WEBVTT - Wired: As Above, So Below 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.680 Before my first daughter was born, before I could even 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:18.599 imagine her existence, I had a dream that I was 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:21.480 walking at the edge of the world. Everything around me 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:25.720 was frozen, and the night sky hung low. A little 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.280 girl appeared at my side and pointed into the tiny 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:39.360 clusters of light. Misha, she said, Misha in Russian, Misha 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:41.760 means little bear. And if you look up in the 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.440 night sky, as the little girl instructed, you'll see ursa minor, 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:48.240 the little bear with the North Star at the tip 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.800 of its tail, a star that, no matter where you 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.560 are in the world or who you are in the world, 0:00:55.080 --> 0:01:21.200 has always hung above, guiding us. Hi. Hi. My name 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:23.720 is Julie Douglas, and this is the stuff of life. 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.679 Each of us is connected to each other, relies on 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:36.200 one another, gives and takes, consciously or unconsciously, weaving the 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.120 web of support that it takes to make a society. 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.920 In a sense, we're all just broken fragments of the whole, 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:50.480 guiding ourselves back to each other. My name is ah As, 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.800 I said. I'm originally from Turkey, but I have been 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.400 living in this country for past four years and on 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:01.680 my retired neurologist I'm Sully, I from Thailand, but I've 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:06.080 lived in the US since nine three. My name is Kathy, 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.440 and I actually lived in this area and worked for 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:15.440 the federal government for thirty years. A Muslim, a Catholic, 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.720 an elapsed Buddhist walk into a march. It sounds like 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.239 the beginning of a joke, but it's Aisha, Suli and Kathy. 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.040 We met them at the Women's March in d C, 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:28.400 historic day when more than half a million people joined 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:33.440 together in despair, anger, and hope about our collective existence. 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.840 I hope people will begin to talk, both on a 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.040 macro level and on a micro level. I think you 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:44.840 have to do a lot of one on one um 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.560 with your families and with your friends. And I think 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:52.600 one of the issues that is happening today people don't 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:54.520 talk to each other. They do want to yell at 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:56.600 each other and scream at each other, and they want 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:00.560 you to believe what they believe. And we all believe 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:03.560 different things, and we all have the right to believe 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.160 what we want to believe. That's what our country is 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:15.240 all about. The trick is to find common ground, and 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:18.960 quite literally, that's something we all have available to us 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:22.480 right under our feet. Something we know as children but 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.320 forget as adults. Young Ferdinand the Bowl, Um, you know, 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.160 he doesn't want to be bucking heads at the other bulls. Instead, 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:33.440 he'd rather lay under the trees and smell the flowers, 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.200 and um, you know, that's what he wanted to do. 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.040 His mother was concerned that he wasn't doing these things, 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.800 but then she decides that Ferdinand is sort of content 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.160 as he is, and she left him alone. That's Charles Burnbaum, 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:52.880 the founder, president and CEO of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:57.680 talking about an influential childhood book, Ferdinand the Bull. We 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:00.280 met Charles on a sidewalk in Washington, d at the 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:02.720 Women's March. He told us about his work at the 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:07.240 Foundation and the way in which landscapes are democratizing and 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.600 even healing. And I've looked back on this recently, Um, 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:13.720 you know, thinking about this book and this idea of 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:19.080 um smelling the flowers. What's so interesting to me is 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:23.120 how often I am moving through a place and people 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:30.599 aren't looking. They're on their phones, they're looking down. The 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:33.560 mission of the Cultural Landscape Foundation is to connect people 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.599 to places. By doing that, they teach people how to 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:40.440 see what Charles calls the invisible hand of the landscape architect, 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.800 or how to value nature and culture on equal footing. 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.200 Escapes are incredibly personal. There's a reason why gardening in 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:52.040 golf for America's favorite hobbies. I asked Charles what kind 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.720 of landscape is his favorite, and he told me it's 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.800 a kind of borrowed scenery. I think for me the 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:02.360 idea of sky and guideline. And perhaps it's because I'm 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.080 born and raised in New York City and that open 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:10.000 space was a very precious commodity. Charles's memories of working 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:14.240 alongside his grandparents became foundational to his understanding of time 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:19.000 in history. I had grandparents who lived in New London, Connecticut, 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:23.640 and they were My grandmother in particular, was a great gardener. Um. 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.520 I remember the sweeps of Black Eyed Susan's and but 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.120 the formative moment that I remember was being in the 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:34.400 vegetable garden planting tomatoes with my grandfather and tilling the soil. 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:39.200 And one of the things we unearthed was an old 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:53.039 Moxie pop bottle. And you know, as a kid, I 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.600 had never heard of moxipop. Um. I knew coke and pepsi, 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:00.000 but not moxie. And this was a bottle that probably 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:04.159 he had been in the ground for I don't know years, 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.279 and it was the first time I think, as as 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:11.520 is even a young person, to think about the idea 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:15.640 that the landscape is embedded with stories and our challenges 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.760 to unlock those and to discover those, and I just 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:23.039 remember thinking how remarkable it was, and um, you know, 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.000 I think as a young person, I even remember thinking about, 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:28.640 you know, the dinosaurs and that that they too were 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:32.279 um part of this palam sest, this layer and layer 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:53.240 upon layer of landscape history that were tethered to the 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.240 land through time. In history is most evident with something 0:06:56.320 --> 0:07:00.279 called witness trees. One of the things about wenz ape 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:05.000 is that when you have something that is living like 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.520 a tree, and the tree was there for an event, 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.960 it becomes a portal or a life way. Yes. One 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.480 of the most tangible witness trees, if you will, that 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:18.280 I can think about is um the memorial at the 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:22.320 World Trade Center in Manhattan. There is this incredible Bradford 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:26.480 pear tree that survives that day and it was moved 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.360 off site in a protected environment during the work that 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.520 then ensued for a number of years, and it was 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:36.640 brought back and there's a wonderfully beautifully simply designed railing 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:41.880 around it, and literally people line up for upwards of 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.480 thirty minutes, as I've witnessed, to be photographed in front 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:50.080 of this tree and um. To have that tangible connection 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:57.640 with something that survived that day, it's incredibly powerful. It's 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:01.120 easy to see how landscapes, borrows, scenery, and public spaces 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:05.080 can become bound up what Charles calls the messy, emotional, 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.880 and provocative aspects of history. We've seen this recently with 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.320 the executive order signed by President Trump that could reshape 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:17.040 twenty four national monuments, including Bear's Ears Monument. You know, 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:21.800 this is a landscape that is imbued with um, not 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:26.760 just a treasure trove of resources. I mean, I've read 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:30.720 that there's over a hundred thousand archaeological sites and wall 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:36.480 etchings that are unrivaled, but it also has Um Navajo 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:40.720 and Hopie Um and um. You know a great number 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.680 of five I think it's five local tribes, native peoples 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:48.640 who are you know, have their stories embedded in these places. 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.680 You know, when you remove the politics that you have 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.840 to begin with saying what is the significance of this place? 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.439 And you know, a national monument doesn't have a although 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.600 it is something that the president makes happen, it is 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:13.080 based on an incredible amount of research and documentation. While 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:17.920 documentation is incredibly important, there are less tangible facets to 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:28.560 a landscape. You know, when we talk about our connectivity 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:34.120 to a place, UM, there's emotional connectivity. UM. For example, 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:37.200 that might be UM, you know we were talking about 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:41.080 national monuments with Bear's ears. Uh you think about Stonewall 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:44.000 National Monument in New York City that you know, you 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.760 have the tavern, but the park that's across the streets, 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.160 which is called Christopher Park, which is part of that 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.840 National Monument designation, and it's a city park. Um, you 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:59.120 know where these um riots or rallies played out over time. UM. 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.240 That landscape boy rehabilitated by a landscape architect in the 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.880 nineteen eighties named Phil Winslow who died of AIDS. And 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.079 so for people that um, we're in New York. Then 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:14.280 for people that make the pilgrimage who are UM, gay 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:19.760 or transgender, UM, this could be this is a very 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.200 powerful emotional connection when you stand there and you know, 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.400 we talked about the visual connections the borrowed scenery. Imagine 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.400 you know, being on the terrorists at built more the 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:34.000 estate in North Carolina in Asheville, and if you didn't 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.000 have that view, which is preserved, it would be a 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.800 very different experience. But you know, I think the other 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:44.160 thing that we don't talk about are the less tangible 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.720 things we experience, Charles says. The National Register of Historic 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:51.800 Places has something called the seven Aspects of integrity when 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:56.680 evaluating a property for historic designation. The last two aspects 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:01.400 are called feeling and association. How do we wrap our 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:04.960 heads around that? Think about the sound of birds, you know, 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:10.640 those are called biophonic sounds, um, rushing water on a 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.920 grand scale Niagara falls, or it could be a cascade 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.520 in your neighborhood park, or you know, if you live 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.160 in the Lower South, it might be Spanish moss blowing 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:23.040 in the wind. Those are geophonic sounds and those contribute 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:26.000 to our experiences. And then there are man made sounds, 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.320 and some of those can be happy or or not 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:31.120 so happy sounds. I mean, think about going to a 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:35.360 ball game and the sound of a bat making contact 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:39.040 with a ball, that cracking sound, and the rush that 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:42.000 you have when you hear that, or the roar of 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:54.720 the crowd, is that they give us pleasure, but we 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.560 may not be aware of them. And I think that's 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:03.400 all part of experience a landscape are those emotional, visual, 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:08.360 and sensory sounds and experiences that we have. So with 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.760 all that's tangible and intangible, I asked Charles what it 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.760 means to be a good steward of the land. There's 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.079 there's two different kinds of stewardship that happens. There's stewardship 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:25.400 that happens in your heart, which is basically I mean 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:27.959 if you own a resource or you know, it's almost 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:30.160 like being a parent. You know, how will you care 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:34.960 for this place? Um? Will you manage change in a 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.960 way that is sensitive to these systems that we both 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.520 have alluded to. And the systems can be cultural life ways, 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.760 they can be at the hand of a designer, They 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:51.080 can be um ecology and all of its manifestations, UM 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:56.160 watershed um you know insect and bird populations, you know 0:12:56.240 --> 0:13:01.080 the use of um natives and not exotics. All of 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:06.480 that is stewardship. But the stewardship is also acting with knowledge. 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:11.720 And this knowledge can be known or just waiting to 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.640 be unearthed, which all comes down to those Moxie bottles 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:20.400 of stories hidden in the land. How do we begin 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:25.520 to really unlock these stories and to make people inquisitive, 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.880 invite them to fall into that portal and um, and 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:32.120 to take the time to do it, to open their heart, 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:51.600 to open their eyes, to open their ears. An excerpt 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:58.920 from When I'm Among the Trees by Mary Oliver. When 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.040 I am among the tree, especially the willows and the 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:05.480 honey locust, especially the beach, the oaks, and the pines, 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:09.679 they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.000 say that they saved me. And daily around me the 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.760 trees stir in their leaves and call out, stay awhile 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.800 the light flows from their branches, and they call me again. 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:24.280 It's simple, they say, you too, have come into the 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.480 world to go easy, to be filled with light, and 0:14:27.560 --> 0:15:06.560 to shine part of the Before my first daughter was born, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.160 before I could even imagine her existence, I had a 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:12.160 dream that I was walking at the edge of the world. 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:16.600 Everything around me was frozen and the night sky hung low. 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:20.520 A little girl appeared at my side and pointed into 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:31.200 tiny clusters of light. Misha, Misha, she insisted. In Hebrew. 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.040 Misha is a name that can also mean a question. 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:40.640 The question, who is like God? Perhaps no one or 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:52.320 perhaps all of us. Imagine if you inherited a trunk 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:56.200 from your ancestors that's full of heirlooms, and the trunk 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.600 has a set size, so you won't get heirlooms from 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:01.920 everybody because you have a lot, a lot of ancestors. 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:04.080 But you can imagine you can kind of rifle through 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:08.400 there and pick up various pieces, uh, and they'll represent 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:12.840 different ancestral lines for you. My name is Jake Burns, 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.440 and I'm a manager of population Genomics at Ancestry DNA, 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:22.960 and I would describe having spent my career examining DNA 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.480 to understand sort of how the evolutionary process works at 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.320 a fundamental level, how does it change your DNA over time. 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:37.320 Jake had always been steeped in mathematics and biology, but 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.520 when he learned that with DNA he could dive into 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.480 the past I nearly any organism and discover something hidden 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:50.120 about their histories, he was hooked. And the idea is, 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:55.200 over time, DNA through the copying process, it isn't perfect 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:58.040 when you pass it on generation to generations, so you 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:02.000 acquire mutations and you can actually think of those mutations 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:05.160 as a ticking clock, and each mutation is a tick 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:10.800 um because they're roughly evenly spaced through time. You can 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.520 start to date various events in time by looking at 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.920 kind of the number of mutations or differences that separate 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:25.720 two different organisms. Combine those molecular clocks with that trunk 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.760 from your ancestors, and a fuller picture of the United 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:33.560 States unfolds. The US is you know, I think particularly 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:39.000 exceptional in having drawn immigrant populations from all over the 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.280 world in very recent time, in the last you know, 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:45.000 four or five years kind of since the birth of 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:56.000 the country. And um that you know, influx of culture, language, worldview, 0:17:56.280 --> 0:18:00.480 and DNA from around the world creates this great mixture 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:06.320 within the US. What's exciting from genetics point of view is, UH, 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:09.960 there are enough subtle differences between these different groups that 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.640 we can you know, attempt to assign kind of originating 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:18.800 uh points in time and space UH and and kind 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.040 of tell this very complicated story of how people have 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:26.040 arrived and assimilated in some cases or not in other cases, 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:33.240 uh into the broader population within the US. Point of 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:37.520 origination arrival simulation. These words stick out because they underscore 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.119 a deeply entrenched pattern in humans, the idea that our 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.920 genes have criss crossed the globe and that we're actually 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.720 far more connected to one another than we know. But 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:49.480 to truly understand, we're going to need some eminem's in 0:18:49.520 --> 0:19:01.719 a few jars. You imagine, uh, a giant glass bowl 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.159 and you fill it with eminem's. But imagine that we 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.760 have thousands and thousands of eminem's in this giant bowl, 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:12.920 and imagine that they are hundreds of different colors. Now 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:16.199 we can imagine this bowl kind of represents one generation 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:18.720 of people in history, where each eminem is a person 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.760 and their colors tell you something about kind of the 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:27.440 DNA that they carry. Now imagine that, Uh, to construct 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:29.560 a new generation, we're going to sort of take a 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:33.159 sample from that first bowl and move it into a 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:35.119 second bowl. And that's how we're going to create a 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:39.280 new generation. When you do your sampling in a in 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.840 a sort of typical population that isn't undergoing a bottleneck, 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.520 you would imagine kind of individually picking out one eminem 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:48.879 at a time and maybe then dropping it in the 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:53.040 new bowl and replacing it in the original bowl. So 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:55.040 what you end up within the second bowl if you 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.600 sample again thousands of em and m's into the second 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:02.600 bowl is roughly the same representation of colors and kind 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.359 of roughly the same proportions of colors in the second bowl. 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:11.560 So that's kind of a typical population generation. This is 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.400 a stable population of eminem's pouring in and out day 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:20.200 after day. But what if something disrupts it, something catastrophic, 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:24.280 creating a bottleneck. The hand of God, so to speak, 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:28.840 digging into the bowl, simply reaching that big, that big 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.280 first bowl with a hand and select a single handful 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.879 of eminem's and throw them into the new bowl, and 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:39.639 then imagine that that little handful expanded over time. That 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:43.520 handful effectively represents the genetic bottleneck, where you've taken a 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:47.679 very small sample of the original population in the original diversity, 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.520 and you've seated a new population. Which you can imagine 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.639 happens is in that small handful, you've got probably no 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:59.119 representatives of some colors, and in some cases you may 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.040 have gotten way more eminem's of a particular color than 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:10.120 you would expect by chance. We humans take our position 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.520 in the food chain of life for granted, but there 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.879 have been moments in time like around fifty to sixty 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:19.600 thousand years ago, when humans were far from dominating the world. 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:23.920 In fact, the population had whittled down significantly to a bottleneck. 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:26.879 The handful of Eminem's plut from the jar, so to speak, 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:31.200 and from this handful we are all descended. To see 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:35.159 this idea illustrated in a mathematical constellation, Jake and his 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.480 team constructed a network of seven hundred thousand ancestry dot 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.600 com customers. Here's what they found. And if you imagine 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:45.359 each one uh as a point in a large graph, 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:48.760 we'll draw an edge between any pair of individuals if 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:52.360 they share enough genetic material to be fairly recently related. 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:57.479 What was surprising is that almost that entire graph is 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:00.960 very highly connected. So among those seven hundred thousand people, 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.119 we had to draw over five hundred million lines to 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:10.400 connect them all, and yet we still gather into mental tribes. 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:14.080 It's a tough time, right. Um. You know, there's a 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:17.320 I think a wave of nationalism across the world, but 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:21.919 in response also to the dangers of globalism. Right, So 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.159 it's you know, that's a very tough conversation. I think, Um, 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.760 each person has to sort of um figure out where 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:33.480 they fall. Um. But I think genetics and family history 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:37.480 have surprisingly a little part to play in that story. 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:44.879 One of the most important take home messages is is 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:49.439 exactly this connectivity of of humanity UM. You know, we 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:55.119 have a tremendous tendency on the surface to um to 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.520 be tribal, right, to support those in our community are 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.479 close community. And part of the way we kind of 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.400 create this social bond is by treating those who are 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.680 next door, just across the street or across the political 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:11.879 boundary as the enemy. And you know, one of the 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:15.439 really powerful things about what we see in genetic data is, 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.800 you know, those close neighbors typically are very close relatives 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:23.800 of yours uh in fairly recent history. And so you know, 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:26.200 it might be very optimistic that I have high hopes 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.240 for sort of the transformational power of getting this information 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:34.440 in a broader audience's hands where they can UM kind 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:38.439 of sit back and sort of recognize how closely related 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:49.400 we all are. Humans are a collection of genes scattered 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:51.760 across time as we know it on Earth. But we 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:55.240 owe our true beginnings to the tumble weed of cosmic matter, 0:23:55.840 --> 0:24:03.879 matter that originated with time itself. The chemical elements that 0:24:03.920 --> 0:24:06.040 we see in the mirror in the Morn, England. We 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:08.400 look at ourselves. So those were all atoms that were 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:12.600 inside stars hundreds of millions of years ago to billions 0:24:12.640 --> 0:24:15.879 of years ago. And so this is a pretty astonishing 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:19.359 story just to begin with about the atoms. We're all 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:23.080 connected in a very deep way, and yet we all 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:27.720 forget that. I'm John Mather. I work at NASA Goddard 0:24:27.800 --> 0:24:30.960 Space Flight Center, and I'm the senior project scientist for 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:35.040 the James web Space Telescope. John's work has helped confirmed 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:37.920 the Big Bang theory the very moment time began when 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:41.280 our universe came into existence, and he's done this with 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:45.800 extraordinary accuracy. John leads the team for the James Webb 0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:49.960 Space Telescope, telescope designed to peer far back into time. 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:52.680 Committee was formed, of course, to write a report to 0:24:52.720 --> 0:24:55.520 say what do we do next, and they said, please 0:24:55.560 --> 0:24:58.520 build us an even bigger, more powerful telescope that could 0:24:58.520 --> 0:25:01.879 see further back in time to see those first galaxies growing. 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:06.840 That's what's become the James Web Space Telescope. And this way, 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:13.120 the telescope acts as night vision goggles, observing longer infrared wavelengths. 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:16.320 This allowed scientists to see things that had never been 0:25:16.359 --> 0:25:20.280 detected before, the locations of thousands of other planets orbiting 0:25:20.400 --> 0:25:23.280 other stars with conditions that could be similar to Earth 0:25:23.320 --> 0:25:26.280 have been isolated. We'd like to find the one that's 0:25:26.320 --> 0:25:31.040 just just the right temperature, the right size, has the 0:25:31.080 --> 0:25:33.960 right amount of gravity, the roughly the right chemistry to 0:25:34.080 --> 0:25:38.000 be like home. This kind of curiosity was a feature 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:42.679 of John's childhood. I grew up in very rural northern 0:25:42.680 --> 0:25:45.600 New Jersey, and so it was really country and really 0:25:45.600 --> 0:25:47.520 far away from town, and it was dark at night 0:25:47.760 --> 0:25:50.240 and you could see the stars. It was a really 0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:55.240 interesting place scientifically to grow up because geology was happening 0:25:55.240 --> 0:26:00.479 all around. This is uh where the Appelachians cut across Jersey, 0:26:00.520 --> 0:26:03.919 and so the glaciers had come across and brought in 0:26:04.040 --> 0:26:06.439 all kinds of interesting stones and rocks, and there were 0:26:06.440 --> 0:26:09.040 fossils lying by the road. We went down to the 0:26:09.119 --> 0:26:11.359 Museum and Natural History in New York City and we 0:26:11.400 --> 0:26:15.520 saw the planetarium show, and we saw the bones displayed 0:26:15.560 --> 0:26:19.159 the dinosaurs, and the and the evolution displays. You can 0:26:19.200 --> 0:26:22.400 see how the fish turned into bigger fish and got 0:26:22.400 --> 0:26:26.439 more complicated over the zillions of years. So anyway, it 0:26:26.520 --> 0:26:30.920 was a fascinating time to be a kid, just having 0:26:30.960 --> 0:26:34.119 a sense of everything was open to be discovered, and 0:26:34.200 --> 0:26:37.480 everything was fascinating. But what draws John the most are 0:26:37.520 --> 0:26:41.879 the mysteries embedded in the stars. Immediately, I'm connected with 0:26:41.960 --> 0:26:44.840 the story that we tell about where did we come from? 0:26:44.960 --> 0:26:49.480 How did we get here? Um? And I know from 0:26:49.600 --> 0:26:52.600 studying and thinking about it that the the universe is 0:26:52.600 --> 0:26:55.400 truly immense and gigantic, and then the stars are really 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:57.760 far away. And then the part that we can get 0:26:57.800 --> 0:27:01.439 from personal experiences so tiny by coming Earth and you know, um, 0:27:02.160 --> 0:27:05.600 human lifespans about a hundred years, and that's about as 0:27:05.720 --> 0:27:08.399 much as we can remember. We talked to our grandparents, 0:27:08.400 --> 0:27:10.960 and that's about as far back as anybody remembers in person. 0:27:11.680 --> 0:27:14.320 And then we go on to say, well, we sidis 0:27:14.400 --> 0:27:16.760 have figured out what's happened over billions of years, and 0:27:16.800 --> 0:27:22.200 it's way beyond personal experience, but it's still mysterious and wonderful. 0:27:22.280 --> 0:27:26.119 And so I say, what a miraculous thing could be 0:27:26.160 --> 0:27:30.720 appreciative of? Say, well, out of this enormous universe, here 0:27:30.760 --> 0:27:33.800 we are looking up at the great mysteries of the 0:27:33.800 --> 0:27:40.119 sky and the mysteries of our own history. So what 0:27:40.320 --> 0:27:43.119 does all of this look like to John who's looked 0:27:43.280 --> 0:27:46.760 deep into space and time through the telescope, returning again 0:27:46.880 --> 0:27:50.960 and again home to Earth. Because the Earth special even 0:27:51.000 --> 0:27:53.760 in the Solar System, we're the only ones that have 0:27:54.880 --> 0:27:58.760 liquid ocean on the surface. We have continents and oceans, 0:27:58.800 --> 0:28:00.959 just enough water to fill up the ocean, but not 0:28:01.000 --> 0:28:05.440 all the way over the top of the mountain. So um, 0:28:05.600 --> 0:28:08.360 we can imagine that life on another planet that had 0:28:08.400 --> 0:28:11.800 water might exist, but without continents, I wouldn't have people. 0:28:12.680 --> 0:28:15.160 Virtually all the astronauts said look back at the Earth, 0:28:16.040 --> 0:28:18.600 either from the space station or from the Apollo. They 0:28:18.720 --> 0:28:23.760 all report some kind of mystic experience about this. Seeing 0:28:23.800 --> 0:28:28.240 the Earth as small and fragile and as our only home. 0:28:28.960 --> 0:28:32.320 People come back realizing that our Earth is very special. 0:28:32.600 --> 0:28:34.600 We might need to protect it as well as we can, 0:28:35.600 --> 0:28:38.560 both from natural disasters and from the kinds of disasters 0:28:38.640 --> 0:28:41.720 that we could cause for ourselves, so we might be 0:28:41.800 --> 0:28:48.760 the only ones for long, long distance around. For chilling 0:28:49.000 --> 0:28:52.400