Begin Again with Davina McCall - Brian Cox: Why We Exist At All

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

What if understanding the universe could change the way you live? In this episode of Begin Again, Professor Brian Cox joins Davina for a conversation about existence, consciousness, mortality and the extraordinary improbability of being alive at all. Brian explains why the atoms that make us have travelled across billions of years of cosmic history, why the universe gave rise to conscious life, and how understanding our place within it can completely transform the way we see ourselves. Together, they explore what happens when we die, whether science leaves room for spirituality, why curiosity matters more than certainty, and why accepting that life is temporary can make it infinitely more precious. But this conversation is about much more than science. Brian reflects on the book that changed his life, the teachers who shaped his thinking, his unexpected journey from rock musician to world-renowned physicist, and why saying "I don't know" may be one of the most important things we can learn. Davina and Brian also discuss grief, fear, hope, the search for meaning, and why seeing the bigger picture of the universe can make us feel more connected to one another, not less. This is a conversation about awe, curiosity, purpose and the remarkable privilege of being alive. If you've ever looked up at the night sky and wondered why we're here, questioned what gives life meaning, or wanted to see the world with fresh eyes, this episode is for you. 🌟 Like, comment and subscribe for more honest conversations about purpose, resilience, love, loss and beginning again. Tap the bell so you never miss a new episode. Follow us here: 📸 www.instagram.com/beginagain 🎥 https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod ✨ Find out more about Brian Cox's live shows and work: https://briancox.org/ ✨ Sign up for the Begin Again newsletter for behind-the-scenes access, recommendations and much more: https://linkly.link/2g2xm (00:00) Intro (01:25) Introduction to Brian and his new show Emergence (11:04) The Book That Changed Brian's Life (16:14) Monzo Ad (17:44) Spiritual beliefs & The Universe (21:10) How The Universe was Formed (23:13) The recent discovery of where Gold comes from (25:34) How Carl Sagan's TV show 'Cosmos' inspired young Brian (32:07) Getting into music and playing in Dare (38:58) Monzo Ad (39:58) The importance of hard work and luck in forging your path ( 41:49) What happens when we die? (47:31) The importance of space travel and scientific research (59:24) The Hadron Collider (01:04:10) Why Brian Became A Teacher (01:07:53) Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computers (01:13:08) How Astronomy can give people a better perspective on life (01:16:44) A letter from a student (01:23:12) A letter from Dare bandmate Darren Wharton (01:27:51) What Brian wants for the Future Sponsored by: Monzo - Download Monzo. Monzo Current Accounts are for 16+ and UK residents. Ts&Cs Apply. We'd love you to share your Get Busy Living stories with us at https://getbusyliving.beginagainshow.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus. T-minor three. She's coming. Guys, come on. I am interviewing the inimitable.

Hang on, let me just do that again. Today I'm interviewing the inimitable Brian Cox. Not only is he just an absolute boss on astronomy, but he is also just a lovely guy. I can't really with you in true life. And he has a gift, and that is explaining things that are actually very complex in a way that even I can understand. Now, Brian, I don't.

I want you to be too shocked, but I'm just going to show you this. You and I went to the moon. I'm so unbelievably honoured and excited to have you here. I'm such a huge fan. Me and Michael, my husband, are like massive, massive fans. So it means a lot to be graced by your presence today. Thank you. It's a grand introduction.

Yeah, I don't embarrass you. But first off, I want to talk about your show before we delve into your life and everything. thing because emergence is, if you just come back from Australia, did you do it? Was those the first shows? Yeah, and a bit of Europe before that. And actually a load of little warm-up shows, little theatres. Love it.

So I've probably done about 100 of them already, but about 50 or 60 with the little theatres. And then we went to some in Europe and then Australia, New Zealand, Singapore. And then here in October. The thing that really excites me about this show is your screen. Can we just talk about that for a moment? Because it looks a little bit like being at the sphere in Vegas or something. I mean, it is an enormous screen. It is.

You know, it's LED screen. And it was when we first started doing really big shows, like arenas. And, you know, the question then arises, how do you do cosmology and astronomy in an arena? It's not like being a comedian. You're not telling jokes. You're talking about things. So what do you do?

So the LED is the best technology for that, especially because astronomy, because with a projector, the blacks on the screen aren't really black. And obviously astronomy, the night sky is you need the blackness of it. We'll talk about that later. The terrifying darkness of the universe. And LED works for that. So we just, it's always a battle, actually. My promoters here listening.

And I'm always saying, I want as much as you can fit into this thing. Yes. And my promoter will say, she'll say, yeah, but I'll say, Yeah, but that's 10 trucks. Like, I don't care. I want 10 trucks. These actually living out my rock and roll sort of dream for when I was 18. For me, there are more trucks, they're better.

And obviously for the person who's doing the accounts, it's like, no, no, no-dor-less trucks. Can you not do it? Do you just do with the microphone? No. So it's, and actually, the images we're getting back now from things like the James Web's Face Telescope or the surface of Mars, there are these incredible high-resolution images. And I've had friends who've worked on those telescopes and those spacecraft who come and see the images for the first time, big,

because they used to just looking on a computer screen. You never see them. But they are, it's just ultra-high-resolution things. So you get this, as you said, this kind of immersive sense of the scale of the universe, which is part of the show. So, yeah, but mainly it's because I like the trucks. Mainly I just want all those flight cases. You know when you're in back, you know, around music in the 80s and 90s.

It's like, yeah, flight cases. And I mean, talking about the music, and obviously we're going to touch on this as well. But is it true you've just worked with PJ Harvey on the opening of the show? Yeah, it was wonderful because she came to, you know, I was obviously a huge fan, but I never met her. And she came to one of my shows. It was a little show in Richmond, actually, Richmond Theatre. And she said, you know, I'd like to meet and say hello. I was like, well, it's BJ.

I'm like. And then so about a year ago, I had this idea because part of the show, a little bit of the shows about the Voyager spacecraft. So these are spacecraft that were launched in 1977. Yeah. So that 49 years in space, they're both in interstellar space now, 70's technology, and we're still talking to them. Really? Really? Wow.

And they're transmitting back, by the way, to Earth with a power. of 18 watts, which is like, you know, a tiny light bulb. And it takes light a day to come from Voyager 1. And we're still talking to it. So it's still working in interstellar space. So these little little things, I remember them because 1997, I remember the launch. Yeah. So I was really excited about it.

And they went, so Voyager 2 went to Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, the only spacecraft to get out that far. And we're still talking to it. So it's this romantic? these voyages out into the stars. And so I said to her, you know, about a year ago, I thought, I'll just email her and say, do you fancy doing something? I thought she'd say, no, she was busy, but she said, yeah.

So we had this idea together about a song about the voyager spacecraft talking back to Earth after 50 years in space, telling us about what it learns and how its, you know, what its reflections are on the value of our planet, from interstellar's face looking back and she wrote this beautiful song with these wonderful lyrics and then we ended it

and then so it's like what do you do when you record it and so I asked a friend who works at Miraval Studios which is in France a very famous recording studio Brad Pitt owns it now but it was where Pink Floyd recorded

the wall and the history of the place you know when you go in there's like George Michael that Wham had recorded there and The Cure. It's just this history of music. And they said today, you know, they said, yeah, we support this. It's a great thing. It's about physics.

You can come and do it. And they gave the orchestra. We had an orchestra there. And it was just for me, you know, it was like I'm at this legend. This is where Pink Floyd recorded the wall. And there's an orchestra there. And there's PJ Harvey's there. And we recorded the song.

And it is just beautiful. So it opens Act 2. It's a beautiful piece of music. It's just like really powerful. And particularly, I mean, musically, but oh, and then I should say, there's a composer called Dario Marinelli who's got an Oscar for, I think he went it for Pride and Prejudice or Atonement. So he's a really famous movie composer.

And I said to him, you know, do you fancy doing something? And he said, yeah. He's actually, it was, I'd work with him on a concerto about Voyager. about, I think it was about 15 years ago, 10 years ago, in Australia. And he'd written this concerto and I did a little talk and we played it. So I'd thought of him and then I thought, I don't know, I should ask him. And then I was in Iceland with the family on holiday in Northern Iceland. And I had this voice with Brian and it was Daria.

I bumped into him. No, in Iceland. In the north as well, not in Reckiwick, but in the north. And so I said... That's so random. It completely random. So I said to him, are you kind of busy? He said, yeah, I'm working on four movies.

And I said, well, can you, do you want to do something? And he said, yeah. So he did all the, he also wrote some music for the show, but he did the string arrangements and conducted the orchestra for the PJ Harvey track. The music's so important in the shows. Because I always say, you know, the ideas that we're talking about are unimaginable. I mean, there's one piece you said about these big screens. There's a visualization, this fly-through.

of galaxies. And it's this data from a new thing called the dark energy spectroscopic instrument right? But it measures

the position and distance of galaxies. And it's like a snowstorm of galaxies. It's just thousands and thousands of galaxies. It's impossible to pursue when you say snowstorm

and you think how minute a snowflake is and there are literally billions. It looks like that. Trillions. And it looks like this

snowstorm. Like you said, each one of them, Like the Milky Way is 400 billion stars. It takes light 100,000 years to cross each one of these things, these snowflakes. And so the question arises, what are we to make of this? And I joke to the audience, you know, because it is impossible to get your head around the scale. But music is helps, not only helps, it might be the only way to think about this.

And so the music becomes an important part of it. that's so that's marla and it's a bit of marla through that and I say to them you know it's the appropriate soundtrack for existential terror and everyone laughs but I don't know if they're laughing

by laughing or being uncomfortable I think it's a bit of uncomfortableness we were talking about this earlier that actually it is a terrifying concept really when you think about the magnitude it is overwhelming it's impossible to imagine which is actually part of the

of cosmology and astronomy. I mean, you know, I'm always being asking what's the point of, not what's the point of doing astronomy and what's the point of it all, you know, they're linked. But I think part of the value is that it's, if you want to ask deep questions about our place and what was it mean to exist and what it was this all about, you need to know something about the arena that we live in. That we live in, yes. You need to know.

I love that. Yeah. Sorry, I really, really like that language that it's an arena we are surrounded by and we can't live a meaning for that understanding what's out there. You know, I mean, part of the show, the show starts. You've got the book there, actually, at Six Corners Snowflake. I know that this was important to you, so we wanted to have the two. I know, well, we'll talk about these later, but this was a very important book for you.

Could you tell us why, the Sixth Cornered Snowflake by Johannes Kepp? Well, the show starts with a story about that book. So it's the way that Kepler writes the story. It was New Year's Eve, 1609 in Prague, in a New Year's snowstorm on the Charles Bridge, which is this famous bridge in Prague, walking across the bridge to a party at his benefactor's house. And the way that Kepler writes halfway across the bridge, basically, he thought, I haven't got a present for my benefactor, a New Year's gift. And so he gets to the party and he says, I brought you a gift, right?

But it's the gift of almost nothing, which is the snowflake. And then the gift, the New Year's gift, is a question about the snowflake. And it's just why does the snowflake have six corners? And it's a beautiful, deep question. And I start the show with that because it's about ideas of symmetry, which are very important in 21st century physics actually. So these ideas of, I describe it as change without change. So what does it mean?

So you can send this snowflake through 60 degrees. It's got six corners. Yes. And it looks the same. Why? And the importance of Kepler's question is this is the beginning of modern science when people start seeing patterns in nature. I should say, if you don't know Kepler,

he's most famous for the laws of planet. motion. So he figured out that planets go in these orbits around the sun and they, and he figured out some mathematical prophecies of the orbits. Actually, back to the previous point, the cosmology, which is our picture of the universe at the time, was that of the ancient Greeks. So it was Aristotle. It's like the earth sits motionless at the center of this tiny universe with these crystal spears around it or something. So our world, our universe was small and we were at the center of it. That's, that's, you know, 1600. Most people thought like that. Four hundred years later, now we have this tremendous picture of this universe of trillions of galaxies and the Big Bang and the

origin of the universe and all those things. But they came from people like Kepler, just really saying there's something pretty here, are beautiful or interesting about nature. And I'm going to ask the question, why? That was the key leap, actually. I loved what you said as well about, you love the fact that he said, I don't know. At the end of the book, he says, I don't know. It's a wonderful. He's a very funny, Kepler. And he says, you know, I'll leave it to future generations.

But the thing about that book, which, of course, you can still get. There it is. It's when you read it, you see this modern mind. You hear this voice. And it's not, you know, I think we tend to think of these people in 1600 of these scientists. Kepler and Galileo and there's really serious. people. I'm really thinking, you know, like almost like, oh, steer, kind of. Yeah, and a great mind, great brain.

He's just funny. And inquisitive and interested and, yeah. But he has a, he, there's something about him that you like, like a little kind of personality. He seems he did everything. You know, he obviously did this work on the planets, which led to Newton's. You wouldn't, I don't think you would have had Newton and his law of gravity and all those things without Kepler. So it's really important. But he's also playing around. He's asking questions about beehives and, um, pomegranate, seeds. There's all sorts of things in that book. And he says things like, he says, to his benefactor,

I've brought you the gift of almost nothing because I know how fond you are of nothing. So he does these little jokes all the time. I mean, I usually bring you the gift of nothing. But now I'm bringing you almost nothing. And it's much better. Right. So it's great. It's a wonderful book. But you see this, the beginnings of the modern way of thinking. And actually, there's a great book. by historian David Wooten. It's called the invention of science. And he says that if you, because if you think about the progress that was made

after Kepler and Galileo, so they're thinking like the ancient Greeks. And he said, so if you'd brought someone from ancient Greece, like, you know, 2,000 years before that, put them in Europe in 1550, they wouldn't have noticed much different, right? Nothing had changed.

Nothing really, no real inventions. Not much had changed. You take someone from 1600 and put them in 1800. They're in the Industrial Revolution. They were no idea. You know, about a couple of hundred years, they could get on a train. So there's something happens at that time that changes the way we think about the world. And it is this.

It's in that book. It's just saying, I think there's a reason for this pattern. That's actually the point. That's the big change. It's not that it was the gods or whatever it is. It's like there must be some reason for this. What's one thing you'd love to be able to say you've done? Well, Monzo's sponsoring begin again to help us win some time back

so we can do more of what we love, like finally doing that thing. I wanted to know what that thing was for you. So, who have we got? Okay. Julia from East Lothian, she rode her first ever roller coaster at 40. Julia, let's hear it. Going into my 40s, I'd never been on a roller coaster. myself and my children went to Alton Towers.

They went a ride, probably one of the fastest rides, and I realised there's no getting out. I can't get out this. I have to do it. I have to do it. There was nothing stopping me, and it was the most amazing feeling. It was sheer excitement, enjoyment, and I wanted to move my word.

I just want to say, Julia, that that gave me such joy. Doing something that you are absolutely terrified of is so good for your self-esteem. It's an amazing gift for you. you, Julia, because you were brave. You had plenty of options to not do it, but you still did it. Well done, Julia. I'm really happy for you. Monzo can't hold your hand on a roller coaster. That's all on you, but they do put your money to work in the background. Sorted, saved, sent where it needs to go, so you have got more time and headspace for the things you actually want to do. What have you

always wanted to try? Or have you already gone and done it? Head to the link in the description and tell me your story. It's interesting how the gods, religion, spirituality and nature are so intertwined because sometimes we can look at nature and we can think there is no way on earth that this was, you know, why was this created? How was it created? And I really wanted to ask you, this interview is going to go all over the place because you keep saying things and I'm like, ooh, I'm going to ask you about this now

and I was thinking I'll ask him about that at the end. But anyway, I would like to think that I am scientifically minded, but I'm not religious, but I feel spiritual in some way, that there are things, synchronicity, ideas like that. That things happen, and I think they happen for a reason. And I always think that nature was created in a certain way for a reason. And what are your thoughts? on spirituality, spiritual paths, like beliefs?

Well, the first thing is that I think there's a sense of wonder, first of all, in what you said, right, which is the most important thing of all that you notice. I had a friend actually as an aside who's the, he used to be the Dean of Guildford Cathedral. Hey, I met him. Victor Stark, he's called. I met him because I think I was the, like, the token atheist on some penalty. in inverted comments right on this panel, and we're talking about these things.

But I'm very, very well with him. And afterwards, he said to me, he said, I don't really care what anyone believes. Really, what's the point of a cathedral? It's to make people think of something else. Yes. Anything, right? I really agree with that, a place to go and think.

Yeah, because they're just a scale and the grandeur, and it connects you with deep questions. And the beauty. There's something about being surrounded by beauty that makes you think. Yeah, this architecture and it's a bridge to something, to questions, right? And so I think that's really important that he was saying really that I just want people to notice there's something worth thinking about. Something, which is what you said, which is just this, right, existence.

And then you go on from there. So that's the first point. So I think you've got to notice. But then in terms of, I talk about this in the show, there are very, deep questions about why the universe is the way that it is. And if you think, what I mean by that is that, so we know that 13.8 billion years ago, very close to the Big Bang, all the universe was, was just the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium. So it's the stuff in party balloons, right? And hydrogen, which is the stuff that goes into water.

And that's it, right? There's nothing else. It's just a soup of those things. and just some simple forces of nature, and that's it. 13.8 billion years later, those atoms have ended up in patterns like us that can have a conversation. So the universe can observe itself and think about itself through us here on Earth, right? It's a remarkable property of the universe. So you say why?

Why is it that the laws of nature and the building blocks are such that they can get just this gas, right, can end up? end up in patterns like human beings. Could you talk me through what happened to the hydrogen and helium and how it evolved? Because it's such an interesting way that they came together to create something else, which created something else. It's the grandest of stories. It's amazing. So you have this, and this is part of the heart of the show, really.

You have this hydrogen and helium, just this gases, right? But the slight differences in, they're almost just featureless. The universe is almost nothing. But it's got these little bits where there's a bit more gas here and a bit less here, and a bit more there and a bit. That's it. Tiny little variations. Then gravity, as the universe expands and cools,

gravity can allow them to collapse into galaxies and stars. And that, by the way, is a huge story about how does that work. But essentially, where it's a bit denser, gravity takes over and they collapse and they make stars. And stars shine by sticking lighter elements into heavier elements. So the sun at the moment is making hydrogen into helium. Well, that's why he's doing it. It's just making heavier elements. But then at the end of its life, when it runs out of hydrogen to make into helium,

it starts making carbon and oxygen and those things. So those things out of which we are made come from generations of stars that assembled them and then died through that stuff out into the universe. And then gravity takes over and it recalapses that into new stars and then ultimately planets. And that's the story of the universe. So the story is 13.8 billion years of which the Earth has been around 4.5 billion, by the way, so to get a scale of it. you end up from this simplest of elements, the heavy elements get made in stars, gravity collapses it all back together again, and ultimately you get places like this. And some of it, by the way, so you've got like gold, you've got like a gold ring or something like that. If you're listening now or watching, you look at that.

It was one of the great mysteries, actually. Where is that made? Because we didn't quite understand it until very recently. What gold? Yeah, so we thought it's made, maybe it's made in supernova explosions when they explode. But then a few years ago, we had these experiments, and they're called gravitational wave experiments. And they're in their own right are amazing. So we can see things like black holes colliding and sending ripples out in the fabric of the universe, space and time.

What happens when a black hole? So they merge into two black holes. So they become massive. A bigger black hole. But it's really violent. So they make space and time ripple. And these things are called gravitational waves and they go out.

A friend of mine, Kip Thorne actually got the Nobel Prize for this work called it a storm in time. So this time storm goes. And we can measure it. So we saw one of these time storms in our detector. And it was a collision between these things

called neutron stars, which are stars that are the mass of the sun, but they're collapsed to the size of a city. They're about 10 kilometres across these things. Wait, wait. Say that again. It's a star, actually more, massive than the sun. Bigger than the sun.

Collapses. Until it's about the size of London. And are you talking about that's when it runs out of, so it dies and collapses into London? So you get these remarkable. They're like a single atomic nucleus, these things, really violent. The last step towards a black hole. If they get any bigger, they just go. But so these things are around.

And we saw two of them collide with these ripples. And we got our telescopes and sent them and looked in. the sky and watched. And we saw gold being made. So we think that a lot of the gold, and this is this gold that you're wearing now, that came a lot of it, perhaps most of it, from the collision between neutron stars. Isn't that amazing? It ended up in Earth.

Yeah. And then so it got made in these collisions. And then gravity collapses it. And we dig it up and make it into jewelry. It's part of that remarkable story. But so... Brian. So we're connected to everything.

It's like too much. So wait, wait, wait. Let's go back to Little Brian. Did you read this when you were, what, like 13? Yeah, after the TV show. So the TV show was on, I think it was 1980 or on BBC One. And so then, you know, if anyone remembers as far back as that, there are many TV channels.

There's not a lot to see, right? There's no internet or anything like that. Yeah. And so, you know, if you were interested at astronomy as I was, you know, you could watch the sky at night. which was great. And that was about it, right? And then this comes on, 13 hours of it.

And, you know, it's kind of of its time in some ways. I mean, you think back then, we didn't know anywhere near as much as we do now. Yeah. But Sagan, it made a massive impact on me because he doesn't only talk about astronomy in that book and in the TV series. He talks about why we do it

and how important science is and how important civilization is. And what learning about the universe can teach us about the way that we behave on Earth. The last episode famously is really about nuclear war and the idiocy of this, you know, what we just talked about after 13.5 billion years of evolution, where at least on this planet,

and probably very few places like this, these atoms have come together into patterns that can think and have conversations and explore the universe. And we might be using that legacy, right? using that history to construct things that we may use to wipe ourselves out. And this was very vivid. I mean, you'll remember at the time, I remember it, late 70s, early 80s. This was what kids like us thought about.

We were thinking, we were being told about the nuclear, and we were watching these things on television, like threads and those things. And so we were immersed in this, like Prince, 1999, the music was about this, Frank Goes Hollywood, two tribes. It was in the culture, right, the threat of nuclear war. And then Sagan puts it in context and says, this is what we came from. This was the history, the billion year history, 13 billion year history of how we came to be here. And this is what we are threatening to do to ourselves.

So this is not astronomy as a documentary anymore. It's just this powerful polemic. Well, it's activism, isn't it really? Yeah. It's quite mind-blowing. Even when you watch it now in the context of all the documentaries that we've seen, you have this Carl Sagan confidently saying, I'm going to use my platform to talk about this.

And it's quite, it made a huge impression on me. Can I say something? I feel like you are now doing the same thing. You are using your platform to do something similar. I feel like you are trying to put love out there into the world. It's like explaining to us. to love where we live, because the alternative is destruction. And this might be all we have in the entire universe.

Well, yeah, to that point. So we don't know of anywhere else beyond Earth where even life exists. And we're looking, and again, I talk about this in this show, that we've some, you know, not evidence as such, but increasingly optimistic we may find life existed on my life. Mars, for example. We see more and more interesting results. We've got loads of spacecraft on Mars and in orbit, and it's getting interesting. So it may well be that there was or still is life on Mars. We're looking for life on the moons of Jupiter, there are oceans below the

surface of those moons. So, you know, we're kind of optimistic, but we haven't found any yet, and we certainly haven't seen any evidence of other civilizations, which is a tremendous mystery. And it goes by loads of names, one of the Fermi paradox. It's paradoxical that we don't see evidence of civilizations far beyond us. So, but to your point, therefore, we might as well act as though this is the only place where complex life and intelligent exists currently in our galaxy, let's say, in the Milky Way galaxy. We should act like that.

And back to Sagan's point, science has taught us that, that it's likely, I'd say it's likely that civilizations are rare, right? So we could say that. We don't know but likely. Imagine we are the only civilization currently present in the Milky Way galaxy. One island of meaning, as I sometimes put it, in an ocean of 400 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy. And then we just go, actually, no, it doesn't matter. Yeah.

You know, we'll just mess. We'll mess it up. Yeah. When you have a bit of context, just a bit from what we've learned about astronomy, then it seems inconceivable that we would even consider that. And I know that's naive in some sense because, of course, politics is complicated and so on, and global politics is complicated. So it is it that I think that knowing a bit about the perspective,

that Sagan you say this, the perspective that astronomy and cosmology gives you, knowing something about that might help you not to do it. So maybe it's not naive, right? Maybe it's, because it might well be true. It is not. It might be correct. And also I think that what you are doing, because you have a voice and you have a platform and you have the ability, I think I read somewhere that your last show, I don't know what like half a million tickets or something like that. I mean, like unbelievable numbers of people are coming to listen to you speak.

That's incredibly powerful because those people in turn will want. want to tell other people. You know, I would imagine when we came to see your show, we just banged on at every dinner party we went to about what we'd seen and what we'd heard. This is how you get a message out there. Yeah, and part of you talked about my history growing up, and you said that I sound a bit like Carl Sagan.

I do because he's one of my biggest influences. I was 11 years old. Yes. And I see this, which is, But it's so powerful that you can't, I couldn't help, but, you know, you, that it's like being influenced by music that you hear when you're 10 or 11 or 12 years old. It's the same thing. I got influenced by these ideas.

When you're 11. So the first, I know, because that was when I first started buying seven-inch singles, right, vinyl. Yeah, yeah, me too. And so the first singles I bought, I know what, they were right. I thought, Gary Newman, cars, I bought Hazel O'Connor, 8,000. Day. I know this because I've got a load of them. I went to see Hazel O'Connor when I was 12. Did you? It was amazing. That was about the time right? It was it 80, was it?

Yeah. What other singles was I buying? The albums I was buying. Craft Work, the Man Machine was one of the first albums. So good. I love it. I saw them do it actually at the Tate Modern. No, a few years ago when they did the album at the Tate Modern. Yeah, it was brilliant. And they just played recently actually. I was away. I missed it.

And then OMD, I remember their third. first album I had, which was the one with electricity on it and messages. So it was like electronic music. Then I got into Duran Duran in a very big way because I'd seen... You must know those guys, right? I do, yeah. Yeah. Which is... Can I just say, 11-year-old you, right, reading this and now here you are, like me saying you're a bit like Carl Sagan. Like, I mean, it's mega. This is your life. Yeah, I know. It's a... Because obviously you don't, I might, it's not planned at all. I mean, that's the key thing.

It's a mixture. It's certainly luck, which I know a lot of people say, but it really is. You make your own luck. Well, you see, I think you seize the opportunities. And even that requires luck to even seize it and it works, right? Because I, as you said, I grew up in Oldham. And I was lucky because I, it was actually even really wanting to be in a band, was that my younger sister wanted to go see Duran Duran.

I remember this vividly. And it was a seventh-a-raggy-tie guitar tour. And I tell the guy, because as you said, I got to know them. And so I went and I was like, okay, I'll go. But I was into like OMD and Ultra Box and things like that. And I saw this gig. It was in Leeds. And I loved it.

I was blown away. It was because obviously at the time they were at the peak of their faith. And this was real, like, pop music done brilliantly. And it didn't say an atmosphere. And I just thought, right, I want to do that. So just because I went to this gig really with my sister, that's what I want to do. So I started learning to play. I didn't have music lessons.

I couldn't play. So I started just trying to do something. It's about the age of 15 or so. And then this is the luck. So in Oldham, living with in Oldham. And a guy called Darren Wharton, who's the keyboard player from Thin Lizzie, moved into Oldham. and went to the pub, my local pub where my dad used to go. And so my dad said, just gave him a demo tape that we'd done.

God bless your dad. You know, yeah. That is good dad work. Yeah. And it was, you know, I don't know if he even listened to it, Darren. But when he formed a band, because Thinley's split up, and he remembered there was this guy up the road who sort of had something to do with keyboards. and just asked me to go and meet him and say,

and really I wasn't very good at playing, but I was good at programming stuff. Right. So because I, that's, you know, because I was set, I was into Ultra Box and OMD and Hollywood fans. And so I joined the band when I was, just before I finished my A-Levels. And then I thought, I'll take a year out.

So that's the look, pure luck, right? And that was dare? That's dare. And then, so I took a year out from university, and in that year we got a record deal. I mean. And so then I didn't go to university. So I think when I was supposed to be in university,

I was in L.A. recording an album at Johnny Mitchell's house, by the way. So he got sillier with a great producer called Larry Klein, who was married to Johnny Mitchell at the time. And he's still a great player. He's still a great bass player and producer. And so I ended up, you know, when I was supposed to be at university, I was in L.A. at Joe. This is great.

And also with someone from Thin Lizzie, like. Yeah, and that, you know, for the musically, it wasn't actually the music I was into, right? I was into, so I've gone from electronic music to Duran Duran and been in your romantic. And then I go into Bar House and Sisters of Mercy and the Cure and also the Smith's and New Order and Joy Division, all that stuff. And then I joined this rock band and so I'd listen to rock music. I enjoy. Can I quickly ask you about going back to uni after you'd taken time out? Because it must have been quite a big thing going,

to uni and everybody else is 18. What was that like and how did you handle that? It was, I think I was 23 when I went back. You've done a lot. Well, yeah, I'd been in this band. And I was actually, you know, simultaneously, I'd just joined D. Ream. So it was even weirder for my friends at university because I was on top of the pox when I was an undergraduate.

So they'd be watching telly at night. And you go, what's he doing? You know, that's he? So it was... Bloody cool, though, Brian. Well done. That's so good. It was kind of...

There was one... It was one we do... You do lab at a university. We do physics. And I never really liked it, actually. I didn't like doing this lab stuff. No. There's one...

I'm so vividly remember because... So I didn't lab and it was like, you know, it was like five o'clock or something. I was like, I'm going to have to go. And we haven't quite finished this. And you go, why? And because I'm on stage, Gmex. We take that.

We were supporting... take that. So literally it was like just get changed and go and go on stage. So I had this very strange experience of being at university and fortunately for me by the way I

took a decision so most of its love I did make a decision because D-Ream got, they weren't a big band when I joined the band. It was in the gap between leaving there when I left there and then went to university and then D-Reem got big

and so I had to make a choice then it's been my second year I think at university and it was like do I go to it was an Australian tour I've never been to Australia I was like do that again or do I carry on doing this and so that was a good decision

that I said no I'm actually going to yeah well done I'm going to do this we're very grateful well I'm I'm I've done enough physics that I knew that I really liked it at university but it was a difficult choice, you know, because when you're a student, you know, it's like, well, shall I get on a

plane and go to Australia and be a rock star again? Yes. As you know, I have been trying at Monzo, who are sponsoring Begin Again. And I think one of the cleverest things about it is something called salary sorter. Now, I'm going to show you on a prop phone, by the way, because you're not seeing my actual bank balance, nosy. But what's amazing about it is your pay lands and it splits itself out, bills, saving, spending, sorted. Set it once and every payday it just happens. I know what money feels like. That

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and UK residents, Tis and Cs apply. And one of the things that I loved reading you's talk about is the graft. You know, that you've said before that you're not sure that anyone is born brilliant at anything. It's about the graft. I think so. it's certainly for the overwhelming majority of people.

I mean, there might be the odd person who's some kind of genius at something. But most people who are successful in music or physics or whatever are not, right? It's that combination. It's part luck that gives you paths open up. And that's luck, I think. And then, as you said,

then it's finding something that you like and really thinking hard. I often, because I still teach students at the University of Mansion. it, right? And one of the things I say to them is that you have to, you know when you understand something. That's actually the only skill. If you get that skill where you're not trying to, you just know enough to pass an exam or whatever it is, or not trying to, even, you know, these days, you know, trying to cheat a bit, maybe with AI or something, whatever it is.

The idea is that you know when you understand it. And it's a great delight. It's the most remarkable feeling when you go, no, I get that. But you've got to work as hard as you have to work, right? There's no shortcut. Sometimes you'll get it quickly. Sometimes you'll get it slowly. But you've just got to do it. And you'll know when you've done it. You don't need to do an exam. You don't need me to tell you you understand it. You know. And that's so that I think for some reason, I figured that out. I like the fact that you keep talking about luck. It's worth thinking about it, isn't it, to look back at your history. The whole life.

And think where were those turning points? And I'm pretty sure most of them will have just been look. I like to for my own kind of heart and happiness. I mean, I know that you've talked a lot before about death and what happens to us after death. And it's like, nothing. I don't talk much about it because I've only got one word, one word answer. It's like nothing. But what I really liked was I listened to something talking about atoms and atoms never die.

They just go somewhere else and that I've chosen to believe that I live on through that. Can you just explain the concept of an atom? Yeah. So these are the building blocks of us. And they're very tiny, by the way. Well, like how tiny? Well, so in, and I do this in the show, actually. So we show a snowflake on the screen from Kepler.

And they're about, what, a centimetre across. So in, so then it's made of water molecules, these little things. And you can line up. Brian, I love it when you talk about, like, things. And you're going, tiny things. That's my illustration of a water molecule. I know, you mean? It's like, what is that?

Again, you go. A tiny little thing. And you can line up about, um, what, something like a hundred million of them across a snowflake. So that's how small they are. Which is why it took us until about in the 20th century to discover these things. So they're about 100 million times smaller than a snowflake night. And so those are the building blocks.

And those, as you say, they're eternal, essentially, for all intents and purposes. They're eternal. So when we die, the building blocks of us are still there. They're not destroyed. And they will ultimately, as we said, they'll go back into the earth. And then the earth will die. Well, the earth may get incinerated by the sun at some point in the future.

We're not quite sure, actually, whether it will get swallowed or not when the sun expands at the end of its life. But anyway, some of them will go out into space. And some of them may recalapse into new star systems. the new planets and so they're just recycled basically and they live for pretty much eternity. If we're made up of atoms, the building blocks. We will carry on in something else in some different form. The building blocks. Yeah.

But that leads to very deep questions about what we are because actually the atoms out of which we're made are changing all the time. Right. So we're not the same atoms that we were yesterday and we won't be the same atoms that we were completely the same atoms that we were tomorrow. that they're being recycled all the time. So you're really a pattern, right? So you're a pattern of information in a sense. And so it's that, really. It's the information processing that's you.

So the analogy often uses a computer, right? So you've got a computer program. It's running in the computer. It's not really anything to do with the computer, the program. When you turn it off, it's not running anymore. So we're like that? Yeah, we sound less around. than the other things we've been talking about.

But that's, you know, as far as we understand it, that's what we are. It's no less remarkable, though, because that's often, I think, the, the, one of the problems that people can have with science is if you just put it like that, then it sounds dry, right? It just sounds like unromantic and not beautiful, right? You're just this processing, and it's just a pattern and it's processing, and then you're die and it's gone, which is true. But the other way of thinking about it is that how remarkable is it that from over 13.8 billion years from just some hydrogen and helium, you end up with those patterns. You end up with these processes that allow us to experience the world.

So it is, Carl Sagan said it first. It's allowing the universe to understand itself. That's beautiful. So in a way, it's just the language that you use. So it can sound horrible and dry and emotionless. Or the same story can sound profoundly magical and beautiful. And that's really the challenge. I think it's magical and beautiful. I don't need anymore. Because some people say, well, it's terrible then, isn't it? You're gone. You just this temporary thing. My perspective is it's so astonishing that these temporary patterns exist at all. And I do talk about this in the show, the more we think about it. But we're trying to understand why. So why do the laws of nature allow temporary patterns like us to exist, which can bring meaning genuinely bring meaning to the universe? Yeah, so that to me is the most wonderful question of all in many ways.

So why is the universe such that collections of atoms can have conversations? So to me that's beautiful and powerful. And the temporary nature of it makes it even more beautiful and valuable in a sense. Do you ever think about death? Does it worry you? To be absolutely honest, not yet. Maybe give me another five years, right? But I don't really, I don't focus on that at all.

Okay, I'm going to actually go back. I'm going to tell you something that is going to horrify you, but please don't hate me because I have changed. But maybe 15, 20 years ago, for 15 years ago, I put, I'm so ashamed to tell you this, Brian, but I put space travel in Room 101. Did you? It's not a, it's, it's,

Please don't hate me. It's not a bad idea in some way. I just thought it's so expensive and we could spend that on somebody. But then I got together with Michael, my husband. I'm so excited about that. I've got together with Michael and he was like, he turned me onto you and changed my whole life. I mean, if you think, I just said there,

it's not necessarily a bad thing to do, right? So it depends what you, what, so how do we value space travel? Well, that was it because I felt like it was territorial pissing. Well, and it may well have been, right, at some level, right? I mean, I'd say probably was, you know, it was obviously the Cold War. It's the space race. But now, and this is often the case, what's come out of that? is this economy in space

that we all use it every day. I'll give you one figure which was astonishing to me. So there was a House of Lords report here in the UK last year and it was about space, the economy of space. And there's a number figure in there which says that 18% of our GDP is relying on space-based infrastructure. 18. So it's like a fit of the economy of the UK.

Oh my God. And it's because it's things we don't, we take for granted. It's not only satellite navigation, obviously. Yes. But all the timing stuff for our financial transactions comes from that. So when you do things with your bank, it's all the timing of all the computers is coming from that. Someone told me the other week that,

so how important is space now? So there's a, it's telling us about deforestation, for example. So it's allowing us to map how the environment's changing, what we're doing to the environment. Someone told me there was a, in Peru, they were having problems with fishing, which were depleting their fishing stocks. And so they enacted a law that the boats in their waters

have to have satellite trackers. And it reduced the hit. It was something like 80 or 90% of illegal fishing. They got rid of, so they were able to control their fishing and all those things. So it's integrated into almost everything we do on a day-to-day basis. So that's kind of the practical idea.

But the other point is that we are also doing these things that are curiosity-led exploration of the planets in order to ask questions, as we mentioned before, like are we alone in the universe? Right. These are questions we're trying to answer. They're profound questions. I mean, I would say for those people listening,

I'm sure we're not alone in the universe, but it's how far do you have to go to find something else? that's alive. That's a really good question. Might be outside our solar system, might be, who knows, thousands of light years. So there's those questions as well.

And the curiosity-led exploration of nature. Go back to Kepler. As I mentioned, these are the foundations of the modern world. So we hadn't really made much progress for thousands of years.

Almost arguably from ancient Egypt, for 5,000 years. basically of civilization, we'd really not done much. And then when people start asking these questions, the beginning of science, in just a few hundred years, we have not only this knowledge, but we have medical technology, as you mentioned. Can you imagine if you'd been ill 100 years ago?

Yeah. You know, there were no antibiotics, even. No. You know, if you go back. And so I think that this, the most valuable thing about science and space exploration and asking questions about the motion of the planets, which is where it all started, is that it led to this way of thinking about the world, which has led to everything we take for granted. Without exception, right?

This is one of the foundations of everything that we enjoy today, our quality of life, longevity, life. By any measure, we use science every day and it benefits us. But it comes from this. So I would say, it's not really about the GDP numbers and all these things like that. It's just about this is one of the, the manifestation of our curiosity. Yes. I mean, honestly, like Michael opening my eyes and him having been such a fan of yours for so long, it's like it's changed everything. but I think me valuing this planet in a way, I've always valued it and I've loved living and I've loved nature,

but there's an urgency now, I feel, where I think politically recently there's been so much hatred and anger and destruction that it feels a bit like we're going back to the 70s again where children are growing up full of fear. Yeah. You know, like your son's 17. And he, you know, he's growing up in a,

and an unstable world. And I feel like us actually in our late teens and Summer of Love, 88, 90, you know, it was a great time of peace, really, for quite a long time. We haven't had that for ages. Yeah. And so we're in the world, as you said, that maybe Carl Sagan's world. And he wrote a book, actually, another book called The Demon Haunted World. Science has a candle in the dark.

He wrote After Cosmos. And it's a wonderful book. And he sees this. He sees this world coming. Does he? Yeah. He's talking about the rise of the return to superstition and darkness. And that's what he means, the demon-haunted world.

Science is a candle that drives away the demons. Yes. It's just this way of thinking about, which is just, as I said, back to Kepler, it's just asking questions about the shape of snowflakes and the motion of the planets. But you're grounded in reality. there. This is the way that you drive out superstition and all the problems that arise

from the fear of the fear of the unknown. It's part of the show actually, there's always a philosophical arc in the shows somewhere, an element of polemic, probably coming from Sagan. And at the end of the show

I say, is that you said, Kepler, I don't know. I say at the end, I'm worried that the world today is full of too many people who think they know everything. Yes. And the thing is, if you think about it for one moment, if you think you know everything, you can't make any progress because there's no progress, because progress requires the unknown. Obviously.

And when you put it like that, so anybody you think is certain is not going to develop as a person, but they're not going to develop any new knowledge. They're not going to contribute anything, actually. I would say certainty prevents you from contributing anything new because you think you know it. And so I think that it's the rise of certainty. And really the beginning of science, only 400 years ago, was the discovery of the joy of uncertainty. That's what it actually is. So that's why Kepler and Galileo is so important because they're going, hang on a minute.

I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm not sure the earth is motionless at the centre of a finite universe. And they would have been ridiculed for thinking that or questioning something, you know, well, it's been like this forever. Of course it's like this.

It doesn't move. Yeah, the authority is the authority of the ancient Greeks, really. Yes. But, you know, and Galileo famously had his, you know, tangled with the church and so on. And that's a complicated story. And part of it was his character as well. So it's not really simple.

You know, a lot of it was, I think he was friends with the Pope. I think, and it was all a bit, you know, it was all very human, right? But ultimately they were, if you think about it, just, it's also allowing yourself to go somewhere that isn't obvious. Because what these people are arguing about, partly was, is the earth moving? Yeah. Well, self-evidently, it doesn't feel as if it's moving.

Right. So it's not obvious that the earth is tearing around this, star, and it's not obvious, as you said, that the star is the sun and its nuclear fusion, and you get a million earths inside it. None of that is obvious. It's remarkable that we discovered it at all. You know, we discovered how to weigh the earth and weigh the sun and figure out how big things are and how far away. One of the things that a story I tell in the show is about how do we know,

which is related to this thing about being certain, how do we know the distance to a galaxy? It's all like me saying the Andromeda Galaxy, you can see it with your naked eye almost here from the UK. Or with binoculars, you see this thing. It took the light over two million years to reach us from that thing, which means it began its journey. You're looking at it live through your binoculars. It began its journey before we had evolved on the earth. And it's coming along. Oh, my God.

How do you know? It's so mind-blown. How do you know? And the story is wonderful. And it involves an astronomer called Henrietta Levitt, who was working at the turn of the 20th century. And she was looking at patterns in data, like Kepler, patterns in the snowflakes. And she had to notice a pattern in the way these particular stars behave, called Seafeed Variable Stars. But she noticed a pattern.

And that allowed her to figure out by just seeing how they vary in brightness, how bright they actually are. And this is the key idea. It's called a standard candle. because if you imagine if you've got this light and you know how bright it actually is and then you can see how dim it is and say well I know how far away it is then the further way it is the dimmer it is right

that's it that that's it but so it took it took this 20th century discovery by this genius Henrietta Levitt who was just working and her job was just to catalogue things because that's what women did at the time right they were just the they would be the ones that would see everything

Yeah. And so she became an extremely famous astronomer. And that's one of the basic ways. But it just shows you that someone's got to do that. Someone's got to figure out a way of measuring the distance to the stars and the distance to the galaxies. And it's really a 20th century discoveries, actually. So we didn't know. Until the 1920s, we didn't know whether these little patches of light in the sky were other galaxies

or structures in our own galaxy. So we didn't know that. It's almost living memory. It's 1920s that we discover that. I mean, obviously, one of, you know, the big questions or possibly the biggest question is how did it all begin? You know, like how did it start? And obviously, CERN is a huge part of that.

You worked there. Yeah. Can you just tell us a bit about when that was and what was that like? What were you doing? CERN is, it's called a particle acceleration. So the large Hadron Collider, it's 27 kilometres in circumference, this thing. So if you ever go to Geneva. Is it underground?

Yeah. So if you land at Geneva Airport ever, then it's close to that. It's underground. It goes into France mainly, but it goes into Switzerland as well. And it goes right past the runway of the airport. So when you land there, you're almost sitting on top of this thing beneath Geneva. Wow. So that's where it is.

And its job is just to send particles around very fast and collide them together. And that's what he does. And they go very, very fast, 27 kilometres, just beams of particles. It makes millions of these collisions every second, just collides particles. But the reason it's doing that is because in those collisions, a way to think about it is you recreate the conditions that were present less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. So one way to think about what's happening there is you can take pictures of what was happening, what the universe was like very close to the Big Bang. So that's one of the reasons we know about what was happening back then because we can recreate those conditions in a tiny bit of space for a tiny amount of time

and we can take pictures of it. And these giant cameras, the one I worked home is called Atlas. It's 40 metres in size, right? These huge digital camera underneath the ground in a cavern the size of St. Paul's Cathedral taking pictures of these little collisions. So it's one of the reasons we know a lot. And what were you doing there then? Like what was your job?

So there I was running a little upgrade project thing, which is kind of an international little group, to put these little detectors close to these beams of particles. These beams, by the way, they're smaller than the diameter of hair, of human hair. These little beams like that. But they carry the energy of an aircraft carrier traveling at 30 miles an hour. Oh my God. So it's really quite cool.

Powerful. And I was putting these little things about amazing. millimeter away from it. So we were trying to put these little detectors in really close. So I was just running this upgrade project. And the BBC were, it was before the machine was turned on. And they started sending people there, you know, because it was kind of interesting. And people were interested in this experiment. And so I just got interviewed by Radio 4 or someone like that. And they'd like the way that I talked. And by the way, I'd, this is the luck again. right. So I'd avoided

even teaching, right? All I wanted to do is research. So I got these things called research fellowships and I was just doing research into particle physics and nothing else. I wasn't interested in anything. I wasn't interested in talking about it. I wasn't interested in teaching about it.

And nothing. But then I just started talking about this machine because I was interested in it and involved in it. And that's the and then I think that someone said, maybe we'll make a BBC, it was called BBC, knowledge, BBC 4, whatever, a little program. Do you want to make a little program? So I made

a little program. And then he said, oh, maybe we'll make a horizon then, you know, which was this wonderful documentary series. And so I did that. And then ultimately got offered this thing, Wonders of the Solar System, which was the big series that I made, which I first became well known. It's a complete luck. I wasn't interested. I wouldn't have pushed that. Can I say something, though?

It's not luck. It's because you are brilliant. Like, that's not luck. The BBC were lucky. You learn, though, don't you? I mean, it's not, as you'll know, you know, it's not that if you want to be on telly, it's a skill like anything else or make radio programs. It's something that you learn through practice. Also passion. I mean, your passion is so tangible.

To listen to you talk about something you love is electric. It's absolutely, no, honestly, Brian, it is such a joy to listen to you talk about it because, like we, me and Michael, but I was, I sat in an audience. I could feel a bit emotion, I don't know why. I sat in an audience and I listened to you speak. You blew all of our minds, but it's your enthusiasm and your knowledge and everything else. But the idea that you almost didn't want to share that with us is so like it would be criminal. We all have different aspects to our characters, don't we?

And I said before, one of the things I like doing is finding things out and figuring out to understand things. And obviously, you know, research, I mean a PhD and those things, that's all, it's all about that. It's all about this, I want to understand this thing. And ultimately find something out that nobody knew. That's actually a remarkable thing. And everyone who's done a PhD has done that in some way.

I'll ask you about, but you did. Yeah, you did a PhD. in particle physics. Yeah. What's that? What is particle? What is particle physics? So that is this, the understanding of the building blocks of nature. What are the smallest building blocks?

The smallest. And how do they talk to each other? How do they stick together? So the things we've been talking about, about these little building blocks. And that's what got you to CERN. Yeah. So that's, I went to university to do astrophysics, which, because I was into astronomy. And then I sort of converted at university.

I didn't know there was such a thing called particle physics, really. You know, I didn't know anything about it. But I got interested in it when I was at university. And so then did the research. I did my PhD in Germany, actually. How did you? Which was a particle collider. Wow.

And then I went to Fermilab in Chicago, which is another one. And then CERN. So I want to talk to you about teaching. And you were saying that you very nearly didn't teach. Yeah. And I'm a time of a world. in a scenario, right? How are you enjoying that? What's that like? I love it. So I teach the first year in September, so in October, because it's the first year, first term. And it's true, I suppose,

that some people go to Manchester could have seen me on telly. And so I wanted them, I feel I have a responsibility if they do that to meet those students, right? Because some of them are doing physics, because they've seen my stuff. And many of them are. aren't, by the way, but some of them are. I can say probably most of them. There's lots of reasons you go to Manchester. It's right. And, you know, we've got Nobel Prize

winners there and all sorts of things. It's a big department. Jodrell Bank, the telescope famously, which you pass a group of other trains in Manchester and London. So all those things. And so I teach first year, first term. And I teach relativity

in quantum mechanics, the introduction. Because those are the things that every, so everyone is 18 who goes to do physics wants to do that. They want to do Einstein. And quantum mechanics is the theory of the particles and the, you know, the building blocks of nature. So, so I really enjoy it. And one of the reasons I like doing it, but also every year I someone asks a question or I'm saying something when I realize I don't properly understand it,

even though it's the first year introductory course, there's always something. You don't properly answer that. There's always something. You go, actually, I think I'm just saying that. It's what we said earlier about you kid you. The skill you have to develop is really making sure you understand something. And there's always something where I go, actually, why is that?

There must be a better way of saying that. Or usually I don't understand that actually. So I'm saying something, which is right. you know, I'll just say something. And would you tell your students? Yeah, sometimes. When someone has a question sometimes, you go, that's a good question. So you can give him the answer, which would be in a textbook.

You go, that's the answer. But you go, why is that? Right. Quantum mechanics is really weird as a theory. It is. Can I tell you something quite funny? I met this guy called Hartmut, who built the Google quantum computer. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And Hartmut was doing a talk, and I went to his talk, and I didn't really get it. So I went and bought quantum computing for dummies. It's really hard. I still don't get it. Like I just can't and I'm going to keep going. Yeah. But it's, it is really mind-blowingly complex.

The picture of the world it gives you is, you know, is just so alien. Yes. It's so different to the world that we experience. And it's still, you know, like you said, quantum computing, is really forcing us to think about what it actually means because it actually does use that weird behaviour. Yes, and it works. It works.

Yeah, so off. I mean, we still do again. What is quantum going to, how is it going to change our world? I mean, just one very simple answer is it has because you don't know how a transistor works if you don't understand quantum mechanics. So, you know, everything, your phone is full. these things and they're quantum devices, really. So you need it to understand that. But quantum

computing is different because it's using the real behavior of these particles to do things that you couldn't otherwise do. But the kind of unfortunate thing, and it's just luck, actually. The unfortunate thing is the first thing we've learned how to do with quantum computers is break the encryption that keeps all our data safe. Oh. So that's a real... It's not the most positive thing in the world, right? And it's just that it happened

that one of the easiest things to do with these quantum computers is code. It's actually to say if you've got a really big number, what are the numbers that you multiply together to make the big number? That's what... Now, that's a really hard thing. So all our banking apps and everything

are based on having a very, very big number. And it's about knowing what the little things are you have to, I'm doing that again, the numbers you have to multiply together. Brian, don't change. All right, I want to. Please don't change. I love it when you do that. I didn't mean to make you self-conscious.

Okay. But it's what are the numbers you have to multiply together to make the big number. And it was thought with a normal computer, any conceivable normal computer, it takes longer than the age of the universe, right, to figure out what these numbers are. Wow. So you can't do it.

No. So it's great for code. making a code. It's brilliant. And that's how the encryption basically works. Everything that we take for granted, keeping our data safe. Yes. Unfortunately, the first algorithm, the first thing anyone figured out how to do with the quantum computer is to do that. And the power of quantum computers is they, in principle, not yet actually in practice, but in principle can do it really quickly. So they just destroy the whole fabric of encryption. Right. And it's not just, because you can fix that. So that's,

what people are doing, so we fix it, so we do something different, and everybody's transitioning over to the different thing. Yes. But one thing is that all the data that's ever been stored up till now is all on computers somewhere, everyone's got it all, and it's all encrypted with this code. The moment anyone actually builds a quantum computer that can do this, you can read everything. So it is actually a problem because any data that's stored anywhere, in the world now that can't be read, will be able to be read when these things work.

If the world was full of love and people just wanting to look after the planet and look after each other and care for each other, this would be the most amazing discovery. But because of power and greed and hatred, it's not. And we need to get rid of these things over here. And I do feel like we can create a more loving and accepting. society in the name of continuing our species. You must be able to do that. Yeah.

Just before I answer that, I just wanted to say about quantum computers, they can also potentially do amazing things. Yes. So it looks like, well, because nature is this. Nature works like this. Really what these things are doing is harnessing the power of nature to do things that are useful to us. So the other things that we think they're going to be really good at are things like understanding biology, making advances in medicine, understanding how life works, material science for building new materials and new aircraft and things.

So there's all that wonderful stuff as well. Well, it feeds into that, right? So then new materials for building engines and things. So there's a whole tremendous sort of area as well. It's just that the easiest thing to do is mess our encryption up. But they're really potentially wonderful things. But to your point, I agree, it goes back to, I think, the perspective. Sagan said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.

And I sometimes say in the Lifeshire, I realize what that meant a few years ago. Because humbling is easy. The size of the Earth is just nothing compared to the size. the universe. The character building bit is this understanding of our place and our history in the universe. So the idea that this might be one of the few islands of meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion suns, in itself in one galaxy amongst two trillion galaxies in this observable universe. So there's something about the potential value and rarity of places like Earth. But also the history, as we spoke about earlier,

it's all perspective. So the character building bit, I think, is Sagan saying, we need to take responsibility because, and it goes back to your question about the unlikeliness of existence, the tremendous, the value of existing, once you know how unlikely

it is, who you exist, the more you seize your life and value your life. It's that, it's that perspective. But made global. Yes. So it's like the whole civilization is this temporary thing, which is like a single human life. And so you should treat the planet and the civilization as you treat your own life.

Yes. It is a thing. It's a thing, an ecosystem that has a finite, fragile existence. And so I think that that perspective, that's what Sagan meant. But you wouldn't know that if you didn't, it wouldn't occur to you if you didn't know about the context. which is the arena as we started with, plus the history of life on earth,

plus the history of the universe, the more you know about it, the more fragile, unlikely, and beautiful and precious this world becomes. That's what I'm sure he meant. I always said that I thought every world leader should go into space. I totally agree. Yeah, and most of them should come back.

I think, yes. But what about when that perspective? Yes, because the, The chap recently who just had his moment to just say how he was feeling, did you see that? And he was just talking about how he felt seeing Earth from space. And it was the most beautiful thing. It was very Carl Sagan.

Yeah. Everyone seems to. I've been lucky to meet astronauts. And even the older ones, the test pilots from the 60s, you know, these real sort of Air Force test pilots, all of them still speak powerfully about the experience of seeing the Earth from space. I think we should do that. I think world leaders, before they, you know, come into office, they should go up into space.

I think you should have to do. I think that should be the law. And it's quite, you know, the little suborbital flight, you still see, it's quite, it's not expensive, actually. You know, the Blue Origin and Virgin Galaxican people. Yes. You know, it's not expensive. It's a few hundred thousand pounds. So it's expensive.

But for a country. For the perspective, I think you should be, you should have to do that. Go and have a look at the thing you're responsible for. And then come back and, you know, behave yourself is what I would say to them. So Brian, I've got little presents for you. The first one is from one of your students. Let me put me glasses on. I'm of an age.

Dear Brian, 15 years ago, I watched your on my TV screen as you explained entropy using a sandcastle in the Namib Desert and a glacier in Patagonia. The accessibility and enthusiasm, yes, Brian,

of your explanations inspired my career in science, although you may have slightly oversold the glamour of travel. I'm not unique in this. Across the world, you have ignited curiosity and people of every age, gender and background, ensuring our eyes occasionally look

up instead of down. The importance of the diversity of your audience should not be understated. After all, we all look up at the same stars and gaze with the same wonder. I've now worked with you for five years and yes, he really is that smart and yes, he really does love physics that much. Having known you beyond the camera, I've been privileged to see the curiosity that you've inspired in me all those years ago is the same curiosity that still drives you today. You're always asking questions, always reading, always learning. Everyone knows what an outstanding ambassador for science you are to the public. But I would like to personally thank you for being an advocate for me. You've challenged me with interesting physics questions,

given me advice on a career in research and engagement, and created opportunities for me to travel and grow as a communicator. Thanks to you, I'm beginning to fold public engagement into my own career. You've shown me that being a great scientist isn't just about asking good questions. It's about giving others the confidence to ask their own. My PhD in postdoctoral projects only exist because of you. Professor Jeff Fawaw went above and beyond to make them happen as well and it's no exaggeration to say that I would not have a career in research without you.

Thank you. And I hope you didn't literally blow Davina's mind, Dr Ross Jenkins. Yes, Ross. Ross! He did! He completely has blown my mind. It's brilliant, isn't it? I'm so grateful.

And I've got another one. Wait, wait, go on. Tell me about Ross. He's a brilliant physicist. And he's a great example of someone who is working in, so he's working on the black holes, right, which is the most, the strangest, most esoteric things you could imagine. And how they work.

And he goes all the way back to question Stephen Hawking was asking in the 1970s. So that's, it's been. working on that. But also, it turns out the things, the skills that you acquire in learning about black holes are very useful, necessary for quantum computing, which is all these things that we talked about, all these, the promise of quantum computers. And he's worked in both areas. So he's able to make that, to do this really esoteric stuff, which is about this blue

skies wonder, you know, curiosity, knowledge for its own sake. And also he has this skill to be able to talk to people in industry and, you know, and the wider world. So that they're quite unique skills, actually. So, yeah, he's quite a unique, well, a unique individual because he's got those two, those, those two abilities. So would it be fair to say that he noticed a connection or something that was helpful between black holes and quantum, like he?

Yeah, and has seized that and really has worked. And has made it a skill. It's really important because we're always in this debate in our society. And it's right to say, well, what should we be spending our money on? We haven't got a lot of money at the moment. We're all under pressure. Yes. What should society do, right?

But it's a beautiful example, the work that Ross does, where it's always the case that finding more out about nature at the deep. level. It turns out to be useful. It's not surprising when you put it like that because we're talking about reality in understanding what reality is. And that knowledge always comes in useful and can sometimes completely transform the world. And the history of science tells you that. And so, but what Ross is able to do, fortunately, there are people, you know, younger people coming through who can make that case and say, because he experiences it. It's like this is weirdly. little physics, this is really useful and connect the two. Is it nice as now, and I hope you don't take this as an insult, but an elder states person, you know, I love seeing people coming up through the ranks and I think, oh, you're good, you're good. Is it nice for you to teach somebody or be part of someone's career and then go, oh, I see,

I see you going somewhere? Absolutely, because that's the, you know, that that generation, that's the generation that will change the world. It's not, it's less and less, as you say, it's our generation, my generation, that people did that for me. So there are people who allowed me to go in the direction I wanted to go in. If you go about 20 years or so, there were people that did not close the door, particularly actually at the University of Manchester. They could have easily said, you're not doing this stuff. this television stuff, you've got a job here, you've got to do this. You've got to do your research and your teaching and those things, and you're not going to do it.

But so someone, and it was people at the university, said, no, you know, this is the path you're going on. We value that you can do it. So it's obviously we are must be obliged, as as you said, elder states people to open those doors and keep them open and allow the next. generation to go through. This letter is from Darren. I'm going to read this for you from Dair. Okay, dear Brian, when Davina asked if I'd write a few words, I couldn't say no. I remember your dad, David, knocking on my door back in 1989. Yeah. God, how brilliant is your dad? Yeah. Well done, David. You were sat in your dad's car. Well, he asked if he could bring you in to meet me. I love your dad. What a ledge. I'd only just left in Lizzie and was looking for musicians

to form dare. At the time, A&M Records wanted me to front the band without playing keyboards. So when I met you, I thought, here's a young good-looking lad who'd be perfect as our keyboard player. Can I tell you something quite funny? A&M Records used to be on Fulham Road. Yeah. And I was a waitress in a restaurant on Fulham Road. And all the A&R people from A&M Records used to have lunch in my restaurant. I used to serve them lunch. Did they? When I was a waitress. Yeah, I remember that. I used to go in there and just basically, they had their CDs lying around and all they're artists, you know, it was people like Brian Adams and who else was around. I can't remember.

So I used to go in and just take CDs. It was great, right, in those days, wasn't it? You could go and pilfer the stocks. Yeah, pill for the stock. Yeah. God, you could have, I could have served your lunch, Brian. You might well have done because I would have been there at that time. Yeah. What struck me straight away wasn't just your tenant, but your curiosity. On the tour bus, while most of the band were talking about music, you and I would be deep in conversation about whether there was alien life out there, whether there was water on the moon, you know, usual tour bus chat.

Looking back now, I suppose the signs were already there that you were destined for something rather special. I also remember you ringing me after you joined the BBC to tell me that Terry Wogan was a big fan. Shut up, was he? Yeah, that's epic. He used to play Dare. Oh my God, that's so good. Terry's gone up in my estimation.

Before long, Terry was playing Dare on his show. Yeah. Mega. And I never forgot that. You always championed the band and I really appreciated it. I'm incredibly proud. Not just of everything you've achieved as one of the world's best-known professors and science communicators,

but of the person you've always remained. Thank you for your friendship over all these years. It's been a privilege to watch your journey with love and best wishes. Oh, that's lovely from Darren. You talk about, you know, meeting famous people. We talked about this star. I mean, he was, you know, this guy, can you imagine if you're in Oldham at the time? And just in the 70, well, the 80s.

Like a mega rock star. You know, it was just like the unachievable thing that he'd done. And that's to Darren's great credit. You know, if you think about what he did when he's. left Lizzie is he formed a local band. Everyone was from within about a three-mile radius of Chadderton in Oldham. So there's great guitar, he's Vinny and Vos play with Shelley and Jim, the drummer. And that was, so he forms a band of young local musicians and ends up, you know, taking us, those kids who would have never got anywhere in the music business, really, you know,

taking us to, as said, A&M Records and Los Angeles and we toured with Jimmy Page. I mean, Jimmy Page. I mean, we told with, Jimmy Page. Europe, we toured with Europe. Europe. Well, Europe was a massive tour. Oh, my God. I'd not been out, I'd only been out of the country once, I think.

So, you know, so I'd been on a school trip to, I think, it was Austria. to Austria on a school trip when I was 17. That's the first time I ever went out of the country, I was 17. Then I joined Dare. And then we did some shows in Hong Kong, and then we in LA, and then we did tour Europe with Europe. So by the age of about 22, I'd been to all these places. But it's because Darren didn't, you know,

you would have thought when he left Lizzie, he's a brilliant musician, brilliant keyboard player, could have done anything. You would have thought he'd go to come down to London or whatever and do that or join a big band. or something. But didn't he just got a lot of local musicians together. We used to play in a place called the Maple Squash Club in Oldham.

So we're doing gigs. Darren's gone from being in Thin Lizzie to playing gigs in a squash club. And it's just with an audience of 100. Amazing. And he did that and built that band. And helped you. So, yeah. I mean, I look at you, Brian, and I see a man who's achieved a lot.

You're very happily married. You've got a lovely son. He's a musician, actually. Is he? Yeah, he's gone into music. Has he really? He played on the PJ Harvey track. Oh, what does he play?

Well, he played bass on it, but he's a guitarist. But he played some bass. Wow. Which is kind of, you know, yeah, so that's his first credit. What was that like for you? It was great because he didn't, you know, he was just playing around in the studio. And Polly said, that's, I like that. Maybe we'll have that.

So it wasn't like, you know, I was saying, saying he's got to be on this thing. He did something that she liked. So that's cool. He earned it. Yeah. Wow. So I mean, you're happy at home.

Yeah. You've been a rock star. You're still so involved in music, which is one of your passions. Hell of it, yeah. You are doing the thing you love, telling the world about the world. Yeah. And the galaxy and the universe. what is there left?

Is there anything? Is there any burning urge that you have left in your life? Yeah, I mean, always. Because as you said, you know, some of them are big things that I'm so lucky to be able to go, wouldn't it be great if we did this? One of the things I love doing is we do versions of the shows with orchestras.

I did one at the Sydney Offer House. You know, we should do with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. A few years ago. And this, oh my God. It was brilliant. And so I want to do another one of those. And so there's those things. But I also like understanding things.

And so he mentioned a Jeff Forshaw, actually. Ross mentioned him. So I've worked with Jeff for, he's my age. But he's a, he taught me actually. Because when I took this break to do music and went back to do physics later. So we're very good friends. And we work on a lot of physics. and do some research with Ross.

And I love doing that. So I equally like just going, trying to think about some esoteric little problem in physics. I could easily go back to that. And I'd be delighted with that as well. But what's lovely is you've got lots of different fingers and lots of different pies and you're equally at home everywhere.

It's absolutely brilliant that. I'm going to wrap it up there. And I just want to say, you have blown my mind. And I, and please keep doing it. I love what you do. I love the energy that you bring to everything. I love your heart and your mind.

And I really have just such a profound amount of respect for you and everything that you do. Thank you for everything. I'm going to give you these. You can have these as keepsies. Oh, thank you. And read them again. Please may I hug you for an uncomfortably long time again? I'm coming in. I'm coming in.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you very much. So just in case you missed this episode here, if you love this episode, I know you're going to love that.