back to indexBetül Kaçar: Origin of Life, Ancient DNA, Panspermia, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #350
Chapters
0:0 Introduction
0:56 History of life on Earth
9:0 Origin of life
31:47 Genetic language of life
44:43 Life and energy
55:26 Ancient DNA
74:24 Evolution
85:55 Alien life
113:55 Panspermia
120:17 Restarting life on Earth
132:58 Where ideas come from
140:30 Science and language
149:7 Love
150:30 Advice to young people
155:4 Meaning of life
00:00:00.000 |
You can study chemistry, you can study physics, you can study geology, anywhere in the universe, 00:00:04.320 |
but this is the only place you can study biology. 00:00:10.620 |
So, definitely something very fundamental happened here, and you cannot take biology out of the equation. 00:00:16.000 |
If you want to understand how that vast chemistry space, how that general sequence space got narrowed down to what is available, 00:00:26.520 |
or what is used by life, you need to understand the rules of selection, and that's where evolution and biology comes into play. 00:00:34.200 |
The following is a conversation with Batul Kachar, an astrobiologist at University of Wisconsin, 00:00:42.320 |
studying the essential biological attributes of life. 00:00:48.720 |
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. 00:00:56.640 |
What is the phylogenetic tree, or the evolutionary tree of life, 00:01:00.280 |
and what can we learn by running it back and studying ancient gene sequences as you have? 00:01:04.840 |
I think phylogenetic trees could be one of the most romantic and beautiful notions that can come out of biology. 00:01:14.720 |
It shows us a way to depict the connectedness of life and all living beings with one another. 00:01:26.240 |
Biologists like visualizations, they like these graphics, these diagrams, and tree of life is one of them. 00:01:36.520 |
It's actually the other way around. It starts from the branches. 00:01:42.240 |
It starts from the tip of the branch, actually. 00:01:44.880 |
And then, depending on what you collected to build the tree. 00:01:51.560 |
So depending on the branches, depending on what's on the tip of the branch, 00:01:56.760 |
the root will be determined by what is really sitting on the tip of the branch of the tree. 00:02:01.080 |
So we could study the leaves of the tree by looking at what we have today, 00:02:04.120 |
and then start to reverse engineer, start to move back in time to try to understand 00:02:08.920 |
what the rest of the tree, what the roots of the tree look like. 00:02:11.000 |
Exactly. So the tree itself, by just taking a few steps back and looking at the entire tree itself, 00:02:16.840 |
can give you an idea about the connectedness, the relatedness of the organisms, 00:02:22.080 |
or whatever, again, you use to create your tree. 00:02:24.640 |
There are different ways, but in this case, I'm imagining entire diversity of life today 00:02:32.560 |
is sitting on the tips of the branches of this tree. 00:02:35.360 |
And we look at biologists, look at the tree itself, 00:02:42.520 |
we like to think of it as the topology of the tree, 00:02:45.000 |
to understand when certain organisms or their ancestry may have merged over time. 00:02:53.400 |
Depending on the tools you use, you might use this tree to then reconstruct the ancestors as well. 00:03:01.920 |
And so what are the different ways to do the reconstruction? 00:03:04.800 |
So you can do that at the gene level, or you could do it at the higher complex biology level, right? 00:03:12.640 |
So in which way have you approached this fascinating problem? 00:03:19.560 |
So it's the gene, could be protein, the product of the gene, or species, 00:03:28.480 |
It totally depends on what you want to do with your tree. 00:03:31.760 |
If you want to understand certain past events, 00:03:35.240 |
whether an organism exchanged a certain DNA with another one along the course of evolution, 00:03:43.880 |
If you rather use the tree to reconstruct or resurrect ancient DNA, which is what we do, 00:03:50.960 |
then in our case, for instance, we do both gene, protein, and species, 00:03:55.680 |
because we want to compare the tree that we create using these different information. 00:04:02.400 |
- Okay, well, let me ask you the ridiculous question then. 00:04:08.240 |
Can we study the genes of ancient organisms, and can we bring those ancient organisms back? 00:04:14.360 |
So the reason I ask that kind of ridiculous sounding question is 00:04:18.640 |
maybe it gives us context of what we can and can't do by looking back in time. 00:04:23.280 |
- Yeah, so dinosaurs or all these mammals, at least for us, 00:04:28.600 |
is the exciting thing already happened by the time we hit to larger organisms or to eukaryotes. 00:04:36.320 |
- Or to you, the fun stuff is before we got to the mammals? 00:04:39.000 |
- The fun stuff is what people think is boring, I think. 00:04:41.640 |
The phase that's, well, there's two different times in the geologic history. 00:04:46.560 |
One is the first life, past origin of life, how did first life look like? 00:04:53.600 |
And the second is why do we think that over certain periods of geologic time, 00:05:00.280 |
no significant innovation happened to the degree of leaving no record behind? 00:05:08.920 |
So you say, the fun stuff to you is after the origin of life, 00:05:13.040 |
which we'll talk about, after the origin of life, there's single cell organisms, 00:05:18.920 |
the whole thing with the eukaryotes and multicellular organisms, 00:05:25.160 |
The whole oxygen thing, which mixes in with the origin of life. 00:05:31.720 |
all they have to do with this primitive kind of looking organisms. 00:05:38.200 |
So I will tell you the more interesting things for us. 00:05:41.680 |
One is the origin of life or what happened following the emergence of life. 00:05:50.360 |
And then pretty much anything that we think shaped the environments 00:05:56.200 |
and was shaped by the environments in a way that impacted the entire planet 00:06:01.600 |
that enabled you and I to have this conversation. 00:06:04.400 |
We have very little understanding of the biological innovations 00:06:16.200 |
I don't want to even say data because they are fossil records. 00:06:19.440 |
So let's say imprints, either that comes from the rock and the rock record itself, 00:06:25.800 |
or what I just described, these trees that we create 00:06:32.720 |
So we have two distinct ways that comes from geology and biology 00:06:43.600 |
The geology gives you that little bit of data 00:06:46.240 |
and then the biology gives you that little bit of kind of constraints 00:06:52.960 |
in the materials you get to work with to infer 00:06:55.480 |
how does this result in the kind of data that we're seeing. 00:07:01.360 |
We can see, we can look back hundreds of millions of years, 00:07:07.680 |
- Even further, and I like that you said fog. 00:07:10.160 |
It is pretty foggy, what we are, and it gets foggier and foggier 00:07:14.520 |
the more you, the further you try to see into the past. 00:07:17.560 |
Biology is, you basically study the survivors, broadly speaking. 00:07:23.440 |
And you're trying to pitch the, sort of put together their history 00:07:38.200 |
So you work with this 4 billion year product, 00:07:43.200 |
It's great, it's a very dynamic, ever evolving chemical thing. 00:07:50.760 |
but you're not gonna get much unless you know where to look 00:08:03.520 |
What we have is the survivors, the successful organisms, 00:08:08.520 |
even the primitive ones, even the bacteria we have today. 00:08:19.720 |
First of all, they are our great, great ancestors. 00:08:31.520 |
But bacteria is in your dinner, bacteria is in your gut, 00:08:37.080 |
- Well, they get themselves invited in a way. 00:08:53.520 |
I feel like I need to defend them in this case 00:09:00.840 |
So which organisms gives you hints that are alive today 00:09:03.800 |
that give you hints about what ancient organisms were like? 00:09:23.320 |
Seldom we develop the tools to engineer them. 00:09:26.600 |
And it depends on the question that we are interested in. 00:09:31.080 |
If we are interested in connecting the biology and geology 00:09:36.560 |
and fundamental innovations across billions of years, 00:09:40.560 |
there are really good candidates like cyanobacteria. 00:09:43.480 |
So we use cyanobacteria very frequently in the lab. 00:09:50.160 |
We can perturb its function by poking its own DNA 00:09:54.560 |
with the foreign DNA that we engineer in the lab. 00:10:00.840 |
It's the most simple in terms of model systems goes. 00:10:05.480 |
Organism that one can study well-established, 00:10:09.320 |
sort of a pet, lab pet that we use it a lot for cloning 00:10:14.120 |
and for understanding basic functions of the cell 00:10:23.280 |
you said that you inject it with foreign DNA? 00:10:39.120 |
- Can you explain what that is, nitrogen-fixing? 00:10:49.240 |
But nitrogen itself cannot be directly utilized by cells 00:10:57.560 |
that is then used for the downstream cellular functions. 00:11:14.400 |
- Well, it's actually a very important element. 00:11:17.520 |
It's one of the most abundant elements on our planet 00:11:35.800 |
that evolution invented to convert it, to fix it. 00:11:39.920 |
- So far we know there's only one nitrogen-fixation pathway, 00:11:45.280 |
You can find up to seven or eight different carbon-based 00:11:59.840 |
roughly three, probably less than three billion years ago. 00:12:12.480 |
- Would we still have life as we know it today 00:12:14.760 |
if we didn't invent that nitrogen-fixing step? 00:12:29.480 |
If you put it, sort of, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, 00:12:38.160 |
with these elements, what is the hardest thing? 00:12:48.520 |
You may hear schnapps. - What's in the cocktail? 00:12:54.920 |
So there are five elements that life relies on. 00:13:06.160 |
needs to operate on, but that's just how it happen 00:13:10.720 |
And there are many abiotic ways to fix nitrogen, 00:13:23.680 |
I think around World War I, the Haber-Bosch process 00:13:28.680 |
that we can abiotically convert nitrogen into ammonia. 00:13:37.640 |
comes from the human conversion of nitrogen to ammonia. 00:13:42.640 |
It's helped, it's the fertilizer that we use, 00:13:49.600 |
So we helped, we found a way to fix our own nitrogen 00:13:55.200 |
- Yeah, but that's way after the original invention 00:13:59.760 |
of how to fix nitrogen. - Oh, absolutely, absolutely. 00:14:01.480 |
- And without that, we wouldn't have all the steps 00:14:07.760 |
We tried to replicate in the most simplest way 00:14:15.200 |
We do this by taking nitrogen, using a lot of pressure, 00:14:22.960 |
relying on one single enzyme called nitrogenase. 00:14:35.880 |
Life pushes this metabolism down to create fixed nitrogen. 00:14:42.640 |
- So the lab pet E. coli, inject them with DNA, 00:14:50.200 |
- So some biological engineers engineered E. coli 00:15:02.600 |
and engineer it with the nitrogen fixing metabolism 00:15:11.880 |
- How complicated are these little organisms? 00:15:25.080 |
of even the most seemingly primitive organisms, 00:15:31.480 |
Okay, that said, what kind of, what are we talking about? 00:15:40.760 |
that you're working with when you're injecting them with DNA? 00:15:43.280 |
- So I will start with one of the most fascinating 00:15:50.880 |
It is a very unique subsystem of cellular life 00:16:13.040 |
But from a key perspective, that's not the case. 00:16:17.840 |
That one may argue that everything that happens 00:16:56.500 |
That's when the, that's the core processing center 00:17:17.980 |
It's itself is like a chemical decoding device. 00:17:22.760 |
And that is incredibly unique for translation 00:17:26.860 |
that I don't think you will find anywhere else 00:17:34.620 |
it's really like a factory that reads the schematic 00:17:44.680 |
- I would divide it into actually even four more 00:17:56.760 |
It's the compounds that make it up, or chemicals. 00:18:00.760 |
It tracks the energy to make its job, to do its job. 00:18:12.420 |
The discrete states that the system is placed 00:18:35.140 |
like when you mess up, the bugs are the features. 00:18:46.500 |
is actually kind of what the computer does with bits. 00:18:51.740 |
There's a, I guess, almost like a mechanical process 00:18:59.140 |
And actually, it's manipulating actual physical objects 00:19:09.860 |
So it is almost a mini computer device inside ourselves. 00:19:13.860 |
And that's the oldest computational device of life. 00:19:28.620 |
- It's more interesting or it's more complicated 00:19:33.620 |
in interesting ways than the computers we have today. 00:19:36.780 |
I mean, everything you said, which is really, really nice. 00:19:39.380 |
I mean, I guess our computers have the informatic 00:19:59.740 |
So that's the number one, I think, difference 00:20:23.660 |
which is the chemical aspect of the translation machinery. 00:20:28.260 |
It's the specific compounds make up the assembly of RNA. 00:20:48.540 |
or information itself, but also as an enzyme. 00:20:51.180 |
And origin of life chemists make these molecules easily. 00:20:56.740 |
we can make even with single pot chemistries, 00:21:07.100 |
that you know that will lead you to the final product. 00:21:15.340 |
and they try to, they're basically chefs of a certain kind. 00:21:37.820 |
It's a pretty rigid, established input-output system 00:21:55.380 |
- So some of your best friends are original life chemists. 00:21:58.940 |
- Just make sure that you have good chemist friends 00:22:19.260 |
They know how to chew energy using ATP or GTP. 00:22:35.580 |
You're looking at about 100 different components 00:22:40.580 |
- Well, let me ask, maybe it's a ridiculous question, 00:22:47.940 |
or did the machine use chemistry to achieve a purpose? 00:22:58.900 |
of different chemical possibilities on earth. 00:23:01.460 |
Is this translation machinery just like picking 00:23:16.860 |
there's like a momentum, like a constraint to the thing 00:23:20.980 |
that can only build a certain kind of machinery? 00:23:24.460 |
Basically, is chemistry fundamental or is it just emergent? 00:23:29.460 |
Like how important is chemistry to this whole process? 00:23:35.820 |
You cannot have any cellular process without chemistry. 00:23:54.500 |
within the system that it can maybe not necessarily 00:24:04.780 |
But in terms of chemistry, you absolutely cannot have 00:24:17.020 |
And I should say all life has this machine, right? 00:24:28.140 |
do you think very specifically about the kind of machinery 00:24:34.140 |
a machine that converts information into function? 00:24:39.980 |
I think what makes this machinery fascinating 00:25:00.460 |
all these proteins that operate in this machinery 00:25:02.820 |
needs to harbor in order to get the mechanism going, right? 00:25:12.700 |
to the transition machinery and you are the initiator 00:25:15.700 |
of this computation system, you need to have, 00:25:20.020 |
you can only afford a certain range of mistakes. 00:25:24.900 |
then the next message cannot be delivered fast. 00:25:27.500 |
If you're too slow, then you may stall the process. 00:25:30.580 |
So there is definitely a chemistry constant going on 00:25:47.660 |
- So it's like a jazz ensemble, the notes of the chemistry, 00:25:51.900 |
but you can be a little off- - I love that you said jazz. 00:25:54.500 |
It's a party and it's like everybody's invited 00:26:03.820 |
there are many things that are very interesting 00:26:14.060 |
So you can get cell-free translation systems, 00:26:31.180 |
because we are far from evolving a translation, 00:26:36.180 |
maybe not so far, evolving a translation in the lab 00:26:47.980 |
so it's hard for those origin of life chemists 00:27:00.660 |
You need to think as a, I think, network systems folk. 00:27:10.180 |
except we are trying to bring this perspective. 00:27:14.220 |
But the more you understand how information systems work, 00:27:18.540 |
you cannot, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. 00:27:35.260 |
of information processing that does not look anything 00:27:48.060 |
to the processing center in the form of a linear polymer. 00:28:01.820 |
if you think about the information itself, right? 00:28:05.300 |
So we have four nucleotide letters that compose DNA 00:28:09.940 |
and they are processed in the translation in triplets. 00:28:21.060 |
So you have 64 possible states that can be encoded 00:28:38.180 |
And then there's two, if not three, that says stop. 00:28:58.340 |
To code for 20 amino acids in different combinations. 00:29:06.380 |
there are 500 different amino acids life can choose, right? 00:29:14.340 |
about this genetic code is quite fascinating. 00:29:19.980 |
I don't know, we may wait for another 4 billion years, but. 00:29:28.100 |
if we said we know exactly how many amino acids existed 00:29:40.860 |
but because roughly 20 out of 60 states are used, 00:29:45.860 |
you're using one third of your possible states 00:29:58.060 |
because it's abundant and it is redundant, right? 00:30:07.060 |
that's implemented by this translation machinery 00:30:13.220 |
You can make errors, but the message will still get through. 00:30:26.180 |
gives you that robustness and resilience within the system. 00:30:28.980 |
- So at the informatic level, there's room for error. 00:30:34.140 |
in all five categories that we're talking about. 00:30:38.420 |
There's probably room for error in the computation. 00:30:40.100 |
There's probably room for error in the physical. 00:30:49.980 |
And not only that, but also the product yields 00:30:53.980 |
a function, no, in this case, enzyme or protein, right? 00:31:04.500 |
- It is, I mean, in my head, just so you know, 00:31:10.060 |
the parallels between even like language models 00:31:13.900 |
that encode language, or now they're able to encode 00:31:17.740 |
basically any kind of thing, including images and actions, 00:31:24.500 |
The parallel in terms of informatic and computation 00:31:32.380 |
- Actually, I have a image, maybe I can send you. 00:31:37.340 |
- If you just do genetic codon charts, we can pull that up. 00:31:47.340 |
So you're looking at, this is life's alphabet, right? 00:31:50.340 |
And so I also wanna make a very quick link now 00:32:01.380 |
or the cultures that use these extinct languages, 00:32:20.580 |
this is what Slavic word is for snow, something like snig. 00:32:25.580 |
- Now we jumped to languages that humans spoke. 00:32:35.980 |
And if you have a lot of cultures who use the word snow, 00:32:46.220 |
If we understand some function about that enzyme, 00:32:50.580 |
we can understand the environment that they lived in. 00:32:56.260 |
So now you're looking at the alphabet of life. 00:33:04.820 |
So what is really interesting that stands out to me 00:33:14.780 |
The one, the methionine that you see, that's the start. 00:33:33.540 |
the translation knows, all right, I got to start, 00:33:51.780 |
There's an outer shell and there's an inner shell, 00:33:54.060 |
all using the four letters that we're talking about. 00:33:56.100 |
And with that, we can compose all of the amino acids 00:34:03.980 |
with these letters, you walk around the wheel 00:34:10.620 |
that make-- - Yeah, the words, the sentences. 00:34:15.500 |
you get three, there are three different ways to stop this, 00:34:19.780 |
And for each letter, you have multiple options. 00:34:37.540 |
and then you get an A that gives you the lysine. 00:34:40.100 |
Right, but if you get an A and if you get an A and a G, 00:34:49.700 |
because they were erroneous and somehow they got locked down. 00:34:53.020 |
We don't know if there's a mechanism behind this too, 00:34:56.660 |
or we certainly don't know this definitively. 00:35:03.220 |
And notice that the colors, and in some tables too, 00:35:08.340 |
that the type of the nucleotides can be similar chemically. 00:35:16.180 |
with the same amino acids or something similar to it, 00:35:37.860 |
Which actually results in a dysfunction, which are? 00:35:40.580 |
- We understand to some degree how translation 00:35:50.100 |
this is the really core level, can impact entire cell. 00:36:01.500 |
It's thought to be as one of the hardest problems in biology, 00:36:11.060 |
So this is, yeah, you're looking at the language of life, 00:36:26.020 |
can be like deconstructed with this wheel of language. 00:36:50.020 |
which may be a little easier way to track the information 00:36:58.060 |
we can describe all life that's lived on earth. 00:37:06.980 |
- So in theory, this is one way to look at life on earth. 00:37:11.460 |
- If you're a biologist and you want to understand 00:37:14.740 |
how life evolved from a molecular perspective, 00:37:21.220 |
And this is what nature narrowed its code down to. 00:37:26.860 |
when we think of carbon, when we think of sulfur, 00:37:31.300 |
that all these nucleotides are built based on those elements. 00:37:36.620 |
- And this is fundamentally the informatic perspective. 00:37:39.060 |
- Exactly, that's the informatic perspective. 00:37:58.620 |
- It appears to be a highly optimized chemical 00:38:05.700 |
It may indicate that a great deal of chemical evolution 00:38:10.700 |
and this may indicate that a lot of selection pressure 00:38:18.060 |
prior to the rise of last universal common ancestor. 00:38:26.500 |
- Okay, can you describe what the heck you just said? 00:38:41.020 |
if you ideally included all the living information 00:38:49.620 |
that comes from living organisms on your tree, 00:38:54.340 |
lies the last universal common ancestor, LUCA, right? 00:39:04.860 |
We call it the last because it is sort of the first one 00:39:15.300 |
- There's one organism that started the whole thing. 00:39:21.540 |
as more like a population, a group of organisms. 00:39:24.620 |
I tweeted this, so I wanna know the accuracy of my tweet. 00:39:33.860 |
It said that we all evolved from one common ancestor 00:39:38.860 |
that was a single cell organism 3.5 billion years ago, 00:39:54.900 |
I mean, I think, of course, there's a lot to say, 00:40:01.540 |
but to what degree is the single organism aspect, 00:40:31.980 |
- A bunch of people said it probably way before. 00:40:34.580 |
- If you put an approximately, I'll take that. 00:40:42.100 |
first of all, as a single organism, I was once a cell. 00:40:49.100 |
- No, but I started from a single cell, me, Lex. 00:40:59.860 |
- My own development, I started from a single cell. 00:41:05.500 |
That, and then, so that's for a single biological organism. 00:41:09.820 |
And then from an evolutionary perspective, the Luca, 00:41:13.020 |
like I start, like my ancestor is a single cell, 00:41:16.540 |
and then here I am sitting half asleep tweeting. 00:41:44.580 |
- Yeah, and it's amazing that this intelligence, 00:41:49.620 |
emerged to be able to tweet whatever the heck I want. 00:41:52.780 |
- Yes, it's almost intelligence at the chemical level, 00:42:12.940 |
if we manage to figure out how to drive life's evolution, 00:42:25.220 |
sort of informatic processing system like this, 00:42:30.220 |
you may ask yourself what might chemical systems 00:42:40.900 |
- Yeah, so like locally, they're intelligent locally. 00:42:53.580 |
The heart of the cellular activities are translation. 00:43:10.460 |
So there are many different ways to disrupt this machinery. 00:43:29.900 |
as we get closer to eukaryotes, for instance. 00:43:40.740 |
- That single machinery is doing 20 a second? 00:43:43.060 |
- 21 for bacteria, I believe eight for eukaryotes, or nine. 00:43:49.140 |
I mean, that's super inefficient or super efficient, 00:44:00.180 |
- I think, if you can show me a computer that does this, 00:44:04.580 |
- Well, this is the big, this includes the five things, 00:44:18.660 |
- I'm gonna ask you about probably what, alpha fold, right? 00:44:32.380 |
There is no way you see this the way we just described it, 00:44:35.580 |
unless you think about early life and early geochemistry 00:44:48.700 |
all of these attributes that we think about life 00:44:55.740 |
stems from translation as well as metabolism. 00:45:00.300 |
But I see metabolism as a way to keep translation going 00:45:07.100 |
But translation is arguably a bit more sophisticated process 00:45:21.260 |
and it is inherently dynamic and it is flexible, 00:45:25.460 |
but it is not focused on repetition as translation does. 00:45:30.940 |
Translation is the kind of in a way, just it's repeats. 00:45:34.180 |
So you have the metabolism that can synthesize materials, 00:45:51.260 |
And it does the tasks and it implements an algorithm, 00:45:57.540 |
So you see both of those attributes in translation combined. 00:46:14.180 |
if you don't find a way to process the information 00:46:20.940 |
- Yeah, and somehow that's what got selected, 00:46:25.460 |
maybe not selected, I don't know if it was accidental, 00:46:31.900 |
for four billion years, that that's what life established. 00:46:40.180 |
another weird thing that life just started doing, 00:46:45.540 |
- I think when we truly understand the answer 00:46:47.620 |
to that question, we may have just made ourselves life. 00:46:50.460 |
I don't think we know quite how translation machinery 00:47:06.040 |
Or the genetic code, why this codon's not others, 00:47:14.200 |
And we are sort of moving towards translation, 00:47:25.080 |
And if you understand that, you're really unlocking 00:47:30.060 |
- One of the things you didn't mention is physical. 00:47:34.560 |
Is there something to mention about that component 00:47:37.320 |
- There's actually a paper published in 2013, 00:47:49.600 |
engineered systems level computation energy consumption. 00:47:56.720 |
And they tried to understand whether the universe 00:48:01.360 |
is using its own, or life is using its full capacity 00:48:07.320 |
And whether if different planets in the universe 00:48:10.760 |
had life, would the capacity would increase or decrease? 00:48:23.520 |
that is far more above and beyond any computational system. 00:48:29.440 |
- That you tell me, that's why I dropped the citation. 00:48:32.200 |
I found the citation, it's quite an interesting paper. 00:48:36.500 |
obviously we can only calculate and infer these things. 00:48:58.600 |
it seems to be incredibly efficient at using energy. 00:49:01.360 |
- I think they look at the theoretical optimum 00:49:05.960 |
- And then try to understand where life falls on this. 00:49:13.520 |
How well are you using for this entire mechanism, 00:49:26.080 |
And this paper aside, it does seem that life, 00:49:30.320 |
obviously that's the constraint we have on earth, right, 00:49:38.320 |
Well, the input is energy and the output is what? 00:50:05.600 |
If you're defining it for finding different life forms, 00:50:08.840 |
then it probably needs to have some quantification in it 00:50:12.760 |
so that you can use it in whatever the mission 00:50:28.760 |
I don't think that defining is that essential. 00:50:39.520 |
a universally defined way of understanding life 00:51:03.840 |
is one definition that the Supreme Court likes. 00:51:12.200 |
to think about when we look at life on other planets. 00:51:18.440 |
So how do we try to identify if a thing is living 00:51:24.560 |
when we go to the different moons in our solar system, 00:51:33.280 |
- It's unlikely to be a sort of a smoking gun event, right? 00:51:40.480 |
- I don't think so, unless you find an elephant 00:51:46.320 |
- No, but isn't there a dynamic nature to the thing? 00:52:08.400 |
that one of my favorite professors once said, 00:52:25.800 |
- I would say that, it's hard to quantify this 00:52:30.340 |
life is definitely chemistry finding solutions, right? 00:52:39.960 |
and maintaining this exploration for billions of years. 00:52:45.000 |
- So, okay, so a planet is a bunch of chemistry 00:52:52.360 |
figure out what cool stuff you can come up with. 00:52:58.080 |
Given a chemistry, what is the cool stuff I can come up with? 00:53:03.720 |
that it embarks upon are maintained in a form of memory. 00:53:18.760 |
of some of those solutions for over long periods of time. 00:53:23.760 |
So that's the memory component makes it more living to me. 00:53:39.560 |
and then maintaining a memory of those solutions 00:53:51.960 |
Okay, so memory could be a fundamental requirement for life. 00:53:56.960 |
- I mean, life is obviously chemistry and physics 00:54:04.960 |
So this is not a disciplinary problem of one discipline 00:54:19.240 |
you can study chemistry, you can study physics, 00:54:21.040 |
you can study geology anywhere in the universe, 00:54:23.500 |
but this is the only place you can study biology. 00:54:30.460 |
- So definitely something very fundamental happened here 00:54:32.880 |
and you cannot take biology out of the equation. 00:54:35.200 |
If you wanna understand how that vast chemistry space, 00:54:38.440 |
how that general sequence space got narrowed down 00:54:43.160 |
to what is available or what is used by life, 00:54:47.800 |
you need to understand the rules of selection. 00:54:50.520 |
And that's where evolution and biology comes into play. 00:54:53.000 |
- So the rules of natural selection operate to you 00:54:59.800 |
I don't know if there are any rules like that. 00:55:08.200 |
and it's a very fascinating area of study now. 00:55:12.440 |
And probably we will hear more about that decades to come. 00:55:15.680 |
But if you wanna go from the broad to specific, 00:55:19.900 |
you need to understand the rules of selection. 00:55:22.160 |
And that is gonna come from understanding biology, yes. 00:55:26.000 |
- Well, actually, let me ask you about selection. 00:55:33.040 |
where you describe that evolution's not good at multitasking. 00:55:42.560 |
but there could be a generalizable fundamental thing to this 00:56:04.040 |
where you shouldn't be messing up with translation. 00:56:18.420 |
- Yeah, because that's how kids learn, right? 00:56:26.660 |
to see if it will fix itself in the same ways. 00:56:42.820 |
- What's the role of elongation in this process? 00:57:05.380 |
So all of these steps are carried out by proteins 00:57:23.380 |
So the cell, the starting codon could still arrive 00:57:29.260 |
but the following information couldn't get carried out 00:57:53.240 |
So we made this ancient modern hybrid organism. 00:58:14.500 |
And that goes back to the difference between Jurassic Park. 00:58:19.340 |
given that this is not fiction, we are doing it. 00:58:29.940 |
and then put a modern gene inside the ancient organism. 00:58:32.740 |
In our case, we are still working with what we got, 00:58:35.420 |
but putting an ancestral DNA inside the modern organism. 00:58:45.260 |
- Yes, but in our case, it's more like a transformer 00:58:47.660 |
than just a regular car, which is doing things. 00:59:02.900 |
One is how does the cell respond to perturbation? 00:59:09.460 |
we inserted, we sampled DNA from currently existing organisms 00:59:16.700 |
and collected DNA sequences from the cousins as well. 00:59:21.020 |
So both ancestor and the current cousin DNA, so to speak. 00:59:25.700 |
And engineered all of these things to the modern bacteria 00:59:35.140 |
or the variant elongator component that still alive today, 00:59:40.140 |
but coming from a different part of the tree. 00:59:45.960 |
Was that something you did as part of the paper 00:59:49.740 |
on evolutionary stalling to try to figure out 00:59:52.820 |
how evolution figures out what to try to improve? 01:00:16.140 |
You can imagine them as sitting on the tips of the tree 01:00:19.240 |
near branch, far branch, compared to the organism 01:00:36.880 |
Like what are the different flavors of elongation? 01:00:40.060 |
So mechanistically or mechanically, it's the same. 01:00:58.240 |
- Is it essentially doing like a copy paste operation? 01:01:01.000 |
- It has its tail that's attached to the code, 01:01:06.000 |
which is then carried biochemically to the linear chain, 01:01:20.600 |
Once that chemistry, that's at the tail end, occurs, 01:01:28.680 |
So you can imagine it's like it hops in there and hops out. 01:01:37.720 |
And it's all triggered by biophysics, biochemistry, 01:01:44.560 |
in this case, GTP, how the phosphor leaves the center, 01:01:57.080 |
Where's the flavors, different flavors of the location? 01:01:59.840 |
- Usually the parts that matter don't change over time. 01:02:12.920 |
especially if there's a difference between two cousins. 01:02:20.480 |
with the most important parts of this machinery. 01:02:26.800 |
or we revert, we engineer that part, we alter that part, 01:02:33.920 |
- Okay, so that's not the fundamental part of the machinery, 01:02:40.800 |
- So now you stripped the machinery down to its parts, 01:02:43.400 |
and now you're looking at the parts of the parts. 01:02:49.880 |
and how you're looking and what you're looking at. 01:02:52.160 |
But usually we see up to 70% level conserved identity 01:03:02.320 |
When you travel back in time, the identity decreases. 01:03:11.280 |
So you're looking at a 3.8 billion year old mechanism. 01:03:14.920 |
And when we look at the ancestors that we resurrect, 01:03:21.640 |
So the identity definitely decreases as you go back in time. 01:03:25.040 |
But still 60% shared information over four billion year, 01:03:34.280 |
So for initiation, we've also recently published this. 01:03:46.440 |
especially if the component is essential for life. 01:03:57.520 |
and presumably that's what that paper is looking at 01:04:02.040 |
- How does it able to say, like mess with the parts 01:04:21.360 |
So we had an initial set of a group of bacteria that we had. 01:04:26.360 |
We then subjected these bacteria to evolution in the lab. 01:04:42.040 |
That if they were generating an offspring every 20 minutes, 01:04:50.040 |
They don't want each other, but they need each other. 01:04:58.360 |
how they will cooperate with each other to fix this problem 01:05:05.880 |
because we know that that's not the condition 01:05:21.680 |
We subject bacteria to different selection pressure, 01:05:30.600 |
Every day, we randomly collect a handful of bacteria 01:05:35.440 |
from the flask, put them in a new fresh environment 01:05:38.800 |
with fresh food, keep them in this environment for 24 hours 01:05:45.160 |
And then we subject, introduce them to a new environment. 01:05:48.600 |
So we repeated this for about, I will say, 150 days. 01:05:53.600 |
So every day, nonstop, we repeated this experiment. 01:06:08.040 |
We kept the environment constant, same temperature, 01:06:19.160 |
So in some ways, we created our own fossil record 01:06:22.720 |
in the lab by evolving and generating these flasks. 01:06:25.840 |
And every step of the way, we also froze these cells 01:06:33.760 |
- How long does it take to go from one generation 01:06:43.480 |
So that's the experiment. - That's the experiment. 01:06:46.600 |
- And you're always messing with it in the same way 01:06:50.480 |
for the initial condition? - It's the same way. 01:06:52.600 |
So we introduced variation at the elongation level 01:06:55.720 |
because we perturbed it with different elongations. 01:06:59.880 |
We found that if we introduce a different protein 01:07:03.320 |
that is very different, the cells don't like that, right? 01:07:06.600 |
So if the distance is larger, the consequences also large, 01:07:13.680 |
If you introduce a variant that is really foreign to them, 01:07:21.340 |
but they were okay with their nearest cousin. 01:07:29.680 |
and then we kept the experimental conditions the same 01:07:33.440 |
and we propagated these populations every day for 150 days 01:07:38.280 |
and we collected bacteria at every step of the way 01:07:49.020 |
to respond to the variation that we've introduced. 01:07:53.940 |
- So what kind of changes would you be seeing 01:07:59.100 |
- Exactly, so we knew where we punched, right? 01:08:03.960 |
So we expected, is it gonna be, is it translation? 01:08:13.840 |
Or will it be another, outside of translation, 01:08:18.360 |
something completely different, a different module, 01:08:28.080 |
So we had a strategy to identify the mutational pathways 01:08:33.080 |
by categorizing what we expected to find or where. 01:08:43.280 |
Why is it not improving multiple things simultaneously? 01:08:48.740 |
- It turned out that what we observed in general 01:08:51.980 |
is that first of all, the harder we hit the cells, 01:08:54.980 |
the more likely they were to respond to our changes, right, 01:09:00.700 |
you mean like changing something about the elongation? 01:09:03.380 |
because I like to think of this as breaking the cell, right? 01:09:17.900 |
the harder the hit is how you think about it? 01:09:34.140 |
in the sense that the cells will not grow as healthy 01:09:36.580 |
compared to a variant that is coming from a near, 01:09:40.620 |
or a variant that is coming from a near evolutionary distance. 01:09:43.900 |
- Is it wrong to think of this kind of hitting 01:09:49.980 |
What are we supposed to learn from this hitting? 01:09:51.580 |
Like how the thing evolves after it's being hit in this way, 01:09:56.820 |
- Because we see translation machinery as almost, 01:10:03.780 |
it is not even clear whether we can remove some of the parts 01:10:08.740 |
all of the same parts in the same efficiency. 01:10:11.100 |
We don't understand the rules of this machinery. 01:10:19.300 |
when we talk about you cannot mess with this translation? 01:10:29.320 |
that was the first thing that we wanted to understand. 01:10:31.160 |
- Did you learn anything interesting about the resilience 01:10:42.800 |
started responding to the changes that we've introduced, 01:10:46.520 |
and that we could never recover the translation 01:10:52.000 |
So that it never reached to it is optimality, 01:10:58.900 |
It needed say one more mutation perhaps to get there, 01:11:04.660 |
we did a lot of experiments to understand this of course, 01:11:18.820 |
we saw another module emerging through mutations 01:11:23.320 |
and getting better at its own different tasks 01:11:27.340 |
You can think of cell as a web of networks, right? 01:11:30.460 |
And we think of these as multiple almost airports 01:11:34.180 |
that are proteins that are more central hubs, 01:11:36.880 |
versus their proteins that maybe are not as important hub. 01:11:39.280 |
If you introduce a problem in the most populated hub, 01:11:43.280 |
you're gonna mess up the traffic system more drastically. 01:11:53.000 |
like translation would be one of the modules. 01:11:55.520 |
- So you're basically saying when you mess with translation, 01:11:59.120 |
the organism would choose to either try to fix that module 01:12:14.160 |
to its own maximum, it stalled its optimality 01:12:19.080 |
So you never get to a degree that is more optimal 01:12:24.320 |
even though perhaps another mutation could get you there. 01:12:41.240 |
For instance, if the variant was coming from a near ancestor, 01:12:45.880 |
It was almost cruising around, trying different modules 01:12:49.000 |
and sort of living its best life still without, 01:12:51.960 |
because there is no real urgency in the system 01:12:58.640 |
Maybe to you it's obvious that's the problem, 01:13:08.320 |
I mean, I guess that's the thing about evolution 01:13:10.240 |
is we don't know what the right direction to- 01:13:19.840 |
Happens to be an accurate representation of my life. 01:13:26.880 |
and you see all the sweaters or jeans all over the place. 01:13:34.480 |
And you'd think that's the most important one. 01:13:38.760 |
And then you think you will get to the other one, 01:13:40.160 |
but you don't because you just fix the most important one. 01:13:42.960 |
That is the, whatever that was getting into your way. 01:13:48.120 |
It fixes the problem that seems to be the most immediate 01:13:50.520 |
and it doesn't go beyond what it really needs to. 01:13:53.280 |
It seems like at least for our experimental setup, 01:13:59.640 |
So like, or is the environment they're operating 01:14:08.560 |
It's definitely removed from their natural setup. 01:14:30.440 |
Like from that, you're saying that we're talking 01:14:35.520 |
but if we step back and look at the entirety of the tree 01:14:41.760 |
the stuff that's fun to you with the first few billion 01:14:45.960 |
and the stuff that's fun to me when I watch on YouTube, 01:14:49.480 |
which is like the lion versus gorilla fights and so on, 01:15:01.640 |
and all that kind of stuff, how did it do it? 01:15:13.120 |
I can tell you that there seems to be very critical 01:15:17.480 |
innovations that happened throughout the history of life 01:15:21.320 |
that are each themselves very sophisticated singularities 01:15:26.320 |
that emerged once and then they set the tone. 01:15:43.000 |
clearly subjected to a lot of chemical evolution 01:15:46.720 |
even prior to last universal common ancestor. 01:15:50.120 |
And then you jump and you see emergence of cyanobacteria 01:15:55.120 |
that's undeniably changed the course of those planets 01:16:02.680 |
in the subsequent aerobic photosynthesis that's life learned 01:16:07.680 |
how to utilize what's available in the environment 01:16:18.720 |
that is endosymbiosis, also another singular event. 01:16:23.040 |
And then you move forward and then comes the plants. 01:16:25.960 |
So these are, I counted, I think six different things 01:16:34.640 |
in the history of evolution of life on earth. 01:16:39.400 |
is that there seems to be two different courses, 01:16:43.440 |
Evolution is operating at the molecular level. 01:16:49.040 |
We're talking about mutations that happen every second. 01:17:06.160 |
I mean, that's pretty rapid for a change to be seen. 01:17:10.100 |
But then the big changes and the ones that I'm talking, 01:17:14.400 |
the really big innovations that caused an increase 01:17:18.560 |
of oxygen on this planet or even its own mere presence 01:17:33.260 |
So saying that we all originated from one common ancestor, 01:17:45.640 |
Of course, you could say there's multiple common ancestors 01:17:47.960 |
in the beginning, multiple organisms and so on. 01:17:50.480 |
But the other stuff that you're talking about 01:17:54.540 |
these leaps of invention throughout evolutionary history. 01:17:58.840 |
Now there's a bunch of people who were commenting, 01:18:27.980 |
like intelligence, like where did that come from? 01:18:33.580 |
I think where that skeptical comments are coming from 01:18:37.180 |
were also just the general skepticism of science. 01:18:43.940 |
people, maybe a failure of institutions and so on, 01:18:51.900 |
And it's not so much that it's anti-evolution, 01:18:59.080 |
"maybe scientists don't have it all figured out." 01:19:09.780 |
there's so much mystery to each of these leaps. 01:19:16.980 |
we'll figure out that we totally don't understand yet? 01:19:22.580 |
I talked to a bunch of people about another mystery, 01:19:31.500 |
is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. 01:19:36.260 |
like we have laws of physics that could be something 01:19:39.300 |
that's like a consciousness field or something 01:19:50.940 |
Like we have a good understanding of how things happen, 01:19:57.420 |
to fill in the gaps of the mysteries of it all. 01:20:07.460 |
Do you have a sense of where the biggest mysteries here are? 01:20:20.660 |
you're fascinated about the translation mechanism. 01:20:33.240 |
capable of formulating or answering questions 01:20:54.320 |
is quite specific to our own chemical species. 01:21:02.280 |
We're introspecting on our evolutionary history 01:21:09.080 |
- We're like another organism listening to this 01:21:16.020 |
two of them talking and the third one's like, holy shit. 01:21:26.100 |
or even contemplating about our own place in the universe, 01:21:29.700 |
if at the end of this would come down to appreciating 01:21:36.040 |
really truly comprehending what it is that we got here, 01:21:43.500 |
'Cause there's no single question in biology, 01:21:53.540 |
But understanding how life here started at first place, 01:22:00.220 |
This is not a concept that is well thought in schools. 01:22:14.900 |
maybe their biology teacher was personally interested 01:22:20.180 |
You know the saying that the brains are evenly distributed 01:22:25.180 |
across any metric you can imagine, but opportunities are not. 01:22:31.860 |
So if people aren't understanding the importance of this 01:22:38.340 |
is because that's a lack of opportunity right there. 01:22:40.860 |
That's was skipped through the proper education 01:22:45.260 |
and training in the delivery of why science matters 01:22:51.140 |
- Yeah, but how do you even begin to seriously think 01:22:57.880 |
I mean, every problem of existence, of life has its time. 01:23:08.580 |
So I don't know if it's time to understand consciousness yet. 01:23:14.940 |
The origin of life, I don't know if it's time for us 01:23:18.860 |
Maybe we need to solve so many more problems along the way. 01:23:26.980 |
and it takes a lot of people to make the world. 01:23:28.900 |
So you will always have some interesting brain 01:23:31.940 |
going after an interesting problem to their own. 01:23:35.220 |
The issue here is that we need to first of all 01:23:38.220 |
understand that what we have going on on this planet 01:23:46.380 |
If we are alone in the universe, that's huge. 01:23:53.500 |
And we are incredibly vulnerable to the changes 01:24:08.040 |
Because of the fact that we think we are some sort of 01:24:10.860 |
ultimate end point, the most sophisticated, amazing thing 01:24:16.080 |
I think understanding, not even understanding, 01:24:21.340 |
but asking these questions of where did this even come from? 01:24:28.060 |
And attempting to understand that using chemistry 01:24:48.040 |
It certainly puts humans in their proper perspective. 01:24:59.580 |
Because ultimately the whole mechanism of nature 01:25:02.080 |
seems to be orders of magnitude more intelligent. 01:25:09.220 |
that have a history of several billion years. 01:25:12.100 |
And that all somehow came together to make a human. 01:25:14.820 |
And there'll be life after us, just as it was life before us. 01:25:23.180 |
- Yeah, I think when you understand the magnitude 01:25:25.620 |
of what happened here, there is no room for arrogance. 01:25:33.380 |
- You know, it's quite amazing what happened here. 01:25:38.140 |
And there is no other discipline that will deliver that. 01:25:42.420 |
But exploring our own origins and looking at life 01:25:49.340 |
rather than one single species at a time, a collective look. 01:25:54.140 |
- You mentioned this question in your TED Talk is, 01:26:00.000 |
the two possibilities of the universe being full of life 01:26:12.760 |
Just actually you as a single chemical organism 01:26:16.960 |
introspecting about its existence in this world. 01:26:21.000 |
- It's having a planet flow of life is interesting 01:26:23.780 |
because there are, we talked about life being all about 01:26:30.440 |
And having solutions in front of you is great. 01:26:37.120 |
Like other humans, you see them as a solution 01:26:50.160 |
- Now you think like an origin of life science. 01:26:58.840 |
- But having this emptiness and unpredictability 01:27:08.000 |
And we should be open to what other solutions 01:27:13.000 |
might be out there and exploring those solutions. 01:27:17.560 |
So that's where you see-- - Different chemistry problems. 01:27:23.360 |
So how many chemistry problems have solutions 01:27:28.360 |
that are lifelike to you out there in the universe? 01:27:33.200 |
- It's a wide open palette if you think about it. 01:27:36.520 |
It's the, we know the chemistry is chemistry. 01:27:39.560 |
I don't think the chemistry will be different elsewhere. 01:27:43.840 |
will be determined by the environment most likely. 01:27:46.560 |
- See, I think there is life everywhere out there. 01:28:01.360 |
his gut is there's life everywhere out there, 01:28:06.880 |
So he says the eukaryotes is the biggest invention 01:28:13.440 |
- I wonder if he thinks that's an accidental outcome, 01:28:31.160 |
where our entire galaxy just has bacteria everywhere. 01:28:41.200 |
And viruses, I don't know which one there's more of. 01:28:44.360 |
But they're both, and most of them are productive. 01:28:50.760 |
- I don't like microbes, you're on the wrong planet. 01:28:56.480 |
I just can't, there's like an imperative to the whole thing. 01:29:28.080 |
That once it's, you cannot stop it once it starts. 01:29:34.280 |
- I just have never on Earth, maybe, but maybe, 01:29:37.880 |
I just, whenever I see life, it seems to flourish. 01:29:49.000 |
the only thing I haven't seen is the start of it. 01:29:51.760 |
- Exactly, but, and how are we gonna understand that 01:29:58.600 |
I mean, that's the, and the question here isn't exactly 01:30:03.000 |
our ability to recapitulate everything that happened 01:30:12.920 |
- You think it's possible to study the origin of language 01:30:19.160 |
So, like, there's a very particular chemistry here. 01:30:26.880 |
what everything is, our perception of reality 01:30:34.680 |
I wonder if it's possible to get to some first principles, 01:30:49.160 |
in a lab on Earth, you're always going to be using 01:30:56.840 |
- So, that's what I sort of talked about in my talk as well. 01:31:10.960 |
I guess it's by design, is they're too short. 01:31:14.880 |
- And did you know that there's no prompter involved? 01:31:27.720 |
- Amazing editor who probably is watching this too, 01:31:35.560 |
I like this podcast, it's a very professional organization. 01:31:40.760 |
Yeah, anyway, in the TED Talk about, yeah, life, 01:31:46.880 |
- So, it's a likely scenario that once we understand 01:31:57.120 |
of formulating its own expression and generating a memory 01:32:05.080 |
and manages its existence on a planetary body 01:32:11.000 |
once we understand what conditions gave rise to that, 01:32:29.480 |
if it was provided through some missing ingredients. 01:32:35.480 |
So you can think of it as a sending fertilizer 01:32:46.280 |
The difference between making that planet Earth-like, 01:32:53.880 |
or we're not talking about turning that planet 01:32:58.400 |
We are talking about first understanding that planet, 01:33:01.960 |
studying its chemistry, studying its properties well enough 01:33:14.240 |
So this is obviously a pretty big speculation and suggestion. 01:33:26.840 |
And I think it says a lot about the perception 01:33:34.080 |
That if the answer is no, no, no, absolutely not. 01:33:41.000 |
- So just to be clear, what we're talking about 01:33:42.600 |
is looking at the chemical cocktail of a particular planet 01:33:45.560 |
and having like tasting it and seeing what's missing. 01:33:55.040 |
scientific process for understanding what is missing. 01:33:58.320 |
Not what is missing in terms of to make it Earth-like, 01:34:00.720 |
but what is missing in order to be sufficiently, 01:34:24.640 |
that we will likely have this capacity at some point, 01:34:34.320 |
So we will be asking ourselves this question. 01:34:37.440 |
I guess I wanted to bring this to daylight a little bit 01:34:46.800 |
should we basically start life elsewhere on another planet? 01:34:54.920 |
Or enable the chemical capacity of that planet 01:35:07.360 |
So if you were to try to argue against my yes, 01:35:19.720 |
Is your main concern a chemical biological one 01:35:29.240 |
So that it's not likely that an attempt like this would work. 01:35:39.720 |
- You gotta be very, you have to have an understanding 01:35:51.480 |
- To me, the worst case, the thing I would be worried about 01:35:56.360 |
is we create life, I mean, the same stuff I worry about 01:36:36.100 |
depending on how you view life, may likely suffer. 01:36:42.540 |
for doing your best to alleviate any suffering 01:36:46.680 |
And that perhaps is a romanticizing this notion 01:36:51.000 |
of life, perhaps bacteria are not capable of suffering, 01:36:55.240 |
but perhaps it'll create more complex life forms 01:37:00.620 |
And that feels like a responsibility as well. 01:37:12.040 |
How do you know it's not gonna be a super deadly virus 01:37:24.760 |
that are able to suffer, that's a tricky one. 01:37:27.280 |
- Yeah, I can see why, because it goes back to, again, 01:37:31.600 |
would we, first of all, do we have a responsibility 01:37:45.000 |
given that we know ultimately we will be vanished 01:37:52.000 |
And if this is in fact a very rare chemical event 01:37:58.360 |
that happens because all the right circumstances 01:38:16.360 |
- If we try to back up remnants of our civilization, 01:38:26.000 |
on the different planets so that humans can survive, 01:38:35.480 |
- Yeah, propagating, becoming a multi-planetary species. 01:38:42.320 |
I think is actually, or what is really more interesting 01:38:48.640 |
that chemical behavior that enabled everything 01:38:56.360 |
or engineering bacteria to live on a different planet. 01:39:00.560 |
You are really stripping it down to what is possible 01:39:12.000 |
on different planets, you are letting that very planet 01:39:16.720 |
You're not necessarily contaminating this planet 01:39:19.320 |
with different chemistry, because the idea behind this, 01:39:29.560 |
you understand the chemistry of the planet really well 01:39:32.440 |
before choosing the planet as a candidate at first place. 01:39:38.320 |
And then it's not about sending a missing ingredient per se, 01:39:42.480 |
but again, just sending more of what it already has. 01:39:45.760 |
That will be respecting that planet's condition too. 01:39:54.600 |
I'm not suggesting any, like, let's just strip everything 01:40:10.000 |
That's not, because I see suffering, I see pain. 01:40:14.680 |
I think this is a question that really reveals 01:40:20.040 |
- Well, okay, so the pushback on my pushback. 01:40:41.640 |
suffered in ways that are almost unimaginable to me. 01:40:48.360 |
- Our own species and before, and animals living today. 01:40:51.920 |
And we're not even talking about factory farms. 01:40:54.400 |
We're just animals living in extreme poverty in the jungle. 01:41:01.120 |
You don't, people think like in the natural environment, 01:41:06.120 |
No, it's a brutal place of desperately trying to survive, 01:41:12.400 |
And it's just like all of that life, that's just mammals. 01:41:15.520 |
And we understand mammals, but like throughout, 01:41:18.640 |
like trillions of organisms that led up to those mammals. 01:41:22.520 |
And the organisms living everywhere, like even bacteria, 01:41:27.320 |
So maybe this idea of death, this idea of suffering, 01:41:31.600 |
is actually, this thing that we see as a bug, 01:41:37.280 |
- I don't think suffering is a linear property 01:41:46.600 |
to what we got here, evolving in another planetary body, 01:41:51.800 |
- Where would you say is the biggest unlikely thing? 01:42:02.480 |
But I understand both sides of the equation, right? 01:42:12.440 |
any other choice, but to back up this chemistry 01:42:18.640 |
So you would be saving, it's the ultimate saving, 01:42:35.720 |
But I can also see your point of view, for sure. 01:42:40.760 |
So like, don't seed a plant with a missing ingredient. 01:42:44.480 |
Try to understand what the ingredients it has. 01:42:56.800 |
We can learn from the mistakes that we've done here 01:43:20.520 |
So these attempts don't need not to come from, 01:43:29.120 |
- I think we're just very recently figuring out stuff. 01:43:51.880 |
even at a time of four year or three, few years, 01:44:05.920 |
because I think what we get to interact with in classrooms, 01:44:31.360 |
but younger people are not afraid of these things. 01:44:51.880 |
being able to see the truth at deeper, deeper levels, 01:44:55.320 |
like, you know, Wikipedia and just the internet in general 01:45:05.040 |
even contemplating about these possibilities, 01:45:10.560 |
should make us think about our own place in the universe. 01:45:19.280 |
to guard what we got better and protect it better 01:45:30.240 |
So either proposition, as famously being told, 01:45:41.760 |
maybe not my fellow scientists listening to this 01:45:45.720 |
but you need to have a level of optimism and hope. 01:45:57.120 |
And we cannot just have fear of suffering or fear of pain 01:46:05.840 |
- I've talked to quite a few people in my life 01:46:17.560 |
Now, there's a place for critics and cynicism in this world, 01:46:24.360 |
and creating things in this world that help a lot of people, 01:46:27.660 |
I think optimism is a requirement, is a precondition, 01:46:47.280 |
I tend to see us humans as being very limited cognitively. 01:46:51.300 |
Like, there's so many things we don't understand. 01:46:58.280 |
of course, we don't know this, but my gut says, 01:47:09.660 |
Like, whatever life is, whatever the life force is, 01:47:14.080 |
whatever consciousness is, whatever intelligence, 01:47:16.240 |
whatever the mechanism that led to the origin of life 01:47:21.240 |
on Earth was everywhere, and we're just too dumb to see it. 01:47:26.600 |
It's somewhere, we'll find it somewhere in the physics. 01:47:29.380 |
- I think that's one of the most humbling parts 01:47:50.200 |
especially when your pursuit is about creating knowledge, 01:47:55.400 |
and that you'll know that what you created can also be, 01:48:06.240 |
And I think we've seen that, this lack of maybe connection 01:48:36.440 |
do you think, 'cause you were flirting with this idea, 01:48:39.720 |
did the translation mechanism came before life? 01:48:51.200 |
this whole informatic chemical computing system 01:48:55.720 |
that is also capable of dynamism and evolvability 01:49:00.560 |
that comes with biology, biological behavior, 01:49:10.040 |
We are able to create molecules from environments, 01:49:20.640 |
So we are able to create the building blocks, 01:49:23.200 |
the Miller-Urey experiment, that's now 60 years ago. 01:49:32.400 |
we are able to make them interact with one another. 01:49:34.760 |
They can get more complex, some call this messy, 01:49:39.200 |
We are able to have these chemicals interact with one another, 01:49:53.240 |
towards more systems-level approach to origins, 01:49:57.360 |
more introduction of systems-level chemistry, 01:50:10.160 |
but how do we make them interact with one another 01:50:12.880 |
that will have the properties of a biological system, 01:50:16.840 |
will be heritable, it will be responding to the environment, 01:50:33.560 |
will get a handle of this problem in this decade. 01:50:38.040 |
one of the most exciting times to be doing this work. 01:50:43.320 |
like incredibly amazing, would blow your mind 01:50:55.560 |
I don't know if you would call it origin of life, 01:51:19.800 |
where they only sparked particular environmental forces 01:51:46.840 |
which led that chemistry to form some level of computation, 01:51:55.560 |
and by biological, I'm gonna keep it to very minimum, 01:52:13.600 |
be it radiation, be it temperature, or mix of both, 01:52:21.520 |
the chemical, physical, informatic, computational, biological. 01:52:26.280 |
- So like simulation and a computer would not-- 01:52:36.520 |
maybe formulate, maybe quantify, create models, 01:53:01.080 |
and end up in biology all through simulation. 01:53:04.360 |
But the stuff that DeepMind did with alpha fold 01:53:15.800 |
That's why there's definitely a lot of benefits 01:53:21.240 |
'cause they at least help the experimentalist 01:53:29.240 |
maybe eliminates very obvious dead ends early on, 01:53:36.880 |
And no one's a better experimentalist than nature, so. 01:53:42.160 |
- Let me ask you perhaps a depressing, sad for you question. 01:53:57.120 |
You mentioned would we seed another planet with life? 01:54:19.320 |
Because in panspermia, you still have a cell, right? 01:54:25.520 |
even a cell to me would be very Earth-like, right? 01:54:36.680 |
- So spreading chemical ingredients, not spreading life. 01:54:49.240 |
either an entire bacteria or microbe or a cell 01:54:52.680 |
or something that is DNA, which is still Terran. 01:54:55.920 |
- So in that sense, that doesn't matter to you 01:54:59.840 |
'cause it's chemistry, that's the initial conditions. 01:55:02.760 |
It doesn't matter how the initial conditions came to be. 01:55:05.160 |
They are what they are and let's go from there. 01:55:07.600 |
And there's all kinds of fascinatingly different 01:55:16.080 |
I mean, obviously there's gonna be always room 01:55:19.360 |
for those sort of discussions or there will be, 01:55:38.040 |
It makes it very difficult to answer scientifically, right? 01:55:43.760 |
You just took the problem away from this planet 01:55:56.200 |
- Does it though, so I've heard brilliant biologists 01:56:05.160 |
So I actually am able to hold all these possibilities 01:56:08.080 |
in my head and all of them are inspiring to me. 01:56:12.880 |
that Earth is just an experiment by a graduate student, 01:56:23.600 |
- But there is some, to me, that's inspiring. 01:56:39.360 |
Still, that's interesting because there's still giant leaps 01:56:45.720 |
beyond the initial primitive organisms like eukaryotes. 01:56:49.200 |
- I don't think panspermia usually articulates 01:57:02.040 |
So that's still interesting 'cause all the different leaps 01:57:12.160 |
interesting to listen to, but I wouldn't place it in, 01:57:17.880 |
in the studies of origin of life, I guess, or-- 01:57:21.640 |
You have the initial conditions for the origin of life, 01:57:27.840 |
that you've described in the five components, 01:57:48.400 |
looking at the fundamentals of chemistry and physics. 01:57:51.000 |
- How do you understand that with fundamentals 01:57:58.120 |
- But you're talking about panspermia, right? 01:58:02.600 |
it's different than, if you think it's similar 01:58:13.680 |
is not a missing component right there, right? 01:58:15.480 |
I mean, when you're thinking about origin of life. 01:58:24.840 |
Now, I tend to believe that most likely that's the case. 01:58:33.400 |
you're gonna push back 'cause that's not panspermia. 01:58:51.960 |
that means a lot of the exploration we're doing here 01:58:56.520 |
will not give us the clues to the origin of life. 01:59:01.520 |
But it just seems like it's still very useful 01:59:15.280 |
not prove, but show that panspermia is very likely? 01:59:45.560 |
and how many brilliant people are working on this right now, 01:59:51.720 |
I would say that we are approaching this problem 01:59:53.920 |
in more broader ways, different ways possible. 01:59:59.040 |
For us, again, we are interested in early cells 02:00:04.040 |
and first cells and what followed origin of life, 02:00:08.960 |
that's between the origin and emergence of first cells, 02:00:13.680 |
it's hard to separate these two ends from one another. 02:00:17.520 |
- So given that life is a solution to a chemistry problem, 02:00:31.760 |
how different would be the tree of life, do you think? 02:00:42.000 |
if we are repeating the planet one million times, 02:00:54.000 |
do they happen at the same time, at the same frequency, 02:00:57.120 |
at the same intensity every time you're running this tape 02:01:06.560 |
I mean, the fact that you would ask that question 02:01:11.880 |
The timing, the frequency, the intensity of geological-- 02:01:25.880 |
or whether we are also giving them more randomness. 02:01:28.880 |
So if the volcano erupted, is it happening at the same time? 02:01:31.720 |
If you have, are dinosaurs getting wiped off every time 02:01:35.200 |
with the same meteorite that's hitting the same-- 02:01:38.000 |
- But also like temperature changes and all that-- 02:01:41.520 |
- That's actually, I've heard you say somewhere 02:01:43.480 |
that one of the things that's fascinating to you 02:01:53.240 |
all the mechanisms were invented and developed 02:02:00.600 |
through the hardship that Earth has gone through. 02:02:03.040 |
- That the biological innovations persisted despite that? 02:02:09.720 |
You kind of think of the biological innovations 02:02:21.760 |
it's almost like judging a book by its cover, right? 02:02:34.080 |
will obviously have a lot of molybdenum in its system. 02:02:49.760 |
That you're saying that environment will determine 02:02:59.600 |
that it's not necessarily this straightforward. 02:03:02.640 |
That for instance, we looked at going back to nitrogen. 02:03:06.240 |
One thing that's fascinating about the way cells 02:03:13.520 |
is that they also do this through a lot of help 02:03:16.560 |
of a lot of metals, a lot of elemental support really. 02:03:32.280 |
we try to understand the elemental composition 02:03:39.520 |
the metabolisms, even though they prefer a certain metal 02:03:44.560 |
that metal wasn't abundant in the environment, 02:03:51.040 |
So it's not that straightforward as though whatever, 02:03:56.760 |
but you don't necessarily eat what is obvious to you. 02:03:59.880 |
Just because there's a lot of that food around 02:04:01.560 |
it doesn't mean life will ultimately go there. 02:04:05.200 |
but it seems like in the case of nitrogen fixation, 02:04:07.560 |
it didn't and maybe that made the difference. 02:04:09.480 |
- It's so cool that, right, it's not the abundant resource 02:04:29.880 |
- Yeah, for instance, I mean, I think it's in the 80s, 02:04:37.800 |
which changed, I think, a lot of scientists' life, 02:04:42.740 |
He contemplates on this notion of the tape of life. 02:04:48.500 |
Of course, I hope people still know what tape is, 02:04:51.360 |
but I think your listeners will know what tape is. 02:05:16.240 |
or can be imagined to be recorded on a linear, 02:05:19.840 |
is it linear chain of events recorded on a tape? 02:05:45.880 |
because you're assuming everything will happen 02:06:00.220 |
than that can be dictated by the environment. 02:06:15.720 |
that the chemistry ultimately defines the destination, 02:06:31.960 |
We are talking about whether life will emerge 02:06:52.080 |
of course they would be fake, otherwise they would die. 02:06:57.400 |
I'm Alice and this is Wonderland, this is great. 02:07:11.400 |
Well, obviously there are microbes in this room, 02:07:18.840 |
- This is not a clean room, so you have microbes here. 02:07:22.160 |
- Yes, so you and I and all the microbes in this room, 02:07:31.660 |
But if you are asking if we are gonna be here, 02:07:41.940 |
Because life will do always, life will do its life thing. 02:07:48.800 |
to the things we were talking about, translation, 02:07:53.060 |
is figuring out what is the important stuff and what isn't. 02:07:56.000 |
Makes me wonder about, just like with the translation 02:08:10.500 |
Like it was obvious that the sensory mechanism of eyes, 02:08:18.400 |
would the sensory mechanism of sight develop? 02:08:29.360 |
- In response to Steve Jay Gould's proposition, 02:08:32.340 |
most people who argue that life is convergent 02:08:38.680 |
and it will in fact lead to a few determined outcomes, 02:08:43.480 |
or it's not that the outcome is determined per se, 02:08:50.160 |
and the mutational trajectories that life can act upon 02:09:01.940 |
So the convergence at the eye level was suggested 02:09:11.020 |
of why life may actually embark on the same solution 02:09:19.300 |
- Do you think there's any inkling of truth to that? 02:09:21.900 |
Like is it just us humans thinking we're special? 02:09:25.540 |
- I think those innovations came again so far after the... 02:09:38.540 |
We humans tend to talk about the later stuff, 02:09:54.140 |
When we say an empty place, or visually at least, 02:09:57.700 |
we are talking about a planet that is really alien. 02:10:07.860 |
that did not have any oxygen for two billion years. 02:10:13.700 |
that we would even think about when we think about life 02:10:17.900 |
that is present in our past, yet here we are. 02:10:26.700 |
we are the super late arrivals to the party, right? 02:10:35.020 |
- But the potential to create us was always there. 02:10:45.920 |
What is it, you think it's possible that it's, 02:10:57.860 |
Like maybe to create the bacteria is not so lucky, 02:11:05.180 |
all the way up to mammals, that's super lucky. 02:11:07.740 |
- Yes, and it may all come down to a few innovations 02:11:15.740 |
So all these molecular tricks may have enabled 02:11:22.220 |
the sort of mere existence of whatever you are able 02:11:28.660 |
- And you have a hope that science can answer 02:11:35.340 |
I mean, we are limited to going back to the beginning 02:11:45.380 |
You're talking about four billion year old records 02:11:47.860 |
that is ever changing, that again makes it beautiful, 02:12:03.900 |
that is embedded on itself, on the surface of this planet, 02:12:11.060 |
And that's the key that most of these recorded remnants 02:12:23.200 |
They're found, they need to be found for us to be able 02:12:27.500 |
to read them, so we work with a very handful set of samples, 02:12:49.860 |
based on a handful of rocks and what is recorded on them. 02:12:53.420 |
Speaking of finding select remnants of our deep past, 02:12:58.420 |
you said that you've been thinking about Nick Nealon's 02:13:02.980 |
essay on scientific knowledge and scientific abstraction. 02:13:05.940 |
So let me ask you, where do you think scientific questions 02:13:11.860 |
You're a scientist, you ask very good questions, 02:13:27.340 |
There are good ideas, there are not so good ideas. 02:13:29.980 |
There are really exciting ideas, maybe some boring ones. 02:13:39.980 |
in doing something different, then you need to be willing 02:13:45.100 |
And that's incredibly difficult, even though we talked 02:13:58.100 |
for the entire infrastructure to move forward. 02:14:14.220 |
If you are disappointed that your idea didn't work, 02:14:22.300 |
True risk is that you accept that it may not work, 02:14:25.860 |
so that the failure shouldn't also surprise you. 02:14:30.780 |
Is it when you embark on stuff, when you embark on an idea, 02:14:35.060 |
do you actually contemplate and accept failure? 02:14:43.620 |
But I eliminated a lot of the things out of my work line 02:14:59.260 |
- So you trusted the signal of boredom as a good sign 02:15:09.340 |
whatever you're doing should be exciting to you. 02:15:11.980 |
If there's only one person that should be ever excited 02:15:16.860 |
And that's enough for that idea to go somewhere. 02:15:19.740 |
I think that you need to believe in the idea, 02:15:28.020 |
That if something isn't working, you should let it go 02:15:41.380 |
in order to, sorry, instead of trying to fix it, 02:15:46.380 |
you should wrap it up and move on to something else, 02:16:11.300 |
- Yes, and there is not a lot of room for true freedom, 02:16:22.020 |
It's not that scientists are just brilliant, amazing humans. 02:16:29.780 |
because they're trained in how to do science. 02:16:41.060 |
giving the message that this is for everybody, 02:16:50.740 |
It is a method that you learn to solve a problem. 02:16:57.820 |
and they get better at it under really good guidance, 02:17:02.700 |
And ultimately everyone finds their own style 02:17:06.740 |
of problem solving and what sort of problems they solve. 02:17:20.620 |
It's kind of interesting because in the age of social media 02:17:48.900 |
that can be a major determinant of that pattern, right? 02:17:53.860 |
So you try to do something that is accepted by others 02:17:57.940 |
because that's maybe unlikely to give results right away. 02:18:10.660 |
you've got to be very, very patient about it. 02:18:17.020 |
- I mean, on YouTube and those kinds of places 02:18:34.060 |
over a period of months and years, not decades. 02:18:40.300 |
is on the rate of seconds, minutes, and hours. 02:19:05.900 |
the algorithm wants you to respond right away 02:19:13.100 |
but true innovation, I think, doesn't even scream. 02:19:20.400 |
But it's also important to not fool ourselves 02:19:23.420 |
and think that everything that people criticize 02:19:38.380 |
and accepting the ideas of the current science, 02:19:43.380 |
and at times trusting your gut and rejecting those. 02:19:48.460 |
'Cause science progresses by sometimes rejecting 02:19:52.580 |
the ideas of the past or sometimes building on them 02:19:59.420 |
is to really drill down into a concept, right? 02:20:07.740 |
and then it may be appealing and gain a lot of traction, 02:20:17.900 |
And so it's not only about defining a problem, 02:20:20.320 |
but then really systematically solve that problem 02:20:30.380 |
I've also saw that you've translated scientific documents, 02:20:40.980 |
is lost in translation in science and in life? 02:21:02.340 |
and it's always fascinating to see how much is lost. 02:21:04.500 |
And the Soviet Union has a tradition of science 02:21:07.580 |
and mathematics and so on, and it's interesting 02:21:24.700 |
I mean, maybe it's more like a gain in some sense, right? 02:21:39.300 |
maybe it's the best system that humans ever came up with 02:21:43.800 |
to seek knowledge, to generate and make sense of the world. 02:21:52.580 |
- Did the kind of translation you do, by the way, 02:21:55.940 |
- I directly translated for scientific work, yes. 02:22:28.100 |
because of something special about ourselves. 02:22:36.540 |
not because there was something inherently special about us, 02:22:41.020 |
or that the system truly selects for the ones 02:22:46.940 |
- Yeah, and language is a part of the opportunity. 02:22:50.700 |
because it comes with, similar to bacteria, right? 02:23:02.500 |
that we isolate from the environment in the lab, 02:23:06.860 |
for them to grow and thrive and sustain themselves. 02:23:14.700 |
For language, with language comes a different culture, 02:23:26.460 |
that can only be achieved by clashing, perhaps, 02:23:30.060 |
two different cultures, two different languages, 02:23:33.740 |
maybe in some cases, four different approaches. 02:23:47.980 |
that different languages explore ideas differently. 02:23:52.140 |
so when I said science is like a language itself, 02:24:15.660 |
an evolutionary biology paper, and vice versa. 02:24:23.140 |
But there's also the language of communicating, 02:24:25.860 |
and because words matter, how we talk matter, 02:24:30.820 |
So yes, just learning English as a second language alone 02:24:34.340 |
is not gonna make you fluent in science either. 02:24:45.220 |
It seems like you have a foot in a lot of disciplines. 02:24:52.660 |
evolutionary biology, I mean, there's chemistry. 02:24:57.460 |
- Biochemistry, biophysics, even we do a lot of statistics. 02:25:02.380 |
So there's a lot of mathematics to what I do as well. 02:25:06.660 |
now it's astrobiology program, I repeat it because it's fun, 02:25:12.180 |
that it is not a fruit salad, but it's a smoothie. 02:25:23.140 |
So a smoothie is a successful combination of those fields 02:25:32.580 |
If you put the wrong ingredient and you press the blender 02:25:43.420 |
- Yes, I can definitely assess that for ginger, 02:25:47.940 |
- I think so, but it's just a personal thing. 02:25:55.580 |
- No, I don't think they do, but I also don't like-- 02:25:57.540 |
- Wasn't that a thing they add in a lot of smoothies? 02:26:01.660 |
I went to Malibu with a good friend of mine, Dan Reynolds, 02:26:07.020 |
And it was probably the first smoothie I've ever had. 02:26:12.180 |
of the kind of places and people that drink smoothies, 02:26:25.060 |
that that's when inevitably the innovation will rise, 02:26:29.300 |
because you will see things maybe a little differently 02:26:48.300 |
So, therefore, the patience will make more sense. 02:26:55.300 |
I'm sorry, patience will be even more important. 02:27:11.220 |
So, let me ask maybe a little bit more of a personal thing. 02:27:23.020 |
that are representative of your bacteria culture? 02:27:28.300 |
- I was born in Istanbul, so I grew up in Turkey. 02:27:41.260 |
You have a, you see a "Welcome to Europe" sign, 02:27:48.540 |
depending on which part of the bridge you are. 02:27:53.740 |
and I spent about roughly 20 years of my life, 02:28:13.520 |
- I think we are very sincerely human as a culture. 02:28:20.540 |
I think that we have the saying that don't go to bed full 02:28:29.820 |
So, you wouldn't eat any food in front of someone 02:28:34.700 |
where I come from without offering to share the bite. 02:28:38.580 |
So, I think those things, however small they may sound, 02:28:44.300 |
especially when you are put in or move to a place 02:28:51.020 |
So, I think that culturally, we had a lot of conscious, 02:29:11.220 |
What role does love play in the human condition 02:29:18.760 |
- It's not easy to learn how to love if you're not loved. 02:29:31.060 |
is that it is something that you can learn, I think. 02:30:13.580 |
passes this planet without knowing what love is. 02:30:18.260 |
And that could be a love to a pet, a love to a plant. 02:30:31.180 |
What advice would you give to a young person today? 02:30:46.540 |
being distributed evenly but opportunities not. 02:30:55.020 |
You realize that there's whole areas of this earth 02:31:03.020 |
And one of the exciting things about the 21st century 02:31:12.100 |
And so all these young people now have the opportunity 02:31:45.180 |
And I was told even people drew from Sarajevo to attend. 02:31:48.780 |
Whenever I think about our role as a scientist 02:31:59.580 |
that we create, I always think about that night. 02:32:14.260 |
to start everything new and not do or not carry, 02:32:19.300 |
replace whatever maybe the feeling that was taken 02:32:26.580 |
from them with hope and love, start a new beginning, 02:32:44.860 |
But what stayed with me was just the look and the feeling, 02:32:50.180 |
the look on their faces and the feeling in the room, 02:33:02.540 |
- Yes, and that's exactly why I'm telling this whole story. 02:33:07.540 |
Because for most of us, we may have to be that seed 02:33:13.340 |
in our families, the first one to do something new, 02:33:24.260 |
I would want the young people to know that you can be that, 02:33:39.060 |
And I would want them to know that their voice matters 02:33:42.300 |
and they need to use it, especially those who think 02:33:49.500 |
And ultimately, I think what it comes down to 02:33:54.140 |
is to trusting yourself, trusting and respecting your voice. 02:34:01.540 |
If you are not respected, start by respecting yourself. 02:34:07.280 |
- Yeah, it's really difficult when you're surrounded 02:34:24.540 |
By or reduced down to what others see in them. 02:34:32.300 |
try to develop the respect and the love for yourself. 02:34:44.460 |
- Be prepared that it's not very fair, unfortunately. 02:34:49.460 |
And so I don't want to depict this Disney story 02:34:52.940 |
that, and then yes, and everything will be just fine. 02:35:16.580 |
Why is the translational mechanism machinery here? 02:35:32.380 |
But there is no meaning, I don't think, no, yeah. 02:35:50.980 |
or from a rational perspective, is void of beauty? 02:36:04.940 |
I mean, we have the capacity to see the beauty. 02:36:09.100 |
- We have the capacity, so why not use it to the fullest? 02:36:22.580 |
this ability to find, to introspect ourselves. 02:36:28.420 |
- I mean, it's definitely soothing to think like that, 02:36:31.980 |
but I don't think there is a meaning like that way. 02:36:44.940 |
- But soothing doesn't mean that there's a meaning. 02:36:52.820 |
because there is just, I think, so much unfairness going on, 02:36:56.320 |
I wouldn't even dare myself to think that there's a meaning 02:37:00.780 |
out of respect to the ones that are suffering. 02:37:05.740 |
I think out of suffering emerges flourishing and beauty. 02:37:20.620 |
and in their stories is a hope for the future, 02:37:23.940 |
is a love for the people who are still living, 02:37:32.060 |
is the suffering and the loss somehow intensifies 02:37:35.620 |
your appreciation of the life that is still left. 02:37:44.340 |
still doing your best and believing that there's, 02:38:03.160 |
there's something more humbling and profound about that. 02:38:13.780 |
this will come out very random, okay, so just. 02:38:19.800 |
In Turkish bathrooms, there is this sign that says, 02:38:38.620 |
- That's your meaning of life found in the Turkish. 02:38:42.460 |
- There's wisdom to that, but it also is because 02:38:49.260 |
So I think there's some profound meaning to that too, 02:38:52.460 |
that just leave it as you would want to find it. 02:38:57.180 |
- So that your little scribble in the long story 02:39:06.740 |
did a pretty good job, at least kept it the same 02:39:11.620 |
- Or at least I left it in the way that I wish I found it. 02:39:20.420 |
- Yes, that's the wisdom from Turkish bathrooms. 02:39:29.860 |
and ended with the wisdom in a Turkish bathroom, 02:39:40.700 |
I really appreciate that you would talk with me today. 02:39:51.060 |
please check out our sponsors in the description. 02:39:53.660 |
And now let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes