Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Graphic Science (#017)

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

On May 8th, the Clarke Center will host an evening of Graphic Science: Comics Engage the Cosmos. In advance of that, associate director Brian Keating chatted with Jorge Cham, creator of PHD Comics, and Daniel Whiteson, physicist at UC Irvine, about their new book We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe, a witty, creative look at the biggest open questions in cosmology. 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, three, two. Hello, and welcome to Into the Impossible. A podcast about how we imagine and how what we imagine shapes what we do. From the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. I'm Patrick Coleman, and today we're bringing you a special bonus episode with our associate director Brian Keating speaking to the beloved, creator of Ph.D. Comics, Jorge Cham, and the UC Irvine physicist Daniel Whiteson about their

new book. We have no idea, a guide to the unknown universe. It has a mix of Cham's witty illustrations and accessible writing to guide us into the aspects of the cosmos that our science still is unable to pin down, a fantastic and really enjoyable way to stretch the imagination. Cham and Whiteson will be joining us at the Clark Center on May 8th, along with USC physicist Clifford Johnson, who wrote and illustrated the graphic nonfiction book, The Dialogues, Conversations about the Nature of the Universe, published by MIT Press.

It'll be an evening of graphic science, so if you're in the area, please do come check it out. Visit our website, imagination.ucsd.edu for more details, and sign up for the mailing list while you're there to stay in the loop on our upcoming programs and research. research. Now let's go to our conversation with Jorge Chamm and Daniel Whiteson. So tell me where are you guys right now. So I'm speaking with Jorge Chamm and Daniel Whiteson authors of the fantastic, but this is going to become a collector's item soon because this is the hardcover. And we at the Arthur C. Clark

Center for Human Imagination are delighted to be hosting an event on May 8th, 2018, which is a launch of your paperback. So what are you guys up to you? And we're going to talk a lot about the book. know you guys are pressed for time. You're doing a bunch of media tours, but tell me what's going on. What brings you guys to New York City? Yeah, we're here this week to we gave a talk at the American Museum of Natural History yesterday at the Hayden Planetarium. Oh, very nice. But we did not meet Neil deGrasisle. We did not meet Neil DeGrasseley. Although we walked past his office.

We did. We left a cartoon grab. That's right. Oh, you did? That's the closest we got. That's the closest we got. Yeah. Any closer, it costs you a lot of money.

It costs you a lot of money. That's right. We don't have the budget to get any closer. I know. And we had to do it after hours. I think it would be during regular working hours is more. But then we're also doing a Pye Day event with Atlas Obscura, which is a great kind of science outreach event organization.

So, yeah, that's where we're in New York. Oh, very cool. I'm going to talk at Columbia also. They have a science series there called Science on the Hudson. And one of these great science communities they've built. In traveling around, we found that a lot of places have really done the work over the years to build a community of people in the public interested in science. And when you built that community with a series of lectures, then they can be really responsive.

And places where they haven't done that yet, it's much harder to reach the people who are interested in this kind of stuff because the community just hasn't formed. Great examples are like Saturday morning physics lectures. we had like hundreds and hundreds of people show up on a Saturday morning, freezing cold, to talk about physics. Yeah, it's great when these local communities come together, you know, just get excited about science and learning about new books and stuff. Yeah, but it's the hard work of the local organizers who spent all that time building these communities and these networks, and it's impressive. So we just use them for all our books, though. Well, you're going to be having an opportunity to shill the paper back when you're here because you just, you just,

described exactly what we do here at the Arthur C. Clark Center. So we have, you know, lectures. We have this podcast, which is the only one of the few podcasts within the University of California that I'm aware of. And we have public lectures and events where we bring in scientists, science fiction authors. We've had Sir Roger Penrose was just here a month ago. Freeman Dyson, I just did an interview with him. So we're going to bring together some of those in the conversation that we have today. and then when you're here on May 8th, for the book signing. Yeah, looking forward to that. We're looking forward to a wonderful event. So I want to talk to you guys first about your day jobs,

and then we'll get into the writing and the collaborative process that you guys have turned out so well. Really a unique book in many ways. I mean, there have been books written about science by comic art authors, and there have been science books written by scientists with no, you know, with dry illustrations. But rarely has been, you know, where two scientists have gone together and done a work of creative, you know, graphic art the way that this is. And I wanted to, you know, first get a background on the two of you individually.

So Jorge, you're originally from Panama, which I believe is correct. You guys still there? Yep, that's right. I was born in Maine from Panama. And then I studied a product here in the U.S. Right. You got your Ph.D. from Stanford. Yeah.

That's right. Stanford. But then what happened was while I was getting my PhD in robotics, I started drawing comics. I started drawing something to call PhD comics, I'll higher and deeper. And, yes, I sort of kept going to the academic track. The comics kind of became more popular than the research I was doing. And so that's what I do now for the time, is that just draw comics and do writing and work on different projects. And as I understood it, the comic sort of took off virally.

You weren't trying to sell it or market it or anything. Originally, it just spread by word of mouth around campus. What do you think made it so appealing to your fellow students? You must have been speaking the truth. Well, I think that's the power of a good comic strip is, you know, it kind of portrays the truth or truths that, you know, are maybe people aren't sort of open to talk about, And so I think, yeah, I think that's what people connected to is this idea that here is somebody writing about the academic process, but in a maybe slightly irreverent way or in a way that was kind of funny.

You know, adding humor to academia where I think was not necessarily a natural combination. Making fun of professors. Making fun of professors. Yeah, so I'll get to that in a second, Daniel, don't worry. But, yeah, so I mean, it's kind of that you capture in the strip. I mean, sometimes I've even heard you compare yourself to, you know, Scott Adams, Dilbert. But in a way, I mean, yours is, it's very highbrow in a sense, and it's very existentially, sometimes full of the dread and ennui that students, and I remember, you know, what it was like to be a grad student.

But, I mean, I have to ask, was your grad student experience, you know, anything like that, which you depict with a character that they think is you sometimes? Yeah, no, I mean, there's definitely, I think, the core of the strip is, is sort of that question. It's like, why would a really intelligent, rational person pursue an academic career? You know, it's not necessarily the most highest paid job out there. And there's a lot of struggle and a lot of, you know, challenges in terms of coming up with ideas and making ideas work.

And there's kind of this big built-in uncertainty. You know, you never know if the science we're working on is going to pay off or you never know if the project you're working on is actually going to work. So yeah, I think that's what people got attracted to. And definitely it was my experience. You know, kind of going into grad school, I thought I was pretty smart, but then now you're suddenly in a pool of really, really, really, extra smart people. And so, you know, just kind of going through that ego check

and going through that kind of realization of your limits, really. And also just kind of the kind of funny dynamics that happened in academia. I think are what made this trip relatable to people. And what do you find is it more, is it more challenging? I mean, the thing that I remember most about, you know, all the academic levels, starting from undergraduate to graduate to postdoc to assistant professor, your social cohort kind of decreases, you know, exponentially at each level. And I wonder, you know, are you working nowadays in isolation?

Are you, I mean, besides the collaboration with Daniel, are you, do you mainly work by yourself? And if so, how do you handle those kind of, you know, different, different environments as opposed to grad school where you've got at least a lot of people are suffering around you? Yeah, I think, you know, there's people around in grad school, but it's a very isolating experience, you know? It's like it's you and your advisor and really nobody else in the world

knows what you're working on at a specific level and what kind of certain things. on your project. So I think academia, even though you're surrounded by people, it's still a very kind of isolating experience. Yeah, and there's a lot of parallels with cartooning. You know, I still work in my pajamas mostly late at night and things like that. I enforce a strict no pajamas rule in the lab, but we could commiserate about, you.

what it was like to be a graduate student. But I think it might be interesting to get, I mean, what about Jorge's comics in the movie in which the movie on which the comic, sorry, the comic strip on which the movie was based on? And I understand there's a second version of that. So what is it like being on the other side of the desk? You know, kind of Jorge always depicts, you know,

the grad student and then the wise, you know, bearded, white hair. So you don't have the white hair. You've got the white sun. You don't have the white hair. That's a nice beard. Yeah. That's right. I'm attempting to talk about this year.

Yeah. So, yeah, with tenure comes, you know, massive heirsutical privileges. So, Daniel, what's it like for those, you know, the uninitiated? What's it like to be a real professor as you are? I think it's the best job in the world, honestly. I mean, I just get to think about questions that are interesting to me. mostly I think about the questions and then spin them off to my students and grads and postdocs who take them and actually run with them and execute them.

I think it's a lot of fun. It's great freedom, great intellectual freedom. Nobody's telling me what to do every day, you know, and I get to goof off on side projects if I want, like this fantastic collaboration with Jorge. So I had no idea when I was in grad school, when I was an undergrad, what being a professor was like. But I'm pretty glad I went down this road. because it's, in my view, it's the best job in the world, yeah.

So both of you guys, I think what is a hallmark for both of you fellows is that you're both great storytellers. I've had the opportunity to see Daniel live and in person, and we're looking forward to your event here on my 8th. And I've seen Jorge, I've seen your TED talk and so forth. What about that commonality? I mean, do you think, I mean, mostly Daniel professors are depicted as, you know, pretty dry. boring, you know, erudite, but intellectually yet, you know, unintelligible. How do you, I mean, did you take any training? Is there anything that you did in your career, you know, to accentuate the extroverted aspect of your personality? Because, I mean, we both know,

not every, every professor may share the delightful things that we enjoy about academia, but they're not all as good at pointing out to the public at such an elucidated, you know, in such an easy fashion as you are. What, you know, what do you attribute that to? I think it takes a lot of practice, honestly, and I think people don't recognize that. And you're right, as professors, we don't get much training or practice. But when I was in high school, I did a lot of debating and extemporaneous speaking, where you have to be sharp-witted and on your feet, especially there's a kind of debate called parliamentary debate,

where there's a lot of zingers back and forth and you're interrupting each other and some witticisms, et cetera, and you get a crowd riled up and stuff. It's a genre of debate. Oh, yeah, and the crowd booms and pisses and stuff like. It's modeled after the British Parliament. The parliament, yeah. You have to come up with clever things to defend yourself. I did a lot of that in college.

Nowadays in the U.S., we just do that on Twitter, right? The government just doesn't. Yeah, or live TV. Live TV, that's right. So I'm actually, personally, I'm much more of an introvert, but I've practiced a lot to try to be an engaging speaker and to try to have fun up there and to relax. Yeah.

So, you know, big, you know, I really started public speaking, but a big turning point for me was, you know, a TA in a class, and I was co-teaching a class. And my other co-teacher said that to really look at how stand-up comedians do it, you know, just in terms of how they engage with the public, how they hold themselves, and just how they're able to tell a story, like a long discourse but also with interesting kind of a size and things like that

and then but mostly just like how to have fun up there you know and so uh for me like studying stand-up comics and seeing how you know just make it fun and just make it sort of like having a conversation but also you know you also kind of have to really start to really start really well in your head um but yeah just mostly go up there and have fun it's exciting yeah that's funny i i had a chance to do a ted X talk about four years ago. And before I did it, I did a TED, I did a comedy store, two minute, three minute long stand-up comedy routine here in La Jolla. Maybe we'll take you guys there for the after hour show on May 8. But we did a comic stand-up routine. Yeah, I did a three-minute, yeah,

I did a three-minute thing. And I said, you know, I said, if I'm going to bomb in front of, you know, the whole world on TED, I want to bomb first in front of, you know, a couple hundred drunk people. So I did that. I actually prefer the, the, the, the, stand-up comedy, you know, club to, you know, the most lecture halls. I mean, for one thing, there's a two-drink minimum, and that was really nice to have, you know, most of my students only come in with one drink, you know. That's right. Yeah, usually they only drink one drink before they come to class.

Or 50 the night before. And I started, you know, to develop new insights into pedagogy, you know, with, from now on, I decided that I'm only going to have a bouncer in each one of my lectures in case, no Facebooking and tweeting of your comics. So speaking of comics, one thing I think, you know, Jorge, you speak a lot of truth. And as I said, you know, there's a lot of truth in enui and existential dread in your comics. But I think, you know, if you were to do that in another form, the way that you do it in a comic form, I think it robs it of some of the pain and actually gives it the ring, I mean, add to the ring of truth.

And I'm wondering, did that always resonate with you? I mean, you could have been an artist, you know, depicting in more realistic form. I've seen, you know, very detailed, you know, scientific drawings that you've made. And, you know, so what about the comic format that appeals to you most? I just think it's magic, you know. I kind of grew up early on in my childhood.

I was exposed to a lot of comic strips, a lot of comic books and a lot of comic collections. And so I just think the whole thing is really magic, you know, the way you can, like you said, you can kind of pass up a little bit of truth, but also kind of mask it in these characters, it gets sort of lighthearted. I just think there's a certain magic to that.

People also are really accepting of it. They're like, they're happy to read a comic and to absorb something from it. It's not an intimidating form of communication for whatever reason. They associate it with childhood or with goofy superheroes or something, but their inhibitions, their barriers are let down when they're reading comics, which is one reason I thought

would be a good fit for communicating science because there are a lot of very understandable ideas when you start telling people I'm going to tell you some physics they immediately start thinking I'm not going to understand I hated music yeah exactly so if you can just get around

that make people feel like don't worry you're going to get it just stick with us and I think that's a big part of the hurdle in communicating physical. Did it simplify things that Jorge had a technical for you, Daniel. I mean, explaining science. And actually, Jorge, you've done comics about explaining science to the public and kind of this, you know, I call it this,

you know, instead of the military industrial complex, it's kind of the academia, academia and journalism, you know, complex where everything has to be really hyped up to, it has to be, you know, a huge major breakthrough in the treatment of toe fungus, you know, and that has to go viral. And then, of course, you know, my pet. It always has to make you healthier or something. something right right or you know major find and caution the world right or yeah or you know so was it work when you were working with horridaniel like was it easy i mean was it easier that he had such a strong technical background as opposed to you know most illustrators you you had a probably you would have had to probably explain a lot more to and that liberate the creative bandwidth for you guys to work

together that you know that hoary had such a strong technical background oh i think it was essential yeah One thing that I noticed very early on was that he just never stopped asking questions until he actually understood. I think part of that was he imagined it was possible to understand and he wanted to penetrate through all the layers of jargon like actually explained simply.

And the first time we hung out, we spent like four or five or six hours talking about one topic in science. He just recorded the whole thing. If you go back and listen to it, you can see this times when he's like just pressing me and pressing me and pressing me. and so I think that's what makes it

part of it's what makes it successful is that we really make a connection all the way down to those accessible ideas and that was part of the processes of our book is that I would start and write something which I thought was accessible and I thought was interesting and I thought had the right take on it

and he'd be like, no, I don't get it or let's, you know, I don't get this first bit in this first paragraph, this first page, explain that more. And that was great. There's been like, for example, we were talking about gravity and, you know, I dot-da-da-da-dot this stuff about space. And it's like, well, what do you mean?

Okay, let's talk about that more. And that whole conversation turned into a chapter about space. And later I realized, that's a great idea. Let's just have a whole chapter. What is space? It's a really simple, basic question and fascinating. Yeah. So, a lot of that came out of this.

You finally found a professor, Jorge, who had to answer your questions. Who would see you outside of office? It's a lot. It's in, um. I've heard him do this with other people, too. This recording he has at a time he was on the bus with the Higgs convener of Atlas, Ilam Gross. And he's asking him questions.

And he's like, explain to me, what is symmetry? And Ilam is struggling. And this is Elon Gross. He's like, he's a good scientist. He's a good speaker. And he's like struggling to find the words. And he says things in that clip. He's like, you make me invent these words because you ask me these questions.

And that's what I think a good science journalist should do, like actually in to things be explained. I think a lot of science those and falls short of that standard. Yeah, absolutely. Possibly, partly because

Jorge had a technical background. Yeah. Also, they probably have a defendant and can't afford to spend four hours talking to a physicist. That's right.

Yeah, you've got mouths to feed. But I've got unemployed cartoonists all the time in the world. That's right. Yeah, tenured professor,

right? Yeah. I don't think I had tenure at the time when we started, actually. Oh, really? Oh, really? Wow. When I was warmed up, I was still an assistant professor, yeah. That was a big risk for you.

Oh, yeah, everything on the line. Wow. And now you've had I known. You would have gotten. I would have charged more. Didn't you find Jorge, didn't you basically commission him to explain as you felt these lacunae and the discussion of the Higgs boson in the early part of this decade. Is that correct, Daniel, that you basically just blind pitched Jorge out of the blue and try to commission him to work on an explainer for the Higgs bosom? Yeah, I just cold emailed him. I mean,

I've been a fan for years, and my wife has been a fan. And actually, I read a different technical comic. It was a comic about the development of the Chrome browser than by Scott McLeod. And, like, I'm not that into Chrome, how to do write a browser. But this comic did a good job of making it interesting. Like somebody who's in total field. So I thought, well, if they can do that for like developing a browser, like what's the big question there, what's the pull the hook, right? There's nothing. Then

the comics can do it for physics where I think there's a lot of big hooks. But I didn't have the artistic skills myself. And so I thought, well, I'll just email a celebrity and see if he writes back. Right. Old cartoonist do write back when you offer the money. Well, I tried

that with Banksy, but he didn't write back. Oh, yeah. You have his email Jess? You just write it on walls and hometown? Or how do you think of it? I wish. So speaking of art, Jorge, one thing we explore down here in San Diego at the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination is whether or not creativity, imagination,

artistry can be taught. And I'm curious, both of you guys, but first, Jorge, could you teach someone to be a good artist? If you just took somebody like me who has no artistic skills, I mean, could you actually could you do it? Could you make me into a Jorge Champ? No. At least you're honest.

I'm not sure. I don't know if you can teach somebody to be an artist, but I think you can definitely, you know, compel them to practice a lot. And so I would say that, yeah, I would say it's mostly about practice and doing it a lot. But more importantly, having kind of that perspective of being open and self-critical and just having that internal desire

to sort of learn the craft and know what it takes, how to recognize what people respond to. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not quite sure that it's something you can really teach, but you can definitely, like, compel people or give an opportunity to do it a lot. One of the biggest advice I give people is, is like, commit yourself to doing it to somebody. So you have a deadline, so you have a reason. So you feel bad if you don't make the deadline.

So for me, like, I think the only reason I really kept doing it was because I was going to for this student newspaper. And they were actually, like, paying me a few bucks. So there was a deadline. So I just had to keep turning it out, you know? So I think if I didn't have that deadline, I would probably just never, never really predict. reduce anything. And so then that gets you to the habit and then that gets you to really

practice line. I know deadlines are important to Jorge because he always turns stuff in immediately before the deadline, which gives me maximum time to work in it, right? Technically, if you think about it. Yes. Daniel, can you teach somebody to be a great physicist? Teach someone to be a great physicist? Yeah, can you teach someone to be a great physicist? Yeah, can you teach someone? I hope so. but I hope so. I'm doing it with all my grad students right now. And how do you do it?

What's your, yeah, exactly. So what would you do? I mean, are there things that you could do to ensure the creativity? Because, I mean, a lot of being a scientist is being creative and being invento. Being an artist, even though, you know, like you said, we don't really get, ever get training on how to teach. We don't get training and how to do research. So how do you, you know, it's mostly taught from advisor to advise.

So how do you inculcate that curiosity, the creativity in your students? students. It's a great question. I think about that a lot because most of my students are members of the Atlas collaboration, which means we're in a 5,000 person collaboration where a lot of things have been done for you and a lot of things have been done, almost everything's been done already. And if you're not careful, your students can just fall into a rut repeating something somebody has done before and not really learning anything. So in my group, I make a lot of particular strides to avoid that. One thing I do is we have this exercise every six months. We call it the crazy ideas meeting, where everybody has to come in with at least one or two ideas for a new experiment.

Think of a question you want to answer about the universe and then propose an experiment. No limitations on cost or practicality or whatever. Galaxy colliders and this kind of crazy stuff. And then we think about it. We take it and we say, well, okay, how would you do that? How much would it cost? Would it actually work? And some of my students take to this right away, and they come in with great ideas.

And actually our cosmic ray smartphone app came out of that meeting where somebody suggested this idea. And if we thought about it, could we make that work? Let's think it through and do the calculations. And we couldn't demonstrate to ourselves that it wouldn't work. So we decided, let's actually try to do it. And other times people had crazy ideas like, let's use the Atlas instrumented area as a direct detection experiment. like we have a bunch of protons in there and if there's a wimp wind,

maybe they'll interact, we'll see them. And so we did the calculations. But the point is that we have to specifically poke them and prod them. And some students never take to it. They feel very uncomfortable, and they show up and they have no ideas, and they never suggest anything.

So I think some students are not good at it. Other students can learn. If you poke them and insist, then they become good, I think you can learn to think broadly and relax your mind. And then I know you guys are on a tight deadline today. So a couple of questions to finish up with. So one is one that I wondered if you could pay,

if you could pay, you know, God or your favorite spirit or, you know, whatever to answer one of the questions, one of the chapters, except for chapter 13. which one would each one of you both like you know most like to know the answer to you you mean questions from the book yeah which would you like to have an idea and we have no idea that chapters are all very very provocatively titled things like who is shooting particles at the earth what is time what is space what is gravity and I'm wondering you know if you could get an audience with your, you know, the creator, if you believe in such an entity,

or just, you know, get the answer, you know, sent it an email to you. What would you most, of all these questions, of all these great questions, which one would you most like to get the answer to? What's God's email address? It's bad. It's bad. Everything. Dot all.

Banksy ads. Well, I think I've already sort of chosen. because I decided to dedicate my life to particle physics and, you know, breaking down matter in the smaller and smaller pieces. And, you know, it's sort of stereotypical, or it's a trite story, but I really have been wondering about that question

since I was a kid, like, what is everything made out of? What is the smallest particle? So to me, it's a really, it's the kind of question, which you knew the answer would change the way you felt about the universe. Like, is there a smallest thing

or does it go on forever with smaller and smaller particles? I would love desperately, love to actually know the answer of that question. And it kills me that there is an answer, right? There is a factual answer. And it's out there. It determined you just don't know it. One day, humans might know it.

It's the kind of thing that makes me want to like freeze my head for 5,000 years. So I can be resuscitated in 5,000 years when we learn the answer. Yeah. Yeah. And that's possible. You could conceivably do that. You could fast forward your way through scientific progress to the future and learn the answer of one of these questions.

That's a little bit tempting to be some times. Absolutely. For me, the question I would want to answer is, it's kind of a tie between, are we alone in the universe? So we have a chapter in the book that kind of talks about how people think about the question of whether there are other intelligent beings in the universe. And also there's a chapter we have about how big is the universe.

universe. And just a question, like, is the universe infinitely big or does it have kind of an edge to it or does it curve around on itself? So I think if those are the two questions I would love to have answered. And then the last thing, you guys sort of epitomize this, you know, there's always this dichotomy that's spoken about in popular circles, you know, the left brain and the right brain. I can never remember which brain I am. You know, and I probably means I'm one of the brains, but I can't, I can't, that's right, bird brain. Yeah, my mom named me brain, you know, only because it was an anagram for Brian, hoping it would get me some extra IQ points.

But do you see the arts and science, you know, as reconcilable in the sense that, you know, can art influence science, can science influence art? We have a great many of our patron saint, if you will, Arthur C. Clark is, of course, you know, a great science, scientist, and a great writer, author. What do you see as the future of these two cultures? I mean, do you think they're destined to sort of meld together more, or, you know, do you think the most fruitful avenue is perhaps some sort of union of the two as you guys have begun to initiate?

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I think there's sort of a happy ecosystem where they support each other. I think science fiction, for example, drive science in a lot of ways. I view science fiction writers as sort of like proto theorists. Like, you know, there's a kind of world I'd like to imagine. Could we do this?

Maybe the world works in this way. And there's lots of examples where ideas started in science fiction and then came actually directly to science. And then the other way, you know, we discover something crazy in science and then there's a bunch of science fiction about it. You know, like how many books are there now

about like AI takeovers and this kind of stuff? definitely influence each other. And on the literary side, and on the artistic side, I mean, I think one of the great sources of artistic inspiration is just the sheer beauty of the universe. You're an astrophysics person. Like, look at the incredible beauty of the universe, and you have to wonder, like, did it have to be that way?

Could we have been humans that evolved that thought the universe was ugly? Could somebody look at these galaxies and say, yuck, what a mess, right? Or look at the Green Canyon and think, like, I wish this was just smooth and featureless. Is it something about being human? Is it something about the universe itself?

I think a lot of these scientific discoveries inspire artistic reactions. And also, in science, artistic and aesthetic preferences guide us. If you talk to theorists in particle physics, they say, this theory is beautiful. That theory is ugly. They prefer theories that have some sort of structure to them

that they aesthetically like. And it's those tools and their aesthetic choices about how they think the universe should work that often guides the research we do. Exactly. Yeah, you mentioned in the book, DRAC, you know, Daraq was guided, you know, he said you should be guided by finding, you know, it's more important your equations are beautiful than that they're right. Yeah. He also had a lot of negative things to say about poets and art. I think he was a deeply closeted poet. I've come out on record about that. that.

Yeah, he wanted to be a poet so badly that when he failed at it, he, you know, his consolation prize was the Nobel Prize, but it's still never, unrequited, a verse. He wanted literature, not physics. That's right, that's right. He wanted it in literature. All right, guys. Good.

Jorge, do you have any final thoughts about the melding of cultures or do you find inspiration from science or do you feel like science can be inspired by art or both? Well, I think that there's definitely, they have different goals, you know, the goal of science is very different than the goal of art. You know, at the core, it's about truth, I think. But maybe one is more objective truth and the other one is subjective truth. But I think, yeah, I agree with Daniel. I think there's a lot of overlap in terms of inspiration and imagination.

And, yeah, just kind of a personal inspiration to do it. But yeah, at the end, though, I think there is sort of there are different, They have different rules. But there's definitely a lot of kind of areas in between, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Well, guys, thank you so much. I know you're super busy today. I want to thank you, Jorge Cham and Daniel White's and authors of,

We Have No Idea, the last hardcover version. I'm going to get you guys to sign it when you're here on May 8th. And we're going to celebrate the release of We Have No Idea in Paperback. And then talk about what's coming next. I want to see and find out the future of you guys, is there? We have no idea to T-O-O. or is there number two? So we'll see.

We'll be excited to find it. I was going to mention the website and guess anyone's interested. It's we have no idea.com. So it's just we have no idea. com. And actually, we do have a project coming up, which is a podcast.

We're launching a podcast to talk about a lot of the things we didn't get to talk about in the book and other stuff. And it's a very humble name too. It's called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. Mostly us talking about science and yucking it up. And so I hope your listeners will be interested.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we'll certainly promote that through our podcast. We welcome the competition. We're not scared of anything here. That's right. Grow the pie of what we have no idea about. Thank you guys so much. This has been Into the Impossible,

a podcast of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. We'd like to thank our guests, Jorge Chamm, Daniel Whiteson, as well as to acknowledge our generous patrons and supporters, including Viassat Inc., members of the Founders' Orbit, and the James B. Acts Family Foundation. Your support is much appreciated. To find out more about the Clark Center and other exciting projects, research, and programs, as well as how to support our mission, please visit imagination.ucsd.edu. Audio production is by me, Patrick Coleman, produced by Patrick Coleman and Brian

Keating. Thanks everyone. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. Five, four, three, two.