Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Professor Brian Cox

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Professor and physicist Brian Cox has no idea how to feel about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Professor Brian Cox sits down with Conan to discuss feeling insignificant at the size of the universe, doing sketch comedy with Stephen Hawking, starting out as a rock musician, and his new show Horizons: A 21st Century Space Odyssey. Later, Conan and his team desperately try to get themselves in sync. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone]. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hello, my name is Brian Cox, and I feel, I have no idea how I feel about being Conan's friend. I'm sorry, that's disheartening. Because you are a brilliant man, and for you just to go, I don't know, feels like a huge letdown for me. No, it's not. It's the key to science. So the key to science is not to guess.

So that's how we acquire reliable knowledge about nature. So I'm just behaving in a way that I was trained by saying I hadn't thought about it deeply enough to give a considered answer. And so I thought that therefore I should do what Newton would have done, or Stephen Hawking would have done, or any of the great scientists, and just say, I actually have no idea. Hey there, and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. So far, this is my best intro ever, just confident. It was good.

And to the point, that was good, right? I wasn't in my head. It was really good, and then you called attention to it and ruined it. Yeah, I know. Well, did I, or in a weird, weird way, I, weird, weird, oh, you ruined it, it was started off so good, and then you just ruined it. You know, I have a bubble in my brain that causes me to occasionally mispronounce a very easy word, like weird, and I went weird.

I love calling it out, because then you get very, like, defensive about it. You're like, where does how they've always pronounced it? This is how it's pronounced. You know, my favorite is when people say, I've heard it both ways. When they're clearly wrong. Yeah. I love that when someone says, anyway, I'm here, and of course I live in North America, and someone will go like, what?

You mean North America? And they'll be like, I've heard it actually both ways. That's you. No, no, that's not me. That is you. No, no, no. Please, I own my mistakes. No.

And when I ever make one, I will own it. No, no. There's still way. When you own them, you only outsource them to underlings. Yes. I outsource all my mistakes and blenders to offshore companies. They'd be really funny if I had, you know, other people hide money, or they, you know, play these international games, or they keep money, and like, I've got some money in the

Bahamas or Bermuda, and they shut a little around. I would love that I just make a ton of mistakes, but I constantly hide them in offshore accounts and banks. Actual mistakes. If there was a way to hide mistakes, errors, omissions, and blunders, and all of mine were kept, so people thought, wow, Conan, he doesn't make mistakes. He's pretty incredible. But then some, like, grand jury justice committee finds them and get access to them.

Right. And they find all of your mistakes. They find hundreds of thousands of incredible mistakes, and errors, and faux pas, and blunders. And they've all been kept in these special accounts. That would be a show like Severance, a really cool sci-fi show. In other words, it's very popular now to have shows where, you know, people can store their consciousness here or there. What about a show where I'm a character who can store all of his mistakes and embarrassing

faux pas? Yeah. That's what this podcast is. Is there enough... Do you think that's what this is? Yes. Oh, and you have them all. You've collected them all.

You've edited them out. Yeah. And so people think... I got you over a barrel, man. There's not enough space. Oh, okay. All right, that's cool. I'm saying you mess up a lot.

Yeah. I mispronounce things a lot. I just don't know if there would be space. There's no cloud. No computing cloud. There's no cloud big enough to hold your mistake. Oh, your faux pas. What if that's what brings down all the servers?

We tried to store all my mistakes and all the servers that Netflix is using and all these different Google... Amazon. ...Amazon, all these massive servers that are in the desert somewhere. And they were all comfortably handling all human knowledge, all purchases, and all entertainment that's ever been made for anyone who wants it at any time. And then we started storing the audio mistakes I've made on the podcast and all of them melt down.

And suddenly we become this society that's just feral. No one can... People are running around. It's Mad Max beyond Thunderdome. And the only currency is that your mistakes are NFTs that can be traded in a Thunderdome. Yeah. And so Conan, instead of saying hurricane, said hurricane, because he spoke too quickly and it came out hurricane, that's worth $35,000.

And people in the future are wandering around in sort of a post-apocalyptic society wearing shreds and rags. But they go in and someone has a piece of ham and they buy that piece of ham with Conan's attempt to say Herbert Hoover, but he said Herbert Hoover. I'm having a really hard time following this. I'm so sorry. If I had a dime for every time we had this exact conversation, I think we just came up with a really good idea for a show.

I don't know if we did. Wait, I'm checking and we didn't. No, I don't think so. Terrible show. Awful show. I haven't even understood it. Put it in the mistake vault. In a future world, Conan's mistakes are NFTs.

They're the only thing that can purchase food. So no one heard them? You removed them before? They were all put on a server by gorely. The server ended up crashing the system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in the future... Society collapsed.

Yeah, society collapsed. But then my mistakes become currency. And that's Conan's mispronunciation of President Herbert Hoover. President Herbert Hoover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This all makes sense now. I'm doubling down on this terrible idea. Yeah.

All right. I think this whole thing is going to be a mistake that goes... Yeah, this is the biggest one and the most valuable NFT you're going to have. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm glad I said my piece. Let's get started with the show. Yeah.

My guest today, of course, in contrast to myself, is a physicist. And professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester. He has hosted countless science programs for the BBC and in 2016 was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. He's now touring North America with his live show, Horizons, a 21st century space odyssey. Tickets and dates are available at bryancoxlive.co.uk. I'm thrilled he's here with us today. Here, Brian Cox, welcome.

Again, I'm going to call you Professor Brian Cox until I feel comfortable with you. One, there are social conventions, you understand. So where you say, well, yes, it's, I'm sure it's a pleasure. Little things like that. For you to break it down into this mystery of the universe as to why someone would be Conan O'Brien's friend is... It's funny. It's really funny.

Are you enjoying this, Sona? He didn't even try to think of something. He tried. You put no effort into this. No, I did. I thought deeply. I thought deeply. Really, you sat under a tree like Newton and you thought deeply about being Conan O'Brien's

friend and you came up with nothing. Well, this is how we acquire reliable knowledge about nature. We have to be, yeah, hubris gets you nowhere in the study of... I have found hubris got me everywhere. The United States was built on hubris. Our whole history is us saying we'll take care of it and then fucking the whole thing up. And look at us now.

We have more fast food restaurants than anybody. So I... Yeah. We did it. Yeah. USA. Completely disagree with your thesis. You just described why I shouldn't have just guessed.

That's why I don't want to repeat that. Sir, you have offended me deeply and we'll get past this. And I think I'm going to ask you again at the end of the interview. Maybe you'll have acquired some valuable knowledge by then. But I don't know how the universe began either or even if it had a beginning. So there are lots of things that I don't know. So you could... Wait a minute.

It makes you feel better. You could put yourself in the category of the universe, which I also don't understand. Well, I am a lot like the universe. I'm ever expanding. People often ask me, how did you get here? Many great minds have sat under trees and thought, what's with that guy? So I've been pondered by many a great mind. And so if nothing else, let me explain to people listening how this interview came to

be because I like to let people in behind the scenes. I got a call from one of my all-time comedy heroes, call, it's not a call, no one calls anybody anymore. Yeah, like he phones you on his landline. I got a telegram from one of my all-time comedy heroes, Eric Idle. And Eric Idle said, would you join me for a nice little dinner party I'm having? Would you and your wife join us? And Brian Cox will be there.

And I was delighted because you came on my late night show twice. Now that is empirical evidence that you enjoyed it enough the first time to come a second time. So you do have some data. Yeah. Yeah. You have some data. Conan is an enjoyable fellow.

Yes. Unless you were promoting something and you were just using me. No, I will take the first one. I agree with you. I agree with you. Don't you feel like you need a lawyer present at this point? Yeah. And so, but you were always fantastic.

I really enjoyed talking to you. And then we had this lovely time at Eric Idle's home and with his wife Tanya and just other guests showed up and it was a really fun time. And at the end of the evening, I said, man, I would love to have you come on my podcast to which you replied, how's Tuesday? That's true. And you said, this is not how it works in this business. Yes.

What I'm supposed to say is my people will talk to your people and sometime in 2023, it may be that we could, but I said, no, I'm only here till Wednesday, so it has to be Monday. What you did, which was, you broke a cardinal rule in show business and I love it. And you said, oh, I could do that. I could do it tomorrow or the next day or the next day. I have nothing going on right now. Precision.

Again. Precision. I, so I gave you a little lesson and I hope that next time someone asks you, could you possibly do my podcast or could you show up on our show? Even if you have nothing going on, I want you to say, well, it's a really dodgy time, but I'll get into it with my people. Now I say my people all the time and I don't have any people. Sona is my people.

And even she won't take my calls. No, I won't, I won't, I ignore them. Did your caller ID say the asshole when I call you? It says, do not answer when you call me. So, but anyway, so I've educated you, but I was going to start with an observation I made when the first images started to come back from Mars from the various rovers that we sent up at an immediate reaction, which was feeling absolutely at peace. And I couldn't understand why I suddenly felt so good.

Then I realized it's because I don't matter in a good way when I, is the way I look at it. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, I think there are, I mean, just to set the scene that our galaxy, just one island of stars has got 400 billion suns in it. Most of those stars, we think our planets around them. So there'll be more than 400 billion planets like Mars and Earth in our galaxy.

Our galaxy is one of two trillion galaxies in a piece of the universe we can see. And we have very strong evidence the universe extends beyond that could be infinite in all directions. And actually, we now have ideas that maybe our universe itself is one of an infinity of universes, so called multiverse theories. So did Marvel Comics come up with the multiverse theory? They stole it. Nope.

So fast. So you're right. So we're physically insignificant, but at the same time, I think we might underestimate our value because we haven't seen any sign of life anywhere out there beyond Earth. And actually, the more we learn about the origin and evolution of life on Earth, the more it seems almost unbelievable that we're here. I mean, there was an unbroken chain of life on Earth for pretty close to 4 billion years, which is a third of the age of the universe.

And the more we learn about the universe, we see it's a violent place. It's not a stable place, stars are unusual, there are cometary impacts, and even planets collide. I mean, the Moon was created by a planetary collision. So another planet hitting us early in the history of Earth. So we live in a violent universe. And the idea that you can start with these single-celled things 3.8 billion years ago in some primordial ocean, and evolution can take you from the single-celled things to

a civilization which took 3.8 billion years. The idea that that's happened in many places is to a lot of scientists unlikely. And so you can make a strong argument that in a galaxy like the Milky Way with 400 billion suns that's been here for 13.8 billion years, on average, there may be one civilization or so present. And so I think that makes us notwithstanding our physical insignificance potentially tremendously valuable. And now I'm nervous again, because now you've...

I was feeling this great sense of calm, and now you've basically said that I am a one in a quintillion event and that I should take everything I do very seriously, and clearly I haven't. So now I feel terrible. No, I was asked. I was asked, right. Can't you lie? What's your problem, man?

I was asked. Don't kind lie. Well, reality is brutal. Yeah. But I was asked to give a little video thing to the intro to the COP26 meeting, the climate change meeting in Glasgow. And it was... The brief was if you get the chance to speak to these world leaders in a little intro video,

what do you want to say to them? And the message was that, ultimately, I said that if you think about meaning, we all ask, what does it mean? That's what you're talking about, really. Are you thinking about what does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be a living thing in this massive universe? And meaning, what is it, right? Whatever it is, it emerges from brains, right?

It's a property of conscious things. And so if there is nothing else, there's nowhere else in our galaxy of 400 billion suns where atoms have come together to think, which when you put it like that, it's a tall order. That's what we ask, collections of atoms that can think. Then if we mess this up, if we destroy ourselves through inaction or deliberate action, then we may remove meaning from a galaxy of 400 billion stars. And we may be responsible for that.

So I think, actually, that your view, both these views are right, it's the combination of feeling humble and physically insignificant, so the universe doesn't revolve around us and you're right, it doesn't care whether we're here or not. But at the same time, this might be the only place where anything thinks for billions of light years, millions of light years in every direction. And that's important. So we have a tremendous responsibility. Yes.

Even if there is life out there, we have to take into the account that they may have made themselves extinct because of behavior like the behavior that we're exhibiting on this planet. There's a thing called the Drake equation that the great Frank Drake wrote down, and it was just an attempt to say, could we estimate the number of civilizations that might be present that we could communicate with in our galaxy, instead of things like the number of stars, number of planets, how long it takes, how many on planets, as you said, that have liquid water and things in the right distance from the star, does life evolve, what's the

probability? So just making you think. But at the end, there's a, it's L, which is the lifetime of a civilization. You know, if you go back to my great heroes, actually, Richard Feynman, who's one of the great physicists I would have never recognized, and Oppenheimer, actually, I've got more and more interested in Oppenheimer, fascinating character, ran the scientific bit of the Manhattan project. He's responsible in Los Alamos.

In Los Alamos, yeah. The bomb. And in the fifties, they both reflected, there's a wonderful essay by Feynman called The Value of Science, which he's on the web. You can just look it up. If you type Feynman, The Value of Science, you'll get it. And ultimately, he's worried that the knowledge that we have acquired, we've been, science has given us, the knowledge our civilization has, exceeds our wisdom, so we have too much

power for our morality and our wisdom and our intellect can't deal with the power that we have. And so they thought they were surprised to be around in the fifties, and they were right to be surprised. And that's before the Cuban Missile Crisis. So it could, it really could be almost a law of nature that when intelligence species begin to learn and therefore require power, that they deploy the power in a way that just wipes them out, maybe civilizations only have a lifetime of a thousand years or 2,000 years

or 10,000 years, that would essentially mean that we're, still, it would mean that we're alone because all the other ones have been brief lights that flicker out of existence. And it's a, you know, what a tremendous shame after four billion years that we would, through our own stupidity, essentially, remove meaning from this corner, at least, this little corner of the galaxy, because we're idiots, basically. Well, that, you know, the other possibility is that we don't end life here, but we end human species. This is a theory that, that I came to know after closely studying the movie Planet of

the Apes. Oh, God. I'm sorry. We all have our own, we all have our own forms of education, our own universities. You know, you're studying particle physics at the University of Manchester and teaching it. And pretty much everything I know from, basically, the first Planet of the Apes movies. The other ones kind of lose me.

Is that the Charlton Heston one? Yes, Charlton Heston's in the first one, and it ends with him, well, I don't want to spoil it. Hey, if I'm spoiling Planet of the Apes for anyone out there, then you're an idiot. You did it, you did it, you blew it up, damn you, damn you, and because he sees the Statue of Liberty, basically humans wipe themselves out and then things start over again and apes are ascended. I don't think so because I think if you look at the history of life on Earth, and we as

a species, a quarter of a million years old or something like that, 250,000-ish, and I've got a friend who's a biologist and he studies these things, evolutionary biology, and he likes to say that in that sweep of stars that you can see in the night sky, all there will be there at best is slime, because slime is probably the default with life. You know, if you look at the history of life on Earth, it was single-celled, just single-celled things, probably 3 billion years or so of the 3.8 that there's been life on Earth. So for most of it, it didn't bother, it just sat there as a soup. Sure.

Why should it? Yeah, I mean, it's, so slime is the de facto form of life in most places. It was on Earth, right? On Earth, right? 75% of the time or more, it was just slime, and it's only in the last 500 million years that anything complex has been around, and then it's only in the last, if you think about it, what, 200,000 years or so that anything has been around with it, with the brain capacity like ours.

So I don't think it's the case that if you just wipe us off the planet, then something else will suddenly be inventing iPhones and things in, given a few thousand years. It's very, it looks very unlikely. So we look like a freak of nature, our presence on this planet. You know, I talk to my father about this all the time, but, you know, my father's father, if you think about it, in my grandfather's lifetime, I think he died in 1976, he saw us land on the moon. They detonate the atomic bomb at Los Alamos.

He sees Elvis Presley show up, then the Beatles, people's hair gets long, we're landing on the moon, you know, Abba becomes a huge fan of Abba, sees every show. No, he didn't. I would just love to throw that in there, but my mind, I can't ponder the galaxy, but I also can't ponder what my grandfather saw in one lifetime. Yeah. And actually Feynman, in the essay, The Valley of Science, he didn't have the internet, of course, but he thought about this, what can, what lessons can this tremendously successful

way of looking at the world teachers in our wider society? So is there anything applicable, a transferable skill, that nature forces into you that you can then use? And he said there is, that the most important thing is what we started with, is admitting that you don't know, and he called it, he said, science is a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, which I thought is a beautiful definition of science. And he said, he used this wonderful word, he said, that's, you know, we keep asking about the meaning of it all, and you get all these people, like you said at the internet,

you're uncertain, everybody knows how to do it, everybody knows how to run a country, everybody knows how they should behave, what God they should worship, and so on, everybody knows this, knows it. And he said, no, it's the open channel. The open channel is to admit that we don't know and understand that therefore our responsibility is to leave something for future generations to discover, to leave, admit that we don't know now, and therefore, our responsibility is to hand over our civilization and our planet to the next generation intact, so that they can acquire some more knowledge and find

out a bit more. But it requires you to, that requires you to say, I might be wrong here, right? That's what you said, that's what democracy is. So if you think what democracy actually is, it's admitting that we don't know how to run a country, because it's too hard. So every four or five years, we change. Right? The very act.

And often when we, every four or five years, we often decide to go in the opposite direction of the one we were just headed in, in the previous election. Which is actually good, because if you didn't, you think about the alternative. The alternative is you go, you plow on in one direction, when we've already established and we all understand that we don't know how to do it, we don't know how to choose that direction. So that means though, that for people like, well, anyone who's listening, let's say that the government that's in at the moment, you don't really like, let's say you like the

other side. The fact that they're there and you don't like them means that you're free. It means you live in a free country. The moment every single government is a government that you like, that's a signal that you're no longer free, because one path has been chosen and it never changes. So we have to celebrate the fact that sometimes it goes against us, which is very hard in today's polarized world. And we get ever more extreme governments and they do things we really don't like.

But every time that happens, as long as it swings back, as long as the pendulum comes back again, then you should actually celebrate the fact that it swings against you. First of all, I love that concept. I think I've mentioned this before, but George Washington, who everyone agreed was the best potential leader of his time in a very unified, we just, apologies, but we just beat the British and now we're- Apologies. Oh, I'm sorry.

I know you're a big fan of- An evolution. Exactly. An evolution. The pendulum swinging. Yeah. The pendulum swinging. But just to say it again, we defeated you, and by the way, I wasn't even here.

I was in Ireland throwing a potato at someone who was throwing a potato at me, but I love that I always point out to people that by the time Washington had his second term, he was every day reading absolute crap about himself, and people were bitching and whining and saying, he's gone, I don't like him anymore. He was the first guy, and Washington had a difficult second term, and then the person who follows him gets one term because no one likes Adams, and then that's just we're off and running. That's the very beginning.

It's a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, and the reason that it comes from science is because nature clearly doesn't care. Nature's very complicated. It doesn't care what you think. It doesn't care what your opinion is. It doesn't care what your title is. So what you learn, when you start doing research in science as a student, what you learn is your opinion is completely worthless because nature tells you that, and that's what Feynman

and Oppenheimer meant. That's the transferable skill. He's knowing there is something you can be wrong, and you're usually wrong, and you can't argue with nature. When you hear people that have opinions on climate modeling, for example, climate modeling is very difficult, and it's hard to do, but having an opinion on it when you don't really know about it is like having an opinion on the shape of a wing in an aircraft. You rarely see people running down the aircraft, actually, to the captain, going like, it's

my right to land this plane. I'm going to land this plane. I know you're an expert in everything, but we don't trust experts anymore, and you're all biased, and so I'm going to land a plane, and that happens rarely. I've been escorted out of a cockpit three times, and I said, my reasoning was I'm a celebrity kind of, and as a celebrity, I have every right to land this 747, and it's never gone, by the way, it's never gone well, don't do it. That's what you learn from science.

I think the reason, actually, that science education is really valuable is not that people need to know all the stuff that I said about 13.8 billion years old universe and two trillion galaxies. It doesn't really matter whether people know that, but what you do need to know is the process by which we acquire reliable knowledge. It's important to have reliable knowledge. It's not necessarily right, but it's the best you can do. It's a good question to ask, if we carry on behaving as we are, and we put this number

of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, what will the climate be like in 50 years? That's a good question. We need to know that. The only way you can do it is by acquiring some knowledge about how the gases behave and building some computer models and trying your best, and you might not get it right. You probably won't. It's really complex, but what's the alternative? Like you said, you just get a panel of celebrities to sit there and go, what do you think?

What do you think? You sold a million records. What's your view? You know, you could do that. Well, first of all, I think we should do that. Oh, no. I happen to know many celebrities, and I can think of no better group of people to decide. Name them.

Who would they be? Eric Eidle. Eric Eidle. Yeah. And as I mentioned, one of the women from ABBA, I don't remember which one. Annetta. Yes. Annetta.

Yes. She's the one that, you're right. How did you know? Because I was into ABBA. You know, I never even learned their names, and neither was a Benny and a Bjorg, and then ... No, beyond. Not Bjorg.

Bjorg's the standard. Listen. Let's admit that we can never really know the members of ABBA. Let's just admit now that Frida, Annetta, Benny, and Bjorg. Wow. That's impressive, and I think you're pronouncing it wrong. You're saying ABBA. Isn't it just ABBA?

Oh, I don't know. Oh, okay. It's Swedish. Or maybe, yeah, maybe you are. Listen, no, it needs to be like, it's Annetta, and the A is either Annetta. I am going to, again, say that I, as I think maybe the real scientist here, will admit that we can't really know how to pronounce ABBA, and we can't really ever know for sure. And this is with great humility, who the members of ABBA are.

We can't know. We can build models that will predict who they are. How about I just Google it? Well, but Google, how do we know? That's you showing a great deal of hubris. The members of ABBA, Agnetha, Agnitha, yeah, Anifrid, Bjorn, and Benny. And Anifrid is Frida, yeah, because then it'd be ABF, ABF, wouldn't it? I just loved it.

This is my favorite conversation in a while, and it's been completely derailed by us figuring out who's in ABBA. It took me 10 seconds. Oh, I love that. You were talking about Eric, Idle. Before the Monty Python live shows that they did in London, the big reunion shows, we'd had this ongoing joke, because I always have a go at them about the galaxy song, because I always say that it's inaccurate.

So his lyrics, and he said, it's not my fault you scientists keep changing stuff, because I wrote it in the 80s. Is this in meaning of life? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just remember that you're a science writer now. And so we had this joke. So he said, you know Stephen Hawking, don't you? And I said, yeah, I know him a bit.

And he said, well, can you ask him if he'll be in a sketch, a comedy sketch? So I emailed Stephen and said, you know, the pythons want you to be in a sketch. And he got back straight away and said, yeah, huge fan. So we went to Cambridge and to his office. And Eric had written this sketch where after the galaxy song at the live shows, I come on the screen by the river in Cambridge and say, well, of course, this is inaccurate. It's terrible because the earth doesn't go in a circle around the sun. It goes in an ellipse and they say, oh, no, no.

But in the distance, there's this little speck and it's Stephen in his wheelchair and he comes flying along the river, knocks me over, knocks me to the ground and then says, you're being pedantic. And then he starts singing the galaxy song. So we did it. We filmed it in Cambridge. We spent the whole day in Stephen's office and talking to him. But we didn't talk to him about the mysteries of the universe or anything.

We just had a laugh about this stupid joke and it was the most hyphenous thing. And when we got out at the end of the day, we thought, I think somehow we've wasted an opportunity. I know you were in a room the whole day with Stephen Hawking. You have Brian Cox in a room with Stephen Hawking. And this is a chance for you two to really try and get to something. And I'm sure you're talking about what's the best way to shoot this joke. Yeah.

How should I fall? How should you fall? When he hits me. And that was it. That's what we wasted the whole opportunity. Maybe not. Maybe you got to something even more important because shooting comedy, I think a few things are more important in shooting comedy and how it's done.

I actually believe that. You really do. I do. I mean, that's my religion. Getting back to Stephen Hawking. Yes. I do wonder sometimes someone like yourself or Stephen Hawking. Or anyone whose job is to contemplate these immense ideas and the vastness of it all.

But then at the same time, you're in traffic in Los Angeles going to Conan's podcast and you're irritated. You asked, could I please get rye toast and they bring you sourdough at the restaurant. Does what you're contemplating help you as a human being in day to day life? I started life as a musician, so I was basically spinal tap for a while, getting upset about the bread. That's right. Yeah.

That's interesting. I want to point out that you didn't buckle down in your studies and you were pretty seriously into rock music, right? Yeah. The first time I came here to LA, I was 18, so it'd be 1986 or something like that. And I was in a band. We were recording our first album with an A&M record, so I was in a rock band. So I didn't go to university until I was 23, although I'd been interested in astronomy.

Did you know that you had this facility then? I was just interested in it. And actually, when I talk to kids, students, I always say that a lot of it isn't a kind of weird, I don't know, special talent if you want to be a scientist. You're just being interested and then being prepared not to kid yourself that you understand something. The real skill, which is something that you learn, is to be able to admit that you don't know and say, okay, I don't understand this.

I'll try again. I'll try again. I'll try again. That's the only way that anybody gets to a deep understanding. Nobody just understands it. It's not magic, this stuff. It's just being able to be honest, actually, and keep going until you find a way of teaching yourself and understanding it yourself.

What was the name of your band? We had a band called Der. You can only say it in there, because we're from Manchester, so we call it Der. How do you spell it? D-A-R-E. Okay. Der. Oh, Der.

It was a tremendously stupid thing to call a band that you wanted to do well in the States, because none of us with our accent could actually say it. It sounds like, what do you call, Der? Der? Yeah, Der. That's what I say. So it was Der that I was in, which is Der, and we grew out of Der. And then people would say to you, kid, have you thought about particle physics?

Name your band something. Maybe rock and roll isn't your thing. Someone can pronounce. But it came out of the keyboard player from Thin Lizzy formed the band. Oh my God, Thin Lizzy. You're a great band. So after Lizzy split up, then he formed this band. The boys are back in town.

The boys are back in town, which I played once on stage. We stuck Scott Gorin playing guitar, which is kind of the fantastic. I'm sorry. So brilliant. So I love me explaining to you how the song goes when you played it as part of your repertoire. So that was my history, and then that band split up. We had a fight in a bar, proper in Berlin, which is the way you're supposed to split up.

I can't even imagine you getting angry. You seem like such a pleasant, perpetually pleasant person. Yeah, I was kind of observing the fight. I was sitting there seeing the other band. It was, you know, the lead vocalist and the lead guitarist. That's what happens. Those are the two. Vocalist, guitarist.

Page and plant. Not getting along. Yeah. So then I went to university after that. And then joined another band at university called D-Ream, which is easier to pronounce. It's all night. It's a dream with punctuation in it. D-Ream.

We had a number one hit, actually. You did? Yeah, in the UK. I won't call it. Things can only get better, which, by the way, is bullshit. Yeah, it's just not true. The second law of thermodynamics tells you that things get worse. It's called the increase in entropy.

So I really should have corrected it at that point. Why don't you just put down in the title and the parentheses? Like, things can only get better parentheses, an exploration of the diametrically opposed opinion in the second law of thermodynamics, closed parentheses, that's how it shows up on the jukebox. Catchy. So that's what I should have done, or at least had it on the back cover. But that was the number one hit, and Tony Blair used it in his 1997 election campaign.

You're kidding. Yeah. So you guys made it? We made it. Yeah, eventually, with the band that I joined at university, we ended up on top. We have a thing in the UK called Top of the Pops, which is the thing that everybody wants to be on. And it'd been one of my ambitions.

So one of them was go to NASA and go to things like JPL here in California, and the other one was to be on top of the Pops. And I managed to do that. My God. I achieved both, ultimately. Did you live the hedonistic rock and roll lifestyle for a while? Well, yeah, in the 80s and 90s, I mean, we were 18, 19, 20s, band from Oldham. I hadn't been out of the country, but the first time I came out of the country was to

come here to record an album. Because we'd only just got a McDonald's, it was one of the great things in Oldham where I lived. McDonald's came, and he was like, what? What is this? Exotic food. It was the most exciting thing that had happened in Oldham. I just measured it.

It's exactly a quarter pound. I mean, it wasn't exactly the most, because Oldham, we invented the Industrial Revolution as well in Oldham, Manchester. So after inventing the industrial world, the next most interesting thing that happened was McDonald's came. Can you swear on your podcast? Just bleep it out. Oh yeah.

Go for it. I'd say the first professional gig that I did was supporting Ginny Page. Oh my God. It was a tour called Outrider that he did. This would be after the breakup, Led Zeppelin breaks up in 1980. This was 1988. Yeah. So this is obviously a project without Zeppelin, yeah.

And Jason Bonham played drums, actually, so we ended up at Hammersmith, and anyone who follows music, Hammersmith, like the head album, those late-time Hammersmiths, so Hammersmith Apollo, or Odeon, as it was, I think, then it was just one of those things, and we supported Ginny Page. And so we're in the bar, and my band are from Oldham. This is talking about accents, and my roadie, my keyboard roadie is called Billy, and he was very Oldham. So he's like, right, I'm going bar, going bar, I'm going drink, bar, right.

So he went to the bar, the backstage bar, and someone kind of pushed in, and he went, Oi, fuck off, fuck off, my round. And he was George Harrison. No! So George said, I haven't been told to fuck off since 1962, and bought us all drinks. That's fantastic! And I told Eric that, you know, because Eric Heidel was a big friend of George Harrison. Sure, he was a good friend.

Yeah, that's George. That is exactly George. So we had this wonderful sort of hour, sat with George Harrison, because my Oldham roadie had gone, my round! So, fuck off! And you know what, it's funny to think about it, because, yes, that 1962 would have been the last time that anyone told anyone in the Beatles to fuck off. Yeah.

You know, I do want to get to just, because I feel remiss if I don't ask you just a few specifics, particularly on, say, climate change, because I think about this all the time, changing, humans changing their patterns is can't be the only answer, because I don't trust in our ability to do it. Are you a believer that there's technology out there, that there are ways that we can be eating carbon, that we can be creating devices, that we can be creating systems, that in addition to us changing our behavior, would help reduce greenhouse gases? Yes, so there are, there's something called carbon capture and storage, for example, that

people look at for coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, where you can, if you want to spend the money, capture the emissions, and then bury them, essentially, take them out. So, and you're right that it's a difficult challenge, because, you know, at one level, so energy use, you kind of allude to it, is a good thing, if you, in that, if you look at the places where, you know, infant mortality is the lowest or lifespan is the highest and people live a high quality of life, then it's places where energy is used. So what you kind of allude to it, it's not, it's sustainable to just say, right now, the

world is going to stop developing now, because you're right, we've, in the US and Europe, we've developed and there are places that would like to have access to more energy, just even clean water, which requires energy. So the key thing, though, is to go back to something I said earlier, which is nature really doesn't care, nature doesn't, it doesn't have morality, actually. So it might be, it's, it might be unfair that we will have a problem if we carry on on this trajectory that we're on, but we do have a problem. And so, and I think you're right, ultimately, there'll be a, it must be a combination of

behavioral change and technology, so cleaner energy. You know, there's a big project, which CERN are involved in, which is one of the places that I work in, in, in Switzerland, there's a big project in France called ETER. Do they have the Collider? Yeah, that's the Collider, the Large Hadron Collider. But they're also involved in a big project called ETER, which is a fusion reactor. So it's a, it's a, it's a nuclear fusion reactor design, which is being built now. And that is, if it works, is going to be part of the answer.

Because it's, instead of having sort of dirty nuclear power as it were, so using uranium and things like that that are toxic, what that does is what the sun does. So it just takes hydrogen and makes helium, basically, give or take. And so the waste products is give or take, you know, the stuff you put in party balloons, right? So, you know, lots of parties. But the number of birthday parties in the world will multiply by 10,000-fold. It's a bit more, as always, it's a bit more complicated than there are some problems with.

But broadly speaking. No, no, no, you had me at party balloons. You think people are going to go fill up their balloons with this, this... Yeah, I think people are going to be celebrating their birthdays every day of the year, just to try and offset this, this, this pretty harmless gas. Yeah, so there are ways that we know, there are ways of generating energy, releasing energy that works. If this works, when will we know if it works within a year or two?

Well, it's in construction now, so it's, you know, it's a sort of 10-year timescale. That's just investment, really. I mean, there was a, I did a, I made a documentary once and I think it's still right. So at the time I made it in 2014, the US invested more money in pet grooming than in fusion research. Oh my God. So my answer was, just why don't you just comb your own cat? And the payoff will be to solve the world's energy needs forever, you know.

But it is true that, you know, I think there is a mismatch in the way that we spend effort and money. Of course, of course. That being one example. We could solve a lot of these problems, we know, we're clever, we can solve these problems. But I'm not naive, I know that it's complicated. I know that there are complex issues with them. I mean, I mean, Australia quite a lot and it's controversial there because a lot of

people work in mining, for example. And it's not okay just to say, well, you can't work in mining anymore, we're not going to do anything about it. We're just going to shift everything to something, you know, I know that politics is complicated. But ultimately, I go back to that point that nature just doesn't care whether politics is complicated. Right. If we carry on doing what we're doing, as far as our models are concerned, we will raise

the global temperatures to a point where it becomes pretty uncomfortable for us. And very uncomfortable for some people. Are you seeing this in the next 30 years, the next 25, 30 years or 50 years? The projections, I mean, you should look online for the latest ones, but we were still trying to keep the temperature rise below about two degrees above the pre-industrial level, which doesn't sound very much, but that causes problems. And what the people I know who work in this area say that one of the problems is that we can't be apocalyptic about it.

That has to be hope. And it's true that global emissions are reducing or the trend is beginning to plan. So the key message is that we can do it. We're not locked in to a horrendous future. It can be done, but it needs political action. It needs investment in things like fusion and battery research and solar power, all those things. You need to do all that as well.

And the behavioral change, you need to do some of that. But together, if you do all those things, then the projections I see are reasonably optimistic that we can control it. And so we have to believe in the... That goes back to what we said at the start. We have to believe in the fact that we can acquire knowledge that's not political. It doesn't depend on your points of view or your morality or whatever it is. There is knowledge about nature that exists that we can access. And the great triumph of our civilization over the last couple of hundred years has

been to develop a way of accessing and acquiring that knowledge. And so we can solve these problems if we want to, or we can spend lots of money washing our dogs, not washing our dogs, not washing our own dogs, but getting someone else to wash our dogs, which was... There was literally... There's another one actually, which is that there's that expression in how we spend peanuts on that. It's actually true that we spend more on peanuts than we do on nuclear fusion research. So we literally spend peanuts on it. Well, fusion is just one of them.

Peanut butter is fantastic. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let's just... I think you... Yeah, can I just say you were finishing so strong. And then when you started to... I messed it up with the peanuts. I don't know. When you started to go after peanuts.

I don't know. He lost me at the grooming because I was thinking about my own dog and she needs a haircut. Sona has one dog and spends $240,000 a year having that dog groomed. And you don't even... You don't make half that. No, I don't. I don't make... I'm in debt. Yeah, she's in terrible debt. I'm in crippled debt.

But you brought us back to the beginning, which is lovely because I want to end where we started. You've now spent quite a long time. I've had a fantastic conversation with you. I've very much enjoyed myself. Tell us now, Professor Brian Cox, what it means to you to be Conan O'Brien's friend. I feel intellectually stimulated. Hey.

Hey. That's nice. I'll take that. I'll take that. Thank you. I thought you would forget and I feel like it's been sitting there the whole time. The whole time you keep talking about how we can save the world and I'm like, what's it?

I've got to change this. He said at the beginning, he wasn't sure how he felt about it. That's got to change. It's got to change. It's got to change. I must live forever in the mines. I feel pleasantly surprised. Hey.

Hey, Brian, this has been an incredible treat and I want to come see your tour because I'm a huge fan and I'll make sure I spread the word. Horizons, a 21st century space odyssey. Yeah. It is a breath of fresh air to talk to you. It's really fun and hopeful and funny. It's all those good things and I swear to God, trust me on this. You'll never, ever be sure who's in ABBA.

It's knowledge that can never be known by man. We didn't talk about black holes. If you threw ABBA into a black hole, then... If you threw ABBA into a black hole... According to our current understanding, then in the very far future, when the black holes evaporated away, we could reconstruct them from the Hawking radiation. So they're never destroyed. So ABBA would never be destroyed.

Now, would they be reconstructed as 1977 ABBA or would they be reconstructed as 2022 ABBA? All of those... the whole lifetime of ABBA would be reconstructable, we think now, from the Hawking radiation, which is a great... which I'm going to talk about. Can we eliminate the Mamma Mia phase? Oh, what? Well, I'm sorry. How dare you? That is unbelievable.

I'm just sorry. I don't go along with the premise. Doesn't know who the father is. You can't do it. It seems that... There's three guys. I'm sorry. I just went so off the rails at the last second.

Brian, I apologize. What is it? What is it, Larry? Mamma Mia. You mean the musical too? The musical and the movie? Sure. Yeah.

How dare you? I haven't seen it. Well... It's fun. We won't get into it just now. That's a good time. Listen. This is a real question.

People are just... Yeah. Everyone should fast forward to the end. When we throw Abba into a black hole, they're reconstructed as all Abbas from all phases, but somehow the Mamma Mia phase is removed. It implies that they're holograms, but we can talk about that next time. You've got to come back. Yeah.

And also, you'll be defending the... Well, so next Monday... No. That was early. No. Three... It was early. Three, two, one.

Oh. Here we go. Three, two, one. Great. What the fuck? Jesus. Why don't you... he should do the clap. I'll judge you doing the clap.

It's a lot of pressure to do the clap, right? Let me explain to people, in case we ever use this, that you need to do a sync clap. If one of us isn't here, Sona and I are in studio, Matt Gorley is in Pasadena. I won't give the exact street, because I think he'd be attacked immediately. You don't know it. Yeah. And I have no idea what it is. I've been there once, but he made me wear a blindfold because he didn't want me to know

where he lives. I sure don't. But anyway, yeah. Anyway, we have to do a sync clap to make sure that we are all in audio sync, and Eduardo counted you down for the clap, and your clap was way off. He did three, two, one, and you did it like that, and so you did it in three and a half instead of what would have been four. And so I was just making fun of your clap, and then you did another clap, which wasn't

great. I think your tempo's weird. It's a lot of pressure, because they're counting down, and it's a lot of pressure, because you're like... It's not a lot of pressure. There couldn't be less pressure. But the countdown involved in anything, it's nerve-wracking. There's never been less pressure.

We're in a podcast studio. All you have to do is clap. If you don't get it perfectly right, we do it again. There is pressure, though, because you're going to ride her ass super hard if she gets it wrong. Thank you. Yeah, because... Yeah, and then you're here right next to me, and I can tell you're judging.

So, Matt, you zoomed in just so you could take Sonya's side. Yeah, I got to run. I came what I came to do. I got to go. Hang in there, girl. Matt zoomed in. Don't leave me. I can't believe he zooms in.

He's like, the cavalry comes in, and it doesn't save me, just immediately puts a blister in my head. What do you need to be saved with, though? What did you get? See, you're the oppressor here. Let me help you. Eduardo, give me the countdown, and I'll give you the correct. Go.

Here we go. Three, two, one. That's right on time. That is called... Is that good? That is called a perfect... You know what, though, he's also... He's really trying right now. You've never clapped that... Confidently, you've never clapped that loudly before. It's called having a sense of time and tempo.

You don't have that. You are born without it. I don't know what happened to you as a child, and I'm sorry, but we shouldn't rely on Sona anymore for the clap sync. What do you think, Matt? I think you're wrong. I believe in Sona. I think we can do this.

Sona. Eduardo, clap her in again, and Sona, you've got this. I don't want to do it again. Okay, I can do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'm looking at you. You're the worst.

Go ahead. You're the worst, worst, worst to be next to right now. I hate this so much. Sometimes the worst is also the best. This is so much. My hands are shaking. My hands are shaking right now. I'm so nervous.

Three, two, one. That was perfect. Felt a little early. Eduardo, what do you think? Be honest. It was really good. Eduardo, oh my God. Eduardo, be honest.

Be honest. Be honest. Here's what I proposed. Why don't you guys do it at the same time without looking at each other and see who's more on? Okay. Eduardo, count a seat. Three, two, one.

I mean, you're both put in sync. That was tight. Yeah. I was perfectly in sync. And then you saw me. Shut up. No. I didn't mean to say shut up.

I don't like it when people say. I do. I'll just say shut up. Say good month. All you say to me is shut up. Good month. Is that what you say to your kids when they're being too harsh? I say good month.

Good month. Yeah, slowly, gently. I think that you. Good month. Good month. You were waiting for me to mess up the clap. You were looking at me. You couldn't wait.

And then when I went too fast, you like dove in. And I think that you're creating a very hostile work environment. And I don't like it. And I want to go cry in the bathroom. Hey, Sona, maybe you can cancel him for his clap pressure. And this could be like a landmark case of canceling. Yeah. This is what gets me.

Yeah. This is what takes me down is that publicly shamed you for being off tempo with your clap. Can I ask you like a serious question? Yeah. Were you ready to scrutinize my clap? Nope. Not at all.

I just heard it and it didn't sound right. Now, Eduardo picked up on it too. I could see in his eyes, Eduardo has very expressive eyes and they welled up with disappointment. You did it. You immediately as soon as I clapped, jumped in and criticized me for it and I don't like it. Sona, Sona, Sona. I think you're an incredible person.

Listen to me. That's the worst. No, no, listen. I hate this. Hold on. I think you're an incredible person, but you do have some flaws and one of them is terrible clap tempo. Awful.

Maybe the worst I've ever seen. I'm never doing that again. I just want everybody here to know I'm never doing the clap thing again. Okay. And that's the end of this segment in three, two, one. Perfect. I taught you well. You didn't teach me anything.

Peace out. Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Salotaroff and Jeff Ross at Team Cocoa and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Year Wolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.

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