Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Poster Boy of Genius with Samuel Graydon

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

This week, Anthony speaks with Samuel Graydon, science editor at The Times and author of Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles. Sam reveals the human side of Albert Einstein, discussing his turbulent marriage, influential sister, and anti-establishment views. He explores Einstein's ties to Judaism, regrets over the Manhattan Project, reputation as a ladies' man, and his groundbreaking perspective on time and reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tellus Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud, so I can stress less during tax season, or any season.

Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager.

Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and this is Open Book. where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word

from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. Joining us now on Open Book, Samuel Graden, he's an author and science editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

But boy, you wrote a phenomenal book, Sam. I want to congratulate you on that. It's called Einstein in Time and Space, a Life in 99 particles. And so, first of all, congratulations on the book. I am sharing with all my friends and some of my adult children. When people think of Albert Einstein, they think of a genius. But your book, I think even Walter Isaacson's book in some ways gave him a little bit of a human side. But why did you decide to hone in on this angle?

Well, so as you mentioned, and thank you, by the way. Thank you. Saying the book is nice. I'm the science editor of the TLS, the Timesituary supplement. and so I get sent a lot of science books and, you know, I read them or I get them reviewed and read the reviews. And I noticed, as I read, most of the science books that were being published over so many years, that if the book was about physics, any aspect of physics, Einstein was invariably mentioned. He was always mentioned with respect. He seemed to be some kind of progenitor, an archetype, and somehow always found.

foundational in any aspect of modern physics. And I thought, well, I just have to get to know. It seems too important to ignore. I should get to know him. And the more I read about him, the more fascinated by his life I became. I sort of the science is truly amazing. But the more I read about him, the more his life stood out to me as a story worth telling in its own right. Okay, so the book goes through 99 snapshots, or let's, as you call them, particles of Einstein's life. How did you go about selecting those and remind us why the number 99, which I think is fascinating, tell us why 99 is so significant. Yes, that is one of the particles in itself, and that is to do with the element Einsteinian, which is right at the end of the periodic table, we're not quite anymore, but

It was right at the end of the periodic table when it was discovered. And it was discovered in the aftermath of hydrogen bomb explosion in the Bikini Atoll. Drones were flown through the air with filter paper and they picked up some of the coral that had been obliterated by the blast and sort of investigated that. and they discovered a new element had been created by the force of the blast, and they decided to name it after Einstein for various reasons. Einstein had just died, and it was a way in effect of honoring him for that. But there was a sort of intention. The idea that he was the founder of the atomic bomb was still sort of in the air at the time,

and the idea that E equals MC squared is pivotal to it. played into this. And I just latched onto the idea that Einstein as a man was so multifarious, as I was saying, his life is fascinating. And he comes across as far more complicated human than I expected. And I latched onto the idea that just as with an atom, you know, an element, it is composed of all of these different parts. And I thought that so was Einstein composed of particles, you know, quotation marks. He composed all these different parts that make up a whole. So that was the metaphor anyway. I mean, I love that. And you also go into his upbringing, his parents, his sister. I believe I'm pronouncing her name right, Maja, I believe is her name. Malava Marik, who was his first wife.

Tell us a little bit about those relationships. And who do you think was most influential on him? I'm that's a good question. I think Maya, Maya is how I've been saying anyway, his sister. Maya, okay, sorry. No, no, that's, I may well be wrong. But she, I mentioned her early on because she's one of the sort of constant relationships that he has that's sort of quite good. I also has reasonably volatile relationships with those close to him and apart from his sister,

except that I tell a very early anecdote of him, I think, hitting her over the head with a bowling ball, I think. He was quite violent as a child when he didn't get his way, which actually is pretty indicative of how he is as an adult. He wasn't hitting people over the head with bowling balls when he was an adult, but he liked to get his own way. But I think out of the ones you mentioned, particularly his first wife, Malava marriage, is a hugely influential figure on him. And their relationship is a kind of slightly tragic story, really. They fall very desperately in love at university. His parents oppose the marriage and he sort of fights for it. And then through one particular tragedy, but is tipped over there into sort of bitterness

that eats away at their marriage until really it's a very acrimonious divorce at the end. And the one incident that I think kind of tips it over, I mean, Einstein, I think they would have divorced anyway. He just hated constraint of any kind. Marriages were not really for him. But they have an interdiscitimate daughter. So marriage gives birth to a daughter outside of marriage with Einstein. But that was enough at the time for society to effectively not have given Einstein a job. So he was on a job search for several years.

and he had got this job lined up, and then marriage gave birth to a daughter. And so they just kept her secret. They simply didn't tell anybody about her existence, not Einstein's parents, not his friends. Eventually, when he did have two sons with marriage, they never found out about her. They almost erased her existence completely. It wasn't until about the 1980s that she was first known about. And so we don't quite know what her fate is, but she was definitely given away. And it seems likely that she would have died at some point at the age of two, possibly.

Einstein literally never saw her, never once went to see his daughter. And the death of, well, the death or certainly the sort of permanent separation from the daughter, I think, kind of twisted that relationship in such a way as to kind of lead it on a road to a very nasty divorce. I mean, I was dying to ask you this question when I was reading your book. Do you think genius or this type of thought pattern that led to all of these great discoveries by Albert Einstein, it comes with some exegesis of abnormal social behavior? Or is that a one-off? I'm overly reading into it. Or do you think that it's just part and parcel for being this sort of nonconformist out-of-the-box sort of thinker?

It's a very interesting question, particularly in relation to Einstein. And that's because I think I went into the book thinking that Einstein would be this sort of, sort of unrelatable character that I couldn't, because he was a genius, he was sort of on another plane of existence or much that was somehow removed from my kind of understanding of everyday existence. But what I found was that he was really quite normal, much more normal than I thought, Einstein. He was a genius, I think. that having spent about three years with him, I find it categorically true that he was a genius. His work is just so groundbreaking.

But it's achieved against the backdrop of very solid work. He's not this sort of transcendental genius who sits back in a chair and then a lightning bolt gives him an idea. He works very hard. And indeed, in moments of personal distress, he sort of works even harder. He buries his head in the sand. I think he says, I bury my head in the sand like an ostrich after his first breakup. when he's 60, he says that that's what he does in a very accurate self-analysis that remains true all of his life. But also, he isn't just, he isn't sort of monomaniacal either.

He's not just this sort of crazed physicist who only cares about atoms. He's very much of the world and very outspoken about his politics and very outspoken about sort of the general intellectual trends. He loved music. He, he, He had a lot to say about music. He thought Mozart was top. And he really, really cared about that. And so he was a sort of active and quite, he had loads of friends. He wasn't a recluse.

He was admired and loved by basically everyone he met, excluding his family. So, yeah, he was, I think that he sort of said. There was some anti-establishment non-conformity to his personality, right? I can identify that with that, by the way, because I'm. a little bit like that. Yes, certainly. I'm not a genius. I'm just a non-performist.

Yes, you're right in the sense that, so there's a nice anecdote I tell him in the book about C.P. Snow, who is a physicist and author, he goes to visit Einstein on Long Island. When Einstein is summering. And Snow sort of writes up this very nice essay about his meeting with Einstein. And there's a point at which Einstein and him are discussing, Britain, Snow is English and he says, oh, why don't you move to Britain? And Einstein says, oh, well, I've been to Britain and I think he got shown around, you know, all these stately homes,

and then he got shown around Oxford. And he said, I was just, you know, there were butlers everywhere. And I was changing in and out of evening dress all the time. And he just sort of imagined Britain as this place where you were constantly shifted between clothes and butlets. And Snow says, oh, no, no, no, it's not like that. And Einstein says, no, I want those swang. This is German word, swang. And swang means constraint in like the broadest possible sense. He, in societal, kind of intellectual, that's why marriage is not very good for him, particularly any kind of constraint on him, he wanted to rail against.

And I think that the kind of anti-establishment stuff that he comes out with. So as I said, he's very outspoken about politics. he hated McCarthyism, for example, and was, you know, very vocal about that and told by various people to go back to Russia and things as a result. But I think that comes from this personal sense of a complete sort of instinctive want of freedom, individual, intellectual, emotional freedom. And I think that that's where that kind of is originates and then goes out from there. Now, he also, sort of interesting, I didn't know this until I read your book, he was offered the presidency of Israel. Yes.

And so, very senior role in Israel. There's a prime minister and a president. He would have been the second president of the state of Israel. So I'm going to wrap two questions into that. One is, tell us about his relationship with Judaism in general, because you write about it beautifully in terms of ages 9 to 12. how he was developing his faith and then how he had a little bit of a revelation related to the faith. But there he is in the 40s being offered this. He says no, of course, but take us through the story, take us through his relationship there.

And how does a Nobel Prize winning scientist get offered such a high profile political job? Yes, it's a very good question. I was surprised when I learned about it. So his relationship with Judaism, as you said, starts, really when he's about nine, his family were not religious in traditional sense. They didn't practice Jewish rituals. But he, when he's nine sort of develops this complete further for religion. He writes his own hymns. He sings them on the way back from school. He obeys kosher dietary laws and his family doesn't. And so he

completely immersed himself in Judaism. And then as quickly as that comes, it goes at the age of 12th, just before he is due faithfully to have a bar mitzance ceremony. But I think, again, it's somewhat related to this idea of constraint. I think the idea of sort of formally committing to Judaism did play a part in his then casting it off. But also he put it down to the sort of scientific awakening, so the idea that he then struggles with the idea of God and he comes to the opinion that God doesn't exist. Or he comes to a very isocratic idea of God, which is based on Spinoza and it's the idea that the universe is God effectively. But it's not orthodox in it, to say at least. And that really is his

sort of religious phase of his life entirely never comes back to religion. However, when he moves to Germany, but to Berlin, kind of in 1914, he starts to become kind of more pleased with the idea, we're accepting of the idea of belonging to a community of the Jewish people. And he sees it, I think his was a community of tribal companions as opposed to religious fellows, the idea that sort of outside of religion he is due. And that's partly in response to growing anti-Semitism in Germany at the time, and that's partly as a result of meeting Jews in Germany who have assimilated into the culture. So I think he describes it as combating anti-Semitism by getting rid of everything Jewish, is what he says, for the idea that you kind of adopt local, you know, national customs rather than Jewish ones.

And he disliked his idea entirely. And so kind of awakens him to the idea of being Jewish. And he sort of funnels that into, he funnels his sort of Jewish awakening into Zionism, the idea of creating a Jewish homeland. So he's against the idea of creating a Jewish state, but is for a Jewish homeland. And he then campaigns very vigorously for that for the remainder of his life. It's about 1920. It's his first visit to America, and that's to raise money for the Zionist cause. He's a complete celebrity.

He's hoisted onto the arms of his life. people, they have motorcade after motorcade and he goes around America to raise money. It's very successful. And he sort of throws his weight behind the cause for the rest of his life. And that is slightly answering your question of why do they offer him this? It's because he's been a very prominent Zionist. But also, I think in the newspapers at the time they say, of course, it's Muscoat. He is the most famous Jew in the world. That's very much. I think, a direct quote. And David Ben-Gurie on the prime minister basically says, well, yes, of course. He is the most famous Jew in the world.

We have to have him as president and then immediately regrets the decision. So there's obviously a persecution angle, right? He feels the need to flee the Nazis in Europe. He comes to the United States. He writes this incredibly famous letter to Franklin Roosevelt, this describing what he thinks is the capabilities, the physical properties to create a nuclear weapon. We learn in the movie Abbeinheimer that he's urging. Roosevelt to build the bomb, but then he went through a journey of pacivism. Talk us through some of Einstein's regrets about his contributions to the Manhattan Project, which was the

project that led to the development of the bomb. It's interesting. It's very, Einstein had no role actually in the Manhattan Project. And so he sends this very famous letter to Roosevelt saying, I think, sir, you should set of a nuclear program. And that is kind of what gets the wheels turning. Then when the Manhattan project is set up a few years later, because of the absolutely enormous FBI files that is on Einstein, the FBI of kind of trying to get Einstein, they just suspect that he's a communist and kind of hate him, really, on a personal level.

He's denied security clearance to work on the project. So he has no role, despite being one of the most famous scientists in the world and having quite extensive direct knowledge of the physics that's going on at the 9-Hodgium project, he is refused because they suspect that, or the FBI suspect that he would be a communist spy. And that's just, I mean, the communist, sorry, the FBI file is fascinating. It's a truly mad document. But it doesn't really relate to his regrets about the nuclear bomb, which were severe. he even within his lifetime was seen as the father of the nuclear bomb and

has to at some point our right state you know he says to a newspaper I am not the father of the bomb because it's drawing on some of his science but he didn't play such a direct contribution and nevertheless he he did feel a sort of deep personal responsibility for the up-term destruction that he saw from the bombs and he He was a committed pacifist, really. So it was a very sort of tense battle in him for the remainder of his life. It's just this amazing paradox. You have these brilliant people that are generally pacifists,

and they create the greatest war weaponry in the history of mankind. Yes. Let's go to something a little bit more fun, which I loved about your book. Einstein's a lady's man? Tell us about that, Sam. Yes, to put it mildly, I think a flirt and more. Yes, he was, he had about almost a countless amount of affairs. I think if I had tried to put every affair he had into the book, it would be several

hundred pages longer. He, as I said, swang, he did not want constraint. He tells his second wife outright that he is going to have affairs, that he doesn't believe that people are monogamous and that he's not going to be faithful. And they have, and she goes through the marriage, but they have quite severe rouse about it. There's one of his mistresses comes and every time that she visits their summer house brings pastries for Elsa, his second wife, who then of course goes off crying while Einstein goes sailing with his mistress and had sex with that. So he does have this. Again, with his family, he is almost very,

verging on the edge of cruel a lot of the time. And I think that that is just simply because he doesn't want any sort of constraint on his, what he can do and what he wants to do and what he's very good at doing is having affairs. He really is an incredibly fetish, incredibly charismatic man. You get that not just from the affairs, but the amount of friendships he has and the amount of very strong friendships that he has. When I was reading all of the various accounts of, you know, people who've met him, Charlie Chaplin or, you know,

the Queen of Belgium or whoever, or whoever it was, they all, in their writing, just conveyed that they were totally in love with Einstein. He must have just been such a joy to know if you were not his wife and gained pastries from his mistresses. So there's a very famous letter. that Einstein writes to the wife of his best friend. His friend has died. And he says in the letter is the name of the friend.

And again, forgive me because I'm American. I don't speak with your beautiful accent, but I think it's Michelle or Mikhail Bezos is the name of the friend. And in the letter, Mr. Einstein says that this figment of our imagination, more or less, this fiction. Your husband has left us, but this is just a temporary illusion as a result of the way we perceive time. Now, I'm not quoting the letter exactly, but you're getting the gist of what I'm saying. And so what was that all about? That's a lovely question because it touches on something which I think makes Einstein very human, which is this relationship he has with

Michelle Besso, his best friend, almost all through his life. And they are very, very close. Besso has a huge impact on not his science as well as his personality. And I think there are two things going on with that letter. Well, three, possibly, if I'm allowed at third. One is that Einstein is very close to death at that point as well. They die within a few months of each other. Besso going just first.

And I think in the letter, Einstein starts by saying, yet again, he has anticipated me. So Einstein is aware that he is not well, and he is dwelling and thinking about death. And another is that he has just lost his best friend, who he has known for 50, over 50 years. And there is a genuine outpouring of emotion in that letter, which is slightly unusual for Einstein. He is reasonably guarded with his sort of really deep inner emotions. You get a lot of his opinions and joys and laughter in reading about him and, you know, some of his sort of worries. But it's very rare to get a glimpse into the really very deep sadnesses or loves. And in that letter, I think you get that.

And then the third thing is that he is drawing on the science that he knows, which in physics, there are almost no equations which draw any distinction between which way time. flows. And so he's saying that basically he is able to still be with his friend. There's a stubbornly persistent illusion known as time, he says in this letter. And so do your best. You're not Richard Feynman, but do your best to explain that to somebody. What is this stubborn, persistent illusion that we know as time? I am not fine, but I will. give it a go. Einstein is slightly referring to his own work in relativity,

which showed that there is no great plot in the universe. There is no one single time. We all carry our own times with us. We all have our own reference frames on the universe, and depending on how you're moving, time moves differently with you as you move. If you go very, very fast, close to the speed of light, your clock will slow down compared to someone who's not doing that.

Time is relative. It depends on you. And it doesn't exist as an absolute thing. So there's that. And then there's also the fact, as I slightly alluded to this, there are incredibly few equations in physics. Most of physics, most of the maths of physics, doesn't have time and built into it at all.

The equations, if you put them into a scenario where there is time involved, work exactly the same as if time were going one way as if it were going the other. It doesn't seem to have any effect on the mathematics. There is an exception, which Einstein is very conveniently ignoring. But most of the time, physics tells you that time is a stubbornly persistent illusion. It's something that we have made up.

Yeah. And I think he proves it through the math. And so this is perplexing to the average person because we get up in the morning, there's a clock. we think the time is running in one direction. And obviously, because of the way we age biologically, retire aging process to the way the time works as well. And so we've got this whole thing going on. But I think Einstein's trying to tell us he's figured out mathematically that there's something else happening in the universe around us. Perhaps there's these five senses, which we can

observe the universe from, or just not enough. Maybe there's other things that are happening beyond the three dimensions that we can observe. And this is what makes him, to me, one of the more fascinating figures. He's up there in my mind with Isaac Newton, obviously, because of the way he was able to take on this challenge. Okay, so we're at the point in the podcast, Sam, where I have five words. I put these out to people. We got into one of these words earlier in the podcast, but I'll use it again.

I'll give you the word. You give me a response to the word. It'll be a sentence of word. something that makes you think. We'll start with the word Einsteinium. When I say Einsteinium, I say element 99, that's its atomic number. There you go.

Entirely useless. It has no use. Yeah, entirely useless, but, you know, a new substance in the universe as a result of these explosions. Science. The pursuit of a truth about the universe that can be experimentally verified. I think that would be something that Einstein would accept as a definition. How about genius?

A pursuit. I think that that's the argument of my book. It's not something that is sort of God-given. It's not something that is extraterraterestually other that you or I have absolutely no access to. I think Einstein had a lot more know-how than we do about physics, but then worked very, very hard to get where he did. So genius is a pursuit as well as a gift. Okay, the word Albert. Well, I quite like him. I think he's my friend in a very strange way. I know him better and in far more comprehensive way than I know anybody else. I've read all of his teenage love letters and I've read all of his science and I think ultimately. Yeah, that's where I was really going with, that's where I was really going, because when you hear the word Albert, you think of the person.

You think of this loving, very complex, but also a sweetness, this charismatic, right? But then when I say the word Einstein, it's a different word because it's now been institutionalized. Am I wrong? Not at all. So if I say the word Albert, you think of a person. But if I say the word Einstein, what about Einstein? The word Einstein, Sam, what do you think of? I think of some of the other words, you've already meant it, genius mostly.

I think that Einstein has become the kind of figurehead of a poster boy of genius. And he played up to that a little bit. You did such a great job in this book because you separated the man from the myth. And it just got us all thinking here in my office. Albert is the man. But Einstein in some ways was the myth, right? This is when I say, hey, you're an Einstein. I'm telling somebody they're a genius, or I say, well, Einstein, you use this word, people think of it a certain way.

And yet underneath all of that, there was a flesh and blood person that you so beautifully describe in this book. Thank you. Yes. That was my aim. So I'm very glad that it worked. Well, this is a terrific book. The title of the book is Einstein in Time and Space, A Life in 99 Porticles. It's written by Samuel Graydon. really appreciate you joining us today on Open Book. Sam, thank you. Thank you. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me

or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CG's national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, productivity and innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it.