Episode Details

In the mountains of southwest China sits a radio telescope big enough to swallow the MCG. It's built to listen to the cosmos. Meanwhile, Beijing has reportedly brought in a science-fiction writer to advise on what to do if something out there answers. That writer is Cixin Liu, author of The Three-Body Problem. His big idea, the "dark forest," says the universe is full of silent hunters, and any civilisation that reveals itself gets destroyed.

So what does China think it's listening for, and why does it want the man who wrote that theory in the room? This week, Rich and Nick head into the dark forest. They start with the Three-Body Problem trilogy and move on to real telescopes, unexplained signals, and what happens to the human mind on the day disclosure stops being hypothetical.

- The silence problem: Trisolarans, sophons, and decades of signals we've already sent out. If any civilisation out there is far more advanced than us, announcing ourselves may be the worst thing we could have done. Our only edge may be the one thing the aliens don't understand: treachery.

- The telescope problem: FAST, the 500-metre dish with about 4,500 movable panels that can refocus without the structure ever moving. It's the most sensitive ear on the planet, and it's already picking up things nobody can fully explain.

- The signal problem: Fast radio bursts flash and fade in milliseconds but reportedly carry more energy than the Sun puts out in a year. Scientists assume they're natural. Rich has other ideas.

- The secrecy problem: Harry Reid's quietly funded UAP program, Luis Elizondo's resignation, and the private money from Robert Bigelow and Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Listen. Then there's Jeremy Corbell's prediction that governments will warn of an alien craft arriving in 2027, and his claim that the warning itself will be the misinformation. - The shock problem: Covid emptied the toilet-paper aisles. What would disclosure do? The guys look at "ontological shock," at how Disclosure Day handled public reaction, and at new research asking who would be hit hardest if confirmation ever came.

Some of this is astrophysics: radio waves, filament structures, bursts nobody can explain. Some of it is just history. Every time a more advanced civilisation has met a less advanced one on this planet, it has gone badly for the one with less.

Contact the show at conspiracycabal@outlook.com.

The Conspiracy Cabal doesn't promote conspiracy theories — we examine them. We search for the kernel of truth in every story, exploring how conspiracies start, why they persist, and what drives people to believe them.

Contact the show at conspiracycabalpod@outlook.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.