WEBVTT - From the Vault: Brian Greene on the End of Time 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:07.800 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.920 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's not Saturday, 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:14.000 but we are going to be airing a vault episode 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.480 today to help us get through some holiday outages. Uh 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.320 so this is going to be the episode that originally aired. 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:23.720 What date was this, Rob, This would have been uh four, 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:29.080 six early pandemic days. I think this was one where 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.960 so this is an interview with the physicists Brian Green, 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.720 who had written a great book called Until the End 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:36.880 of Time. But I think this is one where my 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.360 my internet failed and I had to duck out at 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.960 the last minute before the interview. But you you bravely 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.040 soldiered on. Robert. Yeah, that's right, we had we had 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.800 we both prepared some questions to ask him, so I 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:51.920 ended up asking questions on your behalf. And I can't 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.440 remember if we went and went back and re recorded 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:56.920 you so that you were asking your own questions, or 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.040 we just talked about doing that. I don't remember how 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:01.760 it came together, as is the case for a lot 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.440 of you. Um that month is kind of a blur, 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:07.720 but we managed to pull it off and it was 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.680 a fun chat. I think I might have rerecorded my questions. 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.240 I'm not sure, but if if you hear me sounding 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:16.480 weird in this episode, that's why. Yeah. I think one 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:18.959 day we'll just put together a super cut of us 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:23.760 doing uh uh, you know, introduction chats with our guests 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.280 during the pandemic, where we talked through our technical problems 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:29.960 and what the headphones we have and where we're recording. 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.440 Um is a but probably a lot of amusing behind 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:36.440 the scenes stuff there that would be massively entertaining to 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.720 all the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, Well, anyway, we 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:47.119 hope you enjoyed this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:49.640 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:58.840 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.520 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:04.720 today we're bringing you an interview with the physicist and 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:08.800 author Brian Green. This one was a real treat, except 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.079 we did have a major audio snag that did mean 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:14.600 that I was not able to be on the call 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:16.800 during this interview. So if you hear any kind of 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.640 like uh, weird sound shenanigans going on in the moments 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:23.040 my questions come in, will be real with you. It's 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.160 because I had to go back and record them later. 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.840 But Robert, you you did me a great honor and 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.200 asking my questions for me during the interview. So thank 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:34.040 you for doing that. Uh, Robert, what was it like 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.840 speaking to Brian Green? I have to ask, Uh, it 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:38.720 was it was pretty great. I had I had interviewed 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:41.600 him once before at the World Science Festival. The World 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:44.920 Science Festival for anyone who who doesn't know it doesn't remember, 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.520 is uh is this awesome gathering of of minds that 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.920 happens every year in New York. But then it is 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:57.079 then all these different panel conversations about these mind blowing 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.560 topics they go out on the internet, um over you know, 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.280 the months to follow. And so I had I had 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:07.840 talked to him briefly about black holes, kind of a rushed, 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.040 you know, busy kind of interview, and that was a 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.000 couple of years ago. But this was this was a 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.040 lot more relaxed, Like I was talking from my closet. 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:18.240 He was talking from you know, I think a study 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:22.040 or or or some similar room in his own home. 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.120 And so it felt felt a bit more laid back, 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.880 uh this time around, though it was of course, you know, disappointing. 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:31.720 We weren't able to have you in there as well, Joe. 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.800 But more to the point, Brian is just, uh, you know, 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:37.600 a brilliant mind. He's you know, one of the best 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.640 known proponents, if not the best known proponent living proponent 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.120 of superstring theory. UH. The co founder of the World 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.880 Science Foundation, UH, Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Department of 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:51.360 Mathematics at Columbia University in New York City, and he's 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.960 the author of several books UM The Elegant Universe in 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.640 UM The Fabric of the Cosmos in two thousand four, 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:02.160 Acharus at the Edge of Time in two thousand eight, 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.000 which is a children's book, UH that that you know, 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.720 breaks down black holes for young readers. UH, there's the 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.600 Hidden Reality, Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.440 Cosmos from eleven, and then his latest book, UH one 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.279 of the main reasons we uh, we decided to chat 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:22.000 with in this episode until the end of time mind 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.800 matter in our search for meaning in an evolving universe. 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.960 I really enjoyed this book. One thing I was surprised 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:31.400 by is how many subjects he gets into. This book 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:36.400 is about the idea of of finitude and impermanence and 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.280 he so he of course explores physics, you know, the 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.480 history of the universe and the future fade of the universe, uh, 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:44.640 in a physical sense, but he also spends a lot 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:47.640 of time talking about like the social sciences and the 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.000 humanities and our obsession with living forever or or with 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.599 impermanence and loss and uh. And I found it a 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:57.920 really interesting and actually kind of beautiful book. Yeah I 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:00.520 I'm going to stress this again during the interview to itself. 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.120 But if you are hesitant about picking up this book 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:05.400 because you're thinking, oh, it's it's a book by physicist, 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:07.200 it's gonna be it's just gonna be a bunch of 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.479 physics stuff. It's gonna be about black holes. It's gonna 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:11.599 be hard to relate. No, no, no, this book is 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.360 is very relatable. It's you know, what's somewhere in the 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:18.279 neighborhood of three hundred and something pages, but but covers 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.080 a lot of ground and a lot of relatable ground, 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.440 getting into you know, at times, how the how, how 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:28.160 the how, how our brains contemplate the cosmos, where religion 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.680 comes from, uh, you know, the the role of scientific 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.359 investigation in our sort of you know, quest to deal 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:41.159 with the undeniable reality of mortality in our lives. Yeah. 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:45.040 He even gets into realms like like philosophy of mind 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:48.480 and like you know, the cognitive science of religion, which 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:50.360 we talked about on the show a good bit and 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.440 and uh and mythology and all that. And I would 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.680 say I was really impressed. He does a really good 0:05:55.680 --> 0:06:00.000 synthesis of complex topics that are outside his field. And um, 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:04.280 I thought it was just a really thoroughly informative and entertaining, 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.320 uh journey to go on. Yeah. And of course, if 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:09.200 if anyone out there is if you are familiar with 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:11.919 the World Science Festival, then you you get a you 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:13.920 have a taste of the sort of interest Brian has 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.080 because you see the sort of topics that are covered 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.080 at World Science Festival. Uh, the diverse array of individuals 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:23.279 who are who gathered gathered there to discuss these topics. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.360 And I think that's reflected in this book especially, So 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.440 highly recommend the book. It is available now. I think 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:31.920 in all formats you can get a you know, kindle edition. 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.960 I think the audio book is available. Uh. So it's 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:36.640 a it's a great book for any time. I think 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:42.159 it's especially a good book for our current reality. Totally alright, Well, 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:48.360 without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Brian. Your 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.840 new book is Until the End of Time, which is 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:55.039 an incredible title because there's this literal expectation of cracking 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.360 open a book with a name like that written by 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:00.520 a noted physicist. But there's there's also the personal aspect 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:03.200 of that title and the religious connotations of the phrase, 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:05.279 you know, all of which are a major part of 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.800 the book as well. How did all of this come 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:11.560 together in your your writing of Until the End of Time? Well, 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:14.160 it's a book that I've been thinking about in one 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:19.800 form or another for maybe thirty years, slowly gestating and 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:26.400 really recognizing the power of having a cosmic perspective where 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.880 you see your life as we all do in the 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.720 everyday sense of human experience, but you're able to tell 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.280 a parallel story where you recognize that you are part 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.880 of this grand cosmic convolting that reaches back to the 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:43.480 Big Bang and goes as far as our equations can 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.600 take us into the far future. And the depth of 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:51.400 perspective that that can provide is I think quite gratifying, 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:53.600 and that really was a motivation for writing the book 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.520 so that people can see their lives within a whole 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.000 variety of stories. The reductions to count, to the physicist, 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.360 all the way to the cosmological account of the astronomer. 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:08.680 You eve a wonderful interconnected tapestry of these subjects. But 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.400 but I do wonder did anyone try to dissuade you 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.160 from writing a book that covers ultimately the entirety of 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.560 human history and the known universe in a single volume. No. 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.400 But the usual reaction before had written the book was 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:24.440 how many volumes is it going to be? Is it 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.520 ten thousand pages? You know, there was a limit to 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.880 the number of words that anybody in a single lifetime 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.480 will be willing or able to read. Those sort of 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:38.520 equips were quite common. But the the idea of say 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:42.160 a three hundred page book, an ordinary length book taking 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:46.680 on cosmology, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.800 the origin of mind, the meaning of consciousness, theorizing of language, 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.439 the telling of stories, the origin of myth, the origins 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:59.439 of religion, how that interweaves with human culture, creative expression, 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:05.840 and then onto the developments from today until time, scales 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.520 that are so fantastically long that we don't even have 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:12.040 names for the numbers that describe the durations that we're 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.760 talking about. Yeah, it's a it's a hefty chronicle. But 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:17.920 being able to sit down and read it in three 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.199 hundred pages to me with the point that you would 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.640 be able to see all of these unfoldings in a 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.920 reasonable period of time with minimal effort and to recognize 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:31.079 your place within it. Yes, And I do want to 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:33.880 stress to our our readers, our listeners rather that it 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:37.720 is a very very readable book. It's just there's you know, 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:41.160 it contains a dense amount of information, I guess, but 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.559 it is um uh. One never feels overwhelmed by all 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.959 of this data. It's it's presented in a wonderfully and 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.240 at times personable way. Yes, thank you. A core theme 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.000 of this book is the concept of entropy. Entropy is 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:57.600 kind of the evil sorcerer driving the magic of impermanence. 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.800 And I think sometimes people get confused when they hear 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:05.320 about entropy as tending toward disorder. You know, it's often 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.080 defined as as the tendency of things to move into 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:13.200 disorder because order and disorder seem like subjective concepts depending 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:15.800 on human judgment and in the book. You have a 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:19.559 wonderful way of explaining entropy in terms of statistics. It's 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.360 a way that makes clear how it's actually an objective phenomenon, 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:27.000 not depending on what feels orderly to a human observer. 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:31.520 Can you explain this here? Yes, And the quantitative version 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:38.960 of entropy does rely upon and resonate quite strongly with 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:43.880 the qualitative version that you just described. So roughly speaking, 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:47.720 when we talk about entropy, we're talking about disorder. And 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.640 the second law of thermodynamics is this idea that things 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:54.080 tend to go from order toward disorder. That's the natural 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.840 direction in which events unfold. And when you want to 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.000 make this more precise, because you're right when you hear that, 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:06.080 you're like, come on, physicists talking about like order and disorder. 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:08.760 You know, there doesn't seem to be enough rigor in 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.640 that kind of description, But we can make it quite 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:15.559 rigorous in the following sense. When things are highly ordered, 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:20.920 if you arrange the ingredients, you typically mess up that order. Right, 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.280 If your books are all in nice alphabetical order, someone 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.640 comes along when you're not looking and sort of rearranges 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.760 a few books. It's obvious that things have changed because 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.400 they're no longer in that nice orderly progression from A 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:36.160 to Z. So that's a situation in which there are 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:41.480 very few rearrangements that would leave the system unchanged. And 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.480 that counting of the number of rearrangements is what we 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.360 mean by low disorder. On the contrary, if those books, 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:50.640 if they're all just kind of, you know, thrown in 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:54.240 a heap on your desk, someone comes along and they 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.520 rearrange the disordered mess you'll never even know that they 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:01.360 were there, because that rearrange mint and a whole host 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.400 of other rearrangements leave the messing looking heap of books 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.360 looking like a messy heap of books. So in that case, 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:12.520 there are many rearrangements that leave the system looking pretty 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.160 much unchanged. And so what we physicists do We simply count. 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:19.960 It's accounting exercise. Give us a system, will count how 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:23.840 many rearrangements of the ingredients leave it looking the same unchanged, 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.439 versus how many leave it looking changed. And a disordered 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:30.480 system high entropy means there are many rearrangements that have 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:34.439 no impact. An ordered system low entropy means are very 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.719 few rearrangements that leave it looking the same. That's how 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:41.320 we make it precise. Why is it that seemingly orderly 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:46.439 structures like stars, planets, and life forms are not violations 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:50.240 of the universe's tendency toward disorder. Yeah, that's a big 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.360 that's a big puzzle, and it's certainly an issue that 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.480 I spend some time on in the book because it's 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:59.800 one of the critical questions to ask and one of 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:02.800 the important questions to answer. And here's how the answer goes. 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.960 This law of thermodynamics, the second law that says that 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.200 things go from order to disorder, says that, in an 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.920 overall sense, if you look at the entirety of a 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.480 physical system, or let's just be grandiose, the entirety of 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.920 the universe, over time, the entirety will go from order 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:27.880 toward disorder. But that does not prevent little pockets of 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:32.679 order from forming here and there, so long as in 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:37.640 the process of those orderly formations coming together, they release 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:41.200 enough heat and waste and disorder to the environment to 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:45.800 compensate for the order that happens in that local environment. 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:51.080 And stars are the perfect example. You've got this gas 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.280 is floating in space. Gravity has the capacity to pull 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.520 things together, and as the gas comes together, it ultimately 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.320 ign Night's nuclear processes because it becomes so hot and 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.839 dense through the gravitational pull driving it into an ever 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:11.080 smaller region of space. And that actually is an orderly configuration. 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.280 But in the process of that orderly configuration forming, heat 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.320 and light is given off by the birth of the star, 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:23.280 and that heat and light spreads to the wider environment, 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:28.920 injecting disorder into the surroundings, and that disorder in the 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:33.920 surroundings compensates and more than compensates for the order that's 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.920 formed in the star itself. And I call this the 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.480 entropic two step. What it is, it's kind of a dance. Right, 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:45.960 You've got order happening here, right, you've got disorder happening here. 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.480 And if they choreographed their dance in the right way, 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.040 then the overall entropy goes up, even though you can 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.240 have orderly structures form in the process. Some of my 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:02.560 favorite passages in the book concern it's core templation of impermanence. Specifically, 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.040 when you get into into discussions of consciousness and the 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.480 human experience and religion, you write that you're you remain 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.280 partial to Stephen J. Gould's take that quote, all religion 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:18.040 began with an awareness of death. Can you expound on this, Well, 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:26.080 religion is this wondrous, really human construct that allows us 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.960 to cope with some of the most difficult of challenges 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.200 that we face. In the most difficult challenge of all 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:38.640 is the realization that we are impermanent, the realization that 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:44.200 we will all die, and early on religion came up 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:50.480 with a number of very powerful ways of dealing with 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.480 that singular realization. I mean, think about it. There are 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.080 species on the planet that react to death, elephants more, 0:15:57.160 --> 0:16:00.000 and they're dead. But I don't think that their elephants 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.960 that are walking around saying, wow, I'm going to die 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.760 one day, what's the point of being here? And then 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.200 what's it all about? I don't think that they take 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.280 it in in that way, while we humans do. And 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:15.280 so religion came up with or provided us a number 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:17.600 of ways of dealing with that. I mean, you know, 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.520 if you don't view death as the end, if you 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:26.120 view death as a stepping stone to another existence, another life, 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:30.040 well that certainly is is something that is deeply consoling. 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:33.120 Right if you think of death as one of a 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.800 cycle of births and death and rebirths, So that again 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:41.840 it's just part of this ongoing cyclical process that ultimately 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.400 will take it to some promised state of being, some 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.680 state of calm, nirvana, whatever you want to call it. 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:53.200 That's another powerful way of dealing with this realization. So 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:59.280 within almost every religion is some means of coping with death. 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.640 And that's why Steve even Jay Gould described religions as 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:07.360 originating in the realization of our own mortality. And to me, 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:12.720 it's a very powerful tool that some rely upon in 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:18.000 order to cope with a devastating recognition of mortality. And 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.639 do you see that as part of the the human 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.800 condition reflected in the pursuit of science as well? I do. 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:29.760 In a different way. We scientists are are driven to 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:34.200 understand where we came from, how we develop, how we evolve, 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.679 how the universe will evolve, or driven to find the 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:41.760 deep laws that undergird existence. And look, different scientists will 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.440 do this for different reasons, but I can speak personally. 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:49.640 I am driven at a fundamental level by the recognition 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:52.760 of the finite time that I have here, and I 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.679 deeply want to know as much as I can about 0:17:56.760 --> 0:18:01.439 how I find myself in this predicament at all, and 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.240 I want to understand, and it's a beautiful story when 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:09.320 you understand it. How the Big Bank gave rise to galaxy, stars, planets, 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:13.760 and ultimately life. I deeply want to understand how life 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:19.480 emerge and how consciousness flourishes within certain of those living systems. 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.040 I mean, we are conscious beings and that's where our 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:28.840 footprint in reality has it's it's it's impact right without consciousness, 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.760 as as a number of great thinkers across the ages 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:36.600 have said, you've got nothing, and so deeply understanding the 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:39.320 sequence of events that led us to this place where 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:43.880 we can look out and wonder and ask questions and 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:48.400 and experience each other and experience beauty. To me in 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.960 the brief flash of time that I have here, I 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.280 want to understand that as fully as possible. So, you know, 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.760 there's this wonderful sociology social anthropologist Ernest Becker. I've had 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.439 a great impact on me back when I read his work, 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.320 and I guess it was the seventies and eighties, a 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.480 long time ago now. And you know he said in 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:10.439 a book called The Denial of Death that all of 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:15.000 human activity can be traced to trying to cope with 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.440 this realization that we have these minds that can soar 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.320 to the edge of the universe, and yet after a 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.760 century we are put into the ground and we're turned 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:30.800 into dust. That is a stunning collision of perspective, and 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.560 we struggle to make sense of it. All right, we 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:35.199 need to take a quick break, but we will be 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:42.480 right back with more thank and we're back in chapter seven, 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.960 Brains and Belief. You follow the evolution of religious thought 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:50.560 and you compare it to scientific investigation, specifically mathematics and physics. 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.040 Could you speak to the basic similarities as you see them, 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:58.359 between Eastern religious cosmologies and science, as well as where 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:04.359 the often popularized similarities in Well, that's right. So a 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:11.280 lot of people are fond of citing parallels between insights 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:15.000 that emerged from Eastern religions, Eastern philosophies, and things that 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:19.160 have emerged in science, and in fact, in the book 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.440 I described a little bit of how you know, My 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:28.360 older brother is Hari Krishna dev devotee and has been 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:33.119 for decades, and certainly in the early days of his 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:37.359 involvement in that practice, when we would talk about work 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.719 I was doing in cosmology or physics, it was not 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:43.800 infrequent for him to say to me how we already 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.320 know all that you know? It's in this or that 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:51.840 Vedic text, which I found both curious and frustrating at 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:55.240 the same time. And when I followed some of those 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.480 through I understood where he was coming from. There was 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:03.800 a resident of language and perspective that you do find 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.320 between some of the things that we seek and some 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:12.520 of the things that have been sought after by thinkers 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:16.879 throughout the ages. We asked similar questions. In science, we 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:21.080 answer those questions with mathematics and with experiment and with observation. 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:23.800 And that's the way in which we feel that we're 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:26.280 making progress. And we can write down an equation that 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:30.399 can predict things about the universe that happened, you know, 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:33.399 billions of years ago, and then we look out in 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.080 the night sky to see what we think should be 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:39.320 the remnant of those processes from thirteen billion years ago. 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.560 And when we see those things out in the night 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:46.480 sky today, we say, wow. We we we seem to 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:48.720 understand something may not be the full truth, but we're 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:52.960 heading towards truth. And and the issue with Eastern philosophy 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:57.280 and Eastern religions is much of it emerges from introspection, 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:02.480 from an inner journey to understand the human reaction to 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:07.000 the universe, and so the barometer of of success and 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.240 truth is quite different. The barometer of truth is, you know, 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:12.840 does it feel right? Does it seem that this gives 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:15.760 me a better sense of how I fit within the 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.600 wider world. Those are important questions, but they're different questions 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:22.920 from the ones that we answer or at least try 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.440 to answer in science. And I will stress right here 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:30.199 and this is vitally. I think both are crucial to 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:34.320 having a full experience of the world. If you stop 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.959 with understanding the objective world through the language of mathematics 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:41.680 and observation and experiment, that's all that you do. You've 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:46.000 cut off the dominant thing that makes us who we are, 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:48.919 which is our inner world, our inner experience. So I 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:51.159 think you really need to blend the insights from all 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:55.600 of these perspectives in order to have the fullest experience 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.560 of reality. In one of the early chapters of the book, 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:00.880 you mentioned as in the side that physicists to use 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:03.960 not just what they know, not just proven theories and 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:07.800 mathematical reasoning to drive their research focus, but also what 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:12.800 you call a hard to describe intuitive mathematical sensibility. Now, 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:14.680 I know you say it's hard to describe, but can 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:18.800 you talk anymore about this kind of physicist's intuition. Yeah, 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:20.840 I thought I was getting myself off the hook by 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:23.800 objecting the hard to explain there, but but I'll do 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:28.920 my best. When you're trained in the language of mathematics, 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:36.200 you acquire a sense of which mathematical sentences are good. 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:40.600 Ones are sharp, ones are effective, ones are economical, ones 0:23:40.640 --> 0:23:44.480 are beautiful, ones are elegant ones. It's like in English, 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:48.280 like we all are trained in a natural language. I mean, 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:51.440 you and I both speak English, maybe speak other languages too, 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:57.240 but in English we can recognize those sentences that are 0:23:57.280 --> 0:24:00.399 are special. Right. We can read Shakespeare here and we 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:05.119 recognize what a turn of phrase that was in king Lear. 0:24:05.320 --> 0:24:08.760 Or we can read Whitman and say, wow, what a 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:12.600 collection of words to put together in that line of 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:15.919 that poem and say leaves of grass or whatever it 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:19.399 is that moves us. Similarly, we can do that as 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:24.160 as scientists, as as mathematicians. And what we have found, 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:27.120