this week, astrophysicist adam frank says not only will we find out there's life beyond earth. he says we'll find out very soon. the u.s. government working with venture capital to develop responsible a.i. we'll speak with the group's new director, and joanna skrobert,

on helping employees navigate a change of life. that's this week on "press: here." . good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. if you looked at earth from space, there would be no obvious sign anyone lived here. it's just a big, blue marble for 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 a deep space probe or all the satellites that we've put into orbit. astronomers call those technosignatures, and my first guest is the principal investigators in a nasa-funded effort to find technosignatures on other worlds to look for aliens, dr. adam frank. he's an astrophysicist, and his new book "little book of aliens" talks about technosignatures. good morning. i have a big question i want to ask you, but i want to really

understand technosignatures. you may remember that opening scene from the movie "contact" which does an excellent job of illustrating how a civilization's radio waves propagate out into space. we have been looking for other signals from other planets doing that for decades. technosignatures is bigger and different than that, right? give me an example of a technosignature. >> first of all, thank you, scott, for having me on today. technosignatures are indications of how much the game has changed and i wrote this book after, you know, 30 years of being an astrophysicist to show people that the search for life, we're at the edge of something. we're at the beginning of a new era. so the old way was to use a dit 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. we've discovered xo planets around the universe, or around the galaxy.

they're everywhere. we can see an exo planet and see into its atmosphere. are there chemicals in the atmosphere that would only be there because of an industrial society? or city lights. is there artificial illumination on the other side? so we can now -- we don't have to wait for a signal anymore. we can actually go watch, you know, alien civilization so to speak going about their civilization business. >> and i want to make sure the viewer understands exactly how earth-shattering that is because thanks to james webb, and the kepler probe, we know where to look and this means, at least your opinion is if i understand it correctly, we could be a few years out from discovering there's life on other planets. i mean, our lifetime. >> i want people to understand we may very well be the last generation that doesn't know the answer to, are we alone? and if you are young enough -- i may even be young enough at 61. we may be the first generation

to finally have an answer to a question that human beings have been arguing about for 2,500 years, and it's all been opinion until now. we're about to get data that will tell us one way or the other that will be -- 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 can't prove it right now, that the sheer size of the universe and the way we understand life is it would be almost mathematically impossible we're not alone. >> you know, there are alien optimists and alien pessimists. i'm an alien optimist who looks at it that way, however, as a scientist, i can sort of see also how, you know, there's so many accidents that go into allowing particularly technological civilizations, animals, you know, even multicellar animals to evolve,

that it's possible that that at least could be rare. i do believe that microbial life, that probably is quite common. as soon as the earth was ready, we saw life start, but it took a long time for animals, you know, higher animals to form. so it's possible that that could be rare, and the only way we're going to find out is to look and now finally we have the capacity to look. >> and that will be, you know, to make a pun, earth-shattering. there will be those who don't believe it. there will be those who feel that their religion has somehow been attacked and others who will say -- i was alive during the most amazing human discovery since fire. >> yeah. i really believe that this is -- that's the last chapter of the book. i try to let people understand why this will be the most important scientific discovery in the world. you know, even if we don't find intelligent life. let's just say we found biospheres, an indication that life had taken over a planet the

way it took over earth long before there were civilizations. that would itself show us -- because right now we don't know if life is an accident. it could be that earth is the only place ever, and life is so different than nonlife. there's no other system that is as inventive or creative or innovative the way life is. not stars, not mountain, not comets, and to know there was even one example of life would show us that we're part of a cosmic community of this innovative capacity, and just like the revolution, this would be that times a thousand. >> so pretend for a minute i am in charge of, you know, the government budget. nasa has given you a grant, but what -- no scientist ever said, i've got enough funding. i'm good. what do you need to push this harder? >> well, the -- there's already

a very -- there's a good -- there's good funding for astrobiology, but it's still, given the revolution we're undertaking, we need both the technology, the new telescopes and the theory to figure out what it is we're looking for. i would say we need both of those. we need more funding. it's still just a tiny, tiny sliver of the budget. double that, and we would be able to do the most extraordinary things you could imagine. it's really both technology and the theoretical advances that we need to know -- to do the search and to know exactly what we're searching for. >> normally i would absolutely avoid this next subject if we were talking about study. you know where i'm going with this because the search for extra terrestrial intelligencely serious scientists is serious science, but -- and every

newscaster makes the joke about little green men and ufos, but the u.s. military is taking this seriously. they have testified -- i mean, credible, rational, sober human beings have testified under oath before congress backed up by video that they saw something, but i guess the biggest surprise i have about it is the world did not completely lose its mind. >> from the scientific perspective, there is simply no data. there's really only three of those videos which get processed over and over and over again. there's no credible, hard scientific data which would relate the uaps or ufos to aliens. there are certainly things we see in the sky that we don't know what they are, and there's a reason that nasa panel just informed, and the testimony said, you know, after looking at, you know, hundreds of these things, only 6% were still in the unexplained category. now those 6% i'm all for a rational, open, scientific study

because people are interested, and it may very well be an issue of national security, and maybe there's some chance there's something there we really need to be interested in. so let's do the study and not have the usual ufo nuttiness and then we'll be able to know what it is, but as of right now, you know, my money is we're going to find evidence of life possiby soon in the skies of alien world where aliens live not in our own sky. >> and my last question to you is, do scientists have a name ready for that? you know, those guys, the others, the -- i guess it maybe depends on where they're from, the omicrons or -- do we have a name ready? >> it's a very good point. when we find them on an alien planet as we said, and again, it may be that what we find is a biosphere, right? we're going to find evidence for forests and microbes and, you know, the collective activity of life. we'll name them after the planet, but you're right. right now these planets have

these boring telephone numbers. we need to start coming up with more inventive names like bob's planet and call them bobbians. >> the dudes. maybe that's not inclusive. >> dudology. >> adam, i appreciate your time this morning. dr. adam frank, astrophysicist at rochester university, and the lead investigative on technosignatures. he's authored five books and his latest is "the little book of aliens." this term was coined by jill tartar. i interviewed her many, many years ago. her interview can be found on our website. i interviewed the scientist behind the kepler telescope as well who is credited with finding more than 2,500 things. presshere.com is where you'll find all of that. we'll be back in a moment. w

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♪♪ welcome back to "press: here." the commerce department is teaming up with venture capital and private enterprise to create a nonprofit to encourage companies to develop artificial intelligence in a responsible manner. set some standards, a protocol, a how-to guide for investors and

startups. responsible innovation labs is in charge of laying down those rules, and we have the person in charge of those labs. good morning to you. it seems like a logical way to zed set a standard for silicon valley and beyond. if you are going to do that, start at the venture capital level. that makes total sense to me because they have tremendous influence. >> we agree. we're building responsible innovation labs for venture investors who are capitalizing this industry, but also for the founders and startups. i think one of the great things about builders in the valley and elsewhere is that if there's a better way and you find it, that's both in what you build and how you build it and what we're focused on with these standards is finding better ways to build in this really important technology. >> and you have tremendous buy-in. it's something like 30 plus venture firms are saying we'll sign onto this. >> we're excited about the number of venture funds who have signed on. since this week, we've seen even more venture funds sign on

board. we're excited about that. we're also seeing startups come to us organically saying they're interested. we're very excited about this. what we're most excited about is actually implementing this with the venture fund. that's where the real hard work begins, and we're excited to get into that with them right now. >> give me an example or a taste of what these protocols are calling for. i assume it's beyond do no evil. >> look. this is a pretty straight forward roadmap 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 so we're saying, look. get some organizational buy-in. that sounds fairly straight forward, but actually we give some concrete tips to our signatories about how you might do that. we believe it's important to foster trust through some level of transparency. transparency will be important depending on what the risks are, depending on how you want to protect your ip, your

competition. it may be important for your customers to hear from you, for your internal stakeholders across the company to hear from you. transparency is important. we believe it's important to audit and test, to forecast risks and benefits and then of course, to make improvements. there's a lot of deference and optionality here, but it's important for the roadmap. >> what's the goal? the best way to get a handle on these protocols would be to try to understand what it is you're trying to prevent. >> well, i think -- let me say -- start with a positive, first, right? 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 how you build it and in this age of a.i. that we're entering into, trust is so critical, right? we believe trust is going to help you scale, and to build trust with your customer base, with your stakeholders, again, we think this roadmap is -- it

points you in the right direction. so yes. so i think building a better product is ultimately what you want to do. that helps you have a more durable customer base and frankly enjoy the upsides of that building, and then, yes. we think this will prevent harm as well, and prevent this thing of unintended consequences. >> so when we're talking about a product, you know, when we talk about a.i., some of it's obvious. chatgpt, i think a lot of my viewers would, you know, imagine a giant computer with blinking lights, et cetera, but sky net for instance, but a.i.'s going to be in a lot of things. a.i. is going to be -- >> correct. >> -- part of my phone. so i mean, we're talking about really big efforts and really small efforts. >> correct. yes. i think we think as one of our venture signatories said earlier this week, every industry right now -- every board room, every established industry is looking around talking at the board

level about how they will incorporate a.i. into their business. so if a.i. delivers as we think it will, and we're optimists about that, it'll show up in every facet of existing industries and to your point, scott, there will be thousands and thousands of applications developed either on top of the frontier models that you're seeing and reading about in the press, and that's where it'll show up in consumers' hands. it'll show up in the doctors' offices, in your bank accounts, and so many other places, right? it will show up next to you at work, and so in that case, it will really be ubiquitous and that's really important, again, to build trust. >> that makes sense. now i mean, if i'm -- i'm a signatory to this, let's say. i run a venture firm and i'm a startup, whatnot. is there some sort of enforcement? are you the a.i. police? >> great question. we think of ourselves as helping the venture industry get better at its practice, at its methods. we want to help startups and operators get better at

building. we think there are other mechanisms for accountability. we think the startups will have signatories and say, have they developed on those commitments? they'll be looking at those startups and saying, if you want to sell into intersurprise, big, sophisticated companies will want some level of trust about what you're building and selling. from a sales perspective, that's an accountability mechanism. there's going to be accountability increasingly for more than one place, and that's a good thing. >> yes. so if you want money for instance from general catalyst, and you're a startup, you better sign, you know, you better sign onto this and follow those rules and then when you make that product and you want to sell it to salesforce, salesforce is going to say, have you signed onto the rules? and there will be this way of enforcing it that way. >> yeah. i don't want to speak for general -- >> i was just using an example. >> for sure. i think for sure you will see a

signatory and understand that is important to them and you'll increasingly see those signatories use this framework in their due diligence as they evaluate companies, and again i think hopefully that helps them grow in what they build, how they have governance and build systems, et cetera. >> so my last question fur is you're working with the commerce department. there are those who are concerned about government's involvement in another powerful technology which is social networking, and i think even the most conservative critics would say government does have a role, that private industry has a role, but grow uncomfortable at least in the case of social networking when in the past those have sort of come up together, when it seems that government and private enterprise is teaming you. how do you respond to that, that this is -- that you're working with the commerce department yet you represent the private industry? i realize you represent a nonprofit, but -- that we're talking about in the industry.

>> just a couple of key important points here. 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's really, really important to collaborate right now where you have this world-changing technology sort of at our fingertips, and so yes. we did engage with the commerce department of the biden administration. i'm getting around and having conversations with staffers on capitol hill. we will talk to anyone anywhere regardless of party because it's important to collaborate. it's important to collaborate with academia and civil society. the stakes are really high, when we have to get this right. that's one thing. two, you know, we understand that there's a wide range of views. there's a lot of deeply -- deep intensity of 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 worst thing we think we can do is to withdraw and go into our corners because we think that will -- that will lead to a system where it gets harder to compete and harder to innovate. so that's why we're showing up, and that's why we're ready to talk to anyone anywhere any time. >> well, i appreciate you walking us through some of those things. you're the head of responsible innovation labs and we'll be back in just a minute.

♪♪ welcome back to "press: here." we've gotten a lot better in the corporate world acknowledging and prioritizing the needs of pregnant employees, and new moms, and nuring moms. my next guest says the next step is to acknowledge the needs of menopausal women, and to start that next step joanna schubert

joins us. joanna, welcome. first define for me what the problem is. women have been a part of the marketplace -- or the workplace rather for decades upon decades upon decades and they've gone through menopause. what is the problem that needs to be solved? >> so the problem is that women don't know that they are experiencing things that are related to menopause or peri-menopause. so around age 35, women's estrogen levels start fluctuating and that leads to hot flashes, anxiety, mood changes, lack of sleep. we have a lot of things that are related to that, and research shows that a lot of women get derailed in their careers because they're experiencing these symptoms, and honestly they don't know that they can get treated for them. so a lot of women quit their

jobs or don't apply for promotions because they're not feeling well, and that can be solved. >> but women have had, you know, general physicians and gynecologists for years. why do we need anything more than that? >> they're not trained in menopause and peri-menopause. there was a study that came out in 2002 by the world health initiative that wrongly said that women should stop taking estrogen, and that study has been thoroughly debunked, but because of that study for the past 20-plus years, no physicians have been trained in what the right treatments are for women in peri-menopause and menopause. no physicians have done the research on estrogen and the power of estrogen, and all that has stopped which means for the past 20 years, women have not gotten the appropriate treatment and now that that has been debunked, we can show it makes a difference women get the right treatment. >> yes, and i did my research. that's what i came up with too is there's this underlying

controversy. part of it is people saying, do we treat the normal human process of aging as a medical condition? that's one question, and then yes. this issue over whether or not there is some long-term effect to hormonal therapy. >> there's no question that the aging process has been treated forever, right? there are erectile dysfunction medicines for men. they don't say they should just suffer like this. why would we possibly think that women should suffer in the same way? if there are treatments that can make it so you can sleep, so you don't have anxiety, so that you can enjoy sex, so that all these other things that are related to menopause can be fixed, there's no reason why we shouldn't fix them for any, you know, because we're supposed to age gracefully. >> and now one of the key things is you provide, you know, the connection between the woman and the doctor, but one of the key things for both -- well, actually, everybody. the woman, the doctor, and you, is that insurance buy into this. they need to pay for it. did you get any pushback on this

on the telehealth? >> no. because of covid, the telehealth rules have now changed and now insurance covers telehealth the same way they would cover in-person visits and many women get better care online than they do from going the doctor. it's better for some being on the computer than being in a physician's office. an insurance contract is able to get all of our visits paid for by insurance. >> and companies are buying into this as well? the company hr departments are saying, you know, because there are lots of things i can offer my employees as benefits and i have to pick and choose, but they are -- they are going with you? >> actually, i have a t-shirt that says menopause is hot, and what i'm saying is it is. employers are realizing this is a key part of their work force. these women are awesome, and they're doing great in their jobs and why not give them the right treatment so they can

continue to do that work? >> that is fantastic. i appreciate you being here and talking so frankly. the ceo of midi health. thank you so much. "press: here" will be back in just a minute.

♪♪ that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. we are groce

and we are your bargain bliss market. what is bargain bliss? you know that feeling you get when you find the name brands you love, but for way, way less? that's bargain bliss. this thanksgiving, we're giving you even more reasons to celebrate. we are offering you $21 off a jennie-o frozen turkey with in-store discount. that's as low as $0.50 a pound. so why wait? hurry in to your neighborhood grocery outlet today. because this deal is only available while supplies last. nights like this are why we love college football. >> on sunday night football. ♪ resiliency really is just not giving up. i've certainly had some times where i didn't feel li