#610 - Brian Cox

[0] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[1] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night.

[2] All right, we're live.

[3] We can't hear ourselves because Brian Cox, even though he's a musician, he goes no headphone.

[4] But we can still hear ourselves, can't.

[5] I can hear you, you're right.

[6] We just can't hear whether or not.

[7] But we wouldn't know anyway.

[8] What would we do?

[9] He knows.

[10] He's got headphones on.

[11] You're right.

[12] This is revolutionary.

[13] From now on, no more headphones.

[14] It's ridiculous.

[15] What would you use them for?

[16] Well, it's like watching television while you're on television.

[17] It's like if you were on TV and you were watching a video monitor.

[18] It seems weird.

[19] Yeah.

[20] It's a little redundant.

[21] I think we should cast them aside.

[22] Yeah, let's just...

[23] In a revolutionary act.

[24] Push them, push them away.

[25] Like, not just put them down.

[26] Push them away.

[27] We reject you, oh, headphones.

[28] We reject you.

[29] Amazing technology.

[30] Infinite Munking Cage.

[31] Yeah.

[32] What's going on, man?

[33] What is this?

[34] First of all, I'm a huge fan of your work.

[35] I said that when you came in, but I have to tell people online.

[36] This is a huge treat for me. I'm very excited.

[37] Space has been my all -time adult freak out pleasure.

[38] I love watching space documentaries.

[39] I love watching television shows on space.

[40] So having you in here is a huge treat.

[41] Thank you.

[42] What's Infinite Monkey Cage?

[43] It's a long -running now, BBC radio show.

[44] So the idea initially was to get scientists to talk about their science, whatever it may be.

[45] As you said, cosmology, or archaeology, human origins, mathematics, anything.

[46] And then I do it with a stand -up comedian called Robin Ince.

[47] It's very good friend of mine.

[48] And we always also invite another guest who will be a comedian sometimes or an actor or someone who will kind of ask those questions that come in from left field.

[49] But it always goes off as your podcast do.

[50] You never know where it's going to go.

[51] So we're recording front of a live audience, usually in London, and we record for about two hours, usually in broadcast it for about 30 minutes.

[52] And there's a podcast as well, which is a bit longer.

[53] But we decided to bring it to the States because there are lots of scientists in the States, lots of comedians and people like yourself that you're going to do it with us in three weeks, isn't it?

[54] Yeah, three weeks.

[55] The 12th of Thursday, the 12th in LA.

[56] Yes.

[57] And so we just wanted, so we're going to record them for the BBC and they're going to be on the podcast and broadcast in the UK, but also in front of a live audience.

[58] So it's a, someone asked me this morning, actually, and I said, it's kind of like a variety show.

[59] Do you have, and I said, do you have those in the States?

[60] I said, yeah, we used to have them.

[61] We used to have them.

[62] Dean Martin used to do one.

[63] So I said, well, it's kind of like, if Dean Martin had a PhD, then he would have been that in black and white, a bit of singing, a bit of dancing, a bit of quantum mechanics, basically.

[64] That's one of the things that's so important about what you do, what Neil deGrasse Tyson does, is that you guys, you, you're entertaining as well as having a genuine passion and a deep knowledge of science.

[65] So it's not just like, here's the cold, hard facts, which are amazing and fascinating on their own, but you guys both have this way of, sort of germinating these ideas into people's minds that might not ordinarily accept them because there's a lot of people in America, especially, that associate learning with boring.

[66] Well, I think the important point, the serious point, is science is too important not to be part of popular culture.

[67] So if we, popular culture is the thing that people discuss.

[68] So if we seed that to, you know, talent shows or sports or whatever it is, then we're removing the most important area of human endeavor out of general conversation.

[69] So I think there's a very, there's a responsibility on scientists to say, well, I accept that, of course, I can't talk at, you know, the level that I lecture at as an undergraduate lecture course at university or even a post -grad lecture course or the level of my thesis or my research.

[70] I can't do that.

[71] But it's extremely important that we don't just seed all the ground.

[72] We don't want people in bars tonight or wherever in restaurants to only, only talk to be talking about the Grammys last night right we would like them to be talking about the fact that the universe may be infinite an extent the asking questions such as how many civilizations are there in the Milky Way galaxy the question the answer might be not very many if that's true then what does that mean for the way that we behave these are important questions but they will never be debated it unless we take the time and and make the effort to to make the science and the ideas and the debate around them part of popular culture.

[73] The internet has also opened up a lot of people's ideas about what science can be and also it opened up a lot of people's ideas about the actual popularity of science because there's until, you know, maybe 10, 20 years ago, with the notable exception like maybe Carl Sagan and a few other famous people that became famous for, you know, either cosmologists or mathematicians, it's very, very rare.

[74] But now, you know, you're a very famous.

[75] But now, you're You're seeing guys like yourself, guys like Neil deGrasse Tyson, it's like more and more Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, while he's alive.

[76] These interesting intellectuals become much more mainstream.

[77] They become – because people realize it wasn't that folks weren't interested in these subjects before.

[78] It's just they really weren't being presented them.

[79] If you don't get enough ratings, if you put your show on Thursday night at 8 p .m., and you don't get X amount of number of people watching, the studio loses interest, the people that produce it, start looking.

[80] looking at other jobs and well, this one's going to work.

[81] And they start moving on.

[82] And that's just the reality of television.

[83] And I think that with the internet, people are able to look at some of these subjects and, you know, someone will send out a tweet or a Facebook link or something like that.

[84] And then you'll say, well, this got a million people to look at it over the last 12 weeks.

[85] And this has sort of, instead of having this immediate time frame where everybody has to pay attention or the show dies, now ideas are allowed to sort of grow.

[86] Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that.

[87] I think we, as a culture, underestimate people.

[88] I think this is what you found with your podcast, I think.

[89] There are millions of people out there who are interested in ideas, interested in the latest things we found out about the universe and nature and the way that it works.

[90] And they'll come to it.

[91] You build an audience, I suppose.

[92] Yes.

[93] And it's very important for the reasons that I outlined.

[94] Our civilization, Carl Sagan, I was used to say.

[95] say this.

[96] Our civilization is based on science and technology.

[97] And so in democracies, if your democracy is going to function properly, then people need to know about the cutting edge discoveries and the things that we found out, which form the basis of our civilization.

[98] Otherwise, how can your democracy function properly?

[99] So that's partly the responsibility of the education system, of course.

[100] But I see, actually, the media on the internet and actually on television and radio as part of the education system.

[101] Now, I know that the media doesn't see itself as that often.

[102] It sees itself as a corporate effort to generate money for shareholders.

[103] I criticise that quite strongly, actually.

[104] We're fortunate in Britain that we've got the BBC whose job it is to be part of the education system and part – it is a national institution.

[105] So having a strong public service broadcaster, I think, is one of the best things you can do as a country.

[106] I mean, imagine America, I know it would be anathema to the big corporations who run the TV channels, but imagine you had a channel which really had a lot of money.

[107] The BBC is well -funded, that everybody contributed to in the States, whose job it was to act in the interests of the nation, whose job it was to say, well, we're going to make these big science documentaries and put them on.

[108] And, yeah, we'll make entertainment shows and drama shows as well.

[109] We're going to make them because we think people need to know this stuff.

[110] We want to enthuse the next generation of scientists and engineers.

[111] That's important, actually.

[112] It's important not to expose people continually to, you know, drivel, basically, populist drivel.

[113] Because people, I think you're right, people want to think.

[114] I really believe that.

[115] People are interested.

[116] I rarely go into, you know, a bar or a restaurant or a party, and people say, what do you do?

[117] And if I say, well, I work at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.

[118] We recreate the conditions that were present less than a billionth of a second after the big bank.

[119] It's very rare that someone just says, huh, yeah, whatever, and then goes and talks to somebody else.

[120] They're interested.

[121] Sure.

[122] So, yeah, I think the, and maybe you're right, the optimistic view, as you say, is that the internet will remove this corporate layer of middle management in a way, this kind of, the television executive.

[123] Maybe if you can remove that filter, which is like a sort of a malfunctioning kidney in the flow of information.

[124] That maybe it's a good thing.

[125] In a way it is.

[126] It's really kind of an archaic idea.

[127] The idea that, you know, at Thursday night at 8 o 'clock, that's when the show airs.

[128] It airs for an hour.

[129] Well, now you can, of course, DVR things, and you can, of course, there's a lot of television shows have things on demand so you can download them later.

[130] But I think that that's the model.

[131] The model is the distribution through the Internet.

[132] And this idea of sending things through the satellites and all the way they're doing it now with television networks, it's like it's not going to work.

[133] It's not going to last.

[134] As soon as companies like Netflix and now Amazon is creating their own television shows as well, those are internet -based companies, and they truly understand what the Internet is all about.

[135] And when Amazon or rather when Netflix releases a series, they release the entire series.

[136] You can download like all 10 episodes.

[137] You can binge watch them, which is a great way to get people hooked on shows as well.

[138] It's like this idea that, you know, the only way you're going to watch something is if it's on.

[139] NBC or CBS or ABC and then those people that run those networks they're in a panic because they've got to get people to watch so they'll throw on some reality show about housewives that are fighting to the death and people tune in I mean this is like I hosted Fear Factor you know I understand what they're doing I was a part of the problem or part of the solution if that's what you wanted to watch on television yeah you know they're just trying to get by like they're just trying to figure out what's the next American Idol what's the next you know whatever show the voice like what do I have to do to do to get 18 million people to sit in front and watch a ball being passed from one man to the other and they try to get across the line.

[140] Everybody goes crazy.

[141] This idea that that's the only way we can get our information, the only way you're going to get entertainment or anything that's coming at you that's being produced and created.

[142] That's dead.

[143] What I find interesting about this debate, though, is the media is obviously tremendously powerful.

[144] It's obviously the interface between most people and ideas.

[145] And so I worry about the increase of choice in a sense.

[146] So it's a very good thing in some respects.

[147] But in other respects, you can ghettoise audiences, or audiences will become ghettoized.

[148] So let's say that, for example, I'm interested in playing computer games.

[149] So as a 17 -year -old or something of you, if that's what you're into, you can just watch that 24 -7.

[150] So you're not exposed to new ideas.

[151] So I would say is that choice, really.

[152] Choice is really what you mean is informed choice.

[153] So you mean, well, here's the spread of ideas that our culture has generated over, you know, more than 3 ,000 years of civilization.

[154] You'll stumble across things you didn't know about.

[155] Maybe you become interested in ancient Egypt.

[156] Maybe you become interested in the evolution of homo sapiens in the Rift Valley 200 ,000 years ago.

[157] Maybe you find that fascinating.

[158] But if you're not exposed to those ideas at all, and culture has no way of exposing you to those ideas beyond the education system, then we're in a, we have a problem.

[159] So I don't know what the solution is to this, but I think that there's something to be said, it will never come back now, but the old -fashioned model that we had in Britain for many years, where the BBC was really quite dominant, was that you could almost, you could say, well, we're going to put X Factor on, let's say, or dancing with the stars or whatever that thing is.

[160] And then after it, we're going to put a documentary on, about astronomy and the idea is that some of that the people who were watching the talent show will drift into the documentary I didn't know I was interested in the moon of Jupiter called Europa that has an ocean surrounding it that may have life on it I didn't know that I didn't know I was interested and that that model works so you're right though it's gone probably so I think the great challenge is how do you how do you expose people to new ideas in our culture how do you get debates going how do you stimulate that kind of excitement about knowledge in this new media world.

[161] Maybe you know.

[162] You're sort of an evangelist in that sense.

[163] I don't mean in a religious way.

[164] I mean, you're someone who evangelizes about the ideas of science and of space.

[165] Like you think it's very important to spread these ideas.

[166] And that 17 -year -old kid who watches video games all day, which easily could have been me, that kid will never break out of that mold.

[167] I think that the, I think the 17 -year -old kid, if he really is completely upset, and he wants to watch video games all day.

[168] The only thing that's going to fix that is he's going to eventually get bored and he's going to want to try something new and having the infinite options that are available today.

[169] Someone could send him a text.

[170] Dude, three words.

[171] Infinite monkey cage.

[172] Google it.

[173] And the guy, he'll be, all right, shit, I'm bored of video games.

[174] And then he'll have access to all kinds of shit that, like, if he was just waiting for the BBC to spoon feed him, he's never going to do.

[175] Yeah.

[176] Also, I think that having the stupid shows that we have here in America, like, if you watch reality shows, one of the things that you'll notice is the anger that people have about these shows, the anger that they're being force -fed, this fucking stupid shit, but they're still watching it.

[177] That anger, sometimes that rejection of it, almost in your soul, forces people to go explore other ideas.

[178] Or it inspires people to go explore other ideas.

[179] It's an interesting model, isn't it?

[180] Frustrate them to the point of just, absolutely.

[181] You get so angry about that anodyne, soul -crushing, what's the word, dullness of culture that you go seek out knowledge.

[182] Maybe that is a model.

[183] I think there's something to it, man, because at one time I was in my hotel room, and I was watching Keep It Up with the Kardashians.

[184] And, you know, look, it was in between shows, like, you know, just flipping through the channels, and it was on.

[185] and it was like, I'm shopping and I can't find what I want to get.

[186] This is so frustrating.

[187] And my sister won't stop bothering me. And they're like texting each other and buying.

[188] And it's so fucking mind -numbing.

[189] And somehow and another, I'm sucked into it.

[190] Like it's a tornado and it's carrying my way up into the sky.

[191] And then I changed the next channel.

[192] And it's some biology thing on crocodiles.

[193] And it's instantly fascinating.

[194] And it's these people that live on the Nile and this scientist who's down there.

[195] He's studying these crocodiles, and, you know, there's the villagers who are worried about these things eating them.

[196] And then I'm thinking, wow, this is so fucking fascinating.

[197] These people are living next to dinosaurs.

[198] I mean, they have a real issue with dinosaurs eating their family.

[199] Like, or you can watch these just simple apes talk about shiny things.

[200] And they'll talk about shiny things for a whole...

[201] And millions of fucking people do.

[202] But the anger of...

[203] Can't take this anymore.

[204] And then you switch the channel or...

[205] go online.

[206] I really think that does there's a yin and a yang to the world.

[207] This is the strongest case for the Cardassians I've ever heard that it compresses your very soul in existence into such a small space that you burst out into a world of ideas.

[208] So that's, yeah.

[209] Well, it's analogous to California because in California we have too much sun.

[210] We have so much sun that it doesn't rain.

[211] We need 11 trillion gallons of water just to make up for the water that didn't rain in the last three years.

[212] It's a fucking disaster.

[213] But if you lived in a place like Alaska in the winter where there's no fucking sun at all and just looking for little peaks in the clouds or those days in Portland where it's just 39 days in a row, there's no fucking sun.

[214] You just get crazy.

[215] You can't take it anymore.

[216] And then one day that sun is there and you're like, ah, it's so beautiful.

[217] This is amazing.

[218] Whereas in L .A., we're like, fucking sun.

[219] We're so tired of the sun.

[220] We just, people get used to shit.

[221] I'm going to call it the Rogan model, which is just depress everyone to the point of, the Rogan model for broadcasting.

[222] Yeah, bore the fuck out of them.

[223] And they'll surely at some point.

[224] And then put the cosmos on.

[225] There must be more to write.

[226] Yes.

[227] And then when it comes on.

[228] And then they get it.

[229] Well, not everyone.

[230] There's going to be some people that are always going to be, they're going to always gravitate towards nonsense.

[231] There's nothing you can do about that.

[232] It's just we're, we're so varied.

[233] We're so, the, the spectrum of human beings from the smartest to the dumbest is so wide.

[234] There's no getting around that.

[235] Life experiences, genetics, whatever causes it, I don't know.

[236] But there's just certain people that do not give a fuck, and they're going to always be there.

[237] But concentrating on them, you know, and like, it's profitable.

[238] Like, you could sell them shit.

[239] It's a really good model if you're in the business.

[240] It is.

[241] I still, you said earlier, though, I'm perhaps optimistic.

[242] I think you could, I think we can sell them.

[243] It sounds almost them, this group.

[244] Some of them, yeah.

[245] You could sell, I still think you can sell ideas to people.

[246] I'm going to be optimistic about it.

[247] Those people maybe not, but there's a lot of fucking people.

[248] There's 350 million people in this country alone.

[249] We underestimate people, I think.

[250] I've rarely met someone who wasn't interested.

[251] Oh, let me take you around.

[252] Are you going to do?

[253] Are you going to?

[254] Let me take you around and bring around some dummies.

[255] Listen, dude, there's some fucking dummies out there.

[256] A lot of smart folks like yourself, you're hanging out at CERN, a bunch of other physicists, you're talking about black holes and shit.

[257] There might be a selection effect, you're right.

[258] I know it is.

[259] I've never been into the cafeteria at CERN.

[260] And anyone who's not interested.

[261] Trust me, man. I hosted Fear Factor for six years, and I'm a cage -fighting commentator.

[262] There's dummies out there.

[263] There's unfixable dummies.

[264] And it's probably not their fault, but it's probably one of the greatest pieces of evidence that points towards natural selection and points towards the variability of life.

[265] And that human beings, we vary so strongly that in comparison to other, like, wild animals.

[266] If you see wolves, I mean, you see wolves that are slightly larger and slightly more dominant and wolves that are slightly smaller and slightly more timid and they get pushed out of the pack.

[267] But they're all fucking wolves.

[268] You see people and you see Brian Cox and then you see.

[269] Kim Kardashian.

[270] I mean, you guys are both on the same timeline.

[271] You're both alive in this point in history.

[272] And one of you is talking about fucking shoes and the other one is trying to figure out what happened right after the Big Bang.

[273] And one of them has a fuckload more people paying attention, Brian Cox.

[274] And it ain't you, buddy.

[275] It's that chick.

[276] The chick with the fake ass is the one who's getting all the eyeballs.

[277] Going back to Carl Sagan's great book, The Demon Haunted World.

[278] It's great book.

[279] I love that book.

[280] I mean, he makes the point that the thing is everyone has a vote and rightly so.

[281] We live in a democracy right now.

[282] You might say, well, could we have some kind of IQ test threshold for the vote?

[283] But therefore, the direction of our societies is, in principle, in the hands of everyone.

[284] So we can't just accept the fact that, you know, well, all right, well, 1 % of the world's population is going to pay attention to reality.

[285] And the rest of them are going to pay attention to reality TV.

[286] And we're going to be okay.

[287] We're not going to be okay because the 99 % will be unaware what they're voting for.

[288] They have control, and rightly so, we live over the direction of our countries.

[289] So education is extremely important.

[290] It is important for people for us to try and make available the great swath of knowledge that we've accumulated over the last 3 ,000 years.

[291] We were absolutely in agreement about that.

[292] I just think that the open nature of the Internet enhances that more than stifles it.

[293] I think there's only good.

[294] I only see good.

[295] I think I'm a big fan of old shit.

[296] I love to go watch old television shows and old movies and old, especially old stand -up comedy performances.

[297] Because there's not just because it's sort of like a time machine, you're looking back at this moment that's been captured, which is absolutely fascinating to me, but also the stark differences, the obvious differences between culture then and culture now, between the awareness of the people, like, there's some movies that were really good movies, but if you try to watch them today, you go, oh, who's that fucking dumb today?

[298] Like, no one is that dumb today.

[299] It's hard, like, the education level of the people that are communicating in these movies, the way they view life is very obviously different than the way we view life today.

[300] Like, you could not put Father Knows Best on television today, because people wouldn't fucking, they're not like, duh, not enough.

[301] Nope, it's got to go to a higher frequency because human beings are very different today than they were in 1950.

[302] I think our culture is one of the clearest influences.

[303] There's some amazing stuff from 1950.

[304] It's amazing books that were written.

[305] There's amazing films that were made.

[306] But the reality is the culture has shifted dramatically in the last 64 years.

[307] There's no getting around that.

[308] It's changing.

[309] And I think having something like the internet just pushes that in a direction.

[310] And a guy like you who gets upset, a guy like you who gets upset at all these reality shows, it's really just proof that this is what you're designed to do.

[311] You're like designed to educate.

[312] These people that are annoying you and these programs that are stupid, that's actually just fuel.

[313] It's just giving you more.

[314] It's giving you an adversary.

[315] It's giving you motivation to stop it from happening.

[316] I mean, if everybody was going to college and everybody was super educated and really aware of the problems with plastic and fossil fuels, and, boy, what a weird world we'd live in.

[317] Probably nothing would ever get done.

[318] Like, the battle between the dummies and the people like yourself is essential.

[319] It's essential.

[320] It's the yin and yang.

[321] The idea, the thesis, that they're defining the motor of civilization and human advancement is irritation with dumb people.

[322] I think it is.

[323] I don't appreciate naps unless I work out hard.

[324] I don't appreciate vacations unless I'm just exhausted.

[325] I have to be exhausted with work to appreciate vacations.

[326] I must say it's one of the threads, I mean, we started talking about Infinite Monkey Cage.

[327] It's one of the threads through the whole series is a slight annoyance that we turn into into something that's interesting, generates ideas for us.

[328] I mean, we had a letter about the title, The Infinite Monkey Cage, complaining.

[329] You shouldn't cage monkeys.

[330] No, that was it.

[331] It was like, it's cruel.

[332] It's cruel.

[333] And we said, no, an infinite, it's an infinite cage.

[334] It's really mean.

[335] It's a lot of room.

[336] It's arguably the universe as an infinite cage.

[337] And then another letter came in, I think it might have been a response, so we'd set that back.

[338] And they said, don't, it's also supporting this kind of Darwinian myth.

[339] The Darwinian myth that we somehow share a common ancestor with a monkey.

[340] So it's, how so?

[341] And he said, well, there was an experiment done that disproved all your nonsense.

[342] We like experiments.

[343] We like evidence.

[344] So this is really interesting.

[345] What's the evidence?

[346] So we read down.

[347] And they said, there was an experiment done in a zoo in Alabama or somewhere where they got 10 monkeys and they gave them typewriters and after a week all they'd done was shit on them so the idea that an infinite number of monkeys could write Shakespeare and all this is a myth it's like well there's a difference between 10 monkeys and an infinite number of monkeys there's not you know 10 is not very close to infinity and it's just these complaints about it and we made my friend Robin Inso, I co -presents it with.

[348] He said, it's not an incremental process, this kind of infinite monkey thing.

[349] It's not like if you have a hundred monkeys, then eventually they'll produce a leaflet.

[350] And then if you have a thousand, they'll do maybe a book.

[351] And then if you have 10 ,000, they'll do Shakespeare.

[352] And it's not, you know, really we mean it.

[353] It's an infinite number of monkeys you need to type out the works of Shakespeare.

[354] But yeah, we get a lot of, we enjoy the complaints.

[355] We get a lot from, yeah, we got a lot of complaints from Deepak Chopra actually these days.

[356] He's a silly bitch.

[357] He doesn't.

[358] He doesn't.

[359] He doesn't.

[360] Isn't that one of those things that's like one of those expressions that people always use it?

[361] If you take an infinite number of monkeys and give them the typewriters, they'll type out Shakespeare, the works of Shakespeare.

[362] Is that true?

[363] Well, it is true.

[364] It's an infinite number of monkeys.

[365] Yeah, but even an infinite number, I think they're going to fail.

[366] They're going to fuck it up.

[367] They're monkeys.

[368] You don't think, no. You're still monkeys.

[369] You were talking to me earlier about infinity.

[370] I know, but if you get an infinite number of monkeys, aren't, there's the same animal.

[371] They're the same exact animal.

[372] They're going to type the exact works of Shakespeare.

[373] Shakespeare?

[374] Well, they will, because there's an infinite number of them.

[375] Every possible combination of letter presses must happen.

[376] That is true.

[377] But would it happen, what is the odds of it happening in the exact same order of the works of Shakespeare?

[378] Is it even calculated?

[379] Less than zero.

[380] Less than zero.

[381] But it's still possible.

[382] The odds are greater than zero.

[383] So that's the point.

[384] So if you've got an infinite number of them, then you will get everything that can possibly happen will happen.

[385] Could you imagine if one monkey just randomly they gave it a case?

[386] key, you know, like, look, we're talking about the entire universe, right?

[387] So we're talking about an infinite number.

[388] But what if they just get lucky as fuck and give one monkey a typewriter?

[389] And this little dude just starts banging out the entire works of Shakespeare, but he's still a monkey.

[390] He's still, like, playing with his butt and, you know, swinging around and having a good time.

[391] He's not doing anything else other than when they put him in front of this keyboard.

[392] He types out all the works of Shakespeare in exactly the right order, the exact punctuation, the exact spaces in between letters.

[393] Well, if the universe is infinite, which it may well be, in fact, there are many ways the universe can be infinite, then that would happen.

[394] Because everything, if it's in accord with the laws of physics, then it can happen.

[395] And everything that can happen in an infinite universe will happen because the universe is formally infinite.

[396] So I contend, and we'll probably get emails about it, but I'm trying to think whether there's any count.

[397] argument, I don't think there is.

[398] I contend that in an infinite universe, even the most unlikely possibility must happen.

[399] In fact, formally, an infinite number of times.

[400] So maybe Shakespeare was a monkey?

[401] A monkey.

[402] Yeah.

[403] Maybe someone's pet monkey.

[404] We could calculate it.

[405] We could calculate it.

[406] Someone can do it online now, because there are, how many letters are there in Shakespeare?

[407] The complete works of Shakespeare.

[408] So you can Google that, someone will tell you.

[409] and we know you've got 26 possibilities and so off we go.

[410] And so how, what's the probability?

[411] What are the odds of randomly typing on a typewriter?

[412] Let's say at one letter per second, how long will it take and one of the odds that you'll type out the complete words of Shakespeare?

[413] That's a known number.

[414] I don't know it off the top of my head, but it can be calculated.

[415] So that's my challenge to your viewers and listeners, send in that email.

[416] Someone will do it.

[417] There'll be someone working at MIT or something who can do it in five minutes.

[418] That's an easy sum.

[419] And then you would have to calculate how many monkeys start out with Romeo and Julia and then just start shitting on their typewriter.

[420] They're like, they start out.

[421] I know the answer that is more than the other one.

[422] And how many?

[423] He's like, get the first chapter perfect and then just shit all over the place.

[424] No, right all the way to the last word.

[425] The last single digit.

[426] Well, I bet every keystroke along the way there's a monkey shitting on their typewriter.

[427] Like you get like the first paragraph, shit all over the place.

[428] This guy got to the second paragraph, shit all over the place.

[429] Yeah, and to go back to having for that.

[430] Monkey Cage complaint letter, that proves that Darwin's wrong.

[431] That's the logic.

[432] Can I just say that if someone doesn't remember, I just came into the podcast at that point?

[433] He doesn't, yeah.

[434] You can't cherry pick that quote.

[435] Brian Cox does not think Darwin's wrong.

[436] That'll be in the press.

[437] There's a great website, a Twitter handle called Take That Darwin, where people that are educationally challenged will question Darwin's theories like.

[438] My favorite one is, you know, if people came from monkeys, how come monkeys are still around?

[439] Like, they retweet that all day.

[440] Because someone says that.

[441] A genuine fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.

[442] That really is, you know, you're going, right, where am I going to start here?

[443] Maybe with a book.

[444] The only way to truly test is to, I think, what we really need to do is take monkeys and give them psychedelic drugs.

[445] We need to do this.

[446] Someone needs to do this.

[447] They need to take an island where the monkeys can't escape and give them psychedelic drugs and leave them puzzles and see what they figure out.

[448] Why does that test anything?

[449] It doesn't.

[450] It doesn't.

[451] It would just be fun to watch.

[452] There is a guy named Terrence McKenna, who I'm a huge fan of, who had a theory called a stoned ape theory.

[453] And he backed it up, allegedly, remember who this is coming from, with climatological data on that time of the world, that he believes that the evolution of human beings, the big part of it, the development of the human beings, brain might have come from them experimenting with psychedelic mushrooms that as the rainforests receded into grasslands animals were forced to try new foods out because their habitat was changing and they would climb down for these trees and flip over these cow patties to get bugs and worms and things along those lines and that this time of the world it was very common to have these psilocybin mushrooms growing all over the place and that the monkeys that would eat them he had a bunch of theories like apparently it's been proven that in low doses, psilocybin increases visual acuity, which would make you able to see things better, which would make you a better hunter.

[454] Also makes you horny, so it would make people more likely to breed.

[455] And that would favor the people, or the monkeys, rather, the subhuman primates, whatever you call them, that went along that line.

[456] Well, it is, one of the more widely accepted theories about hominin evolution, is it is that climate change played a key role.

[457] And actually, in my latest series, Human Universe, we focused on a theory which links the climate change, particularly in the Rift Valley, because we know that the big jumps in brain size all occurred in the Rift Valley of Africa.

[458] And it's quite remarkable, actually.

[459] And that's broadly speaking accepted, I think.

[460] Although there's a lot of argument with anthropologists, because the data is sparse, you know.

[461] But it's broadly accepted there.

[462] And it seems that the big jumps in brain size occurred at times when the Earth's orbit was most elliptical.

[463] So the Earth's orbit oscillates, it becomes more elliptical and more circular, and there are many different oscillations, driven by gravitational interaction with the planets, like Jupiter in particular.

[464] And it seems like when the Earth's most elliptical, that the rate of climate change in the Rift Valley is higher and more extreme.

[465] And it seems to be the case that there's relatively strong evidence for the case, that when you get these really rapid times of climate change, as you mentioned, then you get increases in hominin brain size, therefore increases in intelligence.

[466] There was a big one 1 .8 million years ago, which was a very big increase in the number of species in the Rift Valley, of which homoe erectus was one of them, which eventually led to us, and a big jumping brain size as well.

[467] And this was at a time when there was strong evidence for rapid climate change in that region.

[468] So that makes sense, like the adaptability of these animals, experimenting with new food sources, trying out new hunting methods.

[469] A lot of them change from herbivore to omnivore.

[470] A lot of the primates that were observed, right?

[471] That's where it gets controversial.

[472] When you look at the academic research, because the sort of Darwinian idea, so you get this pressure from climate change.

[473] But then what's the selection effect?

[474] Because climate change happens over many generations.

[475] It doesn't happen over one generation.

[476] So the question is, well, what actually is doing the selecting?

[477] What are we selecting for?

[478] Why is this group?

[479] more likely to breed and be more successful if it's more intelligent.

[480] So some people say, well, it's because they were forced into groups.

[481] So it's group dynamics.

[482] It's the fact that you end up with bigger tribes, you know, hundreds of individuals cooperating together.

[483] And that's what's being selected for, and you need to be intelligent for that.

[484] Some people say, as you said, that it's more adaptability.

[485] So maybe they have to learn to go fishing or they have to learn to eat the particular different crops.

[486] So that's a big area of debate about what might have been the selection pressure this precise selection pressure.

[487] But it does seem pretty nailed down that climate change, certainly in that region of Africa, in Ethiopia and Tanzania and through the Rift Valley, had played a role in driving us towards intelligence.

[488] And essentially, the size scale is very small, by the way.

[489] I mean, so you go back four million years, and things like Australopithecus are around, which are basically upright chimpanzees.

[490] The brain is not much bigger than a modern -day chimp.

[491] But then you go to 200 ,000 years ago, and that's when Homo sapiens first emerged just over 200 ,000 years, which is not very long ago, and it's quite remarkable actually, and the modern theory is they spread out of Africa about 60 ,000 years ago, and they made it into Europe about 43 ,000 years ago or so, into North America and South America only 15 ,000 years ago.

[492] So it's a very, it's quite a rapid spread.

[493] And the fact that we've only been around as a species for at most a quarter of a million years, a quarter of one million years, is quite remarkable, I think.

[494] Well, when you think about what we've accomplished.

[495] I was flying into Los Angeles last night, and I was thinking, if you could take the pioneers that came from Europe in the 17 and 1800s, the guys who were on those wagons with the wooden wheels and they were pulling them with horses across the country, trying to see what's over there, if you could show them, like, hey man, this is what's going to go down in 2015.

[496] Hop on this plane, look out this fucking window.

[497] Whoa, look at that grid.

[498] They would freak the fuck out.

[499] They saw all the electricity It's like the sky of Los Angeles, in my opinion, Los Angeles is more beautiful at night than any other city.

[500] Because it's so spread out, it's all lights.

[501] As you're flying in, it looks so science fiction.

[502] Well, you know, I recently interviewed the astronaut Charlie Duke, who landed on the moon, or the Apollo astronauts.

[503] And he said to me, his father couldn't believe it because he was alive when the Wright brothers flew.

[504] So his father spanned the time from the Wright brothers.

[505] and he was alive and then his son walked on the moon in one lifetime 60 years well 70 years well the real the real mind fuck is what the creation of the plane to the time someone dropped an atomic bomb from the plane is less than 50 years yeah and in nuclear physics we didn't know we didn't know there was an atomic brotherford discovered the atomic nucleus in Manchester in a I was it 1912 or so I should know but anyway By the way, something like 1912, 1913.

[506] So he discovers the nucleus.

[507] And within 30 years, you have an atomic bomb.

[508] They didn't even know.

[509] And Rutherford was actually asked at the time.

[510] He said, it's the usual question we get as physicists.

[511] They say, what's the use of this?

[512] And Rutherford said, there's no use to it.

[513] He said anyone who thinks that you could use this as an energy source is talking moonshine.

[514] And within 30 or 40 years, you have nuclear reactors producing power, and you have atomic bombs.

[515] rapid progress well that's one thing that's been constant about people and predicting the future we've always got it wrong always we miss some of the rapid advances you know we talk about you know there's a computer down and a phone here the fact that the modern electronics is is a single lifetime the transistor is what 1940s I think at Bell Labs here in the US it's not long ago you know that you go from that to this I mean we're talking about Apollo, I mean, this is significantly more powerful than anything that was available in the world when Apollo was there.

[516] The rooms filled computers at NASA, which were nowhere near as powerful as that.

[517] It's amazing.

[518] I mean, those Google glasses that people are wearing is a sign of things to come, in my opinion.

[519] They stopped making them, but there's a new company that has like a goggle that looks like a skiing gogg and it allows you to move things in front of you, like a virtual desktop.

[520] You can spin squares, hold things in place, throw things to the side and they disappear.

[521] I mean, we're going to get really, really, really weird within the next couple of decades.

[522] Yeah, I've actually seen some of that technology.

[523] It's a company called Magic Leap.

[524] Yes.

[525] I've been there in Miami.

[526] You saw it in person?

[527] Yeah.

[528] What does it look like?

[529] Really, it does indeed, you can put 3D objects into your field of vision.

[530] How is that working?

[531] So you've actually seen it.

[532] I signed an NDA.

[533] You did?

[534] You can't talk?

[535] But I tell you that it works.

[536] It's a remarkable thing.

[537] Google have just bought the company, actually.

[538] Yeah, we played it, we played some videos of it, and we couldn't figure out whether we were watching a simulation, we're watching what the future holds, or we're watching an actual demonstration of that technology.

[539] Yeah, oh, it's going to be impressive, I think.

[540] And it's interesting what you said, because it brings the web, this unlimited information, into your field of vision, so you can manipulate it, and then there are questions about what's real and what isn't and who cares anyway, you know, really.

[541] and it's an interesting.

[542] Do you dabble at all in the theory of some sort of an artificial world that we live in, you know, these ideas of simulation?

[543] Do you dabble in that or is it just too much?

[544] It's interesting, actually.

[545] I mean, a colleague of mine at Manchester, there are some physicists who think that it's a possibility, a strong possibility that we're living in a simulation.

[546] I mean, it's, you know, it's speculative out there stuff.

[547] But it's an attempt to explain some properties of the universe, that are interesting and unusual.

[548] So one of my favorite, I think, at the moment piece of cutting -edge physics in cosmology.

[549] Cosmology, I should say, the study of the universe, the origin and evolution of the universe, is going through a revolution at the moment.

[550] And it's coming from data.

[551] So it's coming from measurements of things like the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the oldest light in the universe.

[552] So just to rewind and say what that is, 380 ,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe became transparent.

[553] for the first time to light.

[554] And that's because it was cooling down, as it was expanding and cooling, then atoms formed.

[555] It became cool enough for atoms to form.

[556] And at that moment, very, very quickly, the universe becomes transparent, and so photons of light can travel on through the universe, and they've been doing so ever since.

[557] And we can take a photograph of that, and we have them with a series of satellites, the most recent, which is called Planck, which is a European satellite that's up there.

[558] So this is a baby picture of the universe, as it was 380 ,000.

[559] years after the Big Bang.

[560] It's a very beautiful picture.

[561] But in explaining that, that's given support to theories called inflationary cosmology theories.

[562] So inflationary cosmology theories say that before the universe was hot and dense, which we tend to call the Big Bang.

[563] Before that, the universe was still there, and he was doing something else which was an exponential expansion.

[564] So it was expanding exponentially fast, way faster than the speed of light, then it stops, and all the energy that was causing that expansion gets dumped into space, heats it up, and that's what we see as the particles and energy today.

[565] So those theories are kind of interesting.

[566] But they also suggest that there are theories called eternal inflation theories that say, well, how long did that period of expansion go on for?

[567] And does it all stop at once, or does it stop in patches?

[568] And if it stops in patches, you get, if it stops in a little patch, you'd get a big bang and an universe.

[569] And it stops in another patch, you get another big bang, another universe.

[570] So these theories suggest perhaps there are an infinite number possibly of big bangs in inverted commas which would mean they're an infinite number of universes like ours and they're being created now all the time and they will continue to be created forever.

[571] So you get this fractal multiverse, ever -growing exponentially fast and really bizarrely those theories have some support from the cosmic microwave background.

[572] They're theories that explain the structures we see I should just underline the fact that this is speculative in a sense, but it's relatively mainstream that.

[573] But one of my colleagues noticed, and some physicists have noticed, is if you were some kind of omnipotent deity programmer and you wanted to run what's called a Monte Carlo simulation to say, well, I'll vary the strength of gravity in one universe, and vary the mass of the electron in another one, and vary these physical constants, and see what happens.

[574] Then this is probably the kind of thing you'd do.

[575] This is what it would kind of look.

[576] like so that you can make an argument that the universe in some sense looks like one of these kind of so -called Monte Carlo simulations because it gives you the possibility of generating every possible number of different ratios of the strengths of the forces of nature and all these things so I just have to emphasize this is way out there way on the edge but it's fun and what is fun and interesting though is that the whine all the way back the inflationary cosmology bit is probably the most widely accepted theory at the moment for how the universe got to be the way it is and it does lend itself to this idea that there may be a multiverse and it may be that in each different pocket universe if you like you can have different physical constants so most of them wouldn't allow life to exist but some of them would so our universe looks very fine -tuned if you look at it in a sense it looks like if the laws of nature were very slightly different you wouldn't get carbon for example produced in style in large quantities, which you need in order to, and when the stars die, the carbon and the oxygen come out, and they re -collapse into another generation of stars and solar systems, and that's how you get the heavy elements that make up our bodies.

[577] So all those things look, you either try and find an explanation for why the laws of nature are the way they are, or you go to one of these multiverse theories and say, well, actually, because that's what we were talking about earlier, about the infinite monkeys, actually every possibility occurs in nature, And then we shouldn't be surprised that we live in a universe that seems fine -tuned for life, seems perfect for us to exist in, because every possible combination of the laws of nature exists somewhere.

[578] And this is where cosmology is at the moment.

[579] This is genuine.

[580] You could go onto the web and Google it.

[581] You'll find a thousand review papers on what's called inflationary cosmology.

[582] And it is cool and interesting, actually.

[583] Yeah, it's beyond that.

[584] It's very, the idea of something being.

[585] infinite and not just infinite but infinite numbers of these infinite things infinite numbers of infinite universes these these theories exist so this idea of computer simulation the idea that the world we live in the universe we live in is a simulation that was the question that you first asked you no no it's because what you went on is beautiful don't change the thing you stay you the idea being that one day if human beings continue to increase our technological abilities.

[586] One day we're talking about this magic leap and we're talking about the goggles that allow you to see a virtual world, we're going to, if we don't blow ourselves up or get hit by an asteroid, we're going to come up with something that is indistinguishable from the reality that we see right now.

[587] And when people start examining the nature of the universe and they start looking at the fractal nature of things and looking at, like, what you were saying, that if you were going to be some omnipotent deity that creates the universe, you'd probably do something like this.

[588] Like, every single combination and throw them out there.

[589] So when we discover, like, there's, is his James Gates?

[590] That was the guy's name?

[591] Sylvester Gates.

[592] Sylvester Gates.

[593] It was a guy who spoke to Neil deGrasse Tyson about string theory and that they found in string theory this computer code that was created by humans in like the 1930s.

[594] They figured this out.

[595] and that this actually exists in these codes in string theory.

[596] And his idea was that that somehow another proves that there is some evidence support that life, the reality that we see right now is a simulation.

[597] Or it could be that, which way more likely, that you're just discovering some sort of code that the entire universe is based on, that when you look at things being fractal and you look at the idea of there being not just infinite expansion, but infinite contraction and that there is no smallest point.

[598] There's just smaller than we can measure.

[599] But when we talk about subatomic particles and we talk about things being like atoms being mostly air, and then you go deeper and deeper and you don't know what the fuck is going on and particles are blinking in and out of existence and existing in the same time, both moving and still, ah!

[600] But could it be that you just got to keep getting, we just can't see it?

[601] Well, I mean, the answer is, I mean, we sort of do know what the fuck's going on at some level with subatomic particles.

[602] Right.

[603] You know, if you look to the LHC, which is the large Adron Collider, which is the place where we generate the highest energy, so it's the biggest microscope in the world in that sense.

[604] We have an extremely good understanding of the laws of physics at that level, up to and including the discovery of the Higgs particle.

[605] That's been proven?

[606] Is that the end of debate at all?

[607] The Higgs, because I remember there was some people that were debating whether or not the Higgs.

[608] How do you say boson?

[609] Do you say boson?

[610] Yeah, boson.

[611] There is a particle there that we've discovered, and it has all the right properties to be the, the predicted standard model Higgs particle.

[612] Please explain what that means.

[613] So the Higgs particle, it was predicted back in the 60s by Peter Higgs and others, hence its name.

[614] And the idea is, basically, that early on in the expansion history of the universe, so let's say less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, as the universe cooled, it went through something condensed out into empty space.

[615] So people call it a phase transition or one.

[616] But it's analogous to a window pane on a cold winter's day.

[617] You don't have cold winter's days in L .A .D., imagine somewhere else.

[618] If you were to get ice on a window, it's analogous to water vapour condensing out into ice as you drop the temperature, it changes into something else, into ice.

[619] So in the same way, the theory is that as the universe cooled, something condensed out, so empty space isn't empty.

[620] It's full of Higgs particles, if you like, or a Higgs field.

[621] So this means this space.

[622] Now, it's not just space between the galaxies, it's in this room, that every square meter of this room is full of the Higgs field.

[623] field.

[624] And our fundamental particles, the electrons, let's say, in our bodies, interact with that Higgs field.

[625] And in that process, they acquire mass. So it's the mass generation mechanism.

[626] It's why some particles are massive, like electrons and quarks, and some things like photons are not massive.

[627] They're massless.

[628] And they travel through the universe at the speed of light.

[629] So that's the theory.

[630] Now, that was suggested and built mathematically, essentially.

[631] There was very little evidence for it at the time back in the 60s.

[632] But over the years, the theory called the standard model of particle physics passed all experimental tests.

[633] So we got to the point where we thought, right, okay, we will build a machine that will either disprove or prove that theory.

[634] And the LHC is such a machine.

[635] If that theory is correct, which it now seems to be, the prediction is you must find the Higgs particle at the LHC or some kind of Higgs particle.

[636] And indeed, we found it as far as we can tell.

[637] So that means that we found a new particle.

[638] It has the right mass, as predicted in the window that was predicted by the theory.

[639] It behaves in every way, like the theory predicts.

[640] So now what we have to do is be experimental physicists.

[641] So the LHC turns back on again in about a month, actually.

[642] So it's been upgraded, it's been fixed, and it's done its maintenance.

[643] So we're going to make more Higgs particles now, and that means we can make more precision measurements and find out whether it is the particle predicted by Peter Higgs, or maybe it's one of a number of Higgs particles, just possibly.

[644] It's likely not now.

[645] But it might be, so there might be five of them, for example, which would suggest that theories call super symmetric theories are right.

[646] So we need to know exactly which precisely how the thing behaves, which is why we have more work to do.

[647] But it looks like it's very sure, but very sure that it is a Higgs particle.

[648] You can mess around and build esoteric theories that get you around it.

[649] But there is a new particle there.

[650] There's no doubt about that.

[651] And it looks like one of these things.

[652] But that's a remarkable thing to think about it, because it was, it's Vigna, when a great physicist, wrote an essay back in the 60s, I think, called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences.

[653] And the unreasonable effectiveness is demonstrated by this discovery because it really is a mathematical prediction.

[654] It's like we think there's a new fundamental particle that does the job of giving mass to the other particles.

[655] And this is how it does it, and this is how it behaves, and this is what it will look like, and this is what it will do.

[656] And then 50 years later, you build the biggest machine ever built, 16 miles in circumference.

[657] Most of it's in France, a bit of it's in Switzerland.

[658] 10 ,000 scientists, 150 countries.

[659] You accelerate protons, nuclear of hydrogen, around this thing, at 99 .999 ,999, 9 % the speed of light.

[660] They go around the 16 miles, 11 ,000 times a second.

[661] We can collide 600 million of them together every second to recreate the conditions that were present less than a billionth of a second after the universe began.

[662] Photograph it in the biggest digital cameras ever built.

[663] The one I work on called Atlas is 40.

[664] 40 meters in diameter.

[665] Vast, vast thing.

[666] 7 ,000 tonnes of digital camera in a cabin the side of St. Paul's Cathedral underneath the ground in Switzerland.

[667] And you find it.

[668] You find this thing that this guy, Peter Higgs, working with many other people, predicted to exist 50 years ago because he did some sums.

[669] So it's a real.

[670] So the universe does behave like that.

[671] There is a condensate in the vacuum.

[672] It is a Higgs condensate.

[673] It does give mass to the other particles.

[674] So it's a tremendous testament to the power of human reasoning, I think.

[675] And it means that we understand physics.

[676] It means that that's one of the important things about it.

[677] It means that our understanding of fundamental physics is not horribly wrong at the moment.

[678] It's good enough to predict something like that, which is a remarkable achievement.

[679] That is mind -blowing.

[680] That is truly, truly mind -blowing.

[681] Do you know when Peter Higgs, actually, the day the discovery, was announced at CERN, PACT Auditorium, Peter was there.

[682] And a journalist went up to him afterwards.

[683] And just what I've said, this is what happened.

[684] This machine did it.

[685] He found this thing.

[686] And he said, how do you feel, Professor Higgs?

[687] And he said, it's very nice to be right sometimes.

[688] Brilliant, understated.

[689] That's a foul design.

[690] Is he British?

[691] Yes, he is.

[692] There you go.

[693] That's exactly how British guy would behave.

[694] A cup of tea.

[695] American would show up with a fur coat.

[696] on, and diamonds around his glasses.

[697] We have a big pimp cane.

[698] And then someone had come on and said, you should have given the Nobel Prize to Beyonce, you know, because it's just this and...

[699] I saw that at the Grammys last night, wasn't it?

[700] Who was it?

[701] It was Kenne West, wasn't it?

[702] He keeps jumping on stage.

[703] Yeah, well, he jumped on stage once, right?

[704] Yeah.

[705] He didn't do it again last night, did he?

[706] Apparently, didn't he?

[707] Almost?

[708] You walked on.

[709] Did he have a go?

[710] He said it.

[711] I can't be bothered.

[712] So I just keep thinking he's going to appear.

[713] You're part of the problem.

[714] You just went and talked about Kanye West, the middle of one of those mind -blowing discussions.

[715] You know he is.

[716] I call that other guy, J -Z.

[717] And someone said, not J -Z.

[718] Well, it's because you call Z -Z.

[719] I know, yeah.

[720] That's a British thing.

[721] People don't know, like, the Z -O -6 is a type of corvette.

[722] They call it Z -0 -6.

[723] Yeah, so J -Z was there.

[724] That's my level of popular culture.

[725] The Large Hadron Collider also figured out or proved, proved quark, glue -on plasma?

[726] Yeah, so that's a latehap in the universe, in the history of the universe.

[727] So, way after the Higgs mechanism kicks in, you have a period when it's still too hot for protons and neutrons to form.

[728] So the building blocks of atomic nuclei are protons and neutrons.

[729] So a proton is made of two up quarks, or quarks, and a down quark, and a neutron is made of two downs and an up, and then some other stuff in there, gluons and things like that.

[730] But the universe went through aphagron.

[731] It was too hot for that to happen.

[732] So you get this plasma, this sea of the free quarks and the gluons and all these things, just before it gets cold enough to condense into protons and neutrons.

[733] And we investigate that by colliding heavier things than protons together at the LHC.

[734] So we can do silver nuclei or lead nuclei and things like that.

[735] The LHC can do that.

[736] And it produces this about a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, so quite a long time.

[737] quite a long time.

[738] You know, this is a lot has happened in that point.

[739] So we can do that as well and see how that phase of the universe behaved.

[740] And that stuff is supposed to be just immeasurably heavy, right?

[741] Oh, the atomic nuclei.

[742] Yeah, yeah.

[743] I mean, if you look at, so an astrophysical example would be a neutron star, which is basically a big nucleus, nuclear dense material, the end point of a collapsed star when it's run out of fuel.

[744] Maybe it's not too big.

[745] If it's too big, it'll turn into a black, So a neutron star would be one and a half times the mass of the sun, let's say, something like that.

[746] But it would be a radius of 10 miles.

[747] So it would easily fit in the LA metropolitan area, right?

[748] But it would have the mass of the sun or greater.

[749] So that's an atomic nucleus density.

[750] That's how you can imagine it.

[751] Something as massive as the sun compressed into something 10 miles across.

[752] And we see these things all over the universe.

[753] Neutron stars are fascinating things.

[754] someone online was explaining it some physicists was explaining that if you had this quark glue on plasma and it was the size of a sugar cube it was it would there's some ungodly amount of weight yeah like you couldn't even imagine it you know Mount Everest you know that kind of it would be like Mount Everest yeah I can't quite but it's something it's something enormous you broke my brain well if you think about it all yeah all our man mass is in, you alluded to it earlier, all the mass, our mass, is in the nuclei.

[755] And if you got all our atomic nuclei, mining your nuclei, and stuff them together into that density, you know, it would be a grain of sand or something, less in size.

[756] So you could, I mean, you think about the universe, I mean, the modern theories of the Big Bang, we've talked about earlier, these inflationary cosmology theories, they suggest that the entire observable universe, which has now got 350 billion galaxies in it, was at some point the size.

[757] of a, I don't know, a baseball or less.

[758] So we imagine, or we speak of, in modern physics, we have theories that address the time when the entire observable universe was something that you could hold.

[759] So you've got enough energy in there to make 350 billion galaxies, each with 200 billion stars.

[760] And it's remarkable that we're not quite there with the laws of physics, but we're not far up.

[761] Those are the kind of, that's the physics we're doing at LHC, basically.

[762] We're trying to explore the laws.

[763] of nature and see to find the laws of nature will describe the universe when it was that hot and that dense.

[764] And we are quite close.

[765] I say we're good from about a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.

[766] Then that's where we have our theories that talk about the Higgs boson and things.

[767] And so we understand that very well.

[768] And so the challenge now is to get back beyond that.

[769] And that's where you, that's where string theory attempts to live, which you mentioned earlier.

[770] String theory, we don't know if it's right.

[771] We have no evidence to that.

[772] It's an approach to trying to describe the universe before those times when our current laws work?

[773] The idea of a birth and a death of a universe troubles some people, the idea that we have sort of artificially subscribed, the idea that this had to start somewhere, and that it may very well be an infinite expansion and contraction, like waves going in and waves going out, the idea being that the entire universe may one day get to a point where it pulls down into itself and becomes one event horizon, one infinite piece of mass, and then starts all over again.

[774] Is that possible?

[775] The current, if you look at how the universe is expanding at the moment, then it is accelerating in its expansion.

[776] So the measurements tell us that the expansion rate itself is getting faster.

[777] And we have a name for that.

[778] We call it dark energy.

[779] And so the, and of order 65, 70 % of the energy in the universe appears to be taken up in driving this increasingly fast expansion.

[780] And so that looks like if nothing happens, then that becomes dominant.

[781] So it continues to accelerate its expansion.

[782] And in the end, you get something that looks like this inflationary period that I said may have existed before the universe was hot and dense.

[783] So it looks like, so that looks like what's happening at the moment.

[784] So whether that can stop, whether there's something that can stop it in the same way as it seems to have stopped very early in the history, by the way.

[785] And whether that's true, nobody knows.

[786] We don't know the mechanism.

[787] But the measurements tell us of distant, particularly of looking at supernova in distant galaxies, and also actually from this cosmic microwave background radiation I mentioned earlier, the detailed modelling and measurements of that all are consistent and suggest that the universe is accelerating in its expansion.

[788] So that would suggest that it's not going to rebound because it's everything's like a big rip scenario almost where everything's accelerated.

[789] Space time is stretching at a faster and faster rate at the moment.

[790] That seems to be what's happening.

[791] So you feel that it's much more likely that there are infinite numbers of these things happening, that there's not just one big bang that creates this universe and we're watching this universe expand, but that there's infinite numbers of these things that are happening at the exact same time?

[792] That's more speculative.

[793] So the way that inflation is probably textbook now.

[794] You get some physicists that will argue with it, but broadly speaking, I think many astrophysicists think the inflation is the best theory we have because it makes predictions that agree with observation.

[795] So it's the best theory in terms of making the best predictions at the moment.

[796] And this is that accelerating.

[797] reading and its expansion.

[798] Very fast, superluminal, faster than light expansion.

[799] That stops, and the end point of that is what we used to call the Big Bang.

[800] So that's broadly speaking textbook stuff.

[801] That's where you teach in undergraduate cosmology courses.

[802] Then some physicists argue that the natural extension to those theories, a theory is called eternal inflation, which are what you said.

[803] So this exponential expansion of space time is always going on.

[804] And it stops.

[805] just in little patches and that little patch is where you generate a new pocket universe if you like of which ours is one example and you can have an infinite number of those and they would be being produced now and you can ask the question how long has that been going on and the answer is nobody knows and there's a debate even amongst the people who believe in those theories about whether it could have gone on forever or whether it would have started in what a colleague of mine at Durham Carlos Frank calls the mother of all big bangs so was there a mother of all big bangs mother of all Big Bangs that set this process in motion.

[806] And in that thing that got so that big fractal thing, you get loads of little Big Bang.

[807] And the answer is this is cutting -edge stuff.

[808] It's very exciting.

[809] But so I'd say, just to be very precise, the inflationary bit, the simple bit, which was first put forward in the 80s, actually, by Alan Guth and people like that in the US.

[810] André Linda, another one.

[811] That looks right in the sense that it matches data very well.

[812] And the consequences of it, are argued about, and are active areas of research at the moment.

[813] One of the things that people were terrified of about the large Hadron Collider is that in trying to find the Higgs that you might accidentally create black holes, little tiny ones, it would just go eating through the earth, like a little ping pong ball that shot through the entire planet.

[814] That's idiots like me. That's definitely shit.

[815] However.

[816] Is it possible to create a big band?

[817] or excuse me a black hole is that is it possible theoretically to have enough power like if you don't have it right now with the large Hadron Collider is it possible that a larger machine will be created and human beings can recreate a black hole yes it's possible and it's possible if you have extra dimensions in the universe right so the thing is that so we know gravity is a very weak force is by far the weakest of the four fundamental forces of nature billions and billions of times weaker than the other ones, which you can tell because you can pick up, you know, a phone, even though the planet's Earth is trying to stop me doing that, and I can just resist the polar planet.

[818] So gravity is very weak.

[819] So that gives you a clue that you can say, well, what energy, how far do we have to go back in time, if you like, towards the Big Bang, before it's so hot that gravity is as strong as the other forces.

[820] The strength of the forces varies, I should say, with energy.

[821] So they change.

[822] And we've seen this behavior.

[823] So So two of the forces, so -called electromagnetism, which is the most familiar one, electricity, that one, and the weak nuclear force, which is one of the forces that operates in the atomic nucleus, they are the same force, they're manifestations of the same force, and we've seen this experimentally.

[824] And in fact, the Higgs boson is part of that process.

[825] And so we've seen the energies that they become the same force.

[826] So the idea is the other force, the strong nuclear force, if you go to higher energies and temperatures, converges, and they'd have some things called grand unified theories.

[827] and then gravity makes its lethargic way back and unifies with them at something called the plank energy which is an immensely short time scales after the origin of the universe if you want to, very, very hot.

[828] So it's a way in excess of anything.

[829] So if you just want to just create black holes in a lab, then the naive thing is you'd have to go to those energies and there's nowhere in the universe, you'd never do it, you'd have a part of it's accelerator to the side of the observable universe and it wouldn't be big enough.

[830] Wow.

[831] But if you allow extra dimensions in space, So you imagine that, so we would live in a three -dimensional space, and then there's time as well, so we've got four dimensions.

[832] If you allow there to be five or six or 13, I think the string theory, they keep changing their mind.

[833] But, you know, 13 now?

[834] Something like that.

[835] I don't know.

[836] But then what you can do is you can arrange for that energy scale at which gravity becomes important to come up so the temperatures to drop.

[837] So you can arrange in some control.

[838] deprived way to get to the point where you could possibly access gravity, see gravity in action, as it were, in particle accelerators, things as big as the LHC.

[839] And in that case, you would produce little black holes, which would then evaporate away very quickly, we think, through a process called Hawking radiation, and they'd be gone.

[840] So you can conceive of a way that you could, if given a big of a leap, that there are extra dimensions in the universe, and given that they're configured in the right way.

[841] way that you can imagine that you could do it.

[842] The interesting point, though, is that, so LACC is, it's a tremendous technological achievement, but it collides particles together, energies that are just insignificant compared to the energies that are available in the universe to nature.

[843] So cosmic rays, for example, hit the Earth, with energies far in excess of those that we generated LAC.

[844] So whatever physics you can conceivably access at these particle accelerators is already, be in access now in the upper atmosphere of the planet because the cosmic ray collisions are immensely higher energy.

[845] So if you can make little black holes because they're extra dimensions in the universe, then they are raining down on us now.

[846] They're here.

[847] They get made because the energies of the LHC, as I said, astrophysical processes all over the universe way in excess, way exceed those energies.

[848] We're not very good at doing high energy collisions compared to nature, compared to supernova and over explosions and compared to all the, and cosmic rays.

[849] There's a cosmic ray actually that was detected.

[850] I think the highest energy one had the energy of a professional tennis player serve.

[851] So 100 mile an hour tennis ball, right?

[852] And it's a single particle.

[853] So you imagine getting hit by a 100 mile an hour professional tennis players serve on the back of the head.

[854] There are cosmic rays with that energy.

[855] But they're like, you know, one particle carrying that energy.

[856] One particle would be equal to getting served.

[857] The energy is 100 miles an hour tennis ball.

[858] So these are incredible energies, way beyond energy.

[859] How many particles would be in a tennis ball?

[860] Oh, it's a good question, that.

[861] So let's do some, let's have a thing.

[862] So Avagadro's number is, what is it, six times ten to the 23, isn't it?

[863] That's right.

[864] So that's the number of particles in the number of atoms, let's say, in 12 grams of carbon.

[865] So it's of the order of, so 10 to the 23, is it?

[866] Well, 10 to the 24 is a million, million, million, million, right?

[867] So a million, million, million particles would be what you'd have in, of atoms of carbon, you'd have in a, you'd put him in on the spot here, aren't you?

[868] That's what you'd have in about, what, 60, 60 grams of carbon or something like that.

[869] So if I was to guess, I'd say something like that.

[870] And that's...

[871] Chemistry, that's chemistry.

[872] See, I don't do chemistry.

[873] But that's out there just floating around in the galaxy.

[874] Like when a hypernova, you're still trying to do the...

[875] Yeah, well, I just made sure, because we're live on the web.

[876] I don't want to get it right.

[877] I get old.

[878] Yeah, people do that all the time.

[879] This show is all about wrong answers.

[880] Yeah, you're just talking.

[881] I mean, it's not your field of study.

[882] I understand.

[883] Well, it should be, really.

[884] Really?

[885] Chemistry, yeah, I do a bit of chemistry.

[886] It's just particle physics, but bigger blobs.

[887] I watched a documentary once on hypernovas, that when they were first discovering the gamma bursts in the galaxy, they thought it was aliens having wars with each other.

[888] That that was one of the ideas that were being bandied about.

[889] It's really great.

[890] I mean, people do legitimately look for signatures from alien civilizations like that.

[891] Sort of, yeah, but it's kind of...

[892] Well, no, there's mad people who do it.

[893] But there actually, you can do...

[894] There are papers written about...

[895] Because you might say, what would the signature of an interstellar starship look like?

[896] Presumably be a matter -antimatter drive or something like that.

[897] So you get these very clear signatures of matter -antimatter annihilation that we know about because we do that the particular photons gamma rays with particular energies and so you can you can actually say well shall we have a look what would it look like if we saw an interstellar civilization an interspace foreign civilization could we detect the signatures so there's a bit of work done on that and we don't see any we don't see any evidence for anything well when you see someone like the people that run seti and search for extraterrestrial intelligence and they're always like asking for funding and they're like you know we need more funding we have to figure this out and one day what if we shut down and then the signal comes?

[898] Like that seems to me to be like one of the biggest, like, Hail Mary wishes, like hoping that you're going to find a radio signal from a galaxy far, far away, that has intelligent life in it.

[899] Well, for me now a galaxy.

[900] Well, it's interesting, though, if you ask astronomers, so you say what's the probability of other civilizations being out there, then they will point, for example, to the new data from the capitalist space telescope, which tells us that there are probably around 20 billion Earth -like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

[901] in the sense that they're small rocky planets in what's called the habitable zone around stars.

[902] The Goldilocks.

[903] Around main sequence stars like the Earth, like the Sun.

[904] So 20 billion, so maybe one in ten stars in the sky has an Earth -like planets around it potentially.

[905] So that's a lot.

[906] So you think 20 billion?

[907] Well, surely life must have arisen on some of those.

[908] The answer is probably yes, I suspect.

[909] I suspect, well, we may find life on Mars in the next 10 years, but it'll be microbes.

[910] So the question then becomes, well, how likely is it for simple life, if it arises, to make its way into a civilization?

[911] And that's where the biologists come and kind of calm the astronomers down and say, well, you might think there are lots of places for life, we would agree.

[912] But on Earth, it took 3 .8 billion years to go from the origin of life to a civilization, which is about a third of the age of the universe, give or take.

[913] So you had to have an unbroken, stable line of life that evolves in the right way, as it were.

[914] So first of all, it gets complex.

[915] I mean, there's a thing called the Cambrian explosion in the history of life on Earth, which was about 550 million years ago or so, which sounds like a long time.

[916] But for three billion years before that, there was nothing that we would call complex.

[917] Single -celled organisms, doing some clever stuff like photosynthesis, but not much.

[918] And then immediately, suddenly, you get a big jump in the oxygen content of the atmosphere on Earth, which was to do with photosynthesis and some geology in play with it.

[919] That's how the oxygen gets into the atmosphere.

[920] And then you get a big jump and you get complex life emerging.

[921] And then pretty quickly, you know, half a billion years or so, you go from complex things to a civilization.

[922] But even then, you think about Homo sapiens we mentioned earlier, they only arose 200 ,000 years ago.

[923] So for the vast majority of the history of life on Earth there's been nothing that could do anything clever in a sense of thinking and building spacecraft and radio telescopes.

[924] So there's a legitimate debate about whether the undoubted increase in, we know now that there are homes for life out there in the Milky Way.

[925] They're very common, we know that.

[926] But what we don't know is the probability that life will emerge in the first place and secondly the probability that will be turned into a civilisation.

[927] And I think that's very low.

[928] So I think the probability, if I guessed, I would say, the probabilities that life will emerge given the right conditions is very high.

[929] And what one piece of evidence you could put forward to that is that it did appear to emerge on Earth as soon as it could after the formation of the Earth and the oceans.

[930] So you get life, but then it took a long time on Earth.

[931] So you might say, well, the probability of it doing anything intelligent and interest in quite low, maybe less than one in 20 billion, in which case we end up being the only civilization in the Milky Way at the moment.

[932] It's possible.

[933] You can make that argument.

[934] And my experience is academic biologists tend to be on the cautious side and astronomers tend to be on the optimistic side.

[935] It's all relative, though, isn't it?

[936] Because even if we are only one out of this entire Milky Way galaxy, you still believe that it's possible for an infinite number of monkeys to create the works of Shakespeare.

[937] Well, I don't believe that.

[938] That's really a fact, isn't it?

[939] Right.

[940] Because we did that with infinity.

[941] But if you look at the entire universe, then the idea of their being not just a life form like human beings, but the exact same life form is not just once, but an infinite number of times.

[942] In the universe.

[943] In the universe.

[944] Well, I'm sure.

[945] I mean, there are 350 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

[946] It would be, surely there are civilizations out there.

[947] And more advances.

[948] Yeah, I'm sure.

[949] I'm sure that's the case.

[950] And it has to be the case in an infinite universe, as you say.

[951] But if we confine ourselves to the Milky Way, which is really the only place we ever have any hope of exploring or contacting anyone.

[952] We'll never contact anyone, even in the Andromeda Galaxy.

[953] It's 2 .2 million light years away.

[954] But we won't.

[955] But the Milky Way, if there's someone there, we could at least aspire to contact them.

[956] So it's worth that effort to listen.

[957] We don't spend much money on it.

[958] We spend too little on it, I think.

[959] It would be a tremendous discovery if we made it.

[960] If we found something like us.

[961] It's worth listening because, you know, when SETI started back with Frank Drake and Carl Sagan and others back in the 60s, then no planets have been discovered beyond the solar system.

[962] None.

[963] So the only planets we knew were our planets.

[964] Now, as I said, we've discovered thousands of planets, confirmed discoveries, and the statistics tell you.

[965] there are billions of them out there.

[966] So virtually every star probably has a planetary system.

[967] So the statistics have gone in the favour of SETI from the astronomical perspective.

[968] But as I say, you've also got to have the time to make things like us.

[969] And that's a tortuous process.

[970] There's no inevitability to evolution.

[971] The thing, it's not to be seen as some march to complexity evolution.

[972] It does what it does.

[973] Single -celled organisms were very, very good at just surviving and getting on with it for most of the history of life on Earth.

[974] So it may be that complex multicellular life is kind of just an aberration, really.

[975] It's just a bit of a lucky accident.

[976] So it's all really just perspective when you think about it, because there's, even though there is an enormous galaxy, relatively speaking, it's one tiny little thing in comparison to the rest of the universe.

[977] so even if we could find something out there the likelihood of it being as advanced as us are very small but it's just a matter of how far we can reach or how far we can see I wouldn't go that I nobody knows what people do know I think is that the Milky Way is probably the boundary of our aspirations it's and for this generation or forever I think so what if we live 100 ,000 years and people keep evolving the galaxy is 100 ,000 light years across.

[978] There are 200 billion star systems in it.

[979] It's big.

[980] It's too big.

[981] But that's not, so you could just about perhaps conceive in the far future of beginning to spread out into the Milky Way.

[982] You could conceive of that.

[983] It given hundreds of thousands of years, right?

[984] But then you go, well, where's the next galaxy?

[985] Andromeda.

[986] It's over two million light years away.

[987] So the idea that you would get across a distance of 2 million light years with any conceivable technology is to me probably, I mean it takes a light beam to 2 million years.

[988] So if you want to talk to someone in Andromeda it will take 2 million years to get a message out there and 2 million years to get it back.

[989] So there's a 4 million round trip.

[990] That's the nearest galaxy.

[991] So it's big, right?

[992] Space that's the thing.

[993] But so you can imagine possibly the Milky Way it's some chance if there are other civilizations there talking to them.

[994] But I think beyond that, I just cannot conceive of how it would be done.

[995] Is this relative, though, in perspective to the single -celled organisms that existed billions of years ago in comparison to us, do we really think that we're the end -all be -all?

[996] And this is the last stop on the road to evolution?

[997] Isn't it possible that we get so advanced if we live to be another billion years that we can, all these ideas that we have in our head about the laws of space and time and what particle physicists are trying to figure out and what string theorists are prescribing as far as 15 different dimensions, is that what you said?

[998] Oh, they changed their mind all the time.

[999] That's pretty unfathetic.

[1000] Well, I want to get into that because I don't understand string theory.

[1001] No, I don't know.

[1002] But I don't understand what you're saying either.

[1003] But my idea is that if we continue to go on the same path, I mean, isn't it possible that we will achieve some unfathomable level of technological proficiency, or of control over matter, or of an understanding of the universe, it's such a deep level that we can violate all these things that we now consider laws, like the laws of...

[1004] Yeah, so the laws would have to be approximation as to some deeper laws.

[1005] So Einstein's theories of relativity are the best theories we have at the moment of space and time, of space time.

[1006] Thank God for Einstein.

[1007] Oh, dude.

[1008] Well, he was.

[1009] And general relativity, actually, is 100 years old this year.

[1010] So that is...

[1011] That's amazing.

[1012] And so the speed of light as a fundamental part of the structure of space and time actually is central to that theory.

[1013] It's actually the thing that protects cause and effect.

[1014] So it protects, if you like, the past from the present and the future.

[1015] So it's built in in a very fundamental way to that theory.

[1016] So you are right, in principle, and it's a speed limit in that theory, by the way.

[1017] And by the way, there are strange things happening.

[1018] As you approach the speed of light, for example, the theory says that time slows down.

[1019] Right.

[1020] The thing that's travelling relative to us.

[1021] So if someone, the number I know is the number for the protons in the LHC.

[1022] So the protons go at 99 .99999 % the speed of light.

[1023] So imagine one of those flying past us now.

[1024] And imagine it had a watch, a proton with a watch.

[1025] you'd see its watch past 7 ,000 times more slowly than our watch and it would live 7 ,000 times more slowly than us so conversely if it was watching us it would see the same effect so you can so you can move through time at different rates essentially in Einstein's theory the faster you go relative to somebody else the slower your watch ticks I got an idea we combine your world and the Kardashians and we shoot them in the space of the speed of light and they don't age.

[1026] Well, that's exactly right.

[1027] So exactly what you said, the cool thing about, that's what I was getting to.

[1028] So the thing about relativity is, if you go at the speed of light, you don't age.

[1029] No time passes.

[1030] It's kind of pointed that you can't go at the speed of light unless you're massless, but that's a kind of...

[1031] Oh.

[1032] But if you're massless, you have to.

[1033] Well, have you ever seen her ass?

[1034] Good luck making that thing massless.

[1035] Well, exactly.

[1036] So she would be limited to travel below the speed of light.

[1037] Just below.

[1038] Even if she only weighed, even if she's only one gram in mass, she would...

[1039] She's a lot more than that.

[1040] Plus, that's not a very aerodynamic object either.

[1041] So good luck launching that sucker.

[1042] Oh, that's right.

[1043] It wouldn't matter in space because it's a vacuum.

[1044] So you're all right.

[1045] So aerodynamics.

[1046] But still, so it's a fundamental thing.

[1047] So if you're going at that fundamental speed, there's no time.

[1048] There's no distance, actually, either.

[1049] All the distances shrink to zero.

[1050] So it's a, well, I'm trying to say it's a fundamental.

[1051] part of the structure of space and time.

[1052] So it's impossible...

[1053] So you would need a different theory.

[1054] So it's literally impossible in Einstein's theory to go at the speed of light unless you're massless, in which case you have to go at the speed of light.

[1055] Could you go just under the speed of light and then time would just slow down?

[1056] Yes.

[1057] So it wouldn't stop, but it would slow drastically.

[1058] Yeah.

[1059] Yeah.

[1060] So as I said, 99 .99 .999 % gives you a factor of 7 ,000.

[1061] Now, here's the question.

[1062] If you somehow or another were able to go, 99 .999 % of speed of light, what would happen in your perspective as far as time?

[1063] Would time...

[1064] Normal rate.

[1065] At a normal rate.

[1066] Yeah.

[1067] So you would age at a normal rate in your perspective.

[1068] But back home, like if you came back around, if you went out in the space and you went 10 years at the speed of light and you came back, everything would change, but you'd be exactly the same.

[1069] Yes.

[1070] what would change for you though something has to change so it's the distances so if you travel so the other thing is from the put let's talk about the protons in the lhc again so they're their times passing 7 ,000 times more slowly from the perspective if someone stood on the ground watching them go round but from their perspective time's going at the same rate but something must change so what is it it's the distance so the lhc is no longer 16 miles in circumference it's about Now I know the number in metric, so it's four meters.

[1071] So that's, what is that, in feet?

[1072] Three feet, the meters, like three point?

[1073] 12 feet.

[1074] 12 feet, yeah.

[1075] So it's 12 feet, so it squashes.

[1076] So distances shrink from the perspective of the protons.

[1077] So time passes at the same rate, the normal rate for them on their watch.

[1078] But the distances seem to shrink, or do shrink, not seem to, they do.

[1079] Are you concerned at all about artificial life?

[1080] Are you concerned at all about the creation, the inevitable creation, of something that in some way replicates independent thought and acts on its own accord?

[1081] I always wonder if human beings are, in some sort of a sense, a technological caterpillar that's becoming a butterfly.

[1082] And we just don't realize it in all of our work, if you look at one of the things that human beings are absolutely fascinated with, whether or not it benefits us or not, We're fascinated with technological innovation.

[1083] We want faster computers, even if we don't even have applications for them.

[1084] We want cars that go zero to 60 in two seconds.

[1085] We want everything to go quicker and better, and we don't get satisfied.

[1086] Like, nobody ever looks at computers and goes, we're good.

[1087] We're good.

[1088] We don't need a bigger laptop.

[1089] We don't need a stronger hard drive.

[1090] Everything seems fine.

[1091] Let's stop innovating on computers and move towards cancer research or whatever.

[1092] No, we'll never, we're never going to stop.

[1093] And I always wonder if whatever, whatever?

[1094] drives us, what if it's similar in some way to a caterpillar building a cocoon, about to give birth this new thing, totally unaware, and that artificial life, that our work with, whether it's code, or whether it's electronics, or whether it's 3D printing, a combination of all those technologies coming together to create some new form of life.

[1095] And we don't think of life being possible, in an electronic sense, because we think of life as being cells and blood and all the things that we are.

[1096] But is it possible that we might just be building the next thing that we look at, well, we've only been alive for 200 ,000 years?

[1097] Yeah, but we might be shitting out the new version of life with our constant fascination with materialism.

[1098] I mean, what is materialism, ultimately, if not a push for innovation and technology?

[1099] Big part of what materialism is, is keeping up with the Jones, is getting the latest and greatest.

[1100] Look at this.

[1101] This guy's got a new TV.

[1102] It sees your fucking brain, you know, it looks through your soul.

[1103] You could play back your history.

[1104] You know, it gets a fingerprint.

[1105] You read it.

[1106] It takes your DNA, and it shows you what your ancestors are doing two billion years ago.

[1107] I mean...

[1108] Well, there's another aspect to R &D besides consumerism, isn't there?

[1109] There's increased life expectancy, decreased child mortality, all of those wonderful things, too.

[1110] But I agree with you.

[1111] I agree with you.

[1112] I don't see any reason why.

[1113] AI is in principle not possible, because I think, although, you know, the research, we don't understand the brain, but I think it must be an object that operates in accord with the laws of physics.

[1114] I strongly suspect that our conscious experience is emergent, so it emerges.

[1115] So there's an algorithm there, a very complex algorithm, but I don't see why it can't be simulated in a sufficiently powerful computer in principle.

[1116] don't see why you can't have a conscious computer.

[1117] I don't personally see why you can't.

[1118] Therefore, if that's true, then you can give a number.

[1119] And as you say, the rate of increasing computing power is rapid.

[1120] We're not there yet.

[1121] There is a project in Europe, a very big project to build a brain simulator.

[1122] It's a long way off.

[1123] And you're talking about billions of dollars.

[1124] But at the moment, you know, as you say, 40 years ago, a billion dollars wouldn't have bought you an iPhone computer?

[1125] Right.

[1126] So, yeah, I agree with you.

[1127] And actually, and as you said, 3D printers essentially seem to be the first step on the road to a self -replicating machine.

[1128] So if you've got the computing power that can be intelligent and you've got a means of it being a replicator, then I don't see why you can't build AIs that replicate.

[1129] And actually, going back to the cosmology for a minute, one of the arguments against the existence of civilizations, more advanced civilisations than us in the Milky Way is that they would have done that and this is an argument from a mathematician called von Neumann and also a physicist called Fermi, it's called the Fermi paradox that let's assume that let's fast forward as you said let's fast forward our civilization 10 ,000 years let's say blink of an eye let's see we've only been around we've been around for less than that as a civilization let's double it 10 ,000 what are we going to look like will we have built self -replicating AIs Yeah, unless there's some reason in principle why you can't.

[1130] So what do you do?

[1131] You send those out.

[1132] They're replicators.

[1133] They can go to asteroids, mine, print, 3D print, a version of themselves, go off again.

[1134] They exponentiate.

[1135] They can crawl over the galaxy, exploring, for free.

[1136] You send them out.

[1137] We've seen no evidence of those things.

[1138] They call von Neumann machines.

[1139] So it's one of the great...

[1140] You can either say that there's something in principle that stops you doing it.

[1141] So actually, there is something special about...

[1142] intelligence and you just can't, there's some reason why you can't build a computer that's artificially intelligent.

[1143] I don't see why that would be the case.

[1144] Or you could argue you can't build a self -replicator, but you can, because we are, we are replicators, and we operate in accord with the laws of physics, so there, so there's a replicator.

[1145] Or, the reason we don't see them is because there aren't any civilizations that ever got to that level in the Milky Way.

[1146] So we're the tip of the spear?

[1147] No one, well, we can't, we couldn't be the first.

[1148] It's very difficult to see how we could be the first.

[1149] Someone has to be the first.

[1150] Why can't it be us?

[1151] Because the Milky Way has been around for the age of the universe.

[1152] So you say, don't you know the Earth is 6 ,000 years old?

[1153] Do you not go online?

[1154] Putting that aside.

[1155] So the time scales, we're talking billions of years.

[1156] Billions of planets, billions of years.

[1157] But it has to happen one time somewhere.

[1158] And if you get one wave of these AIs away into space, then you can show using computer models with realistic assumptions about rocket power and things like that, that you can cover the galaxy on time scales of much less than a billion years, actually a million years, less than that.

[1159] So you can show that you can cover the galaxy in your von Neumann probes, your replicators, in hundreds of thousands of years, let's say a million, two million, three million, ten million, it doesn't matter because we've got billions of years.

[1160] And yet we see no evidence of them.

[1161] So what are we to make of that?

[1162] Either there's something wrong with our arguments that we're putting forward, that actually you can't build self -replicating intelligent robots.

[1163] I don't see why not, but maybe there's something wrong with that.

[1164] Or really, civilizations are so rare that, as you say, we are the first to get to that level.

[1165] But that's interesting, isn't it?

[1166] That would be an interesting.

[1167] I always think, in a most Sagan -esque sense of this, so imagine we're the only civilization in the galaxy.

[1168] what a tremendous responsibility there is on us.

[1169] Imagine what that knowledge should do to our political processes, the way that we think about ourselves, the way that we get on together.

[1170] Imagine how ridiculous it is to divide our little world up into countries and have a little war every now and again and point nuclear missiles at each other.

[1171] If, in fact, there's nowhere else in the Milky Way galaxy where anybody thinks, where anybody can look at the stars and have these conversations, what a ridiculous way to behave.

[1172] So I think cosmology is gives a perspective which is not, doesn't necessarily need to be humbling.

[1173] It is humbling and that's perhaps a good thing.

[1174] But it doesn't need, you don't need to be depressed about it.

[1175] It could be quite elating.

[1176] You say, well, with what we are, according to the evidence and the data at the moment, is almost indescribably special.

[1177] Our tininess, our potential uniqueness, our insignificance in a cosmic scale.

[1178] actually makes us special because we're the only place.

[1179] And so these ideas are worth pursuing, I think, because they make you think about these issues.

[1180] Well, doesn't it also point to our ego that we think that our biological process is any more important than the exploding suns that are required to create carbon life in the first place?

[1181] Or any of the processes of the universe?

[1182] The answer to that, I think, is that you're right, in a completely logical sense, We're no more important or less important than the stars themselves.

[1183] You're right, we're just natural objects.

[1184] But I would counter by saying that people look for meaning in the universe.

[1185] People like to look for meaning.

[1186] It's one thing that we've done since we began to look at the stars.

[1187] The universe means something to me, doesn't it?

[1188] Meaning exists because it means something to us.

[1189] So we know that.

[1190] It would be ridiculous to say the universe is meaningless.

[1191] It means something in my head.

[1192] We have families, we have loved ones, et cetera.

[1193] So the fact that that meaning exists, it might be emergent, it might appear from the laws of nature, and it is almost certainly transient, unless we build these self -replicated machines.

[1194] We're not going to last forever as a civilization, probably.

[1195] So to me, that doesn't, in any way, water down the significance of it.

[1196] So I think, again, cosmology can be a powerful aid to philosophical thought in this sense, because we have to accept that there's meaning in the universe, because it means something to us.

[1197] I don't see why it has to be eternal.

[1198] I don't see why the meaning doesn't imply purpose.

[1199] I don't think there's any purpose to the universe.

[1200] I don't think there's any point to our existence.

[1201] But the fact that we exist at all is worth celebrating.

[1202] You don't need to add anything else.

[1203] In fact, you almost devalue it.

[1204] It's like, why would you...

[1205] This is remarkable.

[1206] We emerged single -celled organisms, probably before that, we emerged some chemical reactions in hydrothermal vents, probably, down in the deep primordial oceans of ancient Earth.

[1207] and over 3 .8 billion years, we've come to the point where we can sit and think about the stars and have conversations like this.

[1208] Is that not enough?

[1209] Can we just leave it there?

[1210] Why does there have to be a point?

[1211] There isn't a point.

[1212] I don't think there's a point to that, but it's worth celebrating.

[1213] Well, it certainly is to us.

[1214] To us, it's amazing.

[1215] But in a lot of ways, isn't looking throughout the incredible cosmos for signs of life, like looking in a sea, of parked Mercedes -Benz for dust.

[1216] Like, one of these cars must be fucking dusty.

[1217] He just cleaned them.

[1218] I'm going to find it.

[1219] And you're ignoring the incredible mechanisms that are in front of you.

[1220] This amazing technology, anti -lock brakes, fucking 12 -inch computer screens.

[1221] They don't have gauges anymore.

[1222] The cars drive for you.

[1223] They steer for you.

[1224] They break for you.

[1225] And we're like, one of these motherfuckers has dust on it.

[1226] Just like us.

[1227] I mean, these planets, we talked about our planet being 4 .6 billion years the universe is 13 .8.

[1228] We're looking for things that live 100 years.

[1229] We're like, there's got to be one out there that sing songs.

[1230] Somewhere there's a better rapper than Jay Zed, and he's out there in the universe.

[1231] We've got to find him.

[1232] We've got to find him.

[1233] This is a search, and we're ignoring asteroids and gamma rays.

[1234] The search for better rap.

[1235] We should rewrite NASA's then reason.

[1236] Yeah, but again, though, it doesn't take anything away from the fascination of just, you know, one of the beautiful things about being a human being is that we think about these things and that we can communicate and that you, in getting on this podcast, you're planting all these seeds in people's minds that are making them consider these thoughts, and now it spreads.

[1237] And that's one of the most fascinating things about the idea of intelligence, is that intelligence begets, intelligence intelligence sort of stimulates other intelligent it's not simply i mean i think one of the reasons why you love educating is like you know how important this is for you and you want you've seen the spark and people's eyes when you explain these things to them and you realize that that person might spread that spark somewhere else and this is really what this process is about in the first place it has meaning to us but in the grand scheme of things you know we're just exporting Kardashians through the universe well we could make a start by exporting the Kardashians and then the resistance of exploring the Kardashians makes people you know the new version of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson that gets out there too that's a that makes me optimistic actually because I wouldn't have thought that that would be done again you know I'd you know I have to because Carl Sagan great hero of mine I mean the fact that it would be done and put on Fox, on a network, you know, at 13 episodes of it.

[1238] Yeah.

[1239] It's true.

[1240] It is.

[1241] There are people out there who want to do it.

[1242] Yeah.

[1243] It's very important.

[1244] Most certainly, and more so now than I think ever before and more so in the future.

[1245] I think even though there is evidence of people are dumb as shit, there's still more evidence of people are super curious.

[1246] There's, I think it's just a numbers thing.

[1247] And if you spoon feed people, the same thing over and over again, like, you know, there's the argument for a limited network.

[1248] I think especially American style you know you or you could just sort of do it the BBC way but the BBC way is beautiful and that it sort of sandwiches these brilliant shows in between other shows like but not enough there's not enough room there's too many things out there now there's you only have 24 hours in a day there's no fucking way you're going to have enough programming you just unless you have an infinite number of BBC's like you you can't there's just too much shit going on the world is too vast and that's the not discounting anything that the BBC's ever done because one of my favorite networks.

[1249] I have this Congo series that I've probably watched a dozen times about the BBC, which is one of the most fascinating documentaries not just on a particular area of the world, but on life itself adapting, which is like the primary sort of theme to that documentary, where they're talking about these parts of the world that were changed really rapidly over a period of a couple thousand years where it used to be.

[1250] planes and then it became these dense rainforests and there's all these animals that are sort of trapped in this world like rhinos and planes animals and they were there was a piece on these these a type of antelope called a dyker that swims underwater a hundred yards they can fucking swim they eat fish I mean it's craziness swimming antelots swimming and it's well it's like related to an antelope but the idea is that you're talking about a very short period of time a couple thousand years that's had this rapid amount of change, these animals have had to adapt, this very strange new environment.

[1251] Oh, I think the inability of some people to understand evolution and therefore react against it, I don't think it's all actually just religiously motivated.

[1252] Most of it is, but some of it isn't.

[1253] I think there's also a lack of understanding of the time scales involved and how fast animals can adapt and change.

[1254] And what a powerful sense, if you like, evolution is.

[1255] You can see it.

[1256] Richard Dawkins often, right, when he's writing beautifully about these things, writes about, look at domestic dogs, and look how quickly the wolf got turned into these...

[1257] Poodles.

[1258] From Poodles to German shepherds to whatever it is, all those things.

[1259] Now that's selection by humans, right?

[1260] So we're selecting for particular traits.

[1261] But the environment and the interaction with other species is as powerful as that.

[1262] it's as efficient as that the environment is a very powerful selector of traits and so you can see that evolution happens quickly speciation happens quickly not quite with the dogs they're still the same species but you can see how given a bit of time you're going to get the poodles and keep going on that line and get the wolves and keep going on that line and eventually you're going to get things that look so different that if you separate them and don't let them into breed that you're going to end up with something that can't breed with that anymore And that's kind of the definition of a new species, one of the definitions of a new species.

[1263] So you can see how it can happen.

[1264] It's obvious.

[1265] And I think one of the problems is the time scales are not understood.

[1266] When you talk about thousands of years, that's quite a long time.

[1267] 10 ,000 years is a long time.

[1268] 200 ,000 years, you go back that long and we didn't exist as a species.

[1269] We weren't there.

[1270] So, you know, hundreds of thousand years is a hell of a long time.

[1271] Yeah, too long to, I think, in our mind to process like we can kind of process a lifetime you know we can process birth to a hundred years wow he lived to be a hundred wow a lot of what a lot of things that guy must have seen yeah but to process a hundred of those yeah a hundred hundreds how about a thousand how about a hundred thousand uh yeah it's it's too much going on there's too much change it's a long time do you subscribe to the idea and i've heard this debated about that human intelligence may be in some form exponential, and that all the knowledge that people have acquired, I mean, obviously not, like, in a physical sense, like you're not born with an understanding of math and language and all these things are learned, but that intelligence may somehow another be not just passed on from generation to generation, but enhanced by life's experiences, and that the genes that are transmitted from you to your children may be, in fact, more powerful and the genes you were given, and that as you've lived your life and acquired information and knowledge and understanding and whatever intelligence means, you know, whatever sort of intangible idea, intelligence truly is, but that this mind power, this, this, this accumulation over the 200 ,000 years that human beings have existed and people breeding and getting to this point, that this might exponentially be growing and expanding.

[1272] Is that in any way possible that we're, I'm not an expert on genetics.

[1273] I don't think so.

[1274] I don't think there's any evidence, as far as I know, that our IQ, average IQ has changed much over the last few hundred years, certainly.

[1275] So as far as I know, that's not the way that it works.

[1276] You need, I think, some kind of selector that would say you'd have to take the most intelligent of us.

[1277] by some measure, let's say, and have them be more successful at producing offspring than the people who are less intelligent.

[1278] You'd have to do some you need some mechanism.

[1279] Haven't that been proven?

[1280] Haven't they done like those, do those sperm banks with really super intelligent people and the kids that come out of it are smart as shit?

[1281] Oh, well, that, I can imagine that might be true.

[1282] I don't think we know, I think the correct answer scientifically is we don't know the link between.

[1283] We don't know enough about the genetics and the genome the human genome, to say which bits are producing brain power.

[1284] If there is such a thing, what is it?

[1285] Which genes, is there an intelligent gene or a set of genes?

[1286] I think that's not known, I think, is the right thing to say.

[1287] But I emphasize it's not my field.

[1288] But it must be something you ponder when you think about evolution, you think about genetic knowledge.

[1289] And that certain things...

[1290] Well, that I would perhaps argue with.

[1291] The idea that I know there's some interest, in this.

[1292] But I think the standard answer is that the knowledge, let's say so I become educated, that I think the standard answer is that that would not have any impact on the genes that I pass to my offspring.

[1293] I don't think there's any known mechanism to have knowledge imprinted somehow back into your genetic code such that it can be sent onto your thing.

[1294] But you may have seen otherwise I'm not aware of any research.

[1295] Well, it's hard to look into a kid's head and find exactly where all the information is coming from right yeah but i don't think there's a known well there isn't a known um a known what's that there's something we had a tricaster just freeze up on us people at home right now are freaking the fuck out we were just about to get to the bottom of this um instincts like humans have certain instincts right like there's people have fears like genetically sort of predisposed fears to like scary dogs animals i mean we know we you don't have to have a dog bite you to know the dog's fucking terrifying like what is that like when a dog is like growling like kids are afraid of teeth they're afraid of big teeth and monsters like even children that grow up in cities they're afraid of monsters and the idea behind that that I've heard I think it was Rupert Cheldrick that was talking about this he was saying that it may very well be that these memories of being preyed upon by like cats like that these genetic memories that are from our ancient, ancient, ancient ancestors when we didn't have homes and we were living in trees and things were running after us, trying to eat us, these ideas are passed down from animal to animal and eventually human to human.

[1296] I don't think, as I say, as far as I know, there's no solid evidence that suggests that things you experience as an adult or as a child, the experiences themselves can be passed on, other than verbally to them when they're listening to your stories.

[1297] I'm not aware of any mechanism that's known that would allow that to happen.

[1298] Haven't they proven that genetics, like epigenetics and some memes, like even useless ones, like racism, can be transmitted from parent to child?

[1299] Not that I'm aware of, but I don't know.

[1300] This is obviously not my field of study either.

[1301] I'm just fascinated by the idea that we don't totally understand all of the, all of the, ingredients of the mind.

[1302] That's certainly true.

[1303] That's certainly true.

[1304] But I'm not aware of it.

[1305] I don't know.

[1306] I doubt it.

[1307] Because I can't see a mechanism.

[1308] Right.

[1309] But I don't know.

[1310] Are we back up, Jamie?

[1311] What's going on?

[1312] The Tri -Caster froze?

[1313] Oh, what a piece of shit that we paid $15 ,000 for.

[1314] How dare you, tricaster people?

[1315] Meanwhile, we should probably be excited that someone figured that fucking thing out.

[1316] You think it might have to do with the box and it gets heated up?

[1317] I have no idea.

[1318] No?

[1319] just shit out on us yeah most likely right how dare they um one of the things that was proposed that i uh i read recently was that black holes aren't real is that nonsense is that like one person's controversial idea yeah yeah basically it's not necessarily nonsense just because it's one person's idea but it's likely to be nonsense i i haven't seen that particular theory so i don't I mean, we have a lot of good evidence for the existence of black holes, not least they're predicted.

[1320] They're a prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

[1321] They're on solid theoretical ground, and we've seen the signatures of them.

[1322] So, for example, the objects at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, we know what the mass is of that object, because we've measured the orbits of stars very close to it.

[1323] We know what the maximum size of the object can be, because it can't be bigger than the orbits of the stars that go around it, and so we measure its mass I think it's about four million times the mass of the sun and the only way that our current laws of physics allow such an object to exist and be so small is for it to be a black hole so there's good evidence that black holes are around but you can always say well you know we've never we haven't been to one they're very hard to photograph because they're black but you can but you can photograph the stuff that falls into them you can see the signature of stuff falling into them which we do and they've they've what was it like it was the Somewhere in the 2000s, they figured out that at the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole that is like one half of one percent of the mass of the galaxy, something along the swans?

[1324] We think so.

[1325] As I said, I think so off the top of my head, I think it's about four million times the mass of the sun.

[1326] And so the larger galaxies would have a larger black hole.

[1327] I'm not sure if it's that.

[1328] It's not well understood, actually, because it's not well understood how galaxies form in the first place and what role these supermassive black holes have in the formation of the galaxies.

[1329] So that's a real active area of research, actually.

[1330] So it's a good question.

[1331] The thing that I was reading was they were debating the possibility that inside each one of these supermassive black holes, so like there being hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one of them with a black hole in the center of it, a supermassive black hole.

[1332] In through that black hole is a whole other universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with black holes go through that whole 100 billion more galaxies, each with black holes go through that 100 billion more.

[1333] I mean, that each galaxy itself literally is a portal to a completely different universe.

[1334] I mean, the point, we don't have a...

[1335] Right.

[1336] The problem with black holes is that there are a prediction of Einstein's theory.

[1337] One of the earliest predictions is a thing called the Swatchchild metric, which describes black holes that was done, I think, in 1915 or 16.

[1338] Right, as soon as relativity was published, it was shown that these things, could exist.

[1339] But we don't, the theory itself breaks down then.

[1340] The theory of black holes?

[1341] The general relativity, which is the theory that explains Einstein's theory, which predicts their existence, but it doesn't, the characteristics of black holes, the physics inside black holes is not understood.

[1342] We don't know.

[1343] Our theories don't work.

[1344] We need what's called a quantum theory of gravity to make progress there.

[1345] So that's the unification of quantum theory and relativity.

[1346] and general relativity, which is what string theory is an attempt to do, but we don't know whether that's the right theory.

[1347] So this is the edge of knowledge.

[1348] So we don't know.

[1349] So we don't know what.

[1350] We don't know how to describe black holes properly.

[1351] We don't have a theory that's capable of describing it.

[1352] We can describe the edge.

[1353] So this thing about an event horizon and all that stuff, that works.

[1354] That's not a problem in Einstein's theory.

[1355] So the idea that if you have a sufficiently dense object, then there's a region around it out of which light can't escape.

[1356] because space and time are too curved for light to get out.

[1357] That's fine.

[1358] The theory describes that properly.

[1359] But when you start asking questions about what happens at the center of a black hole, the singularity, the very idea it's called the singularity tells you there are infinities in the theory.

[1360] The theory is doing things.

[1361] It's infinitely dense.

[1362] It's infinitely small.

[1363] Well, no, it won't be.

[1364] We don't have infinities in general in nature, other than perhaps the size of the universe, as you say.

[1365] So there's something going on there, but we don't have.

[1366] the physical theory.

[1367] We don't have the tools to describe it.

[1368] It's an active area of research.

[1369] So I don't know is a good answer in science.

[1370] And so speculation is fun.

[1371] But ultimately, you know, we're talking about a regime of nature which our current theories are not capable of describing with any authority.

[1372] And that's the inside of a black hole.

[1373] We were talking about this before the podcast, the difference between the way you present your shows and the BBC and the way you're sort of forced to present your shows on, like, the Science Channel.

[1374] And this was one of the very issues.

[1375] A little bit.

[1376] I mean, that's a bit strong.

[1377] But dealing with unknowns, dealing with when you're describing things like black holes or like the event horizon of a black hole, that there are points in time where you have to say, we don't know yet.

[1378] Yeah, no, we were talking earlier, and I said, because at the moment we're a cyber series in the UK called Human Universe which has been on in the UK five episodes, one hour long so we also make them with Science Channel and the Science Channel's one hour is 43 minutes because they have adverts commercials so fine that's the way so we've got to take 17 minutes out but also we have some interaction about well how do we nuance things for the you know because you'll do things for a British market that will be different in American market and one of my favourites recently was that so one of the programmes is about this multi that we just talked about earlier.

[1379] The fact there may be an infinite number of universes.

[1380] The universe may have been around forever.

[1381] There may be no beginning to the universe.

[1382] All speculative, right?

[1383] They may have been.

[1384] So what does that mean?

[1385] It means that our existence is inevitable.

[1386] We have to exist in an infinite universe.

[1387] And we are because we have to be.

[1388] So there's no purpose to our existence.

[1389] There's no universal meaning to our existence.

[1390] We are because we have to be.

[1391] And in the British version, I say, So to the camera, how does that make you feel?

[1392] And the wonderful thing is, nobody knows.

[1393] This is new physics, it's right at the edge, it's speculative, but we're beginning to address it with the data and the theories.

[1394] So we need theologians and philosophers and artists and novelists.

[1395] We need to discuss these things.

[1396] What does it mean for us if our existence is inevitable, and we're not special, but yet we may still be valuable.

[1397] What does it mean?

[1398] I don't know.

[1399] So the last thing I say in the British version is, so what do you think, say to the audience?

[1400] And I think it's beautiful, and it's, it's filmed over Tokyo, over Tokyo skyline.

[1401] I think it's beautiful.

[1402] But I did get a note from the Science Channel saying, well, the thing is that this is not the style on the...

[1403] So we tend to try and leave the view with some concrete things.

[1404] So can you tell them what it means for the...

[1405] So I'm going, what the meaning of life?

[1406] The mean the great existential question of what does it mean to exist?

[1407] You want me to answer that?

[1408] Yes, that would be better for our audience.

[1409] It's like, well, I really, I'm a bit, I don't know.

[1410] So I said, you know, can you tell me what to say, perhaps?

[1411] I'd love it.

[1412] Look, if Science Channel, if you know the meaning of life, then we tell me, and I'll gladly say it on the program, I don't know.

[1413] Right.

[1414] So it was kind of interesting that there's that difference in style.

[1415] But I loved it that they said, can we just, we really do want you to broadcast the meaning of life on Discovery at 9 o 'clock.

[1416] Because I can see that would be a great sell, you know, on Discovery tonight.

[1417] After Sharks, you know, whatever they put on.

[1418] After Shark Week, then we're going to do the meaning of life with Professor Brian Cox.

[1419] Brian Cox will tell you what it means to exist, for your existence to be inevitable in a possibly infinite cosmos.

[1420] Find out at 9.

[1421] It would be good.

[1422] It would be completely subjective.

[1423] What life means to you doesn't, you know, Jamie has a different need.

[1424] This is what we do.

[1425] I do do in the series.

[1426] This is what it's about.

[1427] It's a love letter to the human race, human universe.

[1428] It's a, you see that certainly if you buy the one -hour versions, I don't know how it's going to pan out in 43, but if you get the one out, which you can buy from good retailers on the internet.

[1429] Can you get it on iTunes?

[1430] You need a, it's not on iTunes at the moment, but you need a, you need a 1080I, I will say.

[1431] Do you do?

[1432] And I found out, my friends, that not all US DVD players play 1080I content.

[1433] They play 1080P content.

[1434] What's the difference?

[1435] One of them is called interlaced and one of them is called progressive scan.

[1436] There's virtually no difference except that in Europe, we take it.

[1437] tend to you.

[1438] So some of your Blu -ray players in America will play it, and some of them weren't, it turns out.

[1439] I just found out.

[1440] Oh, so they won't play it at all.

[1441] They won't play it.

[1442] It's the wrong...

[1443] On the Blu -ray.

[1444] You can buy it, but...

[1445] And I encourage you, too, because it's wonderful.

[1446] But so there's something...

[1447] But it'll be on Science Channel anyway in a few months, but it'll have cut down a bit.

[1448] But the central message is this, that we talked about earlier, that it leads you, I think, to value the human race.

[1449] So there's like we filmed in Ethiopia, which I love, I always love filming in Ethiopia because we're in the Ritz Valley filming this story about the emergence of humans from the Ritz Valley.

[1450] And we filmed in somewhere called the Danical Depression, which is one of the, other than Death Valley.

[1451] It vies with Death Valley often for the hottest place on Earth, but it's far more barren than Death Valley.

[1452] It's up in Northern Ethiopia on the Eritrean border.

[1453] There are volcanoes and it's bleak.

[1454] But there's a tribe of people called the Afar that live there.

[1455] And they're fascinated.

[1456] I stayed with them a few years ago, and they don't have a concept, for example, of possessions, because they don't have anything.

[1457] They just live on these volcanoes in this wasteland.

[1458] So if you put something down, like something, then they will legitimately pick it up, and they'll say, I'm going to use it for a while.

[1459] So when you're a film crew, you kind of, there's no cultural idea.

[1460] They're not stealing, they're not taking stuff.

[1461] They don't have that idea because they don't have anything.

[1462] So if you leave a camera, they might get your camera.

[1463] And we had some guards, with us from the FR tribe, but it's a bit dangerous there.

[1464] And he had an AK -47, this guy, and he sat there with his AK -47.

[1465] And then we woke up one day, and we had a mountaineer with us, and he got one of his mountaineering ropes attached to his AK -47, and he sat there now with this guy's rope.

[1466] So the guy said to me, shall I ask for it back?

[1467] I was like, no. But number one, it's attached to an AK -47, right?

[1468] Which gives him the advantage, presumably, we get into an argument.

[1469] And number two, it's fascinating.

[1470] They have no idea of possessions.

[1471] But the reason I started saying that was because we were, filming.

[1472] We're talking about meaning in life.

[1473] And we said to this man, he was called Aden Alley, a guy at the F .R. tribe, small man, probably four foot tall, right?

[1474] Old.

[1475] And we said, we're talking to him about this through a translator, and he said to us, on camera, he said, your eyes have your age, but your ears have your father's age.

[1476] Your ears hear the past, and your eyes see the present.

[1477] And this is the way you should live.

[1478] And I just thought, that's amazing.

[1479] beautiful thing that came out of this man. And so we put that in the series just and subtitled it and left it there.

[1480] So it's full of little just people celebrating those people.

[1481] It's something you'd never see.

[1482] You don't think there are people who live on volcanoes in northern Ethiopia that say wonderful things about your ears, having your father's age and the past being used through your ears to manipulate and inform the way you behave in the present.

[1483] Beautiful, deep thoughts.

[1484] So we tried to fill the series with those things as well.

[1485] So it's a mixture of cosmology and this celebration of the wonder of human existence, the diversity of human thought.

[1486] So there's beautiful stuff in there.

[1487] A love letter to the human race.

[1488] Yeah.

[1489] And why not?

[1490] Because we deserve it.

[1491] Well, we're so adaptable.

[1492] The idea that people can live like that with no possessions at the same time where people live in a world that are one of our biggest issues is that people live to accumulate possessions.

[1493] And the idea of materialism is, it's very much like you were talking about the 17 -year -old boy that only pays attention to video games, that becoming obsessed with anything, whether it's becoming obsessed with objects, becoming obsessed with ideas.

[1494] Human beings, we are so flexible.

[1495] We're so flexible in how we can exist as a culture or as a community, that our ideas are so rigid that people have to be this way.

[1496] And, you know, you can't run around on the internet saying that there's no meaning to life when Jesus' name is being broadcast right now on Christian ministries all throughout the world.

[1497] They understand what the meaning of life is all about, Brian Cox.

[1498] You are the one who is ignorant to the ways of the Lord.

[1499] And I do think that what I've found is that travel, because I filmed in, I was just filming in, actually for Infinite Monkey Cage, for in Monkey Cage, because we're doing the shows and they're live, you have to have a different kind of US visa.

[1500] And the visa you have to put where you've been in the last five years.

[1501] years.

[1502] How many countries have you visited within the last five years?

[1503] And it's 38 I'd been to filming these things.

[1504] Thirty -eight countries.

[1505] Wow.

[1506] I thought, wow, I didn't know that.

[1507] That's a lot.

[1508] And what's interesting, what I found really, honestly, is that when you go to Ethiopia or India or Japan or out into the wilds in these places, people tend to be relatively, well, everyone I've met as, first of all, been interested in stuff.

[1509] So through the translator with the Afr tribe, we, we We talk about the stars, and I say, I talk about stars, and they're interested.

[1510] So they've never been to school.

[1511] They have their own education.

[1512] They're up there learning about how to live in a volcanic wasteland, but yet they're interested.

[1513] And the things they're interested in are common, I find.

[1514] And I genuinely haven't met anyone that I found uncomfortable, I was uncomfortable with.

[1515] I haven't met any of the maniacs that we consider we think of as populating the world.

[1516] You know, we think, well, it's okay here, you know, in North America or in Europe or something, we're okay.

[1517] but there's all these wild people out there you know so I know I just haven't seen any evidence of that and so that's part of human universe it's just trying to put these impressions yeah they believe different stuff so you might think you know like you said there's the people he say well Jesus is the way but then you'll go to India and you'll find that there are people who are Hindus who strange beliefs to us you know the Ganesh the blue elephant god and they're part of their fabric of understanding stand in the universe.

[1518] And I find it wonderful, actually.

[1519] It tells you something, that there are some things that are cultural and some things that are not.

[1520] Religion's cultural.

[1521] You go different places, you have different religions.

[1522] That's not to say, although I don't have any interest, I don't have any interest in religion.

[1523] I always say, people ask me quite a lot.

[1524] You know, do you believe in God?

[1525] I know, no, but I don't really even think about it until I get asked.

[1526] I would have never stumbled across that concept to myself.

[1527] I get asked a lot now because I do science on television.

[1528] I always say the same thing which is I don't really not really interested I don't think about it it so does that upset anybody well kind of because I don't want to be dismissive I'm not trying to be dismissive you just talking about your own personal interests does that does that upset no I mean you're you're you're what I'm saying is I'm just reaffirming what you're saying you're just talking about your own personal interests yeah like why do why does your personal lack of an interest in something upset people but it seems to right well it can do because I think it's a central part of the framework they used to explain world and meaning and all these questions that we're discussing which are difficult questions and I think don't have answers right I don't you know it's a complicated question what does it mean to be alive um as we've said it obviously means something personally but I don't these are complicated questions so but I think what's interesting is you go around the world and you see that these questions are common and people think about them in wherever they are whatever they are level of education they have some framework for understanding that But there are also, the commonalities are large, the fact the curiosity about the stars is something that you see everywhere.

[1529] You see, you know, the curiosity about the origins of the universe and there are stories which are different all over the world.

[1530] All, in my view, and in the human universe, view, that equally valid, right?

[1531] They're all worth, I don't recall from them.

[1532] I think they're interesting.

[1533] They're interesting responses to nature, I think.

[1534] So these people that live around this volcano, how do they survive?

[1535] they eating?

[1536] They have goats that they manage to feed on the limited, tiny amounts of limited vegetation that's there.

[1537] Very little water, so they're very careful with the water.

[1538] But they've developed this way of living.

[1539] They're a remarkable, tough, really tough bunch of people.

[1540] How many people live up there?

[1541] I don't know actually how big the FAA is.

[1542] But it's one of the, Ethiopia's very tribal, and it goes into Eritrea as well, so it's in this area.

[1543] At the top of the Rift Valley.

[1544] It's called the Triple Afar Junction, which is a tectonics, plate tectonics.

[1545] It's where all the volcanism at the top of the rift is.

[1546] So it's the generator of the Rift Valley, if you like, which is beautiful, actually, is an idea because this is the cradle of humanity.

[1547] So you've got this.

[1548] I find it a magical place, actually, Ethiopia, for that reason.

[1549] And I recommend it, actually.

[1550] Addis Ababa is a beautiful city.

[1551] It's a high altitude city.

[1552] So Ethiopia, you tend to think of, especially if you're kind of my generation, you think of Live Aid, and the big famine in Ethiopia, you think of this dusty place, and it is in some areas.

[1553] But actually, the capital, it's a very green country.

[1554] It's high altitude, quite a pleasant city, because some African cities, when they're very hot, and they can be very unusual for people like us from places that are not dusty and hot.

[1555] But Addis is not like that, actually.

[1556] And I find there's an idea, when I go there, I like the, there's an idea that, because you kind of almost know that we came from there somehow.

[1557] You come armed with this knowledge that this is, that we were all related to someone who lived here in and around Addis Ababa in the Rift 200 ,000 years ago.

[1558] We're all related to someone who lived there.

[1559] And we wandered out from there.

[1560] I find that a powerful thought, actually.

[1561] And it dismisses, you know, there's a great deal of talk of differences amongst us.

[1562] But actually, if you go to Ethiopia, you realize very soon that we're...

[1563] It's not far back, as you said, you trace your generation as parents, father, grandfather, back, back, back.

[1564] You don't go far back before you get to an Ethiopian, which is quite wonderful, I think.

[1565] It's so perspective -enhancing, too, to see people in this day and age.

[1566] I was watching a documentary on people that live in the Amazon that are barely contacted by the Western world.

[1567] They sort of, like, they may have, like, American underwear or something that someone gives them.

[1568] But other than that, like, you know, these people have been living essentially very similar to the way they've been living thousands of years ago.

[1569] and they're getting by they're fine and it just makes you realize like how how this world that we live in right now that we think everybody has to have an email address everybody has to at least have some form of public transportation no they don't you don't you don't have to have anything these people all walk around they walk around in the jungle and they live and they've been living like and they know what to eat they know what not to eat and they know what to avoid and they they have babies and their culture continues and they don't even write things down and they've been living like that for a long time and they're people just like you and just like me yeah with the same you know I find the same level of curiosity and interest it's kind of sometimes more so well yeah exactly yeah we exactly so it's very interesting that that perspective the people that you contacted in Ethiopia how many are in their group the ones that you were in contact with there were maybe I don't I'd be guessing a hundred or so in this kind of.

[1570] Do they have a written history?

[1571] No. No. Oral history.

[1572] Yeah.

[1573] So these are stories passed down from generations, so they're great storytellers.

[1574] Wow.

[1575] As a result.

[1576] In these isolated tribes, I mean, obviously Ethiopia is a fascinating country because it's one of the few countries in Africa that is an ancient country.

[1577] I mean, they're there in biblical times.

[1578] You know, they've got these myths about...

[1579] When you go to Addis, they say we've got the Ark of the Covenant in the Cathedral in Addis.

[1580] And you say, can I see it?

[1581] And they go, no, but it's there.

[1582] But I like the mythology.

[1583] The mythology is that the Queen of Sheba was up there and stole it, I think, and came back and brought it back, stole it off, yeah, of King Solomon.

[1584] It would be Solomon, wouldn't it?

[1585] So you've got this, it's all intertwined.

[1586] So the fact that their written history, the Central Ethiopian written history, is in the, it's biblical in its spanish, it's about ancient Egypt.

[1587] They were part of that thing, the Egypt and, and Ethiopia and then into Jerusalem and those areas, Palestine, and then out to, that thousand -year -old, two -thousand -year -old history is part of that country, very centrally part of it.

[1588] Whereas usually in Africa, you know, you get countries that have been divided up and they came after the Second World War and they post -imperial things.

[1589] But Ethiopia is a real, it's a more grounded place in history.

[1590] So it's a fascinating place.

[1591] What is the area that's supposed to contain the Ark of the Covenant?

[1592] It's in that cathedral, allegedly, in Addis.

[1593] As I say, I wasn't allowed to see it, so I'm very fine that it exists.

[1594] How many people are supposed to be looking at it?

[1595] Nobody.

[1596] There are issues with this myth that you're not allowed to look.

[1597] Is it like Al Capone's vault where, like, it took Gerardo Rivera to break down the wall before we realized there was nothing in it?

[1598] I mean, is there like a room that no one goes into?

[1599] I think broadly speaking, yes.

[1600] Other than the priests and things, I think.

[1601] I have the basic idea.

[1602] That's supposed to guard it, maybe?

[1603] Someone must have built the cathedral, and obviously the Queen of Shiva stole it in the first place.

[1604] Oh, so it's not there anymore, or it is there?

[1605] No, it's there.

[1606] She stole it from Jerusalem.

[1607] Oh, and brought it to Ethiopia.

[1608] And I think that's right, and took it down to Ethiopia.

[1609] Imagine if it is something, some technological object from a forgotten time.

[1610] Yeah, you wander in and go, oh, yeah.

[1611] You know what they find?

[1612] Well, I saw it on Raiders that lost up.

[1613] Yeah.

[1614] So it does exist.

[1615] It melts pasteless.

[1616] Yeah.

[1617] Do you remember there was some work that was, was done on ancient batteries, where they believe that some of the artifacts they found, like Egyptian pyramids, perhaps, might have functioned in a very similar way to a modern battery.

[1618] I saw that, yeah.

[1619] I mean, it's possible, I suppose.

[1620] Right.

[1621] We, again, we talk about time scales.

[1622] It's three and a half thousand, four thousand, five thousand years.

[1623] You know, the earliest pyramids, I think.

[1624] Right.

[1625] So, yeah, we don't know.

[1626] We know quite a lot about the Egyptians.

[1627] Again, I'm talking about a human universe.

[1628] I'm supposed to talk about a monkey cage, Anna, but I'll talk about a human universe as well.

[1629] Because we found, my wife actually started learning Egyptians.

[1630] She was just interested in hieroglyphics.

[1631] She just got interested, so she did some classes.

[1632] And the literature from ancient Egypt is fascinating.

[1633] You're talking about 2000 BC, these things that have been written down.

[1634] And the earliest, I looked in, I wanted, in the book of human universe, which you can get in the US, I should say.

[1635] I went to look, I want the earliest literature.

[1636] What is it?

[1637] And it's basically, one of the earliest things I could find was basically Monty Python's parrot sketch, right?

[1638] Because it's this, it's a complaint.

[1639] And it's like, I wish to register a complaint.

[1640] Really?

[1641] It's a piece of papyrus.

[1642] And it's a complaint about, I think it was the coffin, it was a coffin manufacturer who supplied this coffin that was the wrong size, and it was kind of a bit of a rip -off.

[1643] person is saying, I'm complaining about this.

[1644] I want to send it back.

[1645] This is terrible.

[1646] I want my money back.

[1647] And they say, you can have two coffins instead.

[1648] And they're going, I don't want a voucher.

[1649] I want my money.

[1650] And so you see this.

[1651] What's wonderful is it's a modern voice that echoes down the ages from ancient Egypt.

[1652] Most of them are either admin things about my garden, you nicked a bit of my garden, you moved the fence in the night, or something like that, or complaining about some piece of commerce.

[1653] Like this is, I've been ripped off by this shopkeeper.

[1654] And It's terrible, and it's wonderful.

[1655] But then there are also poems, fantastic poems.

[1656] There's one about, it's a woman talking to her husband.

[1657] And the other way around, it's a husband talking to a woman.

[1658] And so you go through, and he's saying, why did you leave me, why didn't you love me, all this stuff?

[1659] It's quite touching and moving.

[1660] And then you realise, towards the end, that this woman had died, she's dead.

[1661] But he's still talking to her, like, because the Egyptians thought that, you know, she'd moved on, conscious decision to go into the afterlife.

[1662] And so there's this kind of bitterness being expressed and this really moving piece of poetry.

[1663] And then you realize that it's 4 ,000 years old.

[1664] You know, it's wonderful, actually.

[1665] So we haven't changed at the point that you find from this old literature.

[1666] Well, one of the oldest pieces of human language was the cuneiform, right, from Sumer.

[1667] I read this one thing that was, there was a passage they were talking about that was about divorce.

[1668] Yeah.

[1669] It was about marriage and divorce.

[1670] There was something along like, I forget what, but it was like a, sort of a very short poem about divorce, about marriage and, you know, for your relief or for your pleasure divorce.

[1671] It was very bizarre, like the concept of two people uniting by ritual existed six, whatever, five, six thousand years ago.

[1672] And they wrote about it in these little scratches you know the cuneiform which looks like ancient nails you know with a flat top and a line that points down and in a certain pattern they've been able to figure out that it means some form some language that you can kind of attempt to translate to our modern languages in a weird clunky you know if you read like russia like the russian translations from russian to english it's so bizarre because their language is so alien to us it's so different that the way they use pronouns and the subtext and all the different aspects that we sort of take for granted about language don't translate correctly.

[1673] Yeah, yeah.

[1674] And you're thinking, imagine that for hieroglyphics.

[1675] Thousands of years ago.

[1676] It's just really difficult.

[1677] But yeah, but I like the fact that the voices are so familiar.

[1678] Mm -hmm.

[1679] We haven't changed.

[1680] The Library of Alexandria, man, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, if that had never taken place and we could somehow another go back and read all the shit that they knew about construction methods and how they built those things and what was the purpose behind them and what was the the significance of the astrological alignment like what were they doing why were they and what they were doing was so insane in comparison to the the greater sum of humanity like if you look at humans 2 ,500 BC and then you look at Egypt you're like Jesus Christ what the fuck happened here how did you guys figure this shit out that no one else anywhere near Was anywhere close to this level of sophistication as far as modern construction?

[1681] I think there's something you can take from this, because if you look at ancient Egypt, of course, if you go to some of the temples down there on the Nile and Luxor in particular, it's just astonishing achievement.

[1682] I mean, as you say, you look at Greece, you look at the Greek literature, and then you look at the library Alexandria, which the knowledge was lost because the barbarians came and burnt the thing down, you realize that civilizations rise and fall, and knowledge can be lost.

[1683] And the Romans, I suspect, thought they were eternal as a civilisation.

[1684] They would continue to progress.

[1685] The Greeks before them thought that.

[1686] The Egyptians thought that.

[1687] They didn't.

[1688] We think that now.

[1689] And it's interesting to reflect, I think, on the fact that you don't have to make progress.

[1690] The progress is in your own hands, so you can choose to make progress.

[1691] They didn't choose to make progress for various reasons.

[1692] They stopped making progress.

[1693] And they vanished, and their knowledge vanished with them.

[1694] a lot of the time.

[1695] And I think it's a lesson for us.

[1696] We could do that.

[1697] You know, we just maybe we've got into this position now with our technology where it just won't go like that.

[1698] But I don't think we can take it for granted, which I think goes right back to the start of the conversation about how do we say to people, you know, this is a remarkable thing that we've done.

[1699] But it's don't take it for granted.

[1700] It's not just going to tick along while you guys sit there and watch sports all the time.

[1701] Right, that's not the way that you make progress.

[1702] Somebody's got to do something.

[1703] And we've all got to.

[1704] to support the people, even if you don't want to do it, then support the people that want to do it.

[1705] So you look at the, you know, I was filming with, on Friday for a thing I'm doing in Britain with Rusty Spigert, who's Apollo 9.

[1706] So he test flew the lunar module on Apollo 9 in 1968.

[1707] The first test flight of it in Earth orbit before they went to the moon in July that year.

[1708] And so he, we landed on the moon, actually, in the, in the simulator.

[1709] It's And he showed me how to do it, and it's fantastic.

[1710] But you look at NASA.

[1711] The investment in NASA at that time, it was never more than 4 % of federal expenditure, and actually it was often less than that.

[1712] So it wasn't particularly expensive.

[1713] It was on average maybe about 3 % of federal expenditure.

[1714] But it laid the foundation, I could argue, for American technological dominance in the last quarter of the 20th century.

[1715] Because, for example, the average age of the engineers in the NASA mission control when Apollo 11 landed on the moon was below 30.

[1716] below 30 years old, those engineers.

[1717] So what happened to them after the Apollo program?

[1718] They went out to work for Boeing and, you know, Microsoft.

[1719] Bell Labs or Lockheed Martin, or whoever it is, all these people.

[1720] And you get this explosion in technological achievement, in economic growth.

[1721] America is a terrific place to be because, in many ways, because of the growth that happened in those 30 or 40 years since Apollo.

[1722] But that was because of a conscious investment led by Kennedy's great speech and also inspired by the Cold War, et cetera.

[1723] There's many reasons why I did it.

[1724] But ultimately, that investment paid vast dividends.

[1725] You look at NASA today and the investment is way down.

[1726] So the ambition that America had to go to the moon because it's there and to beat the Russians, yeah, but to do it.

[1727] And that ambition seems to be missing to me. And I looked to this country actually because I think it is.

[1728] the country.

[1729] No other country could have done that.

[1730] No other country could have gone.

[1731] Moon will go, I think, before this decade is out, you know, will go.

[1732] They hadn't flown anyone in space when Kennedy made that speech.

[1733] You hadn't flown anyone in space.

[1734] And you say, within 10 years, I'm going to walk on the moon.

[1735] That's an American thing to do, I think.

[1736] It's part of what's great about this country.

[1737] And I regret the fact that that doesn't seem to be there at the moment.

[1738] And going back to why I started saying that, the idea that progress is, is, come, progress is, comes to the bold, right, I would say.

[1739] So the idea that it will just come, they will just make progress.

[1740] It is not necessarily right.

[1741] In fact, history tells us it's wrong.

[1742] So you've got to have, I believe, bold visions and visionary leaders.

[1743] And leaders will just say, well, this is not a great deflection of resources.

[1744] It was, as I say, it was always less than 3, 4 % of federal expenditure.

[1745] But it's a great deflection of national will.

[1746] And it's a great generator of a sea of engineers and scientists who were inspired.

[1747] by those things and trained in that process that go out to the economy and make the economy better.

[1748] There's a study that suggested there was a 14 to one return on every dollar invested in Apollo by 1980.

[1749] And people can argue about the, was it 10 to 1, was it 14 to 1, was it 20 to 1?

[1750] Is the return to the private sector or a return to the government?

[1751] GDP, just into wealth generated.

[1752] They made tang.

[1753] Each one of those dollars generated at least.

[1754] 10 and maybe 20 in a decade.

[1755] And it's obvious how it did it because look at those young engineers and look at the technologies that were developed for Apollo.

[1756] Someone said to me at NASA Ames up in San Francisco, virtually every technology in commercial aviation today got invented there at NASA.

[1757] Ames actually, most of it.

[1758] So you can point to one place and go that's where everything I take for granted when I get in an aircraft came from that almost directly.

[1759] Do you think it's because of the ending of the Cold War, the lack of competition with Russia?

[1760] We were on top, so we just got soft.

[1761] There's no need to keep pushing and pressing.

[1762] There wasn't an adversary.

[1763] There wasn't this technological adversary that's out there that gives people the motivation to continue to invest 4 % of the gross domestic product or whatever the amount of money we need.

[1764] Yeah, I don't know.

[1765] It seems, I mean, if I look at Britain, so I talk about my country, which did the big thing ran the world and then declined and doesn't run the world anymore handed it over to you guys we guys had a little island you ran it out of an island it's pretty dope yeah you know we have a big ass continent yeah we just set off from the wrong place you guys did it out of rural island yeah well yeah it's sort of smaller in California yeah it's pretty crazy we did well for a while not bad but it seems to me that what we lack is these things are not expensive in fact they're vital they generate money.

[1766] So it seems to me it's leadership.

[1767] It's visionary leadership, I think.

[1768] Inspiration.

[1769] Yeah.

[1770] And it doesn't take, well, I was going to say it doesn't take much clear.

[1771] It took a Kennedy, I think.

[1772] I mean, that speech is a remarkable speech that rallies a nation behind something.

[1773] But it's not a particularly large diversion of resources.

[1774] That's the point.

[1775] And certainly, given what you get back, it seems to me the investment in R &D in science and technology and education, these are the things that form the foundation of our future.

[1776] Absolutely.

[1777] And everybody agrees with that.

[1778] And I get very involved.

[1779] I get involved in politics in Britain, but not party politics, but this, lobbying for this, spend money on the young, spend money on the education system, spend money on inspiration, make sure that there's a generation of these great engineers and scientists that America is currently world leading in, absolutely, and make sure that they're still there.

[1780] And how do you get them?

[1781] How do you inspire them?

[1782] I don't want kids to want to be singers, actually, particularly on X -Fat.

[1783] actor.

[1784] I don't want them to be famous.

[1785] There was a survey done recently, I think, where they said to a load of school kids, what do you want to be when you grow up?

[1786] And a lot of them said, famous.

[1787] Famous?

[1788] What do you mean?

[1789] Famous?

[1790] You want to walk on the moon, don't you?

[1791] You want to invent the world's fastest computer, don't you?

[1792] Do you want to, what do you mean?

[1793] Famous?

[1794] You've got to be famous for something.

[1795] It's not famous because you want a talent show.

[1796] We go back to the poor Cardassians.

[1797] I've never seen the Kardashians, by the way.

[1798] I don't know who the hell they are, and thank God, I don't, because I don't know.

[1799] I don't think we have them in Britain.

[1800] I don't think maybe we do.

[1801] Oh, they get over there.

[1802] Do they get over there?

[1803] I'm sure.

[1804] But I don't want to pick on that lot.

[1805] I mean, they're doing what they do, right?

[1806] But the point is, you don't want to be one of those.

[1807] I mean, without being disrespect, maybe they're having a good time.

[1808] You're so British.

[1809] You're trying to insult people and then not at the same time.

[1810] I don't want to insult people who kind of make their way, you know, and do well.

[1811] They're not criminals.

[1812] They're not evil people.

[1813] They're not the scourge of society.

[1814] But the point is what do you want to aspire to be as a kid?

[1815] What do you want to aspire to be?

[1816] And it's true that in the 60s they wanted to be Neil Armstrong or one of the engineers.

[1817] in mission control.

[1818] And that's a government has, I know it's kind of unfashionable in some circles say that, but government sets the direction in the, it has to.

[1819] You know, companies can do it as well.

[1820] So you have the big companies like Apple and Google.

[1821] So people do aspire to work with those companies.

[1822] But I think the grand direction of civilization is set by governments and visionaries.

[1823] And it's not expensive, but it's terrifically expensive not to do it.

[1824] Well, governments, the idea of government has really been hijacked in this country, and it's become about money.

[1825] Being careful.

[1826] It's good to you.

[1827] You know, it depends what you mean by government and big government and small government.

[1828] Special interest groups and lobbyists.

[1829] There's just too much money involved.

[1830] It's complex.

[1831] There's legal, like absolutely legal corruption in this country, like where giant corporations are allowed to invest enormous sums of money.

[1832] into candidates that will, once they get into office, do the bidding of these corporations, manipulate laws, move things around, make things easier for these corporations to manipulate our society.

[1833] That's a reality, and that's very unfortunate.

[1834] But I think that's a reality that's also being eroding, or is eroding, rather, by technology.

[1835] I think people understanding the mechanisms involved in government is making them want to change those mechanisms.

[1836] People pushing for ideas like being able to vote online.

[1837] This is like people are really frustrated by this.

[1838] How come I can bank online?

[1839] How come you can deal with the entire world's economy through computers and the internet but you can't vote?

[1840] How come?

[1841] Is it because you don't want it to be that easy for people to give their opinion and people to vote?

[1842] Because the world of the internet and the world of actual voting, there's a big gap between them.

[1843] There's a big gap that would instantly shift right over if you were allowed to vote online.

[1844] And there's people that say, oh, there's problems with that, oh, corruption, oh, you're the one who's always worried about hacking.

[1845] Well, guess what?

[1846] That's going to be the case no matter what you do.

[1847] There's all sorts of problems with voting the conventional way.

[1848] I mean, America, we've had giant scandals and dibold voting machines that contained third -party access, the ability to manipulate the data.

[1849] It's all been proven.

[1850] There was a documentary called Hacking Democracy that showed how ludicrous it is to think that our system that's in place right now is infallible.

[1851] Not only that, it's massively flawed.

[1852] The technology that exists because of the Internet, because of the ability to exchange information instantaneously with each other, is unprecedented.

[1853] And I think that is going to shift the idea of government that's going to scatter all these crazy people that are running things right now that's not going to be viable anymore, just like kings aren't viable anymore.

[1854] You can't be Henry VIII in 2015, unless you're the guy in North Korea.

[1855] He's like the last one.

[1856] But most governments can't be run the way they were run thousands of years ago.

[1857] There's too much access to information.

[1858] We know you're not a God.

[1859] We know you're just a person.

[1860] You know, we have this ability to exchange these ideas so quickly that the word gets out too fast.

[1861] Well, I mean, you listen to Tim Berners -Lee when he talks about the World Wide Web and invented, by the way, at CERN, of course, the web bit of it.

[1862] Yes.

[1863] And then he talks in those terms, actually, you feel it's quite idealistic, Tim Berners -Lee.

[1864] I am too.

[1865] Freedom of information, free exchange of information.

[1866] And I think you're right.

[1867] I mean, it goes right back to the beginning of the conversation, doesn't it?

[1868] Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing, or the web, let's say, a good thing or a bad thing?

[1869] And you must be right in this sense.

[1870] That it, as long as people, you know, you need a certain, we're having this conversation at quite a high level.

[1871] You know, we're talking about great movements and great shifts in civilisations.

[1872] And so I suppose you need a, you need the perspective first, don't you?

[1873] You need your appetite stimulated for knowledge and information and to use, not to use the internet or the web to gettoize yourself.

[1874] You need to have some instinct that I'm not going to just go find the little sliver of information that interests me. And perhaps information that's nontenicom is also that, you know, how you can go and be a conspiracy theorist and find plenty of information to support your conspiracy.

[1875] Reptile people.

[1876] That toolkit, Sagan always talks about this in the demon -hoid world, again, about giving people a toolkit, bullshit detectors, I think he called it.

[1877] You know, the education, science, the scientific method, that's a bullshit detector kit, basically.

[1878] So if you can get that in, you can get that in, maybe this is the priority really in schools, to say, well, I want you to know how to think, how to look at information, assess where the information came from, understand if it's likely to be tainted or biased or good or bad or how do I assess this vast quantity information out there how do I not ghettoize myself how do I not decide that I'm only going to read I'm only going to exist on forums that say that we didn't land on the moon and there was a big conspiracy and everyone covered it up how can I broaden my reach to say is that really true shall I check some other stuff like the telescopes that way you can look at the spacecraft on the moon you know that kind of bits of evidence you know so So I think that's very important.

[1879] Is it ironic that in this day and age we accumulate more data?

[1880] I think there was some statistic about in every two days we accumulate more data, more like numbers, and a lot of it's probably Instagram pictures and Twitter and shit that's useless, but that more hard data gets accumulated or processed or produced by humans today than the entire time of human history up to that point.

[1881] which is fucking staggering.

[1882] Yeah.

[1883] But it also, most of it takes place on computers.

[1884] Most of it is ones and zeros.

[1885] Most of it takes place in a language that you and I can't even read if it was written on a piece of paper.

[1886] No one, and it's a big subject statement.

[1887] How do you use that data?

[1888] And how do we use it?

[1889] There's an example, the program I do in the UK called Stargazing Live, which is a live astronomy show on the BBC.

[1890] Lots of people watch it, kind of people like it.

[1891] One of the things that we do is citizen science projects.

[1892] So, for example, last year that we used the European Space Agency's database of photographs of the surface of Mars.

[1893] Nobody's ever looked at them.

[1894] There's too many of them.

[1895] So we've got too many pictures of Mars.

[1896] No human eyes have ever looked at these pictures.

[1897] So we ran a project where we wanted to answer a question about some features that were seen moving across the surface of Mars, weather features, that we thought may be seasonal.

[1898] so maybe in the marsh and winter they moved down to the equator and then move back up again in the summer, didn't know.

[1899] And we proved that they were indeed seasonal by getting millions of people who watched the program to go look at the pictures for the first time.

[1900] So you can go online now and look at pictures of Mars, let's say, that nobody's ever seen because there's too much data, even of another planet.

[1901] So imagine the amount of data generated on this planet that no one's ever looked at.

[1902] There'll be data about what increases the likely of certain cancers, for example.

[1903] The lifestyle that does that and doesn't it, that'll all be there in the data.

[1904] But no one's quite got their head around now to go and mine that data and try to use it.

[1905] Just using the data is extremely difficult and challenging.

[1906] But you're right, it's there.

[1907] No one ever looks at it.

[1908] Well, not only that, the idea of somehow or another preserving this, if there was some event, super volcano eruption, like they're constantly worried about Yellowstone and there's one in Indonesia, I believe it is, that they believe is connected to a mass extinction event that killed off a giant swath of the population.

[1909] Oh, they're nasty, those sea of volcanoes.

[1910] Terrified.

[1911] We don't want one of those to go up.

[1912] And if one of those hits and somehow or another, the power goes out all around the world and the only people that survive are those folks that live by the volcano, fuck, man, we're starting up from scratch?

[1913] Like, I mean, relatively in terms of the universe, that's nothing.

[1914] So, you big baby, you've got to wait another 10 ,000 years for, civilization to reemerge and someone to reinvent the internet, you know, and the arc of the covenant and still locked up in Ethiopia because they already did this and they already figured out how to make a little nuclear bomb or something like that.

[1915] I don't know what the fuck it is.

[1916] But for our immediate life, it's so critical to not just acquire this information, but to nurture it and to spread it.

[1917] I mean, that's your whole idea, right?

[1918] You're just talking about expanding science and education and getting people excited and involved, but all that doesn't mean jack shit if the fucking earth spits out a giant ball of lava that engulfs half of north america that kills 90 % of the planet like we're starting from scratch and there's not none of this is going to be any good no computers no hard drives no flash drives no database it's all bullshit the cloud go fuck your cloud it's not really in the cloud i got news for you it's down on earth it's oh it's in the cloud no it's not there's no cloud okay it doesn't exist you go up and look around for your fucking data it's not there it's it's in Someone's goddamn building, okay?

[1919] It's in a fucking building.

[1920] Stop saying it's in the cloud, because it's not.

[1921] That's a dirty, sticky lie.

[1922] That's reality.

[1923] Unless you're launching that fucking shit up, taking all the hard drives of all the world and launching it into space and, you know, on a 10 ,000 -year loop.

[1924] So it comes back around and lands, you know, you do it 99 .9 % of the speed of light.

[1925] So the data, you know...

[1926] Go get it back again.

[1927] Yeah, it comes back around.

[1928] that, who works?

[1929] Could you imagine if that's what happens?

[1930] Like one day, you know, it just, they pick a strategic location that they believe will be a large population of life, and it relands 10 ,000 years later, and we go, oh, fuck, look at this.

[1931] Look at all the shit they knew.

[1932] And it's all in DOS or whatever, something that we could read like fairly easily.

[1933] They run it through some computers and they realize, like, wow, fucking people have been around.

[1934] Do you remember my first, my first operating system on a PC was DOS 5?

[1935] Do you remember that?

[1936] DOS 5.

[1937] I was post DOS.

[1938] No, the first computer that I ever had had Windows 95, and Windows 95 was the big deal.

[1939] My friend Chris made computers with Windows 3 .2.

[1940] He preceded me. 3 .1, which you ran on DOS.

[1941] So I had no Windows when I forgot my first PC.

[1942] Wow.

[1943] That's cool.

[1944] That's crazy.

[1945] And if you think about how recent.

[1946] Yeah.

[1947] 40 Meg.

[1948] Yes, it's nothing.

[1949] You can't get an email on that.

[1950] Yeah, right.

[1951] If someone sends you a. picture it's way bigger than that yeah every fucking picture is a hundred meg right yeah and if you think that that was 1995 it was only 20 years ago yeah and in 20 years a blink of an eye you know yeah a blink of an eye i think we should go back to dos you think so yeah why because you had to know how the computer worked you had to you had to these little auto -exec dot bat files that but is that good isn't that like more work than you need isn't it's a big deal that It's a big deal in the sense because we have a problem with getting kids to write code because they all sit there on PS4s and things like that.

[1952] Well, it's a lot of work to write code, right?

[1953] Yeah, but in the old days with the computers.

[1954] I have friends that make video games, and one of the most shocking things was the sheer amount of hours that go into coding video games.

[1955] You know, the folks at Id Software, they let me in behind the scenes and Epic Games, too.

[1956] Cliffy B., our friend, Cliffy B, who's been on the podcast before, I would watch those guys work.

[1957] They would do 16 -hour days, and they would just be coding and drinking fucking caffeine and just staring in front of these monitors and just running over thousands of lines of code, and you're like, oh, that's how you make a fucking video game?

[1958] Yeah, they're kind of $100 million things.

[1959] Oh.

[1960] It's just unbelievable.

[1961] They went movies.

[1962] Well, they're bigger than movies.

[1963] The average huge game, like a Grand Theft Auto, when those games get released, the amount of money that they generate is rival to like avatar some huge spectacular hit like not an average movie but a just gigantic monumental epic huge successful movie that's like an average video game you know grand theft auto and madden when those madden games come out the fucking world changes like i mean people generate there's so much income that gets poured into those video games and you realize that it's a lot of just people just coding just standing in front of the computer games and just pounding on the keyboards.

[1964] It's madness.

[1965] You know, maybe that's the way that Western civilization falls.

[1966] The coders.

[1967] People stop fucking them.

[1968] That's what's what's going to happen.

[1969] They're going to stop breeding.

[1970] That's what's going to happen.

[1971] Women will stop having sex with coders, and it's all going to fucking end.

[1972] All their accumulated knowledge that we were talking about before, like the coders making children that are better coders, nope, just ends.

[1973] Yeah, one day.

[1974] People like me, you can write Fortran.

[1975] Yeah, one day we wake up.

[1976] and we realize that no one's making video games anymore.

[1977] So we go to these places where they made video games like, hello, everybody's dead, cobwebs everywhere.

[1978] They just died and no one fucked them.

[1979] The apocalypse.

[1980] No more.

[1981] Well, imagine if computer coders cease to exist and all of us were forced to back engineer computer code.

[1982] If today, like for somehow or another, I don't know how many people in this world have a deep understanding of computer operating systems or computer code but I couldn't imagine it's more than 1 % and if we lost 1 % of the population just disappeared from the earth and then the rest of us dopes were left to observe our cell phone crashing or our fucking tricaster over here that shit the bed on us mid -broadcast I mean well just that's a critical part of our society of civilization itself and totally overlooked so you coders out there god bless you Keep breathing.

[1983] Yeah, keep breathing.

[1984] And may you breathe, breathing, and breathing.

[1985] We need to supply them with a, yeah.

[1986] Praise Oden for the coders.

[1987] It's amazing.

[1988] It's amazing if you really think of how much our life and our civilization revolves around electronics and around computer code.

[1989] We should do a monkey cage on this, actually.

[1990] Yes.

[1991] I mean, it's stunning.

[1992] If you really stop and think about it, every single thing that used to be mechanical, and analog is now a computer.

[1993] Like cars.

[1994] It's the main for car enthusiasts.

[1995] It's one of the main complaints is that you don't feel what a car is doing anymore.

[1996] One of the thrills of driving an older car, like especially an old sports car.

[1997] They're not as fast.

[1998] They don't handle as well.

[1999] But you feel everything.

[2000] You feel the road because it's a mechanical steering.

[2001] There's no assisting.

[2002] Like if you go to like a 1973 Porsche 9 -11, there's no hydraulic assist in the steering.

[2003] It's all mechanical.

[2004] You feel every pebble.

[2005] You literally feel the mechanism turning the tire.

[2006] You feel the tires losing their grip.

[2007] It's all transmitted through your seat and through your hands.

[2008] And people live for this.

[2009] It's like exciting stuff.

[2010] But if you drive a modern Porsche, it's like there's a million operations that are going on behind the scenes and every second to avoid collisions and slow your tires down and breaking on the right side because you're turning left.

[2011] All this shit that's going on that you don't even know, you don't even feel it.

[2012] a magnetic ride control system that's adjusting.

[2013] There's certain cars now, like, I believe Mercedes -Benz, has a camera that looks at the road in front of you and gauges whether or not the suspension should be compliant or rigid.

[2014] It adjusts.

[2015] And you can go, I think, up to like 30 miles an hour.

[2016] You just take your hand off the wheel and put it in cruise control, and it fucking turns based on the lines on the road.

[2017] Do you think that...

[2018] So the first sentient being is going to be a 9 -11.

[2019] sentient artificial being.

[2020] I hope it's an American car.

[2021] I hope it's a Corvette or maybe perhaps a truck.

[2022] Maybe an F -150.

[2023] Takes out godless heathens.

[2024] Just drives around, eats assholes.

[2025] I wonder, you know, I think for sure if we can live, you and I'm 47.

[2026] How old are you?

[2027] 47?

[2028] 47.

[2029] So if we could live another, if we get really lucky, we live another 50 years based on modern interpretation of science and medicine.

[2030] I'm actually 46.

[2031] by the way.

[2032] I'm 47 in March.

[2033] Just because that I'll get letters.

[2034] Oh, people get mad.

[2035] Fucking liar.

[2036] At least you added the right way.

[2037] You know, if you're like, I'm 40 -ish.

[2038] I have a friend who won't tell me his age.

[2039] Ian Edwards, he won't tell me how old he is.

[2040] Motherfucker.

[2041] I think he's my age, but he won't say it.

[2042] I should have said 47 because then Wikipedia will change.

[2043] Yeah.

[2044] Wikipedia is wrong about a lot of shit.

[2045] It still thinks Brian Cowan's my brother.

[2046] It still thinks I'm five feet tall.

[2047] if you if you consider this idea that we if we everything goes correct and we live to be 95 years old let's go let's go there for sure there's going to be something you know there's going to be some they've already got these little japanese talking head ones that look eerie very strange sort of artificial faces that talk to you there's going to come a point in time as the exponential increase in technology whether it's 20, 30 years where they're going to make fake fucking people, man. Say what?

[2048] Let me plug something else.

[2049] Nothing to do with me. There's a friend of mine, Alex Garland, who just made a film called X Machina, which is a great science fiction film, which will be coming to the States.

[2050] It's just been released in the UK, XMachina.

[2051] Can I get it online somewhere?

[2052] Legally?

[2053] Not legally, I suppose.

[2054] Oh, illegally?

[2055] Can I get it?

[2056] That's a problem, you fucker.

[2057] But it's, make it legal so I can get it.

[2058] X Machina.

[2059] You'll see the trailer on, you can get the trailer on YouTube, and it's been released in the States.

[2060] I can't remember when, but it's great.

[2061] And it's about an AI, a female AI.

[2062] And it's about a guy kind of like one of these Elon Musk -type guys who lives out in the woods, and he's built one of these things.

[2063] And he gets one of his employees to come and do a touring test on it, which is to see if he thinks that this thing is sentient, this AI.

[2064] But she's beautiful, and it kind of goes off from there.

[2065] But Alex wrote The Beach, and he wrote 28 Days Later.

[2066] So it's a really brilliant.

[2067] science fiction film.

[2068] But it explores some of these issues that we've been talking about, about what it is to be human.

[2069] Are the AI's better than us?

[2070] Are they better than us morally, physically strength?

[2071] What is it?

[2072] Why is this girl so beautiful?

[2073] Why did he make this beautiful woman?

[2074] It's just it's a great film.

[2075] So I recommend that to everyone who's listening.

[2076] That sounds amazing.

[2077] When is it going to be released here?

[2078] It must be very soon because it's been, it's just been out in the UK.

[2079] It did very well.

[2080] It was out in...

[2081] Is it going to be released in theaters or is it going to be a digital release?

[2082] April 10th.

[2083] America.

[2084] It's a great film.

[2085] Wow, that's a great concept.

[2086] I mean, that I've said for a long time that I believe the first artificial intelligence would be sex slaves.

[2087] People are going to make artificial sex people.

[2088] People that you can have sex with, like, you know, is it cheating to use a device?

[2089] Is it cheating to masturbate?

[2090] Some people say yes.

[2091] I was reading a forum article where these people are arguing.

[2092] This guy's arguing with his wife.

[2093] She's saying if he doesn't stop masturbating, she's going to divorce him, specifically to porn.

[2094] You know.

[2095] They shouldn't argue with his hand and say the unfaithful the device of unfaithfulness.

[2096] Just beat his hand up.

[2097] But then, you know, it goes from masturbation to masturbation using technology meaning the internet to watch pornography to masturbation using a device like they have these, you know what Oculus Rift is, I'm sure, right?

[2098] Yeah, yeah, that's good actually.

[2099] It's amazing.

[2100] I had to go with that.

[2101] Well, the new version of it, my friend Duncan called me up.

[2102] I was at the improv and when And, you know, when he called me, I was about to go on stage.

[2103] It was like five minutes before I go on stage.

[2104] And he had just got back from some 3D virtual reality conference, and he was just screaming at my phone.

[2105] It's a fucking game changer, man. This is the craziest shit.

[2106] He said that the HD quality was stunning.

[2107] I did, I go.

[2108] Sony, let me have a look at the one that there's an Oculus and something else they're using for the PS4, which is not going to, it's not out yet.

[2109] But it'll be out in 12 months, I think, something like that.

[2110] It's amazing.

[2111] They showed me this demo, and it's, it's, that HD real it's like stunning stuff I think that is going to be a game changer well they decided to do first person pornography with these things that's supposed to just be like there's a real issue that people are going to have with being addicted to this stuff because I don't believe that our minds I think one of the reasons why people have such a deep like what we're talking about earlier that people get angry at dumb programming and people get angry at dumb songs and dumb television shows.

[2112] One of the reasons I think we have this instinct to get upset at it is we, I think we inherently understand that we're not designed to process the media that we've created.

[2113] We're designed to imitate the successful behaviors of other tribal members.

[2114] We were designed to listen to people like you talk and be inspired, but you're right here.

[2115] I'm looking right at you.

[2116] Evolved.

[2117] Right.

[2118] Evolved, not designed.

[2119] Oh, I don't mean it in that sense.

[2120] I mean in the sense of this is like how we function.

[2121] Evolved.

[2122] I'm sorry.

[2123] I don't mean design.

[2124] But if you take that into consideration, what about a screen that's 60 feet tall?

[2125] And Brad Pitt comes on, and his bone structure is fucking perfect.

[2126] And if it's not, they manipulate it and make it perfect with 3G, CGI.

[2127] And every time he talks, music's playing, and every word out of his mouth is carefully considered.

[2128] Although it looks spontaneous, it's not.

[2129] They've carefully considered this for weeks and weeks for maximum impact on your psyche.

[2130] And you're sitting there, and the music's playing.

[2131] and he kisses Angelina Jolene.

[2132] Oh, like, we're not designed for that.

[2133] So our very existence, the world that we live in, our model of it, is based like 90 % on bullshit.

[2134] 10 % on real life experiences, 90 % on movies.

[2135] And I have a friend who got in a fight with a guy, and the guy said to him, while they're about to fight, some drunken thing, prepare to dine in hell, tonight we dine in hell.

[2136] He yelled out a fucking quote from a stupid.

[2137] movie like when they were about to fist fight they were fist fighting like which could potentially leave it lead to death I mean when you're involved in like actively trying to hurt another human being all fucking bets are out the window this is chaos right and the guy's yelling at a movie quote tonight we dying in hell this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship we're fucking confused the hell out of him just start randomly shouting quotes back from the great we're off to see the wizards trying out crazy Frodo you are my brother we're crazy I don't think the inspiration that I get from songs like there's songs that I'll listen to you know like there's certain like weightlifting song I swear when you listen to those songs you can lift more weights you can work out harder like you're tired you're on the elliptical machine queen comes on like dragon attack and you fucking ah your body reacts to it You have a physiological response to media, to something that's been created that doesn't exist in nature.

[2138] With all of nature's majesty, with fucking waterfalls and flowers, it never figured out how to make sound come out of a headset that's just incredible.

[2139] It just makes your fucking goosebumps raise up.

[2140] We've created some weird shit.

[2141] And in creating that weird shit, we're altering our very version of the reality that we observe with our real senses, our eyes and our ears and our ears and our fingers and we're changing it and this oculus riff shit it's gonna take it to a whole new place i mean it's gonna it's gonna be as addictive as reality tv is with its stupidity it's gonna be way more addictive if you could like look at any part of those people while they're talking you know i mean you could do whatever you want you could move around in their world while they're while they're existing you don't have to have a real life have you've seen wallie i haven't warly yeah was it good yeah it's great it's a great film but everyone just ends up every human is basically a fat, useless slob that floats around, can't even walk, and he's just on a big space liner, floating around in space, useless, just gone, watching TV.

[2142] Well, that's certainly a pessimistic version of reality.

[2143] What do you think?

[2144] What's your version of reality?

[2145] Because we're running at three hours in, we turn into a pumpkin.

[2146] We're right about there.

[2147] like what is what do you think is going to happen with us are you pessimistic are you optimistic do you enjoy the way we're the direction we're moving ultimately um the our scientific and engineering achievements are astonishing and going beautifully well i think it needs i don't think it needs i'm optimistic i think but i think it just needs a a little, I'm slightly pessimistic at the moment.

[2148] I think it just needs this little nudge, I think.

[2149] Just a, we've got the, we've, in countries like ours, right?

[2150] We've got these education systems and these universities that are broadly speaking very good.

[2151] They need a bit more money, but they're pretty good.

[2152] And we've got a culture that allows us to be open -minded, and we have democracies, and all these things are very difficult to get.

[2153] So I think we often miss the great things that we have in place.

[2154] In places like the, the, you know, US and Europe, definitely really very good.

[2155] And so it just takes a recognition of that, I think.

[2156] And that's how we started again, isn't it?

[2157] How do you just remind people what wonderful opportunities they have and what wonderful things they are to do?

[2158] And if you just turn the reality TV off for a bit and go and read a book or something, a Kindle book, if you want, it doesn't have to be a real book, then, you know, what wonderful things could we achieve?

[2159] So I'm kind of optimistic there, I think.

[2160] You have to be.

[2161] Beautiful.

[2162] I think so.

[2163] I mean, obviously there's some real issues with culture and society.

[2164] But I often wonder, as we talked about before, if those issues just inspire us to improve and change.

[2165] If you can't have a yin without a yang, I mean, you have a bunch of shit going on that is like a constant ebb and flow.

[2166] And I always, I always ponder whether or not that is almost a mechanism for progress or a mechanism for advancement.

[2167] And that without it, you don't get that.

[2168] I don't know.

[2169] It's possible.

[2170] It is possible.

[2171] So we can be optimistic at the end of the podcast.

[2172] Yes, I think we wrapped it up nice.

[2173] I think we brought it home in a beautiful way.

[2174] And can I say, just because my promoters sat over there, and I know he's been sat there for three hours, he would like me to remind the viewers that the Infinite Monkey Cage tickets are available online.

[2175] Infinite Monkeycage .com.

[2176] So you're on the, yeah, so you're on the LA one, which is the 12th of March.

[2177] Yes.

[2178] At the Ricardo Montalbaum Theater.

[2179] How ironic that Fantasy Island.

[2180] The guy from Fantasy Island, that's who Ricardo Montalban was, that we're going to be at the Ricardo Montobon Theater.

[2181] One of the dumbest fucking shows ever, Fantasy Island that had a little midget, boss, the plane.

[2182] Yin and Yang, as you said.

[2183] See, it's all coming together.

[2184] The film theater, the great show.

[2185] And then in San Francisco the day after, New York and Chicago.

[2186] All the dates are available at Infinite Monkeycage .com.

[2187] Thursday, March 5th, they're in end.

[2188] NYU at the Skirball Center in New York City.

[2189] Neil deGrasse Tyson's doing that one, actually.

[2190] Yes, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist John 11.

[2191] Did I say it right?

[2192] John, J .N. And then March 7th at the Anthonyam Theater in Chicago with Paul Serrano, paleontologist, and evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne.

[2193] And then, of course, the 12th with me and Blossom, the girl from Blossom.

[2194] She's on the Big Bang here, right?

[2195] And the guy you meet, Feature Armour, is there.

[2196] David Cohen, Emmy Award -winning writer.

[2197] Secret, as well.

[2198] There might be a Python around.

[2199] Oh, and you got one March 13th about UFOs, alien probes, and other close encounters.

[2200] Oh, I want to be on that one.

[2201] Do you?

[2202] Damn.

[2203] Can't make it.

[2204] Can't go to San Francisco.

[2205] I'm busy that day.

[2206] Listen, you're fucking awesome, man. Thank you very much.

[2207] Thanks for existing.

[2208] Thanks for doing what you do, because it's so important.

[2209] and it's so exciting to me to be able to watch your shows and to be able to just sort of sponge that information from you and thanks for just keep on keeping on there I'm going to see you in three weeks so I'll bring the human universe stuff for you I'll bring you some great and watch it or download it on the tyrant yes don't do whatever you got to do do folks get by all right we love you thank you see soon thank you enjoyed that cool