Look, I'm aware that I'm, uh, let's put it this way, a skeptically leaning kind of guy.

That's always been in my nature. When I hear something, I rarely instantly believe it, and I usually

start asking questions. As with all personality traits, sometimes this is a benefit, like when I'm

right to be skeptical and I don't buy a lie. And sometimes it's not so beneficial, like when I should

have just believed someone from the start.

And I'm also aware that sometimes this skepticism can be viewed as pessimism or cynicism. So I want to be very careful in how I word the main point that I'm going to make in this episode. I want to be

absolutely 100% clear that it is certainly possible to build a Dyson

sphere. And for those of you who don't know what a Dyson sphere is, don't worry, we're going to get

to that. But I also want to be absolutely 100% clear that it's really stinking hard to do it.

So hard that I don't imagine us doing it anytime soon,

where soon can mean 100 years, 1,000 years, or even 10,000 years.

And it may be so hard to do it that it's not even a good idea.

And therefore, outside of some massive expression of artistic sensibilities, we may never

build a Dyson sphere. And nobody in the universe may build a Dyson sphere.

But still, it's possible. And I must admit that we as a species have been capable of some truly awesome accomplishments,

things that our ancestors once thought were too difficult to actually do.

Like, I don't know, harnessing the power of the atom or curing diseases or wiping out entire species.

We're not so proud of that last one. But let's back up a bit.

What the heck is the Dyson sphere? And why is it so hard to build? The year is 1960. It's a

groovy time. SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is just getting started and is

mostly focused on radio signals.

We had just invented this technology within the past few decades that could transmit

...