Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name's
Speaker 2: Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I chat with distinguished theoretical
Speaker 2: physicist and a professor of natural philosophy, physics, and astronomy
Speaker 2: at Dartmouth College, Marcello Gliser, the first Latin American recipient
Speaker 2: of the Templeton Prize. His new book is The Dawn
Speaker 2: of a Mindful Universe, a manifesto for Humanity's future, out
Speaker 2: now in all formats, and it's just a tremendous read
Speaker 2: to kick off a new year with optimism and determination
Speaker 2: about our relationship to the planet. So without further Ado,
Speaker 2: let's jump right into the interview. Hi, Marcello, Welcome to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: My pleasure. Thanks Rob.
Speaker 2: The new book is The Dawn of a Mindful Universe,
Speaker 2: out now in all formats. You stress that this is
Speaker 2: not an doom book about the dire trajectory of human civilization.
Speaker 2: You point out that, particularly with the existential crisis of
Speaker 2: climate change, scare tactics don't seem to work. What is
Speaker 2: it about humans that make us so resistant to change?
Speaker 2: When confronted with problems like climate change?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I think what makes climate change different is that
Speaker 4: you don't see the eminent danger in front of your face.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's not sort of like the Japanese just bald pearl harbor,
Speaker 4: we got to mobilize and five back kind of thing.
Speaker 3: You know. It's sort of like.
Speaker 4: This slow, slowly encroaching thing, and we tend to not
Speaker 4: push back whenever we don't feel this kind of oh
Speaker 4: my god, you know, the world is about to end
Speaker 4: kind of thing. And so there is a disconnect between
Speaker 4: what people keep saying, Look, global warming, it's real, it's happening.
Speaker 4: You know, it's affecting all of us. For example, I
Speaker 4: live in northern New England.
Speaker 3: And it's late December here and there is no snow
Speaker 3: right then.
Speaker 4: There should be two feet of snow out there, and
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, it's al Nino. It's normal. It's not
Speaker 4: really normal.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: This is the hottest year ever recorded apparently in the planet.
Speaker 4: So I'm talking about twenty twenty three. And so that
Speaker 4: means that I think the problem, the challenge that people
Speaker 4: have is convincing people of two things. First of all,
Speaker 4: that yes, it's not happening right now, but it's happening slowly,
Speaker 4: and when it starts unfolding, it's going to just get
Speaker 4: worse and more challenging.
Speaker 3: So it's like the slow approach to the danger.
Speaker 4: And the other one is that most people say that,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm just one person.
Speaker 3: What am I going to do?
Speaker 4: You know, if I stop eating meat right now, it's
Speaker 4: not going to make a difference, And if I buy
Speaker 4: an electric car, it's not going to make a difference,
Speaker 4: because I'm just a little little person in this giant
Speaker 4: eight billion people world controlled by corporations and governments. So
Speaker 4: my actions are useless.
Speaker 3: And the point is that that is only true to
Speaker 3: a certain degree, because what you do is a statement
Speaker 3: of who you are and why you believe in right,
Speaker 3: and the way you position yourself in the world.
Speaker 4: Really is a mirror of your attitudes and your value system.
Speaker 4: And so if you are a person that is bothered
Speaker 4: by global arming, by the fact that the big oil
Speaker 4: companies are polluting the world because we need the fuel
Speaker 4: and that's the only way mostly that we can use it,
Speaker 4: you can do something about it, not so much to
Speaker 4: stop global arming by yourself, but to make a statement.
Speaker 3: And I am an optimist. That's why when you talk
Speaker 3: about doom.
Speaker 4: You know, like, I'm an optimist and I think that
Speaker 4: the alternative, you know, to be a pessimist is a
Speaker 4: total disaster, right, because you know, I grew up in Brazil,
Speaker 4: and as you know, Brazil, we love soccer, and so
Speaker 4: I'm using a soccer metaphor, which is this, right, So
Speaker 4: if you are pessimists, you're the kind of guy that
Speaker 4: is going to go to a game and even before
Speaker 4: the ball is kicked for the first time, you sit
Speaker 4: down on the ground and say, oh, there's no way
Speaker 4: I can win this game.
Speaker 3: I'm giving up, you know. And what kind of game
Speaker 3: is that? Right? What kind of life is that? So
Speaker 3: you have to try to.
Speaker 4: Make a difference and make a statement because you will
Speaker 4: influence people around you. And I think that I'm a
Speaker 4: believer in the chain reaction of social forces, and so
Speaker 4: that as more and more people engage with this way
Speaker 4: of thinking about preservation sustainability, the more difference you know,
Speaker 4: we are going to feel in a society as a whole.
Speaker 4: It's a big, big challenge, but I think it's possible.
Speaker 2: In the book, you propose a transformation of the collective mindset,
Speaker 2: particularly the adoption of a post Copernican worldview. Can can
Speaker 2: you walk us through this beginning with just a reminder
Speaker 2: of who Nicholas Copernicus was and how he helped transform
Speaker 2: an established worldview.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So this is a very long story. This is
Speaker 3: sort of the core kind of aspect of the whole book.
Speaker 4: And the idea is this that even before Copernicus's starting,
Speaker 4: really from the beginning, if you think about our species, right,
Speaker 4: so we are Homo sapiens, and we've been here on
Speaker 4: this planet for about three hundred thousand years. Just give
Speaker 4: perspective to people, if you look at the history of
Speaker 4: the world, right, the planet Earth, Right, planet Earth has
Speaker 4: been around for four and a half billion years. So
Speaker 4: if you take three hundred thousand of four and a
Speaker 4: half billion years, you're talking. And if you take four
Speaker 4: and a half billionaires and compress it into twenty four
Speaker 4: hours in one day, right, we basically arrived a few
Speaker 4: seconds before midnight. So we are the newcomers on the planet, right,
Speaker 4: that's for sure. But on the other hand, we have
Speaker 4: changed the planet dramatically. And it's not three hundred thousand
Speaker 4: years of Homo SAPIs that did it is about ten
Speaker 4: thousand years of agrarian and industrial civilization. That they did
Speaker 4: it so in about ten thousand years, which changed everything.
Speaker 4: So if we look at our history sort of like
Speaker 4: in what we call deep time, right, so we start
Speaker 4: from the beginning. For most of the time that we
Speaker 4: existed in this planet, we were organized socially.
Speaker 3: In a completely different way. Were what we call hunter gatherers, right,
Speaker 3: So people organize themselves into small bands.
Speaker 4: They all helped one another. The idea that we're savage
Speaker 4: caveman is kind of silly and it's old fashioned. You know,
Speaker 4: all the anthropology studies now mentioned that actually those bands
Speaker 4: of hunter gatherers they'd stuck together, but they also collaborated, interbred,
Speaker 4: you know, with.
Speaker 3: Each other, and they had a relationship to the planet.
Speaker 4: And this is the essential point, which is very very
Speaker 4: different from the one we have now. And nowadays, the
Speaker 4: only cultures that still relate to the planet.
Speaker 3: In a similar way other indigenous cultures. And what do
Speaker 3: they say. They say the planet is sacred, right, that the.
Speaker 4: Mountains, the rivers, the forests, the animals, everyone is interconnected
Speaker 4: in a very fundamental way. And you have to respect
Speaker 4: this chain of being because if you don't, you're going
Speaker 4: to pay a very high price. So there was this
Speaker 4: notion of everything had an enchanted kind of reality about it.
Speaker 4: There were spirits everywhere. The ancestors were there too, and
Speaker 4: there was really no separation between the reality that we
Speaker 4: see with our eyes right now and this kind of
Speaker 4: fantastic other world of spirits and forces beyond their control.
Speaker 4: So there was a way of dealing with the planet
Speaker 4: which was in a sense deeply respectful.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So with a grand civilization, many wonderful things happened. For example,
Speaker 4: we started to plant and we could feed more people,
Speaker 4: and of course of that, the population started to grow,
Speaker 4: and we started to condense more and more into small
Speaker 4: areas which became city states.
Speaker 3: And you know, life expectancy didn't grow much for that
Speaker 3: because once we start putting a lot of people together,
Speaker 3: there all sorts of issues like sewage and diseases. And
Speaker 3: so for most of the history of our species, the
Speaker 3: life expectancy was between thirty and forty years old. This
Speaker 3: is including Victoria and England in nineteenth century. We never
Speaker 3: lived very long.
Speaker 4: But the point back to your question is that what
Speaker 4: changed with their ground civilization was the notion that now
Speaker 4: we can control the planet, we can control nature. Look,
Speaker 4: we are planting, we are making things grow, we can
Speaker 4: domesticate animals, and more and more.
Speaker 3: We felt like we are the owners of the place.
Speaker 4: Right, And it is no coincidence when you look look
Speaker 4: at monotoistic religions which came at about the same time,
Speaker 4: you know, Judaism and then Christianity, they all talk about
Speaker 4: us as being above the world. You know, God created
Speaker 4: the land to serve you. You take ownership of the animals,
Speaker 4: et cetera. That's in Genesis in the Bible. Right to say,
Speaker 4: all right, this is our place, this is our world.
Speaker 4: We control it, and we are above nature. And this notion,
Speaker 4: you know, that we are above nature kind of pervaded
Speaker 4: all of what happened in the last two thousand years
Speaker 4: that we are going to be creating technologies that we
Speaker 4: can't use to basically protect us from the forces of
Speaker 4: the world. Right, So we build our homes, we warm
Speaker 4: them up, we create clothes, they are warm, we eat
Speaker 4: and cook our food, etc.
Speaker 3: So we tried to really control the forces of nature.
Speaker 3: But then comes a storm.
Speaker 4: There comes about panic eruption, or an earthquake or a
Speaker 4: tidal wave. And to teachers that you know what folks
Speaker 4: is not that simple, right. We are not really above nature.
Speaker 4: We are really very much part of the natural world, right.
Speaker 4: But we kept on going and became very successful developing technologies.
Speaker 3: And this is our story, right. We are a species
Speaker 3: that tells stories about who we are and the place
Speaker 3: we have been. Now back to Copernicus. So Copernicus showed
Speaker 3: up in the early fifteen hundreds, and in fifteen forty
Speaker 3: three he wrote a book.
Speaker 4: He published the book which is sort of like the
Speaker 4: big book of his life, okay, And the book was
Speaker 4: called on the Revolution of.
Speaker 3: The Celestial Spheres. And what the story was with that
Speaker 3: book is that up to his time, everyone believed that
Speaker 3: the Earth was the center of the universe.
Speaker 4: That there was the Earth in the middle, and then
Speaker 4: you had the moon and had Mercury and Venus around it,
Speaker 4: and the Sun and all the other planets up to Saturn,
Speaker 4: because that's all.
Speaker 3: They could see. In the fifteen hundreds, everything revolved around us,
Speaker 3: and so the Earth was the center of everything.
Speaker 4: And of course we, according to religion, were created in
Speaker 4: the image of God. So we were like, you know,
Speaker 4: even though we were being kicked out of paradise, we
Speaker 4: were sort of the God emissaries in this planet, right,
Speaker 4: and so we had this value system where we were
Speaker 4: the best, right, our planet was the center. When Copernicus
Speaker 4: comes in, he basically changes this story and he says, sorry, folks,
Speaker 4: it turns out that from what we can say from astronomy.
Speaker 3: That is not the story. The story is that the
Speaker 3: Sun really is the center of our solar system, and
Speaker 3: the Earth is just a planet, just like Mercury and
Speaker 3: Venus and Jupiter, which means that it just goes around
Speaker 3: the Sun.
Speaker 4: And at that point something very profound happens, because if
Speaker 4: Earth is just a planet like any other planet, it
Speaker 4: does not have the value that people believed it had.
Speaker 4: So all of the philosophy and the cosmology, you know,
Speaker 4: the way we thought about the universe at the time
Speaker 4: was based on the Aristotelian So Aristotle, this Greek philosopher
Speaker 4: about three hundred years BCE, built a whole system, a
Speaker 4: whole worldview, you know, based on the fact that the
Speaker 4: Earth is the center.
Speaker 3: Everything falls to it.
Speaker 4: Everything changes here by the heavens, the planets, and the
Speaker 4: moon and the stars are all eternal and changing. So
Speaker 4: the Earth was the place whereas everything was changing, the
Speaker 4: skies were eternal.
Speaker 3: There was some hierarchy. There was vertico, you know, from
Speaker 3: the center of the earth changing all the way up
Speaker 3: to the sky. And the Catholic Church bought that and said,
Speaker 3: that is exactly how the world should be if God
Speaker 3: created it. And God is not on earth anymore like
Speaker 3: he was for our ancestors. God is way up there
Speaker 3: in the skies. And it's a very abstract idea, you know.
Speaker 4: The more the idea of the monotheistic God advanced in time,
Speaker 4: the more remote God became. You know, in the Old
Speaker 4: Testament it was around a lot, you know, it was
Speaker 4: like burning bush with Moses and doing all sorts.
Speaker 3: Of other things.
Speaker 4: And then in the Christian times, you know, it became
Speaker 4: sort of like this idea in the skies.
Speaker 3: It sent a sun, you know. But and so the point.
Speaker 4: Is that as religion left the planet, the planet became
Speaker 4: an object, became not sacred anymore, a place where you
Speaker 4: could exploit as you wanted. And that attached to the
Speaker 4: notion from astronomy from Copernicas, Hey, the Earth is just
Speaker 4: a planet. Meant that the combination of the science of
Speaker 4: the time and this religion of the time meant that, yes,
Speaker 4: you can do to the planet whatever we want. It's
Speaker 4: just another world. It's not that important. If there is
Speaker 4: life here, there will be life and other planets too.
Speaker 3: So it's really cool.
Speaker 4: Actually, if you look at the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 4: all these guys, like very famous scientists were speculating about
Speaker 4: life and another world, like, you know, like is it
Speaker 4: going to be just like here or not? And if
Speaker 4: it's just like humans, would they be sinners? And if
Speaker 4: there is a sinner there, well you need another Jesus,
Speaker 4: you know, And are there many Jesuses and.
Speaker 3: All these different planets to save people. It was like
Speaker 3: this wild conversation about this other life. And the end
Speaker 3: result of this, right as the centuries advanced, is that
Speaker 3: the Earth was objectified and became a place where you
Speaker 3: could do as we wanted to. And so that's the
Speaker 3: impact of the Copernican idea, which was not really his.
Speaker 4: I mean, all he said is that, look, the Earth
Speaker 4: is planet, but the whole everything else that followed, and
Speaker 4: this has been the narrative of modern astronomy and cosmology,
Speaker 4: which is what I do for a living, you know,
Speaker 4: as a researcher, which is essentially this and you must
Speaker 4: have heard this before. It's like, man, these are scientists
Speaker 4: keep telling us that the more we know about the universe,
Speaker 4: the less important we become. You know, if the Earth
Speaker 4: is just a.
Speaker 3: Planet, and then the Sun was the center of everything.
Speaker 4: But then, sorry, folks, know, the Sun is just a
Speaker 4: star and this star they are in this galaxy in
Speaker 4: the Milky Way where we live, there are about two
Speaker 4: hundred billion stars, you know, and the Sun, the kind
Speaker 4: of star that the Sun belongs to, which is it's
Speaker 4: called g star, is only about three percent.
Speaker 3: Of all the stars.
Speaker 4: And then the galaxy that we thought until one hundred
Speaker 4: years ago, everybody thought the Milky Way was the only
Speaker 4: galaxy in the universe. And then this American astronomer called
Speaker 4: Hubbo said, nope, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies
Speaker 4: out there, and these galaxies, furthermore, are moving away from
Speaker 4: one another. The universe is expanding, and so like, we're
Speaker 4: really becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, right, And then
Speaker 4: to top it.
Speaker 3: All, in the last forty years or so, we discovered.
Speaker 4: That the matter that we are made of, the atoms
Speaker 4: in your body are just about five percent.
Speaker 3: Of the stuff that fills up the universe.
Speaker 4: So all the stars and the planets and the gas
Speaker 4: clouds and the people.
Speaker 3: All this stuff is only about five percent of what's
Speaker 3: out there. So now even the stuff we are made
Speaker 3: of is important, right, and then to finish the whole thing, right,
Speaker 3: to less nail on the coffin. In the last twenty
Speaker 3: years or so, even our universe may not be the
Speaker 3: only universe. That may be part of what's called a multiverse,
Speaker 3: which is like a bubbling soup of.
Speaker 4: Different universes, and each universe has a different set of
Speaker 4: proper And so the narrative that I'm trying to build
Speaker 4: here is that we went from a species that thought
Speaker 4: of this world as their mother, as the sole responsible
Speaker 4: for our existence, to a species where the development of
Speaker 4: industrial technologies and this way of looking at the universe
Speaker 4: as this very very big place, which is all true scientifically,
Speaker 4: you know, took the value of our planet and objectified it,
Speaker 4: and it created this mindset where we don't have to
Speaker 4: worry about the world. That's the story, you know, that
Speaker 4: comes into this book. And then the point is, okay,
Speaker 4: now that story needs.
Speaker 3: To change because if we keep telling this story to ourselves,
Speaker 3: we are not going to be here telling the story
Speaker 3: for much longer. So The question is how can we
Speaker 3: build a different argument to explain who we are now?
Speaker 2: Some might, you know, criticize this notion as something radical
Speaker 2: that could never captivate the mainstream, but you rightfully point
Speaker 2: out that the major shifts in worldview and cultural narrative
Speaker 2: occur throughout human history. So it's it's not an unreasonable hope.
Speaker 3: Right, I hope not. You know.
Speaker 4: For example, the shift to Copernicanism, the shift from an
Speaker 4: Earth centered cosmos to a Sun centered cosmos was like
Speaker 4: profoundly changing, right. I mean, there was the whole issue
Speaker 4: with Galileo and the Inquisition because he was, you know,
Speaker 4: about one hundred years not quiet eighty years after Copernicus.
Speaker 4: He was saying, folks, Copernicus is right, you know, and
Speaker 4: if you keep insisting that the Earth is the center,
Speaker 4: you're going to embarrass yourselves, you know. And only in
Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties the Church forgave Galileo.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: And so changes of mindset they do happen, right when
Speaker 4: there's enough evidence for them to happen, either moved by
Speaker 4: fear or moved by scientific evidence. You don't have to believe,
Speaker 4: because science is exactly what tells you you don't need
Speaker 4: to believe in this. You need to look at the data,
Speaker 4: interpret it properly, and understand what's going on. Right, So
Speaker 4: where does the fun new story comes in?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: The story that comes in is that you can rescue
Speaker 4: this notion of belonging to the natural world that ancient
Speaker 4: cultures have had for a long time and couch it
Speaker 4: in a scientific narrative. And that's what I tried to
Speaker 4: do in this book.
Speaker 3: Right, And how do you do that? Well? First of all,
Speaker 3: there is the story that everybody knows already that we
Speaker 3: are made of star dost right, you know. So you have.
Speaker 4: Johnny Mitchell and you have Carl Sagan, all of us
Speaker 4: saying these things, and people have to internalize that this
Speaker 4: is really true.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And I love to talk about this because it is
Speaker 4: so beautiful. You know, it's kind of at the same
Speaker 4: time lyrical and scientifically accurate.
Speaker 3: That you know, the iron in.
Speaker 4: Your blood, and the calcium in your bones, and the
Speaker 4: carbon in your cells, all of these chemical elements, they
Speaker 4: all came from stars that blew up over five billion
Speaker 4: years ago. So if you stop to think about this,
Speaker 4: for instance, so what you know, so because the stars
Speaker 4: are what are the great alchemists. So what a star
Speaker 4: does essentially is that it grabs hydrogen. A star is
Speaker 4: a giant ball of flaming hydrogen. Hydrogen, you guys don't remember,
Speaker 4: is the simplest chemical element that exists in nature. It
Speaker 4: has one proton and one electron in the one proton
Speaker 4: in the nucleus and one electron moving about it. So
Speaker 4: that is the simplest thing that exists chemically speaking. And
Speaker 4: what a star does it grabs hydrogen, pushes it together,
Speaker 4: compresses it really hard, and this compression transforms hydrogen in
Speaker 4: all the other chemical elements that exists.
Speaker 3: That's called nuclear fusion.
Speaker 4: So a star is essentially a giant nu clear fusion
Speaker 4: device that transforms hydrogen into helium, carbon, oxygen all the
Speaker 4: way to iron. And then when it gets to iron,
Speaker 4: big stars tend to explode in what we call super
Speaker 4: and over explosions, and when that happens, the heavy elements
Speaker 4: all the way to uranium.
Speaker 3: Are forged in different ways.
Speaker 4: So and then when the stars explode, they spell all
Speaker 4: that stuff out into interstellar space, and all these gas
Speaker 4: clouds filled with all these chemical elements travel around hit
Speaker 4: all the floating clouds of hydrogen sprinkle them with the
Speaker 4: heavy chemical elements. And when this star is born and
Speaker 4: the planets are born, they carry with them all the
Speaker 4: chemistry that will become part of life. So that's who
Speaker 4: we are, you know. So the star do story is
Speaker 4: really true. So that's connecting us to the history of
Speaker 4: the universe as a whole, right, So we connect ourselves
Speaker 4: to billions and billions of years of cosmic history.
Speaker 3: So that's one point.
Speaker 4: There's this Buddhist monk that I like a lot called
Speaker 4: ticknot Hunt, who talked about this thing called interveing.
Speaker 3: The notion of intervening is really cool, he says. You know,
Speaker 3: pick up a book and read a poem, and you
Speaker 3: look at that page in that book and you say, wow,
Speaker 3: this page is made of paper. So that means that
Speaker 3: as I'm reading this book and I'm looking at this
Speaker 3: page of paper, there is a cloud that made this
Speaker 3: paper possible, you know, because this paper is made of wood.
Speaker 3: Wood is tree.
Speaker 4: Tree needs water. Water comes from rain, rain comes some clouds,
Speaker 4: and the planet made that happen. But it only made
Speaker 4: that happen because there is a sun giving it energy
Speaker 4: to make it happen and to drive its climate. And
Speaker 4: so you're already connected to the Sun, so when you're
Speaker 4: reading a page of a book, you're really already.
Speaker 3: Connected to this.
Speaker 4: But the Son, of course, is a star that belongs
Speaker 4: to a galaxy that belongs to the universe. So in
Speaker 4: this page of paper that you're reading, you have the
Speaker 4: whole history of the universe, and that's the notion of intervening.
Speaker 3: So this vision that this guy had.
Speaker 4: It really is completely supported by scientific research.
Speaker 3: So that's all good. Now comes the second part.
Speaker 4: That's where it becomes a little provocative from my end,
Speaker 4: which is this, In the last fifteen or twenty years,
Speaker 4: this new branch of astronomy called astrobiology came out, and
Speaker 4: what is astrobiology. Astrobiology is essentially the study of life
Speaker 4: in the universe. Right, So now it's kind of awesome.
Speaker 4: You can actually get grants from NASA and National Science
Speaker 4: Foundation to study aliens or the possibility of alien life
Speaker 4: in the universe. You know, twenty years ago that was
Speaker 4: not possible at all. And what we have been doing
Speaker 4: with the Hubble Space Telescope and now the James we
Speaker 4: have space Telescope, which is this spectacular machine that allows
Speaker 4: us to look at planets going around other stars, to
Speaker 4: search for chemical elements, look at these chemical elements in
Speaker 4: their atmospheres to see if the atmosphere stell is about
Speaker 4: life in that world or not. So, to make this
Speaker 4: a little more concrete, if a native astronomer looked at
Speaker 4: Earth from far away, from like ten light years away,
Speaker 4: you would say, oh, look at that blue planet over there.
Speaker 4: It has a very thick atmosphere. It has water, it
Speaker 4: has carbon dioxide, it has methane, it has ozone. That
Speaker 4: planet is alive just because of the combinations of possible
Speaker 4: chemicals in their atmosphere. So to find life elsewhere, you
Speaker 4: don't really need to take a spaceship and go interstellar,
Speaker 4: which would.
Speaker 3: Be awesome, but it's not possible yet. But you can
Speaker 3: look those planets thirty their atmospherees S thirty the chemical
Speaker 3: composition of the atmosphere, and say, yep, it really indicates
Speaker 3: the presence of biological activity there.
Speaker 4: So we're doing that now, and we have found so
Speaker 4: far over five thousand, five hundred exoplanets we call them,
Speaker 4: that is, planets rotating orbiting around other stars far away,
Speaker 4: and we have been able to study the atmospheres of
Speaker 4: a small amount of them. But we have also found
Speaker 4: what kind of planet is that? Is it like an
Speaker 4: Earth like rocky solid guy, or is it more like Jupiter,
Speaker 4: which is this big, giant, buffy ball of gas. And
Speaker 4: what we have found out is that the vast majority
Speaker 4: of worlds I have nothing to do with Earth, a
Speaker 4: much more like Jupiter on neptunes of big gas planets.
Speaker 4: Only about three percent of the planets that we have
Speaker 4: found so far have a similar look to Earth. But
Speaker 4: of those, very few of them orbit a star like
Speaker 4: the Sun. Some of them orbit stars which are much colder.
Speaker 4: Most of them, in fact, orbit stars which are much colder.
Speaker 4: And so as you start looking at this in more detail,
Speaker 4: you realize that even from an astronomical perspective, even though
Speaker 4: there are trillions, and I'm not joking, trillion is one,
Speaker 4: trillion is a one with twelve zeros, there are trillions
Speaker 4: of planets in our galaxy alone, okay, but very few
Speaker 4: are going to be similar to this planet.
Speaker 3: So what we're beginning to learn is that despite you
Speaker 3: have this gigantic diversity of worlds out there which is
Speaker 3: really spectacular, and they are all magically amazing, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: you have moons in our Solar system, not just the planets.
Speaker 3: You have the moons too, like Enceladus and Europa, which
Speaker 3: is this moon of Jupiter that has a crust, and
Speaker 3: the underneath the ice crust there's a nocean of salt
Speaker 3: water that carries four times more water than all the
Speaker 3: oceans of our planet together. So like damn.
Speaker 4: You know, if there is that, then maybe hey, salt water, right,
Speaker 4: that may be life there, So there'll be there are
Speaker 4: planned missions that will go there, hopefully at some point
Speaker 4: land drill a hole, try to get some of the
Speaker 4: water to analyze if there are any little create creatures
Speaker 4: out there. But even if there are, they're not going
Speaker 4: to be as complex as life here. See, the thing
Speaker 4: about Earth is not that it's just a living planet
Speaker 4: as a whole, but it's a living planet with very
Speaker 4: complex life, and that makes all the difference. So Avatar,
Speaker 4: you know, that's that that movie was made for a
Speaker 4: very good reason, you know, which is there will be
Speaker 4: very few planets like was similar to there will let
Speaker 4: me be the more more bombastic here I do this.
Speaker 3: There will never be another Earth in the whole of
Speaker 3: the universe.
Speaker 4: You can have planets similar to Earth maybe, and even
Speaker 4: if they have life, life on those planets, even if
Speaker 4: it's kind of like our life, like carbon based water bays,
Speaker 4: that life is going to be completely different from life here,
Speaker 4: which means which I think is really cool, and it's
Speaker 4: part of the fundamental soul of the book that we
Speaker 4: are the only humans in the universe. There will be
Speaker 4: no other humans. There could be other humanoid like things.
Speaker 3: With like a left right symmetry like you have, you know,
Speaker 3: left right eye and stuff, but there will be no
Speaker 3: other human species in the whole of the universe. And
Speaker 3: that puts us back in the center of the universe,
Speaker 3: but in a completely different way from before Copernicus, because
Speaker 3: now we become the species that is self aware and
Speaker 3: is able to tell its own story.
Speaker 4: And the biggest story that we tell is the story
Speaker 4: of how we belong to the universe as a whole.
Speaker 4: So we are in a sense, telling the story of
Speaker 4: the universe. We are the voice and the mind of
Speaker 4: the universe telling its own story.
Speaker 2: And so is this this basic idea, this this idea
Speaker 2: of the Earth is this precious gem and it being
Speaker 2: vitally connected with us. This gets into this idea of
Speaker 2: the secular sacredness of the planet.
Speaker 4: Correct exactly so in this so I propose this thing
Speaker 4: called biocentrism, which is not a word I invented. Other
Speaker 4: people have used it, but I used it in a
Speaker 4: somewhat different context. I think the context that I use
Speaker 4: is similar to the people.
Speaker 3: That we're doing this logical theology.
Speaker 4: I guess in the seventies and eighties, you know, they said,
Speaker 4: you know, religion abandoned the world, then we need to
Speaker 4: go back to that. And what I'm saying is that, yes,
Speaker 4: religion abandoned the world, so did science, because you know,
Speaker 4: science also sort of like took the world as a
Speaker 4: big laboratory without really respecting it for what it is.
Speaker 4: And now we have this new science coming out and
Speaker 4: we can bring this notion of what I would call
Speaker 4: a secular spirituality, the idea that you can relate to
Speaker 4: the world. It doesn't matter if you believe in God
Speaker 4: or not. This has nothing to do directly with God.
Speaker 4: If you do, that's great, bring God back to the planet.
Speaker 4: But if you don't, you can relate to the awesomeness
Speaker 4: of being part of this deep connection to the history
Speaker 4: of the universe in this planet that allows us to
Speaker 4: be able to tell this story.
Speaker 3: Right. It's not just that we exist here.
Speaker 4: But this planet has had even though it has had
Speaker 4: wild climate changes, you know, there was this planet has
Speaker 4: been an ice ball completely. It has been a tropical forest.
Speaker 4: You know, it has gone through all these different phases
Speaker 4: in these four billion years of existence, but it always
Speaker 4: allowed a certain amount of stability in the climate for
Speaker 4: life to persist. Right, And life has been around here.
Speaker 4: So I told you that the planet's fare and a
Speaker 4: half billion years old. Life has been around for three
Speaker 4: and a half billion years in here, and it became
Speaker 4: incredibly complex. And once you start to look at nature
Speaker 4: with these eyes, you know, with the eyes of awesomeness, like,
Speaker 4: be grateful for what you have, because this is a jam.
Speaker 3: Look at look what happens to us when we try
Speaker 3: to get out of the atmosphere. Right, the universe is
Speaker 3: profoundly hostile to life. When I read things like life physubiquitous.
Speaker 4: In the universe, that the universe is filled with life,
Speaker 4: and like, I find that almost offensive because first of all,
Speaker 4: we have zero evidence of that. Okay, so there's zero
Speaker 4: evidence that we have been certainly visited by aliens. Right,
Speaker 4: there's another whole conversation. And I have lots of friends
Speaker 4: writing books about that, but more than that, we have
Speaker 4: zero evidence that there is life in other places, which
Speaker 4: doesn't mean there isn't. See, this is where you have
Speaker 4: to be very careful with scientific statements. We cannot prove
Speaker 4: that there is no life in an other world. That's impossible.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you why. It's because we simply cannot go
Speaker 4: and visit every other world in the universe to find
Speaker 4: out if there is life there or not. So we
Speaker 4: may say life is rare, or life in our bubble
Speaker 4: like cosmic bubble like within a big distance from our
Speaker 4: planet here is rare, but we cannot.
Speaker 3: Rule it out.
Speaker 4: But what we can rule it out, as I said before,
Speaker 4: is that definitely there will be no other.
Speaker 3: Human species in the universe, and even.
Speaker 4: If there would be, they'll be so far away and
Speaker 4: so remote that for all.
Speaker 3: Purposes, all practical purposes, we really are alone telling our
Speaker 3: own story of what's going on. Now.
Speaker 2: You talk about this a little bit in the book.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if you might feel this question. Do
Speaker 2: you believe that various sci fi, futurists and transhumanist ideas
Speaker 2: such as the digitization of consciousness and even things like
Speaker 2: interplanetary colonization no matter how far fetch some of the
Speaker 2: concepts may be, or you know, just outside of immediate grasp.
Speaker 2: Have they played a negative role in moving sort of
Speaker 2: the public imagination away from more life centric and earth
Speaker 2: centric worldviews.
Speaker 4: I think absolutely yes, because you know, just it's a
Speaker 4: matter of focus, right, you say, look, we are going
Speaker 4: to mess this planet up, and we're just going to
Speaker 4: move somewhere else, so it doesn't matter, you know, let's
Speaker 4: just keep doing it. Let's just keeping it up, and
Speaker 4: we're just basically eating its entrails, right, that's what fossil fuels,
Speaker 4: they come from underground, right, So we're sort of feeding
Speaker 4: from the entrails of the planet to sustain this big
Speaker 4: civilization on the surface. And hey, if there are other
Speaker 4: worlds out there for us to colonize, just like we
Speaker 4: did here. So this whole notion of colonizing other planets
Speaker 4: is a repetition of what we have.
Speaker 3: Done to this planet if you think about this, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, what happened.
Speaker 4: Here is that there were native populations around the planet.
Speaker 4: But then you had the Europeans that had the technology
Speaker 4: to explore and go across vast distances and in the oceans,
Speaker 4: and that's what they did, and they moved on to
Speaker 4: these other places. And what did they do? They plundered, right,
Speaker 4: I mean I grew up in Brazil. Brazil was colony
Speaker 4: of Portugal that in the fifteen hundreds was the most
Speaker 4: powerful country or you know, kingdom in that case in
Speaker 4: the world. And they you know, you look at all
Speaker 4: the gold in the churches in Europe and cathedrals, where
Speaker 4: did that come from?
Speaker 3: Well a lot of it came from South America? Right,
Speaker 3: And so are we going to just repeat that model
Speaker 3: as we move on? So let's go to the moon,
Speaker 3: and let's go mind the moon, and then we make
Speaker 3: a base on the Moon, and then we colonize, so
Speaker 3: we tear a four Mars, which basically means we make
Speaker 3: Mars into our earth thing, which is completely ridiculous. It
Speaker 3: just doesn't work and it will not work.
Speaker 4: You can make an igloo like life, a biosphere kind
Speaker 4: of thing in another world and recreate the earth conditions
Speaker 4: in that world locally, but at.
Speaker 5: A global level that is so far away, as you said,
Speaker 5: so far Thatch, that it is at this point, given
Speaker 5: the problems we have in this planet right now, we
Speaker 5: should be focusing everything.
Speaker 3: That we've got here and not and can I go
Speaker 3: to Mars and you know, colonize Mars or whatever. So
Speaker 3: that's the planetary aspect of things.
Speaker 4: And then the other one the transhumanist idea that we
Speaker 4: can and I write a lot about that, not in
Speaker 4: this book so much, but in other places, that we.
Speaker 3: Can't actually.
Speaker 4: Create some sort of scientific based immortality.
Speaker 3: Right, is a.
Speaker 4: Very very old idea, right, I mean, at least you
Speaker 4: can go back to Frankenstein. So you know eighteen nineteen
Speaker 4: where Mary Shelley she used the cutting edge science of
Speaker 4: her time, which was look, electricity can make muscles twitch. Right,
Speaker 4: that was like Galvani, you know, Volta had discovered this
Speaker 4: stuff in Italy and people are like amaze by this, right,
Speaker 4: They're like wow. So basically the secret of motion is
Speaker 4: electricity growing through your nerves and your muscles. So that
Speaker 4: means that if you could recreate a dead person and
Speaker 4: pass electricity to that person, science would conquer death.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Transhumanism is exactly the same notion, but now using our cutting.
Speaker 3: Edge technology, which is digital technology.
Speaker 4: So the sense the essence being if we could capture
Speaker 4: the essence of who you are, right, so essentially look
Speaker 4: into your brain and somehow can download your memories and
Speaker 4: the circuitry in your brain, and you can recreate all
Speaker 4: of that complexity in a it's.
Speaker 3: Called the connectome. You know, how all the synapses of
Speaker 3: your neurons connect to one another. It's like a map, right,
Speaker 3: so this would be the map to yourself, right, and
Speaker 3: each one of us.
Speaker 4: Even though we have brains which are very similar, they're
Speaker 4: also very different because I'm not Rob, and Rob it's
Speaker 4: not me. Even though we share so much of what
Speaker 4: we are, right, there is a difference there. So the
Speaker 4: idea is if you could capture the assence and create
Speaker 4: a giant simulation, then that simulation will be you.
Speaker 3: Or an approximation of you. And I find that very
Speaker 3: disturbing and also very kind of like, uh, far fetched
Speaker 3: is not even a word for this, because we have
Speaker 3: zero idea of what it means to capture ourselves, you know,
Speaker 3: the essence of who we are from a digital perspective
Speaker 3: or any kind of perspective, because we don't know what
Speaker 3: consciousness is of how it works. But as you said,
Speaker 3: the way you phrase the question, which is very clever,
Speaker 3: it is like those things, even though they are very
Speaker 3: far fetched, can they be taking us away from our task?
Speaker 3: Right now, which is to really celebrate the life that we.
Speaker 4: Have and the planet that gives us the possibility of
Speaker 4: having this life, as opposed to spending so much energy
Speaker 4: and fantasy and money and resources in dreaming up a
Speaker 4: future which is not going to help us in the
Speaker 4: next few decades, which is when we really need the help.
Speaker 3: And the answer is absolutely that's why we should be focusing.
Speaker 3: And the hope of this book is to help people
Speaker 3: maybe refocus a little bit on the beauty and the
Speaker 3: tremendous miracle in a sense that life in this planet
Speaker 3: really is and.
Speaker 4: What a place that we have, that we should be
Speaker 4: thinking about it very differently than we are.
Speaker 2: Now. Part of the hopefulness of the book is that
Speaker 2: it's not just big ideas. You also discuss concrete steps
Speaker 2: that individuals and society can take. So what can we do,
Speaker 2: what can link listeners to the show do to help
Speaker 2: adopt these principles and drive positive change as individuals?
Speaker 4: Right So, so the subtitle of the book is a
Speaker 4: Manifesto for Humanity's future. Right So, manifest is kind of
Speaker 4: like a little bit of a pretentious thing to say.
Speaker 3: There are lots of people writing manifesto about this or that.
Speaker 4: But so what I did is I went back to
Speaker 4: something I read but I was a teenager, which was
Speaker 4: a communist manifesto about Marx and angels, you know, said
Speaker 4: to say, Okay, what the heck is a manifester and
Speaker 4: how do you write one?
Speaker 3: Right? And so basically the manifesto has two parts.
Speaker 4: Right, he has this is the argument of why the
Speaker 4: world needs to change, Right, So you bring that argument
Speaker 4: forward and you say, look, in their case was about
Speaker 4: capitalism and the bourgeoisie and we need to you know,
Speaker 4: save the workers, et cetera. So that was their story.
Speaker 3: Our story is we are making a planet sick, and
Speaker 3: we can be healthy as humans in a sick planet.
Speaker 3: So we have to change the way we relate to
Speaker 3: the planet. It's that simple, right. I Mean, it's a little.
Speaker 4: More sophisticated that in the book, but the bare bones
Speaker 4: is this, you know, a sick planet cannot support a
Speaker 4: healthy life or any kind of life, human or otherwise.
Speaker 4: So then the second part of the manifesto is, okay,
Speaker 4: what do you do about this?
Speaker 3: What are the action items? Right? And in their case
Speaker 3: was you know, workers of the world unite and you know,
Speaker 3: let's throw out the kings and all that, and that's
Speaker 3: what happened with Itzar in Russia.
Speaker 4: But in our case is about what can we do
Speaker 4: as individuals and as a society in order to actually
Speaker 4: start really making a difference, right, And I suggest several
Speaker 4: different things. Okay, So at the individual level, and not
Speaker 4: just at individual I also at the corporate level. Is
Speaker 4: the notion of I call it the doctrine of less what. Well,
Speaker 4: you don't need to become vegan overnight, because you know
Speaker 4: that doesn't work. But if you cut your meat consumption
Speaker 4: in half, if everybody cut the meat consumption in half,
Speaker 4: a fifty percent solution, you will make a tremendous impact
Speaker 4: on the amount of not just the methane and the
Speaker 4: carbon dioxide, but the water pollution and soil pollution, the
Speaker 4: cattle grazing and cutting the forest to have area for
Speaker 4: the cattle to graze would make Okay.
Speaker 3: So the notion that it is possible to make personal choices,
Speaker 3: that's the real challenge. There are personal choices that you can.
Speaker 4: Make that may not be ideal for you, that may
Speaker 4: involve a certain level of self sacrifice that will impact people.
Speaker 4: And some people are man, I don't care, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: Well, if we don't care, we're going to be a price.
Speaker 4: Like if we didn't care about the Japanese invasion of
Speaker 4: the Nazis in Europe, we would have lost Second World
Speaker 4: War and the world will have been a very very
Speaker 4: different place right now.
Speaker 3: So we care, and when we care, we.
Speaker 4: Make change happens. Right The Manhattan Project is a great
Speaker 4: example that. You know, if people watched Openheimer, they know
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about. That was an incredibly difficult technical challenge,
Speaker 4: very expensive. But you put a bunch of great minds
Speaker 4: together and give them the resources, and we can solve
Speaker 4: problems to a certain point.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get to that in a second.
Speaker 4: So less meat, less energy, less water, less garbage. These
Speaker 4: are the four lessons that we can all work on together.
Speaker 4: Shorter showers, more coposting, et cetera. So all these things
Speaker 4: can be done. And then there is the doctrine of
Speaker 4: the more more, what more? Engaging with the natural world.
Speaker 4: What does that mean? It means go out look at
Speaker 4: nature once now, I look up at the sky. If
Speaker 4: you live in the city, find a darker corner, go
Speaker 4: to a park, look at the park, pay attention to
Speaker 4: what's going on.
Speaker 3: Walk by the.
Speaker 4: Ocean front, you know, engage with the natural world, because,
Speaker 4: as I was saying earlier, you know, for most of
Speaker 4: our existence, we were beings in the natural world.
Speaker 3: That's what we vote for. That's why we.
Speaker 4: Sweat and we run distances. You know, I'm a long
Speaker 4: distance runner. I love that and because that connects me
Speaker 4: with really the essence of what.
Speaker 3: We have volved here.
Speaker 4: For we were like hunting antelopes and gazelles, you know,
Speaker 4: two hundred thousand years ago, and we got them even
Speaker 4: though they're much faster than we are, because we could
Speaker 4: do this for a long time. So we have all
Speaker 4: those senses of very good vision, very good resistance, and
Speaker 4: ways of moving which are designed to be in the world.
Speaker 4: But what we have done since Sagra Sation is we
Speaker 4: created cities which are the anti nature.
Speaker 3: Think about that, right. A city is a ball of
Speaker 3: concrete surrounded by nature on all sides.
Speaker 4: And the idea is that we can engage with nature
Speaker 4: much more. And once we do that, you feel better
Speaker 4: about yourself. Even if it's just a walk in the park.
Speaker 4: You know, people have been talking about forest bathing and
Speaker 4: all these things. Just walk and look at the trees,
Speaker 4: you know, and the clouds in the sky and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. He has measured physiological benefits. You know, lots
Speaker 4: of studies, a few of them at Stanford have already
Speaker 4: demonstrated that we feel.
Speaker 3: Better when we engage with the world.
Speaker 4: So that's the more connection to the world, more respect
Speaker 4: for animal life, right, because that story I was telling
Speaker 4: in the beginning where I said, we have basically deemed
Speaker 4: ourselves the owners of the planets, and we can do
Speaker 4: too everything like we can kill them, we can eat them,
Speaker 4: or we can have them as pats, which is you know,
Speaker 4: think of this this. It's kind of uncomfortable to say this,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to say it because why not look
Speaker 4: at the cognitive dissonance here. We love our pats, We
Speaker 4: love our dogs and our cats and our bunny rabbits
Speaker 4: or even our fish, you know.
Speaker 3: But then we go out and we eat a calf.
Speaker 3: How does that work exactly? And you go visit the
Speaker 3: farm and you go, oh, look, how cute, you know,
Speaker 3: like when you have little kids.
Speaker 4: You go and you go look at the beautiful cow,
Speaker 4: and then we go eat them.
Speaker 3: So what is going on here? You know? And you
Speaker 3: love your dog like yourself, like the.
Speaker 4: Dog dies or like in the deep depression, it's just
Speaker 4: an animal.
Speaker 3: I love my dog deeply. It's just the best dog
Speaker 3: in the world. But so, what is going on here?
Speaker 3: How do we get to be that way? You know? So,
Speaker 3: and that's an uncalled conversation.
Speaker 4: You know, they're like, look, there's a story that can
Speaker 4: be told from the farm to the junk of meeting
Speaker 4: a supermarket, but it's so far removed that we just
Speaker 4: go to the market and we buy that, and we
Speaker 4: we just you know, we don't care.
Speaker 3: But we should be caring more. That's the point. You know.
Speaker 3: It's because we didn't care for thousands of years that
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 4: In a difficult situation now. So it's a hard conversation
Speaker 4: to have. But the more engagement of the natural world
Speaker 4: is essential. And the other thing I suggest is two
Speaker 4: more things, just because you know, the Eyasa could talk
Speaker 4: for too long.
Speaker 3: One is the notion of education.
Speaker 4: Every school, at any level, from elementary school to pach
Speaker 4: d level, should tell the story of who we are
Speaker 4: in the universe. This whole conversation that we had about
Speaker 4: where we come from from stars, how we evolved in
Speaker 4: this planet, how connected we are to all forms of.
Speaker 3: Life and to this world in particular. This is a
Speaker 3: story that should be told at all levels, you know,
Speaker 3: and we hardly have a talk about this, and that's
Speaker 3: why we don't know who we are. That's why we
Speaker 3: think we are the owners of the place, because we
Speaker 3: forgot to tell this story, which is.
Speaker 4: The most important story. And finally, as a consumer, you
Speaker 4: have choices too, you know. If you think that that
Speaker 4: certain corporation does not align with your ethical values about
Speaker 4: the environment and about how they treat animals, don't buy
Speaker 4: from that business. Buy from another business. And that has
Speaker 4: more power and more pressure than any think. Consumers have
Speaker 4: power when they unite and boycott a certain company because
Speaker 4: they don't align with their values, you know. And so
Speaker 4: there's this Being an optimist, I have to say, there
Speaker 4: is this thing called bi corporations now, which are corporations
Speaker 4: that have an ethos, have a way of dealing with
Speaker 4: the world which is much more alignment sustainability and circular economics, etc.
Speaker 4: And so this is happening already, and I have tremendous
Speaker 4: fate that all this work is going to kind of
Speaker 4: crystallize into a different way of thinking about who we
Speaker 4: are in the next decade or so.
Speaker 2: And you also point out that there's a responsibility for
Speaker 2: the scientific community as well.
Speaker 4: Correct, there is because and that's the hard one because
Speaker 4: as a scientist, I know how my peers think, and
Speaker 4: the scientific community should be telling the story I believe
Speaker 4: as it is, which is not like, oh, there are
Speaker 4: lots of Earth like you know, you know, people talk
Speaker 4: about other earths out there. Now there are no other
Speaker 4: earths out there. There may be Earth analogus, but there's
Speaker 4: only one Earth. So it's just a way of telling
Speaker 4: the story. As you know, the way you tell a
Speaker 4: story makes a huge difference. You could be telling the
Speaker 4: same story and completely change the meaning of that story.
Speaker 4: And so I think we should be very careful about
Speaker 4: telling the story of our planet and our species in
Speaker 4: this planet in a much more environmentally aware way. And
Speaker 4: with this notion, and you know, when you use the
Speaker 4: word sacred, you know most scientists scringe, right because they
Speaker 4: associated that with other kinds of sacred. No, but I'm
Speaker 4: talking about the sacredness of life that that perhaps is
Speaker 4: the most fundamental universal moral value, which is life is
Speaker 4: sacred right and our life of another human, but other
Speaker 4: life forms do.
Speaker 3: And so if you relate to that in a more
Speaker 3: concrete way, not just as you're just saying that. As
Speaker 3: a scientist, you have a role to play.
Speaker 4: You are a role model for this way of thinking
Speaker 4: about the world because you are the one bringing all
Speaker 4: this information to the public. Right, so the people that
Speaker 4: are writing books about science should be thinking a little
Speaker 4: more carefully about what are they saying of the power
Speaker 4: of science, and science, for example, solve all the problems.
Speaker 4: I probably always going to go back to that, and
Speaker 4: I can go back to that right now, and the
Speaker 4: answer is absolutely not. You know, science not all problems
Speaker 4: have a scientific solution. You know, some problems have a
Speaker 4: complicated solution that also uses science, but it uses philosophy.
Speaker 4: He uses anthropology to anthropological ways of thinking about who
Speaker 4: we are in a culture, and native ways of thinking
Speaker 4: about who we are and how we relate to certain values.
Speaker 3: So I would believe that now we are.
Speaker 4: At this point where the science that we are using
Speaker 4: to describe the planet, you know, it's called systems science,
Speaker 4: is telling us a story that we have to bring
Speaker 4: together different ways of knowing in order to tell people
Speaker 4: what really matters in this world. Not just we are
Speaker 4: going to sequest the carbon with our machines, and that's.
Speaker 3: Going to solve oup all as well.
Speaker 4: Will not because guess what science historically, and that's a
Speaker 4: hard thing to say, but it's true. Historically science always
Speaker 4: has served those in power because science needs money to operate,
Speaker 4: and this alligance between science and state and science and.
Speaker 3: Industry is what has pushed science forward.
Speaker 4: So unless you have an industry that has a certain
Speaker 4: way of thinking about the world, or powers in state
Speaker 4: they have a certain way of thinking about the world,
Speaker 4: the science that is going to be mostly funded is
Speaker 4: not going to be the science that is going to
Speaker 4: bring us out of our mindset unless we have a
Speaker 4: different mindset, which is what I'm proposing.
Speaker 2: So again it falls to us. It falls to society
Speaker 2: to really be the major movement here.
Speaker 3: It falls to society. It falls to families, communities, schools.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a rest roots thing. You know, it
Speaker 3: goes from every In my opinion and of course, you know,
Speaker 3: is that every family should be sitting down together and
Speaker 3: talking about this problem because if you have kids, hey,
Speaker 3: this is the world they're going to be living in,
Speaker 3: you know, and and it's our responsibility to kind of
Speaker 3: make them aware of what's going on and what the
Speaker 3: possible choices we have for a future that is going
Speaker 3: to be a great future, not just a horrible dystopic future,
Speaker 3: which is what so.
Speaker 4: Many people are talking about, right. I mean, it's you
Speaker 4: talk about doomscrolling for a reason.
Speaker 3: Lots of public intellectuals are talking about a world with
Speaker 3: a horrible future ahead, right, like digital doom and you
Speaker 3: know you name it, like none of technology taking over,
Speaker 3: you know, like noneobots and all sorts of existential risks,
Speaker 3: and very few people are talking about Okay, these are.
Speaker 4: The risks, what are the solutions? How can we revert that?
Speaker 4: And that's a much harder job because it's so easy
Speaker 4: to point fingers and say this is happening. So this
Speaker 4: is going to happen, But what about what can we
Speaker 4: do even though it costs? That's the thing, you know,
Speaker 4: every choice we make involves a little level of self
Speaker 4: sacrifice because you cannot leave the other choice. So you're
Speaker 4: always losing something when you make a choice. But some
Speaker 4: choices are for the common good, and it's time for
Speaker 4: us to be thinking about us and this planet in
Speaker 4: terms of the common good. Ours and everybody else is
Speaker 4: in it.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much. For writing such an inspirational
Speaker 2: book and for coming on the show to discuss it.
Speaker 2: I recommend it to all our listeners. It's a great read.
Speaker 2: It's a very consumable read. You just end up reading
Speaker 2: the entire book in a single session, And I think
Speaker 2: it's a great read to kick off the new year,
Speaker 2: wouldn't you say?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Twenty twenty four, folks, you know this is the
Speaker 3: year where if things don't change radically, you know, we
Speaker 3: are going to be paying more and more of a
Speaker 3: price every year. And we don't want that. We want
Speaker 3: a better place. We don't want a worse place. So
Speaker 3: let's wake up and work together to make this happen.
Speaker 2: Well said. Where can our listeners follow you and learn
Speaker 2: more about your work?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm all over at social media. You know. There
Speaker 3: is a Marcella Glizer dot com. I am on x
Speaker 3: and Instagram, and I have a ton of followers on
Speaker 3: YouTube and so and also LinkedIn because I'm starting a
Speaker 3: new think tank in Tuscany actually, which is precisely to
Speaker 3: help corporate leaders rethink about their roles in the world.
Speaker 3: You know. So I'm thinking that one way we could
Speaker 3: affect change is by going straight to the power source
Speaker 3: and making them see other ways of thinking about the
Speaker 3: world and then implement them in their business. So, in
Speaker 3: a sense, even though I don't like trickle down economics,
Speaker 3: this would be a trickle down worldview change, and that's
Speaker 3: what we're trying to do. So I'm all over. I
Speaker 3: just look for my name and you'll find.
Speaker 2: Me excellent, and we'll have our social media accounts tag
Speaker 2: you where we can as well.
Speaker 3: Awesome, Rob, Thank you so much for your time and
Speaker 3: fight invitation.
Speaker 2: Thank you for chatting with us, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks again to Marcello Glizer for taking time out of
Speaker 2: his holiday to chat with me here. The Dawn of
Speaker 2: a Mindful Universe, a manifesto for Humanity's future, is out now.
Speaker 2: Grab a copy. I highly recommend it. A reminder to
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: though on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Also a reminder to everyone to please rate and review
Speaker 2: the show wherever you have the power to do so,
Speaker 2: and hey, if you listen to us on an Apple device.
Speaker 2: Maybe check in and make sure that you're still subscribed
Speaker 2: and receiving downloads. It helps us out. Thanks as always
Speaker 2: to the excellent JJ Possway for producing the show. If
Speaker 2: you want to get in touch with us, email us
Speaker 2: at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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