Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Galileo & the Science Deniers with Mario Livio (#044)

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

   Mario Livio is a renowned astrophysicist & best-selling author. His new book “Galileo and the Science Deniers” is the gripping first biography of Galileo Galilei written by an astronomer. Though Galileo’s quest to prove that Earth orbits the sun was correct, he eventually recanted his belief as punishment for heresy. Livio describes parallels to our modern world where, even 400 years later, some people assail science when it conflicts with their ideology. Show notes and resources are available here.  An interview with Dr. Livio and Steve Mirsky on Scientific American’s “Science Talk’ podcast is available here.  His research into whether Galileo actually said “And yet it moves!” is here.  00:05:37 Galileo’s quest for intellectual freedom wasn’t an attack on religion. 00:12:15 Telescopes are tools that allow augmented senses. 00:15:44 The importance of Galileo’s discoveries supporting Copernicanism. 00:20:48 Why ideological bias does a disservice to both science and religion. 00:25:51 Galileo was only human — some of his findings were wrong. 00:32:30 Denying science can be dangerous and even deadly. 00:39:15 Did an unconvincing preface lead to Galileo’s arrest? 00:44:12 Do authority figures have an obligation to keep the peace? 00:49:39 Why Galileo was sentenced to house arrest instead of prison. 00:54:43 What was Galileo like as a father? 01:01:12 Teaching ‘the controversy’ can liven up science lessons. 01:06:33 Lessons from Galileo for the COVID-19 pandemic. 01:10:44 5 questions INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE asks all authors. Livio is now retired from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope. He is a Fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and has published over 400 articles, both in peer-reviewed scientific journals and popular science magazines: www.mario-livio.com/articles Livio is also Science Advisor to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, collaborating on the world’s first VR music experience, The Hubble Cantata. In this discussion with Dr. Brian Keating, Livio recounts Galileo’s prolific Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. Five, four. Hello out there, everybody listening to the Into the Impossible podcast, the production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. I am your fearful host in these fearful times, Brian Keating. And today I'm joined with a friend and fellow astrophysicist, Dr. Mario Livio, who is the author of many books. We're going to talk about his newest book in particular, which is called Galileo and the science. science deniers. I want to give a quick bio of Dr. Livio, who is known for many, many books, but he's also known as an internationally famous and renowned astrophysicist. He's a best-selling

author and popular speaker who worked for 24 years with the Hubble Space Telescope. He's a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has written six previous books to this one on Galileo, and more than 400 scientific articles. He's appeared on 60 Minutes, Nova and even the Daily Show. And he's lectured all around the world, literally, including here in San Diego, and we'll get back to that in a little bit. And he has a very widely watched TEDx talk

called TEDx Mid-Atlantic, which was associated with one of his books from, I think it was 20, 2012, when I saw that video. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. And he, like I, you know, have a fascination with the great maestro Galileo Galilee. And behind me, you'll probably be able to describe this better than I can, Mario. First of all, how are you doing in these unusual times?

Yeah, well, you know, I'm sheltering in place at my home, not going anywhere, just doing short walks around the house for a long time already. And unfortunately, Maryland, where I live, is still, you know, we're not yet opening up. Yeah. It's one of those states. is not opening up yet. So the first thing I wanted to talk about is I usually do with guests that are authors, not all a guest on the In The Impossible Podcasts are authors, but since you are many books of great renown, I want to start off with the cover of the book.

As they say, you know, don't judge a book by their covers. Don't judge a book by its cover. But I always judge books by their covers. I really know how much thought and intensity goes into the creation of a cover. from firsthand experience. So can you walk the audience through the choice of the cover design? We'll put up a picture of it. And even the title of the book.

Let's start there. Yeah. So, well, the title, you see, this is a biography of Galileo, but because Galileo had to deal with all kinds of science deniers, and because science denialism is the way I see the big problem today, then this is what determined the title, Galileo and the Science Deniers. Namely, it's a biography of Galileo, but with an eye on science denial today. So that's about the title.

Concerning the image on the cover, so I chose the very first portrait of Galileo, when he was relatively young, probably in his 40s, It was done by an unknown Tuscan painter, but it's the very first portrait known of him. Usually people are familiar with pictures of him by Sustermans when he was old. Even there is one attributed to Tintoretto when he was sort of middle age. This one is the earliest. So that's that.

And then there are these, there is this. there is this figure of orbits of planets around the sun. And the way the cover was chosen is that his picture is in the middle of that, which makes it look almost as if he is in the bull's eye of a target, which kind of describes his life. So that's how that cover was designed. And of course, the deeper kind of perspective of the target of the bullseye that he lies at the center of is the Copernican construction of the cosmos. And obviously we'll get into that because it's deeply intertwined with not only Galileo's scientific accomplishments, but also with his identity.

I think his very identity psychologically was tied up along with the Copernican principle that he, what we now call the Copernican principle, it really wasn't called that until I think the 1930s. with Bond and Tommy Gold and other people. But the Copernican dialogues and even his books, which tie nicely into your books as well, made me think that this is really a book about controversies and curiosity. And it had nice references to, not directly, but in my mind it brought up your previous books, brilliant blunders, and your more recent book,

why, what makes us curious. And we'll get into those a little bit because I do think there is sort of a theme that runs through those three books in particular that I want to touch upon for the audience. I want to first begin with kind of a deeper picture of why we should have academic freedom even at this day. Are we still kind of being threatened as academics? You're now a meritus professor, I understand. But is academic freedom relevant to today? I don't have the government telling me what I should research or what I shouldn't research or my dean or my chancellor. So can you talk about academic freedom? We discuss that quite frequently on this very podcast.

What does it mean to you and is it relevant today? Sure. Let me just first make a small correction. I mean, I'm not formally an emeritus. I'm a retired professor. Retired, okay. Yes. But I'm not emeritus.

Very busy, yes. Yes. Now, concerning the situation with academic freedom, you see, the bigger question that I regard in this book in particular, but that always has been very close to my heart, is what I would call intellectual freedom, which is a little bit even more than academic freedom. I mean, it's not just your ability to research what you want and publish what you want and so on. But it is really, it ties into things even like freedom of speech, you know, that you should be entitled to your opinions too. And that's part of what I call also intellectual freedom. And Galileo's fight was largely a fight for intellectual freedom. It is often described as if it was a clash between science and religion, which in fact it wasn't, and Galileo never saw it as such.

It was, Galileo, you know, like all people at his age, was a religious person. His main point was that the Bible is not a science book. It was written for the salvation of humans and not to teach them science. He pointed out that, you know, in the case of astronomy, for example, the planets aren't even named in the Bible. And the language used, he said, was such that common people will be able to understand it. So basically, when science tells you something that appears to be contradictory to literal interpretations of biblical texts, you must change the interpretation. You must understand that that's not what the text.

text meant, because Galileo was convinced that actually the Bible cannot make any errors. It's just our interpretation that can be wrong. So really it is this intellectual freedom, this idea that you should be able to research whatever you want, express whatever opinion you want, without any interference, be it from any type of officialdom, you know, no governments, no religious institutions, none of those should interfere with your opinions, as long, of course, as your opinions don't harm anybody or don't incite others to harm somebody. Yes, I think that's been a theme for a few guests I've had on recently on the podcast,

including Michael Shermer, who's a well-known skeptic, atheist, but yet a valid and vigorous, vehement defender of free speech, even for people whose ideas he calls devilish, and his new book is called Giving the Devil is Due, and it's about the freedom to express ideas even when they're wrong. I'd like to talk a little bit about how we have in this book, you know, one main controversy at the time, which was, of course, the Copernican versus the Aristotelian system. Can you explain for a little, for the listeners that might not be familiar, What is the difference between the system that Galileo promoted and the system that seemingly the church and Pope Urban later on famously went to defend so brutally in Galileo's case? Yeah, so, you know, there is Thotelian and the Ptolemaic, sometimes is called system, yes, was this geocentric system where the Earth was at the center and the planets and the sun, in this case, all revolved.

around the Earth. And that fit very nicely with the Catholic Church's thinking because it basically put the Earth and humans on Earth at the center of the universe. So this is why it has been adopted for many centuries. The Copernican system, which is the one that Galileo adopted, say that no, it's actually the Sun is at the center and the planets, including the Earth, the sun and the earth is just another planet, just like the other planets, and they all orbit the sun. So this was the main difference. And so what I thought about as I was reading this is what would I, on the devil side, which is ironically the God's side, in this case, the opposite side to Galileo was the,

of course, the Catholic Church headed at the Vatican by the Pope, that we should sort of see it, through their eyes, at least to understand why did they believe so vehemently in the position that they did? And I think a lot of it comes down to one of the things that we do here on the Arthur C. Clark's Center for Human Imagination on this into the Impossible Podcast, is that scientific inquiry is the best method to go about getting truth, but sometimes it will be vehemently opposed by people who trust their senses. And I think Galileo was kind of interesting to me, because in many cases, he let his own biases, so to speak, sneak in to scientific arguments. And you outlined four cases that he made in favor of the Copernican principle,

which is the heliocentric model of the world, which we now know to be correct. But I often point out, even to some of my college students, and I would expect it's true even in Johns Hopkins, and I know that for a fact, actually, but all around the world, even some college students who are physics majors, If I say to them, the world is, the Earth is at the center of the solar system, the sun goes around the earth, prove to prove me wrong. I know that. That's not the case. But I think it's very difficult for the average person, let alone for a college student, let alone a lay person who's not interested in science to prove many of these things.

So they tend to take things based on their senses. And I think what Galileo did for the first time is give human beings extra sensory perception. And I want to walk us through what really kicked off this notion in his mind was the pioneering use of the telescope. He didn't invent it, contrary to popular myth about him. He did many things, but he didn't invent the telescope. But maybe say what happened in the summer, fall of 1609 through the winter of 1610 that really revolutionized Galileo's perspective on the universe? Yes. So, you know, it has been said that during those months that you now mentioned, Galileo made more discoveries than almost any other person did in their entire lifetime. So indeed, he did not invent the telescope. The telescope was invented in the Netherlands. But as soon as he heard about this, he immediately started to construct his own telescopes. And very quickly, he constructed better telescopes.

than any ones that were available. I mean, the typical telescopes that were there available, you know, were a four-power telescope, and he constructed telescopes that were more than 20 power. So he had better telescopes than most. But first of all, you know, think about this. I mean, people got a telescope what they would do in places like in the Venetian Republic. They would watch sea, you know, the sea, ships at sea, and things like this. Galileo had the idea of turning this to the heavens and looking at what he could see there.

And he started by observing the moon. And he observed the moon, and he saw features on the moon. But this is the amazing part. That's where his artistic education came in. You see, because, for example, the British astronomer Harriet also observed the moon and saw the same features that Galileo saw, but really couldn't understand them and just drew some very, very rough sketches

from which you cannot understand anything. Galileo, from his understanding of light and shadow and drawing, he was able to understand that what he's seeing is a very rugged surface with craters and mountains. And not only that, he drew them. You know, he had these washed drawings which were fantastic of the surface of the moon. So already by that,

he introduced something that is a huge step towards modern science. Because what that did, you see, until then, there was this feeling that things terrestrial and things celestial are very, very different. Things terrestrial, you know, they can get corrupted, they died and this. In the heavens, everything is perfect. There are no blemishes, nothing. He showed, no, the surface of the moon, is really very much like the surface of the earth.

So already he introduced this unification of showing basically that things on earth and things in the heavens are very similar. Then, of course, he went and observed, let's say, you know, not necessarily in this order, but Jupiter, and found these four satellites of Jupiter, which today we call the Galilean satellites. These were, first of all, the very first object since antiquity newly discovered in the solar system. Second, this looked like a mini-solar system in itself. You know, it had four objects revolving around Jupiter. It was actually able to determine the periods of revolution of these satellites to very high precision. But not only that, you see, some of the people who are.

objected to the earth moving around the sun said yeah well if it's moving around the sun how is it possible that it's not losing its moon for example and also why is it the only planet that has a moon before you know he discovered that what he did is with his observation he killed both of these objections because first of all he discovered that other planets have moons and And second, you see, everybody agreed that Jupiter revolves around something, be it the Earth or the Sun. Well, the fact is, it revolves around something and it's not losing four moons. So there is no problem for the Earth not to lose its moon.

So this was the other thing. Then there was his observation of Venus. That was really, you know, like almost like a last nail in the coffin of Aristotelianism, even though not fully, but to some extent. The thing is that Venus, because Venus, if Venus revolves around the sun, it means that there is one point when it is farthest from Earth, and then it should look smaller, smaller and fully lit. And there is a point where it is closest to Earth, namely between the Earth and the Sun,

in which case it's the biggest and dark, basically, and shows some of the Earth, some crescent phases in between, really like the moon, like our own moon. And that was what was seen. While if Venus was orbiting the Earth, it should always appear as some sort of a crescent, but never full or dark. So this was a very, very clear evidence that Venus was orbiting the sun. He had other observations. I don't know if you want me to list them all.

I mean, you know, he saw that there were many stars in the Milky Way. He followed the paths of sun spots on the surface of the sun and determined that they are on the surface of the sun, and from that determined that the sun spins around its axis, which actually removed another objection to Copernicanism, because they said, well, if the earth is moving, how come it can move all the time and not stop? Well, here he found that the sun was also moving, you know, spinning around its axis and not stopping and so on.

So all these observations really added, all of them added something to this idea of Copernicanism. Yes, of course, they added to it, again, I'm going to take the side of the Pope, ironically, but none of them were provative of this fact. In fact, it wasn't proven that the Earth truly goes around the sun and not the other way around for almost a century, right, until the study of aberrations took over. But I think you're absolutely right. Giving evidence is incredibly important. One piece of evidence you left out is, of course, the most interesting part to me from a psychological perspective. And I think this book is as much as a psychological profile written from the perspective. For the very first time, I believe your book is a first portrait.

of Galileo as a biography by an astronomer. I think, is that correct? I mean, you're not a theologian, you're not a historian, but you're a world-renowned astrophysicist. I don't think we've had such a biography. Is that right? I think that that is true. At least none of the well-known biographies were written by active astronomers or astrophysicists.

So the piece of evidence he left out was, of course, Galileo's claim that the tides that caused in the oceans were. generated by this sort of combined motion of revolution and rotation, rotation on its axis and revolution around the sun, both of which were essentially, you know, found to be heretical at a time. We'll get a little bit more into that when we discuss Galileo in the dialogue, or the dialogue on two chief world systems, so-called that got him into the most trouble. But let's go back to 1616 when I find it so fascinating that I of course knew that in 1616, he was really scolded and warned not to teach the heliocentric model. But what I found most interesting, just to be honest with you, Mario, was that there were these Jesuits, there were these priests, and they were studying math and science.

And I always say when I'm talking to religious people, they say, you know, why are so many scientists? atheist? And I say, well, why don't you know more about science than you actually do? And I think in the past, because I think it's a vehicle if you believe, and your book doesn't make a case for atheism in any sense of the word. But I think if you want to know more about the world, if you believe it was created, then it should impel you to learn more about the universe and know more about science. What do you make of the fact that in the 1600s, the early 1600s, there were so many Jesuits interested in astronomy. Was that merely to fend off attacks by people like Galeo and Bruno and others? No, I definitely don't think so. And this is why I say that it is a mistake to think that the Galileo

story is a clash between science and religion. The Catholic Church actually employed some of the best scientists of the time at the Collegio Romano, at this, you know, at the Roman College in Rome. And so they were excellent mathematicians and very, very good scientists. So what is true, however, you know, one has to admit, is that a number of them still were unable to somehow isolate themselves from the teachings of the church and, you know, be completely open-minded about their scientific discoveries. At least some of them, that was the case. Or maybe it was a matter of education and, you know, the way that they had been brought up and things like that. Because certainly, for example, they confirmed the reality of Galileo's observations. You know, at first he had to fight to even convince people that what you see with the telescope represents a reality.

and it's not some artifact of the telescope. But they actually agreed that these were really the things that are out there that you see with the telescope. It was more the interpretation of the results where they had some trouble. And you see, what happened is that most of those Jesuits, while accepting all of Galileo's findings, they somehow discover the full. fallback position, there was this hybrid model of Tycho or Ticho-Brahe, as is sometimes called,

where, you know, everything revolved around the sun except the earth, and the sun itself revolved around the earth. And even with Galileo's observations, it was virtually impossible to show that this model is wrong. But Galileo, you know, had the opinion of modern scientists, which says, if you have two models that explain things equally well, you choose the simpler one. I mean, for him, Brice model had, you know, in our language, had too many moving parts. And so he didn't accept that. But his observations could not quite argue against that, even though we know today that his observations of sunspots and the motion of sunspots actually could show conclusively that the Copernican model was correct.

But that he didn't know that. Yeah, that was sort of poetic justice, perhaps, that it could have taken him to a level of proof. but I doubt, given all the other evidence that he provided, they also didn't know that his explanation for the tides was wrong. So I doubt, you know, I came away from the book doubting that if they had really appreciated or thought more about the Sunspot evidence, which I think is very strong, that they would have been convinced by that if they weren't convinced by the other observations that he employed.

And again, you know, I think it's important to say what was he actually proving or disproving. I think he was merely, with the observations, at least of the Medici satellites, he was very smart and cunning politically in some ways. He named the moons of Jupiter after his patrons. And I think we do that nowadays, too, with the Simon's Observatory, et cetera. But in reality, I think, you know, he also was a victim. You paint a portrait of him as a human being, which I think on many cases is very valid. And I've talked about this with other guests. that when we portray somebody like an Einstein and Stephen Hawking as a scientist, it's true.

On the other hand, it kind of does a disturbance because they're almost like otherworldly, and Galileo was kind of otherworldly when you look at his successes. But when you look at the scientist as a man or as a woman, then you can realize that they have their own flaws, and none of this is to excuse the treatment of Galileo. But can you say something about what you came away with in your impressions of Galileo as a human being? What vices? What sorts of just normal human behavior? I always think of him as kind of this paragon of science.

But like most scientists, he was susceptible to certain biases, including those that were tightly wrapped up with his ego. So can you say something about him as a human? Yeah. Galileo was really not the nicest person. would say. He was a real zealot. He was a zealot and he, you know, he could be very nice to members of his own family, but boy, if you were against him, did he use a sharp pen against you? And he really, he never held back. I mean, no one could criticize him and not, you know, feel his wrath. not the nicest person. He was also, you know, he had his own problems in his personal life.

You know, he never married the woman with whom he had his children. He put two of his daughters in a convent. And that was not so unusual at the time, except that I'm still a little bit puzzled by why didn't he put them in a somewhat better convent than the one he did put them in. Even though that was convenient because it was not too far from his home in Archechre. So he did that. He definitely was wrong. He was wrong a number of times. I mean, you mentioned the tides, his theory of the tides was completely wrong.

It was interesting because it had this mechanical aspect to it, which, you know, was some of his trademark. And he didn't like forces that acted across distance, you know, like gravity, which you don't see. So in that respect, it was an interesting theory, but it was completely wrong. He had a theory of comets, which was completely wrong. I mean, it had some interesting, again, elements to it, but it was wrong. I mean, he did not believe that these were real objects, you know, orbiting the sun and so on. So he definitely was wrong on occasion. He fought with equal strength when he was wrong as when he was right.

And yeah, like I say, he wasn't the nicest person. However, I will still say his fight for intellectual freedom was far beyond, you know, just trying to be right. I mean, when you read what he wrote, you know, about not interpreting the Bible as a science book, I mean, that is just so convincing, especially to somebody reading it today. But his point was always so well taken in that. And his language was incredible because he was first in poetry and the arts. So he could write well.

So, yeah. But at the same time, he was extremely sarcastic on many occasions, sometimes rightfully so, sometimes somewhat less rightfully so. So he definitely was a human being. He for a while drank a lot, enjoyed women quite a bit. And of course in his interaction with the church,

he appeared to be not always completely truthful in the sense that clearly he was very frightened, especially at old age. He was afraid of being tortured. He was well aware of what happened to Jordano Bruno was burnt at the state. And he was really fearful. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the church had this kind of authoritarian power

over the affairs of people throughout the lands of Italy that they influence. You make the point that he made a very poor decision in retrospect to kind of leave the Venetian, Paduan kind of sphere of influence and move to Florence to avoid teaching. Now, I'll do anything to get out of teaching, but I don't think I want to get my books on the index or get threatened with torture. Let me, as I did with Galileo, let me ask the kind of other side of the coin and, again, acting as the devil, but defending the Pope or the opposite side of Galileo, you know, what should the Pope have made? Again, back then, even advanced sophisticated colleagues, or not, I won't say colleagues, they were actually enemies of Galileo

in some sense, but people like Copernicus and others, Tico Brahe, they had, you know, ideas of the universe that we would say are really, you know, completely wrong. Aristotle, of course, being among them, Ptolemy, et cetera, are they deniers? I mean, were you worried about using the term denier? Whenever I see it, you know, I read a book for physics today as a book review called the number of the heavens by Tom Siegfried. And he really talks about the multiverse. And in it, I criticized him for using the term denier. He calls it multiverse deniers like Paul Steinhardt or other people.

I found it a very charged term. I feel some terms should be used for really, you know, awful intellectual oversights, such as denying the Holocaust or perhaps, you know, climate changes you make in this case, even though I don't think those are equivalent either. Were you worried about that using such a potentially loaded term that maybe some listeners might be put off by? No, I wasn't worried, but I will say that there is no doubt that using that term was influenced by the fact that I was so alarmed by science denial today. truly alarmed. And as you can see throughout the book, it's a biography of Galileo,

but constantly with an eye on what's happening today. And those were things that are really troublesome. And it's mainly troublesome. Look, I mean, it's one thing if people still believe, let's say, in creation, instead of, let's say, you know, Darwinian evolution or something like that. That, you know, I think is not a good idea, and certainly it shouldn't be taught in science classes. But it doesn't have an immediate effect on our lives. But when you have things such as climate change or how to treat the current COVID-19,

pandemic. And you have science denial in that case. So these are cases where people are betting against science while putting the future of life

on earth in danger. And I think that that is truly insane to do that. I mean, it's never a good idea to bet against science. Because science has this, you know, wonderful ability to self-correct, even if it sometimes takes time.

So it's not that science is always right, but science does self-correct. And, you know, I mean, for example, you know, people would say, oh, the initial models for COVID-19 say that there will be 200,000 dead in the US, and now they say it's only 74,000 you know, the models. They say, sure, because these are mathematical models and they rely on inputs that you put from data. And as your data become better, then the models, you know, can change.

This does not make them wrong. I mean, it's just, this is the way science really works. But science is a discipline where you can test things, where you can falsify things, which is extraordinarily important. And so that was constantly on my mind when I wrote this book on Galileo. And the denial in his case, again, it's not the fact that people were religious. It is the fact that they couldn't accept the fact that interpretations of biblical texts could be wrong.

Not that the Bible itself is wrong. The human interpretation of those texts could be wrong. This was Galileo's point. He made it, again, in his usual sarcastic fashion, he said that he didn't believe that the same God who has given us our senses and reason, wanted us to abandon their use. So, you know, I mean, he said,

When you have a conflict between what observations and reasoning tell you and interpretation of text, you should change the interpretation of the text. So another thing that struck me in the book is Galeo as a businessman, as a head of an enterprise, a CEO of an industry, Galeo Incorporated. My friend and we did an event together at UCSD in 2010 on the 400th anniversary of the publication of Sedirius Nuncius, Mario Villajoli. He basically makes a very convincing case in his book, Galileo's Instruments of Credit, that, you know, what Galileo wanted to do was kind of two things that are almost at odds with each other. He wanted to attain, you know, prestige, fame, make more money, have more information. influence, but he also wanted to avoid attention, you know, sort of from the people that were, potentially would view his findings with suspicion. I think it's impossible to say that he wasn't warned, you know, and didn't know.

And you make this case in the book where you kind of go back and you make the case that in the famous trial of 1634, that he believed, you know, he would make statements that seem to like reject the Copernican theory or argue on behalf of the Pope Urban's view, for example. And I think, you know, it's so interesting about when you say we should believe in science. You and I are both scientists. I mean, we know that scientists are human. We know that scientists make mistakes. I think in this case, it's scientists have a propensity that is good to be anti-authority and that we shouldn't look to authority for the answer. Einstein, as you point out, and many other scientists, and Darwin as well, in brilliant blunders.

You point out that they make mistakes, and that did a very good service by showing scientists as human beings. And so I think it's very interesting that Gallio had this dual mandate, and he was extremely, he reminds me of like a hermit crab or one of those fiddler crabs that you see on the beach here sometimes in San Diego or maybe in Baltimore before you eat them in the crab crab district, but these fiddler crabs that are really extremely well developed on one side of their claw. And the other side is like atrophy. They never use it. I don't know why genetic or not genetically, biologically, that is the case. But it seems like he was incredibly brilliant when it

came to scientific matters and even cultivating a monopoly on this telescope. I mean, he wouldn't even share it with Tico, with Kepler, right? But on the other hand, he was incredibly impolitic. He didn't seem to understand the way that his ideas and his message could be crafted. You go through the episode of the dialogue. We'll turn to that now, where his famous book on the two different systems of the world written in this exchange over four days as a dialogue. And he puts the words of the Pope, namely Aristotelianism, into the mouth of a character named Simplicio. Can you talk a little bit about Simplicio and his psychological motives in that book? Yes. So in that book, it's a conversation between a...

monk, three people. One plays the role of Galileo himself. One plays the role of an Aristotelian, and one plays the role of an educated but non-scientist who listens to the other two. So the guy who plays Galileo basically argues for the Copernican system. Simplicio, who the name is coined after a known Aristotelian supporter, but also has a connotation of being a simpleton. He plays the role, he talks about the Aristotelian system, and the educated person is named after a personal friend of Galileo. And for anybody who reads that book, it is easy to see that Galileo more or less ridicules Simplicio and his ideas about, you know, a geocentric model.

But Galileo also knew that he will not get permission to publish the book. in this way. And, well, I don't know if he knew that, but it was pointed out to him by his friends. And so he added a preface and the Coda in which he more or less said, oh, well, actually, it's all, you know, just a model in a way, and it's inconclusive at the end. The problem was that, again, anybody who read the book wasn't particularly convinced by the preface and the conclusion or the CODA, they did look like an afterthought.

And consequently, you know, he was eventually put on trial. But so he wasn't politically smart in that way. But, you know, I like to think that he was also at some level naive because he he had a great opinion of himself and justifiably so in the sense that he was very, very smart. And his arguments, you know, against literal interpretations were extremely powerful. So he felt, I think, that once he puts, you know, this caveat at the beginning and at the end, that is enough. And the fact is, believe it or not, that when Pio Paschini, who was this person who was asked in the middle of the 20th century to write a biography of Galileo, and he was the person of the church asked by the church to write that biography, he basically concluded that Galileo was fair. And it was not his fault that the Copernican argument was much stronger than the Aristotelian one.

And, you know, it's telling that the church actually prohibited the publication of Pio Paskini's book, even though they ordered it. That's really fascinating. It's funny to think about how, you know, time and time again, history, as Mark Twain said, doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And towards the end of the, again, as I said, before we went on to live recording this, I said to you offline, I don't like to give away the whole book because I want people to read this book. It reads so interestingly. It's a work of nonfiction. It's a work of science, science biography. And it's written by a professional astrophysicist, one of the greatest to use.

Although you haven't used many refractors as far as I know. I've used more refractors than you have, I think. Well, I'm a theorist. You are an observer. Yeah, but you use the Hubble Telescope, and you've made major discoveries throughout your storied career. So I want to turn back to the Pope again. I just think it's more interesting if I kind of take a little bit of a gentle adversarial discussion. But the thing that I kept thinking about is what if you, Mario Livio, what if you're emperor of the planet, And you're astronomers and you support your National Science Foundation so heavily that you've got the greatest telescopes in the world.

And your planetary astronomers, they discover an asteroid. And the asteroid's coming right towards the Earth. And it's going to hit the Earth and with a 0% chance of missing the Earth, it's going to devastate all of life on Earth. What would you do? Do you have an obligation to keep the peace, even if it means not lying through, you know, co-mission? but lying through omission, perhaps. What would you do as emperor or Pope Mario Livio? I don't know.

That's a hard question. I'm not sure to understand your question in the way that there is nothing I can do to actually stop it from. Yeah, there's nothing you can do. What I'm getting at is, does a government or the papacy back in the 17th century, do they have an obligation to kind of keep the peace?

Is there an obligation to avoid panic? even if we know it's inevitable, or even if the science is not decidable with the instruments and knowledge of that time, is there, you know, should they have, was it so bad of them to keep, to try to keep the peace? Obviously, I don't believe this, but I'm just kind of making this devil's advocate position for you to consider. What obligations did the Pope have? I mean, what if this got out? Could it be dangerous? Could it undermine the entire credulity in the, and the biblical narrative, for example. Yeah.

Well, I still think that in that case, the actions of the Pope did not come from that type of motivation. It came from type of motivations that, yes, there was already, you know, the 30 years' war. So there was a clash between Protestants and Catholics that the Pope was very aware of. There were problems that the Pope was having internally because this particular Pope, Urban VIII, spent money like there was no tomorrow. There was nepotism that he appointed his nephews to various positions and so on. And so his entire attitude was really more of a person who felt personally.

you know, under pressure. And not because, you know, he necessarily believed that this is the best course for Christianity or humanity. I don't think that he did that. You know, concerning, should one keep the peace if an asteroid is about to destroy Earth without any possibility to avoid that, I don't know. I don't think one should keep quiet about that. In the same way that I don't think anybody should have said, you know, that when the current pandemic started, oh, there are now only 15 cases, and very soon it will be down to zero.

So, you know, when all scientists were saying exactly the opposite. So I don't think that this is a good strategy. I think that telling the truth even in difficult times is pretty essential. I mean, yes, one can encourage people. You know, I mean, you know, during World War II, you know, Churchill famously, you know, say, we'll fight them on the beaches, we'll fight them in the streets. I mean, he did not say, oh, no, they are never going to come here and nothing is going to happen, you know, and so on. He basically said, look, it's really bad, and we would have to do everything we can to fight them.

So I think, yeah, that's my opinion. So I want to talk now, I'm going to stop being a devil now, at least for the time being. I want to talk about Galileo's, the end of his life. obviously the story that you recount of his trial is incredibly gripping, and much has been made of it in the media, even in the press, and even the not pardoned technically. I don't think the Pope John Paul II pardoned Galileo in 1992, but instead kind of the aftermath of the affair, again, I want people to read the book. So I'm showing now on the back of my screen some scenes that I took from Archechetti, which is the final, home house imprisonment that Galileo enjoyed, I put enjoyed in quotes, although I do think, you know, if you have to be home imprisoned, we ran a conference there in 2015 on the subject

of testing relativity. And of course, you make the point in here. Galileo was one of the first, if not the first, to consider what is meant by relativity, so much so, the relative motions of objects and their behaviors, so much so that Einstein and one of his books in his works, cited Galileo is really the originator of this idea of the principle of relative motion. Now, Galileo was imprisoned here, beginning in 1634 until his death in 1642, I think, so eight or so years. The Pope was not, he seemed like a real difficult person. He was very, it seemed tyrannical, oppressive, almost vindictive in many cases.

But he did allow him to live in this rather sumptuous villa, which we, as I said, I had a conference there. I spent three days in the villa. We lived near it and ate there every day. And beside from hiding my head on the ceiling, because the ceilings are very low there because people's heights, that back then, including Galileos, were kind of a good 10, 15 centimeter shorter than I am. It didn't seem that bad. So did the Pope do him sort of give him any special kindness, or was that just sort of an accident that he was allowed to live both near his daughter Celesta, the sister Maria Celesta. I don't know if his other daughter was at the same convent, but you can see it here, I think,

in the background. She was. Yeah. So talk about, you know, if he wasn't treated like, you know, Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, he was put into a pretty decent arrangement. He was essentially under house arrest. And, you know, as I say, the surroundings are pretty nice. So what was life like for him in imprisonment?

He did write more books after he was in prison. Correct. He wrote a very important book that described all his experiments in mechanics and all his ideas. Yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah, we'll talk about the discoursing. Yes. But, well, look, Galileo was probably the best known scientist in Europe. And he actually was a personal friend of the Pope before he wrote the dialogue.

So it was quite, and he was also all. He was, you know, already in the 70s, so he was already quite old. So there was no question that he would really be put to torture. And in addition, there are some speculations that maybe there was even some sort of a plea bargain during the trial, which, you know, he confessed and, you know, did his abjuration. and as a result of that, he was given a somewhat more lenient treatment and, you know, more not so severe a punishment. But the punishment was still there. I mean, he was on house arrest for, you know, eight and a half years or so.

And, you know, there were lots of restrictions. He could get visitors, but he couldn't get many. visitors, he couldn't discuss many things. Even when he died, they wanted to do a big, you know, tomb for him and the Pope objected to that. They still didn't allow him to publish more books. In fact, even the printing of his previous books was disallowed in Italy. So, so it's not that he wasn't punished. He was punished. But yeah, he wasn't burnt at the stake and

wasn't forced to torture. So behind me now is yeah, go ahead. The humiliation he had to go through by giving his abjuration on his knees before the Inquisitors, you know, a person at 70 years old

was sufficient, I think. And mind you, he was never very healthy too. I mean, he suffered from lots of illnesses throughout most of his life. Yeah, and the story of his kind of delay of trial and is just so gripping. It reads like a true courtroom drama. So you're to be commended as usual. I'm showing in the back for those of you watching on YouTube, you can see it. Some of the olive trees and the grape trees that are in Galileo's Villa. It's it's such a peaceful, genteel place to be. As I said,

That's much better than, say, what Bernie Madoff, quote-unquote, might be enjoying as we speak. Just a quick note on his daughter. A lot of books focus on Galileo or focus on scientists and their relationships with their fathers. I mean, my book sort of covers that. What's so interesting in Davis Sobel, who endorsed your book saying such lovely words, as every so often a reason arises to retell the life of Galileo, this year, as Mario Libio so forcefully demonstrates in Galileo and the science, Myers, the 400-year Galileo affair cast an urgent new light on the current climate crisis.

That's Davis-Obel offer of Longitude Galileo's daughter and the class universe. And she wrote very tenderly about their relationship and how devastating it was for Galileo when he passed away. What about that? You have daughters, if I remember? Yes, yes. And I have daughters too. I have two daughters and a son.

Oh, yes. So what was Galileo like as a father, as a scientist father, you know, to boot? He was, his father, you know, had high hopes for him. Unfortunately, he let him down. He became a, you know, a scientist, not a doctor. And it reminds me of Hubble. His father wanted him to become a lawyer. And, you know, these great scientists, you know, renowned for their use of the telescopes,

defied their fathers to go on to great accomplishments. for all of humanity. But tell me a little bit about Galileo as a son and as a father, especially with his son, Vincenzo, and his daughter, Celeste. Yeah. So as a son, you know, his father was a musician and a music theorist. He almost certainly helped his father in experiments. His father, Vincenzo, was himself a very stubborn and, you know, not particularly giving in to authority a person.

And he wrote a book against the musical theories of his own teacher in music. And Galileo almost certainly inherited some of this objection to authority from his father. No question about that. So he had two daughters and a son. Unfortunately, at the time, there was a big difference between women and men, in the sense that to marry a daughter, you needed to have a dowry. because all his children were illegitimate, because he never married the woman that was the mother of his children, the dowry for his daughters who were illegitimate daughters would have been just incredible and beyond his means.

And as a result of that, he put them in the convent, which was not unusual at the time, like I said. Now, one of his daughters never adjusted to the convent life, really, and we know almost nothing about her except a little bit which we know from the letters of his other daughter. This daughter, sister Maria Celeste, she wrote to Galileo and, you know, more than a hundred of her letters survived. and Davao Saba so beautifully described those letters. And in addition to her book, she actually published a translation of all of those letters. And those letters are really moving. I mean, they are moving in particular in what she writes to him. I mean, you know, first of all, the respect with which she treats him.

and but you know when she died she died in her 30s this was a huge shock for Galileo and he wrote to a friend that you know we had this daughter who was so smart and so loving of him and so on he was clearly devastated by her death no question about that and she took care actually of his villa and of you mentioned the olive trees the olives and the wine and so on when he was during this trial so he was a very loving the son because there was no issue of

Darry with the son the son was eventually made legitimate by by the Grand Duke and he actually so he lived a rather peaceful life He was near Galileo when he died. And yeah, and that's it. But the life of the daughters was really tough. Yeah, I imagine that. I'm showing in the background of my video that I took from the Italian. This is the University of Archetri and outside of Florence.

And you can see one of their teaching telescope domes. And even in the back, you can see another. dome, El Duomo, and Florence down. Now, this is not far. They are the stewards of Galileo's villa, where he lived out the rest of his life after this imprisonment. I want to, I know the video will probably get people to be nauseous. So I'm going to turn it back to a photo of the same area, which is much more bucolic and peaceful. Again, this is Galileo's final resting place, final place where he did science. Here's a picture of the door, very imposing door, wooden medieval looking door.

It's quite striking. Here's the night shot of the entryway seen from the courtyard. Here's the courtyard itself with a bunch of Italian physicists I know in the background, taking pictures. This is a panoramic view. I want to finish up the discussion of the book with the last book that Galileo ever wrote, and then I want to talk a little bit about books in general to you. in the remaining few minutes.

You have a few more minutes to go? Sure. Okay, great. So when I read this book, and it finishes up with the discussion of the Discourse, which is the discourse on two systems of the world, and you make the point what that really means, and I'll leave it to the reader to read the interpretation of these two systems, and he seemed to use this dialectic methodology quite a bit.

And it made me think of pedagogy today, and one of the things that struck me so powerfully from your last book, why what makes us curious. I'll put this up, I know. We'll feed it in there, kind of a view of it anyway. We'll put up a link to it in the notes. But you make the case for and why for pedagogy in a way that really struck me as I was reading the book, the new book, Galileo on the Science Deniers.

And that's that, and you're going to think this is crazy, but we should teach the controversy. You ever heard that phrase before? Teach the controversy, Mario? Well, I heard that usually news media, they like controversy. Yeah, it's usually in the context of creationists that say, oh, you should teach that there is a controversy, that between Darwin, Darwin had these significant doubts and blah, blah, blah. You should teach intelligent design on an equal footing with creationism. That's typically what they mean by that. I'm just being a little bit tongue-in-cheek here. What I mean is the controversy that you really really.

illuminate in the di-in-the-discorcy, you talk about how Galileo used, say, inclined planes. Now, I don't know if you were remember or how teaching was done for you where you grew up, but for me, when I was introduced to inclined planes and balls and things rolling down incline planes, it was the most stupefyingly boring, you know, monotonous form of education. But then I started thinking about what you said in the book, Why, when you talk about, well, how do you teach the law of gravity to a young kid? You teach them, him or her, about the dinosaurs. You How did the dinosaurs die? Well, they were hit by a huge asteroid.

And then how did that asteroid get here? Well, it was attracted by gravity. And you don't start off with the inverse square law, right? And I started thinking, well, what if we taught physics majors and especially non-majors? What if we said, here's this controversy, here's this book where these principles were laid out. And it was the result of this book came about as a result of a huge controversy revolving around the very interpretation of the word of God, if you will. word of science and I wonder you know what do you think about like teaching as a teaching method to make things more visceral and to make children more curious

and asking why you know what you start off this book was written in prison and what we know about inclined planes was written by a man who was imprisoned at the time and don't you think that would pique their curiosity yeah I think you know certainly sort of a human story edited to this and in storytelling always you know works i mean uh you're right that uh you know when i grew up uh we actually solved problems on inclined planes uh to death uh when i studied physics still do and uh and it really you know i mean you must have you know i i remember i was thinking you know what how many times am I going to use this incline plane? And you know, not once. I don't remember once

somebody telling me, you know why we even talk about inclined planes? Because Galileo was really trying to study freefall. But he had no good way to measure short times. So we had to slow motion to slow the motion to a point where he could make more precise measurement. And he had this incredible idea of slowing down the motion

by rolling balls down inclined planes at a very small angle. Because that allowed him to measure the times better, you know, and so and not only that, he had this intuition that free fall can be seen

as an extreme case of an inclined plane that is at 90 degrees, you know, to the ground. So nobody ever mentioned this to me when I studied these things. And I think that if you tell people that, you know, I think they get a better feeling of, you know, what kind of insights were involved in this inclined planes. Absolutely. And my, you know, my complimentary suggestion to what you're saying is also to teach a little bit of the history.

You know, we always teach science as discovery. you know, were punctuated by Nobel prizes and attention, but we never really talk about the human beings behind these discoveries and how interesting would that be and make it much more visceral and likely for people to remember, you know, here I'm showing the picture of his villa where, you know, he might have been ruminating. I like to think about him walking around here, and this is on the second floor,

and we overlooking where the kitchen was, where they would eat back then. And I just think it's so fascinating to think about how these arose from basically this ultimate controversy of all, which is, you know, how does the universe, how is the universe organized? Does mankind play any sort of special role within it? And so it's fascinating. I think it could combine your book Y with your book Galileo on the Science Samar. It's to really stimulate curiosity in a way that's uniquely perhaps well suited to Galileo in particular. I want to finish up by a discussion of

You know, kind of just a current event, perhaps, involving things in the news while we're doing this remotely. Instead of in person, we did an event about two years ago now with you in person here in San Diego. It's quite lovely to have you here. So now, of course, we're all shut down because of the COVID-19 emergency that's going around the world. What can you say about that from the perspective of Galileo or what lessons would Galileo have to teach us about how to handle such things as this? You know, again, you already mentioned that phrase, which I mentioned in the book, which is believe in science. You know, we should have taken the advice of the scientists here from the beginning, and we should continue to follow them. I mean, look, let me just give you a very, very simple example.

I mean, the task force that deals with the COVID-19 pandemic issued very, very clear, guidelines to, you know, what should it take for various states to open, you know, to reopen businesses and things like that and so on. Very, very clear guidelines. And the guidelines say you should have 14 days of declining, you know, numbers of cases and new cases and all that, you know, and so on. And yet, we are faced now where a situation, which, you know, almost 20 states open without having that. That really means not following the science. Now, of course, I hope very much that nothing really bad will happen as a result of this.

And of course, I realize that everybody wants to open. Yes, I mean, clearly, I mean, we're all stuck at home and not doing what we want to do and what we can do. And there are people who are losing their businesses, and there are people who hardly have even what to eat and so on. This is horrible. But those guidelines were put together by a bunch of scientists who sat down and really thought what it takes to actually overcome this pandemic.

So you cannot just ignore that, you know, altogether. So I think Galileo would have been as terrified as I am from this type of reaction. You know, because he would not understand why people are not following the advice of those who are experts in these types of things. The last thing related specifically to the book is this famous motto, and you can say it in Italian because I can't, and yet it moves. Can you say something about this unique kind of pursuit that you undertook in the writing of this book to understand how that phrase originally? First say it in Italian, please. E pursemov. E pursemov.

And what does that mean and what is the truth and the fiction surrounding the famous phrase? Well, I can tell you what it means. This was referring to the earth, yes? And legend has it that, you know, after finishing everything and so on, he sort of muttered this phrase and yet it moves, you know, and yet the earth moves. I took, I did a whole years of work. years worth of research trying to find out the origin of this motto and I did find that out now I will not tell you what the result is here now however on

May 5th which is in a few days from today I published an article well I it will be published in Scientific American on the result of that motto. But look, irrespective of whether this is a myth or not, I mean, the motto has become, you know, like a symbol of intellectual defiance, basically saying, in spite of what you may believe, these are the facts. And as such, it applies to so many situations even today. Very good. So I like to finish up the conversation with what I call the final five. And that involves the following questions that I like to start off, just conclude most of my discussions with. And that involves the meaning, first starting with the meaning of books in your life. And one thing I always like to kind of present to other authors is what your preferences. is, if you were to have somebody pick up this book 100 years from now, but it's just one reader, would you prefer that to, say, having 100 readers or 1,000 readers, one year from now?

Okay, we all want a lot of book sales when the book first comes out, but I'm talking about the lasting impact. Is it more important to have longevity or to have the breadth of influence of this book's ideas? Well, ideally, you would have both. Can't say both. That's the idea. But do I want longevity or breadth now? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, would you rather have, let me just say, would you rather have 100 readers one year from now or one reader 100 years from now? I see. Well, you know, books, maybe this book is, maybe for this book I would pretext. for longevity, but for books in general, I mean, and especially books that are related to science, they only have a certain length of lifetime. So, and after which they become sort of dated. I certainly hope that this one would not, but generally books on science become dated. And so for those, certainly I would, you know, would want a very large readership now.

because they would become dated anyhow. So, yeah, along those lines, when I was reading your book, it reminded me I bought a copy of Galileo's book on the military compass, which is perhaps, in some sense, is one of his rarest books of all those books, even though, obviously, the Sidereus Nuncius and the Diagago were banned during the index of prohibited books. But I started reading, there's an English translation you can get.

It's beautiful. It has the Italian, actually the Latin. I think it's the Latin. I don't remember if he was writing in Italian back then. I know the Sidurias nuncius is in Latin, and then the Dialago famously was in Italian. But anyway, I'm reading the English translation because I don't speak Italian or Latin. And I came across a passage where Galileo is talking about this use of the military compass in what we would call nowadays currency conversions.

In other words, you want to convert euros to dollars. This way of manipulating the compass could be used to do that. And it's really just a matter of scale factor, what we call a scale factor now. But the example that he uses, I think, is he talks about converting, you know, scuti to Dukati. Scudy to Ducati. And I started thinking, like, if you could find a scudy today, you know, it might be worth a little bit. I mean, you can find Roman coins, you know, from 2,000 years ago and buy them for a couple of dollars at an antique show. So certainly one scudy is not worth that much.

But then you look at the prices of a Galileo compass. If he had just kept the compass book, the first editions were, you know, is almost, you know, prices. Yeah, well, because you only printed like 60 copies or something of that book. Yeah, and they start to deteriorate. So I just thought it was cute, that he has his book that's 420 years old, basically. And the currency conversions, if he had done them or left it to his son, Vincenzo and his daughter, who survived, perhaps. Well, she was a nun, so she didn't have many progeny one expects. I want to talk one more question.

No, and she died before him. I didn't mean Celeste, the other one. Oh, okay. Yes. So the other question about books is, what would you like your target audience to be? Would you rather have it be people that are kind of fanatical supporters of Galileo, or would you rather have it be science deniers themselves? Well, again, I would like it to be both, to be honest, but I will tell you something.

I mean, I've seen many studies which show that once adult people are convinced of something, it is virtually impossible to change their opinions, even if you show them facts. And so in this case, I wouldn't say supporters of Galileo, but I would say I would like every sort of educated person, you know, to read this book. Concerning the issue of how do you change opinions, I think there is no escape from doing that from very early on, namely the education system for children. Once they become adults and have strong opinions, it turns out it's very, very difficult to change those. Very good. Okay, just a couple more questions. One now, turn two, involves what you're optimistic about in the future and what you might be a little more pessimistic about coming about in the near future, but either scientifically, politically, culturally, what have you?

I think, you know, one thing that, you know, I would say almost keeps me up at night, is inequality. Inequality, I see that as one of the biggest problems that, you know, our world is facing. Because you have these places, you know, you live in San Diego. there is a, you know, just south of you, there is a border with Central America, and there is a huge disparity on the two sides of that border. Similarly, if you look between Europe and Africa, you know, the Mediterranean, there is a huge disparity on both sides of that border. There used to be a huge disparity between Western and Eastern Europe. It's somewhat less now, but still. Still, there is a big disparity. And those things are very problematic.

And I honestly don't even know of good solutions for them. But I see those things as being a serious problem. Now, of course, there are things like climate change that worry me. I mean, people, we do need to do something about this. There is no question in my mind. And we need to do this. What am I optimistic about? you know

I do feel you know even now at this horrible times of COVID-19 you do see here and there you see the goodness of people coming out you know I mean

when I do my short walks around the house now and with a mask and other people go you know we all say hello to each other you know people that I don't even know who they are and you see, you know, people who try to support others and things like this, and you see lots of acts of kindness in very many places. That somehow, you know, gives you the hope that maybe there is hope to humans. Yeah.

On the scientific part, I always hoped that during my lifetime, we will find life elsewhere, and we haven't yet. And I am now not young anymore, so I don't know if I will live to see it. I actually believe that within 20 to 30 years, we will either find life elsewhere, or at least we will have some meaningful. full constraint about how rare life is in the galaxy. Yeah. But the problem is that I'm not sure that I will live 20 to 30 more years, so I may miss on that. Yeah. So the last question really involves something that is close to our hearts here at the Arthur C. Clark Center.

You might be familiar with Sir Arthur C. Clark's famous three laws of culture, science, society, what have you. His first law being that there's any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's his second as first law. His third law is that for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert, which is something that Isaac Newton would put into place later on. Thanks to the work of Galileo, as you point out in the book. But his second law is the one that our podcast name is taken from, and that's the only way

of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. And I'm wondering what about your life, your work, seemed impossible maybe as a young person in your 30s or 40s that now seems possible because you did venture a little bit beyond your comfort zone into what we call the impossible. You know, I'm not sure. I mean, life has changed so much. and technology in particular has changed so much that I'm convinced that many things that today we take for granted

I saw as absolutely impossible when I was a child. I mean, you know, to be able to do this conversation now in the way we do it, you know, I could not have dreamt that this is how we would do it. I still remember that as a child, we were always told that one day people will be able to talk on the phone and actually see the person that they are talking to. And, you know, I thought, whoa, wow, will I ever see that? Now we're doing it live. Yes.

So, yeah, I'm not sure exactly what I did, which was impossible. I mean, I think that society as a whole did many things that look impossible. and we benefit from that. AI probably will be the impossible of the relatively near future, I think, you know, big advances in NIH, I think, you know, to the point maybe even that they become the dominant intelligent civilization. That will be a topic for another time. Mary, I want to thank you so much, Dr. Mary Olivia, author of Galileo and the Science Deniers, a wonderful new book that I had an opportunity to read

and we'll listen to when it's out on audiobook on May 5th, and we'll try to have this up as well as links to your other things. Where can people find out more about you online and what's your next project? Well, more about me online. There is, I have a website, which is Mario-dash-Livio.com. be confused with a website which I don't conduct, which is called MarioLivio.com without the dash that is written by a person that I don't know at all.

You just drove a lot of traffic to that site because people are going to want to see what it is. I'll save you the trouble. It's not worth visiting. So it's Mario dash livio.com. That's my actual website. And my next project, well, I of course started thinking about the next book, but I don't like to talk about this before. you know, I really know that that's a book I want to write.

Yeah, I understand. And I'll remind people they can find Dr. Mario Livio at Mario dash Libya, or Mario underscore Livio, on Twitter. And he tweets quite frequently, and it's always quite interesting to see his punditry about all the issues of the day and issues of many centuries ago in the Galileo and the Science Deniers. Mario, thank you so much. It's been a real treat as usual.

I hope we can see each other in the day. coming months in person. Thank you very much. And I hope so too. Stay well. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, and review. For a chance to win a free copy of our most recent guest's newest book,

send a screenshot of your review to info at imagine.ucsd.edu. We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego in the Division of Physical Sciences. Directed by Eric Vary, Brian Keating, and Patrick Coleman, produced by Stuart Volgo. For more information, go to imagine.ucsd.edu. Find us on Twitter at ImagineUCSD.

is indistinguishable from magic.