Ceo of media health on helping employees navigate a change of life. Thats this week on press here. Good morning, everyone. Im scott mcgrew. If you looked at earth from space there would be no obvious sign anyone lived here. Its just a Big Blue Marble or a pale blue dot, but if you look closely enough you might start to see the stuff we humans leave lying around, the carcass of an Apollo Lander on the moon, a deep space probe or all those satellites that weve put into orbit. Astronomers call those techno signatures and my first guest is the Principal Investigator in a nasafunded effort to find techno signatures on other words to look for aliens, dr. Adam frank is an astro physicist and his new book little book of aliens talk about astro signatures. First, i want to understand techno signatures and you may remember the movie contact that does a great job of how video waves propagate out in the space and weve been looking for signals from other planets looking for that in decades and techno signals are different from that and give me an example of a techno signature. Thank you for having me on today. So techno signatures are how much the game has changed and i wrote this book after 30 years of being an astro physicist to show people that the search for life, were at the edge of something and its the beginning of a new era. So the old way was to use a Radio Telescope and just pointed at a star and hope that there was something there maybe sending you signals. What we have now is the capacity to actually we know where planets are and we discovered exoplanets around the universe or around the galaxy and we can look at an individual planet, exoplanet and we can look into its atmosphere and we can tell is there pollution there . Are there chemicals in the atmosphere that are only there because of an Industrial Society or city lights. Is there artificial illumination on the other side . We dont have to wait for a signal. We can go watch alien civilization, so to speak, going about their civilization business. And i want to make sure the viewer understands how earth shattering that is and we know where to look and we this means at least, your opinion is if i understand it correctly, we could be a few years out from discovering theres life on other planets. I mean, our lifetime. I want people to understand that we may very well be the last generation that doesnt know the answer to are we alone and if youre young enough. I may be young enough at 61, we may be the first generation to finally have an answer to the question that human beings have been arguing about for 2,500 years and its all been opinion until now. We are about to get data that will tell us one way or the other that will give us hard numbers relevant to this question, are we alone . And most scientists and lots of people who just look at this sort of thing for fun would tell you it is almost certainly likely we are not alone, even if we cant prove it right now that the sheer size of the universe and the we we understand life its almost mathematically impossible we are not alone. There are alien optimists and alien pessimists and i am an alien optimist. However, as a scientist, i can see also how, you know, there are so many accidents that go into allowing particularly technological civilization, animals and multicellular animals to evolve that its possible that that, at least, could be rare. I do believe that microbial life, that probably is quite common just because on earth as soon as we see the earth is ready we saw life starting, but it took a long time for animals, higher animals to form so its possible that could be rare and the only way well find out is to look and finally now we have the capacity to look. And that would be to make a pun, earth shattering and there will be those who dont believe it. There will be those who feel that their religion has somehow been attacked and others who say i was alive during the most amazing human discovery since fire. Yeah. I really believe and thats the last chapter of the book. I like to help people understand why this will be the most important scientific discovery in the world. Even if we dont find intelligent life. Say we just found biospheres and an indication that life had taken over a planet the way it took over earth long before there were civilizations and that would itself show us because right now we dont know whether or not life is an accident and it could be that earth is the only place ever and life is so different from nonlife. As a physicist, theres no other system that is as inventive ore creative or innovative the way life is. Not stars, not mountains and not economics and to show uses that theres one example of life would show us we are a Cosmic Community of this innovative capacity when people realize earth is not the center of the universe and this would be the kaepernick us times 1,000. Pretend i am in charge of the government budget. Nasa has given you a grant, but i know scientists have said ive got enough funding. Im good. What do you need to push this harder . Well, theres already a very theres good funding for astrobiology, but its still, given the revolution that we are undertaking we need both the technology and the new telescopes and we need the theory to figure out what it is were looking for. We need both of those and we need more funding because the thing we could be doing if we had more funding because its still a tiny, tiny sliver of the budget, double that and wed be able to do the most extraordinary things you can imagine and its technology and the theoretical advances that we need to know to do the search and to know exactly what were searching for. Normally, i would absolutely avoid this next subject if we were talking about you know where im going with this because the search for extraterrestrial intelligence by serious scientists is serious science, but and every newscaster makes the joke of little green men and the u. S. Military is now taking this seriously, and they have testified incredible, rational sober human beings have testified under oath before Congress Backed up by video that they saw something, and i guess the Biggest Surprise i had about it is the world did not completely lose its mind. From the scientific perspective, theres no data and there are only three of those videos which are processed over and over again. Theres no credible, Scientific Data which will relate the uaps and ufos to aliens and certainly there are things we see in the sky that we dont know what they are and in the recent nasa panel that just formed, the testimony said that after looking at hundreds of these things, only 6 were still in the unexplained category. Now those 6 im all for a rational, open, Scientific Study because people are interested and it may very well be an issue of National Security and maybe theres some chance that theres something there that we really need to be interested in. So lets do the study and not have the usual ufo nuttiness and then well be able to know what it is, but as of right now, my money is were going to find evidence of life, possibly soon in the skies of alien world where aliens live, not in our own skies. And my last question to you is do scientists have a name ready for that . Those guys, the others i guess it maybe depends on where theyre from. The omicrons. Do we have a name ready . Thats a very good point. When we find them on an alien planet, and again, it may be that what we find is a biosphere. Maybe well find evidence of forests and microbes and well name them after the planet and right now the planets all have these boring telephone numbers and 34b, d. We need to come up with better names for the planet, like bobs planet. I was thinking about dude. Dudology. Adam, i appreciate your time this morning and dr. Adam frank is an astro physicist and americas lead investigator on techno signatures and author of five books and his latest is the little book of aliens. The term techno signatures was made by dr. Carver, along with interviews with seth shostak and the interview with the scientist behind the kepler telescope credited with finding more than 2500. Pressheretv. Com is where youll find all of that. Well be back in a moment. With katie porter. Porter refuses corporate pac money. And leads the fight to ban congressional stock trading. Katie porter. Taking on big banks to make housing more affordable. And drug company ceos to stop their price gouging. Most politicians just fight each other. While katie porter fights for you. For Senate Democrat katie porter. Im katie porter and i approve this message. You want to see who we are as americans . Im peter dixon and in kenya. We built a hospital that provides maternal care. As a marine. We fought against the taliban and their crimes against women. And in Hillary Clintons state department. We took on genderbased violence in the congo. Now extremists are banning abortion and contraception right here at home. So, im running for congress to help stop them. For your family. And mine. I approved this message because this is who we are. Welcome back to press here, the Commerce Department has created a nonprofit to encourage companies to develop Artificial Intelligence in a responsible manner, set some standards, a protocol, a howto guide for investors and startups. Responsible Innovation Labs is in charge of laying down those rules and gara banzal is in charge of those labs. Good morning to you. Good morning. A way to set a standard for silicon valley. If youll do that, start at the Venture Capital level and it makes sense to me because they have tremendous influence. We agree. We are building responsible Innovation Labs for example investors who are capitalizing and also for the founders and startups. I think one of the great things about builders in the valley is if there is a better way youd find it and thats what were focused on with these standards is finding better ways to build in this really important technology. 30 venture firms said well sign on to this. We are excited about the venture funds and since we announced this earlier this week weve seen even more venture funds, and weve seen startups come us organically and we are very excited about this. What we are most excited about is implementing this with a venture fund and thats where the real hard work begins and were excited to get that right now. Give me a taste of what these programs are calling for. I assume its do no evil. Look, this is a pretty straightforward road map with a lot of deference to the builders and the investors here. So let me just give you a couple of examples. Look, people want help and get some organizational buyin and that sounds straightforward and we have signatories about how you might do that and we believe its important to foster trust through some level of transparency. Transparency is important depending on what the risks are and depending on how you want to protect your i. P. , and there are certain initiatives where it may be important from your customers to hear from you, from internal stakeholders across the company so transparency is important. We believe its important to audit and test, to forecast risks and benefits and to make it to the improvement. Theres a lot of deference and optionality here for all of the builders and its important that we lay down this pretty straightforward road map. Whats the goal . Maybe the best way to handle is to understand what it is youre trying to prevent. Well, let me start with the positive, first. I think so much of this industry, this sector is built around finding better ways to serve customers and that, again, is in what you build and in this age of ai that youre entering into, trust is so critical and we believe trust will help you scale and to build trust with your Customer Base and your stakeholders, again, we think this road map points you in the right direction. So, yes, building a better product is ultimately what you want to do. That helps you have a more durable Customer Base and frankly, enjoying the upsides of that building and then, yes, we think this will prevent harm, as well and prevent this thing of unintended consequences. When were talking about a product. When we talk about ai, some of it is obvious and chatgpt and a lot of my viewers would say a giant computer with blinking light, et cetera and skynet, for instance, but ai will be in a lot of things and ai will be a part of my phone. Correct. So were talking about really big efforts and these are very small efforts. Yes. I think we think as one of our venture signatories said earlier this week, every industry right now, every boardroom and every established industry is looking around talking to their c suite about how to incorporate ai into their business and if ai will deliver and were optimistic about that and it will show up in every faceted industry and to your point, there will be thousands and thousands of applications developed either on top of the frontier models that you are seeing and reading about in the press and that is where it will show up in consumers hands. It will show up in the doctors offices, in your Bank Accounts and so many other places, right . So it will show up next to you at work. So in that case it will be ubiquitous and it will be very important to build trust. That makes sense. Im a signatory to this, and im a venture firm and a start up. Are you the ai police . Great question. We think of ourselves as helping the venture get better at building. We think there are other mechanisms for accountability and we think the startups are looking at sig nat nat ors and weve loofrn boon lookings startup you want to sell in important important prize, so from a pure sales perspective, that is another neckable afternoonism. Your customers care and that will be more than one place and thats a good thing. If you want money as a catalyst and youre a venture startup, you better follow those rules and when you make that product . You want to sell it to salesforce, salesforce will say have you signed on to the rules and it will be a way of enforcing it that way. I dont want to speak for general or what they will require. Right. For sure. I think certainly you will see a venture signatory. I think you will see this framework in their Due Diligence as they evaluate companies and hopefully that helps them grow in what they build, how they have governance and build system, et cetera. So my last question for you is you are working with the Commerce Department, and i know there are those who are concerned about governments involvement in another powerful technology which is social networking, and i think even the most conservative critics say government does have a role. Private industry has a role and grow uncomfortable at least in the case of social networking when those have sort of come up together when it seems like government and private enterprise is teaming up. How do you how do you respond to that that this is, that youre working with the Commerce Department and yet you represent the industry and i know you represent a nonprofit. Just a couple of key important points. One is this is proactive leadership from the venture and startup community. Part of our job at responsible Innovation Labs is to collaborate. We think it is really, really important to collaborate right now where you have this worldchanging Technology Sort of at our fingertips and so yes, we did engage with the Commerce Department and the biden administration. Im getting around and having conversation with staffers on capitol hill. We will talk to anyone anywhere regardless of party because its important to collaborate. Its important to collaborate with academia and Civil Society and thats one thing. Two, we understand that there is a wide range of use. There is a lot of deep intensity to feelings around this issue and how do we best deploy this technology. At responsible Innovation Labs we want to accelerate and we want to deploy and we think Building Trust is the best way to do that and so for us, engaging is the way to promote growth and competition. The worse thing we think we can do is to withdraw and go to our corners because we think that will lead to a system that will get harder to compete. So why were showing up and ready to talk to anyone, anywhere any time. Gaurab bansal. He is the headresponsible Innovation Labs and well be back in just a minute. Welcome back to press here. Weve gotten a lot better in the corporate world acknowledging and prioritizing the need of pregnant employees and new moms and nursing moms. My next guest says the next step is to acknowledge the needs of menopausal women, and to start that step Joanna Strober says we need to Start Talking about it. Joanna is the ceo of midi health which recently received 25 million in a venture led by google. First, define for me what the problem is. The women have been a part of the marketplace or the workplace for decades upon decades upon decades and theyve gone through menopause. What is the problem that needs to be solveded . The problem is that women dont know that they are experiencing things that are related to menopause or perimenopause. Around age 35 womans estrogen levels start fluctuating and start going down. That fluctuation leads to hot flashes, anxiety, mood changes, lack of sleep and we have a lot of things related to that and Research Shows a lot of women get derailed through the years because theyre experiencing the symptoms and they dont know that they can get treated for them. So a lot of them quit their jobs or dont apply for promotions because theyre not feeling well and that could be solved. But women have had general physicians and gynecologists for years and why do we need more than that . They are not trained in menopause or perimenopause. There was a study that wrongly said women should stop taking estrogen. That has been debunked. No physicians have been trained in what the right treatments are for women in perimenopause and menopause. No physicians have done research on estrogen and the power of estrogen and the research has stopped and women have want gotten the appropriate treatments and now that that research has been completely debufrpged now we can show it makes a huge treatment for women to get the right treatments. As i did my research thats what i came up with, too, is that theres this underlying controversy. Part of it is that people are saying do we treat the normal, human process of aging as a medical condition, thats one question and then yes, this issue of whether or not there is some longterm effect to hormonal therapy. Theres no question the aging process has been treated forever, right . There is erectile disfunction for men and they dont say they should just suffer like this, why would they possibly think women should suffer in the same way if there are treatments that they can make so you can sleep and you dont suffer anxiety and enjoy sex so all of these things can be fixed theres no reason to not fix because were supposed to age gracefully. One of the key things is you provide the connection between the woman and the doctor, but one of the key things for both actually everybody, the woman, the doctor and you is that insurance buy into this, that they pay for it. Did you get any pushback on this on the telehealth. No. Now Insurance Companies cover telehealth the same way they would cover inperson visits and many women get better care online than they do from having to go to the doctor. Its a much better conversation and a more honest conversation that theyre able to have on their computer rather than being in the Physicians Office so, no, we are finding that we are able to get insurance contracts and all of our visits paid for by insurance. And companies are buying into this, as well. The Company Hr Departments are saying because there are lots of things i can offer my employees as benefits, and ive got to pick and choose, but they are going with you. Actually, i have a tshirt that says menopause is hot, and what im finding is that it is. Employers are realizing this is i key part their workforce. These women are awesome and theyre doing great in their jobs and why not give them the right treatment so they can continue to thrive at work . Thats fantastic. Well Joanna Strober i appreciate you being here and talking so frankly and Joanna Strober is the ceo of media health. Press here will be right back. This ad . Typical. Politicians. Hes bad. Im good. Blah, blah. Lets shake things up. With katie porter. Porter refuses corporate pac money. And leads the fight to ban congressional stock trading. Katie porter. Taking on big banks to make housing more affordable. And drug company ceos to stop their price gouging. Most politicians just fight each other. While katie porter fights for you. For Senate Democrat katie porter. Im katie porter and i approve this message. Thats our show for this week. My thanks to my guests and thank you for making this part of your sunday morning. You want to see who we are as americans . Im peter dixon and in kenya. We built a hospital that provides maternal care. As a marine. We fought against the taliban and their crimes against women. And in Hillary Clintons state department. We took on genderbased violence in the congo. Now extremists are banning abortion and contraception right here at home. So, im running for congress to help stop them. For your family. And mine. I approved this message because this is who we are. Damian trujillo hello and welcome to comunidad del valle, im damian trujillo, and today the San FranciscoInternational Arts festival is back on your comunidad del valle. [music] [music]