ReThinking: Searching for life on other planets with astrophysicist Sara Seager

Summary

Podcast Summary: ReThinking—Searching for Life on Other Planets with Astrophysicist Sara Seager

Podcast: WorkLife with Adam Grant
Host: Adam Grant (in partnership with TED)
Guest: Prof. Sara Seager, Astrophysicist and Planetary Scientist at MIT
Date: February 17, 2026
Episode Focus: Exploring the search for exoplanets, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the impact of cosmic perspective, and the value of curiosity-driven science.

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Overview: Main Theme & Purpose

In this episode, Adam Grant welcomes acclaimed astrophysicist Sara Seager to delve into humanity's search for life beyond Earth. The conversation journeys from scientific methods for detecting planets around distant stars to profound reflections on the significance of discovering—or not discovering—alien life. Throughout, Seager shares her personal and professional motivations, challenges conventional assumptions, and provides perspective on why looking up at the stars remains crucial, even with pressing problems here on Earth.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Sara Seager’s Origin Story & Motivation

• Personal Background: Sara shares how a tumultuous childhood sparked both a distrust of authority and an openness to unconventional ideas, traits that have served her well in science.
  • "Because of my stepfather, like, a distrust of authority and because of my dad, openness to crazy ideas … What a winning combination for science." (03:38–04:42, Sara Seager)
• Choosing Astrophysics: Realized early that “life is short,” so pursued astronomy despite advice that the field was a major risk for a graduate student at the time.
• First Exoplanet Discoveries: Started her PhD just as exoplanet detection began, working on projects considered highly risky but ultimately foundational.

2. What Are Exoplanets and How Do We Find Them?

• Definition: Planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system.
  • "An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star other than the sun." (05:30, Sara Seager)
• Detection Methods:
  • Most commonly: Observing periodic dips in starlight as planets “transit” across their stars from our perspective.
  • Necessity of monitoring millions of stars due to rare, ideal orbital alignments.
  • AI helps streamline detection but hasn’t yet found fundamentally new techniques.
  • "For exoplanets, [AI's] really done more of that first category—just done things that we can do better, faster or more thoroughly." (07:49, Sara Seager)

3. How Many Exoplanets Are Out There—and Is Life Likely?

• Staggering Numbers:
  • Trillions of exoplanets in the Milky Way.
  • Every star likely hosts planetary systems.
  • "In our galaxy alone, there are hundreds of billions of stars. So… that's more than hundreds of billions [of planets]." (08:29, Sara Seager)
• Possibility of Life:
  • Statistical likelihood overwhelmingly suggests life beyond Earth.
  • Biologists resist certainty due to uncertainty about how life originated on Earth.
  • "If it formed twice independently, the chance then is just so believable that it's happening elsewhere." (10:20, Sara Seager)
• Limits of Current Searches: Realistically, our current capabilities restrict search to nearby stars (hundreds to a few thousand), making detection of intelligent life soon improbable.
  • "I might even put it at zero for now." [Probability of finding intelligent life in our lifetime] (11:24, Sara Seager)

4. What Would Finding Life Mean for Us?

• Perspective Shift: Would alter humanity’s view of its place in the universe, continuing a centuries-long unraveling of anthropocentrism.
  • "It changes our view of our place in the cosmos… So it kind of carries us forward in this cosmic story." (12:20–13:03, Sara Seager)
• Search for Simple Life:
  • Hope to find evidence (even tentative) of microbial or basic life, perhaps in our own solar system (subsurface Mars, Venus’s clouds, icy moons).
  • For exoplanets: search for indirect signs like atmospheric gases that “don’t belong,” e.g., oxygen.
  • "We’re looking for gases that don't belong… that's where we're at." (13:10–14:35, Sara Seager)
• Fermi Paradox:
  • Adam: Paradox questions why we haven’t seen signs of intelligent life despite high probability.
  • Sara: Likely answers—technology is too primitive, distances are vast, or civilizations choose not to contact.
  • "We're the ants to the super intelligent beings out there… why would they come here and talk to us?" (15:57–16:46, Sara Seager)

5. Should We Try to Make Contact? Existential Risks & Debates

• Ongoing Debate: Active discussion in astronomy about whether to intentionally send signals.
  • "That debate is actually an active one." (18:04, Sara Seager)
  • Sara’s take: It likely doesn’t matter—if someone is advanced enough, they'd find us regardless.
• Perspective on Discovery: If we find evidence first, she supports making contact, but suspects reciprocal discovery is almost inevitable given technological advances.

6. The Value of Astronomical Research and Science for Society

• Why Study Space When Earth Has Problems?
  • Attracts and trains future scientists; inspires curiosity and technological advances applicable elsewhere (GPS, medical imaging, etc.).
  • Pure science (“blind variation and selective retention”) is unpredictable but essential for breakthroughs; only some research leads to practical advances, but the pipeline is necessary.
  • "To solve practical problems on Earth, we need a lot of people trained in technological sciences… one of the big things we do in astronomy is we communicate to the public the wonders of science." (25:00, Sara Seager)

7. Lightning Round & Personal Reflections

• Worst Career Advice: “Don’t go into astrophysics. You’ll never make it.” (30:41–30:45)
• Best Advice to Others: Hone your inner voice—listen to hunches and positives in intuition. (30:53–31:23)
• Controversial Opinion: There could be microbial life in Venus’s clouds—an environment hostile to Earth life. (31:32–31:46)
• Favorite Space Films: Arrival (for non-anthropomorphic aliens), Interstellar, time travel movies. (31:55–32:45)
• Dream Dinner Guests: Dead family members over famous scientists; prefers memories over risking disappointing reality. (32:53–33:33)
• Adam on Motivation: “A desire to help other people and...a love of learning... discovering and communicating knowledge about what makes humans tick.” (34:21–35:22)

8. On Humility and Cosmic Perspective

• Against Arrogance:
  • "It's just self centered really. Like thinking that we're the only thing that could be out there." (35:48, Sara Seager)
• Embracing Humility:
  • Looking at the night sky, understanding earth is a “less than a speck of dust,” helps put personal and human struggles in perspective.
  • "Confronting our own tragedies against the vastness of the universe... brings comfort." (35:54–36:34, Sara Seager)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the odds of finding intelligent life soon:

  "I might even put it at zero for now."
  —Sara Seager (11:24)

• On the immensity of the universe:

  "In our galaxy alone, there are hundreds of billions of stars. So, wow. I mean, if every star has multiple planets, that's more than hundreds of billions."
  —Sara Seager (08:29)

• On why scientific exploration matters:

  "You have to do so much extra science, you know, just to get to a discovery, you can’t preplan what it is you want to do."
  —Sara Seager (26:30)

• On feeling insignificant (and comforted) by the cosmos:

  "When you look at that night sky and just realize our earth is just a speck, we’re like less than a speck of dust."
  —Sara Seager (35:54)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Sara’s childhood and influences: 03:38–04:42
• First exoplanets, risk-taking in research: 04:48–05:51
• What is an exoplanet? 05:28–05:47
• Detection techniques and biases: 06:43–07:43
• AI's role in the hunt: 07:43–08:26
• How many exoplanets exist? 08:29–09:17
• Probability of life elsewhere: 09:22–10:20
• Why biologists object to probabilistic life estimates: 09:42–10:04
• Likelihood of finding intelligent life soon: 11:14–11:32
• Perspective shift: Cosmic humility: 12:20–13:03, 35:54–36:34
• Fermi paradox and the "ant" analogy: 15:04–16:46
• Contact debate and making the first move: 18:04–19:24
• Value of astronomy for society: 25:00–27:47
• Lightning Round: 30:31–33:56
• On humility, arrogance, and the night sky: 35:45–36:37

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Tone and Style

Throughout, Sara speaks with candor, insight, and a blend of scientific rigor and poetic awe. Adam’s tone is inquisitive, playful, and at times genuinely awestruck. The conversation moves seamlessly between technical explanation and big-picture philosophical reflection.

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Conclusion

This thought-provoking episode explores not just the search for extraterrestrial life, but what it means for humanity to search—and to stay humble in the face of cosmic scale. Sara Seager argues compellingly for curiosity-driven science, while Adam Grant brings psychological insights and personal wonder to bear on some of the largest questions there are. Whether or not contact with alien life ever happens, the journey itself, they suggest, holds enormous value for us all.

Transcript

[Sarah Seager]

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[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

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[Sarah Seager]

Small child, my dad took me to a star party. That's not like where the Hollywood stars are, but it's where amateur astronomers have their telescopes out. I remember clearly getting to see the moon through a telescope for the first time. It's absolutely astonishing. The moon is literally a whole other world and I just thought, wow, what is out there? It's so huge and vast and magnificent. You know, whatever's out there beyond Earth.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Sarah Seager is An astrophysicist and planetary scientist whose research focuses on exoplanets, planets outside our solar system, orbiting other stars. When we spoke, she was at mit, sitting in front of her chalkboard, which.

[Adam Grant]

Was covered in equations. Sarah, is that the Goodwill hunting chalkboard behind you?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, it is mit.

[Adam Grant]

It's on brand. What are those equations?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, these equations describe exoplanets that fortuitously are aligned in a way that they go in front of the star as seen from our viewpoint. And we call these transiting planets. And it's the main way we discover exoplanets today.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Sarah's main research goal is to find another Earth, meaning a planet outside our solar system that could sustain life. We talked about how to detect exoplanets, the likelihood of finding alien life forms out there, and how her unique childhood.

[Adam Grant]

Circumstances led to her groundbreaking work. I have so many questions for you about this, but before we get there, take me back to your origin story. How did you end up in this field?

[Sarah Seager]

So, my origin story, I always loved the night sky. And, you know, coupled to that, I had a very quirky childhood. I lived with my mother and stepfather, and my stepfather was literally like a mean monster who mentally tortured me. And at the same time, I lived with my dad on weekends. And even though he was an educated man, he believed in crazy things. Like, he adored me so much, he told me he believed in reincarnation and that we would come back to this Earth together, like, again and again as, like, business partners or brothers or something. And so there I was, like, at 11 years old, going to the library, taking out a stack of books to kind of sort through this on my own. So what I got out of my childhood was, because of my stepfather, like, a distrust of authority and because of my dad, openness to crazy ideas that I could think through on my own. And, wow, what a winning combination for science, because we have to be able to challenge authority and we have to entertain out their ideas and sort through what is possible.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. So how did that take you to searching for exoplanets?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, it sounds so cliche. And I don't know how I came to this, like, at such a young age, in my early 20s. But life is short, you know, and if you find something you're good at, that you love doing, you should go for it. So I decided to go to graduate school in astronomy. And when I was in graduate school in the mid-1990s, that's when exoplanets were first discovered. And my PhD thesis advisor, by the way, was his first student. And he also. He only told me this a couple of decades later. He didn't realize that you shouldn't be giving a graduate student, like, an incredibly risky project. But I guess neither of us knew any better, and we thought it was an amazing idea. So I jumped on the chance to work on these new exoplanets.

[Adam Grant]

So what is an exoplanet?

[Sarah Seager]

An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star other than the sun, because in the night sky, all of those stars are suns. And if our sun has planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, et cetera, it makes sense that other stars have planets also. And they do.

[Adam Grant]

We didn't know this with much confidence, though, when you first got into the field, did we?

[Sarah Seager]

Not at all. The evidence we had was that we can see stars being born, and around those stars, we see disks of leftover stuff of gas and dust that we assumed formed planets. But when I first got into it, everyone had thought that exoplanets would be like our solar system, like small planets close to the star, with massive planets like Jupiter quite far from the star. And that's not what people found initially, because our selection biases. What's easier to find are big planets close to the star. So it's not only that not much was known about them, but what was known wasn't believed. And then, I mean, slowly the evidence grew, but not after a lot of, like, back and forth. And eventually the evidence just became incontrovertible that exoplanets are real and they're incredibly different from our solar system.

[Adam Grant]

How do you detect one?

[Sarah Seager]

There's so many ways to detect exoplanets. The most common one today is by watching star brightnesses as a function of time. So to oversimplify, it would be like taking your phone and pointing at a field in the night sky and just taking a picture over and over again, like, for nights on end and years on end. And what we're looking for is a tiny drop in brightness, because some planets, their orbits are aligned perfectly with our point of view. And so the planet goes in front of the star as seen from our viewpoint. And repeatedly, every time it orbits its star, it goes in front of the star, and there's a tiny, tiny drop in brightness. Like, what you have to understand is we don't spatially resolve those stars. They're just points of light. Yet we can measure the drop in brightness precisely enough to find evidence of planets orbiting their star. But it's a rare occurrence to align just so. And that's why we have to stare at the night sky and look at hundreds of thousands, like to millions of stars at one time.

[Adam Grant]

I can imagine then that AI has started to radically transform this detection process.

[Sarah Seager]

Like, yes and no. You know how there's two uses for AI? I'd say two uses in science. One is just to do our job better. So we can train AI with supervised learning or unsupervised learning and just get it to do more uniform job more quickly. But the part about AI that we really want it to do is find something we humans couldn't do. So not just doing what we can do better, but putting things together in a new way. For exoplanets, it's really done more of that first category. Just done things that we can do better, faster or more thoroughly or just more efficiently or with a tiny bit more insight. It hasn't really found, like a new path, a new way to do things.

[Adam Grant]

Do you have a sense of how many exoplanets might be out there?

[Sarah Seager]

Trillions. Trillions. In our galaxy alone. We have just scratched the surface. It's like we can meet our neighbors, but we can't meet the people on the other side of the globe. So literally every star appears to have a planetary system. And in our galaxy alone, there are hundreds of billions of stars. So, wow. I mean, if every star has multiple planets, that's more than hundreds of billions.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, that's just. That's a number at a scale that is almost impossible to grasp.

[Sarah Seager]

It is. It is almost impossible.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, it's hard. I can't even picture a trillion of anything.

[Sarah Seager]

I know. Just think about that vast night sky. At the very darkest sky, if we had good eyesight, we could see only thousands of stars. And yet there are hundreds of billions out there in our galaxy alone. And hundreds of billions of galaxies.

[Adam Grant]

Incredible.

[Sarah Seager]

So if that doesn't make you feel insignificant, like, what does?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, and I guess, you know, the other thing that makes really salient for me is it makes it seem so much more unlikely that there isn't intelligent life anywhere.

[Sarah Seager]

I agree biologists don't like this, but, yes, the numbers just seem to tell you there has to be intelligent life somewhere out there.

[Adam Grant]

Why don't biologists like that?

[Sarah Seager]

Because we don't understand how life originated on Earth, and so we cannot assume that it originates elsewhere until we understand how it happens here.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, but the question of mechanism seems like a really different one than the question of probabilities, doesn't it?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, aren't they related? I mean, you have to know how something Occurs in order to assess the probability of it occurring again.

[Adam Grant]

Fair. But, you know, I guess thinking about this as a social scientist, even not understanding the mechanisms, I think, what are the odds that, you know, we're talking one in a trillion times how many galaxies?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, I'm with you. I'm with you. And just to be honest, one thing that a lot of us want is to find a sign of life, one more sign of life with an independent genesis. And then I do think we can, you know, we can all agree that if it formed twice independently, the chance then is just so believable that it's happening elsewhere.

[Adam Grant]

So it's hard for me to even imagine. How would it be the case that it's just here, that it's just Earth?

[Sarah Seager]

Sure, let's for now agree that there has to be intelligent life somewhere out there with trillions of possibilities in our galaxy alone. What we're more focused on in a practical fashion, is the nearby stars. So it's not trillions of them or rather hundreds of billions of stars. It's maybe like the nearest hundred stars or the nearest few thousand stars that we can legitimately search with our generation's capabilities.

[Adam Grant]

Yep. And then, okay, the probability starts to feel a little smaller at that point.

[Sarah Seager]

It does, unfortunately.

[Adam Grant]

What do you think is the probability that we find intelligent life in, in our lifetime?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, okay, I hate to break it to you just on my personal opinion alone. It's pretty low.

[Adam Grant]

I figured as much.

[Sarah Seager]

I might even put it at zero for now.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Wow.

[Adam Grant]

And why is it just too far?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, a lot has to happen for intelligent life to evolve, Right? I may be getting outside of my depth here, but I think back to, like, the dinosaurs, right? The dinosaurs dominated. I can't imagine us humans like, even coexisting with dinosaurs. They're just so big and vicious. If the dinosaurs had survived, there wouldn't be room for us humans or some other life form to be intelligent there. So it's not just that we have to have planets nearby that have the right conditions for life, but life has to be able to evolve and get to a place where there's room for intelligent life to. To also evolve and to be willing to communicate with us. There's just a lot that has to go. Right.

[Adam Grant]

So what would it mean if there is life on other planets? Like, how do you think about our world changing if we do discover it?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, I think that really depends. I think on a daily basis it's not going to change our life. Right. But I definitely think it changes our view of like our place in the cosmos. You know, for a long time, for centuries, millennia, people thought that Earth was literally the center of the universe. We thought everything revolved around us. And later on in the Copernican revolution, people recognized or acknowledged or found evidence that we're not the center. But Earth revolves around our sun, and other planets revolve around our sun, and therefore our sun is the center. And later on we realized our sun is just but one of countless stars orbiting the center of our galaxy. And now our galaxy is just one of, you know, know, so many galaxies. So it kind of carries us forward in this cosmic story of what is our place, how do we fit in?

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so timeline wise, how long do you think it might take to discover life if it's out there?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, let's just start with simple bacteria, like not even complex life, just the simplest life form we can think about, maybe even simpler than our bacteria here on Earth. Let's start with that. That we hope to have evidence for. Maybe not robust solid findings, but kind of suggestions. We really hope to accomplish that in our lifetime. Starting with our solar system, the subsurface of Mars. One of my favorites is the clouds of Venus. Little primitive microbes just floating around. Perhaps subsurface of one of Jupiter's or Saturn's icy moons, like Enceladus is one of the favorite targets. It's got plumes of water kind of bursting out. And a lot of these places we've seen organic molecules or have hints from models that organic molecules could be there. So I think that is a big, big deal to find signs of primitive life. In terms of exoplanets, we now can study their atmospheres and we're looking there for signs of life, like a few steps removed from actually, you know, collecting samples and looking for bacteria, but gases that don't belong. Like here on Earth, we have oxygen that fills our atmosphere to 20% by volume. But without life, without plants and photosynthetic bacteria, we'd have no oxygen, cause it's so reactive. So we're looking for gases that don't belong. So I know I'm like really excited, and maybe you and others are not as excited about just finding these tentative hints, but that's where we're at.

[Adam Grant]

No, I think it's tremendously exciting to find even the most basic signs of life anywhere outside of Earth. I mean, that to me would be a, it'd be an earth shattering, no pun intended discovery. And I think, you know, I guess then there are, I mean, there are so many Questions this raises for me. One is the way you do your job. It almost eliminates the Fermi paradox for me.

[Sarah Seager]

In what way?

[Adam Grant]

As I understand it, and please correct my lay understanding. But when I first read about the paradox, it was the idea that, you know, on the one hand, it seems highly likely that there should be intelligent life out there. And on the other hand, if it were the case, we would already know about it and we don't, and therefore, what's going on. And from your point of view, it sounds like there are two simple explanations of this. One is that our tools are too primitive to detect it or to reach it. And the second is that it might just be way too far away.

[Sarah Seager]

That is definitely one of my thoughts on it as well. But the other side of the Fermi paradox is, if there is, like a super intelligence out there, why aren't they coming here? You know, that's kind of what it is. It's kind of less about us and what we can do and more about what this other supposedly more advanced civilization or civilizations would have done.

[Adam Grant]

But they could also be too far, right. And they could be super intelligent but still not be able to reach us, right?

[Sarah Seager]

I think so. Or they may decide it's not worth the energy to reach us. I mean, it literally takes a lot of energy. Or my favorite theory, actually is that. That they could maybe do all the above, but they just don't bother. It's like the ants. I mean, unless you live in, like, a concrete block apartment or house, the ants seem to come every year, like in the spring. You know, they come, they do reconnaissance. You get a few ants, and if they hit upon a piece of, like, cat food or something, right? Then you get a whole stream of them. And, you know, they have their own kind of intelligence. You know, they went back and told the team, come this way. But would you talk to those ants? Like, would you say, hey, I'm Adam. I've got this podcast. I mean, I. Well, I actually like to think we're the ants. We are the ants to the super intelligent beings out there. And, like, why would they come here and talk to us?

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Wow.

[Adam Grant]

You know, I think, okay, I wouldn't go and talk to them, but as.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

We do, whenever we discover a new.

[Adam Grant]

Animal species, I would want to study them. Are you suggesting we're not even interesting enough to be studied? Or are they studying us from a distance? How do you think about that?

[Sarah Seager]

Maybe they're studying us. Just like, if we study the ants, do they know we're studying them all Right.

[Adam Grant]

So it might be happening and we're just. We're in the dark about it.

[Sarah Seager]

Maybe.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Okay. As far as we're concerned. I've been so curious for a while.

[Adam Grant]

About if aliens are out there, is it a good idea to search for them? Tell me if you read this article. There was a Times piece before the pandemic by Steven Johnson called Greetings ET Please don't murder us. And Stephen at least raised the question of should we be galactic introverts rather than galactic extroverts? And it really pushed me to rethink the whole idea of doing the outreach and making contact, because I think the, you know, the best case scenario is really great, but the worst case scenario is existential risk. And when it comes to other forms of existential risk, we proceed extremely cautiously. And so I'm so curious as an expert on this, where do you come down? Should we be searching? Should we not be searching? If we find it, should we try to make contact?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, I can say that in the astronomy community, people do vigorously debate sending a message. And once in a while, some people get together and they're like, hey, we're going to send the signal. And then other people damp them down and like, no, don't send the signal. So that debate is actually an active one.

[Adam Grant]

And where do you come down on it?

[Sarah Seager]

I don't think it matters. I think whether or not we send a signal, I don't think there's anything we can do to get around the fact that others could find us if they're there and if they have the technology to do that, even if they're like us.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, let me phrase that a little differently. I think if they're vastly more intelligent than we are, of course they'll find us. But if they have similar levels of intelligence, they might have an equally difficult time finding us. Right. And it could be millennia or longer before they detect us.

[Sarah Seager]

Right. If they're like us now, they can't find us because we cannot find another Earth twin right now. So at this moment, they wouldn't be able to find us. But, you know, they could just be a few hundred years ahead of us, which is nothing in cosmic time.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Right.

[Sarah Seager]

And yet they could find us. I mean, the first thing they'll do is they'll see oxygen and they'll know it's a highly reactive gas and shouldn't be there. And so the first thing they'll do is suspect there's some kind of life here. Not necessarily intelligent life, but there's something re engineering the atmosphere, something that's constantly pumping out oxygen because it's so reactive it shouldn't last.

[Adam Grant]

So if we find them before they find us, do you think we should make first contact or no?

[Sarah Seager]

I do, I do. But I honestly will go back to what I said over and over again that if they have the ability to come to us, then they already know we're here.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

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[Adam Grant]

How you say it.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

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[Adam Grant]

Would you want to live to see humans make contact with aliens?

[Sarah Seager]

Absolutely, yes.

[Adam Grant]

Why?

[Sarah Seager]

I just think it's part of who we are as humans. We always want a narrative of where we came from and what it means to be human. And like me as the little girl or anyone who hopefully can go out and see the dark night sky. When you look up there, you realize just how much more there is to the world, to us, right, than our daily drudgery. There's so much out there and we just want to know what is out there, who might be out there.

[Adam Grant]

Did you read Project Hail Mary?

[Sarah Seager]

I did, Yes, I did read it.

[Adam Grant]

So Andy Weir was on the show and we had such an interesting conversation about his creative process around imagining what would a different origin of life look like and what kind of planet would they come from. I'm sure you daydream a lot about these kinds of questions. If you imagine us finding life out.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

There.

[Adam Grant]

Where do you envision it? What does it look like? What are your images?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, believe it or not, we don't do that very often unless we're asked, like by science fiction people. So we do sometimes think about it, but not in that sense. So for example, we have thought about this. I mean, one kind of one is that if a planet has like a higher surface gravity than Earth, we expect animals close to the ground with like big, huge legs so they can, they can defy gravity. Right? It's like the opposite of when you're in the swimming pool. You know how you can lift something really heavy in the pool because the water buoyantly is like helping you hold it up. The opposite of that. A high gravity planet where you can barely drag yourself around. Or we've imagined planets with like very unscientific, this is just like dreaming. But some of these planets have massive atmospheres and they're probably really dark at the Surface extremely dark and gloomy. Maybe there's birds with giant wings that fly high up where the wings are like plant leaves. You know, they have photosynthesis ability, like to get energy from their sun while they're flying.

[Adam Grant]

Wow.

[Sarah Seager]

We can easily put a bunch of things together, but it's never really in the context. It's never in the context of like actual scientific work right now.

[Adam Grant]

So I guess one thing this makes me wonder about is what do you make of the fact that so many people are opposed to the idea of doing the kind of work you do because we have too many problems here on Earth.

[Sarah Seager]

Right, Right. I do get that question a lot.

[Adam Grant]

Do tell.

[Sarah Seager]

I do. Well, you know, the best answer I can give you is to solve practical problems on Earth, we need a lot of people trained in technological sciences, like in physics and engineering and math and other topics. And one of the big things we do in astronomy is we communicate to the public the wonders of science. So I want you to think about young kids and even my origin story where I talked about the night sky. Like small kids don't know about the large defense agencies or they don't know that, you know, someone had to invent insulin or GLP1 or lasers. Right. We don't hear about those, like telling a little kid, wow, like, lasers are part of our everyday world and, you know, they were just invented from pure physics. Or hey, tell a teenager, you know how you're glued to your GPS because you've got to get somewhere that just came from this kind of long convoluted, just exploring rockets. Rockets and people wanted to get beyond Earth's gravity and orbit Earth. So one of the main things is just to attract more people to science. We need astronomy to show people how great it is. That's number one, encouraging people to go into STEM fields. The second one is that it's really hard to explain to people that pure science of any kind is needed and may at the outset seem wasteful. But those things I've just mentioned, GPS and medicines and lasers and so many things you have to do. So much extra science, you know, just to get to a discovery, you can't pre plan what it is you want to do. And I do have an analogy that is a bit of a sad analogy, but it's also a legit one. I got to go to the UK with when my kids were younger on a soccer tour. They call it football, of course. And honestly, there's so many players that go through the talent pipeline just for the very few that make it to the top teams. And so all of science is like that. You have a ton of stuff happening and you'll be like, why do I support astronomy? Why do I support this? Why do I support that? That's why in astronomy we take credit for some medical imaging, because we had to translate our data to images. And so we need to get that message out of why we spend so much on science, because without doing that, we can't find the discoveries that were not conceivable before.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I think that that tracks with what I know about the psychology of creativity. One of the the most successful models in the field is basically a model of blind variation and selective retention. This is Dean Simonson's work, probably most seminally, but basically what it says is just like evolution. Idea generation requires a tremendous amount of variety. There's going to be a lot of noise and the challenge is to find the signal and then hone in on it. And I think maybe underscoring that, I've read some evidence that approximately half of all patents are either accidental or spontaneous discoveries, you know, not driven by a planned search of any kind. And so I think you're spot on.

[Sarah Seager]

Great. Well, I'm glad that one resonated with you. But one more we should ask ourselves, like as a society, should we have exploration? Should we have great art and great music and parts of science are like that?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, they're kind of like creative adventures just for the sake of them.

[Sarah Seager]

That's right.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. For small businesses, every hire matters. But here's the challenge. You need to find the right person without turning hiring into a full time job itself. A bad hire can be costly, not just financially, but in team morale and momentum. And the process can be exhausting. Sorting through applications, trying to identify who actually has the skills you need, all while running your business. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's designed to streamline the entire hiring process. You can draft job posts, shortlist candidates, and even conduct AI powered screening interviews. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. No recruiter jargon needed. Less searching, more connecting with real talent. Hire right the first time, post your first job and get $100 off toward your job [e-mail] worklife. That's LinkedIn.com worklife. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Intuit QuickBooks Payroll. The key to great work and a great balance. But without the right support, balance might feel impossible. Especially when you're drowning in admin work Reclaim time with Intuit QuickBooks Payroll. It doesn't just handle payroll. It's so much more. It's your books, time tracking and team management in one powerful platform that actually works for you. No more juggling outdated systems or headaches over numbers that don't add up. QuickBooks Payroll gives you control because QuickBooks Payroll connects Payroll, time and accounting. You get a complete financial picture. That means smarter decisions on the fly without the guesswork. And with automations handling the heavy lifting, you get more hours back every week. More hours to think strategically, take care of yourself or actually breathe. Reclaim your work life. Balance this year with QuickBooks Payroll. Learn more by going to QuickBooks.com payroll today. That's QuickBooks.com payroll. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank capital1NA member FDIC.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, I want to go to a lightning round. I've got a few rapid fire questions for you. One is what is the worst career advice you've ever gotten?

[Sarah Seager]

Don't go into astrophysics. You'll never make it.

[Adam Grant]

Glad you ignored that one best advice. As somebody who's not been afraid to take scientific risks, I could give maybe.

[Sarah Seager]

More than one answer. But one idea is hone your inner voice. Like unpack your successes and then try to develop that inner voice. Like, you know, if you're walking in the back alley and there's like a shady character, you feel you're worried and you go the other way. But we also have that same in a positive way for science and for everything we do. Right. Like you may meet someone and be like, hey, wow, I need to get to know this person better. Or you know, you may have the opposite vibe. But we have that in science also. So honing that, that's the best advice I haven't gotten. But that I can give.

[Adam Grant]

Yep. Okay. Following that, do you have a hypothesis, a hunch, or an opinion that's controversial in your field?

[Sarah Seager]

Yes. Right now it's that there could be life, microbial life on Venus, in the clouds of Venus that are not made of friendly water but are made of concentrated sulfuric acid that kills all of our life instantly.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. Oh, if you turn out to be right on that one, that will be a revolution. Okay, let's see. Do you have a favorite space film?

[Sarah Seager]

I can't say I have a single space film, but I love all the films about meeting intelligent aliens. One is called Arrival, because it's really a film that doesn't assume these aliens are little green humanoids instead. They're like a weird kind of life that we can't really communicate with. We can't actually. And so I really like that depiction of it. I love the time travel, actually. I love every movie that has to do with time travel. I know time travel is not possible, but I just love that idea of, like, getting put in the future or the past. Some of the other movies I love Interstellar. What a great movie, because as much info as we can get about exoplanets now or in the future, we'll never know the little details. And in Interstellar, you know, they found planets. They may be places for us to go in the future, but until they actually go there, they don't know if we humans were so fragile, could survive on these other worlds.

[Adam Grant]

Great choices. If you got to host a dinner party for anyone in history, alive or dead, who would you invite?

[Sarah Seager]

You know, I'm not the one who admires people or has heroes. It's just, like, who I am as a person. But I would definitely invite dead family members. I would definitely want to bring them all back and have a moment that makes sense.

[Adam Grant]

I have to wonder, though, you wouldn't want to sit at dinner with Copernicus and Galileo.

[Sarah Seager]

Honestly, probably not. Like it might be. I don't know. I mean, there's something about having people in the past or people who are no longer alive. There's something about just preserving your memory and what you know about them. Like, what if you invited Kepler or Copernicus and they were a total ass? Like, how would you feel? Wouldn't that just, like, shatter your dream of these people? But no, no, no.

[Adam Grant]

I have modest expectations of their personality and character. I just think it would be so interesting to bring, you know, somebody who was responsible for one revolution into a time where there have been many others and see how they react and like. Or, you know, you take like. I don't know, like, I would love to have a dinner with Einstein reacting to the gravitational waves. Discovery.

[Sarah Seager]

I see.

[Adam Grant]

Okay.

[Sarah Seager]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

Now that that hypothesis is supported, what.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Does he envision next?

[Sarah Seager]

Right. Or maybe you'd like to bring someone from the future. Who would tell us our fate or if we're going to become those? Maybe cyborg or maybe not. Maybe we'll be all taken over by AI.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, I give you the mic now I think it's time. Do you have a question for me?

[Sarah Seager]

Well, I do have a question for you. I'd like to know what motivates you.

[Adam Grant]

What motivates me? I think there are a lot of things and it's a weird question to answer. As somebody who studies motivation, like, I should probably have a well thought out answer to this. But what seems to motivate me most consistently is one, a desire to help other people and two, a love of learning. I think those are kind of the twin joys of the work that I do. I remember. I don't know if I've ever felt as well captured by a quote as when I stumbled across EB White saying, I wake up in the morning torn between a desire to enjoy the world and a desire to improve the world. And this makes it very difficult to plan the day. And I feel that conflict a lot. But I think I've mostly been able to resolve it by trying to improve people's lives in a very small way through both discovering and communicating knowledge about what makes humans tick. I just find that endlessly fascinating.

[Sarah Seager]

I like it. Thanks for sharing that.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. Thank you for asking. I think what motivates me is understanding what motivates other people and then trying to help motivate them. That would have been a more succinct answer, wouldn't it?

[Sarah Seager]

I like it.

[Adam Grant]

Yes. Okay, so before we wrap, I just want to ask you, you have said frequently that we shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume that we are alone in the universe.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

Why?

[Adam Grant]

Why is that arrogant?

[Sarah Seager]

It's just self centered really. Like thinking that we're the only thing that could be out there.

[Adam Grant]

And what would you like to replace that with?

[Sarah Seager]

Humility. When you look at that night sky and just realize our earth is just a speck, we're like less than a speck of dust. I like that view because it's tough to get through life. Like we have a lot of high highs, low lows, and in the midst of all that lowness, I don't know if this is good or bad, but confronting like our own tragedies against the vastness of the universe, it somehow brings comfort. Aha.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so this is kind of a perspective taking or self distancing intervention for you where when you realize how insignificant we are, it makes what seem like it makes all the Big problems seem smaller.

[Sarah Seager]

It definitely does. That's why I like it. That's why I love the universe.

[Adam Grant]

I love it. Well, Sarah, thank you for taking the time to chat today. This is like being a kid in a candy store for me. So thank you.

[Sarah Seager]

Thank you, Adam. It was great chatting with you.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick. And our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ban Chang, Julia Dickerson Tansa Karl, Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[Sarah Seager]

You know, we could self destruct us humans. We could turn into AI or AI could, you know, eat us. But the cockroaches will still be here. Like when you think of the vastness of the universe and us self destructing, those cockroaches are very hardy.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, it's true. I would prefer to see nematodes survive.

[Sarah Seager]

Nematodes, yeah.

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. For small businesses, every hire matters. But here's the challenge. You need to find the right person without turning hiring into a full time job itself. A bad hire can be costly, not just financially, but in team morale and momentum. And the process can be exhausting. Sorting through applications, trying to identify who actually has the skills you need, all while running your business. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's designed to streamline the entire hiring process. You can draft job posts, shortlist candidates and even conduct AI powered screening interviews. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. No recruiter jargon needed. Less searching, more connecting with real talent. Hire right the first time, post your first job and get $100 off toward your job [e-mail] worklife. That's LinkedIn.com worklife. Terms and conditions apply.

[Sarah Seager]

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks. It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in. Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER call clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.