This unusual Israeli podcast covers everything from sentient AI to extending the human lifespan

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Tal Patalon is the host of “A Matter of Life and Death,” an English-language podcast from Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services.(Asaf Brenner)

BY RENEE GHERT-ZAND, JTA

If an alien spacecraft landed in Prof. Avi Loeb’s backyard tomorrow, he would readily step on, leave his family behind and take off to discover the great beyond.

Obviously, he’d be giving up a lot, but it’s for an essential cause, he says: Humans need to explore the possibilities for human life beyond earth.

“We know the sun will burn up the surface of the earth within a billion years,” he says. “We won’t be able to stay here.”

Loeb, an Israeli-American astrophysicist at Harvard University, shared these thoughts recently in a podcast conversation with Dr. Tal Patalon, head of Kahn Sagol Maccabi (KSM), the Research and Innovation Center of Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services. Loeb was Patalon’s guest on an episode of KSM’s popular English-language podcast, “A Matter of Life and Death.”