Dr. Bernardo Huberman: How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.660 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.880 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.200 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.280 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.240 | My guest today is Dr. Bernardo Huberman.

00:00:17.800 | Dr. Bernardo Huberman is the Vice President

00:00:19.880 | of NextGen Systems at Cable Labs.

00:00:22.320 | Prior to that, he was the Director

00:00:23.820 | of the Social Computing Laboratory at Hewlett-Packard.

00:00:26.640 | And he is, as his name suggests, my father.

00:00:29.880 | Today, we discuss various topics in science,

00:00:32.040 | including relativity theory,

00:00:33.920 | chaos theory, and quantum computing.

00:00:36.200 | But I'd like to assure you that even if you have

00:00:38.640 | zero background in physics, computer science,

00:00:40.780 | or mathematics, that entire discussion will be clear to you

00:00:43.920 | as to what those things are,

00:00:45.720 | and even some of how they work.

00:00:47.960 | During today's discussion,

00:00:48.840 | we also talk about a life of science,

00:00:50.760 | that is, what it is to spend one's life in curiosity,

00:00:54.400 | in trying to understand the universe around us,

00:00:56.440 | and how to understand ourselves.

00:00:58.520 | Indeed, today, we also talk about neuroscience,

00:01:00.940 | how the brain works, and the different sorts of questions

00:01:03.840 | that I do believe everybody asks,

00:01:05.840 | whether you're a scientist or not.

00:01:07.760 | Questions like, where do we come from?

00:01:10.120 | Is there a God?

00:01:11.480 | What is our use or purpose in the universe?

00:01:14.440 | And how is it that we can ponder these super high-level,

00:01:17.080 | abstract questions about how we got here,

00:01:19.760 | and what our purpose is,

00:01:21.040 | and how things work at the quantum level,

00:01:23.440 | tiny, tiny bits of things that we can't even see.

00:01:26.480 | And at the same time, to lead an everyday life

00:01:29.400 | that is meaningful and joyful.

00:01:31.560 | We talk about this in the context of understanding oneself,

00:01:35.160 | in relation to others, family, community,

00:01:37.960 | including scientific community,

00:01:39.440 | and what it is like to come from a different country.

00:01:41.720 | My father immigrated from South America.

00:01:43.760 | What it was like to do science in the United States

00:01:45.720 | then and now, cultural differences.

00:01:48.360 | And of course, we touch on some of our relationship as well.

00:01:50.880 | How could we not?

00:01:51.980 | I must say, for me, it was an immense pleasure

00:01:53.980 | and privilege to have this conversation,

00:01:55.880 | not just because Dr. Huberman is my father,

00:01:58.180 | but because I believe the knowledge,

00:01:59.600 | and indeed some of the wisdom that he shares,

00:02:01.440 | will be useful to everybody.

00:02:03.240 | About what it is to carve one's own unique trajectory,

00:02:05.920 | in terms of career and life.

00:02:07.720 | And at the same time, how to savor the simple,

00:02:09.920 | everyday things that make life so worth living.

00:02:13.080 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:15.880 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:18.580 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:20.720 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science,

00:02:23.360 | and science-related tools, to the general public.

00:02:26.200 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:27.340 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:30.040 | Our first sponsor is Helix Sleep.

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00:05:05.080 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman.

00:05:08.400 | Dr. Bernardo Huberman, welcome.

00:05:11.040 | - Thank you, Andrew.

00:05:12.440 | - And also great to see you, dad.

00:05:14.200 | - Same here.

00:05:15.280 | - I guess no premonition would have foreseen this one.

00:05:18.140 | - No, absolutely not.

00:05:19.640 | - And people might notice today

00:05:22.780 | I'm drinking out of a mate gourd,

00:05:24.460 | in part in honor of my father's father

00:05:27.220 | who drank out of his loose leaf mate every morning.

00:05:30.180 | My first sip of mate was taken sitting in his lap

00:05:33.540 | when I was maybe four years old.

00:05:35.780 | - Yes, yes.

00:05:36.620 | - In my Spider-Man pajamas.

00:05:39.020 | In any event, let's talk about science.

00:05:41.860 | You're born in Argentina.

00:05:44.300 | - Mm-hmm.

00:05:45.700 | - As I recall, because once we had a conversation about it,

00:05:49.660 | you had a teacher, maybe it was in high school,

00:05:52.700 | who turned you on to physics,

00:05:54.500 | which became your field of choice.

00:05:56.300 | - Yes, yes.

00:05:57.140 | - But prior to that,

00:05:58.500 | were you interested in different subjects?

00:06:01.020 | I don't recall if you had an avid interest in academics

00:06:04.180 | or you just did it because you were supposed to

00:06:06.020 | prior to that teacher.

00:06:07.260 | Then we'll talk about him.

00:06:08.300 | - Yes, yes.

00:06:09.140 | I was always very interested in ideas and so on.

00:06:12.300 | Science at that time was a bit vague,

00:06:14.660 | but I'd read a lot of philosophy.

00:06:17.180 | I didn't understand much of what I read,

00:06:19.020 | but nevertheless, I kept reading it.

00:06:20.780 | I was interested in psychology.

00:06:22.460 | I was an avid reader.

00:06:24.940 | As a matter of fact, I embarrassed my father,

00:06:27.060 | or actually made him disappointed for a birthday.

00:06:30.020 | I think I was 14 years old.

00:06:31.580 | I asked him to buy me the 12 volumes of Freud's writings.

00:06:36.100 | - Really?

00:06:36.940 | - Yeah, and he said, "What for?"

00:06:38.460 | But I was very impressed with it.

00:06:39.780 | Of course, I couldn't even understand

00:06:40.940 | half of what these books had in them.

00:06:44.420 | So I was very interested in many things.

00:06:47.260 | And I must say to you that my interest in science,

00:06:50.700 | in particular physics,

00:06:51.940 | doesn't come from the standard thing

00:06:53.500 | that you see here in the United States mostly.

00:06:55.340 | Namely, I was not a whiz kid in math.

00:06:57.420 | I was not one of these people that can really do things

00:07:01.260 | very, very quickly and so on.

00:07:02.460 | But I was interested because I thought that physics

00:07:05.020 | was gonna complement my attempt at understanding

00:07:10.380 | how the whole universe is put together.

00:07:13.340 | The philosophers were saying all sorts of things.

00:07:15.220 | I went to a very special school

00:07:17.700 | that I learned six years of Latin and so on.

00:07:19.900 | And I had to read things like Kant and Cosmogonies

00:07:24.020 | and so on that really didn't mean much to me.

00:07:26.420 | But suddenly I started discovering

00:07:27.820 | that physics might be interesting.

00:07:29.380 | And I had a cousin, Hector, who was a physicist,

00:07:32.100 | a particle physicist already.

00:07:33.660 | I mean, he was living at that time in France.

00:07:36.100 | And so there was a little bit of that influence.

00:07:38.500 | But my interest was in things that had to do

00:07:41.660 | with fairly abstract ideas.

00:07:43.940 | I cannot believe that at one point or the other

00:07:46.220 | I was very good in geometry class,

00:07:48.900 | being able to prove theorems.

00:07:50.380 | I mean, the teacher would just say, "Let's prove this."

00:07:53.300 | And I was somehow able to reason through

00:07:56.140 | and come to some proofs.

00:07:58.260 | So I think that I was very interested in ideas

00:08:02.380 | and not necessarily in the very concrete aspects

00:08:04.500 | of science at that time.

00:08:06.220 | - Can I ask you a question about early schooling?

00:08:08.340 | So if I remember correctly,

00:08:10.820 | you were born naturally left-handed.

00:08:13.300 | - Yes.

00:08:14.140 | - They forced you to learn to write with your right hand.

00:08:16.980 | - Yes.

00:08:17.820 | - You went to a very strict schools.

00:08:19.420 | - Yes, yes.

00:08:20.300 | - Like military levels of strictness.

00:08:22.140 | - Almost, yes, yes.

00:08:23.740 | This is a very interesting type of education.

00:08:26.140 | They have it in France.

00:08:26.980 | It's called the lycee in France.

00:08:28.780 | And this is a very special school in Argentina

00:08:30.900 | was actually founded in the 1500s by the Jesuits.

00:08:34.220 | And my father went to that school.

00:08:36.660 | And so he wanted me to go there.

00:08:38.740 | And my brother went there too.

00:08:40.340 | And in six years of a very strict education,

00:08:42.740 | mostly humanistic, I learned Greek and learned Latin.

00:08:46.380 | I learned immense amounts of history, which I loved.

00:08:49.780 | And there were other courses, you know, French and so on.

00:08:52.220 | In French, we had to memorize incredibly long poems

00:08:54.980 | that we had to recite.

00:08:56.300 | - Do you still remember some of them?

00:08:57.420 | Because sometimes early memories are embedded so deeply.

00:08:59.900 | - Yes, yes.

00:09:00.740 | And my brother and I sometimes tell each other

00:09:02.460 | some of the pieces of these poems.

00:09:04.380 | Yes, yes.

00:09:05.220 | And I'll say something right now to foreshadow

00:09:07.500 | what will likely happen several times

00:09:09.220 | throughout today's discussion,

00:09:10.180 | which is anytime that my father is in the presence

00:09:13.220 | of his brother, my uncle, Carlos,

00:09:16.540 | they start laughing about jokes that they've been telling

00:09:19.780 | over and over back and forth with one another

00:09:22.180 | since they were a young kid.

00:09:23.740 | So just the mere mention of his brother

00:09:25.700 | will bring a bit of a smile and a chuckle

00:09:27.940 | to both of our faces.

00:09:29.860 | - Yes, yes.

00:09:30.700 | So I'd learned a lot of French.

00:09:32.860 | And also my parents decided, my mother mostly,

00:09:35.500 | that I had to learn French and English.

00:09:37.060 | And I went to Alliance Francaise,

00:09:39.300 | where for five years I went there.

00:09:40.820 | I was essentially the only boy in the class,

00:09:43.020 | which was very nice in a way.

00:09:45.060 | And in order to graduate,

00:09:46.740 | I essentially, you know, to be fluent in French.

00:09:48.940 | But in the special school I went to,

00:09:50.500 | the discipline was very straight, very straight.

00:09:53.780 | You know, we were supposed to do things

00:09:55.300 | you don't do in the United States.

00:09:56.340 | The moment the teacher walks in, everybody stands up.

00:09:59.020 | And if you're late and standing up,

00:10:01.340 | you're just kicked out of the classroom

00:10:02.980 | and things of that sort.

00:10:04.660 | But it was a lovely experience in many ways

00:10:07.380 | when I reflect on it,

00:10:08.260 | because it gave me a humanistic education

00:10:11.060 | that has been incredibly useful in my career.

00:10:13.820 | Most people don't realize that.

00:10:15.580 | I mean, I tend to think of things in a very broad context,

00:10:18.660 | and it's because of the education I had.

00:10:20.900 | Okay, so, and I loved the history of Rome,

00:10:23.740 | and I'd learned to recite things in Latin.

00:10:27.100 | And so it was very, very, I enjoyed that very, very much.

00:10:30.220 | My brother didn't, actually, and so.

00:10:31.940 | - Well, you two are very different.

00:10:33.100 | I have great, great adoration for Carlos,

00:10:35.660 | but you two are very different.

00:10:36.900 | And along those lines,

00:10:37.740 | I was just about to ask or mention,

00:10:40.780 | and some of our Argentine

00:10:43.260 | and South American listeners generally,

00:10:46.220 | and perhaps even European listeners,

00:10:48.020 | might be shocked and perhaps disappointed

00:10:51.140 | to learn that you're one of the few Argentines

00:10:53.580 | that I know who doesn't care much

00:10:56.260 | for the game of football, soccer.

00:10:58.020 | It doesn't seem to concern you much at all.

00:10:59.580 | - No, no.

00:11:01.060 | The reasons for that are sort of interesting, I think.

00:11:03.980 | I've reflected on that,

00:11:04.940 | because my own wife likes to watch a soccer game.

00:11:08.100 | I mean, she's Danish.

00:11:08.940 | She likes the European tournaments.

00:11:11.180 | I never liked mob behavior.

00:11:14.100 | I never liked this whole passionate involvement

00:11:18.020 | in these things.

00:11:18.860 | I don't know why.

00:11:19.700 | I was never able to understand it,

00:11:22.420 | to the point that I never went to a soccer game

00:11:25.020 | till the week before I left for the United States.

00:11:27.860 | My brother insisted that I had to go to a soccer game,

00:11:31.460 | and this is sort of embarrassing,

00:11:33.900 | but at one point or the other,

00:11:35.100 | it's someone, you know, there was a good goal,

00:11:36.980 | and so I stood up and said, "This is great,"

00:11:38.620 | and I turned out I was on the wrong side of the audience,

00:11:41.220 | and people got very, almost violent with me, you know?

00:11:46.140 | So, yeah, soccer to me is something that I watch,

00:11:48.780 | but I'm not passionate about.

00:11:50.260 | - Right.

00:11:51.100 | - Yeah, I never really felt that it was that interesting.

00:11:53.300 | Although, you know, I was in a rowing team.

00:11:56.020 | I learned boxing.

00:11:57.860 | I did a lot of sports,

00:11:59.420 | but I don't like that much of spectator sports,

00:12:02.620 | like tennis.

00:12:03.460 | I played tennis since I was a teenager.

00:12:05.420 | - I'm not a spectator sport fan either.

00:12:07.340 | The other day, someone asked me

00:12:08.340 | what my favorite sports team is.

00:12:09.620 | You'll like this.

00:12:10.460 | And I said the Harlem Globetrotters

00:12:12.780 | because they're undefeated.

00:12:14.020 | They have the best record,

00:12:15.060 | and that was actually the one professional sports team game

00:12:19.140 | you took me to when I was a kid.

00:12:20.180 | We'd always go see the Globetrotters.

00:12:21.740 | - Yes.

00:12:22.580 | - They're undefeated.

00:12:23.420 | - Yes, unbelievable, yes, yes.

00:12:24.700 | - And my father took me to see them too.

00:12:26.580 | They're fantastic, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:28.180 | - I love it.

00:12:29.020 | So your father was not a scientist.

00:12:30.780 | - No.

00:12:31.620 | - Your brother's not a scientist,

00:12:33.380 | and you were fated, according to them,

00:12:36.060 | to join the family business.

00:12:37.180 | But then you had a teacher who exposed you to physics.

00:12:40.940 | - To physics and to the notion

00:12:42.820 | of being authentic in what you want.

00:12:45.260 | There were two parts to it.

00:12:46.740 | He was a very interesting and tormented man, I felt,

00:12:50.220 | but it was very interesting.

00:12:51.180 | He would come into the class.

00:12:52.300 | Most of the students, you know,

00:12:53.340 | really didn't care about what he was saying.

00:12:55.260 | And so I was fascinated,

00:12:56.780 | not only by what he was saying,

00:12:58.220 | but his whole personality.

00:13:00.420 | But I need to say something here that is important.

00:13:03.180 | I also was rather irresponsible.

00:13:05.420 | You see, I grew up in a family, a well-to-do family,

00:13:09.300 | that I never thought I was going to make a living.

00:13:12.260 | So it was easy to be interested in science or anything

00:13:15.740 | because, you know, it's what you do.

00:13:17.900 | Yeah, it's, you know, you're interested in culture.

00:13:20.700 | You read books, you do things.

00:13:22.700 | But my father used to say,

00:13:23.900 | what are you going to do once you graduate?

00:13:25.460 | You don't want to start teaching in elementary schools

00:13:27.540 | or something of that sort.

00:13:28.580 | My brother used to say, if he does physics,

00:13:30.620 | I'll have to support him because he still says that.

00:13:33.460 | - So scientists were considered poor.

00:13:35.860 | - Poor, yeah.

00:13:36.700 | Yeah, they couldn't get a job.

00:13:37.540 | I mean, science in Argentina.

00:13:39.260 | Argentina has a big tradition in medical sciences.

00:13:41.660 | I think two or three Nobel Prizes and so on.

00:13:43.980 | But in physics, they produce some very good physicists.

00:13:46.740 | One of them lives in the United States.

00:13:48.260 | I mean, he's very, very famous, Maldacena.

00:13:50.340 | I haven't met him, but I know he's one of the top people

00:13:52.820 | in the field.

00:13:54.060 | But I just got into this because I was interested.

00:13:57.060 | It sounded, you know, fascinating and abstract

00:14:00.780 | and the ideas were so powerful.

00:14:02.980 | And I think, and, you know, I reflected a lot on this.

00:14:06.140 | When you're psychologically in adolescence,

00:14:08.380 | because my parents made me jump two grades.

00:14:11.340 | So I was much younger than my classmates.

00:14:14.020 | And that created a lot of problems for me.

00:14:15.700 | I mean, at the time when, you know, you're developing

00:14:18.020 | and so on, all the boys were talking about girls

00:14:20.220 | and so on, I still was really interested,

00:14:22.300 | understanding why the excitement and so on,

00:14:24.420 | you know, I was very young.

00:14:25.700 | But it gave me a sense of order.

00:14:29.060 | You know, reading a book about physics

00:14:30.780 | and understanding that there are laws

00:14:32.940 | that tell you how things work,

00:14:34.940 | gave me a tremendous sense of order and power.

00:14:37.580 | So, you know, everything else was a little bit in flow

00:14:40.340 | and the family and my own relationships with friends

00:14:43.260 | and girlfriends or whatever.

00:14:45.180 | And going back to science, it was just a sense

00:14:47.340 | of, I don't know, I still remember those days.

00:14:49.700 | It was very, very soothing in a way.

00:14:52.660 | - So it's like a touchstone.

00:14:54.020 | - Yes, yes, yes.

00:14:55.380 | - And what grade were you, this teacher,

00:14:58.220 | was this like middle school, high school?

00:15:00.100 | - Yeah, no, yeah, high school, yeah.

00:15:01.340 | I was 13 or 14 years old, yeah, yeah.

00:15:03.660 | When I finally, I started listening to this

00:15:05.740 | and I said, wow, this is impressive.

00:15:08.180 | You know, it's powerful.

00:15:10.020 | There are ways to know what's true and what's not true.

00:15:12.780 | You know, you just don't speculate on things.

00:15:16.060 | So, but most of this stuff, I didn't really understand.

00:15:20.740 | Then I had this cousin of mine, Hector,

00:15:22.380 | who was already gone, but I would go to his parents' house

00:15:25.460 | and there, there were his books,

00:15:26.980 | all these incredible books on quantum mechanics,

00:15:28.980 | relativity, and I would just take them home.

00:15:31.540 | And I didn't really comprehend a lot of the math,

00:15:34.660 | but somehow it seemed impressive.

00:15:37.340 | It was like looking into a mechanism or something.

00:15:40.580 | So, and I used to take them to school.

00:15:42.500 | And one of my teachers once said, you know,

00:15:44.340 | you seem to interested in this,

00:15:45.620 | but you don't understand it.

00:15:46.620 | So, you need to, you need to learn it.

00:15:49.580 | And he was the one who started pushing me into this.

00:15:52.420 | On the other hand, my family was saying,

00:15:55.420 | you should become a lawyer.

00:15:57.020 | Just, you know, my brother and father.

00:15:58.580 | - And that never interested you?

00:16:00.140 | - No.

00:16:01.220 | I, it's interesting because now I'm very interested

00:16:04.220 | in aspects of constitutional law and so on.

00:16:06.260 | When I hear about arguments against, you know,

00:16:08.020 | the Supreme Court and so on,

00:16:09.740 | I became very interested in law and economics later on.

00:16:12.340 | I mean, just to read about it.

00:16:13.940 | But what my father was talking about

00:16:15.700 | at the dining room table,

00:16:16.980 | it was all about strategies of, you know,

00:16:19.500 | getting something done half an hour before the opposition.

00:16:22.580 | So you win a case.

00:16:23.500 | I mean, I was totally interested in that.

00:16:25.740 | - I'm sensing a bit of a theme,

00:16:27.060 | which is that social dynamics and what other people do,

00:16:31.380 | regardless of whether or not they like it,

00:16:33.420 | or it earns them a particular living,

00:16:35.420 | didn't capture you.

00:16:38.820 | Like the idea that people and their groups

00:16:42.660 | and their ways of thinking and behaving,

00:16:44.940 | while they may not bother you, it doesn't,

00:16:48.180 | it didn't captivate you.

00:16:49.220 | The way that like, it sounds like physics, you know,

00:16:51.580 | made you think that there's something kind of bigger,

00:16:53.860 | that there's something more universal.

00:16:56.140 | - Right.

00:16:56.980 | - Which indeed physics is, right?

00:16:57.820 | It's not, it is, it explains most everything.

00:17:00.260 | - Yes, and I- - Most everything.

00:17:01.940 | - Yes, and I also think that I was a bit of a loner.

00:17:05.060 | It was very hard to find people that, you know,

00:17:08.180 | I mean, children or young people that thought like me.

00:17:10.620 | So eventually I became part of a group.

00:17:13.180 | We were four or five guys that used to get together

00:17:16.020 | on Saturdays and, you know, go to the movies and so on.

00:17:18.500 | And then afterwards discuss, you know,

00:17:19.980 | whatever we were interested in.

00:17:21.340 | And so I was, I was only 16 years old, you know,

00:17:24.060 | and deciding what to do with my life.

00:17:25.980 | Of all four of us, we committed.

00:17:28.580 | There were, some of them came

00:17:29.780 | from incredibly wealthy families, two of them.

00:17:31.980 | We committed to really be true to ourselves

00:17:34.620 | and pursue what we liked.

00:17:36.740 | But I was the only one.

00:17:38.100 | The other two ended up running the business

00:17:40.380 | of their parents.

00:17:41.340 | And one of them essentially, I don't know what he did.

00:17:43.740 | I saw him years later.

00:17:45.380 | - Money becomes a pretty, a bright beacon

00:17:47.980 | for a lot of people.

00:17:48.980 | - Yes, yes, yes.

00:17:50.140 | - Yeah, I'm grateful to you that you never pushed me

00:17:53.900 | to go in any particular direction.

00:17:55.740 | - Right.

00:17:56.580 | - You pushed me to not go in particular directions,

00:17:59.340 | but never with respect to academic choices.

00:18:02.220 | In fact, I don't recall you telling me or Laura,

00:18:06.420 | that by the way, folks, that's my sister's name,

00:18:09.460 | that we had to do anything except attend our classes

00:18:13.580 | and do our best.

00:18:15.020 | But I never felt pushed to go into science.

00:18:17.420 | - No. - No.

00:18:18.340 | - Although you had a little bit of a curiosity about it.

00:18:22.020 | - Animals.

00:18:23.020 | - Animals, and I remember I was going through a period

00:18:25.940 | in which I started getting convinced

00:18:27.380 | that there was very little to do in physics

00:18:29.180 | and I wanted to change.

00:18:30.180 | And one day on a bike ride,

00:18:32.060 | I think I was carrying in the back of my bike and bicycle,

00:18:34.260 | you were young.

00:18:35.420 | You asked me, "What is the unsolved problem?"

00:18:38.100 | And I said, "I don't think it's in physics,

00:18:40.100 | "but it's the brain."

00:18:41.020 | And you said, "Okay, I'll go into that."

00:18:43.060 | You said, "I'll never forget that."

00:18:44.740 | - Well, it's interesting.

00:18:46.180 | I'm fascinated by human memory, as you know,

00:18:48.580 | I know you are as well.

00:18:49.540 | And I recall that story as well.

00:18:50.940 | I recall it slightly differently,

00:18:52.140 | but we're really closely aligned.

00:18:54.060 | Which is, I remember you used to walk me to school

00:18:56.220 | in the morning and you would drop me off

00:18:58.540 | at the cut through to the path behind Gunn High School.

00:19:02.780 | Because that's, I would pick up Kristen Harnett

00:19:05.140 | across the street.

00:19:06.900 | And you told me it would be better

00:19:07.980 | if I picked her up by myself

00:19:08.980 | and walked her to the end of the street,

00:19:10.540 | which is where class was.

00:19:12.300 | You were teaching me chivalry.

00:19:13.800 | And I remember asking you what you do.

00:19:17.980 | I was probably five or six years.

00:19:19.980 | Well, let's see, first grade.

00:19:20.900 | So it'd probably be somewhere around six or seven years old.

00:19:24.020 | I asked you what you do and you said, "Physics."

00:19:25.940 | And I said, "Well, what is that?"

00:19:28.820 | And you said, "Well, let me tell you

00:19:32.220 | "the feeling it gives me instead."

00:19:34.580 | You said, "You know, the night before your birthday?"

00:19:37.540 | And I said, "Yeah."

00:19:38.380 | And he said, "You know that feeling?"

00:19:39.940 | And I said, "Yeah."

00:19:41.020 | And you said, "Well, that's how I feel

00:19:42.740 | "every day when I go to work."

00:19:45.020 | And I remember, I'll never forget that.

00:19:47.220 | And I said, "What do you do?"

00:19:48.100 | And you said, "I'm a physicist."

00:19:49.660 | And I said, "Well, then I'll be a physicist."

00:19:51.900 | And then I recall,

00:19:52.980 | so maybe we had the conversation twice,

00:19:55.500 | you saying, "Well, most of the big problems

00:19:58.900 | "in physics are solved.

00:19:59.940 | "So you should pick something perhaps

00:20:01.780 | "a little less untread like."

00:20:04.820 | And I said, "Like what?"

00:20:05.660 | And you said, "Well, the brain is pretty interesting."

00:20:07.580 | And then I said, "Okay, I'll work on that."

00:20:09.060 | - Yeah, no, that's true.

00:20:10.420 | This issue of feeling like before your birthday

00:20:12.540 | is something I remember saying to you.

00:20:14.580 | I don't recall feeling that way every day.

00:20:17.740 | I do recall feeling like this when I had an idea

00:20:20.100 | and finally worked out and we wrote a paper and so on.

00:20:22.740 | You know, it was an incredibly exciting time.

00:20:25.180 | It's, you know, well, you know about it.

00:20:26.820 | You've done it yourself now.

00:20:28.100 | And so I wanted to convey that to you.

00:20:30.980 | It was very, very interesting and important to me

00:20:33.220 | that you understood that.

00:20:34.500 | On the other hand, it made me feel very isolated as well,

00:20:37.900 | not only with you, with everybody.

00:20:39.300 | I mean, it's a very esoteric field.

00:20:41.940 | You know, you used to walk into the study,

00:20:43.740 | look at me, you know, writing equations and so on.

00:20:45.820 | And what you say, what's that, you know?

00:20:47.580 | - I was thinking about your study,

00:20:49.140 | which was just a door down from my childhood bedroom.

00:20:53.380 | I still remember the way that your study smelled.

00:20:56.380 | I can still smell it.

00:20:57.620 | I have an incredible sense of memory for certain things.

00:21:00.020 | I can still remember,

00:21:01.060 | but I remember how your books were aligned,

00:21:02.500 | where your stereo was placed,

00:21:03.900 | your photos, your photo of Einstein,

00:21:06.260 | your photos of me and Lara and mom.

00:21:08.100 | I remember all of it.

00:21:09.460 | And the sofa that was just off behind it

00:21:13.780 | because you're a nap taker, like,

00:21:15.900 | which I inherited from you.

00:21:17.260 | But I remember that, yeah,

00:21:19.900 | you would spend a lot of time in that office

00:21:22.580 | and listening to classical music.

00:21:25.660 | Do you listen to music while you work

00:21:27.460 | or did you listen? - All the time.

00:21:28.420 | All the time, yeah.

00:21:29.820 | Classical music for me is something I discovered

00:21:32.740 | very young, very young.

00:21:34.580 | My parents also loved classical music, my brother too.

00:21:37.620 | And it's something that I, to me,

00:21:39.580 | has a tremendous emotional resonance with the way I feel.

00:21:43.420 | Sometimes it's background music.

00:21:45.140 | Sometimes I'd really listen very carefully.

00:21:47.940 | It's something that I, yes,

00:21:49.340 | I've always had in my life and still have it.

00:21:51.340 | I mean, it's very, very important to me.

00:21:53.420 | - But not many musicians in our family.

00:21:55.740 | - No, unfortunately, yeah.

00:21:57.740 | Although there is a very famous one.

00:21:59.460 | - We've all tried.

00:22:00.700 | We've all tried.

00:22:01.540 | - Yeah, yeah, you in particular, yeah, yeah.

00:22:03.340 | - We all failed.

00:22:04.180 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:05.220 | There is a very famous Huberman,

00:22:07.540 | the great violinist, Bronislav Huberman.

00:22:09.740 | I mean, there's a picture.

00:22:10.580 | I think I sent it to you.

00:22:11.420 | He and Einstein, he was one of the greatest violinists

00:22:14.860 | in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s.

00:22:16.820 | An incredibly interesting man.

00:22:18.780 | He's the founder of the Israel Philharmonic.

00:22:21.580 | And that's one of the reasons that the name Huberman

00:22:23.620 | is in some street in Israel, because of him.

00:22:27.060 | - Are we related to him?

00:22:28.060 | - Unfortunately not.

00:22:29.060 | (both laughing)

00:22:30.660 | - Which explains the lack of musical prowess in our family.

00:22:34.340 | We all love music, but none of us are good musicians.

00:22:36.860 | - No, right, yes.

00:22:37.980 | - Except my cousin Diego.

00:22:40.180 | - Diego, he has a perfect ear,

00:22:41.860 | so he can really do interesting things, yes, yeah.

00:22:45.020 | - So going back to your childhood, this teacher.

00:22:50.020 | - Yes.

00:22:51.260 | - So, I mean, what was it?

00:22:52.780 | You already had a sort of seeded an interest

00:22:55.500 | in finding order, in things that made the world make sense.

00:23:00.500 | What was the political situation in Argentina at that time?

00:23:06.060 | - Quite horrible parts of it.

00:23:07.580 | I mean, there was a dictatorship

00:23:08.860 | that lasted for a long time, this Perón thing, and so on.

00:23:11.220 | It was, I mean, he was really a follower of Mussolini

00:23:14.780 | and people of that sort in World War II.

00:23:16.740 | - So what did that mean like out in the streets?

00:23:18.540 | Like you grew up in the heart of Buenos Aires,

00:23:20.460 | but like, what did that mean in terms of,

00:23:22.260 | I mean, was there poverty everywhere?

00:23:23.820 | Were people, I mean, was there violence?

00:23:25.700 | I mean, what does it spell out to you?

00:23:26.900 | - Well, it was a very oppressive regime.

00:23:29.460 | I mean, you had to be careful what you talked about,

00:23:31.820 | you know, in my family, like most of that social class,

00:23:36.100 | we had maids and a cook,

00:23:37.660 | and so you had to be very careful what you said.

00:23:40.380 | - Because they would run that information back?

00:23:41.940 | - Absolutely, and people, and your grandfather,

00:23:44.140 | my father, at one point or the other,

00:23:45.220 | was prevented from coming to visit me in the United States

00:23:48.020 | because he was classified as a communist

00:23:49.940 | because he did not join the Perónist party.

00:23:52.300 | - Okay, for the record, we are not communists.

00:23:55.980 | We are both big believers in capitalism

00:23:59.300 | sitting here at this table, right.

00:24:01.220 | - So, no, and so it was terrible.

00:24:02.940 | It was a terrible time.

00:24:04.260 | It was a very oppressive time.

00:24:05.500 | - But he wasn't a communist, either.

00:24:06.660 | - No, of course not.

00:24:07.620 | Of course, no, no, he was on the other side.

00:24:09.660 | But the idea at that time, it was to be classified as such.

00:24:13.380 | Eventually, that information leaked to the,

00:24:15.540 | obviously, to the American authorities,

00:24:17.420 | so when he asked for a visa, they denied him.

00:24:19.940 | It was a very complicated story.

00:24:21.300 | I don't think we should waste time

00:24:22.700 | to know how it got eventually resolved

00:24:24.740 | through a friend of mine who was a priest

00:24:26.620 | just here in the United States.

00:24:28.620 | But the point being that, during that time,

00:24:31.940 | it was a very, you had to be very careful

00:24:33.860 | the way you spoke, the way you said things.

00:24:36.500 | There was a dictatorship that was very much

00:24:38.340 | like the fascist in Italy, you know,

00:24:40.020 | and actually, that dictatorship lasted

00:24:42.220 | until a few years ago, because as you know,

00:24:44.260 | or as you heard, the new president we have

00:24:46.540 | is one that actually ran against

00:24:48.140 | this whole ideology, Peronism, and so on.

00:24:50.460 | - Millet.

00:24:51.300 | - Millet, yes.

00:24:52.140 | So, I was never, I was not political at all,

00:24:55.780 | but you have to be careful.

00:24:57.700 | But it was a funny time.

00:25:00.660 | And when he was overthrown through a military revolution,

00:25:03.540 | you know, my parents were delighted,

00:25:05.580 | and I remember the celebrations and so on.

00:25:08.220 | But that was considered the minority that was against him.

00:25:10.860 | You know, it was a social class movement.

00:25:13.420 | The working class was behind Peron

00:25:15.780 | and what he promised and what he gave them.

00:25:18.380 | So, but that eventually died.

00:25:21.100 | So, the real problem was that there was no real commitment

00:25:25.620 | to science as an investment that a country should make.

00:25:29.620 | Yes, it was nice to have Nobel Prizes,

00:25:32.060 | and it's culturally good,

00:25:33.460 | but they didn't have the pragmatic notions

00:25:35.380 | that we have, see, in the United States,

00:25:36.700 | of doing science means solving concrete problems.

00:25:39.220 | - And this was in the 1950s.

00:25:42.980 | - The '60s, too.

00:25:43.820 | - Right, so this was the, like,

00:25:45.540 | one of the biggest and fastest progressions of physics

00:25:50.540 | and its implementation in the US.

00:25:52.140 | - Yes.

00:25:52.980 | - So, were you hearing about that?

00:25:53.820 | - Of course, I was following it all,

00:25:55.460 | and I wanted to, you know,

00:25:57.300 | I wanted to buy books about it and so on.

00:25:59.340 | I had some conflicts with my father about spending money

00:26:02.580 | on books that he thought

00:26:03.540 | that were not gonna take me anywhere and so on.

00:26:05.540 | I mean, he was a very pragmatic lawyer.

00:26:07.580 | He didn't understand why I was doing these things.

00:26:10.380 | So, yes, I was aware of everything.

00:26:13.140 | And actually, the university was very good.

00:26:16.300 | I entered the university.

00:26:17.380 | You had to choose what you wanted to do,

00:26:19.300 | and after a tremendous crisis, personal crisis,

00:26:22.460 | I decided not to go into law or engineering,

00:26:26.100 | which was the alternative my father offered,

00:26:28.300 | and I decided to study physics.

00:26:30.140 | And I didn't regret it at all.

00:26:33.100 | It was a very impressive time.

00:26:35.100 | You know, I got a good education in physics,

00:26:37.220 | a little bit too abstract.

00:26:38.660 | - So, this was experimental physics

00:26:40.300 | or theoretical physics? - Both, both, both.

00:26:42.740 | In the lab, I was okay.

00:26:44.140 | I mean, I was better in classes on advanced,

00:26:48.100 | I took a lot of courses in advanced mathematics

00:26:50.860 | and calculus and beyond that,

00:26:52.540 | and, you know, complex analysis and so on.

00:26:55.740 | - So, it turns out you were good at math after all.

00:26:57.900 | - Good, yes, I understand math.

00:26:59.900 | I'm not a whiz.

00:27:01.540 | I mean, like many of my students have been.

00:27:03.860 | I had guys that can do incredible things, you know,

00:27:06.260 | that I can't do them, but slowly.

00:27:08.300 | I understand, yes, yes.

00:27:09.860 | So, but yeah, physics is something

00:27:12.900 | that I knew how to be intuitive about it.

00:27:16.060 | I had already interesting ideas

00:27:18.420 | that perhaps didn't pan out, but yeah.

00:27:21.380 | - So, the teacher in high school,

00:27:24.300 | were they the one that told you

00:27:25.980 | that there was like a career in this thing?

00:27:28.340 | - Yes, he said, you know,

00:27:29.300 | you should devote yourself to this

00:27:30.980 | if you really care about it.

00:27:32.580 | He was a man that obviously,

00:27:34.180 | he was sort of tormented on many levels and so on.

00:27:37.500 | - You say that because of the way

00:27:38.580 | he carried himself physically?

00:27:39.860 | - Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

00:27:40.860 | He was troubled, but was interesting, intense man.

00:27:45.620 | I still remember his name.

00:27:47.660 | He was a philosopher, his name was Egesland,

00:27:50.580 | which is a German name.

00:27:52.300 | And he started talking about, you know,

00:27:53.820 | discovering, you know, Christianity

00:27:56.460 | and what it meant to him

00:27:57.700 | and what it is to be authentic and so on.

00:28:00.060 | So, and then I had a very large exposure

00:28:02.380 | to the great thinkers of the antiquity,

00:28:04.780 | then, you know, Roman and Greek.

00:28:06.500 | So, it was all, to me, fascinating, interesting,

00:28:10.300 | you know, and it was good to have friends

00:28:12.140 | that I could discuss these things with.

00:28:13.780 | - Do you think it's a disservice

00:28:15.300 | that nowadays in the United States,

00:28:17.780 | and even when I was growing up,

00:28:19.020 | but especially now that we don't force kids

00:28:22.660 | to be exposed to all these topics?

00:28:24.180 | Like, we try and track people into something early on.

00:28:27.540 | Actually, a recent guest told me

00:28:29.460 | that many schools are now just giving knowledge,

00:28:32.660 | but not expecting kids to do problem sets.

00:28:35.580 | You know, teaching them about physical activity,

00:28:38.860 | but not expecting them to do physical activity, seriously.

00:28:41.940 | - Well, that sounds a little bit funny.

00:28:43.940 | - Well, no, but that's, I mean,

00:28:44.900 | that is the direction that education

00:28:46.460 | in this country is going.

00:28:47.820 | - I was a visiting professor in France.

00:28:49.460 | Actually, you live there because of that, in Paris.

00:28:53.260 | And I discovered, you know,

00:28:54.300 | the French intellectual tradition

00:28:56.140 | is also very, very abstract compared to the American.

00:28:58.980 | I mean, the English and the Americans

00:29:01.060 | are the ones that took physics,

00:29:02.980 | and the Russians too,

00:29:04.460 | into a very, very practical realm

00:29:06.100 | and made progress that are very, very concrete,

00:29:07.860 | almost engineering-like.

00:29:09.900 | - I'd like to take a quick break

00:29:11.140 | and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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00:29:24.140 | Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012,

00:29:26.900 | and I started doing that at a time

00:29:28.300 | when my budget for supplements was really limited.

00:29:30.780 | In fact, I only had enough money back then

00:29:32.660 | to purchase one supplement,

00:29:33.980 | and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1.

00:29:37.020 | The reason for that is even though I strive to eat

00:29:39.420 | most of my foods from whole foods

00:29:41.100 | and minimally processed foods,

00:29:42.900 | it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits,

00:29:44.900 | vegetables, vitamins, and minerals,

00:29:46.620 | micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone.

00:29:49.780 | And I need to do that in order to ensure

00:29:51.700 | that I have enough energy throughout the day,

00:29:53.500 | I sleep well at night,

00:29:54.780 | and keep my immune system strong.

00:29:56.980 | But when I take AG1 daily,

00:29:58.460 | I find that all aspects of my health,

00:30:00.140 | my physical health, my mental health,

00:30:01.860 | and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better.

00:30:04.940 | I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1,

00:30:07.740 | and I certainly felt the difference.

00:30:09.620 | I also notice, and this makes perfect sense

00:30:11.620 | given the relationship between the gut microbiome

00:30:13.700 | and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1,

00:30:16.220 | which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning,

00:30:18.660 | and again later in the afternoon or evening,

00:30:20.800 | that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy.

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00:30:38.180 | to claim that special offer.

00:30:39.940 | - When I came to the United States,

00:30:41.220 | I must tell you, I came as a graduate student

00:30:44.700 | at the University of Pennsylvania.

00:30:45.620 | - Let's talk about that.

00:30:46.460 | So how did you end up getting into the United States

00:30:49.460 | as a graduate student?

00:30:50.300 | You applied.

00:30:51.140 | - Yeah, I was graduating,

00:30:53.540 | and the future looked rather gloomy.

00:30:56.820 | I had a girlfriend whose father was very wealthy,

00:31:00.020 | and she said, "No problem, you're gonna work for my dad,"

00:31:02.820 | and she got a factory or whatever.

00:31:04.460 | - Why do I feel like that is not the kind of offer

00:31:06.420 | that you'll go for?

00:31:07.300 | - No, no, not at all, not at all.

00:31:08.800 | - I've never known you to work for anyone, except you.

00:31:12.140 | - Yeah, in a way, you're right.

00:31:12.980 | - I'm a bit the same.

00:31:13.820 | - Yeah, yeah, so yes, yes.

00:31:16.180 | Just the idea of running a business was not...

00:31:18.780 | I was truly idealistic and irresponsible too,

00:31:22.780 | but I had a cousin who was already got his PhD

00:31:26.100 | in theoretical physics at Columbia University,

00:31:28.420 | was a professor in France, then Sweden, and so on.

00:31:31.900 | So I felt that perhaps I should go to the United States,

00:31:34.780 | and so I started applying to this.

00:31:36.660 | My father was saying, "I won't even help you with this."

00:31:40.100 | He didn't like, my parents didn't like it.

00:31:42.900 | I was very close to my family in many ways,

00:31:45.300 | and so I applied to many places.

00:31:48.820 | I remember being accepted at, I think it was Cornell,

00:31:52.140 | and I said, "Oh, New York, that's great."

00:31:53.980 | 'Til someone said to me,

00:31:54.820 | "You have to take a plane to go to real New York."

00:31:57.180 | - Yeah, he loves New York City.

00:31:58.740 | We both love New York City. - If that guy's not for you.

00:32:00.180 | So in any event, I got this very, very nice fellowship

00:32:03.580 | to go to University of Pennsylvania, which is-

00:32:05.180 | - Who's the fellowship from?

00:32:06.740 | - The Navy, the United States Navy, yeah.

00:32:09.020 | I'm very grateful for that,

00:32:11.060 | and I actually wrote that in my PhD thesis.

00:32:14.540 | I was very grateful, and I think it was incredible

00:32:16.460 | that they were supporting that kind of research.

00:32:18.620 | - They wanted to bring you to the US to build weapons?

00:32:21.060 | - No, no, no, not at all, not at all.

00:32:22.580 | I came to the United States working for Professor Burstein,

00:32:25.340 | who just died at the age of 101,

00:32:28.100 | and no, but I was supported by the United States Navy.

00:32:31.300 | It was a fellowship by the University of Pennsylvania.

00:32:33.780 | But I remember in my first interview

00:32:36.300 | with some of the teachers, professors,

00:32:39.220 | that I am talking to them

00:32:40.580 | about the foundations of quantum mechanics,

00:32:42.300 | and the guy says to me,

00:32:43.580 | "Let me give you an interesting problem.

00:32:45.740 | "You have a ping-pong ball,

00:32:47.020 | "but instead of being a classical ping-pong ball,

00:32:48.740 | "it's a quantum one.

00:32:49.580 | "Could you tell me at what heights will it bounce?"

00:32:51.540 | I had no idea what to do.

00:32:53.540 | I had no sense that you could turn all this knowledge

00:32:56.660 | into something implementable, practical, and so on.

00:32:59.780 | So it was quite a struggle the first year.

00:33:01.380 | - So you had theoretical understanding,

00:33:04.220 | not experimental understanding.

00:33:05.260 | - Right, right, yes, or empirical, and so on.

00:33:07.380 | I didn't know how to calculate things very well, yeah.

00:33:10.060 | I didn't think it was--

00:33:10.900 | - Despite being good at math.

00:33:11.940 | - I was good, yeah, math, understanding the math.

00:33:14.020 | There's a difference thing between understanding math,

00:33:16.180 | implemented, and creating things.

00:33:18.220 | Well, you learn that.

00:33:19.300 | I had four years of graduate school,

00:33:22.460 | and got my PhD in physics,

00:33:23.940 | so obviously I learned how to do it.

00:33:26.060 | But what I'm saying is that I had this very,

00:33:28.660 | very vague theoretical understanding of what the world worked,

00:33:32.460 | but not really practical.

00:33:34.500 | I didn't have it at my fingertips.

00:33:36.500 | That's what you learn when you go to graduate school,

00:33:38.060 | as you know yourself, okay?

00:33:39.700 | So that's--

00:33:40.540 | - Yeah, it's one thing to learn about the brain

00:33:41.660 | as an undergraduate,

00:33:42.500 | but in graduate school is where I learned

00:33:43.820 | how to slice brains, stain brains, trace connections,

00:33:46.780 | record from neurons, and it's a whole other business

00:33:49.460 | to get your hands dirty in the thing.

00:33:50.860 | - Absolutely, absolutely, and the same thing for me.

00:33:52.820 | Yeah, I'm taking courses

00:33:53.940 | and discovering what you like and dislike.

00:33:56.380 | I was a little bit bound to my professor

00:33:58.180 | because he was the one who gave me the fellowship,

00:34:00.260 | but I didn't like what he did,

00:34:01.740 | which was always very problematic.

00:34:03.540 | - Did you have a good relationship?

00:34:05.100 | - It was funny.

00:34:05.940 | He sort of became, tried to become my surrogate father,

00:34:09.900 | but on the other hand, intellectually,

00:34:11.340 | I always felt that the guy was not quite there.

00:34:14.180 | I mean, he was very famous and so on,

00:34:16.300 | but--

00:34:17.140 | - He's a member in the National Academy.

00:34:18.300 | - He was not, but he was very famous, very famous,

00:34:21.860 | but I always felt that there was a lack of depth

00:34:24.020 | into what we were doing.

00:34:25.460 | It was not just him.

00:34:26.420 | It was just the solid state physics.

00:34:28.460 | There was a very famous, you know,

00:34:31.380 | Mary Gell-Mann, who had total contempt

00:34:34.020 | for solid state physics.

00:34:34.980 | She used to call it squalid state physics.

00:34:36.820 | - For those that don't know Mary Gell-Mann,

00:34:38.340 | we'll get to Murray later

00:34:40.140 | because I had the interesting experience

00:34:42.740 | of meeting him as a child,

00:34:43.860 | but he discovered the quark.

00:34:46.380 | He won the Nobel Prize in many ways

00:34:48.420 | is considered at least as superb a physicist

00:34:53.420 | as Feynman, maybe better.

00:34:55.700 | Yeah, lesser known, but among physicists,

00:34:58.140 | you know, would evoke great fear in everybody.

00:35:00.900 | We'll get to Murray in a little bit.

00:35:02.700 | So did you enjoy graduate school?

00:35:04.860 | - Yes, but it was incredibly hard.

00:35:06.780 | Very hard.

00:35:07.620 | The first year in Toba.

00:35:08.460 | And also personally, I was very lonely.

00:35:11.700 | You know, I say I was transplanted

00:35:13.540 | into a whole different world.

00:35:14.820 | Philadelphia is not a city I would recommend

00:35:16.580 | too many people to live in.

00:35:18.260 | I escaped every weekend to New York

00:35:20.460 | and my professor was always upset about that.

00:35:22.780 | - And you went from being pretty well off financially

00:35:25.020 | to basically having no money.

00:35:26.460 | - I had no money.

00:35:27.660 | I lived on very little money as a matter of fact, yes.

00:35:31.260 | My parents, my father felt that,

00:35:33.100 | okay, this is what you're gonna do.

00:35:34.260 | You're gonna survive on this.

00:35:35.660 | They paid for a ticket once a year to go back to visit.

00:35:38.580 | And it was incredibly nice and soothing to be back

00:35:41.900 | and to be taken care of and everything else,

00:35:44.100 | you know, the life and the family.

00:35:46.140 | And then going back again to Philadelphia

00:35:47.820 | and the reality of just being a student.

00:35:50.260 | Unlike many people and foreign students

00:35:52.980 | that were with me in other places,

00:35:55.900 | I did not enjoy,

00:35:57.140 | I mean, it was quite a cultural adventure for me

00:35:59.780 | to meet people from all over the world,

00:36:01.900 | to learn what they,

00:36:03.060 | I became very close to a Japanese postdoc,

00:36:05.660 | a very interesting man.

00:36:07.580 | But I was quite miserable.

00:36:10.340 | - So this was in the mid '60s?

00:36:12.980 | - Yes, yes, late '60s, yes, yeah.

00:36:15.300 | I did not like my life there at all.

00:36:17.620 | I mean, I lived for four years.

00:36:20.100 | I didn't have a single girlfriend or anything.

00:36:21.900 | I, you know, I dated and so on,

00:36:23.460 | but I just felt that I was transplanted

00:36:26.260 | into an environment that I didn't like.

00:36:29.340 | Okay, and on top of that,

00:36:31.740 | my conflict with my advisor were not serious

00:36:35.860 | because they were not overt,

00:36:37.420 | but they were there all the time.

00:36:38.740 | - That can be tough.

00:36:39.580 | For those listening,

00:36:40.420 | the relationship to your graduate advisor

00:36:42.140 | is a potentially wonderful,

00:36:45.060 | a potentially hazardous one

00:36:46.340 | because they exert enormous control over your future,

00:36:49.300 | not just through letters of recommendation,

00:36:51.060 | but opportunities.

00:36:52.100 | And I got lucky in that sense.

00:36:54.580 | - You were very lucky, yes.

00:36:56.500 | My advisor was the kind of person

00:36:58.220 | that if you went out to dinner with him,

00:36:59.460 | he ordered for you.

00:37:00.900 | - Are you kidding me?

00:37:01.740 | - I'm not kidding.

00:37:03.020 | He was that kind of guy.

00:37:03.940 | He would take the whole group to a Chinese restaurant.

00:37:05.820 | And before you said, "I don't like this,"

00:37:07.620 | he just ordered.

00:37:09.300 | Once he took me for a whole weekend to his summer house

00:37:11.780 | to finish a paper.

00:37:12.700 | The guy couldn't finish a paper.

00:37:14.500 | And it was, I was a mess.

00:37:16.100 | And he, and his daughter was there.

00:37:18.740 | She was 16 or 17.

00:37:20.620 | And she said, "Are you two going to talk physics?"

00:37:22.660 | I was going to say, "No, let's go for a walk."

00:37:24.300 | He said, "That's all we're going to do."

00:37:26.140 | But the physics consisted in him regurgitating

00:37:28.340 | whatever we were doing.

00:37:30.260 | I mean, I remember I was so miserable

00:37:32.740 | looking at my watch,

00:37:33.860 | seeing how the heck do I get out of here?

00:37:35.420 | I didn't have a car.

00:37:36.660 | So I was sort of his prisoner for,

00:37:38.580 | from Friday to Sunday night.

00:37:40.540 | So it was hard for me.

00:37:44.060 | I never really felt that happy.

00:37:46.260 | On the other hand, I had no other options at that time.

00:37:49.060 | Okay.

00:37:49.900 | So, but then as soon as I graduated, I got out.

00:37:53.220 | So.

00:37:54.660 | - I was just thinking about how different

00:37:56.060 | your graduate school experience was from mine.

00:37:58.420 | I, you know, I delighted in my advisors, you know.

00:38:01.940 | She was amazing.

00:38:02.780 | - You had fantastic people.

00:38:03.620 | - Yeah, I got lucky.

00:38:04.580 | And I got a lot of that from you,

00:38:06.220 | which was to, for those who don't know,

00:38:08.220 | I left a program at Berkeley,

00:38:10.180 | which everyone thought I was insane.

00:38:12.380 | Insane to leave Berkeley to go to Davis.

00:38:14.180 | That was by choice.

00:38:15.620 | But I remember what you said.

00:38:16.940 | You said, "How big is your incoming class at Davis?"

00:38:20.460 | Right?

00:38:21.300 | Because by all standard criteria,

00:38:23.300 | Berkeley is the better institution.

00:38:25.140 | Davis is great,

00:38:26.100 | but Berkeley's considered exceptionally strong.

00:38:28.820 | And I said, "There are three of us."

00:38:30.580 | And you said, "Well, either you're making

00:38:32.420 | the best decision of your life

00:38:34.180 | or the worst mistake of your life."

00:38:35.940 | And then I think you asked me

00:38:37.540 | what was driving the decision.

00:38:38.780 | I said, "Well, there's this person there.

00:38:40.700 | Her name is Barbara Chapman.

00:38:41.740 | And she just seems to be working on things

00:38:43.860 | that if I don't work on these problems,

00:38:46.220 | I'm gonna regret it.

00:38:47.740 | And I can't imagine working on anything else."

00:38:49.900 | And you said, "Well, go for it."

00:38:51.500 | Which I really appreciate because any parent,

00:38:55.220 | if I were a parent and my kid said,

00:38:56.420 | "I'm gonna leave Berkeley and go to Davis

00:38:58.140 | halfway through a PhD and start again."

00:39:00.340 | I think I probably would have balked, so.

00:39:03.940 | - Well, Barbara also played a very, very nice,

00:39:06.740 | supportive, emotional role in your life.

00:39:09.140 | I mean, it was obvious

00:39:09.980 | that she had tremendous preference for you.

00:39:11.900 | - Yeah.

00:39:12.740 | - You were like her son in many ways.

00:39:14.340 | - I smile and well up a little bit

00:39:16.700 | only because, well, she passed away young,

00:39:18.420 | but she's just an amazing person.

00:39:21.180 | So I feel very blessed for that.

00:39:23.580 | That wasn't your experience with your advisor.

00:39:26.500 | So during that time, I did wanna ask about this.

00:39:29.100 | I asked about it being the mid to late '60s

00:39:31.740 | because it was the counterculture movement.

00:39:34.380 | - Yes, yeah, right.

00:39:35.300 | - And one thing that people should know about you,

00:39:38.500 | I'll just offer this up,

00:39:39.500 | is that in the entire time I've known you,

00:39:41.860 | which is a while now,

00:39:43.400 | you've been very clear.

00:39:46.940 | Like you never had any interest in recreational drugs.

00:39:50.140 | - No.

00:39:50.980 | - Never did 'em.

00:39:51.820 | - No.

00:39:52.640 | - Even though that was super common then.

00:39:53.480 | - Yes.

00:39:54.320 | - I've never seen you have more than a glass of wine.

00:39:56.140 | - Yes.

00:39:57.180 | - You'd never been drunk in your life.

00:39:58.500 | - Never.

00:39:59.820 | - And you don't like football,

00:40:01.980 | despite being from Argentina.

00:40:04.180 | It occurred to me on the drive over,

00:40:06.780 | like peer pressure is just not something that impacts you.

00:40:10.460 | You're not gonna do something

00:40:11.540 | because people around you are doing it.

00:40:13.260 | - Well, no, you're absolutely right.

00:40:14.620 | I always felt this sense of uniqueness or whatever,

00:40:18.900 | but I became very humble because of it.

00:40:20.500 | I'm not arrogant.

00:40:21.340 | It's not that I feel that others are worse and so on.

00:40:24.500 | But yes, when I came to the United States,

00:40:26.820 | there was something, there was a decision I had to make,

00:40:29.220 | which is, I remember explicitly thinking about.

00:40:31.500 | It was the first time that I was beyond the control

00:40:33.620 | of my parents and family and the social environment

00:40:36.500 | in which I was in Argentina.

00:40:37.780 | So you could do whatever you wanted.

00:40:39.500 | And I was not the only one who came.

00:40:41.140 | There were three or four brilliant mathematicians

00:40:44.060 | and physicists that came with me.

00:40:45.580 | And I saw them, within a year, just losing it all.

00:40:49.700 | They never, one of them never graduated.

00:40:51.700 | They got into drugs.

00:40:52.700 | They got, they moved to the village in New York,

00:40:54.660 | and they decided that that was the life

00:40:56.300 | they wanted to have.

00:40:57.300 | Problem is that 10 years on, what are you doing, right?

00:41:01.020 | I mean, being, getting to be an old hippie

00:41:04.300 | is not that interesting.

00:41:06.140 | So I really had that notion at that time

00:41:08.900 | that I needed to be very disciplined.

00:41:11.220 | And I had to internalize a set of values

00:41:13.180 | and to ask myself what I want and what I don't want.

00:41:16.060 | And so, yes, indeed, I used to go to parties.

00:41:18.740 | To me, it was quite a surprise.

00:41:20.940 | In New York, Philadelphia, people smoking pot

00:41:24.020 | and all sorts of other incredible things,

00:41:26.100 | getting drunk and so on.

00:41:28.060 | It was something that I would say, "No, thank you."

00:41:30.580 | And that was it.

00:41:31.420 | And I felt quite okay with it.

00:41:32.820 | And I never felt the need to satisfy a group of people

00:41:38.980 | that were like this in order to be included.

00:41:41.180 | - You know, there's only one person

00:41:42.820 | that I've ever met in my entire life, now that I'm 49,

00:41:45.700 | I can say things like now that I'm 49,

00:41:47.860 | who has never been drunk, never done drugs,

00:41:50.340 | basically has never really had a sip of alcohol

00:41:53.780 | except for once, and that's Rick Rubin,

00:41:55.700 | my good friend who's- - I like the meaning.

00:41:57.460 | - Yeah, by all standards is probably

00:41:59.940 | the greatest music producer of all time

00:42:01.700 | across a dozen different genres, right?

00:42:05.140 | Not just rock and roll, but classical, country, all this.

00:42:07.780 | And I once asked Rick, you worked in music

00:42:12.620 | where drugs and alcohol are everywhere,

00:42:15.660 | or at least used to be.

00:42:16.980 | And he just said, "Yeah, it never really interested me.

00:42:19.860 | "I could be around it, but not participate in it."

00:42:21.940 | And so, the two of you are the only people I know

00:42:24.140 | that have ever had that kind of relationship

00:42:26.700 | to what's going on around you,

00:42:29.100 | where you don't feel pulled into it.

00:42:32.140 | - I also didn't understand, I mean, for instance,

00:42:35.060 | the role of drugs and alcohol in young people,

00:42:37.700 | I was a graduate student, to a large extent,

00:42:40.140 | plays a role of relaxation and, you know,

00:42:42.980 | getting rid of stress and anxiety and so on.

00:42:45.940 | To me, it was very interesting

00:42:47.220 | that people would actually come sometimes to my place

00:42:49.380 | and ask, you know, do you have something to smoke or,

00:42:51.780 | why? Because I'm nervous or whatever.

00:42:53.460 | Well, you know, deal with your state of anxiety,

00:42:56.020 | but you don't have to drink to do that.

00:42:58.540 | And I was always a little bit also concerned about my brain.

00:43:01.900 | I mean, I was afraid that these things

00:43:03.100 | would just take me over the edge, off the rails.

00:43:06.980 | So, I just, but I think I was also, I need to say this,

00:43:11.700 | I was also rather judgmental of people

00:43:13.660 | who did it at that time.

00:43:15.500 | And it was a way, by being judgmental,

00:43:17.900 | by saying this is wrong,

00:43:19.500 | then I was able to stay on my track, okay?

00:43:22.940 | Today, I'm much more understanding.

00:43:24.380 | I mean, I hear people and that's what, you know,

00:43:26.340 | it works for them.

00:43:27.180 | It's fine, although I still don't like it.

00:43:29.700 | And it was even worse when we came to California

00:43:32.580 | because that here, everything was going on,

00:43:34.540 | not just drugs and everything else.

00:43:36.300 | So-

00:43:37.140 | - Well, let's talk about that,

00:43:38.140 | but not that specifically right off the bat.

00:43:40.460 | So, you finished your PhD.

00:43:42.340 | - Yeah.

00:43:43.180 | - You could have become, done a postdoc, become a professor.

00:43:45.140 | - I was playing with that.

00:43:46.100 | I was playing with that.

00:43:46.940 | I wanted to go to, my dream was to go to Cambridge University

00:43:52.340 | in England, not only because the Cavendish Laboratory

00:43:55.660 | was fantastic, there was the whole thing on DNA.

00:43:58.140 | I mean, Crick was there and so on.

00:43:59.940 | So, I thought that perhaps I would just start, you know,

00:44:02.940 | inhaling some of those vapors.

00:44:04.420 | - You wanted to get into biology.

00:44:05.700 | - Well, I was interested.

00:44:06.980 | I mean, because I'd read the famous book by Watson,

00:44:09.540 | you know, "The Double Helix," and I couldn't sleep.

00:44:11.700 | I mean, I read it one night and I said,

00:44:12.940 | "It's incredible what this guy did."

00:44:14.140 | - Amazing book.

00:44:14.980 | - Amazing book, yes.

00:44:15.860 | So, I said, oh, the whole thing is becoming like physics.

00:44:18.060 | It's no longer all these complicated names and so on.

00:44:20.580 | - Well, it's crystallography, which is, you know,

00:44:22.940 | I mean, the physics and chemistry are so--

00:44:24.900 | - Crystallography is boring because you have,

00:44:26.580 | it's like botany.

00:44:27.420 | You have to learn all these crystals.

00:44:29.820 | - I'm just chuckling because the spaghetti model folks,

00:44:33.980 | as we call them, the crystallographers,

00:44:35.500 | are probably covering their eyes right now,

00:44:37.380 | but that's all right.

00:44:39.180 | They love what they do and thank goodness for them.

00:44:41.420 | - No, no, of course.

00:44:42.260 | - 'Cause they design novel drug pockets and receptors.

00:44:44.580 | I mean, they're doing some cool stuff.

00:44:45.420 | - So, I thought that being at Cambridge was okay.

00:44:47.420 | I mean, you would suffer from, you know,

00:44:49.140 | not even heating in the rooms and so on.

00:44:51.420 | But then what happens was, I mean, you know,

00:44:54.380 | I met your mother and then, you know,

00:44:57.140 | she brought a little bit of reality into my life

00:44:59.820 | and said, you know--

00:45:00.660 | - How so?

00:45:01.500 | - Well, she said, you know, it's time for you to graduate.

00:45:03.060 | Time, because I was just staying there as a, you know,

00:45:05.540 | a PhD student, you know, I was fine, you know.

00:45:08.860 | Okay, the money was a problem,

00:45:10.220 | but, you know, I got to live like this.

00:45:12.260 | - You met mom in New York.

00:45:13.460 | - I met your mother in New York, yes.

00:45:15.020 | And she was, she had her, you know, feet on the ground

00:45:17.900 | and said, you know, it's time for you to graduate and so on.

00:45:20.500 | And then she actually was right.

00:45:22.380 | And so, I decided to look for a job,

00:45:24.780 | and my professor wasn't necessarily letting me go.

00:45:28.100 | He wanted me to stay as a postdoc with him, which, you know.

00:45:30.780 | - This is something people don't often understand,

00:45:32.660 | is that if a student or postdoc is very good,

00:45:36.500 | the advisors are de-incentivized

00:45:40.300 | to move them along to their job.

00:45:42.020 | - Right.

00:45:42.860 | - But it's a tricky game

00:45:43.700 | because you want the support of your advisor,

00:45:45.020 | but oftentimes your advisor, if you're very good,

00:45:47.140 | they want to keep you.

00:45:47.980 | - Yes.

00:45:48.820 | So, there was also another aspect at that time.

00:45:51.100 | By then, I started thinking that I wanted to live

00:45:53.820 | a much more comfortable life.

00:45:55.340 | I mean, I come from a family

00:45:56.940 | that lived a very comfortable life,

00:45:58.580 | and I wanted that very badly.

00:46:00.420 | And so, I started, you know, looking for jobs and so on.

00:46:03.420 | My advisor was not too keen to, you know,

00:46:06.540 | tell me what to do.

00:46:07.780 | So, instead of going,

00:46:08.740 | I could have gone for a postdoc to a couple of places,

00:46:12.140 | but I wanted to be a little more independent.

00:46:14.300 | And I discovered that there were research institutions

00:46:16.420 | like IBM and Xerox in the West Coast and so on.

00:46:19.540 | There were, you know,

00:46:20.380 | people could do science, you know, good science.

00:46:23.300 | And, you know, Bell Labs was the most famous one of all.

00:46:26.260 | - That was on the East Coast.

00:46:27.220 | - In the East Coast.

00:46:28.060 | I went to Bell Labs for an interview,

00:46:29.500 | and I felt that they were running that

00:46:30.900 | like a Russian internment camp almost.

00:46:33.540 | I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:46:34.460 | You were, they were, we were 10 of us,

00:46:36.500 | and, you know, they took us around

00:46:38.180 | and people were taking notes of what you were saying

00:46:40.220 | and asking and so on,

00:46:41.300 | telling us that was an elite place.

00:46:42.980 | It was an elite place.

00:46:43.820 | - So, East Coast.

00:46:44.940 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:45.780 | - East Coast institutions.

00:46:46.860 | I mean, it makes sense to me now

00:46:48.100 | why having been raised in the Bay Area

00:46:50.260 | that East Coast institutions and I

00:46:54.340 | are just never gonna mix

00:46:55.460 | because there's, they love tradition,

00:46:58.460 | they love hierarchy, and they love history.

00:47:01.420 | Whereas on the West Coast,

00:47:03.580 | well, it's all about the startup, the IPO,

00:47:06.700 | what is about what happened in the last three years

00:47:08.460 | and what's gonna happen in the next 10 years.

00:47:10.180 | - Right, well, on the other hand,

00:47:11.380 | there is something nice to be said

00:47:13.020 | about the European model of universities in the sense that,

00:47:16.180 | the biggest contrast, you say this,

00:47:17.700 | I remember, I, you know, when you gave,

00:47:20.500 | when professors gave this colloquium and so on,

00:47:22.620 | they were wearing a suit and tie

00:47:24.020 | at the University of Pennsylvania,

00:47:25.060 | an Ivy League school and so on.

00:47:26.380 | I came to Stanford.

00:47:27.700 | I went to the first colloquium

00:47:29.020 | and the students were coming in shorts

00:47:30.180 | with their dogs into the auditorium.

00:47:32.180 | I couldn't believe it.

00:47:33.460 | I mean, it was, it was such an incredible,

00:47:36.500 | you know, change, cultural change.

00:47:38.580 | - Yeah, but smart, but smart, I mean.

00:47:40.780 | - Oh, incredibly smart, incredibly smart.

00:47:42.580 | They know that about that.

00:47:43.780 | So, in any event, I discovered something

00:47:46.180 | which historically became incredibly important,

00:47:48.180 | although I was marginally involved in it,

00:47:50.740 | which was Xerox Corporation had invented a copier,

00:47:53.900 | decided that they were gonna get into the information age,

00:47:56.180 | and they decided to establish a new research center

00:47:58.580 | in Palo Alto, next to Stanford,

00:48:01.140 | where they would recruit people

00:48:02.340 | that would work on this whole thing,

00:48:03.940 | computers and information and physics and so on.

00:48:07.020 | And I came in and the guys, you know,

00:48:08.860 | whoever interviewed me, they said,

00:48:10.180 | "Oh, this is exactly the place for you."

00:48:12.620 | So, that's what I did.

00:48:13.940 | And the interesting thing was that while I was there doing

00:48:17.980 | what I thought was interesting things,

00:48:19.300 | there was a whole group of people, very small,

00:48:21.540 | that invented the personal computer.

00:48:23.700 | Steve Jobs saw it and built the first Mac out of it.

00:48:26.620 | - This was, I had a classmate in high school,

00:48:29.060 | Becca Canara.

00:48:30.140 | - Yes.

00:48:30.980 | - I remember, 'cause she wrote a Vespa to school.

00:48:33.660 | - Yeah, her mother was involved in that.

00:48:34.500 | - And her mom was involved in creating the,

00:48:38.020 | it was Adele.

00:48:38.900 | - Adele, yes.

00:48:39.740 | - Adele Goldberg.

00:48:40.820 | - Adele Goldberg in developing the ability to move

00:48:44.580 | what appear to be pages on the screen.

00:48:46.340 | - Object-oriented languages.

00:48:47.660 | I had no idea that was going on, I'll be honest with you.

00:48:50.180 | I mean, it was going on the second floor.

00:48:52.100 | They were all hippie-like.

00:48:53.340 | I mean, it was a scandal of the life that they had there.

00:48:56.620 | It was the '70s and still the Bay Area was not what it's now.

00:49:00.860 | I mean, everybody went to risottis, you know,

00:49:04.140 | take long lunches and there was a lot of stuff

00:49:06.420 | on drugs and so on.

00:49:07.780 | - Yeah, can I ask a question about that?

00:49:09.180 | So Xerox PARC was this incredible place.

00:49:11.660 | I remember going there when I was a kid to your lab.

00:49:14.100 | Actually, one of my earliest recollections was

00:49:16.300 | you took me into your and Jim Boyce's experimental lab.

00:49:21.300 | You told me to pick a piece of fruit.

00:49:24.980 | There was a bowl of fruit.

00:49:26.060 | I picked a banana.

00:49:27.460 | You took the banana, you peeled it,

00:49:28.980 | and you dipped it into liquid nitrogen.

00:49:31.060 | And then you told me to throw it on the ground

00:49:32.620 | and we shattered the banana.

00:49:34.140 | And I thought that was like the coolest thing ever.

00:49:36.480 | I remember that.

00:49:37.320 | That was happening, but you mentioned the stuff

00:49:40.080 | that was happening about developing computer interfaces

00:49:43.360 | and that indeed Jobs borrowed or stole

00:49:48.360 | mostly because PARC didn't protect

00:49:50.280 | the intellectual property well.

00:49:51.560 | I mean, he didn't do it illegally.

00:49:52.800 | I mean, he sought, they basically gave it away.

00:49:55.080 | - Right, right.

00:49:55.920 | - They basically gave it away, right?

00:49:56.740 | - Xerox was thinking that, you know,

00:49:58.340 | copiers were their future and that's it.

00:50:00.200 | - But I also recall, 'cause I overheard the conversations

00:50:02.620 | between you and mom when I was a kid, perhaps,

00:50:05.640 | that there were, it was pretty wild at PARC.

00:50:08.160 | Like there was this whole, like the room with the beanbags,

00:50:11.000 | people were taking LSD and other drugs.

00:50:14.280 | That wasn't your scene though.

00:50:15.320 | - No, no, no, not at all.

00:50:16.600 | I was in the physics lab and we can talk later

00:50:18.720 | a little bit about it with Gene Boyce,

00:50:19.880 | who was a very, very interesting collaborator of mine

00:50:22.080 | and so on.

00:50:22.920 | We had a lot of fun, but not on that level.

00:50:24.880 | As a matter of fact, we were considered very square people,

00:50:27.880 | you know, doing what we were doing.

00:50:29.240 | I mean, this is a group of people that were truly the,

00:50:31.680 | I mean, books have been written on this whole class

00:50:34.960 | of people that became really the embryo

00:50:37.680 | of what Silicon Valley became.

00:50:39.880 | There were brilliant people trying to do new things,

00:50:42.480 | Adele, Alan Kay.

00:50:43.720 | There were many of them.

00:50:44.560 | - Did you ever want to get involved in that stuff?

00:50:46.520 | - I used to see them as so,

00:50:48.760 | yeah, I'll tell you how I got involved.

00:50:50.780 | The head of the group, Bob Taylor, a very charismatic man

00:50:53.280 | who was responsible for the development

00:50:54.920 | of the personal computing.

00:50:56.640 | He was the head of the computer science lab.

00:50:58.680 | He once heard that I played ping pong.

00:51:00.480 | So he started challenging me to ping pong.

00:51:02.400 | So we used to play ping pong, you know,

00:51:04.380 | and the conversations were so odd

00:51:06.320 | because I would say, oh, you do computer science.

00:51:08.800 | I have some mathematical problems.

00:51:10.440 | I would like some guys in your lab to help me.

00:51:13.520 | He said, we are not the kind of computer scientists

00:51:16.360 | you imagine, like at IBM with a white coat,

00:51:18.800 | fixing machines and solving math.

00:51:20.920 | We want to revolutionize the world.

00:51:22.360 | We want to change the way you think.

00:51:24.000 | He used to say that to me.

00:51:25.520 | And I sort of understood a little bit of it,

00:51:28.120 | but quite frankly, it seemed totally out

00:51:30.160 | of whatever I was doing.

00:51:31.600 | - This is what when Mark Andreessen,

00:51:33.620 | founder of Netscape, et cetera, A16Z,

00:51:36.620 | now when he was sitting in the very seat you're sitting in,

00:51:39.660 | here he described this notion of wild ducks

00:51:42.540 | that at companies you have these people

00:51:44.100 | that are small groups of people

00:51:46.100 | that are really kind of wild and outrageous

00:51:48.660 | and really testing the outer limits of what's possible.

00:51:51.420 | Do you think they serve an important role?

00:51:53.900 | - Tremendous, tremendous.

00:51:54.740 | And I was a little bit of that in my field at that time.

00:51:57.820 | I was the first one to realize

00:52:00.340 | that once I saw these machines,

00:52:02.340 | I could use them for doing things

00:52:03.700 | even in physics that no one could do.

00:52:05.680 | And the kinds of fields that I chose to work on

00:52:08.580 | were totally out of what people were doing

00:52:11.140 | at Xerox or IBM and so on.

00:52:13.420 | I think that these people are essential.

00:52:15.920 | Now, the question is what does a company or a university,

00:52:19.260 | what do they do with those ideas and so on?

00:52:22.100 | Xerox lost it completely.

00:52:24.020 | I mean, they showed them the stuff

00:52:25.260 | and there's a whole books that have been written about it.

00:52:27.700 | - Well, one thing that I think I'm realizing now

00:52:29.700 | I inherited from you consciously or unconsciously

00:52:33.780 | is that, well, I've been more of a risk taker

00:52:38.180 | with various aspects of my life

00:52:40.500 | than I probably should have been,

00:52:42.040 | but that I've always enjoyed being near people

00:52:47.040 | who are really pushing the boundary on something.

00:52:49.460 | Like my love of like skateboarding,

00:52:51.300 | but not just skateboarding,

00:52:52.260 | but our friend Danny Wade jumping the Great Wall of China,

00:52:55.340 | building mega ramps in his yard.

00:52:56.900 | I knew I wasn't gonna do that,

00:52:58.700 | but there's something about being adjacent

00:53:00.860 | to people like that,

00:53:02.420 | that changes the way that I've approached things

00:53:05.540 | that were more pedestrian to make them less pedestrian.

00:53:10.540 | And maybe we'll return to this

00:53:13.260 | because I think that being around people

00:53:17.460 | who are real mavericks and real iconoclasts

00:53:20.340 | can be very beneficial,

00:53:21.500 | but it doesn't mean that you have to jump in

00:53:22.780 | and do what they're doing.

00:53:24.060 | - Well, I decided at one point to take huge risks.

00:53:27.500 | And as a matter of fact,

00:53:28.500 | my first piece of work after I got my job at Xerox PARC,

00:53:32.300 | which was supposed to work

00:53:33.260 | on some solid state physics or whatever,

00:53:35.740 | was I had this notion,

00:53:37.100 | this fantasy of Einstein in the patent office.

00:53:39.740 | So I would start working on things that were crazy.

00:53:43.860 | And there's a whole notion in physics,

00:53:46.100 | which is called tachyons,

00:53:47.620 | particles that are faster than the speed of light.

00:53:49.260 | - How do you say it?

00:53:50.100 | - Tachyons.

00:53:50.940 | - Tachyons.

00:53:51.760 | - It's from the word tachyons,

00:53:52.600 | which means fast, swift,

00:53:53.860 | means particles that are faster than the speed of light,

00:53:56.060 | which is impossible.

00:53:57.220 | But some physicists were playing with that idea, okay?

00:53:59.820 | And I became very interested in that.

00:54:01.660 | As a matter of fact,

00:54:02.500 | my first paper out of graduate school was on tachyons,

00:54:07.420 | and I had the pride of getting the paper accepted

00:54:10.300 | in the top physics journal.

00:54:12.700 | - It's physics review letters?

00:54:14.180 | - Physics letters, yes.

00:54:15.700 | Yeah, and I remember my cousin Hector

00:54:17.820 | sending me a note or something saying,

00:54:19.820 | "Well, now I see the road to perdition," he said.

00:54:23.740 | But I was so proud of it.

00:54:26.140 | I really thought that I was doing something incredible,

00:54:28.420 | and it had nothing to do with the work

00:54:30.100 | I was doing on a daily basis.

00:54:31.420 | And I published several papers

00:54:33.180 | on things that were very important to me.

00:54:35.740 | - You have a lot of single author papers.

00:54:37.820 | - Yes, yes.

00:54:38.660 | - This is something that is especially rare in biology,

00:54:43.420 | but you have a lot of single author papers.

00:54:45.500 | - Yeah, yeah, I was very proud of that.

00:54:47.380 | Yes, yes.

00:54:48.220 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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00:57:33.700 | - Can I ask you a question, as a slight departure,

00:57:36.300 | but as something I've always wanted to ask you,

00:57:38.880 | and feel free to say no if it's not

00:57:41.460 | like something that could be done in a couple of minutes.

00:57:44.300 | So many people hear Einstein's name,

00:57:47.380 | they think of the hair, they think of relativity.

00:57:49.980 | Is it possible to explain relativity in a way

00:57:54.620 | that the everyday person can get it a little bit better

00:57:58.900 | than they perhaps understand it now?

00:58:01.660 | - Yes, I think, as a matter of fact,

00:58:03.300 | I learned not long ago that Einstein himself

00:58:06.220 | wrote a popular book on relativity

00:58:08.020 | that seems to be very, very accessible.

00:58:10.300 | Okay, now, there are two aspects to relativity.

00:58:12.740 | I mean, there are two things that our brains

00:58:15.680 | were not made by evolution to understand intuitively.

00:58:19.260 | One is relativity, and the other one is quantum physics.

00:58:22.380 | We know, we have intuitions, like, you know,

00:58:25.940 | an animal, for instance, if you see a lion

00:58:28.900 | running after a zebra and so on,

00:58:30.660 | the lion can actually calculate intuitively,

00:58:33.220 | you know, the speed at which it can move and so on.

00:58:35.700 | We can do the same.

00:58:36.840 | But if you start thinking about what happens

00:58:38.460 | when you get too near the speed of light,

00:58:40.260 | we have no intuition whatsoever.

00:58:42.260 | Time almost stops.

00:58:44.100 | There are all sorts of complicated things.

00:58:46.120 | Lengths contract.

00:58:47.080 | I mean, it's a very complicated set of things,

00:58:48.920 | and that's why it's very hard to understand,

00:58:50.800 | although the math works.

00:58:52.420 | Then there is general relativity that is even worse

00:58:54.680 | because there is some kind of a warping of space-time

00:58:57.040 | that is responsible for gravitation.

00:58:59.140 | But I'll go into that in a second.

00:59:01.160 | The other one is quantum physics.

00:59:02.760 | Our brains are not, not only are they not wired

00:59:07.760 | to understand that near the speed of light,

00:59:09.480 | because no one moves near the speed of light.

00:59:11.480 | I mean, we move at speeds that are fairly small

00:59:15.120 | compared to the speed of light.

00:59:16.760 | And quantum mechanics is at such a microscopic level

00:59:19.960 | that is below, basically, the level of a molecule.

00:59:22.280 | It's molecules, atoms, and inside the atom.

00:59:24.680 | So, it's very, very hard to visualize

00:59:26.200 | or even understand some of the very counterintuitive ideas

00:59:29.920 | like entanglement and also, you know.

00:59:32.160 | So, relativity can be understood

00:59:35.200 | in the sense that you can explain certain things,

00:59:36.960 | but people say, "Well, how can quantum work like that?"

00:59:38.980 | And then you have to get into the math.

00:59:40.760 | Okay.

00:59:41.600 | But I think that, I took a course a few years ago

00:59:45.200 | on generativity and I just--

00:59:47.600 | - Is it profound?

00:59:48.440 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:59:49.260 | I wanted to learn it finally.

00:59:50.680 | It's profound, deep.

00:59:52.920 | And it makes you feel that this man, Einstein,

00:59:56.800 | he had help from a lot of people,

00:59:58.320 | but still, it's an incredible thing.

01:00:00.880 | I mean, you know, it's on a level of Beethoven's symphonies

01:00:05.880 | and Mozart's piano concertos.

01:00:07.660 | I mean, it's something that comes into your head

01:00:09.640 | and you're able to do, you know, through a lot of struggle.

01:00:12.840 | I mean, it took him years to do that.

01:00:15.360 | Okay, so, but it's profound.

01:00:18.320 | Now, when you say, "Can you explain?"

01:00:20.080 | I mean, the point is Einstein one day discovered

01:00:22.400 | that if the speed of light is the speed of light,

01:00:23.960 | no matter how fast you move with respect

01:00:25.840 | to a beam of light,

01:00:26.680 | it's still moving at the speed of light.

01:00:28.240 | That means that the notion of simultaneity

01:00:30.320 | between two events is relative now.

01:00:33.360 | So, you and I might say, "Yes, now it's 110,

01:00:36.920 | "but if you're moving very fast with respect to me,

01:00:39.720 | "instead of 110, you'll say something else," okay?

01:00:42.240 | Just because time for you and I are not synchronized.

01:00:46.080 | And that leads to all sorts of very interesting effects,

01:00:48.360 | and practical effects, too,

01:00:50.240 | because from there comes the idea

01:00:51.720 | that mass and energy are the same.

01:00:53.480 | From there, nuclear weapons came out of that.

01:00:55.880 | All sorts of very interesting things, you know,

01:00:57.600 | and today, you know, we can even detect gravitational waves

01:01:01.840 | that are coming from almost the beginning of the universe.

01:01:04.440 | We can detect that because of those theories.

01:01:06.960 | They can calculate.

01:01:08.440 | So, it's profound, yes.

01:01:10.680 | I mean, Einstein, I think, stands on,

01:01:12.760 | I mean, Newton, too, by the way.

01:01:14.200 | I mean, you know, Newton, Einstein,

01:01:15.960 | I think they're top people, you know.

01:01:18.280 | But they talk to God, in a way, as they say. (laughs)

01:01:22.720 | - We'll get back to God a little bit later.

01:01:25.560 | Yeah, it seems to me that

01:01:29.160 | even though it's very hard to grasp,

01:01:34.000 | it's worth asking for those of us

01:01:36.160 | that don't have an intuitive sense of relativity theory

01:01:39.640 | that is starting to, you know,

01:01:41.640 | peer into these things a little bit,

01:01:43.120 | trying to understand them.

01:01:44.120 | Do you think that it gives one's mind an ability

01:01:47.000 | to, you know, to tap into forms of cognition

01:01:51.200 | that we don't normally think about

01:01:52.680 | when we're looking at macromechanics of the world around us,

01:01:56.480 | that objects fall down, not up,

01:01:58.040 | and, you know, a helium balloon goes up, okay,

01:01:59.760 | and you can learn something about helium.

01:02:00.920 | But it's all pretty straightforward

01:02:03.800 | with just a few simple bullet points,

01:02:06.360 | whereas when you get into quantum mechanics,

01:02:08.600 | yeah, it challenges the mind in a way

01:02:11.560 | that it really feels like, for most people, there's a cliff,

01:02:13.840 | and we just kind of go, okay, you know.

01:02:16.200 | And obviously, there's trust there,

01:02:19.160 | but for people that are curious about understanding

01:02:22.440 | how the really tiny bits of the physical universe

01:02:25.280 | link up with the really big bits of the physical universe,

01:02:28.440 | where's the best place to start?

01:02:29.880 | - Well, okay, you're asking a very, very interesting question

01:02:32.960 | which is, for most of us who are trained in physics,

01:02:36.720 | we learn how to calculate,

01:02:38.600 | we learn how to operate with these things.

01:02:40.560 | I, you know, I just got a patent on using quantum mechanics

01:02:43.640 | for communication and so on,

01:02:45.560 | but it's still the puzzle is,

01:02:47.960 | why does it work the way it works?

01:02:49.360 | So what I'm saying is you learn an operational way

01:02:52.480 | of doing these things operationally.

01:02:54.840 | I don't know what happens in your brain

01:02:56.400 | because I have ideas that come out of intuitions,

01:02:58.920 | not just formulas and equations,

01:03:01.400 | and yet I don't necessarily think I understand deeply

01:03:04.960 | why these things are the way they are.

01:03:06.520 | They are where they are,

01:03:07.800 | and there's no reason why they shouldn't be like that.

01:03:09.920 | Our brains, as I said before, you know,

01:03:12.200 | they are essentially conformed

01:03:14.400 | to understand the macroscopic world,

01:03:16.000 | not high speeds and so on.

01:03:17.480 | So physicists work in general activity.

01:03:19.920 | I don't.

01:03:20.760 | Can do incredible calculations.

01:03:22.160 | Can you tell you what a black hole collapsing

01:03:24.360 | to another black hole would do?

01:03:26.600 | And, you know, they're using general activity things,

01:03:29.560 | and so they can do it.

01:03:31.320 | Now, what it does to your brain

01:03:33.120 | that allows you to operationally work with these equations

01:03:36.080 | and solve it and have new ideas,

01:03:38.640 | it's something I don't understand.

01:03:41.040 | Namely, for instance, the example that I gave

01:03:43.440 | about quantum mechanics, that's a very simple one

01:03:45.640 | because I talk to a lot of people nowadays

01:03:47.360 | that work on this, is I can give you two dice, okay?

01:03:51.560 | You know, just dice.

01:03:53.240 | You can go to Mars and I stay here.

01:03:55.560 | The dice are, let's assume

01:03:56.960 | they're quantum mechanically entangled.

01:03:58.840 | I throw my dice.

01:03:59.720 | I see three.

01:04:00.560 | You got three.

01:04:01.840 | And we don't communicate.

01:04:03.000 | They're entangled.

01:04:04.040 | They go, this is faster than the speed of light.

01:04:06.120 | I throw again, five.

01:04:07.000 | You get five.

01:04:07.840 | I do one.

01:04:08.680 | You get one.

01:04:09.520 | And it's an amazing thing.

01:04:10.360 | - What is the origin of the entanglement?

01:04:12.240 | - It's a property of quantum systems

01:04:14.160 | that they can get entangled.

01:04:15.680 | That's the word.

01:04:16.800 | And somehow what happens to your system affects mine,

01:04:20.840 | but doesn't affect it in the sense of signal.

01:04:23.280 | No signal.

01:04:24.160 | They're entangled.

01:04:25.440 | Now, let me, let me, now, this becomes rather--

01:04:28.320 | - They're not entangled through other bits of the universe.

01:04:30.040 | - No, no.

01:04:30.880 | - They're totally independent.

01:04:31.720 | - Totally independent, yes.

01:04:32.680 | They are entangled in the sense

01:04:33.720 | that quantum mechanically they started like this.

01:04:35.800 | Now, there are ways, I mean, they're trivial things.

01:04:38.040 | There's a famous example of the socks.

01:04:40.280 | Okay, so you take a trip and you took a pair of socks.

01:04:44.640 | Let's assume they're blue socks and so on.

01:04:46.560 | And then you open your bag and you,

01:04:47.800 | oh, I forgot one sock.

01:04:50.240 | So this is my blue sock.

01:04:51.520 | So you know that there is a blue sock at home.

01:04:53.640 | So knowing that is a correlation,

01:04:55.360 | but that's trivial, right?

01:04:56.560 | I mean, you can do that with anything.

01:04:58.200 | In quantum mechanics, imagine that you look at a sock,

01:05:01.280 | but the sock is changing colors all the time.

01:05:03.680 | So now you observe it is red.

01:05:05.160 | The other one is red.

01:05:06.000 | I observe it is green.

01:05:06.880 | The other one is green.

01:05:08.280 | Okay, randomly.

01:05:09.280 | - So little bits of the universe are entangled.

01:05:11.600 | - Well, some people, and a friend of mine

01:05:13.960 | who's a Buddhist claims that there is a whole religious

01:05:16.960 | or Buddhist who are saying that everything was entangled.

01:05:19.480 | Yes, originally all atoms, all electrons,

01:05:22.600 | all elementary particles were entangled, yes.

01:05:24.800 | Because the universe started very, very tiny

01:05:26.560 | and everything was entangled.

01:05:28.120 | Okay, so you could imagine that the universe is entangled.

01:05:31.160 | So what happens here affects the other.

01:05:33.080 | But it gets, the entanglement gets lost

01:05:35.680 | when perturbations and noise appears and so on.

01:05:38.320 | So we are not today entangled with, I don't know.

01:05:40.800 | I mean, we don't think that we are.

01:05:42.120 | - Some people think that.

01:05:42.960 | - Yes, yes.

01:05:43.800 | - Some people are entangled.

01:05:44.640 | - Yes, yes, yes.

01:05:45.480 | - Well, that gets to it.

01:05:46.320 | - But that's a whole, yeah.

01:05:47.480 | - That's a whole thing.

01:05:48.320 | - Yeah, that's poetry.

01:05:49.640 | - That's poetry, exactly.

01:05:51.040 | There's another example that brings us

01:05:54.560 | to a very salient aspect of my childhood,

01:05:57.760 | which is chaos theory.

01:05:59.600 | - Okay, yes.

01:06:00.440 | - Right, so I'll say it so you don't have to.

01:06:03.360 | You're one of the founders of chaos

01:06:06.680 | or certain aspects of chaos theory.

01:06:08.760 | We'll talk about that.

01:06:09.840 | But for those of us that grew up in the '80s and '90s,

01:06:12.880 | I was born in '75, who saw the movie "Jurassic Park."

01:06:17.880 | There's a moment in that movie

01:06:20.600 | where I think Jeff Goldblum is explaining,

01:06:23.280 | what is it, chaos theory.

01:06:26.480 | And maybe it was the butterfly flapping its wings

01:06:28.440 | in one location and impacting something someplace else.

01:06:31.040 | For the poets in the world, right,

01:06:33.400 | that was a very captivating example

01:06:37.680 | because I think the human brain can naturally understand

01:06:41.840 | that things around us, we can have an impact on them

01:06:43.960 | and they can have an impact on us.

01:06:46.160 | But that the notion that a small insect,

01:06:50.120 | thousands of kilometers away can impact something

01:06:54.000 | that's going on more adjacent to us,

01:06:57.160 | it seems outrageous, sci-fi.

01:07:00.360 | But the notion that one thing impacts another

01:07:04.640 | and impacts another, that's pretty straightforward, right?

01:07:06.680 | There's just a dominoing of the physical world.

01:07:11.040 | Chaos theory is different.

01:07:12.320 | - Yes.

01:07:13.160 | - Okay, could you explain chaos?

01:07:15.720 | - Yes.

01:07:16.560 | - And I'll just add one more thing just for context

01:07:18.720 | for you to sort of the paints in the palette.

01:07:21.280 | Around the same time, I remember the book "Chaos"

01:07:23.680 | coming out and where there was a lot of excitement

01:07:27.440 | around chaos and this was coming up.

01:07:29.680 | There was also a lot of discussion about fractals.

01:07:33.960 | The idea that when you zoom into things

01:07:35.600 | at a very, very small level,

01:07:37.240 | you start seeing some regularities.

01:07:38.800 | Now we know this about crystal structures, right?

01:07:40.560 | Like go drop a water under a high-powered microscope,

01:07:42.800 | you'll see structure there.

01:07:44.080 | It's not random.

01:07:45.040 | The angles are very consistent,

01:07:47.040 | at least around certain nodes, et cetera.

01:07:49.120 | So I think people love this idea

01:07:51.160 | that we have repeating patterns and numbers in nature,

01:07:56.160 | that things at a distance can impact us more closely.

01:07:59.080 | Like this is the kind of stuff

01:08:00.120 | that the non-physics brain can understand.

01:08:04.640 | - Yes.

01:08:05.480 | - And it does enchant, right?

01:08:06.320 | We sort of poked at poetry.

01:08:07.560 | I love poetry, you love poetry.

01:08:09.400 | But I think it enchants

01:08:14.720 | because I think humans are naturally interested

01:08:18.320 | in how the randomness of life

01:08:21.560 | might not be as random as it appears.

01:08:23.600 | So what is chaos?

01:08:26.480 | Where does it exist in our lives?

01:08:29.080 | Not emotional chaos,

01:08:30.280 | but and what is the relationship

01:08:32.760 | between fractals and chaos, if any?

01:08:34.960 | - Okay, let me say, first of all,

01:08:36.160 | about why chaos is what it is.

01:08:38.000 | And it's not quantum.

01:08:38.840 | And there is quantum stories

01:08:39.920 | and there's a quantum chaotic field,

01:08:42.360 | but I won't go into that.

01:08:43.800 | Chaos is a very interesting idea,

01:08:47.000 | which it flies against our intuitions.

01:08:50.640 | Since the times of Newton,

01:08:52.200 | we know that if you give me the position

01:08:55.360 | and the velocity of initial particle,

01:08:57.120 | I can use Newton's equations of motion

01:08:59.240 | to tell you where that particle is gonna be anywhere

01:09:01.960 | with an incredible precision.

01:09:03.200 | When we launch a rocket,

01:09:05.160 | we wanna go to the moon,

01:09:06.640 | we can calculate and predict exactly

01:09:08.760 | where the rocket is gonna be after so many hours,

01:09:10.840 | after so many days and so on.

01:09:12.240 | Actually, we use the equations of motion

01:09:14.240 | to predict that trajectory.

01:09:15.480 | And it's a precise trajectory.

01:09:17.280 | - This is how Elon was able to capture the rocket

01:09:19.360 | with the chopsticks recently.

01:09:21.280 | - Something of that sort.

01:09:22.200 | Yeah, that's, yeah.

01:09:23.840 | Okay, now, the idea of chaos is,

01:09:26.640 | so that's, okay, it works.

01:09:28.560 | There are some cases where, let's assume,

01:09:31.400 | now I'm gonna give you a simple example.

01:09:32.680 | So I take a ball, I put it on a billiard ball,

01:09:36.400 | on a billiard table.

01:09:37.960 | I send it out.

01:09:39.160 | And at the moment I can know exactly

01:09:41.520 | the position of velocity,

01:09:42.480 | I can tell you exactly where it's gonna go.

01:09:44.640 | Chaos says that a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny difference

01:09:49.400 | in the initial position or velocity of that ball

01:09:52.200 | will take it very, very far from the other one,

01:09:55.520 | which is ridiculous.

01:09:56.720 | I mean, if I tell you that, you know,

01:09:58.360 | two cars start at exactly the same speed

01:10:01.120 | in the same position and one of them has a little more,

01:10:03.160 | you know, they'll stay parallel to each other.

01:10:05.400 | In some systems, and I'll tell you in a second,

01:10:08.080 | that actually, those two trajectories diverge completely.

01:10:11.760 | So it's what we call sensitivity to initial conditions.

01:10:15.240 | Okay, that's what chaos is all about in classical mechanics.

01:10:18.800 | What is really weird about it

01:10:21.000 | is that it happens in systems that also undergo friction.

01:10:25.000 | Because let me give you an example that I used to,

01:10:26.640 | you know, I used to teach chaos at Stanford for many years.

01:10:30.120 | So imagine I give you a beaker full of molasses.

01:10:34.400 | And you take a very big ball, stainless steel ball,

01:10:37.120 | and you just throw it into the thing.

01:10:38.720 | Well, after a while, it will just drift

01:10:40.720 | with it and it goes so slow because, you know,

01:10:42.800 | friction slows it down and it just goes.

01:10:45.680 | And now you throw another one from another altitude

01:10:47.760 | and all of them are gonna do exactly the same.

01:10:50.560 | Some systems that are chaotic do exactly the opposite.

01:10:53.280 | Even though there is friction,

01:10:54.400 | everything tends to just slow it down,

01:10:56.280 | they just keep going far apart from each other.

01:10:58.520 | Amazing.

01:11:00.080 | Amazing thing.

01:11:00.960 | So that's chaos, okay?

01:11:02.200 | And I can tell you a little bit

01:11:03.280 | why I got so involved in this and the work we did.

01:11:05.920 | - Does chaos exist in every physical system?

01:11:08.400 | - Mostly, yes, yes.

01:11:09.960 | - Maybe even in neurons or the brain.

01:11:11.600 | - Oh, yes, absolutely.

01:11:12.680 | I mean, this is why I don't wanna get into controversy here

01:11:15.200 | about issues of whether we live deterministic lives or not.

01:11:18.800 | But, you know, if things are a little bit random and so on,

01:11:21.560 | or even just a tiny difference in initial conditions

01:11:24.000 | can take you to very different outcomes.

01:11:26.400 | But this, we're not talking about many particles,

01:11:28.200 | we are talking two.

01:11:29.440 | Okay, so that's one.

01:11:30.680 | Now, fractals is a different story

01:11:32.600 | that comes out of a guy who I knew very well,

01:11:34.440 | Benoit Mandelbrot, a very, very, very funny character.

01:11:37.760 | Brilliant, too, but very strange.

01:11:40.240 | Who discovered that certain things are self-similar.

01:11:43.720 | That if you look at the coast of Britain,

01:11:45.280 | he used to say that.

01:11:46.440 | You look at the coast of Britain and you say,

01:11:47.880 | "Okay, tell me, how long is the coast of Britain?"

01:11:49.480 | You go with a meter and you measure it.

01:11:51.400 | Now, suppose that the meter that you're using now

01:11:53.760 | can measure up to an inch.

01:11:55.160 | Well, you're gonna get a different distance,

01:11:56.800 | even though you are adding the same.

01:11:58.240 | Because there are all these little things

01:12:00.320 | in the coast of Britain that are essentially self-similar

01:12:03.000 | that add a tremendous amount of length.

01:12:05.360 | That's what a fractal is all about.

01:12:07.120 | These are structures that are not just a simple line,

01:12:09.640 | but they have all these other things, okay?

01:12:12.120 | He thought that it was a whole new geometry.

01:12:15.000 | As a matter of fact, and I tell you this

01:12:16.760 | because I knew Benoit very well,

01:12:18.600 | I met him through a talk that I gave on chaos.

01:12:20.640 | He used to hang out with chaos physicists.

01:12:22.320 | He was a mathematician, brilliant man in many ways.

01:12:25.080 | I was having dinner with him in Copenhagen in a restaurant.

01:12:28.360 | And then the very pretty waitress came to us and so on

01:12:32.080 | and served us, and we were talking, he's a Frenchman,

01:12:35.040 | he spoke with a very heavy French accent,

01:12:36.760 | and so she says something, "What are you doing here?"

01:12:39.240 | He says, "We're at a conference."

01:12:40.880 | "But I'm not just at a conference.

01:12:42.720 | "I'm a very special man," he said to her.

01:12:45.440 | And she said, "How come?"

01:12:46.400 | And he says, "Do you know who Euclid was?"

01:12:49.640 | And she says, "Sort of."

01:12:50.920 | She said, "Well, he was a Greek man who invented geometry."

01:12:54.200 | And he said, "Oh, well, guess what?

01:12:55.960 | "I am better than Euclid.

01:12:57.600 | "I invented a different geometry."

01:12:59.160 | - He said that? - Yeah, he said that.

01:13:00.880 | - Points to the waitress in Denmark that knew about Euclid.

01:13:03.720 | - That was very smart. - The Danes are smart.

01:13:05.200 | - Yeah, yeah, okay, that was very funny

01:13:07.120 | that he would talk about it.

01:13:09.080 | So he would give a talk, and he would say,

01:13:11.240 | "My equations can generate anything."

01:13:13.240 | Indeed, he could generate any patterns.

01:13:16.040 | So he would say, "You want a mountain?

01:13:17.400 | "Here goes a mountain, blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:13:19.040 | "and you see a mountain, beautiful graphs," and so on.

01:13:21.640 | So self-similarity is a very powerful idea in physics

01:13:26.520 | because it allows you that if you know something

01:13:28.440 | at a certain scale, you can predict what it's gonna be

01:13:30.240 | at a different other scales, and I use that.

01:13:33.400 | But chaos and fractals are not always the same.

01:13:37.520 | As he used to say, because he didn't like physicists,

01:13:40.200 | because we never liked his talks, we always said,

01:13:42.240 | "Okay, so you're telling us that, you know, things are..."

01:13:44.800 | He used to say, "I'm not interested in pulleys.

01:13:46.800 | "I'm not interested in things that move things up and down,"

01:13:49.360 | he used to say.

01:13:50.200 | - He was thinking about elementary physics class.

01:13:51.880 | - Something of that sort, yeah, yeah.

01:13:53.840 | But fractals are very interesting

01:13:56.080 | because these are self-similar structures.

01:13:57.880 | At all levels, they look the same.

01:13:59.680 | You look at it big, you look at small,

01:14:01.280 | they have the same type of geometric behavior.

01:14:04.720 | Chaos is all about dynamics, how things evolve in time, okay?

01:14:09.440 | And chaotic systems, they tend to diverge

01:14:12.000 | from each other for a long, long time.

01:14:13.920 | The man who invented the idea of the butterfly effect

01:14:16.200 | was a man called Ed Lorenz,

01:14:17.880 | who was a very famous meteorologist at MIT,

01:14:22.040 | and he was solving the equations of the atmosphere,

01:14:24.960 | trying to predict the behavior of the weather.

01:14:28.000 | And he noticed, in these very old computers and so on,

01:14:31.200 | that sometimes he would get different behaviors.

01:14:33.440 | He thought there was something wrong about the computer,

01:14:35.800 | and he discovered that the only thing that was wrong

01:14:37.720 | was that the initial conditions that he was giving them

01:14:40.000 | was very tinily different,

01:14:41.960 | and he would get different things.

01:14:43.480 | From there, he went into that.

01:14:45.120 | And there's a very beautiful,

01:14:46.120 | I mean, there are ideas that are very beautiful,

01:14:47.840 | like strange attractors and so on.

01:14:49.440 | I mean, we don't have to go into that.

01:14:51.240 | So chaos is really a field that essentially explains

01:14:54.520 | why things that seem to be simply explained

01:14:58.320 | by classical physics tend to diverge from each other,

01:15:01.680 | and they give rise to random outcomes.

01:15:04.760 | That's the important thing.

01:15:05.760 | You can use chaos in order to generate random numbers.

01:15:09.240 | You can use chaos to generate random patterns.

01:15:12.520 | I've done that.

01:15:13.360 | - And chaos exists at the quantum level and the macro level?

01:15:16.920 | - Okay, so I was working on something,

01:15:19.000 | and I don't think it's interesting how I got into this,

01:15:21.080 | because I was doing something else,

01:15:23.160 | and suddenly I decided I was gonna do this,

01:15:24.760 | and I really started going very fast at this.

01:15:27.080 | But then I had a very bright student that you met, Ted Hoag,

01:15:30.880 | and we decided, let's see if we can see chaos

01:15:33.320 | in quantum mechanics.

01:15:34.840 | And we started doing it, and there were a couple of papers

01:15:37.360 | by the Russians actually showing that this was the case,

01:15:39.680 | and we discovered that it was not the case.

01:15:41.920 | We actually proved that quantum systems are not chaotic.

01:15:46.040 | There's some kind of interference between them and so on

01:15:48.840 | that makes them recur back and forth periodically.

01:15:51.280 | - Why do I find that reassuring,

01:15:52.680 | that if you get down to a small enough level

01:15:54.400 | that you can really predict what's gonna happen

01:15:56.840 | as opposed to small perturbations

01:15:59.080 | leading to big differences in outcome?

01:16:01.160 | - That was the whole point.

01:16:02.640 | We discovered that quantum mechanics,

01:16:04.920 | there are waves and interferences and so on

01:16:07.080 | that make the system recur, you know?

01:16:09.440 | As a matter of fact, I had quite an exchange

01:16:11.000 | with Dick Feynman about it, you know?

01:16:13.160 | When I met him, I went to give a talk at Caltech,

01:16:16.480 | and I was in his office, and he said,

01:16:18.120 | "So what are you gonna talk about?

01:16:19.720 | "Because I don't wanna waste my time."

01:16:21.360 | And I said, "About chaos."

01:16:22.600 | He said, "Okay."

01:16:24.160 | I said, "You know, some things are very,

01:16:25.800 | "in particular, in quantum mechanics."

01:16:28.080 | So I'm smiling because he was so sharp and so on.

01:16:33.080 | So he said, "Okay, give me the problem."

01:16:36.080 | And he said, "What is it?"

01:16:37.000 | I said, "Well, okay, I give you an electron,

01:16:39.200 | "and you have it in a potential, and I give you a laser."

01:16:41.920 | And he says, "The laser inside or outside the apparatus?"

01:16:44.680 | Just like that. (laughs)

01:16:46.440 | So I said, "Outside."

01:16:47.280 | So you turn on the laser, and I said,

01:16:49.000 | "So what happens to the electron?"

01:16:51.000 | And I knew he was gonna give me the answer

01:16:52.840 | that was already in the literature,

01:16:54.080 | but he appeared to be thinking that.

01:16:55.720 | He stood up and walked around,

01:16:57.320 | and was making all sorts of noises.

01:16:59.520 | And then suddenly he says,

01:17:00.880 | "The energy grows linearly in time."

01:17:02.600 | I said, "No, it doesn't.

01:17:04.400 | "How do you know?"

01:17:05.240 | I said, "We measure it.

01:17:06.080 | "I can show you," and so on.

01:17:07.680 | And he was very impressed,

01:17:08.880 | because that means that there is no chaos, actually.

01:17:11.960 | Then he said, "Oh, you know why I got it wrong."

01:17:14.120 | I said, "No, because I wasn't thinking in colors,

01:17:16.560 | "only black and white."

01:17:17.800 | (laughs)

01:17:19.040 | - Was he trying to be funny?

01:17:20.080 | - Of course, he was always funny.

01:17:21.680 | - Let's talk about Feynman, and Gell-Mann, and Mandelbrot,

01:17:25.160 | and all the rest as a collection for a moment.

01:17:28.520 | One of the great gifts of my life has been

01:17:34.720 | that you would talk about scientists.

01:17:38.000 | It really enchants me.

01:17:39.000 | I'm like, I'm just so delighted when I hear it.

01:17:41.720 | I grew up hearing the stories about these scientists,

01:17:44.800 | and not athletes, which is great, but scientists.

01:17:49.800 | And it seems to me that every time you talk

01:17:53.840 | about another scientist, you both revere the work they did.

01:17:58.840 | You see something unique about them.

01:18:01.160 | And something I learned very early on,

01:18:04.520 | and I've certainly internalized is,

01:18:06.800 | and forgive me because I'm assuming here,

01:18:09.200 | is that there's a certain aspect of their quirkiness

01:18:14.200 | or something about them, to take them seriously,

01:18:17.880 | but not too seriously.

01:18:20.120 | I never learned to assume that

01:18:22.400 | because somebody was a Nobel Prize winner

01:18:25.080 | that they were perfect, for instance.

01:18:26.760 | Like you would tell me, like Einstein had,

01:18:29.480 | he was amazing, like he was relatively,

01:18:31.120 | the patent office, all this stuff,

01:18:32.200 | and he had all these problems with women.

01:18:34.200 | - Oh, yeah.

01:18:35.040 | - Or, you know, and I read the books, right?

01:18:37.080 | Or this person, I won't name names

01:18:39.880 | 'cause these people are still alive, Silicon Valley.

01:18:42.840 | Actually, when you and I used to take walks

01:18:44.320 | when I was a postdoc,

01:18:45.160 | we used to see Jobs walking around, right?

01:18:47.800 | No feet, no shoes, he had feet, no shoes.

01:18:49.960 | And you would say, you know, I mean, like, he's amazing.

01:18:52.880 | Like, this guy's brilliant.

01:18:53.760 | But then we would chuckle about some of the Jobisms,

01:18:57.040 | you know? - Yes.

01:18:57.880 | - And so one thing that I learned

01:18:59.040 | was that scientists are just people,

01:19:01.760 | that these founders, the creators, they're just people.

01:19:04.600 | And they often have very challenging areas

01:19:07.680 | of their life as well.

01:19:09.040 | Like, they're not perfect, they're not gods.

01:19:12.280 | Some of them have almost godlike access

01:19:15.880 | to the universe and understanding it.

01:19:18.280 | But it seems to me that, like,

01:19:20.080 | you hold people up for their contributions,

01:19:24.000 | but you never actually, thank goodness,

01:19:26.920 | put people on a pedestal to the point where you're like,

01:19:30.000 | this person is spectacular in every way.

01:19:32.320 | And I'm not saying you cut them down to size,

01:19:34.000 | but I learned very, and this has served me well in my life

01:19:36.720 | and now public facing or on Twitter.

01:19:38.960 | Like, if I make a mistake and someone comes at me,

01:19:40.680 | it's somebody that I respect, I go, ah.

01:19:42.880 | But then I remember, like, this person has a lot of issues

01:19:45.800 | in certain domains of their life.

01:19:47.420 | So, to realize that, like, we're all human,

01:19:50.320 | like this notion of, like, none of us are gods.

01:19:55.040 | And yet there are people like Feynman,

01:19:57.640 | like Gell-Mann, like Einstein,

01:19:59.600 | who have almost supernatural levels of ability.

01:20:03.120 | Yeah, so what's that about?

01:20:04.160 | Like, how do you hold knowledge, insight,

01:20:09.080 | and stature in your mind alongside, like, the humanness,

01:20:14.560 | like, the inherent flawed nature of all of us, you know?

01:20:18.460 | - Well, okay, it's complicated.

01:20:21.460 | There are many ways to think about it.

01:20:23.680 | In some of these names, you know, for instance,

01:20:27.380 | these people are built into giants by the media too.

01:20:31.300 | I mean, you know, Feynman, I mean,

01:20:33.100 | if you go to Quora and so on, everybody's asking, you know,

01:20:35.460 | what did Feynman do, what was he wearing, and so on,

01:20:38.580 | as if, you know, he was a god.

01:20:40.120 | I mean, obviously what he did in physics.

01:20:42.020 | He, and I interrupt myself here

01:20:44.480 | because he really worked very hard,

01:20:46.720 | very hard, according to Gell-Mann in particular,

01:20:48.700 | to creating a myth about himself.

01:20:51.040 | He worked very hard.

01:20:51.880 | When I met him, I can't even tell you the anecdotes.

01:20:55.360 | I only met him for an hour,

01:20:56.680 | but he was obviously the kind of man

01:20:58.720 | that wanted to leave an impression with you.

01:21:00.200 | - R-rated and X-rated anecdotes.

01:21:01.880 | - Exactly, and, you know, but I remember the good one

01:21:04.080 | was that, you know, I was gonna give a colloquium,

01:21:05.880 | and he said, "Should I come?"

01:21:07.480 | I say, "I think you should come."

01:21:08.560 | And then he said, "Well, then I'm gonna give you

01:21:10.360 | "a piece of advice.

01:21:11.200 | "Do not look at me, because if you look at me

01:21:12.960 | "during your talk, you're gonna get confused,"

01:21:15.180 | and so on, you know?

01:21:16.300 | And actually, that's exactly what happened.

01:21:17.940 | I started, you know, the colloquium at Caltech,

01:21:20.420 | you know, the marine boot camp of science,

01:21:22.780 | and there I am, starting to talk,

01:21:24.220 | and suddenly I said, instead of saying, "The next hour,"

01:21:27.460 | I said something like, "In the next week,"

01:21:29.340 | or something or so, because there he was,

01:21:31.100 | and then he started saying, you know,

01:21:32.300 | "Like, look elsewhere, elsewhere," you know?

01:21:33.940 | That kind of guy, you know?

01:21:35.060 | - For anyone who hasn't lectured,

01:21:36.420 | there's a tendency sometimes when one is going fast

01:21:38.660 | to fill in without thinking.

01:21:40.260 | It's just something that one learns.

01:21:41.940 | I mean, I've had to learn it the hard way

01:21:43.580 | when we missed it in the recording and this kind of thing.

01:21:45.980 | It's a humbling moment, but yeah,

01:21:48.220 | I think that, well, Feynman would have been canceled

01:21:51.200 | by the standards of the last few years.

01:21:53.720 | - I took even my father once to a lecture

01:21:55.380 | he was giving in San Francisco,

01:21:57.380 | and he was giving a beautiful lecture to,

01:21:59.980 | I don't know, get some award for teaching, and so on,

01:22:02.140 | and suddenly a bunch of women walked into the front

01:22:04.600 | of the big room, you know, and they started coming,

01:22:07.700 | because it turns out that in one of his lectures,

01:22:10.180 | he said something like, you know,

01:22:11.500 | "If you do it this way, you're as bad as a woman's driver,"

01:22:14.860 | as, you know- - Feynman said.

01:22:16.140 | - Feynman said that, and then all these women

01:22:17.820 | were saying things, and then he said,

01:22:19.140 | "I love women, they're all smart."

01:22:20.980 | He was very clever.

01:22:21.820 | - Yeah, so he would have lost his job

01:22:23.100 | by the standards of recent years.

01:22:24.020 | - Might be, yeah, yeah, okay, but regardless of that,

01:22:26.420 | 'cause I really want to go back to this issue,

01:22:28.620 | people like Merrick Gell-Mann, I mean, it was,

01:22:31.500 | to me, he was the most intimidating person I've ever met.

01:22:34.460 | I mean, now, eventually I got to know him

01:22:36.620 | because he liked what I was doing,

01:22:38.620 | and as a matter of fact, he and I organized a workshop

01:22:41.260 | in an incredibly luxurious place in France,

01:22:43.980 | at the estate of Madame Schlumberger,

01:22:46.100 | one of the oiled people.

01:22:47.780 | Actually, it was an incredible meeting

01:22:49.820 | that he and I organized,

01:22:51.180 | so I got to know him a little bit personally,

01:22:52.740 | and all he was complaining at that time

01:22:54.340 | is he couldn't get a date.

01:22:55.580 | He was a widow, and he wanted to, you know,

01:22:58.860 | women were intimidated by him, too.

01:23:00.780 | - Well, as I recall, 'cause I remember meeting him

01:23:02.700 | when I was a kid, and we both shared a love of birds,

01:23:04.900 | but he was perhaps one of the world's most obnoxious people.

01:23:07.900 | - Right, but you impressed him.

01:23:09.940 | As a matter of fact, I still, you know,

01:23:11.820 | I don't know if you want me to remind you of this,

01:23:14.500 | because we had two stories there.

01:23:16.140 | Your mother and I were taking a hike in Aspen,

01:23:18.060 | and we saw a bird that looked incredibly complicated,

01:23:20.380 | and so on, so we looked at the bird.

01:23:21.980 | The next day, we went to him,

01:23:23.260 | because he loved birds, as you know,

01:23:25.180 | and I said I saw a most unusual bird.

01:23:27.780 | He said, "Describe it," so I drew it up,

01:23:29.860 | and he gave me the name in Latin of the bird,

01:23:32.620 | and then he said, "That's the most common bird

01:23:34.700 | "in the Bay Area of California.

01:23:36.260 | "As a matter of fact, you should see it

01:23:37.420 | "when you pick up the newspaper next time you're there,"

01:23:39.900 | and indeed, two weeks later,

01:23:41.060 | I went to pick up the New York Times,

01:23:42.380 | and there was the bird, but at the same time,

01:23:46.380 | I said, "Andrew likes birds," and he asked you,

01:23:48.780 | "What is your favorite bird?"

01:23:50.380 | And you said, "The rainbow lowerkeit."

01:23:52.340 | - Still is.

01:23:53.180 | - And he said, "This kid knows.

01:23:55.500 | "This kid knows," he said.

01:23:56.940 | - I know my birds.

01:23:58.660 | I know my birds. - No, no, that is amazing.

01:23:59.900 | I never heard, because if you could have said a parrot,

01:24:03.180 | he would have not been very interested, okay?

01:24:05.940 | But he was intimidating, very intimidating,

01:24:08.740 | and he was nasty, too, when he wanted to be,

01:24:11.420 | so he enjoyed the power he had.

01:24:14.100 | I was a member of the board of the directors

01:24:17.940 | of the Aspen Center, so we had to decide

01:24:20.180 | what programs we had every summer,

01:24:21.580 | and he would come to me and say,

01:24:22.820 | "Whom do you want me to insult today?"

01:24:24.940 | He had all sorts of very funny names

01:24:26.820 | for all sorts of physicists and so on.

01:24:29.500 | The downside of people like that in science,

01:24:31.420 | 'cause I've known some, too,

01:24:32.380 | there's a very famous neuroscientist now in his 70s

01:24:37.060 | who has a Nobel Prize, who also is known

01:24:41.260 | for generating anecdotes about himself.

01:24:43.520 | And in recent years, because of political correctness,

01:24:46.940 | wokeism, and so forth, tends to do that less,

01:24:49.480 | 'cause he was sort of a trucker's mouth.

01:24:51.980 | Brilliant guy, but he's known for being outrageous

01:24:56.780 | and trying to create tales about themselves.

01:24:59.020 | This is something that scientists do.

01:25:00.540 | - Yeah, right, right.

01:25:01.380 | - Right, in order to maintain their legacy.

01:25:03.700 | - Yeah, also to feel good about themselves.

01:25:05.580 | I mean, by the way, I mean, Gell-Mann,

01:25:08.740 | I mean, I work with him, he was incredible.

01:25:10.900 | I mean, you know, and the way he would interrupt people

01:25:13.500 | and so on, and there are two things I can tell you

01:25:15.820 | that are interesting.

01:25:16.660 | Once he was announcing some new results,

01:25:18.420 | he was working on this whole thing on quarks

01:25:22.140 | and other things, and actually it was string theory,

01:25:25.140 | and he announced a seminar,

01:25:26.340 | and everybody goes into the garden,

01:25:28.020 | you know, and the seminars are nice.

01:25:30.580 | I need to remind the audience, perhaps here,

01:25:33.100 | that the Aspen Center for Music was right next door,

01:25:36.220 | in the tent, they were rehearsing.

01:25:37.820 | So the seminar was supposed to start at three,

01:25:39.860 | and there's, Gell-Mann comes with all his notes

01:25:41.660 | and then he's out.

01:25:42.500 | He always had notes, walking, pacing, and nothing happened.

01:25:45.540 | And suddenly, they were rehearsing

01:25:47.740 | the Beethoven's fifth symphony,

01:25:49.460 | which starts, ta-ta-ta-tan, and then you heard the sound,

01:25:52.940 | and then he started.

01:25:54.220 | I will now tell you about a new theory

01:25:56.500 | of how the universe works.

01:25:57.900 | That's the way he spoke.

01:25:58.740 | - So what strikes me is that these people

01:26:00.340 | take themselves very seriously.

01:26:02.060 | - Absolutely, absolutely.

01:26:03.660 | - Do you think that's important in life?

01:26:05.660 | - I don't, I like to, I mean, as you know,

01:26:08.860 | I like to have a good sense of humor about myself

01:26:11.620 | and be self-deprecating.

01:26:13.100 | I think some people, you know, have issues,

01:26:14.940 | and they do that.

01:26:15.820 | I mean, it all depends on how do you, you know, see things.

01:26:18.900 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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01:27:44.780 | Let me ask you about this.

01:27:49.020 | So, you know, further down my list

01:27:50.700 | of things I want to talk to you about is that,

01:27:52.740 | you know, you've always loved,

01:27:54.740 | it's clear from a young age,

01:27:56.300 | like high-level concepts, deep concepts,

01:27:58.820 | order in the universe, working on hard problems.

01:28:01.300 | You just filed another patent.

01:28:02.620 | Like, I mean, as long as I've known you,

01:28:04.500 | you've been pursuing some new area of knowledge

01:28:08.260 | or implementation of knowledge.

01:28:10.420 | And yet, you, like your father,

01:28:13.100 | I know you delight in everyday things.

01:28:17.560 | I mean, since I was a kid,

01:28:18.820 | you've taken a walk after dinner.

01:28:21.620 | You've biked to work if you can,

01:28:23.580 | you know, that day because of the weather.

01:28:25.020 | You love, like, a really good espresso,

01:28:27.940 | a really good meal.

01:28:28.900 | Like, the high and the low are checked-off boxes for you.

01:28:33.220 | - Yes. - Right?

01:28:34.060 | That's different, I think,

01:28:35.400 | than the way most people think about scientists,

01:28:37.460 | especially theoreticians, theorists, excuse me.

01:28:41.540 | Which one is it, theoreticians or theorists?

01:28:45.100 | - Theorists, they say, yeah. - Theorists.

01:28:48.300 | - That, you know, we assume like the academics

01:28:51.060 | that are always somewhere else,

01:28:53.020 | like they're up here, they're not grounded,

01:28:54.780 | they're not feet on the ground.

01:28:56.260 | But you like everyday things.

01:28:57.900 | - Oh, absolutely. - Like, you very much like,

01:28:59.260 | like where we're gonna eat dinner tonight

01:29:00.660 | is every bit as important as this-

01:29:02.300 | - Absolutely. - The conversation

01:29:03.460 | about relativity.

01:29:04.300 | - Absolutely.

01:29:05.120 | I think that there is a myth

01:29:06.580 | that sometimes gets perpetrated at universities.

01:29:09.360 | My first meeting with my advisor

01:29:10.940 | when I got to University of Pennsylvania,

01:29:12.780 | he said, "I want you to know one thing.

01:29:15.300 | "You're gonna live like a monk."

01:29:17.140 | I said, "What does that mean?"

01:29:18.380 | "No fun, nothing, you're gonna work.

01:29:20.240 | "I want you to work.

01:29:21.220 | "You're getting paid to do something."

01:29:22.980 | I was so scared.

01:29:24.420 | And then I told him that on weekends

01:29:25.820 | I had to escape to New York City

01:29:27.100 | to take a walk on Central Park and look at nice things.

01:29:29.760 | And, you know, I always enjoyed the good things of life.

01:29:32.980 | And, you know, at that time I couldn't afford them,

01:29:35.100 | but that doesn't mean that I didn't, you know, enjoy them.

01:29:37.860 | And I do believe that I inherit this from my father,

01:29:41.620 | a tremendous enjoyment of life in general.

01:29:44.860 | And yes, I am very physical and tactile about things.

01:29:49.620 | I like to surround myself with things that are beautiful.

01:29:52.220 | I enjoy, as you said, good meals

01:29:54.760 | and the daily things about life.

01:29:57.220 | I'm not just living in some stratosphere

01:30:00.460 | and not being able to, you know,

01:30:02.940 | enjoy a meal I'm having and so on.

01:30:05.100 | No, the opposite.

01:30:06.420 | And yes, in that sense, I am very much like that.

01:30:09.860 | And, you know, Mary's the same way.

01:30:12.380 | And so that's why I enjoy that.

01:30:13.940 | - Your wife.

01:30:14.780 | - Yeah, my wife, sorry.

01:30:16.060 | Yes, we really enjoy, you know,

01:30:18.980 | she in particular being Danish, you know,

01:30:20.840 | they have this idea of slow eating

01:30:22.860 | and enjoying the good things of life.

01:30:24.340 | And I'm very much like that.

01:30:26.180 | Yes, very much.

01:30:27.180 | I don't feel guilty about it.

01:30:28.800 | You know, if I can afford it.

01:30:31.380 | - Nor should you.

01:30:32.220 | - Huh?

01:30:33.040 | - Nor should you.

01:30:33.880 | - Well, there is a certain aesthetic component to science

01:30:36.340 | and the idea that they sell you that, you know,

01:30:38.820 | Einstein didn't care about anything.

01:30:40.160 | Actually, if you look at the negotiations

01:30:41.820 | that Einstein had with Institute for Advanced Studies

01:30:43.600 | for salaries, you'll see that he really cared a lot

01:30:46.140 | about these things too.

01:30:46.980 | - Oh, so our notion of him is just kind of like,

01:30:49.220 | it was just science and he had no interest

01:30:50.940 | in material things at all.

01:30:51.780 | - Right, right, yes.

01:30:52.740 | I had an uncle actually, Hector's father.

01:30:55.360 | You know, there was a branch of the family

01:30:56.620 | that was very much into culture.

01:30:57.980 | They had beautiful collections of paintings and so on.

01:31:00.100 | And once, I was, what, 14 or so.

01:31:03.180 | And I remember at a party,

01:31:04.700 | we had big social parties in my parents' house.

01:31:07.340 | And he was lecturing me that I should never care

01:31:09.580 | about anything but truth and concepts and so on.

01:31:13.340 | I was a little bit scared.

01:31:14.920 | I wanted to enjoy life as well.

01:31:18.420 | Okay, so it was a little bit complicated.

01:31:21.380 | No, no, I enjoy everything, of course.

01:31:23.260 | I think I got out of my father mostly, yes.

01:31:26.620 | My mother was a little more aesthetic in a way.

01:31:29.560 | But yes, the tiny little things of life

01:31:32.860 | are what makes one's life, you know.

01:31:35.180 | - I'm slowly starting to get that.

01:31:36.820 | - Yes, yes.

01:31:37.660 | - I feel like I've been a little like rabid

01:31:40.300 | about my interests, almost to an obsessive level,

01:31:43.220 | to the point where I've sometimes overlooked

01:31:46.600 | like how many opportunities for just like

01:31:49.700 | lovely daily interactions I have.

01:31:51.380 | I try, but I feel like I've just been chasing

01:31:54.060 | the carrot of knowledge.

01:31:57.020 | Like, I love doing what I do.

01:31:58.060 | I've always done that, you know, but.

01:31:59.500 | - Well, but you have to be careful indeed.

01:32:01.300 | I, you know, as you know,

01:32:02.580 | I meditate for many years and so on.

01:32:04.460 | And being in the present and being able to just,

01:32:07.220 | you know, be there and nothing else

01:32:09.540 | is a tremendous source of satisfaction

01:32:12.580 | and calms me down and so on.

01:32:15.060 | - When did you start that?

01:32:16.780 | - Well, I started actually out of the discovery.

01:32:20.620 | I mean, a trivial thing that many people have.

01:32:23.420 | I discovered that every time my blood pressure

01:32:25.460 | was taken by the doctor,

01:32:26.580 | it was just going through the roof.

01:32:29.180 | You know, it's called a white coat phenomenon

01:32:30.860 | or something of that sort.

01:32:31.780 | And I got very, very upset about it

01:32:33.420 | because I tried to control it.

01:32:35.460 | And it got worse and worse and worse.

01:32:37.140 | And they told me, you know, what to do.

01:32:38.340 | And so at one point or the other,

01:32:39.820 | I have a friend, a colleague, more than a friend,

01:32:42.380 | who's a Buddhist, who started telling me about,

01:32:45.580 | you know, have you tried, first of all, biofeedback?

01:32:49.420 | That's the one I tried for a year.

01:32:51.060 | I did biofeedback.

01:32:52.780 | And then he started telling me about meditation.

01:32:55.060 | So one day, actually, he's a physicist as well.

01:32:58.020 | He was visiting me in my lab.

01:32:59.540 | And I said, he said, let me, let's do it.

01:33:01.860 | I did a session with him on meditation.

01:33:03.380 | And I couldn't believe it.

01:33:04.540 | My hands suddenly were warm and, you know,

01:33:06.820 | felt incredibly nice.

01:33:08.460 | So I decided that I really wanted to learn how to do it.

01:33:11.460 | And I started doing it at a time when I truly needed it

01:33:14.220 | because I realized that without being aware, I was anxious.

01:33:19.220 | Like, for instance, I would see myself

01:33:21.340 | walking down the street, holding my, you know,

01:33:23.780 | fists this way.

01:33:25.060 | That's not a very relaxed way of living, okay?

01:33:27.780 | So I really started doing this meditation

01:33:30.620 | on a fairly continuous basis, and I really enjoy it.

01:33:33.540 | And it's very important as, you know, as a father,

01:33:37.940 | I say this to anyone too, that you have to enjoy life.

01:33:41.660 | I mean, pursuing these things, you know, eventually,

01:33:43.940 | what, you know, the value is in the pursuit,

01:33:48.580 | not in achieving them anyhow.

01:33:49.900 | So you might as well pursue many things at the same time.

01:33:52.340 | I mean, a good meal, eaten properly,

01:33:54.660 | can be very, very nice too.

01:33:56.300 | - I love that about you.

01:33:58.860 | It's something I'm working on.

01:34:00.940 | I remember when I, along those lines,

01:34:02.740 | I remember when I was in graduate school,

01:34:04.740 | we published a paper,

01:34:06.020 | and then we published a second paper in science.

01:34:08.700 | And I remember thinking, like,

01:34:09.820 | this is like such a proud moment,

01:34:11.060 | a first author paper in the journal "Science."

01:34:13.060 | And I told you, and you said,

01:34:15.340 | "Well, enjoy it and just be aware that by tomorrow,

01:34:20.340 | you'll be worried that you'll never do it again."

01:34:23.580 | - Exactly, yeah.

01:34:25.220 | - And fortunately, we published in "Nature"

01:34:27.780 | and a few other journals a bunch of times after that.

01:34:29.860 | But you also warned me about the postpartum

01:34:32.700 | of post excitement, like something great happens.

01:34:37.780 | You know, at that time, we, as a field of neuroscience,

01:34:40.140 | didn't really understand dopamine dynamics,

01:34:42.060 | but now we do.

01:34:42.900 | What you were describing is this trough in dopamine

01:34:44.860 | that we get a day or two after some big event.

01:34:48.420 | - Yes.

01:34:49.260 | - Typically, postpartum is associated

01:34:50.080 | with the birth of a child,

01:34:50.920 | but it could be, you know, getting a degree

01:34:52.820 | or a great party or a paper in "Science" or "Nature,"

01:34:55.660 | first author paper.

01:34:56.940 | And you said, "A couple of days from now,

01:34:58.980 | you're gonna feel low and you just have to wait."

01:35:01.540 | And I'll never forget what you said.

01:35:03.340 | You said, "Just go back to what inspired the first project,

01:35:07.920 | pick a different problem, it'll happen again."

01:35:10.260 | And the second time it happened, I was like,

01:35:11.580 | "He was right, it happened again and again and again."

01:35:13.900 | I haven't had an infinite number of those papers

01:35:15.860 | in those journals, but I learned about

01:35:17.980 | the dopamine dynamics associated with pursuing a goal.

01:35:21.140 | And then you get the thing and you're very excited

01:35:25.140 | and then you feel the drop.

01:35:26.580 | - Yes, yes.

01:35:27.820 | And that, I think, that is something

01:35:29.340 | that even ancient philosophers knew about it.

01:35:32.140 | The Buddha, many, you know, the Greeks and so on,

01:35:35.340 | this idea that the things we pursue,

01:35:38.660 | they are ephemeral in a way,

01:35:39.780 | in the way the feelings, they elicit in us, you know?

01:35:43.140 | And I think that you're right.

01:35:44.740 | And there is also another tendency one has to try to avoid,

01:35:48.060 | which is you're successful in something

01:35:49.820 | and you continue doing exactly the same thing

01:35:52.220 | because, you know, by now you know how to do it

01:35:54.140 | with your hands tied here.

01:35:55.660 | And I always felt that I want to go elsewhere.

01:35:57.860 | And, you know, I have sort of a reputation

01:36:00.260 | for changing fields and, you know,

01:36:03.100 | I don't do that in order for others to be puzzled by it.

01:36:06.500 | It's just that I'm curious

01:36:07.740 | and I want to have a feeling again,

01:36:09.700 | that like falling in love, you know, the new thing,

01:36:12.900 | you know, it's nice at the beginning,

01:36:14.380 | but eventually whatever you're doing,

01:36:16.340 | it becomes, you know, trite and so on.

01:36:18.580 | - Yeah, let's talk about that because after chaos,

01:36:22.180 | which brought a lot of, you know,

01:36:23.580 | I remember we had reporters in our house

01:36:25.340 | and there was like a TV and the book by Jim Glick,

01:36:28.340 | and then you switched to something completely different.

01:36:31.540 | - Yes, yes.

01:36:32.380 | - And you got into computer science.

01:36:33.540 | - Yeah, well, computer science is a--

01:36:35.220 | - Computers. - Computers.

01:36:36.300 | What happened was that a lot of the success that we had

01:36:39.780 | was because I was at PARC.

01:36:40.940 | We had phenomenal computer facilities there,

01:36:43.620 | things that we could visualize at a time

01:36:45.140 | very few people could do.

01:36:46.780 | And so, and one of them actually,

01:36:48.500 | someone suggested I get a patent.

01:36:49.900 | There is a patent for the chaos

01:36:51.980 | that sometimes people have in T-shirts

01:36:53.580 | that actually we discovered for the first time

01:36:55.300 | with guys from UC Santa Cruz,

01:36:57.220 | with Jim Crutchfield and so on.

01:36:59.100 | You know, he was actually very instrumental

01:37:01.700 | in getting me into chaos and so on.

01:37:03.220 | But that is, but when I, what happened was,

01:37:05.860 | okay, so we did this, we did quantum.

01:37:08.220 | And then one day I said, okay, so what do I do now?

01:37:10.500 | Okay, well, you can go and publish one paper

01:37:12.500 | after that in chaos.

01:37:13.340 | I mean, you can produce 10 PhDs with this.

01:37:16.300 | But then I said, why don't I do the opposite?

01:37:18.100 | I'm using computers to help me in the physics.

01:37:19.940 | Why don't I use the physics to study computers?

01:37:22.420 | Well, that's an interesting idea,

01:37:24.020 | but you know, I mean, so why don't you do that?

01:37:27.060 | So what happened to me,

01:37:28.980 | I was at a meeting on chaos in Copenhagen

01:37:31.420 | and I couldn't sleep one night

01:37:32.740 | and I had a book called "The Computer Red Brain"

01:37:35.260 | by John von Neumann,

01:37:36.700 | perhaps someone that was a true genius.

01:37:38.780 | I don't know if you heard of him.

01:37:40.100 | He invented computers.

01:37:41.980 | He was a phenomenon at all levels.

01:37:44.620 | And he was part of the Manhattan Project.

01:37:47.460 | He was perhaps one of the most brilliant people

01:37:49.260 | that ever existed, at least that we are aware of.

01:37:51.140 | I mean, he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies

01:37:53.100 | for Neumann.

01:37:54.100 | There are all sorts of anecdotes about him.

01:37:55.980 | He had a photographic memory.

01:37:57.220 | You could give him a page of a phone book.

01:37:59.500 | He would look at it, close it,

01:38:00.620 | and then he would recite the phone numbers

01:38:02.220 | from bottom to top.

01:38:03.820 | - Totally useless skill.

01:38:05.340 | - Yeah, but he was a genius, a genius, true genius.

01:38:08.700 | He invented computers.

01:38:09.820 | He invented game theory in economics.

01:38:12.540 | I mean, it was- - Useful skill.

01:38:14.380 | - Yeah, exactly, okay.

01:38:15.820 | In any event, so he wrote a very little book

01:38:17.780 | called "The Computer and the Brain."

01:38:19.420 | No equations, nothing.

01:38:20.540 | And one night, four o'clock in the morning,

01:38:22.500 | I cannot sleep.

01:38:23.340 | I get down, you know, it was summer,

01:38:24.700 | so the sun was still setting in Copenhagen.

01:38:26.900 | And I went there to read it.

01:38:27.740 | And I said, "This is what I'm going to do.

01:38:29.980 | I don't know anything about brains,

01:38:31.500 | but I can imagine, you know,

01:38:32.900 | if the brain is like a computer,

01:38:34.140 | I could do something like that.

01:38:35.580 | But I also want to apply some of what I know

01:38:37.540 | to these things."

01:38:38.780 | And the first thing that occurred to me

01:38:41.180 | was to start looking at the computer network

01:38:43.060 | we had at Park.

01:38:44.380 | These computers were communicating with each other

01:38:46.140 | as we nowadays, we know, that's the internet and so on.

01:38:49.220 | So there were many, many aspects of this.

01:38:52.540 | And I decided that because I was very influenced

01:38:55.700 | by one or two students that were very much into economics

01:38:58.540 | and libertarian ideas and so on.

01:39:00.180 | And one of them had taken two courses in econ at Caltech.

01:39:03.980 | So we decided to start looking at this as a market

01:39:06.460 | where computers essentially buy and sell programs

01:39:09.980 | to execute in their machines and so on.

01:39:11.620 | So we started really doing

01:39:13.100 | what we call the ecology of computation.

01:39:15.100 | It was a big effort,

01:39:16.620 | which married economics

01:39:18.340 | with artificial intelligence and computer.

01:39:20.820 | But it became a big thing.

01:39:22.180 | And so I became, again, it's like falling in love again.

01:39:24.980 | It's a new field.

01:39:25.860 | I thought it was great.

01:39:27.260 | - Yeah, the discovery process of falling in love

01:39:28.940 | is half the fun.

01:39:30.300 | - Absolutely, yeah.

01:39:31.140 | And I also was able to, I mean,

01:39:33.780 | there is a lot of formalism in economics

01:39:35.740 | and some of it is really, I mean, sort of academic.

01:39:39.220 | But there are some ideas that are very profound

01:39:41.300 | to the extent that some people

01:39:42.740 | consider me an economist sometimes,

01:39:44.500 | because I think in terms of utility rewards

01:39:47.220 | and risk and all this stuff.

01:39:48.620 | And as a matter of fact,

01:39:49.460 | a lot of the work I'm doing now on resource allocation

01:39:51.820 | in networks comes from ideas from economics.

01:39:54.260 | - When you go into a new field,

01:39:55.820 | in order to learn about the field,

01:40:01.940 | is that mainly through talking to people in the field,

01:40:04.100 | reading books?

01:40:05.020 | - Both, both.

01:40:05.940 | - And it doesn't strike me

01:40:07.900 | that you have ever tried to ingratiate yourself

01:40:10.380 | into any field.

01:40:11.580 | It's not like you're trying to be a member of the field.

01:40:13.780 | Like you go in as an observer and a learner.

01:40:18.780 | - Yes, I need to say this.

01:40:21.900 | I don't think that many people have said

01:40:23.740 | if I stayed in one field,

01:40:25.580 | I would have done much better

01:40:26.660 | in terms of reputation and so on.

01:40:28.500 | As a matter of fact, I can tell you an anecdote that is--

01:40:30.740 | - You mean like awards and stuff?

01:40:32.220 | - Yeah, like for instance, not long ago,

01:40:33.980 | I was already doing computers after chaos and so on.

01:40:36.620 | I won't name the person,

01:40:38.020 | but a very good physicist professor at Berkeley

01:40:40.980 | came into my office and says,

01:40:42.060 | Bernardo, we have an issue here.

01:40:43.260 | I said, what is it?

01:40:44.260 | That your name for a membership

01:40:46.220 | in the National Academy of Sciences is coming up.

01:40:48.780 | I said, oh, that's nice.

01:40:50.220 | He said, well, it's a problem.

01:40:51.460 | You're not writing papers in physics.

01:40:53.220 | You're writing papers in computer science.

01:40:54.660 | And we need a physicist because otherwise,

01:40:57.180 | the chemists will get that job.

01:40:58.660 | The physicists don't--

01:40:59.660 | - Like welcome to academia.

01:41:00.820 | - Yeah, so I said, well, you want me to do?

01:41:02.940 | He said, well, can you perhaps write one or two more papers

01:41:05.700 | on this so we can show?

01:41:06.540 | I said, no, I cannot do that.

01:41:07.900 | I can't.

01:41:08.860 | - Well, isn't there a famous story about Feynman

01:41:12.100 | and being elected to the National Academy?

01:41:13.780 | - Yeah, he refused to, yes.

01:41:15.020 | - Right, I think they told him

01:41:16.580 | he was in the National Academy.

01:41:18.180 | And then he said, well, what do I do?

01:41:19.540 | And they said, well, you elect in other members.

01:41:22.100 | And he said, I quit.

01:41:23.940 | - Well, yeah, so in any event,

01:41:25.340 | I never became a member of the National Academy.

01:41:27.260 | - But you never sought prizes.

01:41:29.380 | - No, I mean, I would have liked to get them.

01:41:31.140 | Why not?

01:41:31.980 | I mean, it's not that I said they are meaningless,

01:41:35.380 | but there was nothing that I could do about it.

01:41:37.740 | And since I was not, as you said,

01:41:39.820 | I was always a little bit of a,

01:41:41.780 | always moving on to the next thing,

01:41:43.700 | never staying long enough going to these meetings

01:41:46.500 | where by now you heard it all over and over and over again.

01:41:49.900 | So, yeah.

01:41:51.100 | - Yeah, I mean, I have to say that,

01:41:52.700 | you know, like, I mean, as you know,

01:41:54.540 | I still have my position at Stanford

01:41:55.980 | and teach, I'm involved in a little bit of research.

01:41:59.300 | But, you know, one of the great advantages I had

01:42:03.860 | is that all my advisors died or killed themselves.

01:42:07.060 | So I was orphaned in science.

01:42:09.140 | And so there was never an expectation from my advisors

01:42:11.740 | that I do the next thing 'cause they were dead.

01:42:14.500 | So I thought about that,

01:42:18.260 | but I remember when I launched the podcast

01:42:20.380 | or started going on podcasts,

01:42:21.580 | I remember you being a little bit concerned.

01:42:23.740 | You're like, you know,

01:42:24.580 | what are your colleagues gonna think?

01:42:25.540 | And I think at that point,

01:42:27.100 | the way that science was going and the structure of academia

01:42:32.180 | relative to what my needs in life were

01:42:34.140 | and just a passion to wanting to do something new,

01:42:36.780 | I put a lot of thought to the fact

01:42:38.500 | that you've changed fields many times.

01:42:40.700 | And I just felt absolutely compelled

01:42:43.860 | to get into science communication.

01:42:45.460 | And there was no stopping that.

01:42:47.060 | But I have to thank you a lot of the reason

01:42:49.500 | I was able to take the step to do the podcast

01:42:52.500 | in addition to being supported by Lex Friedman's suggestions

01:42:55.380 | and a lot of help from others,

01:42:56.860 | Joe Rogan and others.

01:42:59.940 | But is that, I was like,

01:43:02.460 | well, that's what you're supposed to do.

01:43:03.980 | When you hit a point where what you're doing

01:43:07.140 | isn't as compelling,

01:43:08.140 | you wait for the thing that draws you forward.

01:43:10.580 | Seems like you were always drawn forward.

01:43:12.020 | I was thinking of carrot and stick.

01:43:13.300 | It's not like you disliked where you were.

01:43:15.380 | It's that there was some carrot that you identified

01:43:17.340 | and you go towards the carrots.

01:43:18.540 | - And also something very,

01:43:20.340 | the other day, my wife was actually mentioning,

01:43:22.740 | I've been, in a sense, an orphan.

01:43:24.220 | I never had mentors.

01:43:25.820 | It's very interesting.

01:43:26.660 | - Except this, frankly, not terrific graduate advisor.

01:43:30.340 | - He was not my mentor, really.

01:43:31.700 | I mean, you know, he didn't even want me

01:43:32.980 | to do the things that I wanted to do.

01:43:35.180 | So I never had someone who was whispering,

01:43:38.460 | Bernardo is the guy too,

01:43:39.500 | you should be considering for this or that.

01:43:41.220 | I mean, I had the fortune to really get to the top

01:43:44.700 | of many of these fields

01:43:45.660 | and I interacted with the top people.

01:43:47.460 | I mean, we talk about Feynman and Gell-Mann.

01:43:49.300 | There are many very famous people

01:43:51.060 | that I respect immensely that I met when I was in France.

01:43:54.900 | You know, as you know, I was teaching there.

01:43:56.340 | I met people that are brilliant and so on.

01:43:58.140 | And I felt treated with tremendous amount of respect

01:44:00.660 | as a colleague and so on.

01:44:01.660 | But I never had mentors in that sense.

01:44:03.780 | And also, as I said, I am a little bit restless.

01:44:06.820 | I am very curious about everything.

01:44:09.180 | And so, you know, sometimes I see something

01:44:11.260 | and I say, oh, there's an opportunity

01:44:12.460 | to do something interesting.

01:44:13.740 | I think that the issue of being curious

01:44:15.900 | is extremely important.

01:44:17.260 | And it's interesting because I reflect a lot

01:44:19.380 | on, say, my father.

01:44:20.540 | My father was an immensely curious person,

01:44:22.780 | but all about details.

01:44:24.260 | He never liked abstractions of any kind.

01:44:27.020 | He was very proud that he went to the same school I went

01:44:30.620 | and the only course he flanked was philosophy

01:44:34.340 | because he said it doesn't make any sense.

01:44:36.140 | Now, perhaps he was right about that.

01:44:37.620 | You know, sometimes you wonder about

01:44:38.820 | what these philosophers talk about.

01:44:40.580 | A couple of months ago in Denmark,

01:44:44.020 | we were invited, my wife and I,

01:44:45.700 | to a dinner with philosophers

01:44:47.460 | talking about artificial intelligence.

01:44:49.140 | I thought these people were,

01:44:50.700 | they didn't really know what was going on.

01:44:53.420 | But nevertheless, yes, I am curious

01:44:57.060 | and sometimes I move on to things.

01:44:58.660 | And I feel that the reward, the internal reward you get

01:45:01.940 | from doing something new and interesting and exciting

01:45:05.140 | is much better than a recognition

01:45:07.660 | that someone will come and say, you know, whatever.

01:45:09.780 | I mean, don't misunderstand me.

01:45:11.500 | I will not say no to a recognition.

01:45:14.020 | But it's not really that I'm,

01:45:15.460 | I do this in order to get that.

01:45:17.940 | That's not me at all.

01:45:19.540 | - Yeah, I mean, the whole thing,

01:45:22.780 | it sort of brings my thinking back

01:45:24.580 | to like the early discussions about, you know,

01:45:26.660 | other students are not interested in physics,

01:45:28.420 | you're interested in physics.

01:45:29.380 | Other people are like smoking a lot of weed

01:45:31.220 | and partying, like, no, like,

01:45:33.700 | like you said, you've not had mentors.

01:45:36.700 | That's one area in which you and I have been very different.

01:45:39.020 | I've always attached myself to mentors, many of them.

01:45:42.380 | Many of them, I mean.

01:45:43.540 | - Well, there might be a psychological reason too.

01:45:45.620 | Yeah, yeah.

01:45:47.420 | That you need this, you know,

01:45:48.540 | or needed that one point of that is parental type figures.

01:45:51.220 | Yeah, sorry, yeah, there might be.

01:45:52.700 | I wish I had them, don't misunderstand me.

01:45:54.780 | As a matter of fact, I mean, my influence on my students,

01:45:57.300 | I produce more than 15 PhDs.

01:45:59.500 | It's also strange because none of them stayed in physics.

01:46:02.940 | Now, the department at Stanford was not too happy with that.

01:46:05.900 | It's not that I told them not to,

01:46:07.100 | but they all smelled that, you know,

01:46:08.780 | I was doing something else.

01:46:10.300 | I mean, you know, from computers,

01:46:12.700 | I became very aware of what was going on

01:46:14.500 | very early on with the internet.

01:46:15.900 | As you know, I started doing all this stuff on social

01:46:18.260 | long before anyone was doing,

01:46:19.740 | and economics of attention and all that stuff.

01:46:22.100 | And many of the students, the other day,

01:46:23.580 | I found one of them, I met one,

01:46:25.460 | Lada Damich, who, you know, I think you-

01:46:27.620 | - She was early at Google.

01:46:28.900 | - No, she went to Facebook.

01:46:30.820 | And the other day, she wrote me a note.

01:46:32.700 | I was so lucky that I met you.

01:46:33.980 | She was gonna do a thesis on, I don't know what,

01:46:35.940 | solar, collecting solar.

01:46:37.380 | - Yeah, you've collected some pretty interesting students.

01:46:39.780 | They're like a pretty, we won't name names other than Laza,

01:46:43.540 | but like some of them are very well-known people

01:46:45.780 | in the tech industry now.

01:46:46.980 | - Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:46:47.820 | - And I think that, yeah, it seemed like the people

01:46:50.140 | that would gravitate towards you.

01:46:51.180 | It's interesting, your laboratory is off campus.

01:46:53.620 | So anyone that decides to be off campus

01:46:55.300 | is already making a choice toward,

01:46:56.660 | like they don't wanna be part of the standard culture.

01:46:58.340 | - But they thought it was interesting.

01:46:59.500 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:47:00.580 | So let me, I wanna get back to this issue

01:47:03.580 | of like internet and Silicon Valley.

01:47:06.300 | I recall it was the early '90s.

01:47:09.580 | So it'd be like '89, '90, '91.

01:47:12.140 | Remember I had this girlfriend, Gretchen, remember?

01:47:14.900 | And her dad was the editor of "Guitar Player" magazine.

01:47:18.260 | And I'll never forget, he told me, he said,

01:47:21.020 | "It's gonna be all about multimedia."

01:47:23.860 | Remember that?

01:47:24.700 | No one talks about multimedia.

01:47:25.700 | He said, "Your television is gonna be,

01:47:28.580 | "your computer is gonna be, your stereo is gonna."

01:47:33.580 | I mean, he was right, right?

01:47:35.140 | He was basically, everything was gonna be synthesized

01:47:37.180 | into common devices.

01:47:38.700 | And we now know that that were not to be true.

01:47:41.300 | But at what point did you decide that things like computers

01:47:45.700 | were mainly going to be a route to industry

01:47:48.580 | and not to academia?

01:47:49.820 | This is really important, I think,

01:47:51.220 | for people to understand because right now

01:47:54.460 | it's kind of happening in biomedical sciences.

01:47:56.780 | But you see this at Stanford.

01:47:57.780 | People get degrees in computer science,

01:47:59.340 | but not to become computer science professors, sometimes,

01:48:02.300 | but really so that they can go into industry.

01:48:04.440 | So how do you see nowadays, like for people

01:48:07.020 | that are interested in science or technology,

01:48:10.300 | do they need to go to graduate school?

01:48:12.020 | Like is a PhD useful anymore?

01:48:13.980 | - Peter Thiel says that you shouldn't even get a bachelor's.

01:48:16.140 | I think that's what he, you know.

01:48:17.500 | - I mean, I have great respect for Peter,

01:48:20.060 | great respect for Peter.

01:48:21.260 | There are a lot of things that are easier to say

01:48:22.900 | when you're already a billionaire.

01:48:24.180 | - No, no, no, I know.

01:48:25.020 | Like Steve Jobs saying, you know, passion is everything.

01:48:28.340 | - Right, I mean, necessary, but not sufficient.

01:48:31.060 | - Right, right, right.

01:48:31.880 | - Necessary, but not sufficient.

01:48:32.720 | - So I think that what's happening today,

01:48:34.380 | I mean, technology, we are going

01:48:36.060 | through a technological revolution.

01:48:37.580 | There's no doubt about it.

01:48:39.020 | We used to learn about the printing press

01:48:41.260 | and now it's the same thing with computers.

01:48:42.820 | I still remember, and I, you know, we, this is amazing

01:48:46.740 | because, you know, today is so, so obvious.

01:48:48.940 | I mean, people didn't know much what was going on.

01:48:50.780 | I park everything.

01:48:52.060 | One night we were having for dinner.

01:48:53.780 | I remember, you know, Emmanuel Mignot, who was, you know.

01:48:56.500 | - He discovered the orexin-hypercretin relationship.

01:48:59.660 | That's the cause of narcolepsy is a mutation.

01:49:01.620 | - Yeah, he was a friend of ours and his wife.

01:49:03.100 | They were at home with our dinner and I was telling them,

01:49:06.780 | I was telling them that you could go to a computer

01:49:09.340 | and go through the Louvre Museum in Paris.

01:49:12.460 | And they say, what are you talking about?

01:49:13.780 | So we finished dinner and we all drove to park at night.

01:49:17.660 | And I turn on my computer and there was a man.

01:49:20.420 | I still remember his name.

01:49:21.540 | Something Pioch was the last name.

01:49:23.340 | He had gone taking pictures of every painting at the Louvre

01:49:26.140 | and put them online so you could just navigate

01:49:30.180 | through the Louvre.

01:49:31.020 | Today it's obvious, trivial.

01:49:32.420 | At that time, they couldn't believe it.

01:49:33.780 | There you are in Palo Alto on an evening going

01:49:36.580 | through all the rooms of the Louvre.

01:49:38.980 | They just couldn't understand what was going on.

01:49:40.700 | - What year was this?

01:49:41.700 | - I don't remember.

01:49:42.540 | But it was just-- - Must have been like '94?

01:49:44.540 | - When the web started coming, that was right before--

01:49:47.460 | - So we all had to get email in college

01:49:49.140 | in the final year of '97.

01:49:50.660 | So it must have been somewhere around like '94, '95.

01:49:53.580 | - Something of that sort, right before,

01:49:55.380 | right at the time Andreessen made the web available

01:49:58.060 | to everybody basically, Netscape.

01:50:00.140 | So in any event, so it was an amazing thing.

01:50:04.300 | It was amazing.

01:50:05.140 | Now, all of these developments were really done

01:50:07.900 | in companies, not necessarily in academia.

01:50:10.860 | - Okay, that is an interesting point.

01:50:12.620 | And I think that today, an immense amount

01:50:15.060 | of the advances that we see in biotechnology,

01:50:18.140 | in computers, in everything are essentially done,

01:50:22.660 | I would say, for profit by companies.

01:50:24.620 | Okay, I think social networks, they started,

01:50:27.260 | we started doing social networks at a time

01:50:29.060 | when no one even thought of doing it.

01:50:30.700 | I used to say I do social science with a capitalist

01:50:32.980 | because sociologists used to study the behavior

01:50:35.460 | of five widows in some Norwegian village and write a paper.

01:50:39.100 | We could look at 150,000 people,

01:50:40.940 | how did they visit this side or that side

01:50:42.700 | and predict how, you know, we were able

01:50:45.340 | to predict behaviors, behaviors, you know?

01:50:48.180 | So I think that today, everybody knows that that's the case

01:50:51.500 | and it's, you know, the same thing

01:50:52.580 | with artificial intelligence.

01:50:53.860 | - But for a kid in high school or kids in college or kids,

01:50:57.020 | I mean, is it worth getting a graduate education?

01:50:59.300 | - Well, it all depends on what you wanna do.

01:51:00.740 | - I mean, law, medicine, you need a,

01:51:03.740 | I mean, you need the professional degree.

01:51:05.940 | I mean, these are ultimately professional degrees,

01:51:07.860 | so you need the training.

01:51:08.740 | I don't want a surgeon that didn't go to medical school.

01:51:10.860 | - Okay, but the danger is, and I remember a very,

01:51:14.100 | very bright guy I had in my team,

01:51:16.860 | you don't wanna become a blue-collar worker.

01:51:19.140 | See, what I'm saying is the following,

01:51:21.060 | being a hacker or being able to deal with software,

01:51:24.700 | it was an incredibly profitable profession.

01:51:27.260 | Now you have these large language models

01:51:29.580 | that can actually program for you.

01:51:31.140 | You need to write a program.

01:51:32.460 | You go to Chad GTP and he'll write it for you.

01:51:35.340 | So suddenly, if you don't have a set of talents,

01:51:40.340 | a way of imagining things or doing something,

01:51:43.020 | you become basically just someone that just hacks

01:51:46.420 | for so many dollars an hour.

01:51:48.700 | Now, it's true that they can give you options.

01:51:51.100 | If the company does well, you get rich and so on.

01:51:53.340 | But I still believe that you need

01:51:55.420 | some contextual cultural part to this.

01:51:59.060 | Okay, now I personally believe that humanities

01:52:03.420 | and all sorts of other things are very important.

01:52:05.140 | And to understand where is your cultural environment,

01:52:08.100 | where are you coming from

01:52:08.940 | and where is this society going is important.

01:52:11.340 | But on the other hand, as you said,

01:52:13.180 | you can just finish high school and start hacking

01:52:15.500 | and become very good at it

01:52:17.140 | and doesn't require much more than that.

01:52:19.060 | - Do you think the examples of like Zuck, Elon,

01:52:23.420 | and others going from essentially departing

01:52:29.820 | standard education to start companies,

01:52:31.540 | do you think they've served?

01:52:33.420 | I mean, certainly not talking about the companies,

01:52:35.940 | but do you think those examples are good examples

01:52:39.060 | for people to internalize or are they unicorns?

01:52:42.460 | - Well, I think that they're unicorns

01:52:44.140 | and you have to be very careful.

01:52:45.380 | We only talk about the success stories.

01:52:48.540 | We don't go and interview the guy

01:52:50.660 | that is loading a landscaping truck

01:52:53.860 | because his startup didn't go anywhere.

01:52:56.220 | Okay, so it is a very,

01:52:58.660 | our tendency to see these people as heroes

01:53:01.180 | and to try to imitate them is a very dangerous one, I think.

01:53:04.900 | Now, that doesn't mean that you should not be working

01:53:06.980 | on the things you care and gamble,

01:53:08.860 | but these are the guys who played a lottery and won.

01:53:11.820 | Do you remember there were many other social websites

01:53:14.740 | before Facebook and they all died

01:53:18.820 | and Facebook could have died too.

01:53:20.180 | I mean, Zuckerberg might disagree with me,

01:53:21.820 | but he could have died, okay?

01:53:23.900 | And all these things are like that.

01:53:26.980 | Apple, when almost under, they brought Steve Jobs again

01:53:30.380 | and the guy put them onto the stratosphere.

01:53:33.540 | And the same thing with Elon Musk,

01:53:35.220 | he's a high-risk taker.

01:53:37.780 | And so far, every time he flips the coin,

01:53:39.820 | he comes the right way.

01:53:41.300 | But to say, "I wanna be like him,"

01:53:43.700 | you have to be very careful and to calculate the odds.

01:53:47.300 | Okay, so when you say this,

01:53:49.180 | how many of these kids really make it?

01:53:51.380 | I mean, it's a very complicated thing.

01:53:53.260 | So I think that to have a strong background in something

01:53:56.020 | will help you when suddenly the field switches

01:53:59.020 | from being a programmer and making a lot of money

01:54:02.060 | to suddenly programming a dime a dozen

01:54:04.900 | or becoming a technician, basically, okay?

01:54:07.380 | - I mean, I had a perfectly thriving career

01:54:09.380 | as a lab scientist with grants and private funding

01:54:13.020 | and a bunch of other things, publishing regularly.

01:54:15.100 | And when I decided to switch to this, were you worried?

01:54:17.900 | - No, because I saw it as a very slow departure

01:54:23.940 | from what you were doing.

01:54:25.260 | And I saw the success very early on.

01:54:27.580 | I mean, I realized that you were essentially satisfying

01:54:31.020 | two things that are very important to you.

01:54:32.420 | You like to explain things.

01:54:33.980 | You're incredibly good at explaining things

01:54:35.820 | since you were a little kid.

01:54:37.300 | Okay, you were always explaining everything to people

01:54:39.660 | and you have a talent, let's face it.

01:54:41.500 | I mean, you know, I'm not saying this

01:54:43.060 | because I wanna flatter you.

01:54:44.220 | I really believe that and everybody says that.

01:54:46.340 | The success of your podcast is a success at explaining things

01:54:49.620 | in ways that people understand.

01:54:51.500 | They don't have to go and buy a book on neuroanatomy

01:54:53.340 | to understand what you're saying.

01:54:55.100 | So I knew that this was a path.

01:54:56.460 | Now, I didn't realize how incredible the path was.

01:54:59.980 | And there was a lot of randomness in it.

01:55:01.420 | For instance, you started podcasting

01:55:03.460 | at a time when very few people were podcasting.

01:55:05.620 | If you start today,

01:55:07.180 | the story would be a very different one.

01:55:08.460 | - The timing was the pandemic, people were home,

01:55:11.140 | they were listening to podcasts.

01:55:12.220 | - And this brings to something to me

01:55:13.820 | that many times people have asked me about me.

01:55:15.860 | What makes me do what I do?

01:55:18.900 | I believe in the idea of walking on beaches

01:55:21.300 | with very few footprints.

01:55:24.380 | When you go into a crowded field, it's a mess.

01:55:26.460 | So many of the times that I move into something else

01:55:28.660 | is when I realize that there's a mob scene

01:55:30.420 | of scientists working at this

01:55:31.860 | and the chances of doing something interesting

01:55:34.860 | are very, very small, okay?

01:55:36.740 | The internet has allowed information to go everywhere.

01:55:39.500 | A guy in Zambia can actually read the same things

01:55:42.540 | that I read here.

01:55:43.780 | So it's very hard to compete against such a crowd.

01:55:46.460 | And many people are brilliant and many of them are smart.

01:55:50.060 | So you started something very early on

01:55:52.420 | and you were lucky that you chose a field

01:55:54.460 | that resonates with the needs of people, okay?

01:55:57.260 | There are also other people

01:55:58.420 | who do a podcasting and goes nowhere.

01:56:00.500 | So I think that I never worried.

01:56:02.940 | I actually was elated to see the trajectory of your podcast.

01:56:07.940 | The only thing is you have a tenure position

01:56:13.420 | and that is a nice safety cushion if everything else were.

01:56:17.820 | Today you're beyond the reach of justice, as I say.

01:56:20.620 | So no problem, you don't need it in a sense, unless you-

01:56:23.740 | - No one's beyond the reach of justice.

01:56:25.180 | But yeah, I still maintain my tenured position.

01:56:27.100 | I spoke to my chairman in ophthalmology this morning

01:56:29.100 | and I'll teach this spring or in the fall.

01:56:31.340 | - And it's good for you too,

01:56:32.260 | to really interact with young people

01:56:34.100 | and to hear what they care and so on.

01:56:36.220 | But I never worried in the sense that I thought

01:56:38.580 | that you have enough talent to do well

01:56:41.300 | and you chose to do it.

01:56:42.940 | I mean, I remember during COVID at the beginning,

01:56:45.860 | we were at your sister's house

01:56:47.340 | and you were drawing all these little diagrams.

01:56:49.180 | - I used to put my drawings. - Yeah, yeah.

01:56:50.740 | And then, so I think you put them on Twitter

01:56:52.340 | or something of that sort.

01:56:53.180 | And it was the beginning of something

01:56:54.820 | much more interesting and important.

01:56:56.780 | And so I never worried about it.

01:56:58.900 | I think that all of us, the whole family

01:57:01.660 | and those who know you are sort of impressed

01:57:04.580 | at the explosive success of the story here.

01:57:07.300 | Your podcast is amazing.

01:57:09.260 | I mean, I don't have to tell you.

01:57:10.940 | - That's what reflects a kind of an early compulsion

01:57:13.260 | more than anything of learn and teach, learn and share.

01:57:16.500 | - Yeah, but there's also, I need to say something.

01:57:18.820 | The other day, actually, we were watching your interview

01:57:21.500 | with Esther Perel and regardless of the fact

01:57:23.940 | that I think it's a great interview,

01:57:25.820 | both my wife and I were reflecting on the fact

01:57:29.100 | that it's also an incredible tribute

01:57:30.820 | to the way you conduct an interview.

01:57:32.860 | Okay, so there is a talent there.

01:57:34.980 | I mean, not many people can take someone

01:57:37.700 | and talk for, and make it interesting,

01:57:39.780 | let's put it that way.

01:57:40.620 | So you have that.

01:57:41.460 | - I inherited your curiosity.

01:57:43.020 | - No, but it's more than that.

01:57:44.140 | It's also a way of drawing people out and so on,

01:57:46.860 | which is also part of your practice.

01:57:49.140 | So I never had any doubts.

01:57:50.460 | They are the opposite.

01:57:51.420 | I mean, the issue is, you know,

01:57:53.220 | obviously you're taking it to many, many places

01:57:56.140 | long beyond what you started,

01:57:58.100 | which was essentially explain to people

01:58:00.660 | how neuroscience works, right?

01:58:02.140 | - Yeah, we've gone into a lot of health domains

01:58:04.100 | and other things.

01:58:04.940 | And I'm also been blessed with an amazing team.

01:58:08.700 | This is something that I think,

01:58:10.580 | while we share a lot of things in common, if I may,

01:58:13.180 | I mean, I've always been kind of a pack animal, you know,

01:58:17.900 | if it was skateboarding, like draw friends together,

01:58:19.940 | if it's birds, I have my bird club with Eddie Chang,

01:58:22.140 | who now, as you know, is the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF.

01:58:25.060 | It's kind of wild to think about,

01:58:26.700 | but yeah, I've rarely gone alone.

01:58:30.340 | Like I'm just struck.

01:58:31.500 | I mean, we've had many conversations over the years,

01:58:33.740 | but I'm just struck at how you've been able to be,

01:58:36.980 | you've been a bit of a lone wolf

01:58:38.860 | with these different camps.

01:58:39.900 | You make friends, you have colleagues,

01:58:41.220 | you maintain long-term relationships.

01:58:43.100 | - I have groups of people who collaborate with me.

01:58:44.460 | I don't do this alone, the opposite.

01:58:46.140 | - Right, right.

01:58:46.980 | But I haven't changed crowds very often, you know,

01:58:51.660 | and it seems like you've had to go into, you know,

01:58:53.220 | economics and theoretical physics and all these things.

01:58:55.460 | And yeah, that's an interesting difference.

01:58:59.900 | And look-

01:59:00.740 | - And it's daunting and thrilling at the same time.

01:59:03.260 | Sometimes when you start giving talks

01:59:04.620 | in a field that you've never done much before

01:59:06.980 | and you see this audience, you know,

01:59:09.140 | can be intimidating too.

01:59:11.140 | You know, even when I started doing chaos,

01:59:12.900 | I thought I was doing very well

01:59:14.420 | till I gave a talk at Berkeley

01:59:16.220 | and there was a mathematician.

01:59:17.380 | I regard mathematicians as the top, top people in the world.

01:59:20.700 | And I was saying something and the guy,

01:59:22.940 | he's a very famous mathematician.

01:59:24.620 | He said, "That's a lie."

01:59:26.780 | I said, "What do you mean?"

01:59:28.060 | He said, "Can you prove it?"

01:59:29.020 | "No, because you know, physicists don't prove theorems."

01:59:31.460 | He said, "Well, then it's a lie.

01:59:33.020 | You cannot prove it's a lie."

01:59:34.500 | It was quite a, you know, a cold shower.

01:59:36.740 | - That happens to me on Twitter every now and again,

01:59:38.700 | where they'll find something where I misspoke

01:59:40.340 | and they do it and it's super embarrassing.

01:59:42.140 | You correct yourself, you move on.

01:59:42.980 | - No, no, and then you learn things too.

01:59:44.460 | And you have a conversation with someone.

01:59:45.300 | - And you never forget those things.

01:59:46.940 | This is what I learned.

01:59:47.780 | Like you never forget the errors you made.

01:59:49.980 | Like on a qualifying exam,

01:59:52.020 | most people will never take a qualifying exam,

01:59:53.700 | but they basically ask you questions

01:59:54.940 | until you get something wrong.

01:59:56.380 | The moment you say, "I don't know,"

01:59:57.500 | or you get something wrong,

01:59:58.860 | that's an important moment

02:00:00.580 | because it's also the thing that you go look up

02:00:02.540 | and you never forget.

02:00:03.660 | - Yeah, right.

02:00:04.500 | And also the tiny humiliations can be very good too for you.

02:00:07.260 | I mean, this is very important.

02:00:08.460 | - I've had plenty of those.

02:00:09.700 | - I've had plenty of those.

02:00:10.540 | - I do too.

02:00:11.380 | I mean, I think it's a very, very important part

02:00:12.740 | of growing up and discovering

02:00:14.540 | that you don't understand something.

02:00:16.060 | But I always, I need to say this.

02:00:17.700 | I mean, in spite of the fact that you paint me

02:00:19.420 | as a lone wolf, I'm not.

02:00:21.620 | I'm very social and I love interacting with people.

02:00:24.780 | And I've always been very lucky

02:00:27.060 | that I surround myself with groups of people,

02:00:28.820 | including today, that are brilliant

02:00:31.660 | and resonate with the kinds of things I want to do.

02:00:34.340 | And so it's very stimulating.

02:00:36.740 | I'm not the kind of person that sits in a corner

02:00:38.500 | and does theories and publish it.

02:00:40.260 | I publish papers on my own.

02:00:41.860 | That was my romantic period

02:00:44.500 | where I needed to be Einstein in the patent office.

02:00:46.780 | And not that I thought I was Einstein,

02:00:48.260 | but it was very important.

02:00:50.220 | I was the only author, okay?

02:00:52.420 | Today, I don't mind putting my name, whatever,

02:00:54.300 | and I don't need it.

02:00:55.340 | I mean, I have hundreds of papers

02:00:56.660 | and lots, you know, more than enough patents and so on.

02:00:59.980 | So I like interacting with people.

02:01:03.020 | It's very, very important to me.

02:01:04.300 | When I have an idea, I need to tell people about an idea.

02:01:07.740 | So I can relate.

02:01:09.700 | - Yes, yes, yes.

02:01:10.540 | So that's very good.

02:01:11.540 | And I still see some of my old students and collaborators,

02:01:14.460 | like, you know, Ted and so on.

02:01:15.740 | And we take walks every once in a while

02:01:17.780 | and discuss things, you know?

02:01:19.020 | And so I learned a lot from him too.

02:01:21.260 | - Right now you're working, as I understand,

02:01:23.860 | on quantum internet.

02:01:25.580 | - Yes.

02:01:26.780 | - This is a mysterious term to most everybody.

02:01:28.740 | - Yes, yes.

02:01:30.180 | - You alluded to it earlier about quantum entanglement

02:01:33.220 | or about entanglement.

02:01:34.060 | - Yes.

02:01:35.220 | - But my understanding is that foreign governments,

02:01:38.940 | countries, and our government and country

02:01:43.260 | are very interested in quantum internet.

02:01:45.460 | - Yes.

02:01:46.300 | - That it might actually be at least as important as AI,

02:01:50.180 | maybe more important for security reasons, et cetera.

02:01:53.940 | Can you explain quantum internet

02:01:55.540 | in a way that I can understand

02:01:56.780 | and the listeners can understand?

02:01:57.620 | - Yes, I can explain.

02:01:58.460 | I mean, I'll tell you the original thing.

02:02:00.380 | Quantum mechanics was essentially finished in 1925.

02:02:03.420 | So we're not reinventing new physics here, okay?

02:02:06.300 | There's the physics of the gravitation and quantum,

02:02:08.820 | but that's not really what we're talking about.

02:02:10.980 | What happens is the following.

02:02:12.140 | The basis of all secure interactions

02:02:14.980 | in the internet on computers are based on the idea

02:02:18.820 | that there are certain mathematical equations or functions

02:02:22.140 | that are very hard to resolve.

02:02:24.660 | So when I send you something encoded,

02:02:26.740 | if someone is listening to that conversation

02:02:28.940 | that is encoded and tries to read it,

02:02:31.500 | it's very, very hard to do

02:02:32.860 | because in order to decode that code,

02:02:34.700 | it's some kind of symbols and so on,

02:02:36.660 | you need to, I don't know,

02:02:38.980 | months or years of a computer to do it, okay?

02:02:42.420 | But it can be done.

02:02:44.380 | Computers get broke,

02:02:45.980 | computer codes get broken all the time

02:02:48.140 | because the basis of these codes are mathematical functions.

02:02:51.940 | You have a mathematical function,

02:02:53.460 | you can create a computer program

02:02:55.060 | that will try to unravel it and it can be unraveled.

02:02:58.420 | Okay, so that's one thing.

02:03:00.220 | Now here comes quantum mechanics.

02:03:01.860 | Quantum mechanics provides security

02:03:03.740 | that is not given by mathematics,

02:03:07.340 | but by the laws of physics.

02:03:09.260 | So if you have a way of sending messages

02:03:13.420 | from one computer to the other,

02:03:15.060 | encrypted using quantum mechanisms,

02:03:17.460 | they cannot be broken.

02:03:20.220 | - Can you give me an example of a quantum mechanism

02:03:22.580 | for encoding information?

02:03:24.220 | - Imagine that I'm sending you messages.

02:03:27.300 | Every message is encoded in binary, ones and zeros, okay?

02:03:30.100 | So I'm sending a message which is a string of ones and zeros.

02:03:33.180 | That string of ones and zeros could be hello, Andrew,

02:03:35.420 | or it could also be something, you know,

02:03:36.980 | that is secretly encoding to something.

02:03:39.140 | If it's classical encryption, which is what we use today,

02:03:43.500 | a computer in principle can look at those symbols

02:03:45.900 | and unravel them.

02:03:46.980 | Now let me show you how it works in quantum.

02:03:50.580 | In quantum, when I send you a quantum message,

02:03:53.940 | the act of touching it, trying to look at it, destroys it.

02:03:59.660 | That's what happens in quantum, not in classical thing.

02:04:02.460 | I can look at the strings of ones and zeros,

02:04:04.340 | and I look at them, and I can make a copy of it,

02:04:06.660 | and then I read them, I take them to my lab,

02:04:08.300 | and I decrypt them, okay?

02:04:10.580 | If I look at a string of qubits, quantum bits moving,

02:04:14.100 | that are not ones and zeros, they are different things.

02:04:16.140 | - These are moving parts?

02:04:17.340 | - Yeah, moving parts, they are usually photons.

02:04:19.100 | They go on, you can use fiber optics, you can use--

02:04:21.420 | - So these are photons, like, I know what photons are,

02:04:23.460 | so they're little bouncing energy of light?

02:04:25.940 | - Yeah, little bunches of light, because photons,

02:04:28.300 | if they're going around, they're also, you know,

02:04:30.940 | the photon could be polarized up or down or whatever,

02:04:33.580 | but if it's in a quantum state,

02:04:35.540 | which is in the intermediate between,

02:04:36.820 | the moment I look at it, the moment I capture it,

02:04:39.740 | I collapse it into one or the other, and I destroy it.

02:04:41.940 | - The interaction with it changes it.

02:04:43.580 | - The measurement destroys it.

02:04:45.140 | This is the mystery of quantum mechanics,

02:04:47.260 | that the measurement collapses, we call it the word,

02:04:51.460 | collapses into one state or the other.

02:04:53.180 | Before that, it was anything.

02:04:54.780 | We could be anything.

02:04:56.340 | So when I use quantum signals, I'm sending qubits,

02:04:59.460 | quantum bits, they're called qubits.

02:05:01.940 | The act of observing the qubit

02:05:04.740 | renders into a classical one or zero.

02:05:07.260 | So then there's no way you cannot break it.

02:05:10.660 | - So does that mean that the practical implementation

02:05:13.220 | of this equates to unbreakable code?

02:05:18.220 | - Exactly.

02:05:20.300 | - Which is why, of course, other governments,

02:05:22.980 | I mean, what I've been told is that in China,

02:05:25.740 | they're working very hard on this.

02:05:26.820 | - Oh, absolutely.

02:05:27.660 | - And that here, we're working very hard on this.

02:05:28.860 | - We are working, I'm working too, yes.

02:05:29.700 | - Yeah, you're working very hard on this.

02:05:31.020 | - Yeah, yeah, no.

02:05:32.140 | But wait, wait.

02:05:32.980 | - Who's there?

02:05:33.820 | Has anyone gotten there yet?

02:05:35.060 | - Okay, the problem is the following.

02:05:36.460 | In order to decrypt this,

02:05:39.060 | remember that I told you that you can use mathematics, okay?

02:05:42.780 | Some of these functions are incredibly complex.

02:05:44.700 | It might take the age of the universe,

02:05:46.100 | perhaps, to decode them mathematically.

02:05:48.380 | Let's not talk about quantum,

02:05:49.940 | but if you have a quantum computer,

02:05:52.060 | now we're talking about a quantum computer,

02:05:54.060 | it can do it in a couple of hours.

02:05:56.460 | A quantum computer could decode any mathematical function

02:05:59.660 | of the ones used in encryption in hours,

02:06:01.940 | whereas it would take the age of the universe

02:06:03.740 | for a monster computer,

02:06:05.380 | standard computer you can buy, to do it.

02:06:07.900 | - So in theory, whoever gets this ability first

02:06:11.180 | can read essentially all the information

02:06:13.620 | that's being sent around the world.

02:06:14.740 | - Not only that, and many people are doing,

02:06:17.540 | the Chinese, the Koreans, and we're doing,

02:06:19.220 | they are grabbing everything now that is encrypted.

02:06:21.580 | They cannot decrypt it, and they store it,

02:06:23.500 | because someday they'll be able to decrypt it.

02:06:26.100 | - But who knows if it will still be relevant?

02:06:28.820 | - Oh, but it may be.

02:06:29.860 | - And we don't know what they have.

02:06:30.700 | - Imagine, imagine, imagine if you can get,

02:06:34.180 | remember when North Korea hacked, what was it, Disney?

02:06:38.940 | One of the, and then they discovered all these emails

02:06:41.420 | where people, like George Clooney, I don't know who,

02:06:43.700 | they was complaining about this or that.

02:06:45.540 | So imagine-- - And worse.

02:06:47.180 | - And worse, and worse.

02:06:48.020 | - We just didn't hear about that.

02:06:48.860 | - Yeah, yeah, okay.

02:06:49.700 | So if you grab all this information,

02:06:51.940 | we cannot decrypt it today,

02:06:53.300 | but if quantum computers become available,

02:06:55.100 | and there are people working on quantum computing,

02:06:57.660 | they'll be able to decrypt it.

02:06:59.260 | In the meantime, people are working

02:07:01.620 | on deploying these quantum networks.

02:07:03.500 | We're working on that too.

02:07:04.780 | Not to deploy them, but just to see

02:07:06.180 | whether or not it's feasible to do that, okay?

02:07:08.660 | The Chinese are ahead of almost everybody.

02:07:11.020 | They have two satellites already in orbit

02:07:12.940 | that are sending these qubits.

02:07:14.700 | So these are impossible to decrypt, okay?

02:07:17.420 | - Wait, so they're sending the qubit,

02:07:18.980 | so you can already communicate in quantum.

02:07:20.940 | - Oh, yeah, yeah, we communicate all the time, yeah, yeah.

02:07:22.980 | I have a lab in Colorado that does that, yeah, absolutely,

02:07:25.340 | over 100 kilometers, yeah.

02:07:26.940 | - But that's not what standard internet is using.

02:07:29.020 | - No, no, no, no, but eventually,

02:07:30.420 | we will have a quantum internet based on all this,

02:07:33.060 | because in order to talk to these quantum computers,

02:07:34.900 | you have to send qubits, not just normal bits.

02:07:37.500 | - So this is a race.

02:07:38.980 | - Yeah, a race.

02:07:39.820 | We are not really, I mean, since we are not a, yeah, yeah,

02:07:42.500 | and there are a lot of people.

02:07:44.820 | I need to tell you that a lot of people,

02:07:46.340 | including this government, that claim

02:07:47.540 | that this is not really that relevant or important,

02:07:50.740 | but in Europe, for instance,

02:07:52.140 | that they're really putting a lot of money into that.

02:07:54.100 | - Why would our government not think it's important?

02:07:56.180 | - Because there is a sociological phenomenon here.

02:08:00.340 | Cryptography has always been

02:08:02.500 | the promise of the mathematicians,

02:08:04.340 | because there are mathematical functions,

02:08:05.900 | you know, like discrete logarithms and so on.

02:08:08.540 | They believe, the moment they heard about quantum computers,

02:08:11.140 | they said, "Oh, we can solve the problem.

02:08:12.700 | "We can create algorithms, mathematical algorithms,

02:08:15.340 | "that are gonna be even harder to break."

02:08:17.980 | They call that post-quantum,

02:08:20.020 | but there is, they don't know it's true.

02:08:22.220 | The United States government is following this post-quantum

02:08:25.660 | because they think it's easier and so on.

02:08:27.660 | Already, they published two of these very, very fancy,

02:08:30.980 | although two students with a laptop

02:08:32.460 | were able to decrypt it within a week.

02:08:34.300 | So obviously, you cannot prove

02:08:35.740 | that no one will ever decrypt these things, okay?

02:08:38.740 | So there is, the cryptographers, they don't like physics.

02:08:41.780 | They don't, you know, they don't work as physicists.

02:08:43.700 | So they say quantum key distribution,

02:08:45.980 | that's the name of this thing.

02:08:48.820 | Esoteric, it's not important, and so on.

02:08:50.540 | And also, it won't work.

02:08:52.100 | Well, they say it's gonna work for short distances,

02:08:54.580 | about 10 to 20 kilometers.

02:08:56.380 | We just published a paper that got tremendous publicity

02:08:59.260 | and an award and so on as best paper,

02:09:01.380 | that we were able to send this stuff over 100 kilometers.

02:09:04.780 | So I mean, and the Chinese are sending that from satellites,

02:09:08.580 | okay, so impossible to decrypt.

02:09:10.580 | Military communications, based on these kind of things,

02:09:12.940 | are impossible to decrypt.

02:09:14.500 | So they are very important.

02:09:16.100 | But there is a whole group of people

02:09:18.300 | that are saying, no, post-quantum is what we want.

02:09:21.100 | And so NIST, the National Institute of,

02:09:23.980 | I think, Science and Technology,

02:09:25.260 | they are really pushing the post-quantum thing.

02:09:28.060 | In Europe, it's the opposite.

02:09:30.340 | They're really embracing quantum.

02:09:32.580 | I mean, I was, Denmark, for instance,

02:09:34.100 | is very far ahead into these things.

02:09:35.820 | NATO just gave them a pile of money

02:09:37.860 | to work on quantum and so on.

02:09:39.420 | So it all depends, you know, it's a complicated thing

02:09:42.260 | because the crypto people are all mathematical people.

02:09:46.500 | So they don't care about quantum.

02:09:48.580 | - Is any of this going to be useful

02:09:50.820 | for trying to understand, I don't know, how the brain works?

02:09:55.420 | - Well-- - Or is it, I mean,

02:09:56.780 | you know, there's still debate as to whether or not

02:09:58.900 | the way that we're thinking about brain function

02:10:00.740 | is even, like, the right way.

02:10:02.620 | We think about neurons, action potentials, and chemicals.

02:10:06.900 | But the physicists, whenever they kind of, like,

02:10:09.340 | poke their noses into this stuff,

02:10:11.300 | they tend to think about it a little bit differently

02:10:13.700 | or they start to think about, well, you know,

02:10:16.020 | state dependence, like, the brain that you have at 8 a.m.

02:10:18.500 | is very different than the brain you have

02:10:19.780 | at 2 a.m. or 4 in the afternoon.

02:10:21.580 | Like, maybe everything's happening differently

02:10:23.220 | and maybe some of this actually gets down

02:10:24.740 | to the quantum level.

02:10:25.900 | Like, we can't say this neuron talks to this neuron

02:10:29.300 | and when they talk in the following way,

02:10:31.620 | you get a certain output.

02:10:33.220 | Like, is there relevance here?

02:10:34.540 | - Okay, there are two things I want to say.

02:10:35.900 | Beware of physicists getting into brains, in brain work.

02:10:39.420 | I mean, they always end up--

02:10:40.260 | - It's like the new thing now.

02:10:41.740 | - Yeah, I know, I know.

02:10:42.580 | - Neuroscience, you know, has swung the doors open.

02:10:44.340 | - I was into neuroscience for a while.

02:10:45.900 | - Yeah, and I think recently, neuroscience has made

02:10:48.180 | a good move of including people from psychology,

02:10:50.820 | computation, even philosophy, economics, and biology,

02:10:54.780 | basically all levels of analysis.

02:10:57.260 | - But the other thing you asked about quantum and the brain,

02:11:01.020 | there is Roger Penrose,

02:11:02.140 | who just got the Nobel Prize in physics.

02:11:04.380 | He's one of the few people who have very esoteric ideas

02:11:07.180 | about the brain being totally quantum.

02:11:09.500 | And he's an incredibly brilliant man.

02:11:11.380 | He was the advisor of Hawking.

02:11:13.020 | - Yeah, I heard him on Lex's podcast.

02:11:14.660 | - Yes, yeah.

02:11:16.060 | - And yeah, he does have interesting ideas

02:11:18.060 | about how neurons might be communicating,

02:11:21.420 | maybe as bound networks as opposed to independent entities.

02:11:24.500 | - But no one really follows it,

02:11:26.500 | and I'm not an expert in that.

02:11:28.700 | So, Roger Penrose is the one that's pushing this.

02:11:31.300 | Many of the physicists go into brain science

02:11:33.660 | are not very clever at doing brain science,

02:11:37.300 | because, you know, I heard a story,

02:11:39.580 | I think it was Francis Crick or someone who told,

02:11:42.340 | I was at a conference and he was saying this,

02:11:44.420 | that a physicist came to him and said,

02:11:46.820 | "I decided to go into brain science."

02:11:48.980 | And so he said, "Okay, what have you done?"

02:11:50.580 | And the guy says,

02:11:51.420 | "I measure the specific heat of the brain.

02:11:53.180 | "What do I do with it, basically?"

02:11:55.220 | - I think it's good that computationally minded people

02:11:57.300 | have joined neuroscience,

02:11:58.420 | because it was getting too modal, too descriptive.

02:12:01.260 | That said, I do think that, you know, math is so important,

02:12:06.260 | but it's often used to intimidate biologists

02:12:09.780 | into thinking that their ideas either might not be true

02:12:12.020 | or that there's better ideas out there.

02:12:14.060 | I will say that when computational neuroscience first started

02:12:17.980 | it seemed like the attempts to model the brain

02:12:20.140 | were pretty feeble.

02:12:21.300 | And actually, I'll just say it, they were pretty lame.

02:12:23.860 | But now, I think with AI and LLMs,

02:12:27.700 | - Oh, that's a whole different story.

02:12:28.780 | - Like the biologists have had to step back and say,

02:12:31.860 | "Hey, you know, these math, physics, engineering AI types,

02:12:36.860 | "they have the potential to really evolve the field."

02:12:39.940 | - Right, right.

02:12:40.780 | - At least that's my stance.

02:12:41.620 | - I was at conferences where people say things like,

02:12:44.020 | "The brain is a massively parallel machine."

02:12:46.660 | And I say, "Wait, wait, are you sure of that?"

02:12:48.460 | - Yeah, that's a meaningless accent.

02:12:49.780 | - Yeah, so I said, "If I show you a row of trees,"

02:12:52.620 | and I said, "Tell me how many are they,

02:12:54.180 | "do you really take the whole thing?"

02:12:55.300 | And he said, "75, or you have to go sequentially."

02:12:58.180 | It's not parallel, it's sequential, you know?

02:12:59.820 | - But LLMs are pretty interesting, right?

02:13:01.660 | I mean, you can take four or five large language models,

02:13:05.820 | essentially sort of pseudo brains,

02:13:07.620 | and have them work on the same problem.

02:13:09.380 | It's hard to work with five people in parallel

02:13:11.220 | in a way that's coherent, right?

02:13:12.460 | You can only talk so much over one another.

02:13:15.780 | - It's very interesting.

02:13:16.620 | That's exactly what we're doing now.

02:13:17.860 | Years ago, with Jeff Frager, we wrote a paper

02:13:20.460 | on the idea of showing how programs collaborating

02:13:23.620 | with each other could solve problems very, very fast

02:13:26.020 | that humans and others cannot do.

02:13:28.300 | And it's a basis of a lot of the work we want to do now.

02:13:31.060 | Yes, and there are people who are already thinking

02:13:33.660 | of putting many, many of these LLMs together,

02:13:35.740 | and then see whether or not they do better

02:13:37.500 | than a single one, or better than a human.

02:13:39.580 | - So you think AI is going to improve life

02:13:43.060 | for the typical citizen?

02:13:45.140 | - Yes, because you can use these things

02:13:47.420 | in order to do things that were very hard to do before.

02:13:50.100 | I mean, I use them, and it's amazing.

02:13:51.860 | I mean, I just, we just published a paper

02:13:53.860 | on hallucinations in LLMs, and so,

02:13:55.740 | because they hallucinate every once in a while.

02:13:57.300 | They say anything.

02:13:58.460 | But yes, yeah, they are very useful, very useful.

02:14:01.060 | And I think that the companies that use them

02:14:03.740 | will make more money than the companies

02:14:05.180 | that produce them, like OpenAI, and so on.

02:14:07.460 | Yes, yeah, it's a very, very important field.

02:14:10.300 | - But 10, 15 years ago, whenever I'd bring up AI,

02:14:12.980 | you would chuckle and say, "This stuff is life."

02:14:14.980 | - Well, the funny thing is that the other day,

02:14:17.660 | well, I don't want to name him,

02:14:18.940 | one of the managers at Xerox, but when I was at PARC,

02:14:22.380 | I started playing with the idea of using machine learning

02:14:24.460 | to see what they can do.

02:14:25.620 | And the AI people at that time said, "That's nonsense.

02:14:28.620 | "We need to think about logic.

02:14:30.180 | "How does the brain think?

02:14:31.980 | "How do we do cognitive psychology, and so on?"

02:14:34.300 | We were just doing neural nets.

02:14:36.100 | That's exactly it.

02:14:37.420 | And the other day, I was meeting with some of these people,

02:14:39.700 | and they were saying to me, "We used to laugh at you,

02:14:42.260 | "you know, doing this stuff,

02:14:43.580 | "because we could do only very little."

02:14:45.140 | And today, it's the rage.

02:14:46.740 | Now, the difference between what I was doing

02:14:48.380 | and what is being done today is the scale.

02:14:50.700 | I mean, you know, I don't know if you know

02:14:52.340 | that they are now using nuclear power reactors

02:14:54.660 | in order to power the data centers.

02:14:56.700 | - I didn't know that.

02:14:57.540 | - But it's an immense cost of computing.

02:14:59.660 | You have no idea the amount of work it takes

02:15:02.060 | to one trillion tokens in order to get

02:15:04.900 | one of these things to work.

02:15:06.820 | - It strikes me you've always been very open-minded

02:15:10.460 | and very willing to adopt new technologies,

02:15:13.820 | but it hasn't changed your daily life very much.

02:15:16.780 | Like, not much at all.

02:15:18.540 | I remember early on, you said, you showed me the internet,

02:15:21.940 | and you said, "Be very careful."

02:15:23.580 | And I said, "Why?"

02:15:24.420 | You said, "It's like mental chewing gum."

02:15:25.980 | - Absolutely. - You chew and chew.

02:15:27.100 | Those were your words.

02:15:27.940 | You said you chew and chew, and at first it tastes good,

02:15:30.900 | then it doesn't taste very good at all.

02:15:32.660 | Then you don't taste it at all.

02:15:34.380 | And then you realize there's no nutrition.

02:15:36.900 | And I always think about that in terms of phone usage

02:15:40.740 | or web foraging behavior.

02:15:42.420 | - Yes.

02:15:43.500 | - And you still like to work.

02:15:45.860 | You take a walk in the afternoon or after eating.

02:15:49.380 | You've always been incredibly regular with your routine,

02:15:54.860 | despite the evolution of all these technologies.

02:15:57.220 | Like, you're not the guy in Silicon Valley

02:15:59.260 | who's like tricked out with all the gear.

02:16:01.020 | - No, no, no.

02:16:01.980 | Well, there is another--

02:16:02.820 | - Actually, I've never seen you at a cafe

02:16:04.220 | with a laptop.

02:16:05.260 | - Well, sometimes.

02:16:06.100 | But, well, there's another aspect to this.

02:16:07.980 | As you know, in the last, up to five years ago,

02:16:11.540 | I spent four years working on the economics of attention

02:16:14.060 | and why is it that people attend to things.

02:16:15.940 | And I really believe, and I'm not an expert,

02:16:18.460 | that there is a tremendous resonance between these machines

02:16:20.980 | and our human brains, and they are addictive.

02:16:23.820 | The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard,

02:16:26.540 | where I was direct in the labs, Meg Wickman,

02:16:29.700 | she used to say, you know,

02:16:30.740 | "I wake up in the middle of the night to look at my phone,

02:16:33.460 | "and I know people who do that.

02:16:34.700 | "And there are members of my family who do that more often

02:16:37.100 | "than I would like to see them do that."

02:16:38.380 | - You don't do that?

02:16:39.380 | - No.

02:16:40.220 | I mean, I do it, but I don't have this compulsion

02:16:43.500 | to see what's going on.

02:16:44.740 | I had a student that he said, "I love spam

02:16:47.300 | "because at least something is happening."

02:16:49.020 | - Oh my goodness.

02:16:49.860 | - He said that.

02:16:50.940 | - Spam?

02:16:51.780 | - Spam.

02:16:52.600 | He said, "I get spam and I look at it

02:16:53.880 | "because something's happening," he used to say.

02:16:56.660 | He's now a very successful financial guy.

02:16:59.140 | Stop doing that.

02:17:00.220 | Brilliant fellow, brilliant fellow.

02:17:01.660 | - But that's because maybe your internal world

02:17:03.780 | is rich enough that you don't, I mean-

02:17:05.860 | - No, but I look at news.

02:17:07.180 | I like to look at things.

02:17:08.620 | I look at videos.

02:17:09.460 | Don't misunderstand me.

02:17:10.300 | It's not that I ignore it, but yeah, I'm not, I mean,

02:17:14.360 | I mean, I like the latest things and so on,

02:17:16.540 | especially if they are beautiful and so on.

02:17:18.420 | But yeah, I'm not into whatever the latest is and so on.

02:17:21.420 | And I remember I got some Oculus things

02:17:24.020 | that I got for free- - VR.

02:17:25.340 | - I gave them to you and I never used them once or twice.

02:17:28.700 | - I'm not, I mean, I've used VR in my lab,

02:17:31.020 | but I don't want to spend time in VR.

02:17:33.960 | - And also as my conversation

02:17:36.260 | with one of your collaborators here revealed

02:17:38.620 | before this podcast, I love mechanical things

02:17:42.080 | and the details, the analog world, okay?

02:17:45.260 | So yeah, digital is interesting

02:17:46.900 | and it's fascinating in some ways,

02:17:48.340 | but I like things like mechanical watches,

02:17:52.180 | cameras that click when you press them and so on,

02:17:54.780 | but not artificially, okay?

02:17:56.820 | So I really like that.

02:17:58.340 | I like things that are very classical

02:17:59.940 | and so on in many ways, and I enjoy that.

02:18:02.320 | I like technology, don't misunderstand me,

02:18:04.300 | and I use it a lot.

02:18:06.020 | And I use it and I do new things with them

02:18:09.500 | and I get patents and so on.

02:18:10.740 | But yeah, I'm not a techie guy in the same sense.

02:18:14.300 | I enjoy, I like to have an analog life, not a digital life.

02:18:18.900 | Riding a bicycle is analog, walking is analog,

02:18:22.300 | sitting and meditating is analog.

02:18:24.240 | Of course, you can also listen through the internet

02:18:28.620 | to a good thing that helps you meditate

02:18:30.580 | or go to sleep, don't misunderstand me.

02:18:32.780 | But I don't have this fascination with things and so on.

02:18:36.420 | I mean, some people do, but-

02:18:38.060 | - It seems like a lot of people have a fascination

02:18:40.120 | with the future.

02:18:41.500 | You seem very grounded in the present.

02:18:43.300 | - I've never read a single book of science fiction.

02:18:46.220 | Most of the people I work with, and I admire them,

02:18:48.820 | they all come with ideas from books and science fiction.

02:18:51.220 | They always say, "Did you read this or that?"

02:18:52.860 | And I say, "I have no idea."

02:18:55.260 | I never liked it.

02:18:56.100 | I like to read about real people

02:18:58.700 | with real blood and real feelings.

02:19:00.380 | Science fiction, to me, is devoid of that.

02:19:02.900 | It's imagining droids doing this or that.

02:19:05.460 | I couldn't care less.

02:19:06.500 | - 'Cause I always think that physicists

02:19:08.980 | must love science fiction because-

02:19:10.860 | - Never, never, never read a single book

02:19:13.420 | or looked at it in a movie or science fiction.

02:19:15.740 | I couldn't care less.

02:19:16.780 | I don't relate to that.

02:19:18.100 | I don't think that these people display

02:19:20.380 | human-like behavior anyhow.

02:19:21.740 | So, I mean, I'm not saying that it's not interesting

02:19:24.420 | to others.

02:19:25.260 | - But you're not a futurist.

02:19:27.100 | - No, no, even though they call me a futurist

02:19:29.220 | because I always anticipate things.

02:19:30.780 | - Right, but you're not somebody who thinks

02:19:33.460 | about what life is gonna be like 100 years from now.

02:19:35.820 | - No, no, I like to know life is now.

02:19:38.540 | Yes, yes.

02:19:40.260 | And I also, as Niels Bohr once said,

02:19:43.060 | "It is hard to predict anything, especially the future."

02:19:46.180 | Okay, we all predict the past very well.

02:19:48.340 | I don't know what's gonna go.

02:19:49.540 | I mean, we've seen things happening,

02:19:51.340 | indeed, unbelievable things.

02:19:53.420 | I mean, the technology that allows you

02:19:55.500 | to become such a worldwide known phenomenon

02:19:58.340 | is because of the technology.

02:19:59.900 | Imagine if you were just declaiming

02:20:01.740 | the Roman Senate centuries ago.

02:20:05.820 | Very few people--

02:20:06.660 | - I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing now,

02:20:07.660 | but with no microphones or cameras.

02:20:09.180 | - Right, okay.

02:20:10.020 | So, yeah, I'm not a futurist, and that's it.

02:20:12.020 | The people tell me I am because I anticipate things,

02:20:15.740 | but not because I imagine a world in which, you know,

02:20:19.620 | I couldn't care less about going to Mars, for instance,

02:20:22.780 | even though Elon Musk thinks this is very important.

02:20:25.580 | - Do you think it's a cool project?

02:20:27.940 | - I don't know.

02:20:28.780 | I wanna ask him why, and then he tells me things,

02:20:32.660 | like he says things like, "Well, you know,

02:20:35.100 | "civilization is gonna die here.

02:20:36.700 | "We are gonna asphyxiate," and so I don't know.

02:20:38.900 | I mean, let it happen, I don't know.

02:20:41.140 | Just enjoy now, you know?

02:20:43.020 | - You're not worried about the future?

02:20:45.060 | - In that sense, no, I'm an optimist.

02:20:47.020 | I believe that technology will solve

02:20:48.660 | the global warming problem, everything.

02:20:50.540 | It's obvious how to solve it.

02:20:52.220 | There's nothing very mysterious, you know?

02:20:54.100 | Nuclear power is gonna do it, you know?

02:20:56.340 | Absolutely.

02:20:57.180 | - And once we get over our preconceived notions

02:20:59.900 | of nuclear power.

02:21:00.740 | - Right, but I mean, very few people have ever died

02:21:02.780 | of a nuclear accident, let's face it.

02:21:04.940 | - Yeah, they need to name it something else.

02:21:07.060 | - Might be, yeah, might be.

02:21:07.900 | - Like many things that at once were thought to be dangerous

02:21:12.740 | when renamed, you know, turn out to not be so dangerous

02:21:16.900 | when renamed, people are willing to adopt.

02:21:18.460 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

02:21:19.620 | - So, yeah, I don't really, you know,

02:21:22.020 | I don't worry too much about the future.

02:21:23.860 | I think that people are ingenious and wise enough

02:21:26.660 | to stare away from the brink, hopefully.

02:21:29.420 | - You don't seem to worry too much generally.

02:21:31.540 | You're not a big worrier.

02:21:33.180 | - No, yeah.

02:21:34.780 | - You and I are different that way.

02:21:35.940 | - Huh?

02:21:36.780 | - You and I are different that way.

02:21:37.620 | - Yeah, you worry a lot, yes.

02:21:39.340 | - Not if I keep busy.

02:21:41.860 | - Oh, okay, yeah.

02:21:43.420 | - These days, a lot less.

02:21:44.580 | I think that, I think at the transition points

02:21:47.540 | between different circumstances and at the transition points

02:21:52.180 | between different career things,

02:21:53.220 | I think it makes sense to worry.

02:21:54.540 | It sort of drives some of the urgency to make sure that,

02:21:57.700 | you know, you reach for the next rung and grab it, right?

02:22:02.700 | And not, you know, not miss.

02:22:04.500 | I mean, there's been, I think there's been elements

02:22:07.940 | of uncertainty in my life where I felt like,

02:22:10.900 | okay, I'm gonna ground the things I can control,

02:22:12.980 | but no, I don't stay up at night worrying about things.

02:22:15.700 | - Yeah, also, I think meditation

02:22:17.620 | is profoundly effective at this.

02:22:20.100 | Suddenly, you're here, and that stays.

02:22:22.540 | The past is the past.

02:22:23.580 | You cannot do anything, and the future hasn't arrived,

02:22:25.460 | so what the heck, you know?

02:22:27.420 | I really believe that, and it has helped me immensely.

02:22:30.820 | I'm very, the few things I'm very proud,

02:22:32.980 | I went for my medical checkup a year ago,

02:22:35.780 | and the doctor says, "I'd love to hear you breathe."

02:22:38.620 | I said, "What's so wrong with my breathe?"

02:22:40.420 | He said, "It's so slow and calm."

02:22:42.100 | - So you got over the white coat syndrome?

02:22:44.380 | - Yes. - Yeah.

02:22:45.340 | - Because of meditation.

02:22:46.260 | - Yeah, you sent me your lab results this morning,

02:22:48.100 | so everything looks great.

02:22:49.900 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:22:50.740 | - But you've always been regular about exercise.

02:22:53.620 | Not excessive.

02:22:54.540 | - No, no.

02:22:55.380 | - You're never one of the marathoners

02:22:56.620 | or the 5 a.m. in the pool people, but no.

02:22:59.700 | - I tried runs to run a marathon, actually, so.

02:23:03.300 | - Yeah, I mean, it's very common in the area where,

02:23:06.060 | and around Stanford, to be pretty extreme about athletics.

02:23:09.260 | That was never your thing.

02:23:10.260 | - No, no.

02:23:11.100 | - Steady, long-distance running.

02:23:13.140 | - Yeah, I told you that once.

02:23:14.220 | I'm not a sprinter, yeah.

02:23:15.380 | Some people are, and by the way, I admire them immensely.

02:23:17.980 | - You mean in life?

02:23:18.820 | We're speaking metaphorically.

02:23:19.660 | - Yeah, in general, yeah.

02:23:20.500 | There are some people who really can do things

02:23:22.100 | incredibly fast, and they move from one thing to the other,

02:23:24.300 | and so on.

02:23:25.660 | Yeah, I like people who reflect some wisdom.

02:23:29.140 | For instance, I have a,

02:23:30.540 | it's very strange for someone like me,

02:23:32.300 | but I see a Buddhist monk, and I just suddenly,

02:23:36.020 | I feel calmer by just seeing that person.

02:23:38.260 | I don't know.

02:23:40.820 | There is something, it's not just the spirituality,

02:23:42.940 | the power they have to be here, totally and absolutely.

02:23:47.380 | It's impressive to me.

02:23:48.460 | I mean, some of the people say,

02:23:49.380 | "Okay, he has funny robes," or something.

02:23:52.220 | I like that a lot.

02:23:53.300 | It's not necessarily a way, I mean,

02:23:56.300 | my therapist used to state to me that to use meditation

02:23:59.980 | to move away from trouble and troubling thoughts

02:24:04.980 | is not a good idea, so you have to embrace the world, too.

02:24:08.420 | But I use it so as just to stay calm and to enjoy

02:24:11.420 | and to see things for what they are, and I think, yeah.

02:24:14.460 | Yeah, the future is the future, I don't know.

02:24:16.580 | - Well, you can only control what you can control.

02:24:18.660 | - Right, but there are some people

02:24:20.620 | that worry all the time about the future.

02:24:22.860 | - Given your understanding of quantum mechanics,

02:24:26.940 | relativity, and the real world,

02:24:30.020 | and perhaps just generally knowing what you know

02:24:34.740 | and experiencing what you've experienced,

02:24:36.980 | do you believe in some sort of higher power organizing force

02:24:41.980 | or let's just be blunt, do you believe in God?

02:24:45.500 | - Well, okay, the word God has a lot of implications, right?

02:24:49.020 | I mean, I don't necessarily, I don't believe in a God

02:24:51.700 | that keeps track of what you and I are doing at this point.

02:24:54.820 | There are too many people, and so on,

02:24:58.020 | so I don't believe in this notion of an agent there

02:25:01.940 | that is somehow knowing what everybody on this planet

02:25:04.700 | is doing, and so on.

02:25:06.620 | I do feel sometimes, and especially because

02:25:09.780 | of the studies I have, and actually from reading people

02:25:14.260 | who have been very, very deep, you know,

02:25:16.140 | in particular the thoughts of people

02:25:17.460 | like Einstein, Heisenberg, and so on,

02:25:19.540 | that there seems to be at times a sense

02:25:21.620 | of an organizing principle in the universe,

02:25:23.940 | and to learn those rules, so there is this notion,

02:25:27.020 | I mean, philosophically, it's called pantheism,

02:25:29.060 | that God is in nature already.

02:25:31.100 | Spinoza and all these people studied this.

02:25:33.540 | That is very appealing to me, the notion

02:25:36.540 | that there is something, that this thing is,

02:25:39.460 | if it's evolving, it's like an entity,

02:25:41.300 | but not an entity that says, oh, tomorrow,

02:25:45.620 | you know, you'll die, or so on.

02:25:47.380 | I mean, you'll die, you'll die, there are lots of events

02:25:49.460 | that lead to death or to happiness, and so on,

02:25:52.460 | but not because someone is out there checking.

02:25:54.660 | I mean, I don't believe there is enough memory

02:25:57.420 | to store all this, although today I saw,

02:25:59.700 | you can buy a SanDisk memory terabyte study this big.

02:26:03.260 | So I don't believe in that, but it's a matter of belief,

02:26:07.180 | not anything else, and unfortunately,

02:26:09.060 | these beliefs are translated sometimes

02:26:11.020 | in complicated action.

02:26:12.580 | I do believe that there is a sense of mystery.

02:26:15.020 | Sometimes, I once heard, I don't know who said it,

02:26:20.580 | but it's a very good sentence that if you listen

02:26:23.140 | to Beethoven say, I mean, the man struggled,

02:26:26.540 | but it's amazing he was able to create that music.

02:26:29.380 | On the other hand, Mozart seems to have been getting

02:26:31.300 | the messages from heavens, you know, on a daily basis,

02:26:34.260 | just wrote it down.

02:26:35.420 | So some people are given this connection

02:26:38.140 | to something much bigger, and you have access to that

02:26:41.460 | through listening to that music, the experiences we have.

02:26:44.300 | - There is this idea out there that consciousness

02:26:46.220 | doesn't just exist within our brains,

02:26:48.180 | but as sort of like a collective network,

02:26:50.980 | and things come through us, not just as individuals,

02:26:53.300 | but as humans.

02:26:54.140 | - Jungian thing is a lot of that.

02:26:56.740 | I'm very interested in the word spiritual

02:26:59.220 | and what it means, you know, to see that things transcend

02:27:02.420 | our particular needs at any point.

02:27:04.860 | But the idea of a God that tells you one thing or the other

02:27:08.780 | is funny, you know, if you look at any movie,

02:27:11.340 | you know, "Braveheart" or whatever,

02:27:13.020 | you see that one group of warriors has a priest saying,

02:27:16.700 | "God is with us," and the other one is about to engage

02:27:18.980 | and says the same thing to the other group.

02:27:21.220 | That's a little bit funny, right?

02:27:22.460 | - Well, I think humans and human brains in particular

02:27:25.940 | are amazing, amazing what human brains can do.

02:27:29.860 | This computer in our heads is spectacular,

02:27:32.580 | and yet it also has limitations.

02:27:34.020 | And I think, well, put differently,

02:27:37.100 | does it make you nervous or worry you

02:27:40.420 | that I seem to have an increasing interest

02:27:43.060 | in God and religion?

02:27:45.300 | - No, I think that it's a beautiful journey

02:27:47.900 | in which you're in.

02:27:48.740 | And there are two pieces to this,

02:27:50.820 | provided you don't start using this

02:27:53.500 | to somehow spout arguments

02:27:56.700 | why people shouldn't do this or that.

02:27:58.060 | - No, no, it's only my own exploration of my own life.

02:28:00.500 | - I respect that.

02:28:01.340 | I think it's a very important thing.

02:28:03.740 | You know, there is an issue here that I read,

02:28:06.940 | reading Wilson, actually, E.O. Wilson,

02:28:09.060 | which, you know, he wrote this beautiful book

02:28:11.660 | on human nature.

02:28:12.500 | And he claims that the religious instinct

02:28:14.180 | comes out of a submissive component in us

02:28:16.700 | that animals have.

02:28:17.780 | Dogs are submissive.

02:28:19.100 | And we believe that we need to be submissive to a king

02:28:22.060 | and to something beyond a king, you know,

02:28:23.660 | some deity or something.

02:28:25.180 | That's his theory.

02:28:26.180 | - I certainly don't feel any compulsion

02:28:27.620 | to be submissive to other humans.

02:28:29.420 | I mean, I think in knowing the limitations

02:28:31.340 | of the human brain and cognition,

02:28:32.740 | I don't care how smart,

02:28:34.180 | I don't care how successful an individual or a group is,

02:28:37.980 | that it's very clear that the human brain is limited

02:28:40.340 | in parsing the universe that we're in.

02:28:42.700 | Otherwise, we wouldn't continue

02:28:43.740 | to have the same issues over and over.

02:28:45.140 | Although I do like to think that we're falling forward,

02:28:47.260 | we're evolving forward,

02:28:48.260 | as opposed to devolving as a species.

02:28:50.340 | But we tend to repeat a lot of the same mistakes

02:28:52.980 | over and over again.

02:28:54.780 | - There's also a technical thing here.

02:28:56.700 | We sometimes confuse randomness

02:28:58.900 | with premonition or God doing something.

02:29:01.420 | I mean, dodging a bullet by turning your head,

02:29:05.020 | as our next president did, is an incredible thing.

02:29:08.180 | The probability is so, so, so small.

02:29:10.780 | But that doesn't mean that there was someone

02:29:13.260 | who said, "Turn your head, do it,"

02:29:15.380 | and so the bullet would pass.

02:29:16.420 | I mean, we ascribe causality

02:29:18.500 | to something that was truly random.

02:29:20.060 | It could have also, in another scenario,

02:29:22.140 | the same turn of the head would have been to the other side

02:29:24.220 | and this person would be dead.

02:29:26.220 | So I, but sometimes we are confronted

02:29:28.740 | with these incredible coincidences

02:29:31.460 | that we cannot explain.

02:29:32.780 | And we say, "Oh, it must be God

02:29:34.580 | that made sure that you and I met

02:29:36.380 | or that we thought the same thoughts," and so on.

02:29:38.900 | - Although as a biologist who started off

02:29:42.380 | as a neurodevelopmental biologist,

02:29:44.940 | I think I just had to see,

02:29:46.820 | there are two things that changed my understanding

02:29:49.100 | of what might be possible.

02:29:50.540 | One was Barbara Chapman, my advisor,

02:29:52.420 | once treated me to an experiment.

02:29:54.500 | It was kind of a funny thing.

02:29:55.380 | Typical Barbara, you know how nerdy she was.

02:29:57.820 | She said, "Are you willing to stay up all night?"

02:30:01.220 | And I was like, "Okay, yeah."

02:30:02.620 | And she took zebrafish eggs and fertilized them.

02:30:06.540 | And I sat for 11 hours with food.

02:30:08.780 | I got up to use the restroom

02:30:09.860 | and I watched a zebrafish egg duplicate and become a fish,

02:30:17.340 | like in real time with my eyes.

02:30:19.100 | Not some movie on YouTube,

02:30:20.380 | although that's impressive too.

02:30:21.420 | People can look these up.

02:30:22.840 | But to just actually see life emerge from a set of cells

02:30:25.740 | through its own organizing principles,

02:30:27.380 | all of which can be explained by genes,

02:30:29.460 | transcription factors, the physics of the mitotic spindle,

02:30:33.100 | all, I mean, math and biology and chemistry

02:30:36.300 | can explain all of it.

02:30:37.860 | But there was something truly spectacular about it

02:30:39.900 | that seems so non-random because it's not random.

02:30:42.700 | And then the other one is that,

02:30:44.980 | I mean, I guess I've had enough experiences

02:30:46.660 | with prayer and the consequences of prayer in my real life

02:30:51.560 | that I just, I sort of can't get my head around the idea

02:30:54.180 | that there's not a God or some sort of organizing force.

02:30:57.660 | I just, I can't accept it because there's,

02:30:59.920 | yes, there's causality, reverse causality,

02:31:02.300 | correlation and mistaking correlation and causality,

02:31:04.780 | but somehow, like, I mean,

02:31:07.540 | I like to think I'm grounded in science and reality,

02:31:10.840 | but I don't think science can explain it all.

02:31:13.860 | - Oh, no, and I think that this experience

02:31:16.020 | of this spirituality, for instance,

02:31:18.660 | I remember, it still happens,

02:31:20.740 | spending a night outdoors and looking at the sky.

02:31:23.420 | I mean, it's an incredible thing,

02:31:24.820 | the stars and you feel so small,

02:31:27.380 | and yet there is order to all that.

02:31:29.580 | It's not just random stuff.

02:31:30.980 | I mean, they move according to laws

02:31:32.740 | that fortunately we humans were able to discover,

02:31:35.580 | which is an amazing thing when you think about it.

02:31:37.260 | Dogs did not discover gravity.

02:31:38.860 | - No, certainly not Costello.

02:31:40.980 | - Okay. - Costello was gravity.

02:31:42.460 | - Yeah, so I really think that there is something

02:31:46.220 | to be said about these spiritual experiences,

02:31:48.420 | and I really believe that, very importantly,

02:31:50.540 | and I listen to people talk.

02:31:52.260 | I recently have been looking at some stuff that C.S. Lewis,

02:31:55.140 | you know, he was a man who was studying the sagas

02:31:59.480 | and the mythology of the Vikings and so on,

02:32:01.860 | and eventually became a devout Christian,

02:32:04.220 | you know, thinking that this was the only answer to the,

02:32:06.580 | because all religions have the same element.

02:32:09.220 | So I understand that.

02:32:11.120 | I respect it.

02:32:12.460 | I experienced that, you know, at times in my life.

02:32:15.740 | But when I think seriously about it,

02:32:17.860 | I think that the moment, you know,

02:32:19.700 | we have this computer and, you know,

02:32:21.980 | we can get glimpses of all this,

02:32:24.700 | but I don't believe that it's this notion.

02:32:27.900 | No one can prove to me that there is someone there

02:32:30.500 | organizing my life minute by minute or second by second.

02:32:34.020 | I don't believe that.

02:32:35.360 | I do believe that there are fantastic chances in life

02:32:38.060 | and randomness, beautiful ones, okay?

02:32:40.820 | And, you know, having you and Lara as children

02:32:45.100 | is a fantastic randomness in my life.

02:32:47.420 | - Hopefully it wasn't too random.

02:32:48.820 | - No, no, in the sense that, you know, children,

02:32:50.860 | you know, children that come unhealthy, whatever.

02:32:54.020 | I mean, you know, it's a very impressive thing.

02:32:56.260 | - Yeah, the number of things that have to organize

02:32:58.100 | to create a healthy child is, it's truly a miracle.

02:33:02.180 | - Yeah, true, true.

02:33:03.660 | Yeah, and I think, but a lot of it is random too, you know?

02:33:06.780 | I mean, the same set of parents

02:33:08.700 | can produce two different set of children too, okay?

02:33:12.180 | I mean, that's a very, very important--

02:33:13.020 | - Well, Lara and I are pretty different.

02:33:15.060 | - Oh, absolutely, but in very beautiful ways too.

02:33:17.500 | So, I mean, neither of you does behave

02:33:21.100 | or conducts a life that, you know, I would be unhappy,

02:33:24.260 | your mother would be unhappy with, so.

02:33:26.220 | But going back to this,

02:33:27.660 | I believe that, indeed, spirituality is important.

02:33:29.740 | I have a lot of access to that through classical music.

02:33:32.540 | There are times that I really believe that is it.

02:33:35.340 | I mean, I can get very, very emotional listening to music,

02:33:38.460 | very emotional, you know?

02:33:40.900 | My wife always notices it when I do that.

02:33:43.220 | And I think that then you are having access

02:33:45.820 | to something very different.

02:33:47.140 | Of course, it can be explained physiologically

02:33:49.180 | by all sorts of resonances and so on, but who cares?

02:33:52.300 | You know?

02:33:53.780 | - You mentioned that you can peer into the future

02:33:56.400 | with ideas that you're working on,

02:33:58.600 | and yet you don't get too far ahead.

02:34:02.220 | Like, you're not thinking like 100 years from now,

02:34:04.060 | what's it gonna look like?

02:34:05.080 | Do you spend a lot of time thinking about the past?

02:34:07.720 | - Sometimes, sometimes.

02:34:09.540 | There is a, I've always, because I left my family

02:34:14.260 | when I was still very young,

02:34:16.260 | I always had a certain nostalgia for things, okay?

02:34:20.220 | I met a, I became friend with a very impressive guy

02:34:24.660 | in France, Claude Jopard.

02:34:26.020 | I think he was the director of the Geophysics Institute,

02:34:28.580 | and both of us had very similar parents

02:34:31.160 | in different, you know, French and Argentina,

02:34:33.420 | but still, and similar educations.

02:34:35.560 | And we had, I have sometimes a certain nostalgia

02:34:39.580 | that is almost melancholy about the way we grew up

02:34:42.660 | and so on.

02:34:43.500 | - Melancholy?

02:34:44.320 | - A little bit of that.

02:34:45.160 | I mean, I--

02:34:46.000 | - I recall your stories about growing up in Argentina,

02:34:48.000 | like you would have 10, 15 cousins over

02:34:50.580 | for lunch every Sunday.

02:34:51.740 | - Yeah, yeah, it was very happy--

02:34:52.580 | - That doesn't sound melancholy.

02:34:53.420 | - No, no, but there were moments, moments of loneliness,

02:34:56.020 | moments of times where I felt very misunderstood.

02:34:58.980 | I had, unfortunately, a very punishing mother,

02:35:03.620 | so that, but I still remember her,

02:35:05.800 | and I think about her in ways

02:35:08.000 | that are not necessarily always very happy.

02:35:10.680 | I was looking at photos a while ago,

02:35:12.200 | and I, there are pictures of her that is, you know,

02:35:14.000 | she's smiling coming out of the Pacific Ocean in Carmel.

02:35:17.240 | She took a walk and so on.

02:35:18.840 | But I reflect back in the past in that sense.

02:35:22.120 | I mean, and sometimes, you know, I'm asked, you know,

02:35:24.560 | how did you grow up?

02:35:26.320 | My wife being Danish, she grew up in a very different way

02:35:29.120 | from, you know, upper middle class Argentines.

02:35:32.400 | So, you know, we reflect on that, you know,

02:35:35.080 | the kinds of childhoods we had and so on,

02:35:37.560 | but not in the sense that, you know,

02:35:39.880 | oh, I wish I had that now.

02:35:41.340 | - No regrets?

02:35:43.680 | - Well, not many, not many.

02:35:46.480 | - That's good.

02:35:47.920 | - I mean, there is one regret

02:35:49.720 | that is more theoretical than anything else,

02:35:51.480 | which is if I look at my family,

02:35:55.040 | my brother stayed, produced family,

02:35:57.440 | children, grandchildren, and so on.

02:35:58.840 | I came here, and I produced children, grandchildren,

02:36:00.640 | and there are going to be two diverging branches

02:36:02.840 | of the family.

02:36:03.660 | - I wish that we still get together.

02:36:05.640 | We got together last year for your birthday.

02:36:07.280 | - Yeah, no, I know.

02:36:08.120 | That's what is so important to me, yes.

02:36:10.760 | But I think about it sometimes.

02:36:12.120 | And when I go back and I see the lives

02:36:14.240 | very similar to what I had, or, you know,

02:36:16.000 | different perhaps, there is a certain, you know,

02:36:18.600 | sense of thinking about the past.

02:36:20.400 | But I also realize that if I didn't take the steps I took,

02:36:25.240 | I would be as miserable as some of my old friends

02:36:27.760 | that are really struggling even to find meaning

02:36:29.880 | in what they do, or even surviving economically.

02:36:32.680 | So, I was really lucky.

02:36:34.480 | - Well, so was I, 'cause I wouldn't have existed,

02:36:36.600 | 'cause you wouldn't have met my aunt.

02:36:37.440 | - That's true too, yeah, yeah, exactly.

02:36:38.920 | - I mean, maybe you would have, but--

02:36:40.160 | - No, no, no, no, no.

02:36:41.000 | - But I'm grateful I didn't grow up in Buenos Aires.

02:36:42.760 | I love the city, I love the country, but--

02:36:44.640 | - I don't feel that--

02:36:45.480 | - I couldn't have done any of the things I've done

02:36:47.680 | in South America, given, maybe,

02:36:49.560 | but the landscape was just completely different.

02:36:51.040 | - Oh, I go there, and after a week, I want to come back.

02:36:53.120 | Yeah, yeah, definitely.

02:36:54.600 | - So, you love this country?

02:36:55.920 | - I love this country.

02:36:56.840 | I feel very much part of this country.

02:36:58.400 | I'm very grateful to what this country has done for me,

02:37:00.960 | for my family, and that includes you and your sister,

02:37:03.240 | okay, and my wife.

02:37:04.280 | - When did you become a citizen?

02:37:05.480 | - Oh, many, many years ago.

02:37:06.760 | And I really did it consciously, not because,

02:37:09.320 | I mean, there were practical things,

02:37:11.000 | but no, I really believe in it.

02:37:13.320 | I really believe it's an incredible country,

02:37:15.240 | and it gives incredible opportunities to people.

02:37:18.160 | As Elon says, Elon Musk, I'm also an immigrant,

02:37:21.040 | and very happy to be one.

02:37:22.600 | - Yeah, you've always been a patriot.

02:37:24.280 | - Absolutely, and on the other hand, as I said,

02:37:26.640 | Argentina's complicated.

02:37:27.920 | I go there, and a lot of smells and things

02:37:31.200 | that, you know, bring memories that are amazing.

02:37:32.720 | - Food's not bad either.

02:37:33.560 | - I mean, huh?

02:37:34.400 | - The food's not bad.

02:37:35.240 | - Yeah, yeah, but it's also the whole atmosphere.

02:37:37.920 | And the first two, three days are an incredible experience

02:37:40.880 | of meeting friends and talking with them and so on.

02:37:43.880 | But after a while, I also see a darker side to it.

02:37:47.800 | I must tell you that, on the other hand,

02:37:49.520 | my country-in-law, Denmark, is also a country

02:37:52.280 | that I like immensely.

02:37:54.440 | There's nice people, and pleasant, and soft, very soft,

02:37:58.320 | especially in summer. (laughs)

02:37:59.800 | - But the Danes are also strong people.

02:38:01.840 | Like, the average Dane is so smart.

02:38:06.560 | I think the high school education there

02:38:08.040 | must be among the best in the world.

02:38:09.440 | - Yeah, there is a notion of proficiency.

02:38:12.080 | I mean, people are proficient at what they do.

02:38:14.480 | Yeah, you go to a store, you go to,

02:38:16.600 | you have a problem, an airline or whatever,

02:38:19.360 | you'll get someone who really knows how to solve it.

02:38:21.720 | But there's also a very, it's a small society,

02:38:25.120 | very homogeneous, tremendous sense of humor, which I enjoy.

02:38:28.560 | And it's very soft.

02:38:31.000 | People, you know, enjoy life.

02:38:32.360 | They have notions like slow food movements

02:38:34.560 | and things of that sort.

02:38:35.800 | So I like it.

02:38:36.640 | I could not live there because it's, you know,

02:38:39.000 | it's a very homogeneous way of behaving.

02:38:41.200 | You know, the Lutheran ethic is there.

02:38:43.280 | They're not religious, but they're Lutheran.

02:38:45.920 | So I feel very comfortable in Europe and so on.

02:38:49.000 | But I like being here, yes.

02:38:51.640 | - Yeah, I feel like our family now

02:38:53.960 | includes so many different nationalities

02:38:56.400 | and religions and backgrounds

02:38:59.040 | and philosophies and political stances.

02:39:01.160 | - Well, it's good too, right?

02:39:02.000 | - Yeah, it's great.

02:39:02.840 | It's starting to look like the UN with some extra.

02:39:04.720 | - Well, I grew up in a family

02:39:06.040 | that had an ideological diversity.

02:39:07.680 | It was incredible, incredible.

02:39:09.280 | - That's good.

02:39:10.120 | - Yeah, so that was also good to be, as a child,

02:39:12.560 | to hear these arguments about politics and so on, you know?

02:39:15.160 | - Yeah, I hear a few of those now.

02:39:16.680 | - Yeah.

02:39:17.520 | - Arguments about politics.

02:39:18.360 | We won't get into politics.

02:39:19.480 | One thing that I did want to say, however,

02:39:21.120 | is that I remember a long time ago,

02:39:24.200 | and I'm certain 'cause I wrote it in my journal,

02:39:25.840 | you said, "Politically incorrect views are often right."

02:39:30.240 | Is that true still?

02:39:32.120 | - Yes, yes.

02:39:33.160 | - Still true for you, I should say?

02:39:34.520 | - Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

02:39:35.960 | Because this has only to be judged in time, okay?

02:39:40.640 | I think that the issue of politically incorrectness

02:39:43.040 | is some kind of a mob behavior

02:39:45.440 | that says you should think like us, okay?

02:39:48.160 | We should be able to express our views.

02:39:50.680 | We're respecting others and so on,

02:39:52.720 | and we should be respected for that.

02:39:54.600 | I think that this whole notion

02:39:56.200 | that others are telling you what to think or not to think

02:39:59.400 | is a little bit complicated.

02:40:00.720 | And I must say something,

02:40:02.000 | which I hope it doesn't get me in trouble

02:40:03.960 | with my Danish side of the family or friends.

02:40:06.960 | Societies like the Scandinavian societies

02:40:09.360 | that are extremely uniform in thinking,

02:40:12.080 | the word "should" is used all the time.

02:40:14.600 | Yeah, you should do this, you shouldn't do that.

02:40:18.280 | Good that you did it, you know?

02:40:19.840 | It's a very, they enforce behavior

02:40:22.440 | in a very, very particular way.

02:40:24.320 | It's not a hurting instinct,

02:40:25.520 | but there is a very, very strict Lutheran tradition

02:40:29.480 | of telling you what you should and you shouldn't do.

02:40:32.120 | So I know very few people,

02:40:35.160 | and I've been going to them for many, many years,

02:40:37.320 | that really have iconoclastic ideas

02:40:39.400 | that are away from the mean,

02:40:41.680 | and they're considered odd, okay?

02:40:44.680 | Very few, including the physicists.

02:40:47.360 | And they have fantastic school of physics there.

02:40:49.760 | Niels Bohr was there.

02:40:50.840 | So it's a society that conformity is the issue there, right?

02:40:55.440 | So on the other hand,

02:40:56.360 | I think that it's good to think differently.

02:40:58.480 | And, you know, there's a man, perhaps you heard of him,

02:41:01.960 | I know, I mean, I admire him.

02:41:03.840 | He died, Freeman Dyson.

02:41:05.280 | He was on a level with Feynman and Engelman, by the way.

02:41:08.320 | He used to have very strange ideas too.

02:41:10.320 | He used to say, "Global warming, what's wrong with it?

02:41:12.440 | "The Sahara is gonna be a garden."

02:41:16.040 | Yeah, you know, the Sahara Desert will become a garden.

02:41:18.840 | People will be able to eat all that food.

02:41:20.320 | - Well, I think people hear that,

02:41:21.320 | but then they counter it against these, you know,

02:41:23.880 | very heart-wrenching pictures of like polar bears

02:41:26.720 | on ice caps that are shrinking, this kind of thing.

02:41:28.800 | - There are more polar bears today

02:41:30.120 | than when Mr. Al Gore said that we're gonna die.

02:41:32.040 | - Listen, I'm not gonna argue climate change with you

02:41:34.040 | because I have no knowledge there.

02:41:35.680 | - No, no, I'm just giving you a bit of-

02:41:36.520 | - Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not countering.

02:41:38.840 | I'm just saying, you know, like,

02:41:40.640 | I mean, this is getting very intense on the internet now

02:41:44.560 | because the arguments on both sides seem pretty strong,

02:41:47.680 | at least as they're presented.

02:41:49.480 | So who's right?

02:41:50.760 | - No, the question is, what can we do about it?

02:41:52.400 | That's the issue, and I think that technology

02:41:54.280 | and wisdom are gonna solve it.

02:41:56.720 | I think so, I really believe that very strongly.

02:41:58.920 | I'm an optimist when it comes to that.

02:42:00.680 | But what I'm talking about being politically incorrect

02:42:02.960 | is this idea of saying things that a group of people say

02:42:05.840 | you shouldn't be saying or thinking those thoughts.

02:42:08.240 | And the question is, can we debate those things rationally

02:42:10.880 | or nicely, respecting people's beliefs, okay?

02:42:13.960 | And I, yeah, I believe in that very strongly.

02:42:16.320 | And I think being politically incorrect

02:42:18.240 | is a way of saying you're sort of, you're smiling at them.

02:42:23.240 | But it's okay, why not?

02:42:25.640 | You know, it's a, you know,

02:42:27.080 | who said that we shouldn't be like that?

02:42:28.960 | I remember encountering the first libertarians

02:42:30.960 | when I was already, you know, working as a physicist,

02:42:33.720 | and they were saying to me, why should we,

02:42:36.480 | why are we, why are we afraid of the Russians?

02:42:39.360 | I said, well, you know,

02:42:40.600 | well, you think they're gonna invade the United States?

02:42:42.920 | Can you imagine Russia invading?

02:42:44.480 | I mean, if they invade it, how are they gonna control us?

02:42:46.400 | You know, they had these arguments.

02:42:47.960 | They were very funny arguments, you know?

02:42:49.640 | Why do we need an army?

02:42:51.080 | Why do we need taxes?

02:42:52.360 | And I really thought that was so provocative,

02:42:54.840 | it was so interesting.

02:42:56.400 | - Do you consider yourself a libertarian?

02:42:58.000 | - In many ways, I like the idea of liberty.

02:43:00.680 | I believe very strongly in it.

02:43:02.000 | I mean, this country was founded on that.

02:43:03.920 | I think that our founding fathers really believed in it,

02:43:06.360 | and I admire them for that.

02:43:08.440 | I, you know, reading Jefferson and so on

02:43:11.280 | is really inspiring to me.

02:43:13.240 | I think that some of the political movement

02:43:15.840 | is a little bit odd.

02:43:17.360 | They always end up with political candidates

02:43:19.840 | that go nowhere and so on.

02:43:21.280 | - Why do you think that is?

02:43:22.120 | - Huh? - Why do you think that is?

02:43:23.320 | - I think that they're-- - If they're so rational,

02:43:25.000 | they're often among the smartest people in the room.

02:43:26.280 | - But they are not the most,

02:43:27.520 | they are not strategically smart.

02:43:29.800 | I've met at times libertarians that think,

02:43:32.440 | you know, incredible thoughts,

02:43:33.600 | and you know, they work in,

02:43:34.600 | they live in Silicon Valley, and they're poor.

02:43:36.760 | I mean, even though they are the ones

02:43:38.000 | who are supposed to know-- - Some are poor, some are--

02:43:39.840 | - Some are not, but I'm saying,

02:43:41.120 | it's very interesting.

02:43:42.680 | They choose presidential candidates

02:43:43.960 | no one ever heard of.

02:43:45.440 | - I think many of them are, you know,

02:43:48.760 | they are on the spectrum in a way

02:43:51.520 | that doesn't allow them to get into the minds

02:43:53.760 | of other people in a way that would allow them

02:43:56.440 | to convince other people about their arguments.

02:43:59.280 | I mean, a lot of politics, as we know, is show business.

02:44:01.480 | I mean, in this recent election,

02:44:02.560 | it was all posturing.

02:44:04.240 | It was all about grabbing emotion.

02:44:05.960 | It was not about logic, it was about emotion.

02:44:07.960 | - Yeah, I have several of my people that,

02:44:09.880 | you know, they put all their money to freeze themselves.

02:44:12.880 | - You're gonna cry over yourself?

02:44:14.080 | - No. (laughs)

02:44:15.000 | - My dad and I have had this running joke

02:44:16.720 | for a lot of years because someone we know very well,

02:44:19.200 | and several people we know well,

02:44:20.760 | have set aside significant amounts of money

02:44:22.800 | to have their heads or entire bodies frozen

02:44:25.200 | on the idea that they're gonna be brought back later,

02:44:27.080 | Han Solo style.

02:44:29.000 | You've always laughed at this idea.

02:44:30.840 | - No, but not only that,

02:44:32.280 | there's a colleague of mine at Stanford

02:44:33.760 | who accuses me of being friends

02:44:35.880 | with a guy that is like that.

02:44:37.400 | And I told this guy, I said, you know,

02:44:39.080 | he thinks that you're a bad influence on me.

02:44:41.240 | And the guy said, well, tell him

02:44:42.840 | that we are the ones who are gonna come back

02:44:44.520 | and do what we believe, but he's gonna be gone.

02:44:47.200 | - You're not interested in living to be 200?

02:44:50.400 | - It's not the issue.

02:44:51.240 | These people are interested in living for another 1,000 years

02:44:53.720 | so when they wake up, they see how the world looks.

02:44:55.840 | They read science fiction.

02:44:57.080 | So they are very interested to know

02:44:58.680 | what the world looks like once they wake up.

02:45:00.960 | So, okay.

02:45:01.800 | - Well, there are people in the health space

02:45:02.760 | that are trying to not die,

02:45:04.360 | you know, Brian Johnson and others.

02:45:05.720 | - That's a different story.

02:45:06.680 | - Yeah, I mean, what's your thought

02:45:07.720 | on trying to live to be 150 or something like that?

02:45:11.040 | - Well, if you can live, the issue is not the age,

02:45:13.720 | it's the conditions of your body and mind, okay?

02:45:17.000 | That's the issue.

02:45:18.240 | I had the misfortune and unfortunate

02:45:19.960 | of having two parents that lived very long lives.

02:45:23.000 | One was incredibly, my father,

02:45:26.000 | was incredibly lucid until the end.

02:45:28.160 | My mother had everything, you know,

02:45:30.560 | all every dementia and complications

02:45:32.840 | that came from, you know,

02:45:34.240 | being an anorexic all her life and so on.

02:45:36.560 | So my father enjoyed being lucid until the end.

02:45:41.040 | And so he, you know,

02:45:42.440 | he didn't take care of himself physically so well.

02:45:44.560 | So the idea is if you live up to 100 or 150 or 200

02:45:47.600 | and you can still do the things you enjoy in life

02:45:49.640 | is one thing.

02:45:51.120 | To be like my mother who couldn't even comprehend

02:45:54.000 | what was in front of her when you put a cup of tea,

02:45:56.600 | you know, then it's very sad,

02:45:57.920 | but it can happen at the age of 35, you know.

02:46:00.320 | So, yeah, I'm not into a race to live forever.

02:46:05.440 | I want to live healthily.

02:46:06.640 | I want to enjoy life.

02:46:07.560 | Enjoyment is the most important piece.

02:46:09.560 | What's the point of being, you know,

02:46:11.520 | tethered to tubes all over the place?

02:46:14.240 | You know, flat on a bed,

02:46:16.400 | and you say, "Oh, I made another year of my life."

02:46:18.520 | I mean, that's not really a life, at least for me.

02:46:21.000 | - Do you worry about or,

02:46:24.040 | and/or wish for anything for me, for Lara?

02:46:27.800 | - Yes.

02:46:28.920 | To be super happy people.

02:46:30.440 | No, I don't want to use the word happy.

02:46:32.240 | I want to see you joyful.

02:46:34.320 | Joy, joy is more important than happiness.

02:46:37.000 | Joy is a state of mind.

02:46:38.880 | Happiness is, okay, yeah,

02:46:40.320 | I set a list of things I want to have,

02:46:42.600 | and I have them, and I smile a lot.

02:46:44.640 | Joyfulness is this sense of being in yourself,

02:46:47.080 | and I would like that.

02:46:48.480 | I mean, you two are very different.

02:46:50.200 | Lara lives much more in the moment than you do,

02:46:53.160 | for reasons, okay, it's her view of it.

02:46:55.720 | - It's her demeanor.

02:46:56.560 | - Huh?

02:46:57.400 | - It's her way. - It's her demeanor.

02:46:58.240 | It's very good.

02:46:59.080 | - I'm focused on what she's going to do this weekend.

02:47:00.800 | - Yes.

02:47:01.640 | - I'm focused on what I'm going to do this weekend,

02:47:03.040 | next week, the next month, and for the next month.

02:47:04.880 | - I would personally like to see you enjoying today

02:47:08.080 | and this weekend, and that's it,

02:47:09.560 | and everything else is going to come to you.

02:47:11.440 | I believe, and now I'm speaking in a way

02:47:13.560 | that is more paternal than anything else,

02:47:15.360 | I think you have a charmed life,

02:47:19.000 | and everything came to you since you were very little,

02:47:22.080 | and you exhibited behaviors and so on

02:47:25.920 | that everybody was even smilingly impressed with you

02:47:28.880 | from the very beginning.

02:47:30.320 | I mean, it's not that you were a genius at chess

02:47:32.160 | or a Rubik's cube or anything.

02:47:33.840 | I know some kids that are like that,

02:47:35.520 | but there was something, something in there.

02:47:37.480 | And so I think that learning to just relax and rest,

02:47:42.280 | but it's part of your behavior.

02:47:44.040 | Since you were little, you had these problems, okay?

02:47:46.960 | I used to put you on my lap and say, "It's going to be fine,"

02:47:50.080 | and say, "Well, what if I cannot do my homework?"

02:47:51.800 | Okay, but you could.

02:47:53.520 | - Or even my stuffed animals.

02:47:54.800 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, the same.

02:47:56.200 | That gave you tremendous--

02:47:57.040 | - Needed to be organized.

02:47:57.880 | - Yeah, it was tremendous.

02:47:58.700 | - Well, I probably have,

02:47:59.540 | remember I had the grunting tick?

02:48:00.840 | - Yes, yeah, oh, yeah.

02:48:02.040 | - That was, drove us nuts, yeah.

02:48:04.960 | - Well, I probably have a little bit of an OCD type thing.

02:48:08.800 | I mean, not diagnostically significant,

02:48:11.680 | but when I bite down into something that I'm pursuing,

02:48:15.680 | it's very hard for me to think about anything else.

02:48:18.160 | - Well, we talked about it when you were at Berkeley,

02:48:20.000 | once you told me that you were starting to run,

02:48:21.720 | but you wanted to run like everybody else was running,

02:48:23.840 | I don't know, how many miles.

02:48:25.320 | - Yeah, no, I heard there was a guy

02:48:26.960 | who had been in the department, Randy Nelson.

02:48:28.700 | He's now a professor in Ohio.

02:48:30.160 | Somebody just like off, you know, just in passing said,

02:48:33.640 | oh yeah, you know, Randy worked, you know,

02:48:35.000 | in like 80 hours a week or 90 hours a week.

02:48:37.640 | And I was like 95 hours.

02:48:39.240 | - Yeah, I'd remember that.

02:48:40.080 | - You know, but what's interesting

02:48:41.040 | is I'm not a naturally competitive person.

02:48:43.200 | It was just this idea, like I've tended to want to know,

02:48:46.200 | and I've since stopped this,

02:48:49.000 | but there was a long time where I wanted to figure out

02:48:51.040 | what my body and mind were capable of.

02:48:53.520 | I just wanted to see like, how high is that ceiling?

02:48:56.240 | And it was only when I almost suffocated on a scuba dive

02:49:00.320 | or when I was working to the point of exhaustion or,

02:49:03.480 | you know, or, and then I also realized that, you know,

02:49:06.560 | I published a number of papers to get tenure.

02:49:08.080 | Like I didn't need that many, but I enjoyed every one.

02:49:10.960 | It's not like I'm not having fun, I'm having fun.

02:49:13.280 | - Yeah, this idea of pushing oneself to limits,

02:49:15.440 | the question is why?

02:49:16.440 | I mean, I think there's so much to enjoy on a regular life

02:49:20.960 | and the things that we have already,

02:49:23.140 | we have to work to get them the way we want.

02:49:25.820 | But I don't think that worrying for the sake of worrying

02:49:28.640 | or just worrying, I mean.

02:49:29.920 | - Yeah, I don't tend to worry.

02:49:30.840 | Well, you know what changed that for me in a major way?

02:49:33.720 | I mean, I've had moments, I've had moments.

02:49:35.820 | I think I can recall, like I have a favorite,

02:49:38.960 | best day of my life moment.

02:49:40.560 | I won't share it here, it's not relevant right now,

02:49:43.280 | but Costello helped bring me into the moment.

02:49:46.840 | Like he would do these things that like,

02:49:48.240 | I would delight in that were just so simple.

02:49:50.640 | Like the way he would like fall over or something,

02:49:53.280 | or, you know, I think that like having another creature

02:49:56.540 | there that is very much in the moment

02:49:59.220 | brings you into the moment.

02:50:00.460 | - Right, and you are very connected to it too.

02:50:02.140 | I mean, I think that if you were connected to someone

02:50:04.540 | that has that property of bringing you down and so on,

02:50:07.020 | you will start enjoying it.

02:50:08.440 | - Yeah, the people I've had amazing partners, as you know,

02:50:11.740 | some less than amazing, but many amazing partners,

02:50:14.260 | and they tended to be also kind of into the future,

02:50:18.700 | like focus on what's not quite there yet.

02:50:20.980 | - But I must say, I think women in general

02:50:22.960 | do it better than men,

02:50:24.680 | that they're better at like grounding to the present.

02:50:26.720 | - Well, it depends.

02:50:27.560 | I think that my wife tends to be more anxious

02:50:30.180 | than I am about the future.

02:50:31.020 | - So maybe it's not general.

02:50:32.800 | - Well, in trying to sort of, you know,

02:50:35.040 | tell her that she shouldn't worry so much,

02:50:37.840 | I think that I also suddenly reflect, what am I doing here?

02:50:41.000 | And I try to also slow down myself.

02:50:43.360 | I think that, you know, yeah,

02:50:45.120 | I think you're someone who's running from one thing

02:50:47.520 | to the other, I mean, to say colloquially,

02:50:49.920 | but it would be nice if you said, okay, I'm fine.

02:50:52.800 | You know, you have a podcast that is doing well,

02:50:55.540 | you don't have to worry what the podcast

02:50:56.880 | is going to be doing in five years.

02:50:58.520 | - No, I don't think out that far.

02:51:00.480 | I don't think about the career piece.

02:51:02.000 | I think that I, I mean, I often don't have a plan.

02:51:06.160 | I know what we're going to do this year.

02:51:07.880 | I don't know what we're going to do after that.

02:51:09.460 | But professionally, I think, look,

02:51:12.120 | I think part of it was science.

02:51:13.360 | I mean, we're talking about a lot of things,

02:51:14.900 | but for many years, right,

02:51:17.440 | from the time I like squared my life away,

02:51:19.240 | and when I turned 19, it was like, okay,

02:51:21.120 | I'm going to get things right now.

02:51:22.780 | There's always been these milestones.

02:51:24.440 | You're going to finish your undergraduate degree.

02:51:26.240 | I did a master's, then you do the PhD,

02:51:27.840 | then the postdoc, then you're going to need to get tenure.

02:51:29.520 | You know, I think the academic system

02:51:32.840 | was a system of two to five year bursts,

02:51:36.840 | like sprinting marathons in many ways to try and,

02:51:41.160 | you know, grab the next thing to get to the next level.

02:51:43.240 | And there was a lot of uncertainty for a long time.

02:51:45.680 | You know, I think I'm finally now coming

02:51:47.520 | to a place of certainty, like feelings of like,

02:51:50.180 | oh, like things are good and they've gone great.

02:51:53.320 | But yeah, but it's hard.

02:51:55.440 | - Oh, of course it's hard,

02:51:56.440 | especially if you have that kind of temperament.

02:51:58.000 | Yes, and I think you need to train yourself almost to,

02:52:00.920 | I just had a set of the words that are,

02:52:06.080 | it's a matter of bringing elegance into your life almost,

02:52:09.240 | to live it in a way that is elegant,

02:52:11.040 | is nice in itself, you know, that is important.

02:52:15.760 | One of the things I learned, I mean, you know,

02:52:18.760 | living with a Dane, Danes don't like you to eat standing.

02:52:22.200 | They sit a table and they light a candle and, you know,

02:52:26.200 | it's very nice, it creates a pace.

02:52:28.360 | - Yeah, the ritual.

02:52:29.280 | - The rituals, rituals are very important.

02:52:31.200 | And also the other thing that is very important

02:52:33.040 | that I discovered is to have something to look forward to.

02:52:35.360 | You cannot just wake up one day and say, and now what?

02:52:38.440 | There has to be something.

02:52:40.040 | Okay, that's important.

02:52:41.200 | I mean, you know, we all have that.

02:52:43.120 | - So Rogan talks about this thing about, you know,

02:52:45.440 | because he has a podcast, he does four episodes a week,

02:52:48.640 | plus he's an announcer of the UFC,

02:52:50.280 | has his comedy career, he has three kids,

02:52:52.480 | he's in a happy marriage and, you know,

02:52:54.400 | he's really into working out and all this.

02:52:55.840 | And he, I heard something recently,

02:52:57.840 | it was actually the forward to Cameron Haynes' book.

02:53:01.080 | I was listening to it and he, it was amazing.

02:53:03.520 | He said, you know, you have to approach your life

02:53:06.720 | no matter how busy or how simple as a kind of work of art.

02:53:11.720 | Like you can't just think of it as daily life.

02:53:13.960 | You have to have some macroscopic view of this

02:53:17.360 | so that you know where to put things.

02:53:19.400 | And it's a lot of what you're saying as well.

02:53:21.480 | - Elegance, yeah.

02:53:22.600 | Life has to have elegance.

02:53:23.920 | Otherwise it's just disjoint moments.

02:53:26.560 | And so sometimes they will be like that

02:53:28.120 | and it can be very creative too.

02:53:30.000 | But most of the idea is to really get into something.

02:53:34.840 | I mean, I personally think that when you describe me

02:53:37.520 | as being very steady or whatever,

02:53:39.480 | sounds very boring too for that matter, right?

02:53:42.200 | I mean, yeah.

02:53:43.200 | I mean, there's a beauty in steadiness

02:53:44.880 | because from places of steadiness, you can take good risks.

02:53:49.640 | - Well, right.

02:53:50.480 | I mean, and I think that my mind is not in a steady state,

02:53:55.400 | but I don't have this notion, I have to see things.

02:53:58.360 | Everybody's talking about something, I have to see it.

02:54:00.480 | I never felt like that.

02:54:01.800 | No, I mean, I'd like to see things, don't misunderstand me.

02:54:05.000 | But it's very important for me to be in the moment

02:54:07.440 | and do things the way I like them to do.

02:54:09.360 | - Yeah, you don't seem to need to go on like jungle adventures

02:54:12.560 | or like ice skate across Antarctica.

02:54:15.160 | Like you've never been one for like the kind of wild outing.

02:54:19.080 | - No, no, the wild outing is here.

02:54:21.840 | That's my wild outing.

02:54:23.120 | Yeah, I can have very wild thoughts about things

02:54:27.120 | that I would like.

02:54:28.000 | Sometimes they're totally wrong and so on.

02:54:29.560 | But yeah, in a funny way,

02:54:32.120 | I am a little bit of what the French call an armchair,

02:54:34.640 | a philosopher or whatever.

02:54:36.080 | There are these people who write articles about France,

02:54:39.160 | if Africa would have never having left France

02:54:41.920 | or something of that sort.

02:54:43.200 | So I'm not like that.

02:54:44.240 | But I don't necessarily crave this physical adventure

02:54:49.240 | for the sake of adventure.

02:54:51.160 | I like beautiful things.

02:54:52.600 | And I don't mind repeating the same beautiful thing

02:54:54.720 | every year if necessary,

02:54:57.120 | going vacation to the same places and so on.

02:54:59.160 | - Yeah, you'd like to go back to the same place.

02:55:00.840 | - Well, there is a difference between tourism

02:55:02.480 | where you see new things and so on.

02:55:04.240 | I like that.

02:55:05.080 | There's also the idea of vacation,

02:55:07.080 | where you just sit and enjoy what you have.

02:55:09.840 | - I confess I've not ever done it.

02:55:14.840 | And you know this about me.

02:55:16.600 | I've never taken a vacation.

02:55:18.440 | - You should go to the summer house in Denmark.

02:55:20.080 | You can spend a week there just enjoying it.

02:55:22.840 | That's it.

02:55:23.840 | I don't know if I show you pictures from the window.

02:55:25.800 | They see the deer in the garden.

02:55:28.280 | They just sit there.

02:55:29.280 | It's nice.

02:55:30.840 | So there's nothing, it's nice.

02:55:33.160 | It can be, you cannot spend a life doing that.

02:55:35.880 | I'm not a monk, okay?

02:55:37.560 | I'm not a meditator that will spend hours on this,

02:55:39.880 | but it's nice to rest.

02:55:41.960 | It's very important, I think.

02:55:43.680 | - And the rituals are important to you.

02:55:45.320 | - Very important, yes, yeah.

02:55:46.880 | The rituals also are very reassuring

02:55:49.640 | because then you know it's predictable, right?

02:55:51.440 | You don't want a totally unpredictable life all the time.

02:55:54.120 | That's why people create rituals.

02:55:55.760 | - You early on taught me about etiquette.

02:56:01.800 | It's something that years later,

02:56:06.240 | I think it was probably in the mid nineties,

02:56:08.440 | for some reason, we were at the movies together

02:56:10.600 | and we saw some people at the movies

02:56:12.240 | and they were wearing their bathroom slippers

02:56:15.960 | and more or less their pajamas to the movies.

02:56:19.280 | And I'll never forget, you grabbed my arm.

02:56:21.720 | Like you didn't grab it forcefully,

02:56:23.000 | but you grabbed me and said, "You see that?"

02:56:24.920 | I said, "Yeah."

02:56:25.760 | And you said, "People are coming to the movies

02:56:27.200 | in their pajamas."

02:56:28.560 | I said, "Yeah."

02:56:29.400 | And you said, "That's the beginning of the end

02:56:31.000 | to any society."

02:56:32.640 | And I thought you were joking,

02:56:34.360 | but it's something I thought about a lot.

02:56:36.960 | You also said, and I'll never forget,

02:56:40.880 | "You're always better off being overdressed

02:56:43.520 | because then at least your class that you're speaking to

02:56:46.760 | or your hosts, et cetera,

02:56:49.200 | they know that you took them seriously."

02:56:51.880 | And I don't think we really appreciate etiquette.

02:56:56.880 | As Americans, especially,

02:56:58.800 | we've somehow confused freedom of choice

02:57:01.600 | with discarding etiquette.

02:57:04.600 | Yeah, it's not something that you hear discussed very much,

02:57:07.560 | but what about etiquette?

02:57:09.760 | - Well, there are many components.

02:57:11.800 | I think the most important one is a societal one.

02:57:14.200 | I mean, one of the things that I like,

02:57:15.880 | for instance, if you go to England,

02:57:18.040 | how polite people are.

02:57:19.440 | Politeness is a virtue.

02:57:21.240 | And politeness, they hire the social class,

02:57:25.520 | they hire the demand to be polite.

02:57:27.720 | It's behavior, it's being nice to people,

02:57:30.800 | it's understanding what they are.

02:57:32.480 | And associated with that, there are codes.

02:57:34.760 | Some of them are behavioral, some of them are dress codes.

02:57:38.000 | I had a brilliant economist,

02:57:40.080 | the Italian economist working with me,

02:57:41.680 | and now he's in the East Coast,

02:57:43.480 | who told me he went to a wedding in Italy

02:57:45.880 | after living in the United States,

02:57:47.320 | and he went to his cousin's wedding,

02:57:49.440 | and his uncle said, "You show no respect.

02:57:52.320 | You're not wearing cufflinks."

02:57:54.040 | He said, "Well, but my shirt is all..."

02:57:55.400 | "No, no, no, go home and get cufflinks

02:57:57.240 | because you're showing lack of respect

02:57:59.320 | for not dressing the proper way to this wedding."

02:58:01.920 | So I think that there are expectations

02:58:03.640 | that people have about certain kinds of behavior.

02:58:06.000 | I mean, if you look at, say, the pictures

02:58:07.400 | of what's going on now in Washington and so on,

02:58:09.640 | you notice that Mr. Elon Musk,

02:58:11.920 | who's always in a t-shirt that says, "Let's go to Mars,"

02:58:14.120 | suddenly he's wearing a tuxedo

02:58:15.560 | because, at least now, he's part of a group of people

02:58:19.360 | that are behaving like government officials should behave.

02:58:22.040 | You don't go in sandals and shorts.

02:58:23.880 | - But Silicon Valley is famous

02:58:25.320 | for the flip-flops and the hoodie.

02:58:26.680 | - Right, because the problem is that people confuse

02:58:29.000 | the style with the message.

02:58:33.160 | They think that because you wear a hoodie

02:58:34.640 | because Mark Zuckerberg was wearing hoodies

02:58:36.720 | makes you brilliant, okay?

02:58:38.840 | And I think that the issue of dress codes

02:58:41.480 | elicit a certain sense of behavior in people, as you said.

02:58:44.960 | I mean, you know, how would you feel

02:58:46.880 | if you went on a first date with someone

02:58:48.520 | that comes in in her, you know, slippers

02:58:51.720 | and a bathrobe and say, "Let's go to the movies."

02:58:54.000 | - It's not happened yet.

02:58:55.480 | - Well, okay, but, okay, so what I'm saying is

02:58:58.000 | you don't have to overdo it.

02:58:59.800 | You know, that's another issue.

02:59:01.000 | And you have to also conform to the rules of the society.

02:59:03.920 | I noticed, for instance, that in the East Coast,

02:59:06.080 | people dress much more properly than in the West Coast.

02:59:09.240 | You go to New York and you see men wearing suits and ties.

02:59:13.200 | You don't see that here, perhaps in LA,

02:59:15.120 | not in the Bay Area, ever.

02:59:17.920 | - Yeah, one thing that you pointed out

02:59:19.440 | is that at any wedding in Argentina,

02:59:22.600 | men keep their jackets and ties on the whole night.

02:59:26.280 | I've always kept my jacket and tie on the entire night.

02:59:28.400 | In the United States, it's almost like moments

02:59:30.960 | after people arrive at any party in a suit,

02:59:33.160 | they start undressing.

02:59:34.280 | - Yeah, right.

02:59:35.120 | Why did they dress up then?

02:59:36.680 | Okay, so that's my view.

02:59:38.040 | So I am not necessarily someone that advocates

02:59:40.720 | wearing a tie when I go to work and so on,

02:59:43.080 | but I really believe that there are codes of conduct

02:59:45.320 | that sort of reflect many things.

02:59:47.200 | And you're also, you're projecting a message, right?

02:59:51.000 | I mean, the idea of a hoodie, at one point or the other,

02:59:53.240 | first of all, was hurting behavior.

02:59:54.640 | Everybody had to wear one because, you know,

02:59:56.800 | then you're cool or, you know, whatever.

02:59:58.560 | Okay, in adolescence, I understand it.

03:00:01.320 | I mean, that's what you do as an adolescent.

03:00:02.960 | You do what others do.

03:00:04.520 | But as you grow up, you can also signal whom you are

03:00:07.240 | by the way you dress and you, you know, you behave.

03:00:10.120 | - Well, what do you think about the discourse

03:00:11.960 | on platforms like X, where you can see a mix,

03:00:15.760 | including a lot of academics and high-level thinkers,

03:00:18.720 | acting kind of like teenagers?

03:00:20.800 | - Well, okay, that's, they want to be popular.

03:00:23.040 | That's all, they want to draw attention.

03:00:24.880 | - Yeah, this is kind of a new thing.

03:00:26.040 | I mean, I mean, they're, I mean, I won't name names,

03:00:28.800 | but, you know, some people who are considered

03:00:31.080 | some of the smartest people in the world,

03:00:33.960 | like what they, their discourse on social media is like,

03:00:38.000 | I mean, they wouldn't last two seconds on the schoolyard,

03:00:41.120 | they'd get hit in the face.

03:00:42.200 | You know, it's like weird,

03:00:43.280 | like grown men acting kind of like teenagers.

03:00:46.440 | - Okay, well, that's, they have a problem

03:00:48.080 | because they want to be thought of as young.

03:00:50.400 | That's a whole different story, okay?

03:00:51.880 | That's a different story.

03:00:52.960 | Now, having said what I said,

03:00:54.560 | I respect that some people eventually reflect

03:00:56.920 | on whether or not the rules,

03:00:58.440 | the rules that, you know, that rule, you know,

03:01:00.560 | the rules that say how you should dress

03:01:02.360 | to do one thing or the other are not,

03:01:03.920 | do not, you know, operate for you,

03:01:06.000 | and then you decide to be very different.

03:01:08.200 | You know, there are many people who are like that

03:01:09.880 | and like to be iconoclastic.

03:01:11.960 | I heard many stories about,

03:01:13.160 | we were talking about Richard Feynman,

03:01:14.720 | who actually made a case,

03:01:16.240 | I mean, Mary Gell-Mann used to say that about him,

03:01:18.480 | to be so different that people will talk about it

03:01:20.640 | because he was very interested in people

03:01:22.160 | telling stories about it.

03:01:23.000 | - Yeah, bongo drumming naked on the roof,

03:01:25.160 | not rushing his teeth.

03:01:26.320 | - Exactly, all that, okay.

03:01:27.440 | So that, but he was very good at drawing attention.

03:01:30.360 | Okay, that's fine.

03:01:31.320 | You can also draw attention by dressing very nicely.

03:01:34.280 | You know, it's all a matter of,

03:01:36.400 | I mean, I was reflecting, you know,

03:01:38.080 | we go to the symphony in San Francisco regularly,

03:01:41.600 | and we are donors and so on.

03:01:43.280 | Sometimes you go to a concert,

03:01:44.520 | it's an amazing thing what you see there.

03:01:45.960 | Some people nicely dressed,

03:01:47.600 | some people dressed as if they just woke up,

03:01:50.280 | they didn't have time to get dressed,

03:01:51.400 | and, you know, got there, you know,

03:01:53.120 | and they're whatever.

03:01:53.960 | - But do you think that,

03:01:55.160 | going back to the initial, you know,

03:01:57.240 | ping of the question,

03:01:58.080 | do you think that we have societally gone,

03:02:01.840 | that we're sort of drifting towards,

03:02:03.480 | like, for lack of a better word, chaos?

03:02:06.400 | So our social interaction chaos.

03:02:09.120 | - Well, you know, I think the pendulum will swing again.

03:02:11.800 | The other day I was talking to someone,

03:02:13.200 | reading actually,

03:02:14.200 | that suddenly, not only in New York,

03:02:16.640 | but in the Midwest,

03:02:17.520 | men are starting to wear jacket and ties,

03:02:20.360 | not just for work, okay?

03:02:22.040 | They go on dates like that.

03:02:23.400 | So, you know, it's a pendulum.

03:02:24.560 | It goes back and forth, back and forth.

03:02:26.840 | I don't think we're gonna end up in a time when,

03:02:28.560 | you know, you have to wear tails

03:02:29.800 | to have a breakfast or something.

03:02:31.920 | I think only the aristocrats used to do that.

03:02:34.160 | But I think that, you know,

03:02:35.480 | it's an issue of how,

03:02:37.160 | also, how we perceive the world

03:02:39.480 | through the eyes of television and movies, okay?

03:02:42.280 | If movies start showing that everybody's dressed whatever,

03:02:44.520 | you know, people are gonna do the same thing.

03:02:46.320 | If movies start showing, you know,

03:02:47.600 | the trends that we see in movies

03:02:49.000 | are the trends that essentially society follows, okay?

03:02:52.080 | - Definitely.

03:02:52.920 | - So, I think that we,

03:02:54.880 | I don't think we're going to chaos.

03:02:56.040 | It's gonna revert.

03:02:57.000 | California is a particular place

03:03:00.000 | because it has always been a place

03:03:01.600 | where people, in order to feel free,

03:03:02.920 | they had to dress differently

03:03:04.360 | and who cares and all that stuff.

03:03:06.400 | But it's not everywhere.

03:03:08.360 | - Yeah, it's kind of interesting

03:03:09.560 | that now counterculture is conservatism.

03:03:12.400 | - Right, right.

03:03:13.480 | - We're back to that.

03:03:15.040 | The anti-war group is the more conservative.

03:03:16.920 | Anyway, it's--

03:03:17.760 | - I mean, also, people like,

03:03:19.160 | you know, it's interesting how Americans

03:03:20.600 | are fascinated with English aristocracy and traditions.

03:03:24.440 | I've been to high table dinner

03:03:25.880 | at King's College in Cambridge twice.

03:03:27.840 | You know, everybody dresses properly.

03:03:31.120 | They wear gowns and the fellows are sitting

03:03:33.320 | at a top table and everybody else,

03:03:35.040 | and people love it.

03:03:36.360 | And we like to see that in the movies.

03:03:37.960 | - Well, it's theater.

03:03:39.160 | - Yeah, right.

03:03:40.000 | - I mean, it's academic theater,

03:03:40.840 | a little bit of pomp and circumstance,

03:03:42.360 | but it's theater.

03:03:43.200 | - And it's nice.

03:03:44.040 | Everything on commencement, you know, traditions and so on.

03:03:46.680 | - Yeah, no parent wants to go to a graduation

03:03:48.920 | that's, you know, kind of a free-for-all.

03:03:50.560 | They want to see some order.

03:03:51.800 | - Absolutely, absolutely.

03:03:53.160 | And I think that, you know, there is a place for that.

03:03:55.040 | And some people will, I mean,

03:03:56.680 | there are designers and sort of clothing and so on

03:03:59.000 | that exploit this nostalgia for that kind of elegant world.

03:04:02.160 | You know, Ralph Lauren and so it's always,

03:04:04.720 | you know, 1960s, fancy, you know,

03:04:07.720 | club type clothing and so on.

03:04:09.880 | So do you plan to ever retire?

03:04:14.560 | - I don't know what it means.

03:04:17.360 | I mean, if retire, no, no,

03:04:19.000 | because I'm not a postal worker.

03:04:22.400 | I'm not a cook at a restaurant that eventually says,

03:04:25.360 | okay, I cooked it long enough

03:04:27.040 | that I collect my retirement and go home.

03:04:29.600 | I have a mind that it works

03:04:31.520 | and I need an environment where that mind can thrive.

03:04:34.920 | And I need an environment where, you know,

03:04:37.240 | for one year, when I left Hewlett-Packard,

03:04:39.520 | I was basically, I took a course in general activity

03:04:42.120 | and so on, but I was really a bit idle.

03:04:44.680 | So suddenly, I mean, in a context

03:04:46.560 | where people have problems and so on

03:04:48.080 | that I really like to listen to,

03:04:49.680 | there's a social component to work, as you know.

03:04:52.200 | So retirement means what, you know,

03:04:56.840 | you're a postal worker and one day you stop delivering mail

03:04:59.400 | and you stay home watching the paint dry,

03:05:01.960 | and that's not me, okay?

03:05:04.040 | So to me, I'm working and I enjoy it.

03:05:06.160 | And, you know, the day that will come

03:05:08.640 | that I cannot enjoy it, I'll stop.

03:05:10.640 | And I think that, again, goes with this issue

03:05:13.080 | of getting bored with things that you don't like to do,

03:05:16.240 | you know, because you've done it for a long time.

03:05:19.240 | No, I enjoy my life, but I don't think in terms of,

03:05:22.700 | I'll say something, the CEO of my company,

03:05:26.920 | he's a great guy, Phil McKinney, said,

03:05:28.960 | "Bernardo, I don't work for the money here."

03:05:30.480 | I said, "I don't either.

03:05:31.640 | "I mean, I like to get paid, but if I don't like it,

03:05:34.240 | "I'll walk," and I can do that.

03:05:36.500 | So it's not that I'm doing this for the income.

03:05:38.640 | That's what I'm trying to say.

03:05:39.680 | - Seems like you've never pursued money for its own sake.

03:05:42.320 | - No, but-- - Nor did you ever

03:05:43.600 | encourage me to pursue money for its own sake.

03:05:45.320 | - But as my cousin, the physicist, used to say,

03:05:47.640 | "Money doesn't bring happiness,

03:05:49.360 | "but it points in the right direction."

03:05:51.200 | - I would say money doesn't bring happiness,

03:05:52.900 | but it can buffer stress.

03:05:54.400 | - Right, and it allows you to have the things

03:05:56.160 | you want to have and you don't have to, no.

03:05:58.160 | Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

03:06:00.380 | I think money's an important aspect of our lives,

03:06:02.880 | you know, having it and so on.

03:06:04.360 | I lived for many years as a graduate student with no money,

03:06:07.000 | and it was very painful, I'll tell you.

03:06:09.540 | Sometimes I didn't eat dinner

03:06:10.680 | because I didn't have any money.

03:06:12.320 | So I like having money to do the things that I like,

03:06:16.200 | but I don't work for money.

03:06:17.600 | Many people say, "Well, you know,

03:06:20.040 | "I invented so many things.

03:06:21.140 | "I could have started in some companies

03:06:23.140 | "and make a lot of money."

03:06:25.400 | I don't really, I don't regret that at all.

03:06:28.360 | - The ultra-rich people that I know

03:06:30.080 | who are happy are still working every day.

03:06:33.120 | - Right, because beyond a certain amount of money,

03:06:35.400 | you still have to brush your teeth like everybody else.

03:06:38.120 | Okay, you can dream of having 150 toothbrushes, but so what?

03:06:41.660 | - Right, and you can only eat so many steaks.

03:06:43.920 | - Yeah, yeah.

03:06:44.760 | I mean, that we all cover.

03:06:46.840 | The question is, what do you do with your life?

03:06:48.280 | Now, you want to travel?

03:06:49.640 | Well, you can travel.

03:06:50.480 | It's nice if you can travel, you know,

03:06:52.040 | in better ways than being, you know,

03:06:54.720 | an undergrad with the backpack,

03:06:56.400 | although it can be adventurous.

03:06:57.240 | - I had fun backpacking.

03:06:58.360 | - Yeah, okay, yeah.

03:06:59.200 | - In a limited budget where, you know,

03:07:00.680 | part of the joy of traveling that way

03:07:02.800 | is you're thrown into kind of street-level interactions.

03:07:06.960 | - I took-- - Youth hostels

03:07:08.360 | and things like that. - Yeah, I went

03:07:09.200 | through Europe like this.

03:07:10.020 | - I mean, I wouldn't change that for anything.

03:07:11.040 | - No, I went through Europe as a graduate student.

03:07:12.680 | I quit everything.

03:07:13.500 | I went to Europe in winter,

03:07:14.960 | and it was quite an adventure.

03:07:16.320 | - In the winter?

03:07:17.160 | - In the winter, it was horrendous.

03:07:18.400 | I had very little money.

03:07:19.800 | I stayed in places where, in Paris,

03:07:22.040 | where the lady in the little hotel

03:07:24.760 | would turn off the light if I turned it on

03:07:26.160 | in the middle of the night.

03:07:27.120 | It was awful, and yet--

03:07:28.600 | - To save energy.

03:07:29.640 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was very funny,

03:07:32.000 | but I met people that were interesting,

03:07:33.920 | and I engaged, you know, it was,

03:07:35.840 | I still, every once in a while,

03:07:38.400 | I hear from one or two of those people I met years ago

03:07:41.680 | in trains.

03:07:42.520 | I went by train everywhere.

03:07:44.160 | I ended up in Denmark in the middle of winter, you know.

03:07:46.760 | - Everything seems to lead back to Denmark.

03:07:48.920 | - Yeah, it's a nice country.

03:07:49.760 | - Well, now you have a Danish wife,

03:07:51.200 | so, and have for a long time.

03:07:52.760 | And have for a long time. - Yeah, many times, yeah, yeah.

03:07:54.980 | No, I, yeah, I like, it's a very different contrast

03:07:58.020 | to Europe, the Central Europe, and so on, you know.

03:08:00.860 | Denmark, Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,

03:08:03.940 | is a very special kind of, you know, country and people.

03:08:06.820 | Yeah, I like them a lot.

03:08:08.140 | Life is very easy there.

03:08:09.340 | - I like Scandinavia.

03:08:11.420 | - Yeah, yeah, it's very nice, yes.

03:08:13.220 | - Good, good, good-natured people.

03:08:15.140 | - Yes.

03:08:15.980 | - Good saunas.

03:08:16.860 | - Yeah, everything, yes.

03:08:18.420 | - And sunshine, at least in the summer.

03:08:20.060 | - In the summer only, yeah.

03:08:22.700 | - Any plans for the next couple of years?

03:08:25.180 | Anything that we should put on the calendar,

03:08:27.820 | make sure that we get in?

03:08:29.580 | - No, because I cannot plan that well.

03:08:32.220 | I don't plan.

03:08:33.220 | - I just-- - Me either.

03:08:34.220 | Maybe I inherited it from you.

03:08:35.220 | - Well, I just move.

03:08:36.500 | I just move and intuitive.

03:08:38.180 | I'm very intuitive about these things.

03:08:40.380 | I suddenly see something, you know, this quantum stuff.

03:08:42.580 | I don't know, I started hearing about it.

03:08:44.780 | I talked to a brilliant guy who was in my lab.

03:08:46.760 | I said, "Hey, Gene, what do you think about this?"

03:08:48.700 | He said, "Oh, sounds interesting, let's do it."

03:08:50.660 | And we're doing it.

03:08:52.260 | I am lucky that I get paid to do that.

03:08:54.340 | But no, I don't have plans like that.

03:08:57.020 | I would like to, we would like, I mean,

03:09:01.620 | we would like to organize our life

03:09:03.100 | a little bit differently now that, you know,

03:09:04.860 | that we have a summer house in Denmark and so on.

03:09:07.420 | I still plan to travel there.

03:09:08.860 | I like Europe a lot, but I don't know if I can live there.

03:09:11.980 | I like Switzerland a lot.

03:09:13.980 | I wanna go to Argentina every year

03:09:15.660 | and I feel very close to my family.

03:09:17.860 | That's very important.

03:09:19.740 | We are all going for an event there.

03:09:21.220 | I hope that you can join us if you can.

03:09:24.020 | So those things are very important to me.

03:09:25.680 | But I, no, I don't have plans for anything.

03:09:28.820 | I don't know, I like to be surprised.

03:09:32.360 | - Well, dad, I wanna extend a real sense of gratitude

03:09:38.600 | from me, from everyone listening and watching.

03:09:46.460 | Although you may argue that they're not gonna be interested.

03:09:50.540 | This has been our back and forth over the last months

03:09:52.740 | as I've tried to convince you to do this podcast.

03:09:56.100 | I can assure you that they were, they are very interested.

03:10:00.260 | Your story is a really unique one.

03:10:01.780 | And I can say that both as your son,

03:10:04.100 | but also as somebody who's sat across from scientists

03:10:07.620 | from all different domains and backgrounds,

03:10:10.620 | not just neuroscientists.

03:10:12.060 | I also really appreciate your ability

03:10:16.140 | to explain complicated things in ways that at least,

03:10:20.460 | you know, we can start to get an understanding

03:10:21.860 | 'cause these are hard concepts.

03:10:25.140 | And, you know, I think what comes through so clearly

03:10:29.060 | is that somehow you've been able to grab

03:10:32.140 | these high level, really abstract concepts

03:10:35.260 | and work with them and try and understand them.

03:10:37.020 | But you've also been able to lead a life

03:10:39.060 | where you're really grounded in the day-to-day

03:10:40.780 | and in reality.

03:10:42.100 | And I have to say your wish for me and for Laura,

03:10:44.620 | and I assume for everyone else to be joyful,

03:10:46.820 | I'll work on that.

03:10:50.060 | And also I must say, it just hit me like square in the face

03:10:55.060 | during this discussion that I get such peace

03:10:59.780 | and I can really focus on being joyful,

03:11:01.500 | knowing that you're joyful.

03:11:03.140 | Like it's so clear, like you have a joyful life

03:11:05.860 | at so many levels and that you've pursued

03:11:07.860 | what you wanted to do over and over.

03:11:10.340 | And, you know, some people may have tuned into this podcast

03:11:14.420 | thinking that we were gonna get into our issues

03:11:16.380 | and things like that.

03:11:17.220 | I'll just briefly say that, yeah, we've had our ups,

03:11:18.940 | we've had our downs and we've certainly landed up

03:11:22.780 | and much, much higher than we ever would

03:11:25.340 | had we not had all of that.

03:11:27.080 | And as I told you last year around this time on your birthday

03:11:33.140 | when we all got together to celebrate,

03:11:35.180 | like we're not just good, we're beyond good.

03:11:38.300 | So anything that comes up around that,

03:11:40.780 | I wanna just go on record saying that like,

03:11:43.660 | that's water under the bridge

03:11:45.340 | and I don't ever think about it.

03:11:46.920 | All I think about are the incredible gifts

03:11:48.880 | that you've given me about curiosity

03:11:52.020 | and pursuing my curiosity about putting new footprints

03:11:55.900 | on untread beaches, the early discussions

03:11:59.260 | around the excitement that science can bring.

03:12:01.740 | I mean, I remember all of it.

03:12:03.260 | I really remember all of it and in immense detail.

03:12:06.500 | And I love your stories about scientists,

03:12:08.620 | both how they soar and also how human they are

03:12:11.660 | and how they're fallible like the rest of us.

03:12:13.820 | So, you know, there's not a day that goes by

03:12:17.660 | where I don't thank God, because I do believe in God,

03:12:21.460 | that you're my father, that you and mom created me and Laura

03:12:25.700 | and that I've had the life that I have

03:12:27.800 | and that I continue to have the life that I have.

03:12:29.700 | So I just wanna thank you for the example

03:12:32.380 | and the nurturing and for coming here.

03:12:34.480 | There aren't words.

03:12:36.420 | - Well, thank you.

03:12:37.260 | You know how much I love you.

03:12:39.220 | I think that these words are the biggest gift that I get.

03:12:44.160 | And I think any father listening to that,

03:12:46.760 | to his son or daughter saying that

03:12:48.760 | would also feel the same way or a mother for that matter.

03:12:51.400 | It is a very fulfilling feeling, you know,

03:12:53.640 | to have that notion that you feel that you owe so much

03:12:57.520 | to what you got.

03:12:59.280 | And also the fact that you've done incredibly well

03:13:01.840 | and the kind of person you are, yeah.

03:13:03.920 | So I wish you all the wisdom that you need

03:13:08.200 | in order to just go through life the way you're going.

03:13:10.960 | But I think that it's nice to also that we are

03:13:14.360 | sort of on the same wavelength and many things.

03:13:16.920 | In you, I see more of a reflection

03:13:18.880 | of what I always wanted to be as well.

03:13:21.560 | So that's easier in a way.

03:13:23.320 | Perhaps it's because fathers and sons have that.

03:13:26.400 | - We certainly relate.

03:13:27.600 | - Yes.

03:13:29.000 | - Well, thank you.

03:13:29.840 | - Thank you.

03:13:30.660 | - I love you.

03:13:31.500 | - I love you too.

03:13:32.320 | You know that.

03:13:33.160 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

03:13:34.720 | with Dr. Bernardo Huberman.

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Dr. Bernardo Huberman: How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life

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