send it again."

• Reducing Abstraction:

  • Utilizing less abstract forms of communication, such as pure scientific data, rather than culturally specific content.

    Ann [10:28]: "They started with the basics... it feels like a lot less abstract than sending a message about the basic building blocks of human life."

Ethical and Practical Considerations

The episode doesn't shy away from the ethical debates surrounding METI's activities. Stephen Hawking's cautionary stance is highlighted, drawing parallels between potential alien contact and Columbus's arrival in America, which had disastrous consequences for indigenous populations.

Ann [21:53]: "Stephen Hawking once said that if aliens visit us, we... the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America."

Despite the low probability of successful communication and the potential risks, experts like Sherry advocate for humility and careful consideration in METI's endeavors.

Sherry Wells Jensen [22:45]: "We cannot ensure that what we're saying will mean the same to whoever receives it... but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. We have to go into this with a huge double scoop of humility."

Xenolinguistics as a Mirror to Human Understanding

Beyond its primary goal of facilitating interstellar communication, xenolinguistics serves as a tool for introspection, allowing humanity to examine its own language, biases, and societal structures.

Sherry Wells Jensen [23:29]: "The good of the discipline is not just to prepare for what is to come... it's also a tool that we can use to examine who we are and what it is that we do and how language works for us."

This self-examination encourages a broader perspective on human communication and community, both on Earth and potentially across the cosmos.

Conclusion

"How to Talk to Aliens" provides a comprehensive exploration of the complexities involved in interstellar communication. From historical messaging attempts like Arecibo and Voyager to modern strategies spearheaded by METI International, the episode underscores both the ingenuity and the profound challenges of reaching out to extraterrestrial intelligences. The introduction of xenolinguistics offers a promising yet speculative framework for overcoming communication barriers, emphasizing humility and curiosity as essential virtues in humanity's quest to connect with the unknown.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ann [04:16]: "Scientists have been trying to message aliens for decades. The first one I want to tell you about is the Arecibo message sent in 1974."

• Thomas [05:07]: "Wait, so they're sending a message that will take 25,000 years to get there?"

• Sherry Wells Jensen [15:55]: "A lot of my job as a blind human being is... to think about what blind aliens might be like or how their language might be different from ours."

• Sherry Wells Jensen [20:27]: "Maybe I need to make not one message, but a jillion messages... send it again."

• Sherry Wells Jensen [23:29]: "The good of the discipline is not just to prepare for what is to come... it's also a tool that we can use to examine who we are and what it is that we do and how language works for us."

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This detailed summary encapsulates the rich discussions and insights presented in the episode, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and philosophies surrounding the concept of communicating with extraterrestrial life.

Transcript

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[Ann]

I was never really a runner. The way I see running is a gift, especially when you have stage four cancer. I'm Ann. I'm running the Boston Marathon, presented by bank of America. I run for Dana Farber Cancer Institute to give people like me a chance to thrive in life, even with cancer. Join bank of America in helping Ann's cause. Give if you can@b of a.com supportann. What would you like the power to do? References to charitable organizations is not an endorsement by bank of America Corporation. Copyright 2025.

[Thomas]

Okay, Thomas.

[Ann]

Hello.

[Thomas]

What is going on? What are we talking about today?

[Ann]

So I know you're a big sci fi fan, right?

[Thomas]

I am a big sci fi fan. I don't know if I've admitted this before, but I, uh.

[Ann]

Oh.

[Thomas]

Growing up, my family had an entire closet full of Star the Next Generation episodes on vhs. We would tape every single one as it aired, and then we put them in the closet, nicely labeled in order, and then we had every episode.

[Ann]

What an organized and nerdy family. I love it.

[Thomas]

I mean, we didn't have cable, so I always had something to watch if I needed it.

[Ann]

Oh, my goodness.

[Thomas]

Big fan. Big fan.

[Ann]

Well, since you're such a big fan, let me test your sci fi chops a little. Yeah. If you could send a message out into the universe, potentially to an alien neighbor, what would you say?

[Thomas]

Well, in my Star Trek mind, I would try to say something about how nice people are and please don't hurt us. That might be what I would focus on. Please don't hurt us.

[Ann]

Very reasonable. Personally, I send out, like, a recipe for cheesecake, Something food related, but, you know, that's just me.

[Thomas]

That's unexpected, but I can get behind that. Right.

[Ann]

But the reason why I ask is, as you know, there are scientists out there who've dedicated, really, their lives to searching for aliens.

[Doug Vakic]

Yeah.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

We think that this. This may be a beacon, some kind of a. An announcement to get our attention.

[Ann]

We've seen the Hollywood tropes of an astronomer. You Know, sitting in a basement.

[Thomas]

I think you should listen to this.

[Ann]

In front of their computer. Just listening to beeps, boops and blobs detection protocol.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

Now those are numbers.

[Ann]

That was a three. The one before it was a two.

[Unnamed Researcher]

It's 42 seconds of non random, non Earth based signal.

[Ann]

Wait, this can't be right.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

It's coming from the moon.

[Thomas]

Yeah. We did an episode on this. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Right. Seti.

[Ann]

Yeah, seti. But you know, those Hollywood films and seti even I feel like there's something a lot more interesting that they don't really touch on.

[Thomas]

Okay.

[Ann]

Which is that we get this message from a distant star. Right. But then what do we do with it? How do we communicate back? There isn't that much discussion on how we can connect with whatever civilization just sent us a message. And to be honest, I think figuring that out is a lot more interesting than just the act of listening, you know?

[Thomas]

Yeah. Like in a lot of those movies, it's kind of just like if you found the aliens, that's it. Story over.

[Ann]

Yeah, but maybe that's not the end. And that's what I want to tell you about how scientists are reaching out to aliens. What would we say? How would we say it? And whether anyone out there can actually ever understand us.

[Thomas]

All right, Thomas, I guess my first question here is how long has this been going on? Like, when did people start trying to send messages out to aliens?

[Ann]

Yeah. Scientists have been trying to message aliens for decades. Right. But the first one I want to tell you about is the arecibo message. In 1974, from the great dish at.

[Thomas]

Arecibo in Puerto Rico, the observatory director beamed a message at the stars.

[Ann]

Arecibo had just been upgraded, and they sent this message to kind of show what it was really capable of. It was three minutes long and sent up as a binary code. So zeros and ones.

[Thomas]

Great.

[Ann]

But basically the hope is that whoever receives this would be able to decode it and construct it into this two dimensional image. And the image would show the position of Earth in the solar system. It would show a double helix and also a stick figure of a man.

[Thomas]

Okay.

[Ann]

The message was sent to a group of stars about 25,000 light years away.

[Thomas]

Wait, so they're sending a message that will take 25,000 years to get there?

[Ann]

Exactly. And then another 25,000 years if we were to get a reply to come back. So for a total of 50,000 years.

[Thomas]

So this is just straight up a PR stunt, then?

[Ann]

Definitely a PR stunt.

[Unnamed Researcher]

It was really just that. A demonstration that we can create a message based on some ideas of math and science.

[Ann]

This is Doug Vakic. He is a former SETI Institute researcher, and he's the founder and president of a nonprofit organization dedicated to the messaging of extraterrestrial intelligence. It is called METI International.

[Thomas]

So, wait, so like seti, but Mehdi messaging.

[Ann]

Mehdi with an M. Okay, okay. And he told me that they weren't necessarily seeking a reply.

[Unnamed Researcher]

One of the assumptions of the Arecibo message is time really doesn't make a difference. You know, let's send a message and, you know, if we need to wait 50,000 years, no big deal. It is a big deal.

[Thomas]

Yeah. I don't know. 50,000 years seems like kind of a long time to wait.

[Ann]

A very long time to wait.

[Thomas]

Have there been any other messages sent anywhere? Maybe closer.

[Ann]

Right, so in 1977, we sent two spacecrafts into space as part of the Voyager missions. The spacecraft Voyager 1 was launched today toward Jupiter, Saturn, and a study of their moons. The goal was to take photos of various planets and to do some scientific instrumentation, experiments, experiments. And as soon as this was done, the idea is that these spacecrafts would kind of just drift off into the universe.

[Unnamed Researcher]

Scientists had the idea, hey, let's put a message on there in a very remote chance that someone stumbles across them millions of years from now. And they used 1970s technology of long play record albums, and in those grooves were recorded binary information.

[Ann]

On the record were pictures of life on earth. Greetings from 55 different languages around the world, but also music and sounds that at the time were meant to depict kind of life on Earth.

[Thomas]

Did they include a turntable or, like, did aliens need to bring their own?

[Ann]

They did not include a turntable, and I think that, what are they doing? But they did send it up with a needle and the etched pictorial instructions on the case itself to basically show that you have to spin the disc a certain rate per minute and have the needle set at a specific place for it to actually work.

[Thomas]

Seems like they don't want anyone to.

[Ann]

Listen to the record other than that it was kind of sent to drift out into space and let the world see what happens. It feels a little bit like writing a little message, sticking it in a glass bottle, sealing that glass bottle, and then just throwing it into the ocean.

[Thomas]

That's how you get found on a desert island. You just SOS in a bottle.

[Ann]

SOS in a bottle. This is something that Doug has really thought a lot about. Like, yes, they were meant to for alien Civilization. But it wasn't them saying, I want to talk. Here's our phone number. It was more just like, here you go, aliens take it. And if you happen to find it, great.

[Thomas]

Yeah, it sounds like it's more about what we would include in a message to aliens rather than actually trying our best to get in touch with the aliens.

[Ann]

Yeah, yeah. In a way, it is a reflection of what we think human society is and how we want to portray ourselves to the. To the universe.

[Thomas]

So if we were to do it with more intentionality, is there a way that's not just throwing a message in a bottle or shooting a message to one extremely far away star cluster?

[Ann]

It's a great question.

[Thomas]

I mean, too far away, honestly.

[Ann]

Too far, Too far away. And Doug told me that if we really want to start a conversation with ET we have to start sending messages to much closer stars.

[Unnamed Researcher]

Start with the stars closest to Earth and move outward so that we reduce the time it takes for an Exchange.

[Ann]

And in 2017, this is exactly what Doug did.

[Unnamed Researcher]

We sent a message from a radio transmitter north of the Arctic Circle to a star just over 12 light years away.

[Ann]

So for a round trip interstellar pen pal, we could potentially, potentially get a response within 25 years or so.

[Thomas]

Yeah, 25 is a little shorter than 50,000, for sure.

[Ann]

And it's much, you know, much easier to grasp, timeline wise, what's in the message. So Doug thought about what we'd have in common with an alien civilization.

[Unnamed Researcher]

Let's stick with the only thing that those aliens directly have in front of them if they get our signal, the radio signal itself.

[Ann]

Oh, so the message that you sent was basically a mini scientific lesson sent as a binary code using two different frequencies.

[Thomas]

I mean, that feels like a lot less abstract than sending a message about the basic building blocks of human life.

[Ann]

Yeah, they started with the basics of counting, and then they increased that to the basics of frequencies, and then eventually wavelengths. And what they were building up to is this idea of, hey, what you just received from us on Earth is what we consider a radio signal.

[Unnamed Researcher]

There's this wonderful interplay between not just saying something about ourselves, but really trying to develop a shared mindset.

[Thomas]

And also, it feels like, you know, when you're trying to learn a new language, you know, the person who's teaching you the language maybe points to a tree and goes, tree. And it's sort of like Doug is pointing to the signal and saying, signal.

[Ann]

Exactly. And Doug is hoping to send, you know, similar signals to a whole bunch of other relatively close, potentially habitable exoplanets just to, you know, up the odds of bumping into somebody out there in our galactic neighborhood.

[Thomas]

I like the effort. It's very creative.

[Ann]

Right.

[Thomas]

I love the idea of using the signal itself to be this common reference point, but I guess it feels so almost impossible to actually be able to ensure that an alien would understand what we're trying to say at all. Like, even if we do get a message out deep enough to the right exact star system and there are intelligent aliens there to receive it, I guess I wonder whether they would even be able to understand what.

[Ann]

Yeah, that's a big question that kept on coming up in my reporting. The scientists that I talked to were also wondering something very similar. You know, we can send as many messages as we want, but if there isn't a basic legend or a key or a way to clearly decode this interstellar note, who's to say the aliens are going to understand what they're getting?

[Unnamed Researcher]

The big risk is that we send a message out. And it's more like a cosmic inkblot test. It says more about the recipient and their interpretation than what the sender intended to say.

[Ann]

That's after the break.

[Thomas]

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[Doug Vakic]

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[Thomas]

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[Ann]

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[Unnamed Researcher]

We get that word from unexplainable.

[Thomas]

Okay, Thomas, before the break, you were saying how even if we somehow do get a message exactly to the right place, to the exact aliens we mean to get the message to, even after all of that, they might not understand it.

[Ann]

Yeah. One big issue is that people often assume aliens would look like us.

[Thomas]

Yeah. Like the little green people. Just they have bigger eyes.

[Ann]

Yep, totally. The exaggerated limbs, the two legs, Very human like figures.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Ann]

But if we want to meaningfully understand an alien civilization, we first have to remember they're extraterrestrials, meaning outside of Earth.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

The most problematic assumptions that we're making, we don't even know we're making them. That's probably the one that's going to get us the thing that we're not thinking about. That's the one that's going to bite us in the butt.

[Ann]

That's Sherry Wells Jensen. She's a linguist who works with Doug, and she thinks a lot about assumptions.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

So a lot of my job as a blind human being who wants to be in the world is I've got to work on getting around an environment that's built for the convenience of people who see, because it's not built for me.

[Ann]

So Sheri is blind, and she likes to think about what blind aliens might be like or how their language might be different from ours because ours is biased towards sight. Maybe smell or taste or hearing is their primary sense. Or, you know, like, would it even be possible for a society to be organized around something like smell?

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

I think so. I want my imagination to run wild with parameters so that I'm investigating all the possibilities.

[Thomas]

Yeah, I don't. I have no idea what that would even mean. Like, how could you build letters and words around smells?

[Ann]

Yeah, it's a complicated idea to grapple with. But there's another big issue. Language changes over time. 900 years ago, you know, English was a totally different language. And a lot of the texts that we have from Old English are still being interpreted and still Being debated.

[Thomas]

Yeah. We can't really, like, sit down with Beowulf and.

[Ann]

No, no. Like, we understand those individual words. We understand kind of different parts of that text, but the interpretation of it all, the cultural and the bigger meaning of those texts, some of that I don't know if we've actually really translated or really fully understand. Yeah.

[Thomas]

And if something takes 25,000 years to get to an alien, I feel like our language is gonna change a lot.

[Ann]

Yeah. Time is a thing, right? Our languages will change. Their languages will change. But let's just say we figure all of this out and we're all in the same room as an alien. It still wouldn't be easy to talk to them. Imagine you walk into the office, and then I point at the coffee maker and maybe give you a little eyebrow action. What would you say or think?

[Thomas]

Eyebrow action? Probably. Probably. You're asking me to pour some coffee, or you're pouring me some coffee.

[Ann]

Yeah, that's what I would hope. You think I'm offering you coffee?

[Thomas]

Right. Okay.

[Ann]

But Doug says me pointing at a coffee machine could also mean a variety of other things.

[Unnamed Researcher]

It could mean, oh, this is this new coffee machine that I got. Don't you think it's cool? Or it could be, I'm going to teach you the word for coffee now. So it becomes really kind of complicated. So you need to take into account not only what you're uttering and the context, but what is the intention?

[Ann]

And this idea of intention gets at a bigger question here.

[Thomas]

Okay.

[Ann]

How do we clearly communicate our desires, our hopes, our dreams, when we barely know anything about the aliens we're communicating with? But Doug, Sherry, and the MEDI community have proposed a framework. It's called xenolinguistics.

[Unnamed Researcher]

Xenolinguistics is a study of what might language at its core be, no matter where you find it, whether you find it here on Earth, which is the only place we know of it, or whether you find it on another world. Is there really something like language throughout the universe?

[Ann]

Basically, xenolinguistics is the attempt to study a hypothetical alien language and to meet ET Somewhere in the middle. And Sherry gave me an example of how xenolinguistics can work.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

If we have a creature that moves around in the world, we can start to make some guesses about things that they probably can do. Right. So they probably have a way of referring to objects in the world. And so I might go out on a crazy limb and call that nouns. They might have a way, probably, of referring to actions in the world. Things that you do to nouns. Right. So I'm going to go out on another limb and call those verbs. Holy smoke. They've got nouns and verbs. That's amazing.

[Ann]

Sherry is kind of oversimplifying, but she's trying to get some kind of basic point where we can start to build a language from.

[Thomas]

I don't know. I feel like just knowing that nouns and verbs of some sort might exist doesn't really get me all that closer to communicating with someone.

[Ann]

Yeah, definitely. And that's why xenolinguists say if we're trying to communicate with aliens, we have to ask ourselves a bunch of different questions.

[Unnamed Researcher]

How do we communicate the same thing in multiple ways so that the aliens have more than one chance at understanding us?

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

Maybe I need to make not one message, but a jillion messages. Maybe I need to make as many messages as there are people. Maybe you send some special number of messages, or maybe you send it, and then maybe. Maybe I should just reverse it and send it again.

[Ann]

And who knows what they won't understand. Maybe they won't understand numbers, so we'd have to send a different kind of message.

[Unnamed Researcher]

Maybe they'll understand a certain kind of pictorial message. Maybe the key is to talk about triangles instead of talking about numbers. Maybe that's what we should be doing.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

Language is more magical and more powerful and more deeply embedded into our psyches than is capturable in the definition that I might make my undergraduates memorize. It's some kind of alchemy through which I can take a thought in my head and do something to it and put something like that same thought in your head. If you don't think that's magic, you just aren't paying attention.

[Thomas]

Given how complicated all of this is, I can imagine a lot of miscommunication. Right. Like sending something out to the aliens and having them understand something we just completely don't intend.

[Ann]

Yeah, there's a little bit of a concern there. You know, you mentioned at the top about wanting to say something to aliens like, don't hurt us.

[Thomas]

Yeah.

[Ann]

And given how hard it might be to communicate exactly what we want to communicate to aliens, some people think we shouldn't be messaging them at all. Stephen Hawking once said that if aliens visit us, we. The outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America.

[Thomas]

Yeah. That would not be a great outcome for our first messages to anyone out there.

[Ann]

Not a great outcome at all.

[Thomas]

It does feel like in all of this, there's a huge amount of unknowns about whether we can get a message. There there's an unknown about whether they can understand us. There's an unknown about whether we should even be doing this. It feels like there's a very low chance of success here.

[Ann]

Yeah, but when I chatted with Sheri, she wasn't really worried about it. How can we ensure that what we're saying will mean the same to whoever receives it?

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

We cannot. We don't know. We don't know. Oh, my God. But, okay, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try, I think. Okay, so go into it knowing that you can be wrong. We have to go into this with a huge double scoop of humility, which is good because that means we'll be careful.

[Thomas]

Makes sense to be humble when you're working on something as, I don't know, out there, as xenolinguistics.

[Ann]

Yeah, humble. Humble is the key here. And the work of xenolinguistics isn't to guess right or to make the most accurate predictions. It's just about being curious. Ask the questions. For Sherry, Xenolinguistics isn't just about studying aliens. It's also about us.

[Sherry Wells Jensen]

The good of the discipline is not just to prepare for what is to come. Hopefully we'll get a signal, but it's also a tool that we can use to examine who we are and what it is that we do and how language works for us.

[Ann]

Xenolinguistics pushes us to think about our biases. It pushes us to think about how we can relate to our environment. But also, and I think this is the most important bit. Right. Like, xenolinguistics pushes us to learn more about ourselves and how we connect to our communities here on Earth, but also out in the universe.

[Thomas]

This episode was reported and produced by Thomas Lu. We had editing from me, Noam Hassenfeld, and Meredith Hodnot, who runs the show. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, music from me, fact checking from Melissa Hirsch and Bird Pinkerton ran into the Octopus Hospital looking for survivors. She dug out the rubble, but there was no sign of the Doctopus, no sign of Dr. Pepper. And then she saw it pinned to the main control panel. It was a note from the birds. Thanks, as always to Brian Resnik for co creating Unexplainable. And if you have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We're at unexplainableox.com, and you can leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. It really helps us find new listeners. You can also support the show and all of Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. You can go to vox.commembers to sign up. And if you signed up because of us, send us a note. We'd always love to hear from you. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast network, and we'll be back next week.