The most memorable taxi ride of my life occurred when I stepped into a cab driven by a man named John, back in 2016. We fell into a conversation about our lines of work. He told me how much he enjoyed his job. As a taxi driver, he got to meet the wonderful menagerie of humankind and find out their life stories — and be paid to do it, no less. And I described my day as a working astrobiologist: how I try to use instruments to detect the signs of living things on other planets, either their fossil remains, or the parts of cells that are alive and well today.
At the mention of
