This program is sponsored by the Kavli Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Kavli Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity. I'm Alan Alda, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

The interesting thing about space is that it's kind of the locus of all utopias.

You know, very common fantasy as a kind of libertarian idea that Earth has become

kind of bureaucratized and generally wimpy and it'd be good to do away with that and if we could

just get away from the sort of bureaucrats and overarching

authorities we could set up this sort of superior society. That first one is the

kind of like more of the Elon Musk view of things. Jeff Bezos who's another

big fan of these sees it as like abundance and environmentalism,

meaning we will have all the riches of space and will also boost a lot of us and a lot of our heavy industry to space and clean things up.

There are a lot of different camps that are latched on to this fantasy of a new chance.

If this became a space race and the stakes started getting higher for land grabs on the moon or on Mars or

something. We imagine that could end up sort of catastrophically. We'd like to

avoid that. That's Kelly and Zach Wienersmiths. Kelly is a PhD ecologist and Zach is a cartoonist. So they might

seem an odd couple to be asking questions about humanity leaving Earth for

space, but they've spent several years digging deeply into what's become to many

people a fascination, even an obsession with the notion of setting up colonies on both

the Moon and Mars. The book they've written is called A Sea colonies on

the moon and Mars. The book they've written is called a city on Mars,

which sounds at first a little like an endorsement of the idea

until you read the subtitle, which is,

Can we settle space? Until you read the subtitle, which is,

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