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60. Dr Alfredo Carpineti on Invisible Rainbows, the Unseen Universe and Pride in STEM

• Humanise Live • Season 1 • Episode 60

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"I blame dinosaurs, and I blame London." 

Astrophysicist and science communicator Dr Alfredo Carpineti (IFLScience, The Big Questions; creator of The Astroholic Explains; founder and chair of Pride in STEM) joins Humanism Now  to explore why the cosmos still sparks childlike wonder, how great science communication balances accuracy with storytelling, and why his upcoming book Invisible Rainbows pairs “unseen light” with the human stories too often left out. 

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Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.

James Hogson:

Welcome to the Humanism Now Podcast. I'm your host, James Hodgson. We often talk here about how humanists have a look at the universe with awe and a sense of wonder. And the value of exploration. Our guest today has not only engaged in that, but has made it his full-time vocation, profession, and now he's helping others to do the same. We're delighted to be joined by Dr. Alfredo Carponetti, astrophysicist, science communicator, and co-host of the Big Questions podcast at IFL Science, as well as his own podcast, The Astroholic Explains. Alfredo is the founder and chair of Pride in STEM, creator of The Astroholic, and the author of a forthcoming book, Invisible Rainbows, which explores the unseen universe and the untold stories of the people who reveal it. Dr. Alfredo Carpanetti, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Alfredo Carpineti:

Thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure.

James Hogson:

The pleasure is ours. I know we've been friends for some time now, and I've met you at various humanist UK events and around in London as well. And I've been a follower of the Astroholic Explained podcast as well. One of the inspirations for us to get started here at Humanism Now. For the uninitiated, what makes someone an Astroholic? What first got you involved in the area and why take it to such an extent?

Alfredo Carpineti:

I think I will have to blame two things. I will have to blame dinosaurs, and I will have to blame London.

James Hogson:

Not two things you you associate with astronomy.

Alfredo Carpineti:

Not exactly, but that is how my journey started. I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was a child, like many other children are. It was uh pre-Jurassic Park, so I always joke that uh I was into dinosaurs when they were still underground. And uhy week I would get a little dinosaurs booklet from the newsagent, and it was uh actually a British publication translated in Italian, and it was by this uh paleontologist from Cambridge working at the Natural History Museum, and I was obsessed. I wanted to be a paleontologist. With my parents, uh, we decided to come to the UK for holiday, and I was like, we must go to the natural history museum, which took some convincing because my parents are very much uh my dad trained as an architect, my mom loves design, they wanted to go to the Fern Album Museum, which is a stunning museum, but it is next door to the Natural History Museum, and so I was just like, please let's go there, and I convinced dad to take me there, and which made him realize that I was never going to be a normal kid because there was this fossil of a caleophysis, and it's still there, you can go and see it. But what's really exciting about this fossil is that in the torax of this small dinosaurs, there is a baby Calophysis, and so at first they thought that this was the first dinosaurs giving birth to live young, and then they realized it was a little bit too big to be a fetus, and so they thought, at least at the time, and so you need to imagine me as uh eight years old really excited about explaining to my dad that this might be the first cannibal dinosaur. Now we don't think that it was cannibal, that it was just accidental overlay of the fossils of an adult over a juvenile. But at the Natural History Museum at the time, because it was the early 90s, there were a lot of possible explanations for why the dinosaurs went extinct. Because at the time we didn't know that massive asteroid, the Chico's Club, impact it hurt 66 million years ago. We hadn't found the crater. That was one of the hypotheses, and there were other hypotheses. I remember maybe if any of you listeners had been to the National Museum at the time, there were little drawings, and one was like that the dinosaurs died on boredom, and there was a drawing of dinosaurs playing cricket. I didn't get that joke at the time. We don't have uh cricket in Italy, at least, not uh diffuse enough for eight-year-old to get that joke, but I'm sure that it was very popular in the UK. But another possible explanation was uh supernova, and I had no idea what that was. Dad didn't know what that was. When we went back home, looked up on encyclopedia, and I found this explanation, but it was very technical. The next thing I asked was a book about astronomy to better understand, and then I asked for a telescope for my holy communion, the Catholicism coming in with death, and then the rest is pretty much history because when we finally set up the telescope, I was just like it just came natural. Like I pointed at something in the sky, like that is Jupiter, let's look at Jupiter. And I was like, how can you know that it's Jupiter? And it's like it's not twinkling, it's not twinkling, it must be a planet, and it's so bright, and it's late at night, so it cannot be Venus, it must be Jupiter. And we looked at it and we saw the band and we saw the the great red spot, uh and suddenly it just like everything clicked in my brain, and that was 30 years ago, and I knew that I wanted to do astronomy, I knew that I wanted to study and understand the universe. So I think to summarize and actually give you a proper answer, what makes you what makes an astrologic, I think, somebody that just have such a passion, uh borderline obsession with uh finding out what's out there in the universe.

James Hogson:

And what keeps you curious and passionate about the cosmos today? Have you maintained that childhood excitement and wonder that you had when you were eight years old?

Alfredo Carpineti:

Oh, absolutely. And it's the fact that uh we first of all we know so much now, we have learned so much. But if we then we can uh break it down in any kind of uh historical period, we can uh start it with the start of modern Western science, Galeo onwards, and we'll say, oh my god, leap and bounds. We can consider the last uh hundred years when we understood that our galaxy is just one of now we um assume at least 200 billions in the visible universe. Or we can just say, how about in the last few decades? How about in the last decade? And there's always like this leaps and bounds, and what really excites me is the fact that uh we can consider so many things that now we understand, and just tells us how much we do not understand. There are so many things that we have a good understanding. We understand, for example, then how a star is born, how it evolves, and how it dies. We have a broad understanding of all those steps. We do not have a detailed understanding of those steps. Yes, we understand that some stars become supernova, and we have a good mass range of which stars could become supernova. We know the sun will never end up being a supernova. But uh the details of how the star will evolve into a giant and eventually a white dwarf, or when massive stars like Beetlejuice will go and explode is still beyond us. We do not have enough knowledge yet. And this is what's exciting. It's a process, is the fact that every day I wake up, I go to work and read some of the latest science news and some latest science research I'm trying to turn it into news and make people excited about that, uh, and there's always something new. And this is wonderful. It's every day's Christmas.

James Hogson:

Yes, yes, and but I guess with each of those new announcements, this is a whole career's worth of work that's gone into making these small steps.

Alfredo Carpineti:

Yeah, it's like there are people that uh have and to be honest, I have a PhD, so I have really specialized knowledge. Uh, it's some things uh that for a period I was the world expert, but it's a tiny fraction of all of the human knowledge. And so seeing people working on something specific that might seem so niche. But of what I do as a as a science communicator is then connected to the the wider picture, the importance of it. It's uh for me science uh is partly for the sake of science, for our quest to understanding the universe and wanting to know more, but it's also because it makes in a way enriches our lives. I truly believe uh into uh I truly bought into Carl Sagan's uh uh where the universe knowing itself. It's not because the universe has a consciousness or anything, but it is because we are here and we can comprehend this extraordinary universe. We are apes that uh evolved to probably scavenge in the savannah, and we're here like with the ability to do amazing things, and we should be doing those amazing things.

James Hogson:

It's very inspiring. And I'm fascinated by the role of the science communicator, as you said, you've got a highly trained and a very specialist area in your area of astrophysics, but I guess in your day job, you're reading in a much broader field and then communicating that to the public and making that accessible, which is the a very difficult and very important step. So, how do you strike the balance between staying true to the difficult granular science and the I guess the expert level of the intricacies of the discoveries versus telling a compelling narrative story that gets people hooked and engaged in the same way that you were as a child? Do you have to take some liberties with the science in order to make it compelling? And I'm always curious how you strike that balance.

Alfredo Carpineti:

That is an excellent question. I think it's not exactly about taking liberty with the science. We often need to simplify things. Uh it's important to simplify things because you want to get uh the people on board. Uh you can do analogies. Is the problem is uh we shouldn't uh consider that the simplification or the analogy is the be all and end all. I think uh, especially in this day and age with so much misinformation going around, that stressing the limitation of science, uh the caveats uh can be and sometimes is just as important as the results. And I think people do love complexity and can follow along with the complexity and understand it as long as you explain why it is important to discuss the complexity and once again the limitation, etc. During the pandemic and uh not so much lately, but I've been writing a lot about uh medicine. I accidentally found myself for most of 2020 as being the sort of COVID reporter for AFL Science simply because it all started between Christmas and New Year 2019, and is usually the period where there are no news. And I spotted uh somebody on Twitter at the time that was talking about this uh weird fever happening in Wuhan, and we didn't have any news, and I was like, oh, we can cover that. Even at the time we thought it was going to be a bit niche, but this scientist was like was hoping that it would not be something like SARS or MERS, and so like start writing about it. Five days later, the World Health Organization declares an epidemic. I've been the person that I've written three articles. Month later, I'm the person that had been following from the beginning, so I've been doing a lot of medicine. And when it comes to medicine, especially in new research, especially research that can bring hope to people, like potential new treatments, is you need to be extremely clear about, for example, and this has been only tested in animals, this is a clinical trial, and what kind of level of clinical trial, what is potential side effect that's seen, etc. It's less so when it comes to astronomy. If researchers are pretty convinced that something is a planet and not a brown dwarf, it's nobody's going to die or nobody's gonna get their hopes up if it turns out the other way around. Um so when it comes to supplement medicine, you need the limitational part of the story. And I think, and at least I feel that helped me put the limitation being part of the stories, even when it comes to astronomy. A good example that I do talk about in the book, I talk about in when I give talks, is this fantastic uh gas cloud at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and has this interesting molecule that is called ethylformate, which you probably think, like I never heard of this molecule, but I will tell you that you have probably smell it and you probably taste it, maybe not tasted, not all of you, but uh smell is quite a good uh bet because it's responsible for the smell of rum and the taste of raspberry. And it is uh interesting that there is this molecule in the cloud in the Milky Way that has this property, and just oh, it will formidate, oh, that's interesting. But what's the next step is usually people start thinking, oh okay, so there is this cloud that smell of rum, taste of raspberry, etc. And it's good to stress to immediately break that notion to say no, that is not exactly like that, and has an extra level of science that you're up to it. First of all, you explain that uh the cloud is mostly made of hydrogen. My hydrogen has no smell, so it's uh not that interesting, and they probably wouldn't care. But my punchline whenever I do this kind of talk is point out that the fragrant molecule, a molecule that I work out that is probably the most common that has some sort of smell is hydrogen cyanide. So you could sort of argue that's probably smell like bitter almond, and usually that gets a few laughs, especially I tend to do sometimes cocktails when I give the explanation, so I said, Don't worry, I'm not pulling Agata Christi on you, there is uh no cyanide in the drink, etc. But what's interesting in Stan pointing out that why there is cyanide, why there is this etofromid, why there's all these other molecules in these clouds that are found in life on Earth, and it's because building blocks of life on Earth are found everywhere in space. And that is just like a cloud in the middle of the Milky Way. It's not like we found stuff that is precursor to RNA and proteins in comets and meteorites and asteroids, but finding just in a random cloud it tells us that the building blocks of water is then the building blocks of life are everywhere. So that makes us hope, think that maybe life in the universe is not as rare as we currently perceive being the only known intelligent species.

James Hogson:

That's fascinating, yeah. And I got a sense there just of how you can bring people into the story. Yes, you share the technical terms, but bring them in with things which we might all recognise, and that becomes the hook then to then say, but why is this important? And bringing that back up, getting people engaged and then explaining why it's important. I can see how that has a much stronger effect. And thank you also for bringing us round to your uh book, uh, Invisible Rainbows, which there was a fantastic preview of at the Humanist UK convention last year. So the book has a double meaning, doesn't it? So I'd like to talk about each of those elements in turn. But if we start off with uh thinking about looking at the universe, what is it that we miss when we look up at the night sky?

Alfredo Carpineti:

We are able to see the universe in just a fraction of all the light that exists. The electromagnetic spectrum is so much wider than our senses allow us to experience. And once that has been incorporated into astronomy, because there was a lot of pushback from traditional astronomers about using radio waves and infrared to study the universe, uh they really taught in the 60s as no no no astronomy is what we can see with our optical telescopes like we were looking with our eyes plus lenses. Everything else, no, that's physics, it's not astronomy. But we started finding things that we wouldn't have discovered otherwise. A great example from the 60s was the discovery of pulsars. These are extreme stars that pulsate every some of them hundreds of times every second. X-ray telescopes in space, X-rays and gamma rays telescopes sent in space to monitor nuclear testing actually discover events uh beyond Earth, and there were explosions uh of incredible magnitudes. And in history, we haven't seen one in a while to the naked eye, but there's been supernovae, and suddenly we were seeing this flashing all over the place thanks to telescopes that are placed in space. And so for me, when I started thinking about a topic for a book, I thought it would be fascinating to talk about the latest uh news about how we use this unseen light to understand the universe, everything that we miss, everything that we still don't know, and why it is fundamental to use all the light, uh, why it's fundamental to consider things in a very holistic way when it comes to the universe. Sure, there are events that are predominant in one type of light, but there are so many that exist across the spectrum, and looking at the different parts of the spectrum paints at least a more complete picture. And as I mentioned, there's so much that we don't know, so we do need those kind of interlocking pieces to unlock a better understanding of these events. A classic example is uh supermassive black holes because they're usually studied in radio waves, because they emit in radio waves and they're studied in X rays. Which are almost at the opposite end of the spectrum. And clearly there is an overlay across the wavelengths of that, but those are where they meet the most. And those two extremes are very important to understand how supermassive black holes work. The sun, we tend to study it in wavelength uh obviously we studied invisible light because uh it's so easy from Earth when the light uh passes through the atmosphere, we have loads of telescopes and everything, but we put telescopes in space to study the sun in ultraviolet because that allows us to penetrate the surface layers of the sun and see what's happening right beneath the surface. And it's very important because those kind of observations help us protect the planet from solar storms and other changes in the sun activity. So it's both for our safety and our knowledge that we need to uh study the universe and study what's around us uh in light beyond the visible.

James Hogson:

And uh you shared some of the images during that presentation as well, so that the accompanying photographs that that go with this is quite breathtaking when you can see this, see what you know is invisible to the naked eye, but when once you see what everything is out there, it's quite miraculous.

Alfredo Carpineti:

There are some images that are literally I am somebody that is lucky enough to spend many days just looking at a pretty picture of the universe. And I am still so in awe that some of the latest telescopes can do incredible, absolutely incredible imaging of the universe. And I have sometimes people telling me, oh, but does the universe really look like that? Or does that nebula really look like that? And like, not to the naked eye, but uh that doesn't matter to me because uh I am unfortunately not on uh the bridge of the enterprise. I am not going to go to I don't know the Orion Nebula and see it with my naked eye. I'm here on Earth, and I can be uh say I'm here stuck on Earth, but we have observatory like Hubble, JWSC, or the very large telescope looking at the nebula and seeing incredible details. And it doesn't matter that uh they are the telescopes are not mimicking the human eye. Even all the optical telescopes have filters, some to a non-specific wavelength, some to just make the picture prettier. What's exciting is what we're seeing. It doesn't matter that I don't know, the the Juno spacecraft around Jupiter has all these enhanced views of Jupiter that showcase the turbulent atmosphere. Yeah, it doesn't matter that's not what uh Jupiter would look like up close to the naked eye. We are seeing the little little, the massive hurricanes that uh pass through the atmosphere of the giant, the biggest planet in the solar system. That is exciting. The fact that Cassini could see a storm in the north pole of Saturn, that's exciting. It doesn't really matter that uh is that exactly the color that you would see if you have a if you had uh a spacecraft there. And if you're really against uh enhanced images, I would say let's work together to get a spacecraft with humans there. And let's go and take those pictures, or let's go and take those tours and see the difference.

James Hogson:

Oh, you can really sense the excitement that this still brings to you, and it's wonderful, Alfredo. And it really came across, as I said, in the talk and in the book. So let's talk about the other side of the meaning as well. I know you wanted to also draw attention to the human stories behind a lot of these discoveries and some of those which were not had been untold or perhaps hidden until this time. So why was that important to you?

Alfredo Carpineti:

When I first started thinking about the book, I was reading a lot of other books about uh science. That was about astronomy. I wanted to be inspired by the greatest, by people that I respect in the community, and even in the books that I found that were like all the best, I started recognizing a lot of names. And of course I would recognize the names because I am somebody that has been in the field for now decades, so it's normal that say, Oh, I recognize that name, I was a collaborator, or I have read a paper, or I saw them speaking at a seminar or at a conference, etc. And in my head, I was like, okay, one can use a book to provide a platform, but also a pedestal for scientists to talk about their research. And a lot of the books that I had read had a very specific uh goal in what kind of subjects they were talking about. So a lot of the people that had been interviewed for them had they were the luminaries, they are the people with the professorships, and there were people that were famous in the field for that work. Given that my focus was about the wavelengths, I had a lot more liberty in picking and choosing who I wanted to highlight. There is in no place of the book that I say, oh, this is an exhaustive chapter on everything you need to know. I don't know about infrared. No, it's a tasting menu. You jump in and find something that is interesting, and that's it. And that allowed me to be more free in who I selected to be in the book, and that was my choice because I thought my title is invisible rainbows, because there are rainbows in the universe that are invisible to our eyes, but uh they exist across other wavelengths, and like I would be missing a trick if I wouldn't be using the book to provide a platform for LGBTQI Plus astronomers to talk about their work. With Pratt in STEM, most of the last decade I've been working to raise the profile and to showcase and support LGBTQI Plus people in science, technology, engineering, and maths. I thought this is probably my one and only chance to write a book. I will try to also give an opportunity to a lot of other people to talk about their work. And it has been an absolute honor to feature almost two dozen people across the wavelength and across the area of expertise, across career levels. There are people that when I started writing, they were doing their PhDs, and there are professors in it trying to be as inclusive as possible and have people from every continent. Obviously, there is a bias for Europe and North America simply because you need people that uh are comfortable being interviewed in English, that I was able to reach, they are comfortable being uh recognized. I don't get too much details into their personal stories because I wanted them to talk about their science and be recognized as experts, but also it's clear that they are part of a big LGBTQ book, or as one of my friends described it, the big book of queer astronomy. So, with all this in mind, it was there are obviously limitation creating about uh this selection of people, but they felt that this was something very important that I needed to make up and given space for them to give long and comprehensive answers, and I'm the one then explaining things around and uh adding uh the details, and they can just shine as the experts in the field that they are.

James Hogson:

Well, it's wonderful to use the platform, your platform that you've worked so hard for to also share and elevate other voices as well. It again, it's a fantastic book. The talk, which I think is available to view. If it is, we'll link to it in the show notes from the Humanist UK conference, was a real highlight as well. We look forward to what's next, and I guess what is next for you? What are you working on now and what will be your next project?

Alfredo Carpineti:

The book should be out with uh Walter Square Books in May 2021. Hopefully, by the time that uh this podcast is out, we will have a pre-order link. It should be any day now from the point of when we're recording. And yes, that is uh the current project uh for the uh the book side uh for invisible rainbows. I am writing a little proposal for a second book. I'm feeling optimistic, but uh to be honest, it's been a long journey for Invisible Rainbows. So uh the question is let's get one out and then work on the second one bug. I hope it comes across that I like to be busy and I like to have projects, and so that is uh the current personal journey. I am working still at IFL Science, uh, things are going very well there. I'm very happy. And when it comes to private STEM, we're going to celebrate our 10th anniversary in April, and uh, we are very exciting for a few more projects happening this year, and we'll continue to support LGBTQI plus people in STEM going forward.

James Hogson:

Oh, congratulations on your 10 years with the group. That's wonderful. And I know you're coming to give a talk to the London humanists as well.

Alfredo Carpineti:

Yes, uh, I was going to go with uh uh because that is not the only humanist uh talk that I'm giving uh soon. Uh so uh yes, is going to be a talk uh about space but also about uh fiction, and we will be talking about uh how humanism uh relates to both uh astronomy and science fiction. It's going to start with a few, I'd say not too controversial, but I would like to argue that uh the big questions that we often ask or consider as realm of astronomy are questions that are shared across philosophy, across religions, etc. The difference is that astronomy can provide some factual answers to them, and I think that is what attracted me to the field, and what uh people that are humanists can find interesting when it comes to the connection between science and those uh big uh queries. And obviously, a lot of science fiction has humanist elements or strong humanist angles, and a lot of science fiction focuses on space and the exploration of space, or at least space travel. So we thought it would be fun to talk about something that was very realistic and then explore how the fictional part of that uses elements or completely turns some of the elements upside down to discuss very much what is the human condition, what is humanism, how do we relate about being humans when we discover aliens or we build androids or we need entities out there that for all intents and purposes would be recognized as gods by earlier human civilization and stuff like that, and I think it's fascinating. I it's very rare to find a scientist that has not an interest in science fiction, and it's always nice to talk to big science fiction fans because they have a lot of questions about science, and so I am very happy to sit at the Nexus between the two, and that is gonna be on January 28th in central London and also online, and then on February 12th, I am in Manchester for the Darwin Day Lecture with the greater Manchester humanist, and it's gonna be about life and light. As you have uh heard, I am quite a big fan of light, and we're gonna discuss how that uh helps shape life both on Earth at a very intrinsic and quantum mechanical level. Because one of my degrees is theoretical physics, but also discussing how, as you heard, light plays a massive role in creating those building blocks in space that eventually came and formed us here on Earth.

James Hogson:

Thank you. We're looking forward to both of those. Speaking of the big questions, you mentioned how science can answer many of these questions. One thing I like to ask scientists that we have on the show is if there was one outstanding question that you would like to know that we discover the answer to during your career, which one would you choose?

Alfredo Carpineti:

If there are other intelligent civilization uh in our galaxy, there are more important scientifically, there are more important uh questions. I think trying to understand how the whole of physics fit together, the grand unified theory would be fundamental. But I am extremely optimistic about that. I feel that while it's gonna be difficult, we'll have to build bigger detectors, uh, come up with more clever ways to study the universe. I feel optimistic that we can find an answer in the coming decades. But I feel that the universe is big and our galaxy is uh tiny in the universe, but enormous for us. And I think that we might be able to find life elsewhere in the universe, or at least evidence of life in the coming decades, but most likely it's gonna be bacteria stuff or something that is uh not us. And I would love to know if there is somewhere else in the universe people that are looking up at the heavens asking the same question. Are we alone? I would love to have that answer. I don't know, a genie, uh God to just call upon one answer, everything else I'm happy to research, but that one I would love to know.

James Hogson:

And finally, our standard closing question: what is something which you've changed your mind on recently and what inspired that change?

Alfredo Carpineti:

Okay, I have decided to be quite controversial for this answer because uh it's something that is hotly debated uh by humanists UK, especially. So I want to start by clarifying things. Uh I have always been a fervent uh borderline militant supporter of the the right to die and uh eutunesia, and being able to choose uh dignified death if that is your choice. And it's always been like that because I remember two particular cases in Italy in uh in 2006 and uh in the early 2000s, and one was uh this poet and activist called Pier Giorgio Welby, who refused uh feeding to have the right to die after living with uh multiple sclerosis for decades. It remains so impressed to me that uh because of that choice, the Catholic Church mounted a campaign against him and refused for him to have a religious funeral. And the reason um he died on the 20th of December 2006, and the thing that remained most impressed me those uh around those weeks was that it was a week and a bit after the death of uh Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who got a religious funeral. And it was uh very clear to me that uh oh yes, you can kill the tens of thousands and the church will welcome you with open arms, but you make a decision about how you want to live your life, and oh you're out. And that was even beyond, and like as a young queer man, I felt very much the oppressive uh hand of the church on the Italian government, uh, even more in the uh situation of Ivan Anglaro, a woman that was in a coma, in uh irreversible coma since 1992. And the church didn't try to stop the government to pull the plug, and she eventually passed away in 2009. And one thing that I did, and I had just moved to the UK, was to have uh a living will to make sure that people knew that I didn't want to live attached to uh a machine, I would rather my organs be given to other people, and there's a lot of things. I that was uh sorry, a long preface to get to the point that I want to make on slightly changing my mind. I do not I have not changed my mind in thinking that we shouldn't have that right. I'm still very much on board with that. But I think that we need to have a more nuanced discussion when it comes to the concept of this is dying when it comes to points raised by disability activists. I absolutely disagree with the many, especially now in the House of Lord's points raised by uh religious people about the secret life. I do not think they'd care about life being secret because otherwise they would be the first one to protest genocides and selling weapons and the fact that in this country we have so many people that cannot afford a hot meal or don't have a house. If they truly believe that life was secret, they should be protesting that, not assisted dying. But the points raised by Disability activists, that uh before you can have uh dignitous death, you should have a dignity's life, that uh there should be accessibility, there should be a better society in general. I completely uh and 100% agree. And I feel that uh as humanists uh and with our belief that we need to act for everyone, need to consistently raise that point that uh I used to remember how militant I was about, no, we need to get this, we need to get this, we need to get this. And now I want to say we need to have a good debate. We don't have to discount people that they disagree because they have concern about how that might be used. And so I am uh taking a more, let's say, relaxed approach, uh more open approach. Uh, I feel that we need to continue to have a debate and we need to bring in people that disagree, not because they think uh this shouldn't be a right, but because they think uh could there be unexpected consequences? So, yes.

James Hogson:

Oh, very well said, and Dr. Alfredo Carpanetti, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Alfredo Carpineti:

Thank you very much for having me.

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