...are both dead and I'm not.

They meant well, but their writings on the subject were pretty much speculation. The last decade has seen a lot of work go into this sort of question and the answers are pretty discouraging.

The way in which gas giants MAY be associated with life is rather different. Now that we have discovered a host of close-in Jupiters round other stars, the old models that gas giants HAD to be out in the cold outer regions of a solar system have died.

Jovians are now known to lie within the habitable zone, and a Moon of such a Jovian would also be stable for liquid water (if large enough to retain the vapour over geologic time).

Imagine Europa with liquid water from surface to depth, or Callisto and Gannymede with oceans and land. Here is a niche for life-as-we-know-it associated with gas giants.

(Apologies to IA and CS, both of whom I admire and would have loved to have met, but time and science marches on)