Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Can Science Save Us? Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees (#271)

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

In his most recent book If Science is to Save Us, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees argues that, in his expert and personal analysis of the scientific endeavor on which we all depend, that we need to think globally, we need to think rationally and we need to think long-term, empowered by twenty-first-century technology but guided by values that science alone cannot provide. In this timely work, Lord Rees details how there has never been a time when ‘following the science’ has been more important for humanity. He warns that our world is so interconnected that a collapse - societal or ecological - would be a truly global catastrophe. So it’s ever more crucial to ensure that science is deployed optimally, and that brakes are applied to applications that are dangerous or unethical. At no other point in history have we had such advanced knowledge and technology at our fingertips, nor had such astonishing capacity to determine the future of our planet. Therefore, decisions we must make on how science is applied belong outside the lab and should be the outcome of wide public debate. For that to happen, science needs to become part of our common culture. Science is not just for scientists: if it were, it could never save us from the multiple crises we face. For science can save us, if its innovations mesh carefully into society and its applications are channelled for the common good. Martin Rees is the UK's Astronomer Royal. He is based at Cambridge University where he is a Fellow (and Former Master) of Trinity College. He is a member of the House of Lords, and a former President of the Royal Society. His research interests include space exploration, black holes, galaxy formation, the multiverse and prospects for extraterrestrial life. He is co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risks at Cambridge University (CSER). In addition to academic publications, research papers he has written many general articles and ten books, most recently 'On the Future: Prospects for Humanity'. Watch the video of this episode here: https://youtu.be/0GNxaMZry28 Connect with me: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating  🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! Can you do me a favor? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast:  🎧 On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. 🎙️On Spotify it’s here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2G3PRMUhxGQkyQzLiiCqlf?si=8656119458df4555 🎧 On Audible it’s here : https://www.audible.com/pd/Into-the-Impossible-With-Brian-Keating-Podcast/B08K56PXJX?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp&shareTest=TestShar Other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast -  Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating  or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our Earth has existed for 45 million centuries, but this one is special. It's the first when one species, ours has the planet's future in its hands. Over nearly all of Earth's history, threats have come from nature, disease, earthquakes, asteroids and so forth. But from now on, the worst dangers come from us.

And it's now not just the nuclear threat. In our interconnected world, network breakdowns can cascade globally. Air travel can spread pandemics worldwide within days. And social media can spread panic and rumour, literally at the speed of light. We fret too much about minor hazards. Improbable air crashes, castogens in food, low radiation doses and so forth. But we and our political masters are in denial. about catastrophic scenarios.

Hello, everybody out there in the universe, the multiverse of minds that I call the Into the Impossible Audience. You're in for a tremendous treat. You are going to hear the voice and the wisdom of the astronomer royal, the man who tells the queen her horoscope, or at least he did, until that fateful day when she woke up no more. We talked about the queen and how he knew her, but Lord Martin Rees has been a fixture in cosmology,

theoretical cosmology, but not only that, as a public intellectual, speculating on such varied and variegated topics as the origin of the universe and the impact of pandemics long before the COVID-19 pandemic struck us. Today's conversation is about his book, if science is to save us. We go through the origin, the genesis of that title and of the contents therein. And what Lord Martin is looking forward to in the future of humanity, if we can get our ideas and minds and hearts behind these vexing and challenging. problems. We talked about the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and I refer in the conversation to a video I made called knowledge is not equal to wisdom. We'll have links to that in the show notes,

and discussing the impact of things like prizes, accolades, tenure, citations on the daily affairs of working scientists like yours truly, but also on young people and how they can come up and how they can be inspired by the voices that sometimes get denigrated, like those of, say, Carl Sagan, which we spoke about quite extensively in this conversation. Martin's a delight. He's so eloquent. He's such a genial person who always thinks and speaks in complete sentences. I really don't know how he does it. But he's one of the greatest thinkers and really has been a friend of mine. It was kind enough to blur my first book, losing the Nobel Prize. We talk about that in the book and his feelings on the Nobel Prize. Today, the first Nobel Prizes of 2022 were announced in

October. By the time you're listening to this, his book will be out and I'll have links to get it, and as well as links to his past appearance on the podcast. It's really an honor, such a deep thinker, and I hope you'll enjoy this retrospective look to the past of science's past greatest hits and what to look forward to in the future if we can get our minds and, as I say, our hearts around these vexing challenges. So for now, I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy this deep dive into the impossible with the one and only Lord Martin Reese.

Enjoy. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable. from magic. Open the pod bay doors, please help. Welcome, everybody out there in the wide world of astrophysics, cosmology, philosophy, and really an understanding, anyone who has an understanding and a desire to know more about our natural world and the place that science holds within it, you're in for a treat, talking to a great friend, not only of UCSD science and other phenomena, but really a hero

of mine and many of the really the most proficient, I would say, working theorists and cosmology, really look to Martin, Lord Martin Rees, today's guest, for inspiration and for really a voice of reason and, you know, continually troubled age. So Lord Martin, thank you so much for joining us from the UK. How are you today, sir? I'm fine. It's great to be in touch with you again. It is. And I love all of your books. I've read all of your books. You blurbed one of my books, and we'll get to that later because today is Nobel Prize Day. A week kicks off. It's I call it Christmas for nerds.

And we both have perspectives on, including in this book. And we'll get to the contents of this book and we'll talk about many other things along the way. And we'll probably run out of time before we run out of topics as we often do. It's just such an honor, Martin, to speak with you. But I want to do what I'm told that you should never do, which is to judge a book by its cover. You're just not supposed to do that. That's considered poor form, but I always say, what else do you have to go on besides the cover and the title? And so I always ask my authors who honor me by coming on the podcast, I ask them, as I ask you now,

what was the Genesis, the origin story behind this magnificently illustrated cover, but more importantly, behind the title that you chose for this wonderful new book. So, Martin, if you could indulge us in what I call judging books by their covers. Well, I am going to escape my answer by saying that both of them were chosen by my editor. That's about 80% of the time I hear that answer. Right. Yes. I was not so sure about the title, but I think a playing cover is okay. So I'm not unhappy with it. When I read the title, so the title, if science is to save us, there's a lot loaded into that title.

So can you walk us through the meaning of the title? Yes. Well, my theme really is that our everyday world has only come about because of the science of the last century or two. But science is now more empowering and that has both good and bad possibilities. So the stakes are very high and what we could do obviously is to harness science and provide a better life for everyone in the world than we in the West have at the moment. On the other hand, there are disasters which can be triggered by the misapplication of science. So the stakes are getting higher. This is a theme I've talked about in the past, but I feel more and more concerned.

But in this book, I discuss not only those concerns, but the scientific community, how it reacts to threats, how it interacts among itself, and the interaction. between science and politics and the wider public. All of those are important topics. And I've had experience in my later years of being involved in scientific organizations and also in a bit of politics. So the book is really a mixture of science and how it's applied and its social consequences. So when I first received the book, I couldn't help but thinking, you know, Lord Martin is a member of the House of Lords and this common refrain that I've never really quite understood maybe you can walk me through it. God save the queen. And I couldn't help but be reminded of that phrase. It came into my mind. And this is in early mid-August when I received the

book. And of course, we're talking in early October. The queen, sadly, is no longer with us. I wondered if you could explain or just what was your relationship? You once joke with me. And I steal this joke, but I usually give you attribute. I always give you attribution because it can't apply to anybody else. But you once told me as a joke that your job is a strong. was to tell the Queen her horoscope. So I can't say I've ever done that. So I always give you attribution as a good academic should. But Martin, what was she like?

To what extent did you know her? Did you get to know the personal side of her? And what does her passing mean not only for the Great Britain, but what does it mean, if anything, to science itself? Yes. Well, let me say, I didn't know her personally, but I met her on a number of occasions, once or twice through being a strong royal, but more often because I was a member of some elite body called the Order of Merit, which had regular lunches. And when I was president of Royal Society,

we celebrated our 350th anniversary. And it was quite a big jamboree where we had seven members of the royal family there, etc. So I had some contact, but normally in a sort of official context. So I wouldn't claim to have known her. But I think if you ask what her impact was, the fact that most people can't remember a time when she wasn't around as queen indicates that she's been a stable aspect of life in this country despite all the changes and so it is really the end of an era and of course since she started as queen very young and served for 70 years it's unlikely that we'll ever

in the next 200 years even if the technology continues have someone serving for so long. But it was a very special reign that she managed to keep the respect of everyone for all that period. Yeah. Yeah, I just think of her with such great digna. My mother met her back in sometime in the 60s for, you know, 10 seconds, but it had this lifelong effect on her. And I wonder, you know, if I could pivot extremely quickly.

Just to a notion that I've had recently, which is the state of, which runs throughout this wonderful book, the state of science in the United Kingdom, both on the synoptic, you know, grand overview, but but also down in the in the weeds a little bit. As you know, the Great British Pound has fallen precipitously. There's a new prime minister, as I understand it. I don't know how all these things work. It's very shadowy to us in the United States. We just have simple things like an electoral college that's representative based on gerrymandering. Anyway, I don't want to get into U.S. politics. But there's been a lot of turmoil economically. There's been Brexit. There's been the new prime minister, the overthrow of the previous prime minister, his formed government has dissolved.

And now your new prime minister, I've been thinking venally that now might be a great time for U.S. institutions to kind of scoop up the best of British talent in that we can offer maybe a slightly better caliber of. of monetary performance for things like houses and mortgages that are very important to academicians. You talk about salary and funding scientists in this book. Am I wrong? You know, is it, should I be ashamed of these thoughts, Martin, that I am thinking about who could we poach from the United Kingdom right now, including you maybe, to come to a U.S. institution, possibly to LinkedIn, and extend their careers or make them more enjoyable and to bolster the scientific reputation of the

U.S. Is this shameful behavior by me? Well, you're being very patriotic, but let me just say why I don't resonate. Let me first make clear, I think the present government is an embarrassing disaster. I can support the conservative party, but this lot are heading off in the wrong direction. But the reason I don't resonate with your view is that I feel that their problem is they are trying to trying to ape the US too much. And it's far better to learn more from Scandinavia, which has high tax, strong welfare state, et cetera.

And they're moving away from that. They admire what you're doing here, despite the fact that you have the worst prison system in the Western world and the amazing gun prevalence, etc. And they would do far better if they were to learn from the countries of Northern Europe, in particular, to have good welfare state. and according to the most, uh, upholds the happiest people. So they're heading in the wrong direction. But I think America has led them in the wrong direction in my view.

Well, I have to take it. Oh, I've never, I've never felt tempted. In fact, uh, when I was 30, I got a top profession at Cambridge and I then got offers from two of the American universities, which I declined, of course. But I never got any offers since then. Could be thought my work declined after the after the age of 30 but i think more likely they realized that i was not likely to want to defect to

the u.s right and having seen that though um i would like to acknowledge all that i've benefited from by short visits to the u.s the main centers and of course i've gotten many friends at lehoia and i've written papers with seven of the package at santa cruz and also with many in other places like like princeton and uh and harvard yeah had many many academic connections But in terms of living there outside academia, I've never been tempted at all. Well, I just want to be respectful, but I have to say one of the issues, and this is getting deep into the weeds for my US listeners, but for my UK, I have a sizable audience in the UK. I love the audience. I'm going to visit them and maybe do an event there next year in 2023. But one of the organizations you criticize in this wonderful book is I think the UKRI, which

Again, you kind of say is aping too much of the U.S. kind of meant. But I want to be extremely extra show my extreme gratitude to UKRI because they have just funded the United Kingdom participation in the Simon's Observatory to the tune of many, many, you know, tens of millions of pounds or dollars, I guess we'll say here. And that's to enable transformative science in the very field that you help to kick off, which is the science of CMB polarization. So, so, Mark, don't be too hard on UKRI, okay? They're paying, you know.

No, no, it's good. And of course, we have good scientists in this field. And I think it's very important also to realize that despite Brexit, which was a disaster for the UK and the war, we remain in the great European consortia, the European Southern Observatory, which is building the world's largest telescope, 39 meters diameter, and the European Space Agency, which has had exciting projects like the Planck spacecraft, which you obviously know about. And so, unfortunately, despite Brexit, we remain in those consortia. Absolutely. Okay. So let's go back to the book, Lord Martin. The book is an exposition of the state

of science and the limitations of science. First, I want to start with the, I want to go through it almost talmudically, as I want to do on occasion. So science, the word science comes from, as I understand it, the Latin cientia, which means knowledge. It does not mean wisdom, which is sapiens, which is why we're called homo sapiens. And as I understand it, I may be wrong, but the thing that we have wisdom about sapience of is that we're going to die. We're the only creatures that are aware that life is finite, as smart as my pet, pet, you know, pet, you know, pit bull is. She doesn't know that she's going to die. And I wonder if we sometimes conflate the two wisdom, sapience, and knowledge, science. And in this notion of saving and kind of almost messianic,

if that's really the appropriate realm for scientists to be expected to achieve. What do you think, Martin? Do we put too much of a burden on that word science and scientists? Well, no, I think science, itself, as you say, is ethically neutral. But the point is that it can be applied for benefit or in a damaging way. And the ethical choices will determine whether science does save us or destroy us. That's the whole point of the title. Right. So when science is sometimes, though, conflated with scientists, and you make a clear distinction in this book of the limitations of that. I guess I wonder what drew you to science? What what is I interviewed your countryman Jim Al Khalili not too long ago on the publication of

this wonderful book, the joy of science. We get a lot of pleasure out of science. Most of us would do this job if we didn't get paid for it. Don't tell my governor Gavin Newsom. He's my boss and he will take advantage of you saying that. But what is it that attracts you to science? And what is it that scientists really need? I mean, we get to, you know, we get paid not incredibly well by, you know, Wall Street standard, but we get paid a handsome salary. Even I at a public university in the south of California, you know, I'm very comfortable. But, and we get academic freedom.

We get tenure. And we get basically similar things that were present a thousand years ago when the University of Bologna was started in the year 1080. What does society owe scientists? Let me ask that question. If we are to save scientists, is there an obligation of a society to, quote-unquote, save scientists? Well, I think if we look back over those hundred years, we will see that most of the benefits of everyday life in health, communications, transport, and all the rest can be traced back to often sort of undirected science. it's often said that sciences of two kinds applied and not yet applied.

And so I think everyone can look back and say that the investment made in science and supporting scientists has certainly proved itself a good investment over the last century or not. Of course, it's not so true if you go back further because before the mid-19th century, technology was quite separate. I mean, they could build marvelous cathedrals and steam engines, etc. But that came before any real science. So it's only since the mid-19th century. We've had this symbiosis between academic science and its applications. But I think we can say that it has proved its worth. And, of course, the same people in the universities who do the science,

certainly in the system we have in your country and mine, they are the people who also do the teaching. And so an output of our life's work is not just the research we do, but the students who we hope to educate so that they can take parts not just in science, but in other walks of life where the background is crucial. And of course, one of the themes of my book later on is that everyone needs to have some feel for science

because so much of the world depends on it and so many decisions that we have to take as citizens, whether they be on health, energy or the environment, have a scientific dimension. So science is something which needs to percolate to the wide public, and we need to have the experts to do that as well as to extend the research. You said this place was steps from the water.

We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost! Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected.

When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. You've been kind of a mentor, as I say, a hero. However, you want to phrase it to me and many millions of people around the world. And part of that's because of your, you know, really just tireless, pursuit of science outreach and an explication, which comes not only at the by way of your extreme, you know, eloquent and, and wonderful, you know, capability to deliver the message,

but also because you have authenticity because of your great scientific accomplishments. In America, well, I shouldn't say in America, there are people in other countries as well. But it's almost denigrated to some extent. I had, I have all these finger puppets here, Lord Martin, indulge me with some forbearance while I try. try to find some of them. I'm looking for Carl Sagan. I've got him somewhere in here. I'll put up a Galileo just to make the video watchers happy. So, you know, of course, he was sort of seemed like he was almost punished in some ways. He was a great scientist and also he was a great communicator. And by some reckoning, he received more attention as a scientist by virtue

of the Cosmos series in 1980 than any other scientists before or since because now everything's so fractured, there's 10 million cat videos uploaded to YouTube every second, I'm told. But now, you know, but back then, there was three channels here. And I remember watching it as a kid. By what, you know, kind of, you know, tech tools or by, by what mechanism could we perhaps make it so that scientists are not penalized or look down upon for participating in the public dialogue, which I think we have a moral obligation to do. Since we're getting paid by the public, we have to communicate to the, I mean, imagine you went to tell your dean, you know, you can't understand what I'm, well, you could get away with it. I couldn't get away with it. You don't,

you don't know what I'm doing or you work at Apple and you tell Tim Cook, you can't understand what I'm doing. It's beyond you, you know, as Feynman said, yeah, if it was worth a Nobel, if I could explain it to you, it wouldn't have been worth a Nobel Prize. But so, Lord Martin, can you tell us what, you know, first of all, did you consciously set about in any way to study the craft of communication, marketing, you know, in some way to that, that, you know, could teach the true wonderful script, the greatest story ever written in some ways. Did you ever study the mode by which you can communicate it or are you just preternaturally gifted at that? Well, I'd like to go back and query what you were saying. I mean, I think it is true

and maybe true in America that popularization was frowned on. And I think it's disgraceful the way the American National Academy was so late in giving recognition to Carl Sagan, of whom I was an immense fan. I thought it was wonderful. We need more people like that. And I think I say in my book that we need people like him to lead campaigns. I found him. I'm sorry. I found him in Lurman. And I had his widow, my Adruian, has been a guest on the podcast and his daughter, Sasha Sagan has been a guest on the podcast. It's a family affairs. Sorry to interrupt. Neil Larson has done the sort of updated version. Yeah.

But I think he was a great guy. But if I think back to myself, I mean, I was brought up in the university where many of the greatest figures had been popularizers, especially in my subject. I mean, Fred Hoyle wrote science fiction and he was in my view for 25 years, the world's number one astrophysicist in terms of range of ideas. He went a bit sort of eccentric in his later years, but he was a really great man. And thinking back to earlier generations, another of my direct predecessors was Arthur Eddington, who was famous for his books. And so, and I think in other fields, people like JBS Holden, Bernal, and other people of that kind got through to the wider public. So I think there was always an intermeshing of wider culture with science.

in Britain and I don't think it harms people's reputation at all. I'm sorry if that's the case in the US. Yeah. No, there are, you know, there are kind of, yeah, it's almost like, well, if you are, if you have time and you're a scientist, you know, maybe you'll, maybe you'll teach and maybe you'll put some energy into learning how to be a good teacher and the, you know, modes of pedagogy. But, you know, really we pay you to do research and to get grants and so forth. And maybe we could pivot there to, you know, academia. As a, you know, you know, As I mentioned, you have a lot of opinions about academia and how to improve it both in the UK and elsewhere and the models thereof.

And you kind of reminded me of something maybe I knew, but I didn't really remember. And it's that really in other countries like Germany and some places in Asia and France, they have dedicated research institutes where the scientists work like Max Planck or CRNRS in France, but only in the kind of of other Western countries, maybe Italy and then the UK and England and America, which all trace back to Germany by ironically, the Humboldt institutes and so forth. But how it's possible, like I don't expect my airline pilot, you know, because he's really good at, or she's really good at flying, you know, to be like an expert meteorologist. Okay, there's something to do with meteorology and flying, but, you know, and I'm a, I fly little tiny planes, but, but I'm not a meteorologist. If I did, if I were a meteorologist, San Diego is the ideal place to do it, Martin,

because we basically have one weather icon that we have to put up every day, as you know. Not so for our sports teams. We don't have such good consistency. But why do we come to expect that, you know, because you're a good researcher, you'd be a good teacher. I mean, it happens to be true for people like Faraday and others, but, you know, I don't know that Dirac was a great teacher, right? So can you talk about?

I went to lecture, he wasn't. On the other hand, you know, Feynman was an amazing. at least if you were at a at a Nobel level caliber to understand half of this stuff, not a freshman. But why do we do that? Why do we assume that just because someone's brilliant at that research that they'll make good teachers and then give them no training on how to be a teacher. I've received no training on pedagogy and maybe that's my fault. But why do we assume that, you know, because you're brilliant in the lab or in the computer or the theory space, that you'll be good at teaching? Yes. Well, it's true that there's not a good correlation,

particularly between being good researcher and a good teacher. But nonetheless, I think there is a virtue in the research universities. As you say, the Germans have abandoned it, but we have it in the UK and the US. And incidentally Chinese have adopted it to some extent. Singapore. And it's, I think, it does have, I would say, two virtues. First, it does mean that the best students get exposed, even at the undergraduate level to the best researchers. and that may be important in stimulating them at the frontier, as it were.

But I think it also really has the effect of ensuring that the teachers, the academics, slightly broaden their perspective. And I think there is a risk of excessive narrowness in academia, and if they have to teach or talk to a public audience, it's broader. In fact, I quoted my book the story of Penins and Wilson, that Wilson didn't realize how important discovery was until he read the article in the New York Times by Walter Sullivan saying that what they discovered was the aftergno of creation. He'd been so worried about the technicality, he hadn't realized that. And so that's an example where one does get a better perspective if one does explain one's work to a, or, wider audience. So I think there's a lot to be said for the research university, but having said

that, I think the model is being stressed. And I wrote an article for British magazine a couple of years ago explaining what was going wrong because in universities, there's more than audit culture, promotion is slow, et cetera. And the editor entitled the article, why I'm young, why I'm not So why I'm glad I'm not a young academic. Yeah. And that's because if I think of the time when I was starting, and this would have been true if I'd been in America the same way, there'd been a burst of university expansion in 1960s, the young outnumbered the old, there was still a retiring age, and so promotion was quite quick. Now there's far more an audit culture in both of our our countries and promotion is slow because there are so many people and it's even worse actually in the US in biomedical areas because there was a survey a few years ago which showed that the average age at which people in those fields got their first NIH grant was 43.

43 yeah that contrasted with the earlier situation Shirley Tillman who was the president of Princeton the contemporary of mine she said that she did a PhD in three years three years of as a postdoc and then got a first grant. You can't do that now. And my worry is that because of this slow promotion and congestion in academia, there's a serious problem because the ones who will stay are the nerds who can't do anything else,

but we want to keep in academia at least some fraction of people who are ambitious and flexible, people who want to feel they've achieved something individually by their 30s. And that's far less possible in academia now and it was. And this is, I think, a big worry. Yeah. It's because of the amount of time people have to spend in grant application.

Because whereas until the 70s, there was expansions of the young, outnumber, the old. That's no longer the case. Yeah. And I've spoken with a few folks. I think I spoke to Jim Al Kalili about this and others about, you know, how to rectify it. And some of it was, you know, mandatory actual retirement. I mean, we have people here. I was showing you before we, before we start.

recording. You know, I'm in Jeffrey Burbage's old office here and I've got some of Margaret Burbages. You know, here's a spectrum of a spiral galaxy which showed Doppler shift that she ended up teaching to Vera Rubin. And then Vera Rubin while she was here for a year, learned from the two of them and went on to great fame and success. But I wanted to, you know, then again, pivot once again, back to another direction, which is, which is, you know, kind of this, the role of of incentivization in science. You talk a little bit about, you know, citation counts and all these metrics that we've, you know, really only come about in earnest in the last, you know, few decades. I'm thinking of, you know, for one thing, the H index, which is the H. And I don't know if you knew

this, but the H. And H index comes from Jorge Hirsch, who is a theoretical physicist at UC San Diego, who has a paper about, which ironically has the most citations, I think, of any of his paper. But this has become, you know, what, you know, computer. computer geeks call, you know, gamification. You know, I've got this watch and it tells me how many steps I took today. And if it does, if I don't, if I get to 10,000 steps, I get some like animation, it feels good. And of course, in science, you know, the ultimate, you know, prize, the ultimate accolade, the ultimate, you know, gamified responses to, you know, there comes a limit to, you can't get double tenure. You can't get, you know, multiple, you know, write multiple papers on the same

theme. So it becomes ever escalation from along their academic rank up to academic rank to different national academies. And then maybe if you're lucky, you know, Barry Barish was here a couple of months ago. He left this here, Martin. This is his Nobel. No, it's just a piece of chocolate. But I want to go and analyze a judge one more book by its cover. And that's if you'll indulge me. That's this book, losing the Nobel Prize. Yes. Which is written by yours truly. But it says in the back by by you, you were kind enough to give me one of the first blurbs. In this riveting personal account, Brian Keating writes frankly of the challenges, frustrations, and motivations during the years spent building and operating instruments to tackle one of the fundamental problems in science,

how our universe began. And I'm so grateful for that, Martin. But since that time, you and I've communicated many times. And you told me you love the book, but you really wish I didn't spend so much time on the Nobel Prize. Because you are of the, and I quote you in the book, and I think, you know, our ideas are in resonance. But can you explain for the audience why, why you thought that was a mistake perhaps for me? And I, you know, I'm no way offended by it. I'm eternally grateful for your attention and kind words and your encomium. But why do you think it was a mistake to maybe focus more on that rather than, I don't want to turn this into my favorite subject, which is me, but why do you think it was maybe mistaken to spend, you know, focus on the Nobel

prize as itself, as they did in three of the. 11 chapters. Yes. Well, I was surprised at your perception that most scientists are motivated by that. They are in some fields, I know, and it's very damaging. It leads to real nastiness in some competitive fields. But to go back to what we were saying earlier, science is often assessed by these indicators like citations and all that, which are perverse indicators because they don't measure what's really important. Right. And I suppose the aim is that these prizes do. But my concern really is about the public perception of Nobel Prizes because the public assumes that the people who win the prizes are all sort of near geniuses and they've made some great individual achievement.

And it is misleading in a number of ways. Well, first, any scientific it builds on the work of others. It's never true to say that the guy who scores the goal in football did it by himself. He was helped by the rest of the team. And that's true of all science. And some science is intrinsically collaborative involving a very large team of collaborators. So that's one thing, but that's not properly recognized by Nobel Prizes, although it is by some other prizes have been set up more recently.

So that's one issue. The second issue is that people who get Nobel Prizes are then regarded as at least be-less celebrities. And those are sought on fields where they have no expertise. And they get them greater weight. And this is misleading because they don't have special authority. And of course, one knows that one can find a Nobel Prize winner to support almost any kind of eccentricity so so many of them do and of course some of them are indeed brilliant i mean you know Stephen Weinberg was obviously brilliant person you know you deserved everything he got um but a lot are

just lucky like pence at Wilson and other people who um get gets get get the prize for making some discovery which may be because they had access to a specialist equipment or just serendipity and so the criteria for giving the prize are to recognize an important advance, and it normally succeeds in doing that, but it doesn't give the public a feeling for how an advance is achieved. It's not just one genius working away at it. There are lots of people in Paro. And I give, in my section of the book where I discuss this, two examples where I think it was, it was went wrong. One was the Higgs boson, which the last paper came from Higgs, but it's accepted that there were six people who worked on it independently, and they were built on earlier people like

Phil Anderson, so lots of people involved. And knowing some of these people, I think it's clear that the person among those six who had the most distinguished career overall was someone called Tom Kibble in London. He was a highly respected scientist and he didn't get the prize. Although he had a far more distinguished overall career. That's one thing. And the other example is the case which you're familiar with, one of the few cases where they've given a prize related to the fundamental science derived from astronomy. This was the evidence of the accelerating universe. And here they gave it to two teams.

There were 15 or 20 people in each team. And they gave it to three people, one in one team, two in the other team. And one can see why they chose those people. They're great guys. But that's a case where it should have gone to the whole team. And it's misleading to regard those things. three people who got the prize as the great intellects. Indeed, I could identify at least four people in the teams whose overall record is more

substantial than that of any of the three people who got the prize. Yeah. We've had two of the three winners have been on the podcast. I'm still waiting for Saul to come on. Hopefully someday that might happen. But, you know, on the other hand, to be devil's advocate, you know, I think nobody Bell's advocate. I don't think he ever intended it to take on the prominence that it did have. And again, we're talking today as the first of Nobel season, which is October 3rd, or the

prize for medicine or physiology, was awarded to Svant Pavel. I think it's too many um, um, I can't, you know, I can't be expected. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, it was good. And very distant knowledge of him. Hopefully I can get him on. But the, you know, kind of history of Nobel Prizes are a little bit, a little bit a rogue's gallery, as you point. And not only are there things that are, you know, factually incorrect, say, Boers model of a mini planetary system for the atom, which had predictive power, but ultimately we know now is not the correct description of the quantum realm. But, or, you know, some say Fermi's Nobel Prize is not quite rightly deserved. But speaking of medicine, the lobotomy was awarded with the Nobel Prize,

and now that's regarded as essentially barbaric. But even going further back in time to 1918, the chemistry prize, which you mentioned in this book, was given to Fritz Haber, who was a German Jew, who ended up making the chemical weapons and overseeing it was six other Nobel Prize winners. And I have a video about this in my channel. I'll put a link to it called Knowledge is Not Equal to Wisdom. Because as it turned out, Heber has he went on to have a factory that went on to produce Cyclone B, which was the gas that gassed most of the Jews in the Holocaust, including members of his own family that perished under, you know, his his inventions.

And I wonder, Martin, we do venerate, you know, inventors. Maybe that's, you know, partially the Genesis or etymology of that word. the Steve Jobs is the, you know, the, the, even the Alfred Nobels. And is that something innate in human beings that we need like a hero, you know, we have sports heroes. We have, we have, you know, other heroes in theater and movies. What's wrong with having, you know, a scientist hero that people look up to? Is it, or is it putting like just too much pressure on a single individual?

As you say, most of these are team discoveries, although Svant, today's winner, or run it by himself, which was kind of interesting to me. But what do you make of that, the ideal, you know, to kind of idolize? It just runs in human nature and we'll never get around it. So maybe we, you know, should just make do with the Nobel Prize and all its flaws. Well, I mean, I agree with you. If they are the people who really are exceptional, I mean, of recent ones, I would put Steven Weinberg in that category, for instance.

And no, we're denying he was an exceptional intellect. And there are quite a few who are like that. And Kip Thorne, I put in that category too. So there are quite a number. But my objection is that many of them aren't in that category at all. They're no more distinguished in general than the average academic in the university in some cases. And I think many of them realize this. In fact, I remember talking to a Californian.

particle physicist who got the prize. And he said, he said to me, I think I'm the dumbest Nobel Prize winner. And then he went to say, no, sorry, I correct that. I'm the dumbest physics Nobel Prize winner. There were several chemists who are dumbers. That's right. There's always room to tease chemists as Dirac was wont to do as well. Well, I want to now turn to and to run some ideas by you.

So you're quite critical, rightfully so. in many ways about the modern journal kind of framework where we have the archive and you talk about Ginsburg, you know, Cornell and his monument. And also the Simon's Foundation should be recognized for their support of it with they don't get any, you know, money in return from it. They don't make more, you know, on their hedge fund profits as far as I know. But it's basic, pure scientific philanthropy. And yet we hear things that, you know, it's not good for people to say start other types of prizes like the breakthrough prize or even funding like the simons foundation of the gordon moore foundation and others where you put so much of scientific prioritization in the hands

of you know maybe eccentric billionaires it could turn out that they're collecting you know like how Howard hughes has one of the most you know you mentioned in the book how successful it's been he was pretty eccentric billionaire i think it's safe to call him that i don't think it's a spoiler to anybody So do you worry about that, the prioritization being set by non-governmental agencies? No, you completed two or three different things. I did. I wanted to say, first of all, I think the archive is great. Yes.

And I think perhaps the age of the journal is coming to a close. We need some kind of quality control. But that can come from the archive, especially if we introduce something new, like, for instance, the restaurant critics, who can give a star to a paper as they like. And if your paper on the archive gets stars, which was not be anonymous, they must be signed by the person given. If the stars are from people who are respected in the field, then that's to the genuine credit of the paper.

And young people who can't read all the literature will then tend to read papers which have got stars from reputable people. And so that would be a way of bypassing the refereeing. And I think refing actually it's a worse problem in the humanities and in economics than it is in science because in economics there are a few journals which allegedly carry great a prestige and a would-be academic has to get at least one paper in one of those journals. I think we're not quite in that state in in our sciences. No. I think the archive is is great and I think also young academics should in promotion criteria be able to include not just the papers they've written, but good blogs they've written and public lectures and all these things.

And YouTube channels? Yeah, maybe. Yes. I think all those things. There's hope for me to win the YouTube Nobel Prize. The other question you asked was about the role of private sponsorship. And I think this is welcome. I mean, the problems may arise if the donor,

wants to control the framework and of course most academic organizations have criteria where they would not allow that to happen that if someone endowed a chair they normally aren't allowed to be on the appointment to committee for the chair for instance and so as long as those rules are followed then I think one should hugely welcome this and the assignment is probably the biggest foundation in the physical sciences and there are others and there's an outfit called the Philanthropic Alliance, which was set up a few years ago with the aim of encouraging wealthy people

to consider donations to physical sciences. Of course, astronomy has had a head start because I think if you look back to the US, who built your telescopes, it was mainly private sponsors. Well, we can look back to this guy. We can look back to Galileo. They didn't build telescopes,

but his discoveries were named after his patrons, right? Yes, yes. But I think astronomy has been more favoured than any other physical sciences, indeed, any other non-medical sciences in terms of private sponsorship. But I think it's very good that there should be private sponsorship to give a diversity of support. And I think it's especially important given that the pressure in your country, the NSF, in my country, UKRI, is getting greater and rather vexatious in the number of forms you have to fill in to get a grant and then to process the grant when you've got it. So I think it's very good that there are these various sources of support. Yeah, and then there are things like the Institute for Advanced Study

on which you've served as a trustee. Just to pivot back, I'm sorry, it's, you know, it's always a wild ride when you're talking to a New Yorker like myself. But going back to the journals, I wondered if I could maybe you and I could flesh out some possible alternatives, because it's not good and you never do this, you never just criticize, you always have solutions that you talk about. One solution that's getting a lot of attention, and especially as you know, from being a guest on Lex Friedman's podcast, we won't talk about aliens. Don't worry. Almost every podcast he does involves aliens. But another major subject is blockchain or Bitcoin technology. And I've thinking a little bit about that and how we could use the blockchain type technology to not

circumvent journals but there are legitimate cases in the bicep affair that i write about in the book you co so kindly blurb we had this you know debate on the team like can we submit it to nature you know and or you know in the end we ended up submitting a 25 page long paper to fizz rev letters which is the longest in history and they've never repeated that since and maybe that's a good thing But for nature, they wanted all these embargoes so that we couldn't release the date. We couldn't have a press conference until it was accepted for publication. So they did read it. And I believe those, I wasn't in the senior leadership by this moment.

So I may get the details wrong. But that was part of the reason we didn't want to embargo it. We wanted to get it out as soon as possible, such that a referee might not want to be able to scoop us with the advanced knowledge of, you know, what our results were. Because they were so dramatically above the expectation of everybody, including. including you would have predicted for the tensor to scale or ratio. So it was a consciousness. Now, what if you had a blockchain and encoded when it was like, you know, what Leonardo or Galileo used to do when he discovered what he thought were three moons around Saturn?

He said the highest planet is threefold or something. It has ears. It wrote cryptically. And Leonardo wrote in the mirror, what if you could encrypt things in a blockchain so that, you know, Bicep has discovered that the primordial, It could be really poetic. It could be really cool. You know, the reverberations are the 20% of the me, you know, whatever.

I know. We could make a joke about it. But in all seriousness, could you envision some way of establishing priority, which is, like it or not, important for scientists, sometimes generated by things that aren't so important, like winning the NUMPRIES. But nevertheless, priority is important for careers and such. So what could we do to circumvent this ossified, you know, 100? How old is nature, you know, for example, is 160 years old or something? It's pretty much unchanged, just like much of academia. So I want to ask you, could you envision a state where you could encode, you know,

maybe even clinical trials or things that would be open source, but it would also establish reproducibility, but it would also establish priority. Is there any hope for that? Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill for, burner gas grill on special buy for only $199 and entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $499. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, pricing valid May 14th or May 27th, US only

exclusions apply. See homedipo.com slash price match for details. Well, I mean, I'm not sure how of the office and priorities is important. I mean, it's only important if you're in a field where either thought it's frustrating that you're only making a discovery a month before someone else would do it. I mean, it's much to be in a field where you feel you're making a distinctive difference and no one else is competing with you. So I think people to stay away from the fields where they have to worry about by someone a month later. Well, I'm sorry, Martin, I have to push back with respect. In this book, you talk about the difference between science and art and you say something like, like if Botticelli never made, whatever he made, then no one would have made it.

But if Einstein didn't have his anis marabalus, someone else would have done it. Maybe it would have been later, maybe it would have been Mikowski and, you know, who knows. But what do you make of that? I mean, there is a priority. There's a rush in science in some competitive sense. They would do it later. But to take the case of Einstein, if he hadn't existed, then his work would have been done over the next decade or two, probably by several different people, not one single great mind. But I think it would be okay.

I just thought in most cases. I mean, for instance, Bicep, that was a unique facility. No one else was going to be able to do that and scoop you. And so you could have published the paper. Well, it's just again in terms of the actual event. So we had been worried that the Plank satellite actually could have seen it. And actually, George Epstadio, who you know undoubtedly very well at your institution, who's coming to, I'm going to meet with him, hopefully in New York in a couple months.

He's a renowned scientist. He had written a paper not too long before, a few years before, that said that they had the capability to measure the same signal as us, but at higher statistical significant. So we, and they wouldn't share their data with us on the foreground. So it started to make us thing. Well, maybe they know something. And, but, but anyway, I interrupted. I'm sorry. But yeah, but I don't think it's strictly true that nobody could have, if it were really as high as 20% of the scalar contributions, they would have seen it. Yes. But the other point I was going to make is that refereeing is only important for a long, difficult-looking paper, which students might waste a lot of time reading. No, who's wrong. Any high-profile paper will get far more discussion. on the web or coffee time in institutions the day it appears on the archive. I mean, I think that's two of any exciting papers that appears on the archive.

The intensity of the criticism it gets within a day or two, from all the people to read it and discuss it at the water cooler or coffee and all that is going to be greater. So the refereeing is not important. And I think that has had the results, I think, that in many cases, the paper on the archive has been modified when it's in his final form, but not by referees, but by general input and the view that some particular aspect of it was a bit dubious. And so, I think it's only for papers which are not going to attract must attention, that refereeing is essential to keep standards up. If it's important, then everyone's going to read it and comment

on it. Yes, very good. So I want to turn, now to, well, first of all, I want to remind people as my podcast obligation, as has spelled out in the Geneva Convention, I must remind people every hour who we're speaking to. And it's such a treat to speak with a hero and a great friend, as I say, Universities of California, San Diego, UC System, and all of science as well as a personal hero to yours truly. And that's Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, author of many, many books. I suppose, got introduced to you in the 90s, Martin, and your wonderful book, Just Six Numbers, really revolutionary winner of the Templeton Prize, along with Freeman Dyson, who was our first

guest on the podcast. I don't know if you knew that, Lord Martin, that Freeman was my first guest, and you quote him in your wonderful annual reviews of astronomy and astrophysics, you said, when I received the Templeton Prize, he told me that made him feel better about having won in himself, as I'd just done as little to deserve it as he had. Of course, you add, I've done far less. Now, Freeman was a wonderful, a wonderful man and really a great friend. I remember introducing him to my, he must have been five-year-old and Freeman was born exactly 90 years, almost to the day, before my four-year-old. So they were like, you know, talking about, but he could talk about anything.

It was, he's such a, he's such a titanic mind. And I miss him terribly. He's been on a few years now. But, you know, one of the things that he and I used to talk about on the couple of episodes that he honored me with is the difference between, you know, mysteries and puzzles, a mystery being something that is, that is perhaps inscrutable, that you cannot understand. And a puzzle, which is something that you might not, I mean, I'm not talking about you, but I might not be able to solve a crossword puzzle in the Sunday times, but my mother can, or, you know, my kid can solve a Rubik's Cube. I can't really do that. So they're soluble, but not maybe by you, but mysteries are perhaps forever inscrutable, according to Freeman.

And I kind of added on my own little twist to that was that like the meaning of life as a scientist was to convert as many mysteries as possible into puzzles because, you know, we like to solve things. And I wonder, Martin, if you could think about the most mysterious thing that remains in science and the greatest puzzle. You've solved. so many puzzles, Martin. It's really just like you're like they used to say about Stephen Hawking. They thought he was Borbaki, a collective. But you've done so many things. What's your favorite puzzle and what's your favorite mystery that still lingers perhaps forever? Well, I think I'll give the same answer that probably most cosmologists would give, which is that

we can trace back with confidence to when the universe had been expanding for just microsecond. because after the first microsecond, the physics is known. But in the first microsecond, particles are moving around with energy is higher than we can readily achieve in accelerators. But many of the key features of the universe, as we all accept, were laid down at a far, far earlier stage still, to put it in perspective, when the universe was a microsecond old, the observable universe was about the size of the solar system, whereas when all the action happened, the universe was the size of a tennis ball and had expanded for something microscopic.

And so that's a huge jump from the physics we understand. And this is a challenge. And I think the question is, will this be forever a mystery? Or will we be able to understand this physics? Because obviously people are working on string theory and all the rest of it. and let's hope that we can probe one stage deeper because it's amazing that in the 50 years when I've been active in science, we've gone from not knowing whether there was a big bang at all to knowing in quite a lot of detail how it evolved right back from a microsecond to the present.

But I think the fundamental laws of nature, which may be represented by string theory and maybe something quite different, And it's possible that they could be beyond the capacity of human brains. Quite possible. And of course, one can then ask, would AI be able to solve them? And this is, I think, a possible scenario. It could be that the maths of the 10-dimensional spaces and geometry is too hard for a human to work through. But some kind of maybe not present, but future AI could work through it all. And if the AI, after chucking away, came out at the end with the correct mass of the electron or some correct numbers for the now unknown parameters of the standard model, then we'd know it was on the right track.

And we'd never, though, get the real insight, which is the main satisfaction of science when, in retrospect, something looks obvious to. This would never look obvious to you. But this might be the only way we would understand these. But there might be, as I say, aspects of physical reality, which are beyond us, just as quantum theory is beyond a monkey. Yeah. That's a possibility. Yeah.

Go ahead. We've then got to realize that one thing we learn as astronomers, and this is one, I think, particular attitude that astronomers can bring to public discourse in general, is that the future is as long as the past. I mean, most people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly four billion years of biological evolution, but many tend to feel that we're the top of the tree,

we have these combinations of this, whereas of course we know in astronomy that the sun's less and halfway through its life and the universe will go on for much, much, much longer. And so we are aware that there are all kinds of emergent properties which will make the future far more amazing than the present. Yeah, and I wonder you mentioned artificial intelligence and I can't resist running, you know, this analogy by you, which is this gentleman who mentioned a couple of minutes back, Albert Einstein. Do you recall what he called his happiest thought, Martin?

It was the elevator. Yes, yes, it was that he pre-fell. He would experience no gravitational force. So I want to ask you, to what extent could AI Einstein, A-I-E, could it them, G, experience, A, a happiest thought, and B, a sensation that's anthropomorphic of falling? In other words, do we have anything to worry about? I mean, the primitive nature of AI at this point seems, you know, painfully obvious. I mean, Elon Musk, who you always lovingly refer to as, you know, wanting to die on Mars,

but you hope that he doesn't die on impact. I love that line. I always attribute it to you. But, you know, Elon revealed these AI bots that can lift up packages. And it's great. And it's wonderful. They're doing trillions of computations per second. But is that the ghost in the machine? Or as your, you know, rival, rival university, Oxford and Oxonian, Sir Roger Penrose has been a guest many times on the show, really think that the brain isn't a computer at all. Where do you fall in that kind of dichotomy? Is the brain a computer or no? One comment on Roger Penrose's idea, although it is amazing that age 91. Yeah.

He's the first of his ideas as ever. He's a really great guy. But I think I'd answer in two ways. I mean, I think it's clear that AI does have superhuman powers to do restricted things, playing go and all that. But that's very different, as you're saying, from general intelligence. And so I think in order to, have the sort of general intentions, it's got to actually interact with the external world.

Because, you know, we've heard recently about these AIs that can digest billions of pages of prints and they can write what looked like serious, sensible paragraphs, etc. But they don't have any concept of the things that those words denote. They just know which words are tied together in particular ways. and that's why they can write sensible sentences. I think it's going to be a long time before machines can interact with the external world directly. If they were to discover new laws of nature, that would be necessary, I think, to interact the external world. But even if they can do that, then, of course, there's the fundamental problem of philosophers.

whether capability implies self-awareness and consciousness. And that's an open question. The famous philosopher of Berkeley, Searle, of course, would have argued it didn't. And so it's, I think, still an open question whether the AI, even if it has superhuman capabilities in many directions, whether it's got self-awareness. And able to have emotion.

as well we just don't know yeah i see it very reminiscent of sort of the drake equation uh where we kind of put you know put these uh posteriori expectations of what an ai or an alien you know would look like or do and i really have no idea whatsoever yeah so i propose the drake equally i told the nick bostrum over there at oxford yeah he should come up with bostrum equation and and uh he's pretty dismissing he doesn't like the drake equation and um you know no no disrespect to the late great frank drake My take, which is discussed in another book, that I think the Drake equation is rather misleading, because if we think of what's happened on the earth, it's taken four billion years,

and we've got a technological civilization of flesh and blood creatures. But in the four billion years ahead, then maybe we will be usurped by electronic entities. They'd be near immortal, and they won't, unless you want to stay on a planet at all. And so they won't be deterred by interstellar voyages. And so if we imagine that there was another earth where life had evolved, as on the earth, then only if it was very, very closely synchronized would we observe it during this interval of just a few centuries when it's got a technological flesh and blood civilization. Either it'll be well behind us, in which case we'll see no evidence of intelligence,

or to be well ahead, in which case what we will see or detect. will be the electronic remote progeny of that civilization. This is, I think, a very serious nessi modification of the Drake equation because the progeny may exist for billions of years, even if the civilization in the flesh and blood sense only lasts for thousands of years. So I'm optimistic about SETI detecting some kind of artifacts. But if it does, then I think they're more likely to be electronic artifacts left by some long dead civilization. Ah, mm-hmm. Oh, that's great to hear that fully fleshed out. I wonder if we could go in the, you know, remaining time that we have to some of the details of the book, although I have to say, I always hated it when I'd go on a conversation and someone say, you know, can you summarize the book entirely so that I don't have to read it and my audience doesn't have to buy, no, I want you to buy this book.

as many formats as possible because it is a slim easy read. I actually had it read to me, as I explained to Lord Martin, by none other than Gwyneth Paltrow, by taking a PDF, converting it to Speechify and selecting her premium voice. And it is as as lugubrious as you would expect. It's blurbed on the back by past guest on the podcast, my podcast, Stephen Pinker, author of Rationality at Harvard University with whom Lord Martin has collaborated on several articles. Stephen called it a judicious and timely presentation of nothing less than how to save the world from one of our wisest scientists and public voices. And I should say that Martin is available 24-7 if you like if you go to the Twitter.com website where he is Lord Martin,

and you can get all his hot takes on Manchester United, on Adele. No, no, you can't get that. But you'll get his greatest thoughts that fit into 280 characters. And I wonder, Barton, speaking of Twitter, which you joined a few years ago, and I delightfully follow you, I want to kind of think as a practicing scientist and go back even further than the names that we've mentioned so far. and go back to John Clerk Maxwell, or James Clerk Maxwell, rather, Scotsman, and his theory of electromagnetism and his famous eponymous four equations of electromagnetism, which are undoubtedly true

and tested, you know, perhaps as good as human beings will ever be able to test and prove and verify and hold across the cosmos. But Maxwell was troubled, wasn't he, by the fact that he didn't see a mechanism by which these waves could be transmitted. And so he proposed that there were a series of vortices and gears and all sorts of, you know, strange phenomena that we know don't exist. Later would be kind of deemed the ether and that would later be rejected in the Michelson Morley experiment center. Can you imagine, you know, James Clerk Maxwell on Twitter? So he comes up with these ideas and these equations and then and then below what he goes through is, this is instantiated by these gears and and fluxions and, you know, virtuous, luminephorous ether,

he'd be a laughing stock, right? I mean, that's crazy. You know, Hertz would prove them wrong a couple. But would we throw the baby out with the bathwater? And I guess I'm wondering nowadays, there are voices that are not in the majority. These are people that don't believe necessarily in a quantum singularity in origin of the universe. These aren't crackpots. These are, you know, friends of the show like Paul Steinhart, Anna EGis, Neil Turrell.

who is just on this past week, Higgs professor at James Clerk Maxwell's alma mater, right, at University of Edinburgh. I said Edinburgh on my inner, I was so embarrassed, Martin. But anyway, imagine are we stifling voices by this kind of instantaneous need to, you know, put things on Twitter and have gotcha moments and you don't engage in it. I'm not implying at all that that's your Twitter accounts focus, right? But are we perhaps stifling, you know, by the thought of public embarrassing? maybe some really good ideas. Like Paul is not on, you know, Neil is not on Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. And I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Has Twitter been a net

positive for science, not just for, you know, getting the hottest takes in the royal family and what Kate Middleton is doing today? What do you think is the benefit and maybe pitfalls of Twitter or social media in general? Well, I mean, I don't think Twitter is very important in science. I mean, I think certain blogs are important. And I, and should be encouraged. But I think on the question you ask about, you know, minority views, I think it's indeed very important to encourage them. And that's why I do hope that despite what I said about science becoming unattractive as a career,

because it's an over-crowded universities, I hope some of those who don't do science and go and work in a startup will make enough money to become independent scientists. I mean, in the 19th century, there were independent scientists like Darwin and Rayleigh, but they were independently wealthy. But there can be people now who make enough money by the time they're 40, and they can become independent scientists. And that would be good, because that will provide a greater diversity of opinion. There's a risk of group think, obviously, in the universities. And, of course, there's a clustering tendency, because if we think about speculative theories like string theory, etc.,

then, as you know, the rival theories, LuPont of Gravity and others. And one of the problems is that if you're a career academic, then you want to write papers that quite a lot of people will read. And that therefore means as a clustering tendency, you tend to focus on what's already the most heavily studied option, whereas in fact we want the reverse to happen. We want people to spread out their efforts. And the trouble is that the risk to get a lot of readers is contrary to that.

It's pressing the long way. Right. And yeah, I mean, it's one of these things that, I mean, interestingly enough, it does have some, you know, geopolitical. I mean, today, Elon, you're one of your frequent subjects of amusement was tweeting about, you know, here's how can we, do you agree this is how the Ukraine war should end? and, you know, annexation of Crimea should be ratified and this and that. I was, vote on it. And he's like, you have to vote again and make sure you vote. And like at some level, I'm sure somebody's listening to what he says.

I mean, he's an awfully influential person. Yeah. So another theme in this book, and it's been a constant theme with many of your fellow countrymen. And that is folks like Tim Palmer, who's a new book coming out. I was on the show a couple of weeks ago. Video should be out by the time this video is out. And also I had on Neil Ferguson, who is a Scotsman, I guess.

I don't know if you can consider Scotsman part of the UK. I don't know. I don't know how any of that works. So it's more complicated than C&B cosmology, which we'll get to, as well as audience questions. So some of my audience asks you some questions. We're going to get to those at the very end. In the next few minutes, we're going to wrap up so you can have a good supper. and proper supper indeed.

But. Okay. So Neil and Tim and now you have discussed the kind of intermeshing of two vast forces, which, one of which you might not have written about had this book come out three years and five days ago or something. And that's COVID-19 and also global warming, which obviously has been around for a very long time. When I talk with both of them, they, Tim and Neil discussed. And it's not the Neil Ferguson, I think, at Imperial who came up at this drastic forecast, which didn't thankfully turn out to be true for UK deaths.

But anyway, it's the other one, the Scottish historian and so forth, the Hoover Institution in America. Anyway, the two of them write that these are intertwined in some way, perhaps by the efficacy of the global response or inefficacy, and perhaps by, you know, one of the few things that can unite a planet, perhaps. but it doesn't seem to be too successful in that I want to I want to take take myself back and my listeners back to January of 2020 I was at a Shabbat dinner a Friday night dinner with some friends and one of my friends told me because I told him I'm going to visit the CMB observatory in in Tibet that the Chinese are building and they want me to see it and give a tour and so forth

and I was excited I've never been to Tibet or China at all so I was happily going to do this And in January of 2020, my friend said, well, you better postpone it. When is it going to be? And I said, April. And he said, oh, no, you better postpone it to like July because there's a thing called COVID-19 and they're dealing with it. And he was joking. Yeah, they welded about 10,000 people inside of a hospital prison. And that's kind of weird, but I'm not going to be in Beijing.

So I don't care. I'll just be in this nice safe place called Tibet. And he's like, yeah, you should still think about it. And yet, Martin, here in America, you know, if my friend, you know, some. you know, and me, a Yenta at a dinner party in January, knew enough to know that there was this global response and at least in China, there was this drastic response and people were taking incredible, you know, precautions and so forth. You would think that the multi-trillion dollar three-letter agencies here and in their, you know, I mean, we have NSA, DARPA, DOE, NSA, all these

agencies blew it. And they're scientists, right? So they didn't save us. And, and they didn't save us. there you have what, MI6, as I understand that, you know, James, no, I don't, I don't mean to apply that, but, but other institutions, science funding institutions, did anyone get it right, A, and how can we say face after, you know, saying, well, we kind of blew it on COVID-19, science included, but certainly the military and the huge budgets, but trust us on global warming. We got it this time, you know, our models, our forecasts, our computer simulations. They didn't work so well for this pandemic, but they're going to work much better 50 to 100 years from now with global warming. What do you say to such a...

Well, I think what you said about the attitude to COVID-19 is very unfair. I mean, it's true that the lockdowns and things were perhaps instigated too late. But I would say it showed sciences as best because the scientific experts, certainly in the UK, they are on television every day with the Prime Minister. giving their views and they were respected. And the scientific effort was international. And the vaccine project was amazing successful when we don't have a vaccine for HIV after 40 years. So I would say it was a great achievement.

And the public got a sort of education in science because early on the way the disease was transmitted was unclear. There was a lot of debate about whether wearing masks was important or waste of time, etc. these things get gradually firmed up and the public could watch this happening. So I would say this was a case when scientists were listened to because they did deliver and there was urgency. I think if we take global warming, which is in a sense a slow motion version of a catastrophe, then the point is that the worst of it is far beyond the horizons, the time horizons of politicians,

and of course in parts of the world they far away from the UK and the US and so that's why action is very hard to implement and to get public support for and I think in the case of climate change I think there's now a consensus about the science but I think the question of what to do about it and how urgent it is to respond and about litigation and adaptation that's a matter for proper debate. But I think the main thing that's lacking is political willingness to act. And that's because politicians will only do something if they think voters care, they won't lose votes by it.

And so that's why it's so important that scientists should explain the issues to a wide public. And they should be aimed by, aided by charismatic individuals. who are going to do a better job as influences and scientists themselves can. I mean, it's very sad that Carl Sagan isn't still alive because he would be obviously leading a campaign through his eloquence that would make people take global warming and lots of diversity seriously. But I mean, I mentioned in my book four sort of charismatic figures, very different from each other, who have had quite a big effect.

One is Pope Francis, who is encyclical in 2015, which led to the standing evasion of the UN and the consensus at the 2015 climate conference. Second David Attenborough, who's made aware of biodiversity and the problem of plastic in the ocean and climate change. Third is Bill Gates, who talks in a great deal of sense in his books about how we can deal with climate change. And fourth, Greater Taunberg, who has been the spokesperson for the younger generation, who are still going to be alive at the end of a century and naturally care more about this. So people like that have, I think, raised public interest and awareness. And that's meant that voters will support this action.

And we need more people like that. And it changed the rhetoric, of business even, although business has not responded enough. So I'm hopeful that the awareness of this general but long-term threat will deepen and widen. But then the politicians will start to take action. Very good. And in the closing moments that we have, I can't resist but be a little bit selfish and pivot back to where, as I said, I met you way back when, which was CMB polarization in the late 1960s, just about three years after the discovery of the background glow, the cosmic microwave background that pays the bills around the Keating House. you were very present. You predicted the possibility of a polarization signal.

Can you explain what led you to that? Again, this is a very nascent field. It would be like, you know, somebody really going all in on, you know, dark energy, you know, research in the early 2000, say, when it was just becoming clear that serendipity struck then and struck back in the 60s. What gave you the confidence to go into the impossible, as this podcast is titled, to pursue that field as a young scientist starting out? Well, I mean, at this time, everyone's why the universe was homogeneous. It was before the idea of inflation, which may be the answer to that. But this didn't happen. And there was a popular idea due particularly to the guy called Mizner, which is that the univor,

The universe went through a so-called Mixmaster phase, when it expanded fast in one direction and then fast another. And he was able to show that causal contact in that universe was better. And so you could understand why the universe homogenized early on, which was a big mystery in otherwise. And so this was the idea of universe which was homogeneous, but anisotropic, it expanded fast in one direction, then another. And then I realized that in those models,

we would expect polarization because the polarization would depend on where the expansion was fastest and slowest at the time of recombination. So I was focusing on that. But then I did mention at the end that polarization would be a natural outcome of any case when you had the gas moving around relative to the radiation. So that was, I think, the first paper written on CNB polarization. Yes, absolutely. And in the book, you talk or in the in the book you do talk about obligations you know one of my favorite passages you're really kind of debating or discussing the roles and basically the trade-offs between human ingenuity i.e technology and and basically whatever the opposite is uh which is

which is adaptation and you know i i wonder if you could look into your crystal i have a crystal ball somewhere around here but if you can look into the crystal ball and and think about the transformations that could attack both COVID-19 and global warming from the perspective of an astronomer. You ask a question, you know, what does an astronomer have to opine on this? And then you answer in the affirmative. They have a lot to say. I wonder, let's talk about first COVID-19. So you mentioned these vaccines. And it is true they have properties of, you know, that do inhibit the spread of disease and they're very positive beneficial. But they're, you know, in terms of efficacy and so forth, against an adversary, if you will, that has 7,900 million petri dishes at any moment to be

experimenting on. You know, what hope can physics, or maybe astronomy, you know, is too, too narrow, but can physics address there? I mean, CRISPR played a role in it. You talk about CRISPR in the book, talk about Jennifer Dowdana, et cetera. But you don't really maybe get into the molecular biology of it. Are there, is there a hope to save us from physics necessarily, or is it sort of out of the realm of where, you know, you or I as astronomers might be properly situated in our own lanes? Can physics maybe help save us from future pandemics? If you had a bet now based on what we've experienced recently. I don't, because one point I often emphasize is that physics is the easy subject, biologists are hard subjects. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. That's right. You're talking about the ease of detecting black holes. The virus or small organism are far greater than anything in the cosmos. So it's a biological subject. So I hesitate to comment. But I think, you know, I do worry because it's true we can hope.

that vaccine technology would improve, but on the other hand, in a more crowded world, new variants are going to appear all the time. And my greatest nightmare is, of course, engineered viruses, which can be used by bad actors, as it were, to create pandemics. So I do worry very much about whether the world can be freed from, in fact, ever more serious pandemic. So that's a big worry. In the quite separate issue of climate change, then of course this involves physics. The modeling of climate change involves physics. I mean, this is quite interesting things like cloud formation, which depends on the extent to its droplets super cool before they crystallize and things like that.

Probably Tim Palmer discussed this sort of thing, which in fact, how cloud cover changes in a warming world. So we can hope for better physics and larger computers, which can allow us to do better predictions of climate on a regional basis. But of course, what we want to do is to have ways of producing energy and storing energy without using fossil fuels. And here again, scientific advances mainly from physics are going to be crucial, better battery technologies, etc. And more fish and solar panels, all these things, they're going to be needed. So I think climate change is a problem for physicists. And of course, I include engineers because the other point I make in the book is that the amount of brain power needed in the application of science

is greater than that needed in doing pure science. So we need some clever new ideas, but then we hope they have to be applied by engineers to be cost effective. And the key thing is to to enable us to provide clean energy and therefore net zero, not just for ourselves in the northern rich countries, but to enable the global South to do the same. Because if they can't use clean energy, can't afford it, then they will be four billion people, and as they develop, they will use a lot of fossil fuels,

and they will produce about 40% as much CO2 per year as we now do to be far from net zero. So it's very important to ensure that the global South can leapfrog directly to clean energy, just as they leapfrog directly to smartphones and never had landlines. Yeah. And I wonder. So we in the North have to have a fast development program, not just for our own sake, but in order to collaborate with them. Yeah. Tim suggests a stern analog, analog, or climate change, applica, supercomputing.

We're not nearly using the full spectrum of supercomputing resources. But I was even thinking as an astrophysicist, relativistic astrophysicist, who's worked on so many fundamental topics, as we mentioned, CMB, polarization, and isotropy, also black holes, compact objects. I wonder if not, you know, an astronomer, who else? Because we are the kind of purveyors of fusion and really figured out fusion quite long ago. And I wonder to what extent could we have a great deal of hope to be saved, not from just solar-powered windmills, but from fusion, from actual low-cost. In other words, if God or Mother Earth or somebody tells you, Hansu Martin, here's a working net positive.

And you talk about ITAR and other things here and the triple parameter. But what if you were handed? Here's a design. Here's this for fusion. Where would that and it would be effective and net net positive? What would be its role? And maybe to some extent fission's role in the portfolio to tackle these global warming challenges. Because to push back again with respect, you know, Greta Thunberg, you know, she's a vocal opponent of the cleanest, most reliable, you know, alternative green energy.

And she's a dramatic opponent of fission reactors. And I find that ultimately inconceivable that she would be against the only source that we know because of the nuclear waste problem and maybe some terrorist concerns and stuff, which are legitimate, but not to the level of if we really think the world is coming to an end, metaphorically speaking, for humans in our current state, the world's going to be fine, right? Martin, the planet's going to go on without us. It'll be here. But for our children and our children's children, what would be the role of fission and fusion in the portfolio if you were Lord of Earth, Barton Rees, not just of the British Empire. Well, I mean, I think, as you know, whether we need nuclear, this is something which is

controversial. Yes. At all levels of expertise, some lay people have strong views, but even experts have strong views. And a great reformer would probably find half of the experts in the world who would say that we can get by with effective storage not just for overnight but for six months and if that can be done then with solar energy etc maybe so that energy from space as well as on the ground maybe that could be done so it's not clear that nuclear energy is needed on the other hand other people say we should at least do r and d into fourth generation nuclear efficient. I tend to be on a latter side, but I think it's not obvious that that's ever going to work. So I think you've got to be a bit fairer to Great Atornblo. Lots of people would share the view that we can get to net zero without nuclear.

That's one thing. But what about fusion? Yeah. Well, everyone knows that's more distant. And it's probably feasible. You know the problems you've got to. stabilised the magnetic field for long enough and all that and I think this could be done but whether it'll be economic i don't know but uh there again i'm very much in favor of the r and d into into fusion and it's very good that there are now about 20 separate groups around the world doing different designs and i t-e-r as you mentioned and in retrospect that's that's too big because they didn't think they can get magnetic fields stronger than one Tesla. I think when they built it and if you can have stronger fields then you can get by with smaller scale and that's been done by the later developments. So I think that's true. Of course there's a quite different kind of fusion using

lasers focusing on little pellets. I must say I've tend to be skeptical about that. It seems very hard to scale. scale up. And I'm afraid I've regarded that as a sort of fig leaf to justify the nuclear research they're doing at Liverpool. Yeah, the Nova Laser. So I won't speak negatively about a fellow University of California. No, I'm just kidding. I would if I knew more about it. But they recently did report net positive or exothermic. Although that's controversial. Some experts like past guest on the show, Charles Seif at NYU, suggest that's kind of moving the goalpost, you know, painting the target around the arrow. Lord Martin, I want to finish up by asking a few questions from my audience.

And then I'm going to conclude with my patented, fantastic four, frilling for final questions that I ask all my guests when they honor me, as you have, by coming on the show, this being your second appearance on the show. So the first question comes from a listener on YouTube. And by the way, you can ask me questions at Dr. Brian Keating. on YouTube and Dr. Brian Keating on Twitter. And you can ask Dr. Martin Rees, Lord Martin Rees at Lord Martin Rees on Twitter. He may or may not respond with emoji cons the way that I will.

But the first question comes from a listener named Huxley underscore S, who opines. He or she says, I think trust in science is at an all-time low, Lord Martin. Is it possible to reverse this? and how? Well, I question that statement. I would have thought that the response to the pandemic certainly increased the prestige of science. It's not high enough, but I think the fact that the vaccines were produced

within a year by groups, that was certainly an amazing scientific achievement. And I think if you certainly compare the trust in science with the trust in politicians, journalists, bankers and others, Athletes, yeah. So I don't share the pessimism. We've got to improve and we've got to interact with the public better. But I think science, although some people are concerned about its scary downsides, does have a positive image.

So great, thank you. Next, King Posse asks, but where the danger is, also grows the saving power. That's a quote from Friedrich Holdelin Patmos. And the question that King Posse one asks is, does Sir Martin believe there's such thing as a saving power, maybe a supernatural one? And if yes, Lord Martin, what form does it take or can it be physically observed? What does say you? Well, I mean, I don't believe in any sort of of saving part of that kind. I think we humans have to avoid destroying ourselves and apply our growing knowledge to human benefit. And it's clear that this is possible. We can, even with

present knowledge, make a world for the entire population, which is as good as the world we enjoy in countries like the United States and the UK. So we can do this. And I think we have. I mean, I don't I don't think we're going to get any help from outside our own human efforts. Very good. So the next one is coming from a listener, viewer on YouTube, who goes by a name that I almost chose for one of my children, and that is Zero Skull. Zero Skull asks a very long question. So pro tip for my listeners out there, if you want to have a high shot at asking your question, me asking it, make it short.

I can't read this whole thing. But he says, what exactly is meant by save us and save the world? Save us in what way? Save us from who? Save us for what reasoned purpose? Why not just ride it to the end? And counter to frost go gently into the good night. So what are we saved from by science?

Well, I think most of us do care about the survivor of the human species and my concern is that for the first time in this century there are realistic scenarios whereby the misuse of science could lead to a collapse of civilization and we certainly have a bumpy ride through the century because of the misuse of science by bad actors so i think we are going through a difficult century and being a human being myself i certainly feel that our species deserves to survive and to do better in future centuries. But more than that, I think we should value the entire biological environment that we are in and avoid mass extinctions. And we are risking those. And I quote in my book, the great ecologist, E. Wilson, who says, if human actions cause mass

extinctions, it's the sin that future generations will least forgive us for. They want to make sure that there are future generations and that they are forgiving because we have helped not ourselves to survive only, but also the natural world to survive. Very, very good. Well, Lord Martin, this has been a tremendous honor as usual for me. I now want to conclude with what I call the fantastic four. But seeing as you've been on before when it was the thrilling three, I'm just going to ask you the new aspects of this question that are pertinent to this. new book. And they are as follows. So you quote in this book, a quote from the namesake of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination, you say any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable

from magic. That's one of his famous quotes. And it's led me to kind of ask people if you could hit one discovery, not necessarily by you, although it's totally acceptable if you made the discovery. You know, Richard Feynman said that the most important question of all, or knowledge of all is the so-called atomic hypothesis. What sort of wisdom or knowledge or teaching or discovery by human beings would you be comfortable as representing the most amount of knowledge and therefore advanced technology, perhaps, most magical invention of human beings? Well, I think the biggest challenge is you understand the brain and life, it's true. self and this can be done in a number of ways. And also an astronomer, I would hope that if you can discover evidence for life in other places, which is certainly possible and see what variety displays, that will help us to understand our place, not just on the earth, but in the wider cosmos.

So I'm hopeful of understanding life and intelligence and brains. Very good. And then the newest of the fans, Fantastic four questions that I'm added is another quote from Sir Arthur. Did you know him, by the way, Lord Martin? I exchanged emails with him about the M87 jet was artificial. Oh, yeah. I'm a huge fan of his works, but I didn't ever meet him. Right.

Well, he said fame. He said a lot of things, including for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. He was quite pithy. But one of my favorite quotes of his is when a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state something is impossible, they are very probably wrong. I want to ask you, Lord Martin, on the off chance that you were ever wrong about something, besides the exact mechanism for CMB polarization, we're not going to hold that against you. But have you changed your mind recently or an in a significant way throughout your career or recently on anything related to science. I haven't really, but I think what was it changed is that many of the challenges which we were speculating about when I started have been settled and we're now addressing questions couldn't even be imposed 50 years ago. So that's an indication of the exciting progress that astronomy and cosmology has made in the last 50 years,

due, as I emphasise in my book, not to armchair theorists like me, but mainly to much more sophisticated engineering and far better instruments on the ground and in space. But I think there's been a huge advance. And so the problems that I'm thinking about now couldn't have been posed 50 years ago. But I think there's a lot of truth because it's rare for scientists to do their best work in old age, whereas it's quite common for musicians to produce their best compositions in old age. And as I say in my book, this is because if you're a composer, then you're influenced by the stars when you were young, but then it's internal development where science is an inherently collective activity. And so to keep it at the frontier, you've got to

absorb new ideas, understand new techniques, etc. And that's something we become less good at as we get older. So we've got to stick to things we can understand and accept our limitations. Very good. Well, yeah. Oh, sorry, I missed the last part you said. So carry on, I guess. Yeah, so keep calm and carry on as always a very good British aphorism. Lord Martin, I want to thank you, as usual, for your, your very wonderful contributions to my life, my career, but also to the greater scientific good, this wonderful book. If science is to save us, please everybody get this book and read this book, engage with it because it's written this year. I mean, it's not some stale book that was written before. It's fresh and relevant and pertinent and will have the ability. Maybe I'll

ask you one more question, Lord Martin. It said that some authors would rather have, you know, kind of one book read 100 years from now than sell 100 books, you know, one. year from which do you prefer do you prefer your books have longevity or massive critical and six and popular success um well i think many of the questions i'm addressing are fairly timely and so we'll be out of date so uh i mean for instance my book called on the future four years ago was as you say it talks about pandemics in the abstract yes and uh in the paperback which came out just last year had an extra chapter of lessons learned from covid so i think um some of the things that I discuss about how science is done may still be true

100 years from now. I don't know, but most of it would be out of date. So I expect that I hope there are some sales in the next year or two, but I expect they will decline. Although my book, Justix numbers has been the most steady seller for 25 years. And I was lucky because I wrote it just after the last big number was discovered. My choice of six now 25 years later. Right. It also, in some ways, led to the also great and deserve recognition, the Templeton Prize and many other accolades that are too numerous. It would take us another two hours to read it. But, Martin, I want to thank you so much for sharing so much of your time with me and my audience today. And I hope we can be in person. Maybe I'll come visit you next year when I visit the UK for the first time in three or four years. Yeah, it's not that bad here. Maybe I can poach you, Martin. I mean, come on. We've got great beaches. I know you.

like the surf and we've we've fetid you in the past and we'll do it again. Lord Martin Rees, thank you so much. Bye. Thank you very much. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Well, that is a wrap on this phenomenal episode. At least I thought it was phenomenal. Hope you do as well. Be sure to pick up Martin's book. I'll have links to it in the show notes. and you'll be able to just have one-click purchase and get through to this incredible set of insights from one of history's greatest minds and I'm proud to call him a friend

and such a generous person he was on until 8 p.m. He skipped dinner or he calls it supper. It was really a delight. I want to ask you to do me a few quick free favors which may ultimately redound to your benefit. If you're listening to this on Apple or on Spotify or on Audible or a host of other podcast apps, you can leave a rating. And we're up to just about 500 ratings. It's incredible.

And what happens is publicists and publishers look at the ratings of podcasts. It's one of the few public metrics that they have to see if a podcast is popular or not. I'll never divulge how many tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of people are listening right now, although it's many, many tens of thousands. But nobody in the publishing world knows that. So if I want to get on, I don't know, tell me who you want to come on. I'll try to get them. Let's say Malcolm Gladwell, I'll just throw out a name. I haven't tried to get them. But let's say I did. Um, his publicist might say, ah, you've only got, you know, 494 reviews. Uh, that means you probably only have, uh, you know, 42,000 review of, uh, you know, daily active listeners. Blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to get into the mechanics of it. But he only has so much time. So he's not going to be able to, or, you know, Malcolm's not going to be able to come on to every single podcast that has. I wouldn't do it either. Um, uh, I have to have my limits, my threshold. You have to have at least one review to get me on your show. I mean, that's Keating's rule. But anyway, if you could do that. And on Apple, you can also leave a written review. And actually on Audible, too. And Audible, an audible, you could be one of the first 10 or 20 people that I only have 11 reviews on audible so we'll have links to do that

down below I want to read I read each and every one of them it's part of my daily routine I get up meditate drink my yak butter tea for three hours and then do extensive yoga session upside on yoga aerial yoga and then I read reviews and I just got one from a person by the name of the memes of destruction sounds scary but it's not titled love and humanity professor keating is a total gem his approach is too difficult and complex no his approach too difficult and complex topics is a mix of humor and logical inferences, working towards truth, and it's a breath of fresh air. I've learned so much. I feel I owe him a Nobel Prize.

Well, this review is as good as a Nobel Prize, and probably more likely than me ever winning a Nobel Prize. To be honest with you, after my first book, losing the Nobel Prize, which you can get at links down below. But that is the first thing I want to ask you to do. Second thing, join my mailing list, briankeen.com slash list. And you may win one of these very, very rare and expensive. Here you can hear them jiggle, jiggling like my money doesn't do.

And these are meteorites. a four billion-year-old piece of space dust coming from the inner solar system that crashed to Earth some 20,000 years ago. You two can win it. If you join my mailing list, it is an opportunity. The next hundred people that join up will send a genuine piece of space dust to you. Last but not least, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel. We can see the video of this interview. And my super producer, Stuart Volkow adds some magic pixie dust to every single episode with background information, B-roll footage, videos, pictures, and much, much more.

So do that. You'll enjoy it. It's free. those three things, totally free, and they're the best things in life, right? As the Beatles taught us. I think in that, you know, they're probably not a one-hit wonder after that song.

Anyway, that's a long way of thanking you so much for going into The Impossible. Looking forward to catching up again. For now, have a magical rest of your week. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava

theater stage on April 30th. The powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. U.N. must be 21 to enter.