Beyond Stars and Conspiracies | A Cosmic Chat with Brian Keating

[00:00:01] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

[00:00:10] I'm going to start recording by the way.

[00:00:20] Yeah, start recording, yeah.

[00:00:21] But the big news this week wasn't like the superconductor or whatever?

[00:00:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, we could talk.

[00:00:26] What was the news?

[00:00:27] The superconductor.

[00:00:28] Here's the latest news about the universe. I'm tired of news about just this earth.

[00:00:32] Yeah, well let's start off. We'll start off.

[00:00:34] I'll start off if you'll ask me that question and we can move into it.

[00:00:36] I just asked you it.

[00:00:37] Oh, okay. We started?

[00:00:38] Yeah.

[00:00:40] So there was a claim, one of many, that the universe has many different features.

[00:00:46] One is that the universe was just declared to be twice as old.

[00:00:50] You think it's bad when people think you're 50.

[00:00:52] Now it would be like the universe thinks it's 100 years old.

[00:00:56] I'm just going to end up for a second. I realized this is all young.

[00:00:59] Like I just realized that, you know Walter White?

[00:01:02] From Breaking Bad?

[00:01:04] Yeah, he was 50 years old when he started dealing drugs.

[00:01:07] Oh wow, what's it all?

[00:01:09] He was just a chemistry teacher. I could deal atomic weapons as a physics teacher.

[00:01:13] Exactly and Voldemort didn't try to kill Harry Potter until he was 55 years old.

[00:01:20] Oh, you're making me feel old. This is ridiculous.

[00:01:23] Guess how old Darth Vader was when he started to build the Death Star?

[00:01:29] Started to build it. Must have been, you know, 35 or so?

[00:01:33] Yeah, but 40.

[00:01:34] 40, okay.

[00:01:35] Thanos was over 65 when he collected the impunity gems.

[00:01:40] And Hannibal was 52 when he escaped from captivity.

[00:01:45] Oh man.

[00:01:46] Whatever that was.

[00:01:47] Genghis Khan was only, you know, 42 when he had his first 10,000 kids.

[00:01:52] So you see, you could still create a lot of...

[00:01:55] So being 50, 100 is the new 50.

[00:01:58] Or 50 is the new 100, however that works.

[00:02:01] That's right.

[00:02:02] But now 26.8 billion is the new 13.8 billion.

[00:02:05] That's right. Yeah.

[00:02:06] So it's part of what I call the academic media hype complex.

[00:02:10] You know, you get some little university, you know, professor like me is squirreling away

[00:02:15] in their lab or on their blackboard and they come up with some idea

[00:02:19] and it sounds really interesting to them

[00:02:21] and maybe they tell one or two of their friends

[00:02:23] and then they tell their department chair.

[00:02:26] The department chair tells the dean.

[00:02:27] The dean tells the media relations at the university.

[00:02:31] That goes out to a local newspaper, in this case in Ottawa, Canada.

[00:02:36] Then the next thing you know it's picked up by international websites, Twitter.

[00:02:40] And then all of a sudden Joe Rogan tweets about it

[00:02:44] and then Elon Musk follows up that tweet about the age of the universe

[00:02:48] by speculating on how sketchy and illegitimate dark matter seems to be.

[00:02:53] So this set off a far storm.

[00:02:55] I was going to ask you, I saw some article recently.

[00:02:58] First off, let me ask you this.

[00:03:00] How do they know it's 26 billion years instead of 13 billion years old?

[00:03:03] Is that true?

[00:03:04] Okay. So is it true?

[00:03:06] The fact is we can't prove something in physics the way we can in math.

[00:03:10] We can't prove one plus one equals two level stuff.

[00:03:12] We can prove that there's evidence against something.

[00:03:15] So we have to ask, does the evidence for the physical age of the universe

[00:03:20] comport to or conflict with a claim of it being 26 billion years old?

[00:03:26] So right now we see objects.

[00:03:28] We still see any objects older than 13 billion years old.

[00:03:32] And the model that was conjectured to explain why certain features of the universe

[00:03:39] appear to be slightly older than anticipated is would be like me saying to you, James

[00:03:44] we realize that human beings are very, very advanced.

[00:03:48] They can build iPhones.

[00:03:51] They can build superconductors.

[00:03:54] And there's no way therefore, and all we understand about human beings,

[00:03:57] there's no way that they could have done this in just four billion years.

[00:04:01] Therefore the age of the earth must be 20 billion years

[00:04:04] in order for that to happen.

[00:04:06] In other words, there's a model that's connected.

[00:04:08] I get it.

[00:04:09] The inhabitants of the universe with the origin of it.

[00:04:13] So let me ask a simple question.

[00:04:15] In general, I thought the model was is that they could tell how many years

[00:04:20] the light has been traveling from the far furthest away galaxies

[00:04:25] to determine the age of the universe.

[00:04:27] Not only that, but what I study the cosmic microwave background radiation,

[00:04:31] this little beach ball in the background,

[00:04:33] that's actually the oldest light in the universe.

[00:04:36] So that's kind of a God's eye view of what you'd see

[00:04:38] if you could look down in our universe from some omniscient deities perspective.

[00:04:43] So what does that mean?

[00:04:45] Well, it means that the universe had its first production of visible light or photons.

[00:04:51] And we can date those photons just like you can date a carbon date

[00:04:55] or you can date tree rings on trees to get their age.

[00:04:58] You can look at wrinkles on somebody's face

[00:05:01] and you can start making estimates.

[00:05:03] And the more data that can be brought to bear,

[00:05:05] the more accurately that estimate can be.

[00:05:07] You don't just take one...

[00:05:08] Are you saying I'm old again?

[00:05:10] Well, I have a good quote for you.

[00:05:12] When an elderly scientist says that something is possible,

[00:05:16] he is most likely right.

[00:05:18] But Arthur C. Clarke said,

[00:05:20] but when an elderly scientist says something is impossible,

[00:05:23] he is very likely to be wrong.

[00:05:25] And so I don't know if he was talking about years.

[00:05:28] That's too close.

[00:05:29] But anyway, so bottom line is there's way more pieces of evidence

[00:05:34] that point to a universe that's 13.8 billion years old

[00:05:37] with a very small uncertainty of just tens of millions of years,

[00:05:40] which is big by human standards.

[00:05:42] Is that because the light from the microwave cosmic background radiation

[00:05:48] appears to be 13 billion light years from us?

[00:05:52] So imagine you ever see these crime dramas like, you know, CSI,

[00:05:56] you know, Atlanta or wherever you are?

[00:05:59] No.

[00:06:00] Okay.

[00:06:01] Well, these crime dramas oftentimes they'll be a murder.

[00:06:03] Okay.

[00:06:04] And the police will come into the murder scene.

[00:06:06] And the first thing they'll do is they'll take the temperature of the body.

[00:06:09] And that tells them some very important information.

[00:06:12] It tells them if the body's at room temperature,

[00:06:15] we know it started at 98.6 degrees, right?

[00:06:19] But if it's at room temperature, it means that it's colder,

[00:06:22] which means that it must have died some time ago.

[00:06:24] And knowing that the body is mostly made of vodka.

[00:06:28] No, I mean of water in my case.

[00:06:30] That cooling off period can be calculated based on the extremely

[00:06:34] well-known properties of water.

[00:06:36] So too, with the light that we see,

[00:06:39] we measure the temperature not of a body but of the universe.

[00:06:42] And we can say we know exactly the temperature it formed,

[00:06:46] which it formed when hydrogen forms,

[00:06:48] it forms at not 98.6 degrees,

[00:06:53] it forms at 3000 degrees.

[00:06:55] So we know that temperature very accurately when it was formed.

[00:06:59] And now we measure it at 3 degrees Kelvin,

[00:07:02] these temperatures are measured in Kelvin,

[00:07:04] which is absolute temperature scale.

[00:07:06] That tells us it's cooled off for a specific amount of time,

[00:07:09] which is extremely accurately known.

[00:07:12] Okay.

[00:07:14] So that's the number one piece of evidence on the age of the universe.

[00:07:17] It has to be connected to a model of how the universe is expanding,

[00:07:20] which Hubble and Einstein showed is dependent on what the universe is made of.

[00:07:24] Now, right, so here's the question I have.

[00:07:27] It's actually when you start getting into,

[00:07:30] okay, first you factor in if we measure it at this XYZ temperature,

[00:07:37] that means it's so many years old.

[00:07:41] But at the same time, the universe is expanding,

[00:07:45] so the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light.

[00:07:49] So everything goes haywire in the math then.

[00:07:52] And furthermore, when the light or the readings from whatever it is we're studying come to us,

[00:08:02] we're seeing it at a different point than where it is now

[00:08:05] because the universe is expanding and it's also everything's moving further

[00:08:09] and distance from us and so on.

[00:08:11] So it just gets all confusing to me.

[00:08:13] Well, I mean things don't go haywire.

[00:08:15] I wouldn't agree with that description.

[00:08:18] We can actually calculate very accurately what happens to objects beyond a certain distance.

[00:08:23] You and I aren't expanding faster than the speed of light.

[00:08:26] It's galaxies...

[00:08:27] No, but the universe is.

[00:08:28] Parts of the universe are, but not all of the universe.

[00:08:31] And it's critical.

[00:08:32] It's not like there's some galactic pile up where galaxies that are moving at 99% of the speed of light

[00:08:38] are all located and then a galaxy that's at 101% of the speed of light are going,

[00:08:44] then we just can't even see them anymore.

[00:08:46] So we need a model to explain how those things behave,

[00:08:49] but actually it's the simplest possible model that describes the dynamics of how the universe is expanding.

[00:08:56] I teach it to my kind of senior level cosmology students

[00:09:01] and it takes a few minutes to explain that the only model that's consistent with what we observe

[00:09:06] is the simplest model there could possibly be.

[00:09:08] In other words, you and I could be expanding away as galaxies

[00:09:12] and we could be expanding as the 97th power of the distance between us.

[00:09:16] That's a possibility, or the 63rd or the 25th, but it's not.

[00:09:21] It's not expanding as any of those powers except for the linear proportionality between us, our distance.

[00:09:26] So in other words, if you double the distance between yourself and another galaxy,

[00:09:30] let's say you look at Andromeda, which is 3 million light-years away,

[00:09:34] and then you look at another galaxy in, you know, Ophiuchus, my favorite constellation,

[00:09:39] and it's 6 million light-years away, that galaxy is expanding away from us if those two were, which are not.

[00:09:45] But anyway, that is expanding twice as fast as Andromeda Galaxy.

[00:09:49] It's a very simple relationship and it's the only one that can preserve

[00:09:52] the features of the universe that we are capable of,

[00:09:55] or the only one that can explain the features of the universe that we observe.

[00:09:59] That we observe, but there are parts of the universe that will never be able to observe

[00:10:04] because the universe itself, again, parts of it are expanding faster than the speed of light

[00:10:09] and so there's some galaxies that are so far away, their light will never reach us, basically.

[00:10:15] So right now in Dubai, someone, baby was just born and we can't observe that.

[00:10:20] What does that imply? I mean, it's a finite to the speed of light.

[00:10:23] It has nothing to do with the expansion of the universe necessarily

[00:10:26] and the unobservability of something is called a horizon.

[00:10:29] So you can't see boats that are past your horizon.

[00:10:32] It doesn't mean there aren't boats there and they could be moving arbitrarily.

[00:10:36] It doesn't mean say anything about their properties, their kinematics or dynamics.

[00:10:40] So I fail to see the controversy in what you're asking.

[00:10:45] So how do they come up with that it's actually 26 billion years old instead of 13 billion years old?

[00:10:51] So they kind of make a hybrid, a melange, a fruit salad of these different models.

[00:10:57] They actually use the Big Bang and then to explain features that couldn't be explained otherwise.

[00:11:03] To make, again, let's go back to my analogy of the discovery of iPhones calling into question

[00:11:10] the mere four billion year old age of the earth.

[00:11:14] What they're saying is they're looking at galaxies.

[00:11:16] These galaxies are too well formed.

[00:11:19] They're spinning like spirals, pinwheels and they claim that our understanding

[00:11:25] of the formation of galaxies does not allow enough time for that to occur

[00:11:30] unless the universe is twice the age that we think it is.

[00:11:33] This is one person's claim.

[00:11:35] To your point though, that we already have very established models about how to calculate

[00:11:40] the ages of different things based on if they were much different,

[00:11:45] if our model was much different, the universe wouldn't be what it is today.

[00:11:48] So why don't they have the same model as you in terms of calculating these ages?

[00:11:53] Because they're trying to fit to a specific answer for a specific reason.

[00:11:57] And you could do that.

[00:11:59] There's nothing preventing you from doing that,

[00:12:01] but the problem is the motivation to do that is not sound.

[00:12:04] They're saying, again, which is more complicated to explain?

[00:12:08] The creation of an iPhone or the creation of the whole earth.

[00:12:13] Just speaking as a cosmic phenomenon,

[00:12:16] or creation of a star versus the creation of the iPhone,

[00:12:21] how much complexity, Kolmogorov complexity it's called,

[00:12:24] how many statements do you have to make in order to explain the formation of a sun?

[00:12:30] Let me say, or a star, which is necessary and sufficient to create a planetary system like the earth.

[00:12:36] Or how many steps do I have to explain to lead up to the history

[00:12:40] and construction of the iPhone, which is more complex?

[00:12:43] So you're saying that using this model of complexity,

[00:12:48] obviously the iPhone is easier to explain than the creation of a star?

[00:12:51] No, no, no. I think it's the other way around.

[00:12:53] The star relies on gravity and nuclear fusion.

[00:12:56] That's it.

[00:12:58] You may not believe that those are easy to understand,

[00:13:01] but there's only, I could explain those in a finite set of statements

[00:13:05] that's much smaller than the finite set of instructions to Apple to make an iPhone.

[00:13:10] There's way more complexity.

[00:13:12] It doesn't mean it's more complicated.

[00:13:14] It just means it's more complex.

[00:13:16] There's more information required to understand the process known as iPhone construction

[00:13:22] versus nuclear fusion.

[00:13:24] I see. So then these people, they're trying to...

[00:13:28] You're saying it's easier to explain the age of the universe

[00:13:33] than the age of a galaxy and they're kind of doing it in reverse?

[00:13:37] I wouldn't say easier to explain.

[00:13:39] I would say the models are simpler and they're calling into question

[00:13:45] the simpler model because of evidence from the more complexified phenomenon,

[00:13:50] namely the galaxy.

[00:14:07] So let me ask you a question.

[00:14:09] I like this model of what did you call it?

[00:14:12] Complexity.

[00:14:14] I like this model and I feel like this could be used to explain

[00:14:17] and identify reasonable conspiracy theories versus unreasonable conspiracy theories.

[00:14:23] So if it takes more sentences to explain how some theory is true,

[00:14:33] then it's most likely a conspiracy theory that's just ridiculous.

[00:14:37] Yeah, you used to call that your conspiracy number.

[00:14:41] The number of people that required to maintain a conspiracy,

[00:14:44] which I loved and I actually employed that recently in the context of these UFO sightings

[00:14:48] that I want to talk to you about.

[00:14:51] Yeah, so it seems like this could be applied.

[00:14:53] It's like the same type of idea that if something is too complicated to explain,

[00:14:57] like the whole idea, which I wrote recently on a Facebook group, we're both in,

[00:15:02] the whole idea of the 9-11 truthers is that too many people would have to be trusted

[00:15:09] to keep the truth if 9-11 was a conspiracy.

[00:15:13] Right, exactly.

[00:15:17] I was just going to say in the context of this complexity theory,

[00:15:20] when you think about how complex or not a phenomenon is,

[00:15:25] you can actually, as Kolmogorov said,

[00:15:27] what's the smallest computer program to describe this process?

[00:15:32] So you've seen like the Mandelbrot set, this like classic fractal set.

[00:15:36] So that's actually, you can write down the Mandelbrot set,

[00:15:39] the general generating function very easily,

[00:15:42] it's just like one equation of complex plane.

[00:15:45] But to actually, like to show you the picture of it requires, you know,

[00:15:50] millions of bits of computer information to make the actual artistic representation.

[00:15:54] And you could represent a simpler one by taking away one more bit

[00:15:59] and then I'll be a simpler one.

[00:16:00] So an analogy to your conspiracy number, yeah, the more you add on,

[00:16:04] it doesn't grow linearly.

[00:16:06] Like if you double the number of people, it actually grows exponentially

[00:16:09] and are geometrically in a conspiracy.

[00:16:13] Right, because not only do you have to worry about like,

[00:16:15] let's say there's three of us, you, me and Jay,

[00:16:18] and we conspire to hide the existence of aliens.

[00:16:22] Well, I mean, the two of us are married and we have kids,

[00:16:26] a lot of kids, you know, Jay doesn't...

[00:16:28] We're not married, but yeah.

[00:16:31] But you know, Jay's got this, you know,

[00:16:34] just this cohort of wannabe wives, you know, the next Mrs. Jay, yeah.

[00:16:40] So now we have to keep them apart from knowing what we know individually

[00:16:46] that I have to make sure my wife doesn't talk to Robin, etc., etc.

[00:16:50] So it grows exponentially.

[00:16:52] So that means and then the one lacuna,

[00:16:55] to use a loaded professor word which you're admonishing me,

[00:16:58] never to do James, the one lacuna of your model

[00:17:01] is it didn't take into account another correlation,

[00:17:04] not just of space but of time.

[00:17:06] Like you have to maintain this over time.

[00:17:08] There should be some outtoucher complexity

[00:17:11] that also captures the relevant time scales

[00:17:14] and coherence links between these things.

[00:17:17] So if my child is going to talk to Robin, you know, someday,

[00:17:21] well then they have to meet and they have to overlap

[00:17:23] and my kid has to be old enough.

[00:17:25] So anyway, it makes it much, much, much less likely to maintain this.

[00:17:28] So I think that the galaxies in the age of the universe,

[00:17:30] the same thing as at play here.

[00:17:32] You need far more complexity to describe a galaxy

[00:17:35] with hundreds of billions of stars in it

[00:17:37] than to just describe one star.

[00:17:39] I mean that's obvious, right?

[00:17:41] So for these reasons, the notion that you're going to try to call into question,

[00:17:46] you know, it's like calling into question evolution,

[00:17:48] you know, the process of evolution, which is very simple

[00:17:50] to describe how evolution via natural selection takes place.

[00:17:54] You're going to throw that into doubt

[00:17:57] because it's not like people born without opposing digits on a kate.

[00:18:00] It doesn't make sense.

[00:18:02] Or that, you know, sometimes people are born with six fingers.

[00:18:04] So therefore, you know, there's not enough time for evolution

[00:18:07] to make that happen.

[00:18:08] So let's throw out evolution.

[00:18:10] It's fundamentally not the most sound logic.

[00:18:12] It's possible, but it's not sound.

[00:18:14] That sound.

[00:18:15] Right.

[00:18:16] It's almost like they're creating a new logic

[00:18:19] to explain that evolution didn't happen

[00:18:22] because someone's born with six fingers

[00:18:24] as opposed to just relying on this simple model of evolution

[00:18:27] that we understand and just assuming that there's going to be outliers.

[00:18:30] Exactly right, yep.

[00:18:32] And so, okay, let me, you know,

[00:18:35] switching away from the age of the universe,

[00:18:37] I read an article recently that we talked in our very first podcast

[00:18:42] about the reasons why the universe,

[00:18:46] the Big Bang not only occurred, but the universe is expanding.

[00:18:49] And so now there's, I read an article recently that

[00:18:51] because of recent images taken by the James Webb telescope,

[00:18:55] there are some people out there who think

[00:18:57] the universe is not expanding and is stationary.

[00:19:01] Now you explained to me step by step

[00:19:03] why the universe has to be expanding,

[00:19:06] which implies that a Big Bang did occur at some point.

[00:19:09] And because it's expanding from nothing basically.

[00:19:13] But these images from the James Webb telescope

[00:19:17] are showing that some galaxies are expanding,

[00:19:22] are the further away they are,

[00:19:26] the smaller they are in a way that would be expected

[00:19:29] in a model of the universe that says the universe is stationary.

[00:19:32] Yes, that is one consequence of this conjecture.

[00:19:37] I think the other one is that the structure

[00:19:40] of the galaxies themselves is too mature

[00:19:43] to have occurred in a mere 13.8 billion years.

[00:19:48] So the problem is you can take those

[00:19:52] and accept those at face value just as Ptolemy

[00:19:55] and Aristotle and others had to add on epicycles

[00:19:59] into their models in order to explain

[00:20:02] the inconsistency between the other observations.

[00:20:06] If you treat the observation of galaxies

[00:20:10] and you say, well what is that on a par with?

[00:20:13] Is that on a par with the following observation

[00:20:16] that all but about 100 galaxies in the universe

[00:20:20] seem to be redshifted, i.e. moving away from us,

[00:20:24] out of 100 billion galaxies.

[00:20:27] So only one 1 billionth of all the galaxies we can see

[00:20:30] are receding away from us at some at great fractions

[00:20:33] of the speed of light.

[00:20:35] In a static universe that is very difficult to explain

[00:20:39] and so in order to explain those data,

[00:20:42] you can have your own models but you can't have your own data,

[00:20:45] in order to explain those models these proponents

[00:20:48] of the steady state model have to introduce

[00:20:51] new unseen phenomenon such as the fact that

[00:20:55] light as the universe, as the light

[00:20:58] propagates through the universe, it loses energy

[00:21:01] and becomes more and more red as the light travels

[00:21:04] through distance. But in reality in their universe

[00:21:07] it's infinitely big, the universe is infinitely big

[00:21:10] so given enough propagation length and time

[00:21:14] there are enough decaying times of the photons energy

[00:21:17] to then appear more and more red.

[00:21:20] Tilely contrived they admit themselves,

[00:21:23] there's no mechanism to do that

[00:21:26] and furthermore that phenomenon should be manifest

[00:21:29] not only on cosmic scales, we should be able to test it

[00:21:32] in the laboratory with much much higher precision

[00:21:35] and all the variables much more precisely.

[00:21:38] So we don't see anything like that, we don't see

[00:21:41] like you send me a bat signal and it's white

[00:21:44] and then I see it and it's totally red because

[00:21:47] we live 3,000 miles away from each other.

[00:21:50] That should happen at some level and we don't see

[00:21:53] any evidence of that so it's highly contrived.

[00:21:56] Is it possible? Sure it is possible but the preponderance

[00:21:59] of evidence suggests it's completely wrong

[00:22:02] because it's a combination of maturity

[00:22:05] of very complex structures, galaxies in order to

[00:22:08] invalidate a much much simpler paradigm

[00:22:13] namely the universe is expanding.

[00:22:15] So again it's a case where people are

[00:22:18] it's another case where people are observing something

[00:22:21] and then using their imagination to fit it into

[00:22:24] to find a model that fits with the few examples they're observing.

[00:22:27] That's exactly right, that's what scientists do

[00:22:30] we compare models to data or we might discover

[00:22:33] a cosmic background radiation that I study,

[00:22:35] we weren't looking for it, it was discovered

[00:22:38] and then it was found to be consistent with other pieces of evidence

[00:22:41] namely the observation of galaxies.

[00:22:43] You have to realize the observation of galaxies

[00:22:46] receding from us in all but 100 out of 100 billion cases

[00:22:50] is completely different branch of science

[00:22:53] than that of studying the amplitude

[00:22:56] and energy of microwave energy.

[00:22:58] So those are completely different things,

[00:23:00] different is like biology suggests an age of the planet

[00:23:04] and then geology suggests, that's amazing if you could do that

[00:23:07] rather than just two examples from biology

[00:23:10] or two examples from geology.

[00:23:12] And we have literally hundreds of pieces of evidence

[00:23:14] that seem to agree with a much much more ancient universe.

[00:23:17] Hold on a second, I'm being paged.

[00:23:21] Because you are Dr. Brian Keating,

[00:23:23] physicist, there might be a physics emergency somewhere.

[00:23:27] I'm getting quantum entangled.

[00:23:29] That's a signal, that's what did it.

[00:23:33] So two examples where people observe something unique

[00:23:37] but then they contrive a model to fit it

[00:23:40] as opposed to the standard models

[00:23:42] that have been observed billions of times.

[00:23:44] That's right, yeah.

[00:23:45] So I read another article recently

[00:23:47] I'm giving you all the conspiracy theories

[00:23:49] and physics that I've read lately.

[00:23:51] I read that there was probably matter

[00:23:55] that exists, some kind of matter that existed before the Big Bang.

[00:23:58] I didn't read the article actually, I just saw the headline.

[00:24:00] I haven't seen it but it sounds completely bogus.

[00:24:03] Does it say anything about the matter

[00:24:05] or do you recall anything about it?

[00:24:07] I mean energy before the Big Bang doesn't even make sense to me.

[00:24:11] You could have a whole universe by the way

[00:24:14] but in the context of the Big Bang

[00:24:17] it's not exactly clear what that means.

[00:24:19] If they're talking about like a cyclic universe

[00:24:21] where the universe bounces and oscillates

[00:24:23] like we did talk about a couple of years ago.

[00:24:26] Yes, it's possible there was matter and energy

[00:24:28] in the preceding universe

[00:24:30] but in the context of a singular Big Bang

[00:24:32] that happened once that doesn't make sense.

[00:24:35] But we know that the Big Bang

[00:24:37] probably didn't just happen once

[00:24:40] that there's infinite Big Bangs.

[00:24:42] Isn't that like a current theory?

[00:24:44] Again, probably, saying it's probable

[00:24:46] there are a lot of scientists,

[00:24:47] every eminent scientist that don't believe in that

[00:24:49] that don't think the universe is an infinite part

[00:24:52] of what's called the multiverse

[00:24:54] where it's coming into and out of existence

[00:24:56] at different locations in what's called the multiverse.

[00:24:59] We have baby universes nucleating

[00:25:01] that is a consequence of the theory of inflation.

[00:25:05] But isn't there like the universe,

[00:25:07] the Big Bang happened,

[00:25:09] it goes all the way out then it starts collapsing on itself?

[00:25:12] That's one model called the cyclic or bouncing model.

[00:25:15] But that is not really what is meant with the multiverse.

[00:25:19] That is a form of multiverse,

[00:25:21] but it's not the multiverse that people normally talk about

[00:25:24] where you have an infinite number of universes

[00:25:26] parallel to ours in space and in time

[00:25:28] where Big Bangs are going on,

[00:25:30] Big Crunches are happening,

[00:25:32] they have different speeds of light,

[00:25:34] different laws of nature perhaps.

[00:25:36] That's the multiverse that is the preponderance

[00:25:39] of cosmologists working today believe

[00:25:41] and I'm reserving judgment,

[00:25:43] but that is one of the goals of Bicep

[00:25:45] and Simon's Observatory

[00:25:47] to give physical evidence for the precursor

[00:25:50] to the multiverse which is called inflation.

[00:25:53] So, but even if you take the cyclic one

[00:25:57] where the Big Bang expands,

[00:25:59] then the Big Crunch happens,

[00:26:01] then it goes back into a tiny dot

[00:26:03] and then there's a Big Bang again,

[00:26:05] even in that one might there be leftover matter

[00:26:07] from a prior Big Bang?

[00:26:09] Yes.

[00:26:10] That didn't make it all the way back in the Big Crunch?

[00:26:12] Yes, but it would be so disorganized

[00:26:14] as to be basically indistinguishable

[00:26:17] matter created at the origin

[00:26:19] of our current observable universe.

[00:26:21] That said, there is one exotic form of matter

[00:26:24] which is proposed to penetrate through

[00:26:27] such a nucleation event

[00:26:29] from a previous universe to a current universe

[00:26:31] and that's matter in the form of a black hole

[00:26:34] or in a curvature energy in the form of a black hole.

[00:26:37] So, some people like Roger Penrose

[00:26:39] has been a guest on my show many times.

[00:26:42] He won the Nobel Prize three years ago

[00:26:45] and his theory is that there are black holes

[00:26:48] that do penetrate through the expansion

[00:26:53] that leads to the nucleation of a new universe.

[00:26:55] It's very complicated theory

[00:26:57] and very few cosmologists take it seriously.

[00:27:02] Alright, and then final conspiracy theory

[00:27:05] that I saw an article about

[00:27:07] is that dark matter doesn't actually exist.

[00:27:10] So, that I would say is less of a conspiracy theory

[00:27:14] than the actual matter of honest to goodness scientific research.

[00:27:18] There's two ways we can account for

[00:27:22] the most prominent evidence that there is

[00:27:25] so-called dark matter in galaxies

[00:27:28] at distances from the Milky Way Galaxy

[00:27:31] and the evidence for those,

[00:27:33] for some strange phenomena occurring

[00:27:35] in these galaxies is overwhelming.

[00:27:37] The evidence that the matter that we're made up of

[00:27:40] the protons, the neutrons, croutons

[00:27:43] that that is the dominant form of energy

[00:27:46] is completely excluded in the form of matter

[00:27:49] and we're also not the dominant form of energy.

[00:27:51] There's something called dark energy,

[00:27:53] but let's stick to one conspiracy at a time.

[00:27:56] Dark matter is a proposal

[00:27:59] to explain the bizarre behavior

[00:28:01] of the rotation of galaxies

[00:28:03] and the behavior of giant clusters of galaxies

[00:28:06] and the behavior of the cosmic background radiation

[00:28:09] that I study that relies on a particle

[00:28:12] of mass that has mass

[00:28:15] that is made of matter,

[00:28:17] but that type of matter does not interact

[00:28:19] with electricity and magnetism.

[00:28:21] That is to say it doesn't interact with light,

[00:28:23] it doesn't absorb light, and it doesn't emit light.

[00:28:26] That has been called dark matter or dunca material

[00:28:29] since this guy Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s kind of conjectured it.

[00:28:33] Now, there's another theory

[00:28:35] that suggests that the universe is made up

[00:28:38] of ordinary matter only,

[00:28:40] like protons and neutrons and electrons,

[00:28:42] but the universe has a different form

[00:28:46] of the gravitational force field

[00:28:49] that just appears as if there's missing matter,

[00:28:52] but this is only manifest on scales of a galaxy itself.

[00:28:56] And that's called modified Newtonian gravity

[00:29:00] or Mond dynamics.

[00:29:02] And Mond suggests that the laws of Einstein

[00:29:06] or the laws of Newton, not Einstein,

[00:29:08] but just the laws of Isaac Newton

[00:29:10] have to be modified when you get to the scale of a galaxy,

[00:29:13] that there are hidden forces

[00:29:16] that make the rotation properties of galaxies change

[00:29:19] in a very accurately calculable fashion.

[00:29:22] So these two things stand in opposition,

[00:29:25] a new form of unseen matter

[00:29:27] and a new modification of the laws of gravity.

[00:29:31] Now we've seen this exact same story

[00:29:34] in the history of physics,

[00:29:36] where we've seen the world with the discovery

[00:29:39] of the planet Neptune.

[00:29:41] So the planet Neptune was discovered

[00:29:44] observationally by noting the weird behavior

[00:29:49] of the planet Uranus,

[00:29:51] or as you call it, Uranus.

[00:29:54] Can't get around.

[00:29:56] Everybody laugh, everybody in the world laughs at that one

[00:29:58] all the time.

[00:29:59] I put up a poll on Twitter a couple months ago.

[00:30:01] I said, do you support my proposal to rename Uranus?

[00:30:04] Incredibly embarrassing to astronomers.

[00:30:06] Nobody's calling it Uranus.

[00:30:09] And is that better, Uranus?

[00:30:12] Is that better than Uranus?

[00:30:14] No, not really, let's be honest.

[00:30:16] Then I said, who's with me?

[00:30:18] Let's change the name to Eurectum.

[00:30:20] And it got a lot of attention.

[00:30:22] Those boys at NASA were out in the...

[00:30:25] So these astronomers, Laverier and others

[00:30:28] looked at Uranus' behavior

[00:30:31] and they saw that it was wiggling around

[00:30:33] in a way it shouldn't, indicative of an unseen chunk

[00:30:36] of dark matter, i.e. the planet Neptune

[00:30:39] which was heretofore un-invisible,

[00:30:41] that was orbiting beyond it

[00:30:43] and influencing its orbit, causing it to behave this way.

[00:30:46] That was an explanation.

[00:30:48] And then, and that was true.

[00:30:50] They predicted where Neptune would be observed,

[00:30:52] telescopes turned towards it,

[00:30:54] 1700s discovered the sixth planet, right?

[00:30:57] So a seventh planet.

[00:30:59] So this is amazing.

[00:31:01] And in fact, it was so convincing

[00:31:03] that in the 1900s,

[00:31:05] when accurate measurements of the planet Mercury's orbit

[00:31:09] began to get measured in the early 1900s,

[00:31:12] people assumed that there must be

[00:31:15] a strange hidden planet called Vulcan

[00:31:18] invisible to us because it was closer to the sun than Mercury

[00:31:22] and it was tugging on Mercury's orbit

[00:31:25] in a strange way that had been known about

[00:31:27] for quite some time before that.

[00:31:29] And so there was a proposal,

[00:31:31] let's solve this problem via another chunk of dark matter,

[00:31:35] invisible matter, in this case the planet Vulcan.

[00:31:38] Now Einstein came along and said,

[00:31:40] no, no, no, no, we don't have to

[00:31:42] conjecture some strange chunk of dark matter this time.

[00:31:45] We have to instead postulate that the laws of gravity

[00:31:49] and orbits of planets like Mercury

[00:31:52] get afflicted and affected much more egregiously

[00:31:55] the closer they are to the sun

[00:31:57] and that you cannot blindly apply Newton's laws.

[00:32:01] So he fixed that and of course was right

[00:32:04] and solved this problem using what's called

[00:32:06] the theory of general relativity.

[00:32:08] So in one case, dark matter was a solution.

[00:32:11] In the other case, changing gravity was a solution.

[00:32:13] We're exactly in that state right now

[00:32:16] when it comes to unseen potential matter

[00:32:20] that is called dark matter or strange modifications to gravity

[00:32:23] called Mond at large scales.

[00:32:26] Now, and again, couldn't it be just like how there was a planet Neptune,

[00:32:30] some other large piece of matter, a planet,

[00:32:35] that we couldn't observe?

[00:32:37] Couldn't that be the exact case here?

[00:32:39] So we're seeing unusual things happening with galaxies,

[00:32:42] but again, there are galaxies out there

[00:32:45] that could be larger than anything we've ever observed,

[00:32:49] but they're too far away for their light to have gotten to us

[00:32:52] so there's no way we can observe them right now

[00:32:54] and that could be affecting the galaxies we are trying to measure.

[00:32:58] Exactly along the lines of this exact proposal

[00:33:02] was conjectured 20 or 30 years ago

[00:33:06] in what became known as machos.

[00:33:08] So macho is an object that's massive, it's compact

[00:33:14] and it only exists in the halo of galaxies

[00:33:17] and this dark matter phenomenon appears to be manifest

[00:33:21] and when we had an observation of dark matter in other galaxies,

[00:33:26] it was thought let's go look in the Milky Way Galaxy

[00:33:30] and it's halo, the outskirts of this giant enormous collection

[00:33:33] of 100 billion suns.

[00:33:35] Let's look for objects themselves

[00:33:38] that are like chunks of matter, planets, even black holes

[00:33:42] which fit the bill of dark matter.

[00:33:44] They absorb light, they don't emit light.

[00:33:46] Let's look for these objects and to do that,

[00:33:48] what astronomers did is use the space telescope

[00:33:52] and other telescopes to look at another galaxy really far away

[00:33:56] called the small Magellanic Cloud

[00:33:59] which is a satellite of the Milky Way Galaxy

[00:34:02] which has about a billion stars in it

[00:34:04] and then look for periodic or non-periodic

[00:34:06] just for a look for brightening and dimming of light from stars

[00:34:09] that happen to be co-aligned

[00:34:11] such that when this macho goes between the line of sight

[00:34:15] from that star in a distant galaxy on its way to the Earth

[00:34:19] the light gets brighter and it gets dimmer

[00:34:22] and it does so non-periodically.

[00:34:25] A planet would do it periodically and we could see that

[00:34:28] but this would happen once, one and done.

[00:34:30] This just passing through town, a black hole

[00:34:32] is moving in front of a distant star

[00:34:35] and guess what?

[00:34:36] They discovered they all touch our objects

[00:34:38] they discovered hundreds of them

[00:34:40] imputing that there's probably millions

[00:34:42] or maybe billions of these things in our galaxy alone

[00:34:46] but that amount of matter is pitifully, woefully inadequate

[00:34:51] to explain the amount of deficit

[00:34:54] between the ordinary matter that we're made up of

[00:34:56] and this missing matter that we call dark matter.

[00:34:59] So they do exist.

[00:35:01] We don't know exactly what they are.

[00:35:03] They could be planets the size of Jupiter

[00:35:05] they could be black holes

[00:35:06] we're learning more about them

[00:35:08] but to date we don't know exactly what they are

[00:35:10] only that they're insufficient

[00:35:12] and they're incapable of explaining dark matter holistically.

[00:35:20] So dark matter might be some invisible particles

[00:35:37] as theorized or it could be just some large chunks

[00:35:42] of matter like black holes or other galaxies

[00:35:44] that we have to date been unable to observe

[00:35:47] you're saying the ones we have observed

[00:35:49] show a pattern that's too small for us to say

[00:35:52] that explains the dark matter situation

[00:35:56] but it could be the case that with distance

[00:36:00] enough things could be not observed

[00:36:04] that maybe it's the reason for this dark matter theory.

[00:36:07] Well, yeah, I mean they're right now

[00:36:09] the main hope of people that believe

[00:36:12] dark matter is a particle

[00:36:13] is that it's not a macho

[00:36:15] that it's a wimp, a weakly interacting massive particle

[00:36:20] so these guys are trolling and gaslighting each other

[00:36:23] these astronomers know how to have a good time.

[00:36:25] So when the...

[00:36:27] If they run into each other at conferences

[00:36:29] is anybody ever angry at each other

[00:36:31] because they believe in machos versus wimps?

[00:36:34] Like you get those kind of politics

[00:36:36] Yeah, I've had people that hate to talk about

[00:36:38] the other alternative models

[00:36:40] and people think there's a conspiracy

[00:36:42] to suppress and reject publications

[00:36:45] and say oh yeah there's all sorts of human behavior

[00:36:47] that's ugly as can be on display.

[00:36:50] So certainly I see that between like string theorists

[00:36:53] and you know like you're an experimental physicist

[00:36:56] so you kind of...

[00:36:58] It's not that you hate anybody

[00:36:59] but like you don't really subscribe to the string theorists

[00:37:02] and they don't subscribe

[00:37:03] they don't play in your sandbox.

[00:37:04] Yeah, I mean it's...

[00:37:05] That's different than I am a loop quantum gravity believer

[00:37:09] and not a string theorist.

[00:37:11] Yeah, so they will fight with each other

[00:37:13] I say you know the biggest misconception of my field

[00:37:16] is that my job is to prove theorists right

[00:37:19] prove them you know that they got it right or something

[00:37:22] my job is the opposite, is to prove them wrong.

[00:37:24] I set out to try to prove everybody wrong

[00:37:27] and then hopefully what's left is a little bit closer

[00:37:29] to the actual truth

[00:37:31] than we would have realized otherwise.

[00:37:33] So in reality these battles or whatever

[00:37:37] I just spoke with Peter Gabbagassian in his podcast

[00:37:40] and we were talking about like all these different

[00:37:42] scientific organizations from the World Health Organization

[00:37:45] to the CDC to Scientific American to Nature

[00:37:49] that they've lost so much credibility

[00:37:52] and he's like well what's a general public person

[00:37:54] supposed to do?

[00:37:56] Like how do you know if you're not a...

[00:37:57] Who do you trust?

[00:37:59] And my whole thing is you should avoid trust

[00:38:02] and belief in people when they do make it tribal

[00:38:04] and ideological and you should think like

[00:38:07] well what's this person's moral bank account?

[00:38:09] Like yes everyone's been wrong

[00:38:11] I was wrong, we claimed as part of a team

[00:38:13] that claimed we discovered evidence for the multiverse

[00:38:16] basically an inflation and we had to retract that

[00:38:18] and that was painful and embarrassing and so forth.

[00:38:20] You know we didn't make a blunder

[00:38:22] but we were overreaching in terms of what we could interpret

[00:38:25] the data to say, so we had to retract that.

[00:38:28] My conjecture is that when somebody comes up

[00:38:32] with an idea like oh the universe is 26 billion years old

[00:38:35] and their PR office at every university has

[00:38:39] goes to the newspapers and then Joe Rogan

[00:38:42] that that is not without its perils

[00:38:46] and in fact what scientists should do

[00:38:48] I'm talking about scientists, not just like media

[00:38:50] they should have a budget

[00:38:52] and that budget should have two you know

[00:38:55] kind of segregated accounts

[00:38:57] and one account should be for publicizing

[00:39:00] the information that was acquired after all

[00:39:03] at great expense time and treasure

[00:39:05] supplied by US taxpayers in my case

[00:39:08] and that should be you know maybe 66% of the budget

[00:39:12] and then 33% of the budget should be reserved

[00:39:15] for the retraction of that.

[00:39:17] Not to say that it's you know half as likely

[00:39:19] that I'll be retracted but the cost to contain

[00:39:23] and retract information is so much more

[00:39:27] difficult to do.

[00:39:29] To get Rogan to then issue a retweet

[00:39:32] you know that I was wrong and Brian Keating

[00:39:34] you know set me straight

[00:39:36] I don't think that's gonna happen

[00:39:38] I'm not gonna ask him to do that

[00:39:40] but the point being when you make an announcement

[00:39:42] that you discovered the Big Bang

[00:39:44] then it appears on A1 above the fold of the New York Times

[00:39:48] as it did for Bicep 2 as you know

[00:39:51] and then the retraction if it ever comes

[00:39:54] comes on page B17 of the Saturday edition

[00:39:57] and it's a horrible thing to communicate to the public

[00:40:00] I still get scientists sometimes who say

[00:40:03] oh wow you were part of the team that discovered

[00:40:05] the you know the Big Bang

[00:40:07] I'm like you're a scientist

[00:40:09] like forget about lay people they think that all the time

[00:40:11] and I'm like the name of my book is Losing the Noble Pride

[00:40:13] like spoiler alert here

[00:40:15] nevertheless it is

[00:40:17] because the media has

[00:40:20] a sensationalist attitude

[00:40:22] and we as scientists need to counter that

[00:40:25] because if we don't the public support

[00:40:27] and trust in science will be irrevocably diminished.

[00:40:32] So let me ask you a question

[00:40:34] like you say you were embarrassed to make this retraction

[00:40:36] how embarrassed like were you worried about your career?

[00:40:40] It's said

[00:40:42] Were you worried you were gonna be fired as a UCSD professor?

[00:40:46] No I wasn't worried about that

[00:40:48] for one thing the you know the kind of retraction

[00:40:51] wasn't of the kind that we said that we discovered

[00:40:54] you know goblins and ghosts

[00:40:57] it wasn't like we said that we made faster than light

[00:41:00] travel neutrinos it wasn't that we discovered life

[00:41:03] you know on a planet and we had a bridge

[00:41:06] we didn't make a blunder we made a very highly accurate measurement

[00:41:09] that's actually far superior to any measurement

[00:41:12] that my subsequent competitor teams have been able to even approach

[00:41:16] however the interpretation if we had just published it

[00:41:19] as we've discovered this pattern of light

[00:41:22] and said maybe in a footnote it's consistent with inflation

[00:41:26] but it could be other things there'd be nothing to retract

[00:41:29] in other words it was merely the overreach that we did

[00:41:32] was merely not merely it was to say that we discovered

[00:41:35] the imprimatur of the Big Bang and the inflationary universe

[00:41:38] which comes concomitantly with the multiverse etc

[00:41:41] so there was nothing really it wasn't a blunder

[00:41:44] you know I didn't leave my thumb on the lens

[00:41:46] you know in the front of the lens when I took a picture

[00:41:48] like I do with my kids

[00:41:50] it was far less kind of amateurish and what have you

[00:41:53] as I say the proof is that we're still the best

[00:41:56] you know constraints on this phenomenon that have ever been made

[00:41:59] well what's interesting to me is that okay

[00:42:02] perhaps let's leave out the Nobel Prize

[00:42:06] let's say you never had to do the retraction

[00:42:09] and life would have been great for you in academia

[00:42:12] and as a professor and you would be well known

[00:42:14] as the physicist who did this

[00:42:16] but I would say the fact that you had this

[00:42:20] negative experience like I know you've had ups and downs

[00:42:23] you've had a rare use gusses in your book

[00:42:25] we've discussed it on the podcast

[00:42:27] but this maybe is the most well known

[00:42:29] this is not just a personal up and down

[00:42:31] this was one that involved all the physicists in the world

[00:42:34] because it was a major you're discussing the Big Bang

[00:42:37] the major thing that physicists or cosmologists study

[00:42:40] and this retraction which then morphed into your

[00:42:45] book losing the Nobel Prize

[00:42:47] which really put you on the map in some ways

[00:42:51] and not just the physicist's map but it's a

[00:42:55] writing a book merges you with pop culture

[00:42:58] and talking about losing the Nobel Prize

[00:43:00] which has an element of humor in the title

[00:43:03] and then you're on all the podcast

[00:43:05] and we're going to discuss your going on to a Rogan's podcast

[00:43:08] in a few weeks

[00:43:09] it's almost like are you glad

[00:43:11] are you glad you had to make this retraction

[00:43:13] and that led to a bunch of events that really

[00:43:16] now made you put you into not only a physicist's career

[00:43:20] but yeah let me answer that

[00:43:22] let me just check my ego for one second

[00:43:25] it's a very flattering question

[00:43:26] now seriously let me check my air conditioner unit is broken

[00:43:29] so hold on one second I'll be right back

[00:43:32] hopefully Jake can edit this out

[00:43:36] nope I'm putting it in

[00:43:38] everyone has to know that Brian's kid is broken

[00:43:42] no wonder he couldn't find the Big Bang

[00:43:45] his air conditioning

[00:43:47] yeah everyone needs to know

[00:43:49] even though you're successful physicist

[00:43:51] your AC could still broke

[00:43:53] no I think the fact that his AC broke means

[00:43:56] of course I'm not going to pay attention when he

[00:43:59] predicts the Big Bang

[00:44:01] sorry Jake

[00:44:03] oh we were just chatting about the weather

[00:44:05] alright so am I glad that we're back

[00:44:07] are we live

[00:44:08] okay

[00:44:09] am I glad that we made this

[00:44:11] um so I was fired

[00:44:14] from my first postdoc experience

[00:44:16] postdoc is sort of the first job you get

[00:44:18] after getting your PhD

[00:44:20] you're trying to become a professor

[00:44:22] trying to prove your metal

[00:44:23] trying to show that you're an independent scientist

[00:44:25] independent of your PhD advisor

[00:44:27] and I got fired from Stanford University

[00:44:29] which is arguably one of the best if not the best in this field

[00:44:33] and I am more glad that I got fired

[00:44:37] from there

[00:44:38] than any you know purportedly negative thing

[00:44:41] that could have ever happened in my life

[00:44:43] your career also is very you're very young then

[00:44:46] and so you probably hadn't really

[00:44:48] I mean here you were a postdoc at Stanford

[00:44:50] which kind of implies everything that happened before then

[00:44:52] was a success for you

[00:44:53] I was yeah I wouldn't say I was like the wonderkin

[00:44:55] but I would say that I had

[00:44:57] uh take I was very hard worker

[00:44:59] I still am a very hard worker

[00:45:01] I wanted to you know kind of make a name for myself

[00:45:03] I'd never been fired from a job

[00:45:05] so just at a you know human level

[00:45:07] but um but I was glad that I got fired

[00:45:09] in retrospect and even at the time

[00:45:11] because it did lead to me connecting to my

[00:45:14] eventual mentor Andrew Lang

[00:45:16] who tragically as I described in the book

[00:45:18] committed suicide um not long after

[00:45:21] we started the experiment that would then

[00:45:23] later lead to the events of losing the Nobel Prize

[00:45:26] and so I miss him you know tremendously

[00:45:28] he was a father figure to me

[00:45:30] um in some ways deeper than my own father

[00:45:32] he was uh he was only in his late 40s

[00:45:35] and can I ask why do you think he

[00:45:37] he did that

[00:45:38] he I think he was you know battling

[00:45:41] some psychologically either undiagnosed

[00:45:44] unmedicated maybe medicated um

[00:45:47] issues he had gone through a divorce

[00:45:49] he had gone through you know he had

[00:45:51] children from his wife's first marriage

[00:45:54] or his ex-wife's first marriage um

[00:45:56] she ended up winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry

[00:45:58] Francis Arnold a few years later um

[00:46:00] but they were like the ultimate power couple

[00:46:03] attractive young brilliant scientists both at Caltech

[00:46:06] and I think it was a complicated thing

[00:46:08] and and I think you know after they got separated

[00:46:10] divorced what have you he tried to

[00:46:12] you know maybe you know have

[00:46:14] relationships with with other women

[00:46:16] and maybe it didn't work out but nobody

[00:46:18] really knows except you know I wish that he

[00:46:20] had just reached out to me as I did

[00:46:22] to him so many times the thing that was so

[00:46:24] surprising is like it wouldn't have been

[00:46:26] like uh non-obvious to him that everybody

[00:46:30] would have like just wanted to help him

[00:46:32] I mean he was universally admired

[00:46:34] and loved and and just super popular

[00:46:36] professor brilliant won everything

[00:46:38] but the Nobel Prize had great you know

[00:46:40] success financially another I don't know

[00:46:44] it's it's very tough to say but but you

[00:46:46] know getting back to my favorite subject

[00:46:48] which is me when I when I got fired

[00:46:51] from Stanford my boss at Stanford

[00:46:53] had been his postdoc before she started

[00:46:55] at Stanford and she graciously in my

[00:46:58] mind connected me to him and then he

[00:47:00] hired me almost on the spot I accepted

[00:47:02] the spot when I interviewed with him

[00:47:04] and moved down to Caltech and then that

[00:47:06] later led to bicep and that led to me

[00:47:08] getting a job at UC San Diego and that

[00:47:10] led to me meeting my wife and having

[00:47:12] my children and there's just no way

[00:47:14] that that would have happened otherwise

[00:47:16] yeah maybe I would have met a different wife

[00:47:18] maybe we had different kids and but

[00:47:20] when you see something that's perfectly

[00:47:22] organized and like that you're there's

[00:47:24] so many more ways that you can be made

[00:47:26] unhappy James than made more happy

[00:47:28] we've talked about this that's called

[00:47:30] entropy of happiness there's no

[00:47:32] available space where I could double

[00:47:34] your happiness like on demand

[00:47:36] but in fact there's probably at least

[00:47:38] you know I don't even talk about it as

[00:47:40] I say with fathers and daughters and sons

[00:47:42] and children and daughters and why

[00:47:44] you you know that you have

[00:47:46] infinite downside risk exposure right

[00:47:48] we've talked about Jim Simons who's lost

[00:47:50] two sons just like and he's one of the

[00:47:52] richest people in the world do you want to trade

[00:47:54] places with him absolutely not would you

[00:47:56] wouldn't you be a lot happier no way

[00:47:58] so I think it's important to realize that

[00:48:00] you can always be made up more so right now

[00:48:02] I can't be made

[00:48:04] more happy very easily

[00:48:06] I mean if my wife if she's listening

[00:48:08] I don't know honey can we have one more

[00:48:10] kid you know she usually hits me in the

[00:48:12] very place that I need to produce that

[00:48:14] child so I just feel

[00:48:16] blessed on every realm

[00:48:18] and yet I could imagine much worse scenario

[00:48:20] so all I'm saying is well

[00:48:22] they're there it's clear when somebody

[00:48:24] says oh well you would marry somebody

[00:48:26] it's just clear I wouldn't be as happy

[00:48:28] there's just no way to convince me that I'd be as happy

[00:48:30] so anyway I'm very glad now you asked me about

[00:48:32] BISEP I'm

[00:48:34] glad that we didn't discover it no I mean

[00:48:36] I knew the night before

[00:48:38] the announcement was made in front of TV cameras

[00:48:40] newspapers

[00:48:42] CNN you know

[00:48:44] all these other scientists without

[00:48:46] me being present there the man who had

[00:48:48] you know arguably created

[00:48:50] the experimental you know predecessor that

[00:48:52] led to BISEP too

[00:48:54] I knew the night before that press conference at Harvard

[00:48:56] centered for astrophysics

[00:48:58] that I would not win the Nobel Prize

[00:49:00] and that's when the name of the book

[00:49:02] came into my mind losing the Nobel Prize

[00:49:04] because I knew that if we were right

[00:49:06] and we did detect the Big Bang's

[00:49:08] origin story that I would

[00:49:10] be excluded from credit because I wasn't at the press

[00:49:12] conference Harvard had kind of edged me out

[00:49:14] and if anything you know

[00:49:16] should have worried about it I think it would

[00:49:18] have been Harvard you know the repercussions

[00:49:20] of this retraction and a lot of my friends

[00:49:22] and alumni of Harvard

[00:49:24] have said stop donating to Harvard

[00:49:26] and and real that you know

[00:49:28] the professor who was the lead

[00:49:30] PI of the project professor John Kovac

[00:49:32] he's still a professor there and

[00:49:34] reasonably friendly with him but a lot

[00:49:36] of people thought like this is outrageous he got

[00:49:38] tenure after this event you know

[00:49:40] he shouldn't I don't feel one way or

[00:49:42] another I'm glad that he's that he's happy

[00:49:44] and he has you know a good life

[00:49:46] but you know UCSD

[00:49:48] had no reason to really

[00:49:50] pursue me in that sense

[00:49:52] okay I guess my point

[00:49:54] is not that

[00:49:56] you would be happy my point is really

[00:49:58] that you took

[00:50:00] a real big

[00:50:02] highlight negative event of your

[00:50:04] career in this case

[00:50:06] you know making

[00:50:08] a statement that's very

[00:50:10] it was very important statement in

[00:50:12] the cosmology world

[00:50:14] and then having to

[00:50:16] publicly be

[00:50:18] you know have a dismiss as incorrect

[00:50:20] but you took that

[00:50:22] and you converted it it's like an alchemy

[00:50:24] you would convert it into gold

[00:50:26] you converted into something much more positive

[00:50:28] and this is really the inspiration

[00:50:30] in your story not

[00:50:32] the physics itself

[00:50:34] but how you

[00:50:36] took a life event that was really

[00:50:38] I mean there's lots of types of bad

[00:50:40] life events like

[00:50:42] like a divorce or like going broke

[00:50:44] or experiencing some other kind

[00:50:46] of loss and the key is

[00:50:50] I don't think all the time there's an alchemy

[00:50:52] that can transform it into good

[00:50:54] like often if you get diagnosed

[00:50:56] with a terminal disease it's I think it's much

[00:50:58] more difficult

[00:51:00] to convert that into something good although it's not

[00:51:02] impossible but I think

[00:51:04] a lot of times people underestimate the power

[00:51:06] of this kind of personal alchemy that one

[00:51:08] can do and you were able to successfully

[00:51:10] do it and not everyone can do that

[00:51:12] imagine if you're on a or imagine a lot

[00:51:14] of people a lot of professors it's the end

[00:51:16] of their lives practically when they don't get

[00:51:18] tenure right do you know like

[00:51:20] people I mean not to

[00:51:22] talk about suicide again but

[00:51:24] professors, professors kill themselves sometimes

[00:51:26] when they don't get tenure because that's their whole life

[00:51:28] was academia and but there's

[00:51:30] all my feeling is in those

[00:51:32] types of situations that essentially

[00:51:34] aren't terminal diseases there's always

[00:51:36] there should always be some alchemy

[00:51:38] that converts it into personal

[00:51:40] gold no I agree and that's the lemon

[00:51:42] aid if not the nub all gold

[00:51:44] yeah I think you're right but no I mean

[00:51:46] I in my heart of hearts do I

[00:51:48] wish that we want I wish I wish

[00:51:50] that we were right you know in the sense

[00:51:52] that we didn't make a mistake because this

[00:51:54] this is a great discovery and

[00:51:56] you know it would have saved Jim Simons

[00:51:58] about a hundred million dollars and wouldn't

[00:52:00] have to I'm just kidding we still would build it

[00:52:02] but to

[00:52:04] advance scientific knowledge the earlier

[00:52:06] that's done James the better

[00:52:08] and if this is true

[00:52:10] you know then I think I even

[00:52:12] if I didn't win and I admit

[00:52:14] as such I shouldn't have won the Nobel Prize

[00:52:16] you know potentially but

[00:52:18] but but I wish that

[00:52:20] that the result had held up forget about the

[00:52:22] Nobel Prize itself because that brings up a lot of jealousy

[00:52:24] and but just that the scientific

[00:52:26] result because I want our scientific

[00:52:28] knowledge to this is the most dangerous

[00:52:30] time I think in history where

[00:52:32] people know so little about

[00:52:34] science and technology but rely on it

[00:52:36] for everything and and we play

[00:52:38] around with things like nuclear holocaust

[00:52:40] and and you know and

[00:52:42] viruses and AI and

[00:52:44] all sorts of dangers and just

[00:52:46] the average person knows nothing about it

[00:52:48] so my goal and my YouTube channel

[00:52:50] my podcast is to like bring together

[00:52:52] the greatest minds in science and technology

[00:52:54] if they're not a depth

[00:52:56] of public speaking that's fine they're engaging

[00:52:58] with the public through me which is the moral

[00:53:00] obligation otherwise I think that

[00:53:02] they're mostly dead weight

[00:53:04] and yeah they can stick in the laboratory that's great

[00:53:06] but I'll be out there publicizing what they do

[00:53:08] and if they're you know too

[00:53:10] scared I often get this jay oh

[00:53:12] don't expect the scientists to speak eloquently

[00:53:14] you know they're you know that requires a lot

[00:53:16] of training I'm like oh yeah I came out of the womb

[00:53:18] you know knowing about relativistic

[00:53:20] quantum mechanics you know I didn't have to work

[00:53:22] at that at all that was easy for no it's

[00:53:24] bullshit it's something that they just use

[00:53:26] as an excuse to either leave it to other

[00:53:28] people but guess what guess what other

[00:53:30] people like the lay people

[00:53:32] say things like oh I'm not a scientist

[00:53:34] or I'm not a math person don't expect me

[00:53:36] to say that or do that you know what I mean James

[00:53:38] that in this sense

[00:53:40] we outsource it's like that line

[00:53:42] from a few good men

[00:53:44] you know when Nick Nicholson tells

[00:53:46] Cruz you know you want me on that wall

[00:53:48] you know even if I'm corrupt even if I'm crooked

[00:53:50] you need me on that wall like

[00:53:52] scientists are needed out there

[00:53:54] so that the lay person doesn't have

[00:53:56] to learn that much about science because it's hard

[00:53:58] but it's an interesting

[00:54:00] thing like you know and there's this whole

[00:54:02] ever since the pandemic there's this whole battle

[00:54:04] between either you're like pro science

[00:54:06] or

[00:54:08] your anti-science

[00:54:10] and they forgot that

[00:54:12] it's kind of the gray in the middle

[00:54:14] that creates science it's like the people

[00:54:16] who are who don't trust

[00:54:18] the science but who have

[00:54:20] a combination of knowledge and common sense

[00:54:22] and skepticism to explore new

[00:54:24] areas but there is room

[00:54:26] for lay people to have

[00:54:28] opinions that don't necessarily agree

[00:54:30] with science it's a delegate

[00:54:32] balance because if you believe in

[00:54:34] a flat earth when obviously the earth is round

[00:54:36] there's something a little crazy so there's

[00:54:38] there's some balance

[00:54:40] in the middle where you need to

[00:54:42] go back to I'm not

[00:54:44] going to trust that

[00:54:46] UFOs exist just because

[00:54:48] some guy is testifying in front of congress

[00:54:50] and he worked for government like I have to

[00:54:52] maybe I trust it but maybe I don't

[00:54:54] and I'm not I wouldn't be wrong

[00:54:56] in either case like and it's the same

[00:54:58] thing with science like oh the scientist

[00:55:00] says this

[00:55:02] xyz theory or vaccine or whatever

[00:55:04] is correct it's it's

[00:55:06] okay it should be okay for me to express

[00:55:08] skepticism I'm not saying I'm anti-vaccine

[00:55:10] or whatever I'm just saying it needs to be

[00:55:12] okay to express skepticism on these things

[00:55:14] and unfortunately it's not anymore

[00:55:16] but the flip side is important too like

[00:55:18] we saw this in the 1800s

[00:55:20] Eagle's Semmelweis

[00:55:22] says you got to wash your hands before

[00:55:24] going from the morgue to the

[00:55:26] living room so that babies don't die and mothers

[00:55:28] don't die he

[00:55:30] you know

[00:55:32] they trashed him put him in a mental institution

[00:55:34] he was skeptical of the

[00:55:36] science and he was a scientist

[00:55:38] I tell it to my kids every time they don't wash their hands before

[00:55:40] they eat chicken nuggets

[00:55:44] that's probably a better technique than my dad

[00:55:46] he told me at night when I'm asleep

[00:55:48] there's going to be rats all over my face

[00:55:50] if I don't wash my face before going to sleep

[00:55:52] pleasant dream Tony

[00:55:54] pleasant dream

[00:55:56] so yeah we're in this weird time

[00:55:58] where you know let me ask you this

[00:56:00] I was at a dinner a few weeks ago

[00:56:02] where it was a bunch of

[00:56:04] physicists and physics writers

[00:56:06] and if I say the names you would certainly know them

[00:56:08] and like one person had even won the Pulitzer Prize

[00:56:10] in writing about physics

[00:56:12] another person had was a well

[00:56:14] known Columbia professor of physics

[00:56:16] and had written a bunch of books and so on

[00:56:18] and they were as the most

[00:56:20] anti-science people I've ever met

[00:56:22] like they were trashing

[00:56:24] genomics, AI

[00:56:26] space tourism

[00:56:28] you know the fact that we could send

[00:56:30] a regular citizen into space

[00:56:32] they thought this was like the grossest example

[00:56:34] of capitalism

[00:56:36] there shouldn't be space

[00:56:38] it was just these quote unquote space

[00:56:40] tourists were like just

[00:56:42] billionaires who were like

[00:56:44] you know virtue signaling

[00:56:46] and blah blah blah

[00:56:48] I can't believe I'm hearing all this

[00:56:50] from a bunch of scientists

[00:56:52] like the TV show Star Trek was a

[00:56:54] show about space tourism

[00:56:56] like it's you know

[00:56:58] they weren't allowed to interfere with anything

[00:57:00] and they were just exploring the final frontier that's it

[00:57:02] and

[00:57:04] why are physicists so

[00:57:06] anti-science

[00:57:08] why are academics so anti-innovation?

[00:57:10] Well I think at some level

[00:57:12] there is a deep distrust

[00:57:14] of the financial

[00:57:16] kind of compensation that comes

[00:57:18] with technological

[00:57:20] you know kind of scaling to something technologically

[00:57:22] useful

[00:57:24] and I often say

[00:57:26] it's too bad that

[00:57:28] physics produces technology

[00:57:30] basic physics because then you come to rely on it

[00:57:32] it's too bad that scientists prevented

[00:57:34] the

[00:57:36] killing of millions more people

[00:57:38] perhaps through the invention of the atomic bomb

[00:57:40] talking about why is it too bad

[00:57:42] because now it's like

[00:57:44] relied upon for everything and now we've

[00:57:46] unleashed and released

[00:57:48] you know kind of this potential for

[00:57:50] planetary scale

[00:57:52] Armageddon in many ways

[00:57:54] AI to

[00:57:56] not just physicists or only physicists

[00:57:58] mainly physicists but

[00:58:00] molecular biologists which is a branch of physics

[00:58:02] in some ways to nuclear

[00:58:04] physics and then perhaps to

[00:58:06] physics of

[00:58:08] much more powerful

[00:58:10] and capable theories

[00:58:12] and technology so yes

[00:58:14] there's a deep distrust of monetization

[00:58:16] I don't know why that is I think physicists

[00:58:18] feel like oh you're a loser

[00:58:20] if you sell out and you should be pure

[00:58:22] and be poor and you know just do it

[00:58:24] for the pleasure of it and

[00:58:26] you'll always hear you know it's kind of

[00:58:28] just an example of survivor bias

[00:58:30] right when you win a Nobel prize

[00:58:32] oh it's just like oh I would have

[00:58:34] just done it for the thrill of doing the work

[00:58:36] okay well I don't see you like

[00:58:38] giving back your Nobel Prize or donating

[00:58:40] it in fact I see you selling it and

[00:58:42] I see you uphining in the New York Times

[00:58:44] who should be president and what should we do with Iran

[00:58:46] and you know so

[00:58:48] I see you leveraging it rather than

[00:58:50] you know so that's fine but don't

[00:58:52] don't denigrate

[00:58:54] kind of the production of technology

[00:58:56] I mean technology as Arthur C. Glark said

[00:58:58] is indistinguishable from magic

[00:59:00] at a certain level and

[00:59:02] don't we all want more magic that's real

[00:59:04] right

[00:59:06] but you know what I think maybe we don't

[00:59:08] because maybe there's a certain

[00:59:10] nostalgia

[00:59:12] and that we love the magic we love looking at

[00:59:14] the stars when we were kids

[00:59:16] and respecting the magic

[00:59:18] of it the mystery of it and as the mystery

[00:59:20] gets uncovered

[00:59:22] maybe there's a combination of jealousy

[00:59:24] nostalgia

[00:59:26] missing the magic yeah that's what's

[00:59:28] you read a book

[00:59:30] you read a book not for the conclusion but for the mystery

[00:59:32] along the way

[00:59:34] yeah so let me refer you you mentioned

[00:59:36] Walter White a little bit ago

[00:59:38] right we're talking about aged people

[00:59:40] we're talking about gray chemists

[00:59:42] okay yeah so I want to talk about remember the other

[00:59:44] person that they thought Walter White

[00:59:46] was was Walt Whitman

[00:59:48] and Walt Whitman has the following poem

[00:59:50] and I'm going to read it to you it's called

[00:59:52] When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

[00:59:54] by Walt Whitman

[00:59:56] When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

[00:59:58] when the proofs, the figures were

[01:00:00] ranged in columns before me

[01:00:02] when I was shown the charts the diagrams

[01:00:04] to add to divide and measure them

[01:00:06] when sitting I heard the astronomer

[01:00:08] where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room

[01:00:11] how soon accountable unaccountable

[01:00:14] I became tired and sick

[01:00:16] so rising and gliding out

[01:00:18] I wandered off by myself

[01:00:20] in the mystical moist night air

[01:00:23] and from time to time looked up

[01:00:26] in perfect silence at the stars

[01:00:29] so he's like declaring that you know this astronomer

[01:00:32] has robbed the majesty the magic

[01:00:34] the mystery and perhaps

[01:00:36] the inexplicable

[01:00:38] and the the the the

[01:00:40] poltergeist in the machine

[01:00:42] and this is the crying that

[01:00:44] and I think as Feynman said

[01:00:46] you know knowing the science behind it

[01:00:48] makes me appreciate it all the more

[01:00:50] and I think I've talked about this maybe

[01:00:52] in the past with you

[01:00:54] when I look out at a

[01:00:56] when I look out and see

[01:00:58] phenomena like the reddening

[01:01:00] of the sun at sunset

[01:01:02] or I see these distant stars

[01:01:04] and I see why they twinkle

[01:01:06] I can appreciate them

[01:01:08] in their beauty as much as you can

[01:01:10] James as a non astronomer

[01:01:12] but I actually appreciate them much more

[01:01:14] and it's just like with your

[01:01:16] do you love Robin Moore now

[01:01:18] or when you met her in the first day you met her

[01:01:20] definitely when I met her

[01:01:22] okay so she's hopefully

[01:01:24] not listening to this podcast

[01:01:26] she doesn't listen to your podcast I know that

[01:01:28] so you've grown to love her

[01:01:30] the more that you've known about her

[01:01:32] love matures right

[01:01:34] but I'm saying it intensifies

[01:01:36] do you love your child more now

[01:01:38] than on the day she was born

[01:01:40] I am better friends with her now

[01:01:42] than on the day she was born

[01:01:44] I would say the love is equal

[01:01:46] you monster

[01:01:48] okay how about this James

[01:01:50] let me prove that you're wrong

[01:01:52] and that you're not being honest with yourself

[01:01:54] let me tell you I just took a paternity test

[01:01:56] and your beautiful daughter

[01:01:58] you know it just came back

[01:02:00] what does that mean you love her when she was born

[01:02:02] what does it even mean

[01:02:04] what has she done anyway

[01:02:06] you would love her the same right because she had so much together

[01:02:08] time and then blood is

[01:02:10] so all I'm saying is the more you learn

[01:02:12] the more I learn about the universe

[01:02:14] the more astounding it is

[01:02:16] the more that I have a deep

[01:02:18] and abiding infatuation

[01:02:20] with it

[01:02:22] but I started like I wasn't always

[01:02:24] an astronomer James

[01:02:26] I started off like Walt Whitman and James Altucher

[01:02:28] and now I've become like

[01:02:30] more you know Brian Keating

[01:02:32] and now I can appreciate that

[01:02:34] and why do you limit me

[01:02:36] as Walt Whitman said and he didn't even take his own advice

[01:02:38] that little schmuck

[01:02:40] he said I contain multitudes

[01:02:42] do I contradict myself

[01:02:44] what is wrong with that

[01:02:46] what is wrong with me saying I actually appreciate it more than you

[01:02:48] and you can have what I have

[01:02:50] James and even deepen it more

[01:02:52] if someone told me I can love my wife even more

[01:02:54] and here's this course

[01:02:56] here's James Altucher, Robin

[01:02:58] Altucher you know kind of a 12 step program

[01:03:00] I would take it because there are very few ways

[01:03:02] in avenues designed that give

[01:03:04] provided great guarantees

[01:03:06] of deepening love and

[01:03:08] abiding infatuation

[01:03:10] but I'm like you in that

[01:03:12] I in terms of the science

[01:03:14] I appreciate the knowledge

[01:03:16] more than the

[01:03:18] majesty like to me having the knowledge

[01:03:20] gives the universe more majesty

[01:03:22] but I was surprised like

[01:03:24] the way you're talking right now is the opposite

[01:03:26] of how these other physicists I met

[01:03:28] were talking like I was so astonished

[01:03:30] you have to tell me off the air who these people are

[01:03:32] because I wouldn't smack them

[01:03:34] and I'm always honest about myself

[01:03:36] but I don't ever want to like put other people

[01:03:38] down

[01:03:40] but I was surprised how

[01:03:42] anti-science as a group

[01:03:44] these scientists were

[01:03:46] it's not surprising to me

[01:03:48] but they literally were like CRISPR is going to destroy the world

[01:03:50] AI is going to destroy the world

[01:03:52] physics you know and they were

[01:03:54] physics is like oh just

[01:03:56] breeding these billionaire

[01:03:58] space tourists

[01:04:00] and they were horrified

[01:04:02] well I would love to know

[01:04:04] about them I mean I often phrase it

[01:04:06] in the form of another great statement by Richard Feynman

[01:04:08] he used to say like

[01:04:10] if you ask a normal person quote unquote

[01:04:12] would you like to live forever

[01:04:14] they'll say no you know I wouldn't want to

[01:04:16] see everybody die and all this

[01:04:18] but if you ask a scientist

[01:04:20] I'd love to see what the physics of the 29th century

[01:04:22] is going to be I'd love to see if we are

[01:04:24] alone in the universe I'd love so

[01:04:26] the physicists I always say are

[01:04:28] like children they're curious

[01:04:30] they're inquisitive they're

[01:04:32] imaginative they are

[01:04:34] usually a kind of plastic

[01:04:36] anti-authoritarian they

[01:04:38] are jealous they're petty they don't

[01:04:40] share their toys with others and

[01:04:42] they have all the bad you know qualities of kids

[01:04:44] there's no such thing as a single-edged sword

[01:04:46] so I think you know we look at

[01:04:48] what scientists should do I would

[01:04:50] say that a scientist should be the most excited

[01:04:52] about the prospects you know if we

[01:04:54] can create something yes is it

[01:04:56] going to be in the hands of

[01:04:58] Joe Biden instead of or Vladimir

[01:05:00] Putin that that that is true

[01:05:02] does that mean we shouldn't have invented it

[01:05:04] I mean just take an absurd should we not have invented

[01:05:06] the transistor which is invented by physicists

[01:05:08] is that a net bad I mean

[01:05:10] was that net negative because we have

[01:05:12] online harassment and we have

[01:05:14] Kardashians you know I mean

[01:05:16] I don't think so I love the car by the way

[01:05:18] I love the Kardashian I did she did a great

[01:05:20] interview with this guy Jay Shetty

[01:05:22] that I actually sent to my wife and it made me

[01:05:24] really appreciate her very much so

[01:05:26] anyway I'll have to listen

[01:05:28] to that I've been on Jay Shetty show as well

[01:05:30] and I didn't know he's

[01:05:32] interviewed Khloe Kardashian a few years ago

[01:05:34] and then just had cameras yeah

[01:05:36] really yeah I'll have to listen to that

[01:05:38] but

[01:05:40] you know so

[01:05:42] again I agree

[01:05:44] we invent all these things there's kind of

[01:05:46] everything with good intentions has some

[01:05:48] bad consequences we've seen this

[01:05:50] over and over again in every field

[01:05:52] and but it does innovation

[01:05:54] sort of happens by itself without

[01:05:56] you know regardless of the individuals

[01:05:58] that's right because there's

[01:06:00] enough people being thrown in every problem that

[01:06:02] someone's going to solve it like the theory of relativity

[01:06:04] if Einstein hadn't solved it

[01:06:06] there were 20 people right behind them all ready

[01:06:08] to go yeah

[01:06:10] no I don't disagree with that

[01:06:12] I mean I think there are things

[01:06:14] like the Mona Lisa

[01:06:16] which just would not exist it wouldn't

[01:06:18] be it might there might be some great painting

[01:06:20] or whatever but it wouldn't exist

[01:06:22] in the way that we

[01:06:24] know and love the Mona Lisa

[01:06:26] but you're right the theory of relativity someone

[01:06:28] else would have discovered it and in fact

[01:06:30] several people were very close to it

[01:06:32] as was I you know right even

[01:06:34] up until the time of Einstein

[01:06:36] so I think you're absolutely right and we kind of give

[01:06:38] scientists too many too much credit

[01:06:40] when in fact

[01:06:42] there's a creative process

[01:06:44] and aspect of science but there's also a deep

[01:06:46] luck and serendipitous aspect of science

[01:06:48] that we shouldn't overlook like with everything I'll still

[01:06:50] give complete credit to the scientists like

[01:06:52] Einstein's the guy, Isaac Newton's

[01:06:54] the guy, Galileo's the guy

[01:06:56] I should be saying

[01:06:58] was it Francis Crick's the woman

[01:07:00] you know for

[01:07:02] Rosalind Franklin

[01:07:04] oh no you're Rosalind Franklin I see I got that

[01:07:06] totally wrong I'm like

[01:07:08] every time we talk you get cancelled

[01:07:10] it's true but actually

[01:07:12] I took an IQ test and it was about 60

[01:07:14] so I just pretend to be smart

[01:07:16] you know people think people say

[01:07:18] we only use 10% of our brains

[01:07:20] and someday I aspire to do that as well

[01:07:22] yeah so

[01:07:24] so it's not to

[01:07:26] be totally

[01:07:28] like

[01:07:30] anti the individual

[01:07:32] but

[01:07:34] it's like things move forward

[01:07:36] no matter what and we can't stop it

[01:07:38] people say we need to regulate AI

[01:07:40] sorry you cannot stop it

[01:07:42] like it's not going to stop

[01:07:44] you can't stop all the things that are happening

[01:07:46] right now

[01:07:48] but let me ask you a question

[01:07:50] go into a different topic you're going on Joe Rogan

[01:07:52] what day?

[01:07:54] supposedly the 21st of

[01:07:56] August

[01:07:58] alright so why how did he

[01:08:00] let's work on this let's make you the best

[01:08:02] Joe Rogan guest ever

[01:08:04] so first of all

[01:08:06] let me take the reins for a second

[01:08:08] as the more experienced podcaster here James

[01:08:10] not the guy

[01:08:12] I have to tell you because a lot of your audience

[01:08:14] and my audience will be new to our conversations

[01:08:16] but I only

[01:08:18] so I met you at TEDx San Diego in

[01:08:20] 2014 and Jay will put a link to our

[01:08:22] TED talks there and yours has

[01:08:24] exponentially more than my views

[01:08:26] but we met then

[01:08:28] I had already followed you for many many years

[01:08:30] and I'd really excited to meet

[01:08:32] you you were with your previous wife at the time

[01:08:34] you were very flustered you almost left

[01:08:36] the arena it was very hard to

[01:08:38] so when I became a semi

[01:08:40] connected podcaster

[01:08:42] and I went on the Jordan Harbinger show

[01:08:44] I asked Jordan

[01:08:46] for one and only one connection I didn't ask

[01:08:48] him to be connected to Kobe Bryant I didn't

[01:08:50] ask him to be connected to Neil deGrasse Tyson

[01:08:52] I asked him to be connected to you because

[01:08:54] you had such a huge impact on my

[01:08:56] life and you know it was

[01:08:58] long before I really was thinking

[01:09:00] podcasting could be my second mountain

[01:09:02] as David Brooks calls it you know something I can do

[01:09:04] in my older age and maturity

[01:09:06] bringing wisdom not just

[01:09:08] knowledge to the world of

[01:09:10] minds that I'm intending to connect so anyway

[01:09:12] when I did that you know

[01:09:14] partially it was because you're

[01:09:16] just a relentless student

[01:09:18] of the craft of podcasting

[01:09:20] and I really see you in the same kind

[01:09:22] of genre as Joe Rogan

[01:09:24] and it's not just because

[01:09:26] of your physical prowess and

[01:09:28] I mean you're a comedian, you were a comedian

[01:09:30] there's so many ways that you guys are similar

[01:09:32] and except for the hair

[01:09:34] you get inspired to your hair

[01:09:36] so I want you to do something that might be hard

[01:09:38] for you and kind of critique me

[01:09:40] and how I am

[01:09:42] as a guest and I know it's not hard

[01:09:44] it's hard for you because

[01:09:46] you kind of should feel paternalistically

[01:09:48] towards although we're almost the same age

[01:09:50] but the bottom line is I've been told

[01:09:52] some tough love

[01:09:54] from previous huge podcast that I've been on

[01:09:56] I can explain the origin story

[01:09:58] but that's you know I don't think that'll be

[01:10:00] super interesting. I would love it

[01:10:02] if you taught me

[01:10:04] kind of how I Brian Keating

[01:10:06] can be the best guest

[01:10:08] and what

[01:10:10] you would do if you were me

[01:10:12] to take advantage of a

[01:10:14] possibly once in a lifetime experience

[01:10:16] not for monetary gain but just for

[01:10:18] my own benefit, Joe's

[01:10:20] benefit, and his audience's benefit

[01:10:22] I'm ready for you Joe

[01:10:24] let me just say you're a great guest

[01:10:26] you've been on this podcast how many times

[01:10:28] like ten times so

[01:10:30] obviously if you were a bad guest

[01:10:32] and I have occasionally bad guests

[01:10:34] you wouldn't have come on again

[01:10:36] so

[01:10:38] I always enjoy having you on

[01:10:40] it's always a good experience

[01:10:42] so we're just talking in kind of

[01:10:44] small amounts here and there

[01:10:46] nor am I the expert necessarily on what makes a great guest

[01:10:48] it's just a great guest for me

[01:10:50] and for me a great guest

[01:10:52] which again I consider you a great guest

[01:10:54] is where it's more

[01:10:56] of a conversation with friends

[01:10:58] and

[01:11:00] of course there's something I'm curious about

[01:11:02] so I came on many times

[01:11:04] we did a whole series of how

[01:11:06] theories of how the universe was born

[01:11:08] something you were an expert in but I was not

[01:11:10] so I had questions so it was

[01:11:12] in that way it's not quite a conversation

[01:11:14] with friends which is totally bi-directional

[01:11:16] but it's more unidirectional

[01:11:18] like it's your I'm asking questions

[01:11:20] you're telling me answers

[01:11:22] and

[01:11:24] so in that sense

[01:11:26] I don't want nothing here as a criticism

[01:11:28] but let's brainstorm

[01:11:30] how

[01:11:32] you going on Joe Rogan could be as

[01:11:34] entertaining and interesting as possible

[01:11:36] what's a podcast but

[01:11:38] let's say an extreme

[01:11:40] form of edutainment

[01:11:42] the best podcast even

[01:11:44] comedian podcast and let's say

[01:11:46] I'm not counting Joe Rogan Joe Rogan is a comedian

[01:11:48] but let's say pure comedian podcast

[01:11:50] they're not just like a bunch of guys

[01:11:52] telling jokes

[01:11:54] history hyenas which I've been on

[01:11:56] which was Christos Safano and Yanis Popes

[01:11:58] two great comedians

[01:12:00] the topics were

[01:12:02] still history

[01:12:04] and so even if they would only talk for 10 minutes

[01:12:06] an hour about history and then it was a hilarious podcast

[01:12:08] they still

[01:12:10] had like a backbone of education

[01:12:12] and entertainment

[01:12:14] they were entertainers talking about

[01:12:16] something educational and

[01:12:18] Joe Rogan I would say

[01:12:20] is not quite

[01:12:22] an interview podcast

[01:12:24] he is in that category

[01:12:26] but I really think

[01:12:28] and there's a couple factors here I really think

[01:12:30] he's

[01:12:32] best when he's having a conversation

[01:12:34] with friends

[01:12:36] and he pulls that off very well

[01:12:38] even if he doesn't know you so he's the

[01:12:40] the best at that

[01:12:42] like he has a lot of experience

[01:12:44] and making people feel very comfortable

[01:12:46] very quickly

[01:12:48] and making it

[01:12:50] a conversation with friends

[01:12:52] even though he's probably

[01:12:54] more curious

[01:12:56] he has someone on because he's curious and again that's what makes it an interview podcast

[01:12:58] and the other person

[01:13:00] then gives their lecture

[01:13:02] or they slice it up

[01:13:04] in their own way

[01:13:06] the answers to his questions

[01:13:08] but still I feel he does a much better job

[01:13:10] than me

[01:13:12] performing it from an interview into a conversation

[01:13:14] with friends

[01:13:16] and so I'll be curious how he does that with you

[01:13:18] having a lot of experience with you as a guest

[01:13:20] I'll be curious how he breaks you down

[01:13:22] to do his style

[01:13:24] and I would say

[01:13:26] before getting into

[01:13:28] anything remotely seeming like criticism

[01:13:30] why did he ask you on

[01:13:32] like is he want to find out about UFOs

[01:13:34] and what this recent

[01:13:36] statements from the

[01:13:38] whistleblower on UFOs

[01:13:40] I think the well the inciting incident

[01:13:42] as they say was that

[01:13:44] he had on

[01:13:46] a gentleman from the Discovery Institute

[01:13:48] named Steven C. Meyer

[01:13:50] who is a

[01:13:52] proponent of intelligent design

[01:13:54] and they were talking about the

[01:13:56] James Webb Space Telescope results

[01:13:58] the same ones that you and I were talking about earlier

[01:14:00] and Steven Meyer mentioned

[01:14:02] you should really talk to Brian Keating

[01:14:04] about this on the show

[01:14:06] and it's actually one of the rare because he doesn't put his show on YouTube anymore

[01:14:08] but it was one of the clips that they

[01:14:10] there's only clip that he put on YouTube

[01:14:12] from that interview so I was pretty

[01:14:14] flattered by that

[01:14:16] and my friend Eric Weinstein

[01:14:18] has mentioned me multiple times

[01:14:20] on the podcast

[01:14:22] as well on the air

[01:14:24] to Joe and that's flattering about

[01:14:26] you know both the UFO

[01:14:28] topic and the origin of the universe

[01:14:30] topic and then last but not least

[01:14:32] Jordan Peterson

[01:14:34] will become friendly with and teaching

[01:14:36] at his university

[01:14:38] this fall

[01:14:40] he has also

[01:14:42] recommended and was gracious to

[01:14:44] spread the word to Joe and introduced us

[01:14:46] and then I was just

[01:14:48] very flattered that Joe agreed

[01:14:50] it was kind of funny Joe sent me an email

[01:14:52] he's like I'd love to have you on and talk about

[01:14:54] all these research and stuff

[01:14:56] and then I didn't get his email

[01:14:58] it got deleted but his booking agent

[01:15:00] it's pretty amazing he does all his own

[01:15:02] booking Joe does but then he has

[01:15:04] a booking agent who already was on the

[01:15:06] case and he took the opportunity

[01:15:08] and we already set up the podcast and like

[01:15:10] three days later Joe Rogan's like

[01:15:12] Brian I hate to bother you

[01:15:14] but will you come on the podcast

[01:15:16] otherwise I have to find another guest

[01:15:18] I'm like holy crap he doesn't know that

[01:15:20] I already

[01:15:22] booked and traveling to Austin on this

[01:15:24] day so it's pretty funny so

[01:15:26] I apologize and so it's just

[01:15:28] he's very down to earth guy I mean

[01:15:30] that guy so many and he's

[01:15:32] on booking and like making sure I have a

[01:15:34] hotel and and there's a car

[01:15:36] waiting for you it's just an amazing

[01:15:38] gracious individual so

[01:15:40] I'm really like that's more or less the

[01:15:42] origin of how it happened

[01:15:44] yeah that's great and so

[01:15:46] again

[01:15:48] I would assume this is going to be a conversation

[01:15:50] more just as much

[01:15:52] as it'll be an interview like obviously he's going to ask

[01:15:54] you questions about things he doesn't know about and wants to learn about like

[01:15:56] whether it's the James Webb telescope

[01:15:58] or UFOs but

[01:16:00] don't be afraid to talk about anything

[01:16:02] like you can talk about anything you're just two guys

[01:16:04] two smart guys

[01:16:06] talking about

[01:16:08] the fact that you want to talk about something

[01:16:10] that makes it worth talking about

[01:16:12] I would have that mindset that it could be

[01:16:14] about anything like parenting

[01:16:16] or politics or physics or

[01:16:18] economics like your

[01:16:20] smart guy he's a smart guy if a conversation

[01:16:22] goes someplace it's supposed to go to that

[01:16:24] place so again

[01:16:26] you don't have to stay in your lane this is what we were talking about earlier

[01:16:28] just because you're a physicist

[01:16:30] doesn't mean you have to stay in your lane

[01:16:32] you could be in other lanes you're a very smart person

[01:16:34] and have lots of

[01:16:36] interesting things to say

[01:16:38] but the other thing is

[01:16:40] I'll tell you one story

[01:16:42] when I was in college

[01:16:44] I would go out

[01:16:46] let's say

[01:16:48] to a bar with a friend of mine

[01:16:50] we would try to talk to girls

[01:16:52] and we were both two

[01:16:54] unattractive people trying to talk to girls

[01:16:56] and he was a very good conversationalist

[01:16:58] he'd always be able to

[01:17:00] wasn't necessarily a good looking guy

[01:17:02] but always good at like sparking a conversation

[01:17:04] would always get the phone numbers

[01:17:06] I would get zero and finally

[01:17:08] he told me James when you talk

[01:17:10] and tell a story take out every other word

[01:17:12] that's how I packed

[01:17:14] that's how I told my wife to pack

[01:17:16] take out every other piece of clothes

[01:17:18] yeah that's impossible though for

[01:17:20] many people but

[01:17:22] I really took that to heart that became like the best writing advice

[01:17:24] I've ever received

[01:17:26] was to take out every other word

[01:17:28] I edit everything I write like a hundred times

[01:17:30] just to take out word after word after word

[01:17:32] and it's the same thing with

[01:17:34] conversations like you know a lot Brian

[01:17:36] so you know everything about physics

[01:17:38] try not to use big words

[01:17:40] like lacuna

[01:17:42] don't use lacuna

[01:17:44] I love it but I also don't want to be like

[01:17:46] oh your meathead UFC guy Joe

[01:17:48] you know fear factor

[01:17:50] no no it's he always denigrates himself

[01:17:52] it says audience this is about

[01:17:54] this is about

[01:17:56] do you know the

[01:17:58] Flesher concave score the FK score

[01:18:00] so the Flesher

[01:18:02] concave score is

[01:18:04] a way to calculate the grade

[01:18:06] level of a piece of writing

[01:18:08] so you can give me a piece of text

[01:18:10] I could there's an interview Google FK

[01:18:12] calculator there are calculators all over the internet

[01:18:14] that if I feed in an entire book even

[01:18:16] it'll tell me the grade though oh

[01:18:18] this is at a 12th grade level this is at a third grade

[01:18:20] level this is at a

[01:18:22] what put in a

[01:18:24] grad students email to me once

[01:18:26] and it was at an 18th grade level

[01:18:28] and I told the guy don't write like this

[01:18:30] anymore because nobody can understand anything you're right

[01:18:32] and

[01:18:34] guess what old man in the sea is

[01:18:36] what the FK score of the maybe the best

[01:18:38] it's like fifth grade fifth grade

[01:18:40] yeah yeah so Ernest having ways

[01:18:42] the book that basically clinched a Nobel prize

[01:18:44] for him in literature was written at a

[01:18:46] approximately fifth to sixth grade

[01:18:48] level and that's like the actually optimal

[01:18:50] for a written book that doesn't mean

[01:18:52] the audience is stupid it just

[01:18:54] means the audience

[01:18:56] wants to enjoy a good

[01:18:58] book and fifth and sixth grade

[01:19:00] level is the best way to hit

[01:19:02] the world audience

[01:19:04] at and

[01:19:06] you're an academic but you're not insecure

[01:19:08] about your intelligence I understand sometimes

[01:19:10] why some people talk smart

[01:19:12] is because they're actually insecure about their intelligence

[01:19:14] but you are insecure about your intelligence

[01:19:16] but you are very smart and I and sometimes

[01:19:18] maybe you don't realize people

[01:19:20] understand things without

[01:19:22] you having to explain

[01:19:24] at the neutrino level

[01:19:26] what it is that's going on with very complicated things

[01:19:28] and so

[01:19:30] I would just take that viewpoint that

[01:19:32] like you're not it's not about

[01:19:34] Joe being smart or not it's just the audience

[01:19:36] enjoys an FK

[01:19:38] score of six

[01:19:40] well and I mean that's

[01:19:42] really helpful I guess the thing is

[01:19:44] it's a common dilemma that I'm worried about

[01:19:46] occurring and I've been accused

[01:19:48] by this very famous podcaster

[01:19:50] off the air with love

[01:19:52] and respect you know of name

[01:19:54] dropping and when I was on

[01:19:56] his podcast and

[01:19:58] and he's been on Rogan show

[01:20:00] and he said you know

[01:20:02] be careful but here's the deal so one

[01:20:04] one thing that's definitely going to come up

[01:20:06] are these UFO hearings which

[01:20:08] you know I don't think we have enough time today to talk about

[01:20:10] before I have to run

[01:20:12] but the fact is

[01:20:14] there's a lot of

[01:20:16] meat there for me to talk about so much

[01:20:18] so that I've had on some of the

[01:20:20] world's experts including one of these

[01:20:22] eyewitnesses you know and Navy

[01:20:24] F-18 pilots

[01:20:26] that witnessed these tic-tacs

[01:20:28] and other phenomena that were the

[01:20:30] subject of this congressional hearing

[01:20:32] that got 10 million views last week

[01:20:34] in Congress along with this guy

[01:20:36] who talked about you know nonhuman biologics

[01:20:38] I haven't had him on

[01:20:40] so now I'm talking to Joe

[01:20:42] and he says what do you make of these aliens

[01:20:44] am I to say

[01:20:46] in fear of name dropping

[01:20:48] you know like well I

[01:20:50] shouldn't say I had on these guys or gals

[01:20:52] no no no no

[01:20:54] it's okay to name drop

[01:20:56] here's what it's not okay to do

[01:20:58] and gosh

[01:21:00] I was on this TV, John Stasl

[01:21:02] I was once on this show

[01:21:04] with John Stasl and there was an

[01:21:06] economist on and every time he made

[01:21:08] a statement he would say something like

[01:21:10] you know as

[01:21:12] so and so said in their paper in

[01:21:14] 1979 X, Y, Z

[01:21:16] and in the commercial break John Stasl said

[01:21:18] don't you don't need to refer

[01:21:20] to anybody else it's your

[01:21:22] theory your ideas like it doesn't mean

[01:21:24] nobody gives a shit who

[01:21:26] what paper you're quoting and they don't

[01:21:28] care they don't remember just own it

[01:21:30] just take the the theory and it's yours

[01:21:32] and so

[01:21:34] when you name drop and say I had the F-18 guy

[01:21:36] John that's important name dropping

[01:21:38] that's the guy who saw with his own eyes

[01:21:40] a UFO so I want to hear what you have to say

[01:21:42] about him that's I don't

[01:21:44] oh yeah your podcast is popular you've had

[01:21:46] big names on that's great

[01:21:48] that's also establishing who you are

[01:21:50] it's not like it's not name

[01:21:52] dropping it's not like well when I was having

[01:21:54] dinner with Barack Obama and we talked

[01:21:56] about UFOs I said

[01:21:58] this that would be more name dropping and

[01:22:00] you don't do that like yes if you

[01:22:02] if you are

[01:22:04] you don't have to quote somebody who wrote

[01:22:06] a book in 1923

[01:22:08] about UFOs but if you're referring

[01:22:10] to what's the guy's name

[01:22:12] Grush who is the whistleblower you have to

[01:22:14] say his name or if you talk into that

[01:22:16] F-18 guy or Avi Loeb

[01:22:18] or whatever you have to say

[01:22:20] his name but again there's a balance

[01:22:22] like someone talking to you directly as opposed

[01:22:24] to something you read you don't have to

[01:22:26] you know if you're just repeating

[01:22:28] somebody's theory you don't have to say who

[01:22:30] the theories was it's your theory now

[01:22:32] that's how you could avoid half of that

[01:22:34] the other thing I've heard is

[01:22:36] this might make it really uncomfortable

[01:22:38] just because I think the job of a

[01:22:40] scientist is to criticize

[01:22:42] the ideas obviously I'm not going to

[01:22:44] criticize the people but let's say I

[01:22:46] don't believe

[01:22:48] the government or I don't believe

[01:22:50] what's pilot or I don't believe

[01:22:52] Eric Weinstein about peer review

[01:22:54] or something like that he's had these

[01:22:56] people on Joe's show

[01:22:58] Joe is reportedly

[01:23:00] out you know his cell phone number to

[01:23:02] guess and they keep in touch and

[01:23:04] he's generally a genuinely

[01:23:06] wonderful human being

[01:23:08] a mensch as we say in the older

[01:23:10] country and the out there country

[01:23:12] I

[01:23:14] don't feel as comfortable

[01:23:16] what if I have to criticize my

[01:23:18] good friend Eric I'm not going to

[01:23:20] criticize his personally but let's say

[01:23:22] you know something Eric's on about peer review

[01:23:24] and he thinks it's stupid and we shouldn't have

[01:23:26] that's stupid he thinks we shouldn't have it

[01:23:28] Jeffrey Epstein's father is

[01:23:30] involved in the origin story of it

[01:23:32] blah blah blah CIA this thing that

[01:23:34] Pergamon press now

[01:23:36] Joe is defensive I've

[01:23:38] heard of his guests because they're his

[01:23:40] friends you know

[01:23:42] we have a different you know

[01:23:44] I have on people in my podcast I wouldn't

[01:23:46] necessarily trust some of them

[01:23:48] to have dinner with let alone like

[01:23:50] give myself a number and hang out with

[01:23:52] so how do I navigate those

[01:23:54] rocky shoals

[01:23:56] with storytelling

[01:23:58] now if he

[01:24:00] says like

[01:24:02] Brian I heard your

[01:24:04] critical of Eric

[01:24:06] Weinstein's peer review

[01:24:08] ideas I wouldn't say

[01:24:10] you know Eric Weinstein is just

[01:24:12] an idiot about this like of course you need

[01:24:14] peer review how else do people know that

[01:24:16] there's been social proof or authority

[01:24:18] on these articles I wouldn't

[01:24:20] say that I would say look Eric and I talk

[01:24:22] about this all the time last time

[01:24:24] we talked about it I said to him

[01:24:26] Eric how would

[01:24:28] the regular person you're a smart guy Eric

[01:24:30] so how would all the people

[01:24:32] less intelligent than you

[01:24:34] know to trust your articles if it's not

[01:24:36] peer review like that's yes there are

[01:24:38] problems with peer review because there's politics in every area of life including

[01:24:40] science yes there's problems with peer

[01:24:42] review because people are afraid of being

[01:24:44] canceled you know through association

[01:24:46] they reviewed your paper and later on

[01:24:48] you turn out to be this or that so

[01:24:50] yes there's problems with it let's think

[01:24:52] so I told Eric can we I asked him

[01:24:54] can we fix these problems and look it's

[01:24:56] an ongoing discussion be skeptical

[01:24:58] of the skeptics and

[01:25:00] and Eric agreed yeah so now

[01:25:02] that's a good that's the story

[01:25:04] yeah okay hold on one second

[01:25:06] my daughter is playing Taylor Swift in here

[01:25:08] hold on one second

[01:25:10] computer stop

[01:25:12] she's playing it somehow she's

[01:25:14] convinced Taylor Swift to come out

[01:25:16] okay next maybe the

[01:25:18] final question before I have to

[01:25:20] run today uh James

[01:25:22] is the following

[01:25:24] when I um

[01:25:26] hold on a second computer

[01:25:28] stop I'm gonna unplug this damn thing

[01:25:30] hold on a second cut this Jay cut this

[01:25:32] up Jay

[01:25:36] he can't even get his computer to work right I was gonna

[01:25:38] believe bicep before it kills before

[01:25:40] Taylor Swift kills me

[01:25:42] okay um

[01:25:44] it was good audio quality though

[01:25:46] I know that it is good and I yeah I've

[01:25:48] changed it from the uh

[01:25:50] LXE a

[01:25:52] uh name to a computer

[01:25:54] and I can do it I ask it to open the pod bay doors

[01:25:56] as well okay so the

[01:25:58] the final so to speak

[01:26:00] question is

[01:26:02] uh one of the hallmarks that I

[01:26:04] respect and try to emulate about you

[01:26:06] and it's made my life really hard

[01:26:08] is on my podcast

[01:26:10] I don't like to ever have an

[01:26:12] author on when I haven't read his or

[01:26:14] her book and you taught me

[01:26:16] some hacks and tricks

[01:26:18] uh one of which was

[01:26:20] read the acknowledgements

[01:26:22] read the last chapter um when you can't

[01:26:24] read the whole thing you can skip certain

[01:26:26] things like when the author starts talking

[01:26:28] about really boring stuff like like the

[01:26:30] fusion of the hydrogen and the

[01:26:32] CMB like you literally said that on an

[01:26:34] episode not related to me but somebody

[01:26:36] else and you were talking I know you

[01:26:38] were talking about my book

[01:26:40] no I don't think I was

[01:26:42] we talked about this because I actually

[01:26:44] called you out and you were happy about

[01:26:46] it and I did something I said you know how James

[01:26:48] you can demonstrate that you really love

[01:26:50] and engage with the author's book most of all

[01:26:52] I said you point out a typo

[01:26:54] a significant logical error

[01:26:56] or typo in their book and I told you about an

[01:26:58] error in choose yourself which

[01:27:00] I was very proud about that that is true

[01:27:02] that definitely they wake up to that

[01:27:04] I think um and I might have made a faux

[01:27:06] pot because I sent Joe copies

[01:27:08] of my books but reportedly

[01:27:10] he doesn't he's not going to

[01:27:12] read them and I'm wondering

[01:27:14] about going in there there's the whole

[01:27:16] uh what was his name Larry

[01:27:18] King where he

[01:27:20] wouldn't read anything like you and Cal talked

[01:27:22] about that many times right yeah yeah but

[01:27:24] which is a very viable interview strategy

[01:27:26] but I don't know if that's like I don't

[01:27:28] know that he's well I know he's

[01:27:30] he's gonna do some research but

[01:27:32] like otherwise he doesn't know me

[01:27:34] I mean I've been told well if you've

[01:27:36] gotten an invitation so don't even worry

[01:27:38] you don't have to prove yourself anymore

[01:27:40] but like how much should I and

[01:27:42] then if I don't if I assume

[01:27:44] that he didn't read anything which is fine

[01:27:46] and I told him like I'm not giving

[01:27:48] you homework assignments I'm just yeah I'm not that

[01:27:50] much of a professor but um

[01:27:52] how can I not seem slimy salesmany

[01:27:54] when I say as I describe

[01:27:56] in my book you know or like don't

[01:27:58] say don't say as I describe

[01:28:00] my book just tell the story same with

[01:28:02] the podcast as I had on my podcast

[01:28:04] uh you know right no you just say

[01:28:06] I've spoken to now you could

[01:28:08] you could because I do want people to know about

[01:28:10] my podcast and my books obviously

[01:28:12] don't worry about that

[01:28:14] if you're a good guest they're gonna look you up

[01:28:16] so you know

[01:28:18] you'll if let's say you told the story

[01:28:20] about losing the Nobel Prize he's

[01:28:22] gonna say you wrote a book on that he will

[01:28:24] say that trust me he will say that you

[01:28:26] don't need to advertise it and look

[01:28:28] again what

[01:28:30] you want your goal let's now

[01:28:32] talk technically in the weeds

[01:28:34] your goal is you want clips to appear

[01:28:36] on YouTube that are interesting

[01:28:38] and a clip let's say is three minutes

[01:28:40] three to five minutes maybe longer

[01:28:42] maybe shorter so

[01:28:44] what what's things

[01:28:46] that you feel right now are unique

[01:28:48] and you have strong opinions on that are

[01:28:50] clippable that are like three minute

[01:28:52] stories so your opinion

[01:28:54] on UFOs I don't believe

[01:28:56] I don't think life exists in the universe

[01:28:58] you know beyond a very small probability

[01:29:00] let alone technological life that's

[01:29:02] pretty controversial he does so

[01:29:04] so

[01:29:06] that's a clip that and he if he disagrees

[01:29:08] that's great

[01:29:10] but think of simple ways to say

[01:29:12] let's do this thought experiment Joe imagine

[01:29:14] if there is like blah blah blah so three

[01:29:16] minute clip on a strong opinion

[01:29:18] that's in the news where you're thinking

[01:29:20] a different stance because right now people are leaning

[01:29:22] towards oh a government

[01:29:24] whistleblower with zero evidence

[01:29:26] as says there's UFOs so people are leaning

[01:29:28] towards that the UFOs

[01:29:30] have happened so you're gonna be contrary

[01:29:32] to that not because you're trying

[01:29:34] to be popular because you legitimately are contrary

[01:29:36] and make a clipable

[01:29:38] very simple and easy to explain

[01:29:40] in three minutes why they don't exist

[01:29:42] and think of like a thought experiment

[01:29:44] you and Joe could participate in a conversation

[01:29:46] on what's another opinion

[01:29:48] that's clippable that I believe

[01:29:50] the universe may not have had

[01:29:52] a single big bang and maybe

[01:29:54] you know much much

[01:29:56] different that there may be

[01:29:58] a conciliance between

[01:30:00] I won't use that word but

[01:30:02] between a biblical narrative

[01:30:04] I believe that

[01:30:06] that's that by the way

[01:30:08] is clippable that the Bible

[01:30:10] and scientists could both be

[01:30:12] correct at the same time now this is

[01:30:14] a common theme among

[01:30:16] biblical scientists

[01:30:18] that they this has been discussed for 50 years

[01:30:20] but it's not well

[01:30:22] known among let's say

[01:30:24] the average listener that the Bible

[01:30:26] and extreme

[01:30:28] physics could be you know connected

[01:30:30] in any way and that is

[01:30:32] clippable what's a political thing you could

[01:30:34] say that has nothing to do with

[01:30:36] physics well again smart

[01:30:38] person I think educational

[01:30:40] system you know is

[01:30:42] is destined for

[01:30:44] the ash you know bin of history

[01:30:46] that we need to complete not

[01:30:48] just you know reformation we

[01:30:50] basically need to tear it down that's

[01:30:52] one controversial opinion so

[01:30:54] so so make it a little more extreme

[01:30:56] kids are going to grow up

[01:30:58] if not your kids your grandkids

[01:31:00] are going to grow up stupid

[01:31:02] if they continue with the current educational system

[01:31:04] yeah like take it take it two

[01:31:06] levels more extreme okay

[01:31:08] something like that I believe the Nobel prize is detrimental

[01:31:10] to science

[01:31:12] and society

[01:31:14] that's something that you probably won't you know he's

[01:31:16] talked about Nobel prize he's had on Nobel prize winners

[01:31:20] okay so but now okay he's defensive

[01:31:22] though of his guests I won't

[01:31:24] guess but right

[01:31:26] so just be you know

[01:31:28] but you know the other things despite all this

[01:31:30] don't don't worry too much

[01:31:32] is another important thing like

[01:31:34] don't again it's just a conversation so don't

[01:31:36] catch yourself thinking in the middle of this

[01:31:38] oh I have to get this interesting but

[01:31:40] I don't want to be defensive

[01:31:42] do zero marketing of

[01:31:44] podcast or book they will come up

[01:31:46] in the conversation don't worry about that

[01:31:48] your only focus is clips

[01:31:50] okay and conversation yeah

[01:31:52] meta is conversation tactical

[01:31:54] is clips all right James well

[01:31:56] this has been wonderful and

[01:31:58] and incredibly helpful and preparatory

[01:32:00] hopefully I won't be nervous

[01:32:02] but it'll be interesting to see

[01:32:04] you know after I that's the real key is

[01:32:06] don't worry about any of these things and

[01:32:08] you could ignore everything I said just be yourself

[01:32:10] and it's going to be great you're going to

[01:32:12] be great myself talking about

[01:32:14] I'm going to listen I'm going to listen to

[01:32:16] that podcast I listen to very few podcasts

[01:32:18] really appreciate it James means so much

[01:32:20] to me coming from my podcast mentor

[01:32:22] and friend and hopefully

[01:32:24] we'll get together and do an in-person podcast

[01:32:26] ourself one of these days eventually

[01:32:28] yeah all right well thanks a lot Brian and

[01:32:30] thanks James thanks Jay

[01:32:32] and enjoy thank you