Neil Theise (on Complexity Theory)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on experts.

[1] I love today's guest.

[2] Me too.

[3] Yes.

[4] Big, um, big, ding, ding, ding.

[5] Not a duck, duck goose.

[6] I don't know.

[7] I say it.

[8] I don't know.

[9] It was five, six, whatever.

[10] Very small amount of people we've interviewed.

[11] Yeah.

[12] Who seem to be able to see the entire world and all of its complexity in one view.

[13] Very big picture and mind blowing a little bit.

[14] Yes.

[15] Again, I found myself trying to relax.

[16] what he had taught us in a social setting.

[17] It's a challenge.

[18] Yes.

[19] It's really worth listening.

[20] It's a very specific way of looking at the world that does encompass so many different singular ways of looking at the world.

[21] Yes.

[22] And then combined into something approaching spiritual, spirituality.

[23] That was very cool.

[24] Neil Thees.

[25] Neil Thees is a diagnostic pathologist and stem cell biologist.

[26] He is also a long -time.

[27] student of Zen Buddhism.

[28] He also knows almost everything you can know about self -organizing complex systems.

[29] He knows as much as you can about physics.

[30] He has a book out now called Notes on Complexity, the Scientific Theory of Connection, consciousness, and being.

[31] It's such a cool point of view he lays out.

[32] Really, really thrilling.

[33] Please enjoy Neil Feas.

[34] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now.

[35] Now, join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[36] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[37] I want to start with a little precursor to say this will be one of the more daunting episodes I will ever attempt to consolidate into two hours or 90 minutes, whatever it is.

[38] Try writing the book.

[39] I can't imagine.

[40] The fact that you brought it in in 180 pages or whatever it was seems impossible.

[41] possible, but I'm going to give you this compliment before we've even talked to you.

[42] We've had 300 experts on.

[43] Of the 300, we've had five that Monica and I agree, or roughly five, where they left and we went, oh, my goodness, I think they see the entire picture.

[44] Yeah.

[45] It's so rare.

[46] It's such a rare occurrence and it's palpable and it's very daunting as well.

[47] Yeah, but exciting.

[48] But exciting.

[49] So I'm reading about you, I'm listening to you.

[50] I'm doing the research and I'm going, oh boy, I think Neil might have his.

[51] arms around, perhaps as much of the picture as one can get their arms around.

[52] Thank you.

[53] So I would like to start before we talk about notes on complexity, about where you're from.

[54] And I've heard your best guess at what led you to science.

[55] But let's try to walk through where you were born and what kind of family you grew up in.

[56] Okay.

[57] Grew up in Hartford, Connecticut.

[58] West Hartford, we moved to when I was 7th.

[59] My mom was from England.

[60] My dad was from Germany.

[61] He was sent out of Nazi Germany in 39, five days before the invasion of Poland.

[62] They had something called the Kinder Transport where the British literally ransomed 10 ,000 German Jewish kids and brought them to England.

[63] He wound up there and was with some families here and there and then wound up in Northampton.

[64] Really quick.

[65] Extended families or random?

[66] Random host families.

[67] Wow.

[68] So he's an orphan of sorts.

[69] Okay.

[70] Very much an orphan.

[71] Not of sorts.

[72] Yeah, not of sorts.

[73] He was an orphan.

[74] By definition.

[75] Although he had an older brother who was 18 and he was 12.

[76] And I think that part of what was going on in his head was, why are they sending me away?

[77] I don't think he fully understood.

[78] Young people who are listening to your podcast, ask your parents the questions about your history that are easy that you won't think of till they're gone.

[79] And then you're like, yeah, yeah.

[80] So I know he was in a couple of houses.

[81] I don't think there was any trauma there, but he was moved around a bit and then landed in a hostel with 40 boys in Northampton, England.

[82] And that was actually a really good place for him to be.

[83] They were taken really good care of.

[84] He made a lot of lifelong friends there.

[85] And he was apprenticed at this factory because all the kids had to learn some sort of trade.

[86] And he was apprenticed at this clothing factory, which is significant because my mother was born in England.

[87] Her parents came from Poland on the eve of World War I, impoverished, East End, worked in the rag trade, worked his way up.

[88] When my mother was born, she grew up in a house off the high street in Hampstead.

[89] If I say to people in London that my mother grew up on Frogna Way, the house on the corner, They're like, you're kidding.

[90] It's this art deco mansion that I can still visit.

[91] And during the Blitz, the family decamped to a country house in Northampton where the factory of my grandfather was, which is where my father was a apprentice.

[92] This is age old, working for your old man. This is beautiful.

[93] So he was 14 and she was 12 and she was the English princess that he fell in love with.

[94] And he was the German orphan who wouldn't dare talk to her.

[95] Oh.

[96] Was grandma Jewish?

[97] Yeah.

[98] So there wasn't any capulets and...

[99] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And this isn't grandma, this is my mother.

[100] I'm sorry, your mother.

[101] I'm that old.

[102] World War II, my parents.

[103] And after the war, two of his surviving uncles from Germany wound up in Hartford, Connecticut.

[104] And so he came to America, first landed in New York, and he was walking down the street one day.

[105] And my mother's family in 49 decamped because the economy, in England was terrible.

[106] And my grandfather thought, oh, the business future is in America.

[107] They moved to America.

[108] He lost everything he had in the course of three bad business deals because he didn't understand American business.

[109] Also in New York at that time.

[110] Right.

[111] And my father's walking down the street and sees one of my mother's brothers -in -law because all the sons and the brothers -in -law who were older worked in the factory.

[112] And he asked about my mother.

[113] Once she got lowered down to his station.

[114] He felt comfortable.

[115] Kind of.

[116] Yeah, sure.

[117] Well, and he said to me, this is America.

[118] The orphan can talk to the princess.

[119] Yes, yes, yes.

[120] Happy Fourth of July.

[121] Oh, great timing, yeah, yeah.

[122] So the household you grew up in had a religious foundation in Judaism.

[123] And you have described it as one that was not overly dictatorial or oppressive, I guess.

[124] No, no, not at all.

[125] It was kind of a joyful experience.

[126] My mother's family, her parents had been Orthodox and came to English.

[127] England and maintained most of their observances.

[128] My mother grew up in that household.

[129] In the country house in Northampton, they had three kitchens, one for meat, one for dairy products, and one for Passover.

[130] Wow.

[131] So they were pretty observant.

[132] And my dad grew up and observant, when he got to England, the hostel he was in, it was Jewish run.

[133] These were all Jewish kids, and it was run in a similar fashion.

[134] So my parents were on the same page with this.

[135] And when he brought her to Hartford, because that's where his uncles were, there was a community of German Jews there.

[136] It may be one of the last really German Jewish synagogues in the world.

[137] And it's faded away because German Jews didn't marry other German Jews within the 40 families or whatever.

[138] Oh, there are stories about, yeah, just because you're Jewish doesn't mean you're not German.

[139] Oh, I just read the Warburgs.

[140] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[141] Great book by Ron Turner.

[142] Yeah, it was all about getting those kids out and all that.

[143] It was ringing a bell.

[144] But yeah, those guys were suffering from identifying most as German.

[145] I have a German passport, and I have that pride in being German, which is weird.

[146] Yes, and so misleading, because Hamburg at the time was such a cosmopolitan inclusive place where most of the Jewish bankers set up shop.

[147] Even while it was happening, that was still kind of this pocket.

[148] Yeah, my grandfather and his two siblings, they all fought in the trenches in World War I. You know the story of the Christmas truce?

[149] Yes.

[150] Yeah, one of my uncles was there for the Christmas.

[151] mysteries.

[152] No kidding.

[153] This was a little unnerving.

[154] So during COVID, I went gray.

[155] And the last part to go gray was the mustache under my nose.

[156] And I was giving a Dharma talk to my Zendo online and people were like, what's with the Hitler stash?

[157] Which was a little unnerving.

[158] So I went back and looked to the video.

[159] I was like, oh my God, I have a Hitler stash.

[160] But it's also the stash of my grandfather and his brothers.

[161] So it's this weird split thing.

[162] Hitler's mustache was a World War I mustache.

[163] It wasn't a Hitler stash.

[164] Well, he ruined a lot of shit.

[165] He ruined a swastika existed in India and other places.

[166] That symbol's gone.

[167] That's a wrap on that.

[168] The mustache is gone.

[169] The name Adolf is in history.

[170] You even see it in the Adolf Kores commercials.

[171] You're like, let's leave.

[172] Let's do A -CORs.

[173] Right, exactly.

[174] He took a lot of things right out of circulation.

[175] I like that.

[176] Hitler took a lot of good things out of circulation.

[177] So life in the synagogue, I mean, not everyone in my community, not all the kids grew up to be observant.

[178] But none of us were fleeing some reprehensible dictatorial.

[179] We were treated like miracles.

[180] We were the future they thought they weren't going to have.

[181] Can I ask, was your sexuality bumping up against any of this?

[182] Oh, yeah.

[183] Yeah.

[184] How were you making peace with that?

[185] I wasn't.

[186] It came to a head for me in first year of medical school.

[187] So, well, first off, the reason I went to medical school, this is really sad.

[188] It was a Tuesday morning, freshman year of college and I was starting to put together that I was gay and that meant at that time I wasn't going to get married.

[189] I wasn't going to have kids.

[190] You wouldn't be employed unless you stayed highly secretive.

[191] It wasn't so much employment.

[192] No, it was worse than that.

[193] It should only have been employment.

[194] I was thinking about remedical school and I wanted to be an academic and I thought so I'll become a rabbinic scholar and I'll grow up and get old knowing other rabbinic scholars and the only people who will come to my funeral are dusty old rabbinic scholars and if i live longer there will be no one to come to my funeral okay 18 years old that's what's in my head and the phone rings and it's my mother the ob who delivered my brother and i who she now worked for as an assistant just died of a heart attack i'm so sorry i'm hung up on the notion of becoming an employee of someone that's seen your vagina intimately you just glaze right over that well yeah monica what do you think I mean, I guess.

[195] Like, once you go to work for your OV, occasionally.

[196] Several times.

[197] Yeah, like, occasionally be like, yeah, he knows exactly what's happening under this skirt.

[198] I guess you trust him enough to know that's compartmentalized into his work.

[199] That would be great if we could really.

[200] Oh, God.

[201] That's how we can only have women obese.

[202] Sorry, I caught that.

[203] My homo little brain never went there.

[204] Right.

[205] That's what I'm saying.

[206] I apologize for even just acknowledging.

[207] that your mother worked for a man who'd been in her vagina many times.

[208] No, no, no, no, I was in her vagina.

[209] Yeah, but I'm sure he had it.

[210] He was just sort of like catching.

[211] So, oh my goodness.

[212] Sorry, Mom.

[213] That's okay.

[214] And he was Jewish, funeral immediately.

[215] She calls me Wednesday afternoon to say that she went to the funeral.

[216] And I said, how was it?

[217] And she said, oh, my goodness, all of Hartford came out for his funeral.

[218] And I thought, if you're a doctor, people come to your funeral.

[219] So I became pre -med.

[220] But do you think come to my funeral is a bit of a metaphor for, I will have a quality so prize that people overlook this thing about me?

[221] No, it was about I will be so lonely.

[222] It was all about how lonely I imagined myself being for the rest of my life.

[223] You couldn't imagine yourself in a partnership.

[224] No, no, no, no. Because the extra piece of this, which I don't know when I formally verbalized it, but by the time I got to medical school, so this is four years.

[225] years later, I realized that was a terrible decision.

[226] But it was too late.

[227] It was the Reagan era and medical student loans were 23%.

[228] Oh my God.

[229] After three months, I couldn't afford to leave medical school.

[230] I realized it was a bad mistake.

[231] So I was stuck.

[232] And the whole depression, loneliness, self -loathing hit a peak.

[233] And I was up on the rail of the George Washington Bridge, looking down, ready to jump, thinking, I'm never going to get married.

[234] I'm never going to have kids.

[235] I'm doing Hitler's job for him.

[236] Ah, I'm exterminating my line.

[237] Yeah, my parents brought me into this world to continue us.

[238] And look what they went through to get to this point.

[239] I'm sure this is very heavy.

[240] Right.

[241] So then I thought, but if I'd jump, they'll die of heart attacks or something.

[242] And so I got down.

[243] And then I was like, no, but I'm doing Hitler's job for him.

[244] So I got up.

[245] And it was up and down a few times.

[246] And then I ran home and got into therapy.

[247] And that was the beginning of things getting better.

[248] Is that when you also start the road down Buddhism?

[249] That had already started to happen.

[250] But that's also Holocaust tied in.

[251] The happy ending to that is I went into therapy, went into analysis.

[252] I failed a year of medical school because what else was I going to do?

[253] So I had to repeat the year.

[254] That gave me cover to get into analysis, Freudian analysis, four times a week on the couch, as a medical student.

[255] Where did I find the time?

[256] But I thought that was the likeliest way to become straight.

[257] Oh, you were convinced you could unravel some things.

[258] Right.

[259] If I could just become straight, then all that you could.

[260] this would go away.

[261] Four and a half years later, I came out to my parents.

[262] I met Mark, my husband, the day I came out to them.

[263] And what year was that?

[264] 1987.

[265] Wow.

[266] Right now.

[267] Maybe it was the day I was born.

[268] What day were you born?

[269] August 24.

[270] March 14th.

[271] Oh, that's my best friend's birthday, though.

[272] Oh, no one.

[273] And it's Einstein's birthday.

[274] And it's kind of my new birthday.

[275] Yeah.

[276] I celebrated every year.

[277] Yeah.

[278] That's beautiful.

[279] Wow.

[280] Right.

[281] So there's that.

[282] But before that, Holocaust.

[283] I grew up in the middle of that, and I had what I would call a strong devotional practice in terms of Jewish stuff.

[284] I was a leader in the synagogue.

[285] But there's this puzzle.

[286] Okay, you have this God who's terrific and all and takes care of us, and yet my grandparents were murdered and many relatives.

[287] Well, I would say history had been uniquely cruel to the chosen people.

[288] Yeah.

[289] Inside, I don't think we think of ourselves quite as chosen in that way.

[290] The joke is, could you choose someone else once in a while?

[291] Sure, sure, sure.

[292] But if the premise of the religion is, you know, you are my people, I am your God.

[293] Hello, reciprocal relationship.

[294] You're creating an in -group out -group, and you notice the in -group I'm a part of seems abnormally victimized.

[295] Well, in my mind, that was when you're special, you might have to deal with more stuff.

[296] Yeah, special doesn't mean good.

[297] Comfy, yeah, it doesn't mean comfortable.

[298] It means, okay, we're up to these challenges.

[299] So I wondered, by the time I got to my teen years, this was a real problem for me. How do I explain all of that?

[300] And another cousin, who was a survivor, wound up in Canada.

[301] He came to visit us, and he had a new girlfriend named Ollie, and Ali wasn't Jewish.

[302] But my parents were fine with her.

[303] She was a Shixir goddess, as I remember.

[304] She saw something in me, and I was a nerdy kid reading, and she gave me James Mishner's novel, The Source.

[305] Now, James Mishner, back in the, I guess, 50s to mid -70s, wrote big, fat 800 to 1 ,000 -page novels.

[306] He would pick a location and then tell the history of that spot in a giant book.

[307] And the source was one about Israel.

[308] A chapter in the middle was about Jewish mystics in the 15th and 16th century.

[309] That was my first discovery that there was a thing called mysticism and Jewish mysticism.

[310] And it talked about unification with God, and it hit me. And I actually said this to a friend.

[311] It's a very vivid memory walking down the beach with a friend of mine, that I thought, oh, if you're a mystic and achieve this union with God, you'll see things from the God's eye view.

[312] And from the God's eye view, everything makes sense.

[313] Including the Whopper.

[314] Yeah.

[315] And so that's what put this into my head.

[316] But Jewish mysticism for a suburban, non -Orthodox, let alone incipian homo Jewish kid, who's not going to yeshiva, isn't going to get married, isn't going to have kids, et cetera.

[317] It wasn't available.

[318] There were smidgens that were open.

[319] So I explored that stuff.

[320] Can I ask really quick, does Jewish mysticism predate the 15th century?

[321] Or that's when it got popular or that's when it was created?

[322] It goes back a few thousand years.

[323] I mean, there's elements of it in the Bible.

[324] You can find, well, you could describe the whole story of Moses as being.

[325] a document of his mystical states, seeing the burning bush, going up to receive the Ten Commandments, seeing the face of God.

[326] That's the ultimate.

[327] Well, for us.

[328] But there was a particular upsurge of it in a place called Svat in northern Israel in the 15th century.

[329] And this was timed around the Spanish exile of the Jews.

[330] And so there was a lot of mystical stuff in Southern Europe going on, and they all sort of accumulated towards this town, North Africa.

[331] Southern Europe.

[332] When people talk about Kabbalah today, a lot of what they're talking about goes back to the main teacher there, a guy named Isaac Luria, who I mentioned in the book.

[333] And that was what was in this book.

[334] That's what I became aware of.

[335] What did I have to explore those kind of ideas back then?

[336] I had encyclopedias.

[337] There was no internet.

[338] I didn't have teachers that had experience of this because modern Judaism had sort of lost connection to it.

[339] The Hasidic movement was sort of an upsurge of popular mysticism, but the rest of modern Jews in Western Europe, which are my people, had sort of pushed it aside.

[340] But didn't label it as sacrilegious, per se?

[341] More like dangerous.

[342] Dangerous.

[343] Yeah.

[344] There was a mystical revival.

[345] There was this false messiah named Shabtitezvi, I think, in the 17th century, where word got out that the Messiah had arrived and it was this guy.

[346] And words spread through Europe that all the Jews were going to be flown on magic carpets to the Holy Land.

[347] People sold their businesses.

[348] Families were destroyed because he converted to Islam under pain of death.

[349] So as mystics often are in many different religions, they're viewed as dangerous because they obscure boundaries.

[350] Well, it's a threat to the power holds as well.

[351] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[352] And it's funny because most of these religions begin with a mystical experience.

[353] Right.

[354] But then the power structure.

[355] institutionalized and men start running them yeah and then the freedom of the mystical life is a threat so Sufis are often persecuted in Muslim nations to this day there has been historically deep suspicion for the last few centuries of mystical practice and Judaism largely my understanding is because of this community -wide disaster that spread through the Middle East North Africa Europe because of this guy false Messiah yeah is Kabbalah part of that's the word of that's the word for the whole umbrella.

[356] It is.

[357] Okay.

[358] The Hebrew word for Jewish mysticism would be Kabbalah or Kabbalah in modern Hebrew.

[359] Okay.

[360] So that's one pretty deep trajectory you're on.

[361] And then you have a separate trajectory that you would have at that time at least labeled separate or in opposition or just completely divorced from that other interest.

[362] You know, it was just who I was.

[363] So I didn't think about what are the origins of it.

[364] But I was a nerdy kid.

[365] I loved reading about science.

[366] I think looking back what that grew out of was I had a really deep sympathy for the world.

[367] A neurotic aspect of it was if I kicked a rock and I wasn't paying attention and it went down a sewer, I felt bad for the rock.

[368] Your mom would ask you to remove ants from the house.

[369] Right.

[370] She'd asked you to kill him and you would remove them.

[371] Right.

[372] Another German survivor asked me to pick this really extraordinary dandelion on this lawn once and I was like, oh, Tanta, I'd have to kill it if I were to pick it for you.

[373] You don't want me to do that.

[374] And she patted me on the head and said, ah, my little nature lover.

[375] Which was code for gay.

[376] Yeah, yeah.

[377] Quite possibly.

[378] Yeah, she might have noticed.

[379] Everyone should have noticed.

[380] When I came out to my parents, my mother said, I had no idea.

[381] Did you, Al?

[382] My father.

[383] And I was, no, I had no idea.

[384] And I said, what are you talking about?

[385] You asked me in eighth grade.

[386] I did not.

[387] Yes, you did.

[388] But whatever.

[389] So the science thing, I think that that sense of connection to it made me curious about what it is and how it works.

[390] It was just a way of becoming closer to it.

[391] And I was much more comfortable in my head than my body.

[392] I was terrified of my physical existence.

[393] And I think that was the gay thing.

[394] I knew that below the neck, there's some issue here.

[395] I don't know what it is, but it has to do with below the neck.

[396] The most primitive instinct there is I'm going to be excommunicated from my group and I'm going to die when that happens.

[397] Because we know if you're not with your group, you're going to die.

[398] We know in a cellular level we have to be with each other.

[399] Well, and in my case, not only will I die, that wasn't the worst part.

[400] I will kill the group.

[401] Uh -huh.

[402] You know, I'm the end of the group.

[403] If everyone were like me, there'd be no more of us.

[404] And when I came out and I told my parents that I had this Hitler thing, they were horrified.

[405] Because this wasn't their idea.

[406] Where did you come up with this?

[407] And I was just like, inside my little brain.

[408] Yes.

[409] But then we get into potentially, like, the genetic passing of the up genome.

[410] Your parents try to shield you from this thing that was so problematic in their life.

[411] Generational trauma.

[412] Yes.

[413] But the mystical thing, too, I think, comes down through that line.

[414] My mother's line is a rabbinic line.

[415] And while we think of most of those people as legal scholars, because that's what rabbis were.

[416] They were all doing mystical practices.

[417] And I feel like there's something that came down through her mother and her father down to me, and that's partly what's being expressed here.

[418] So I had the religion thing going on, and then I had the science thing, and it's like sometimes I like to play Monopoly, and sometimes I like to play risk.

[419] They're different board games.

[420] Right.

[421] So I didn't have any issues with that.

[422] Our culture has issues with holding both of those.

[423] Well, they're pitted against one another.

[424] They're seen as antithetical to one another.

[425] But not in my head.

[426] But we've got to walk down that path to figure out, because that's kind of the, I'm rarely intrigued by anything, quote, spiritual.

[427] But I found myself quite intrigued when we get to your final conclusion, I have to say.

[428] So I would like to start now with...

[429] We're starting now.

[430] Okay.

[431] Well, I'm a relaxed now.

[432] Let me just add that you ultimately become a diagnostic liver pathologist.

[433] You're a professor at NYU.

[434] You've written this incredible paper in 18 you published, which presented this idea of...

[435] I can't even say the word.

[436] Interstition.

[437] So you're just a bona fide badass in the medical world.

[438] complexity theory this is very very fun it reminded me while i was reading that sam harris had this guest on one time and his specialty was scaling right he was obsessed with scaling and how everything scales and almost so this felt very in concert with that it's related yeah okay so could you tell us a little bit about complexity theory only a little tell us a lot about it's hard you have such wonderful concrete examples of it that I think everyone can feel and sense.

[439] Just for some kind of context, a lot of people have heard of something called chaos theory and or the geometry that goes with that fractals.

[440] And this comes to the scaling thing, which we may come back to.

[441] So you might look at a tree in its totality.

[442] Oh, it's a tree.

[443] And then you might find if you carve a piece off of it and you look at it under a microscope, you might be shocked to find that the little piece of the tree actually looks almost identical.

[444] to the big tree you're seeing.

[445] And that's fractals?

[446] Yeah.

[447] You don't even have to cut a piece off.

[448] Just look at the trunk and then see where it branches.

[449] Those each look like a trunk.

[450] Uh -huh.

[451] Those branch into smaller branches.

[452] Each of those looks like a trunk.

[453] Right.

[454] On and on until you get to the twigs.

[455] And so the thing about fractals is that they're scale invariant.

[456] No matter how close you look, or you look at it microscopically, the way the bark is forming looks like the way the bark is forming big.

[457] Yes.

[458] Clouds from a distance look puffy.

[459] but if you go closer, you feel like, why aren't I getting closer?

[460] Because you see smaller puffs and smaller puffs.

[461] In an airplane, you can't always judge how far you are away.

[462] And so it just looks like the same thing, regardless of how closer far you are.

[463] And these geometries occur all over the place.

[464] So if you look at a satellite view of a riverbed and the way a river branches into a delta, but I can show you pictures.

[465] If I don't tell you that it's a riverbed, I could tell you, oh, this is a picture of blood vessels.

[466] Well, can I tell you, and it looks the same.

[467] Do you use Apple TV?

[468] Yes, I do.

[469] So Apple TV has these great screensavers that come on.

[470] Maybe four days ago, I'm watching one that is a satellite view of a river system.

[471] And at first, I thought that's so weird.

[472] They're showing us some kind of cardiovascular system.

[473] Right.

[474] You had seen it one way and suddenly see it another way.

[475] People have asked me on occasion after I've given talks on all this stuff, what's enlightenment like, like I would know.

[476] But what I say to them is it's that moment where you thought it looked this way and then you see it that way.

[477] That's an awakening moment.

[478] Right, right, exactly.

[479] So it's all a matter of you come in with sort of assumptions about what things are, and this gets into complexity theory, you hear a sound in the sky and you look up and you see a dark, funny shape.

[480] Is it a balloon?

[481] Is it a ship?

[482] And then you realize, no, it's a murmuration of starlings.

[483] It's a flock of birds.

[484] I love the starlings.

[485] Yeah.

[486] So when you look up, if you're at the right vantage point, you might look at the group of starlings and see it as one object.

[487] And now we zoom in and what do we see?

[488] It's interacting birds.

[489] It looked like a thing, but it's not a thing.

[490] It's interacting smaller things.

[491] You go in deep enough to the microscopic level and there's no starling.

[492] It's just cells interacting.

[493] We need to spend one second there.

[494] The notion that we're not one item is really abstract.

[495] Because our only interaction with it is as one cohesive unit.

[496] It's only abstract because we're trained to, not see it.

[497] Yes.

[498] And my professional training, because I'm a pathologist, what that means is I look at biopsies from people's tissues under the microscope all the time.

[499] So I'm seeing people at the cellular level hours every day.

[500] Yeah.

[501] Right.

[502] And so I live at that level of scale.

[503] I've had dreams.

[504] I never have flying dreams.

[505] Did you have flying dreams?

[506] Never had one.

[507] Yes.

[508] Yeah, of course he does.

[509] I know.

[510] I'm jealous.

[511] I figured.

[512] Oh, God, everyone's resentful.

[513] Yeah.

[514] Yeah.

[515] All the flying dreams.

[516] You're the chosen person.

[517] I'm the new missile.

[518] Oh, my God.

[519] Sell your businesses.

[520] I always fly just three feet off the ground, though.

[521] So I don't want you guys think I was up in the sky, like, doing somersaults.

[522] But you flew.

[523] I flew.

[524] So the only time I've ever had a flying dream, I was flying over a liver slide.

[525] And I was flying in the tissue, in the valleys, up over the peaks.

[526] And part of me lives at that level of scale.

[527] My training allowed me to open up complexity theory the way I do.

[528] At the level of the cell, the bird ceases to exist.

[529] The way at the level of the bird, the flocks cease to exist.

[530] Our bodies are nothing but cells interacting with each other.

[531] Flocks of cells.

[532] Cabillions of cells.

[533] That organize themselves from the bottom up.

[534] And there's no cell in the body that's figuring out, do I need to eat?

[535] Am I hungry?

[536] Do I need to sleep?

[537] Am I tired?

[538] Am I horny?

[539] Am I excited?

[540] Am I depressed?

[541] They're all just doing their thing, interacting with each other at the local level.

[542] someone told me that starlings pay attention to seven other starlings around them if that's the correct number how they got to it is you can computer model all these things yeah and that's what led to chaos theory and complexity is once you had computers you could model how things interact over time also just being able to film the flock of starlings to our eye six thousand feet away it would appear they all change direction at the same time right but if we go frame by frame multi frame camera shooting that, will realize one change, which made multiples of sevens react.

[543] Which is another principle of complexity theory, the individual of a complex system, the flock is a complex system.

[544] And each bird, if it chooses to go this way versus this way, the whole flock may change.

[545] The bird appears to be a solid thing, but it's just a community or a flock or a colony of cells.

[546] Any one cell changes how it's going to behave.

[547] The whole system is going to change.

[548] Yeah.

[549] So in Buddhist terms, that's interdependence, right?

[550] that the way the world exists depends on every single tiny piece of it, and they're all connected to each other.

[551] And the slightest change down here can yield vast changes.

[552] Now, a famous example of that kind of thing is the butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil becomes a tornado in Texas.

[553] That's chaos theory.

[554] And the difference between chaos and complexity, chaos was discovered first.

[555] If you computer model it, if that butterfly flaps its wings in just that, way, it will always give rise to the same tornado.

[556] Weather systems are chaotic, and that's why we've gotten really good at predicting weather, because when I was a kid, they predicted weather all the time, and they were always wrong.

[557] Now you have a weather app, and you know, it really tells you pretty much the next day or two.

[558] If it tells you these systems coming in at seven miles an hour, generally is.

[559] Right, from that direction.

[560] That's because we've learned to model chaotic systems.

[561] And the thing about them is that they are predictably predictable.

[562] If you have the basic settings at the start of it, it will always give rise to the same result.

[563] When they were playing around with this, they discovered that, so if you think about a way to map different organization of things in the universe, there are things that are perfectly ordered, like billiard balls bumping into each other or a checkerboard, things that are completely random, like molecules in a gas, they're just bouncing all over the place, and then chaos turned out to be a third kind of order, and the geometry that describes that is fractal geometry, these sort of self -similar things across scales.

[564] It turned out between order and chaos, there was a fourth zone, and weird things started to happen there.

[565] And this came out of a very simple video game, actually, from the early 70s called the Game of Life.

[566] And it turned out that if you set it running and you set the initiating circumstances one way, it's a grid with black and white squares.

[567] And there are rules for how squares turn on or turn off, alive or dead.

[568] Most of them, you set up a pattern and it dies within a few moves.

[569] Some of them would become a stable object -looking thing.

[570] Some of them would blink.

[571] So you could have a horizontal line of three squares, and then the next turn it would be a vertical line, and then the next turn would be a horizontal line, and we'd do that forever.

[572] Or you take a three -by -three block of alive squares, and the next turn, it's a three -by -three block of alive squares for infinity.

[573] And then there were patterns that were examples of chaos, and these would be moving patterns that would be endlessly developing themselves.

[574] But then there was a fourth pattern that they discovered that actually, when you look at the patterns, they look biological.

[575] And it turned out mathematically this was something else at the edge of chaos between order and chaos.

[576] And so complexity sometimes is referred to as life at the edge of chaos for this reason.

[577] A significant difference between complex systems and chaos is that complex systems always have a little bit of randomness in their system.

[578] This is really key.

[579] And that makes them predictably unpredictable.

[580] Chaos was predictably predictable.

[581] Complexity, you can't ever tell where it's going.

[582] And the importance of this low -level randomness, I often use ant colonies.

[583] Yes, I love this example.

[584] I love this too.

[585] Everyone loves this.

[586] Because everyone played with ants when they're kids.

[587] Can I say one thing, really quick, that you had pointed out, I think, before we got to hear, which is people are walking down a sidewalk.

[588] They're not bumping into each other.

[589] There appears to be an order, if you're looking at it from up above, the Empire State Building.

[590] It appears that everyone got a game plan or that someone has a game plan.

[591] And we're all following it.

[592] Yes.

[593] And then you recognize there's no fucking game plan.

[594] There's no mastermind that's set up anything.

[595] I think we even succumb to that notion that there is some kind of grand scheme and that this has been designed.

[596] But it hasn't been designed.

[597] No. At all.

[598] But we think it has because we inherited it.

[599] Right.

[600] It works.

[601] You think, oh, someone must have figured this out.

[602] Right.

[603] Because I'm not doing it.

[604] No, I've never met anyone that's doing it.

[605] And there's no government position.

[606] Right.

[607] And the fact that I was going to say, Anson, you talked about people moving down the street, this is one of the remarkable things about complexity is, while it's describing things that are complex, that doesn't mean complicated.

[608] It's actually very simple.

[609] And there are four basic rules that things interact with each other.

[610] If they follow these rules, they create a complex system.

[611] And the math that describes that works, whether you're talking about a flock of birds, people walking down the street, an economic system, cells organizing in the body, molecules organizing themselves within your cells.

[612] It's the same stuff regardless of what scale you're talking about.

[613] And this gets back to it's at that fractal boundary.

[614] It's independent of scale.

[615] The same math applies no matter who or what you're talking about.

[616] So I was sitting in a Zen garden in Kyoto once and there was a wisteria branch in front of me. And there were ants going up the wisteria branch, two columns of ants going up and one column of ants coming down.

[617] And after that trip, I came home and I went into the subway at Delancey and Essex in New York City, Lower East Side.

[618] And there's a stairwell there that's particularly wide compared to most subway systems.

[619] And it was rush hour.

[620] And there were two columns of people going up, the outside, and one column of people coming down.

[621] And none of them knew what they were doing any more than the ants knew what they were doing.

[622] They were all just, I've got to go home and get dinner together.

[623] Oh, I've got a meeting I have to go to.

[624] Oh, I can't wait to go home and sleep.

[625] Yeah, there's no rule to walk this way.

[626] And yet it was arising.

[627] And this is what complex systems to do.

[628] We call that emergent self -organization.

[629] The things self -organize into these emergent global properties, they self -organize on the local scale.

[630] You have all these worker bees.

[631] You have a queen bee.

[632] You would maybe think the queen bee has disseminated the instructions to everybody.

[633] But no, the queen beans just making eggs.

[634] And each individual bee has not been told what to do.

[635] Right.

[636] Once you start to see it, everywhere you look, this is how the world works.

[637] This is how living things work.

[638] This is a miraculous concept.

[639] It is a phenomenal concept.

[640] To say that there's no grand design, no one has the full set of plans, yet cumulatively, it's creating a fucking beehive or an ant colony.

[641] Another key thing to add is that top -down control doesn't work.

[642] Well, communism gave it a shot.

[643] Right.

[644] I've been talking about this stuff for about 20 years.

[645] And so the best example was when it was Hillary versus Obama.

[646] Hillary's campaign was a traditional campaign that was completely top down.

[647] She had tight control over every part of her campaign.

[648] The Obama campaign, you read how they were setting it up.

[649] Local control, no governing ideas, just letting creative things rise up from the bottom.

[650] And the result is one is a creative living system that can change on a dime to adapt, environment changes, top -down can't change so quickly.

[651] You know, and there's always some degree of top -down.

[652] These aren't absolutes, but in general, top -down is rigid.

[653] If the environment changes, there's no way to explore a new way to evolve and respond.

[654] Whereas in a living complex system, there's always that chance.

[655] And where the nimbleness comes from is if there's no randomness in a system, there's no opportunity to change if the environment changes.

[656] I love your example of the line of ants in a feed line.

[657] You look at a food line of ants from a distance and you see a straight line and you think all the ants are following the line.

[658] And it's very efficient.

[659] But if you kneel down and look closely, there are always some ants that aren't following the line.

[660] There's some strays.

[661] You mentioned before how I rescued ants from my mom's kitchen and got them out before she could kill them.

[662] Because I felt sorry for them.

[663] I thought they're kind of pathetic and lost.

[664] They're not following the line.

[665] She was completely correct.

[666] This was the beginning of a home invasion.

[667] The ants not following the line If you put your foot down in the middle of the line It's those ants that very rapidly find The new efficient route around your foot It's those ants not following the line That can find other food sources So when this food source runs out They're already onto the next food source If there's too much randomness Then no one's following the line They're like the disruptors Yeah and it's easy to go Oh the poets and the artists in society or their divergent ants The thing is that anybody can be a divergent hand.

[668] That ant who's divergent now will become the leader of a food line later on.

[669] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[670] We've all been there.

[671] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[672] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[673] but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[674] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[675] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[676] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[677] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[678] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[679] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[680] What's up, guys?

[681] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good, and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[682] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[683] And I don't mean just friends.

[684] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[685] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[686] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[687] How does a system reach homeostasis where they have the right amount of explorers or divergent participants?

[688] Good question.

[689] How?

[690] It's probably implicit in this global conversation where I mean that there is no how probably.

[691] There's some critical mass of divergence where it couldn't function.

[692] Except where we'll wind up going is that it's not just evolution.

[693] It's the entire universe.

[694] But setting that aside for now.

[695] Yeah, yeah, earmark that.

[696] Yeah, so the notion of homeostasis, I've mentioned that there are these four rules to complexity.

[697] We talked about one, that everything happens on the local level.

[698] There's no cell monitoring, everything that's going on.

[699] There's no queen bee figuring out where the flowers are and how to get the honey made.

[700] Second thing is there's this low -level randomness in the system.

[701] Not too much, not too little, just enough to allow flexibility and adaptation.

[702] Third thing is kind of obvious.

[703] Three ants don't make a colony.

[704] Three bees don't make a hive.

[705] three birds don't make a flock.

[706] But if you have enough, I've gotten ant colonies.

[707] My day, we would have ordered them from the backs of comics.

[708] Now you just get them from the internet.

[709] 25 ants makes a colony with food lines, a cemetery, tunnel digging.

[710] But when you get underneath around eight ants, they no longer pay attention to each other.

[711] So you need a certain number.

[712] And the more you have, and the greater diversity of interactions between them, the more complexity you have.

[713] So a colony of 200 ants is not as complex as a colony of 2000, isn't as complex as 20 ,000.

[714] Or in human terms, a village is not a city, is not a megalopolis.

[715] But the same math, the same principles apply across all those scales, right.

[716] Can I just add one that I heard from the scale guy that I loved?

[717] Sure, yeah, yeah.

[718] He was talking about if you look at the human body, if you just peeled off the front of it, and then you also paired that with how cities operate, that all your blood vessels, in your cardiovascular system are really roads.

[719] And you look at the way houses span out.

[720] And the roads stop where the last house goes.

[721] And if they want more houses, they have to build more roads.

[722] And that the whole thing mirrors almost exactly how the body has assembled itself.

[723] When I give a talk on my interstitium stuff, I start with a picture of my medical center from the East River.

[724] I'm at NYU.

[725] So from the East River, you look at the east side of Manhattan.

[726] And I start off by explaining, well, you need a communication system between the parts of the body.

[727] The cardiovascular system does that, but the interstitium does it too.

[728] And so you have the streets and the avenues which lead to the walkways, which lead into the hospital, into the patient room.

[729] Yeah, and the hospital's like an organ.

[730] Exactly.

[731] But you also have the East River and the FDR drive going along, which are even bigger routes.

[732] It's all the same stuff.

[733] Yeah.

[734] It's so wild.

[735] Right.

[736] Like you said, this is kind of the magic of it.

[737] The fourth rule we haven't talked about is kind of the how of the homeostasis.

[738] We talk about negative feedback loop.

[739] and positive feedback loops.

[740] So in interacting with each other, the individuals who are interacting have influences on each other.

[741] They have means of communicating with each other.

[742] They send signals to each other which tell you, do more, do less.

[743] And a negative feedback loop, we don't mean negative, bad, positive good.

[744] We mean a negative feedback loop is like an air conditioner.

[745] Temperature goes up in the room, the air conditioner senses it, turns on, the temperature comes down, turns off when it gets cool enough.

[746] So the air conditioner provides, It's a negative feedback to keep the temperature of the room in an oscillating, balanced, homeostatic range, a comfortable range that's healthy for you.

[747] So that's a negative feedback loop.

[748] Oh, interesting.

[749] And when you're walking down the street and you're thinking about what your busy day ahead is or you're walking down the street and you're listening to some music and you're just bopping along to the music and you don't bump into each other.

[750] It's because there's part of your body's nervous system that's paying attention.

[751] to how close you're getting to people.

[752] We all have very strong senses of, hey, you're in my physical space.

[753] And so your body makes little adjustments of your shoulders turn this way or your step goes this way, and so you don't bump into each other.

[754] Those are negative feedbackers.

[755] But it's also culture -dependent, which is fascinating, which is a complex system.

[756] Yeah.

[757] And so that's an example of a homeostatic mechanism that we do all the time.

[758] Yeah, it's just operating in our sub -com.

[759] Right, right.

[760] It's like our operating system.

[761] Now, you can have positive feedback loops.

[762] That would be like the warmer room gets, the heater turns on and it gets warmer, and the heater turns on higher and it gets warmer.

[763] That would be a positive feedback loop.

[764] So obviously that would eventually lead to a burning room.

[765] Yeah.

[766] So positive feedback loops tend to expend energy and then everything gets burned up and there's no room left, collapse.

[767] They accelerate until they terminate somehow.

[768] So you can have those in living systems.

[769] Think about when you get a fever.

[770] That's a positive feedback loop turning up your temperature to optimize how you're going to fight off your infection.

[771] But when you've fought off the infection, negative feedback loops come back in to suppress that and your temperature returns to its circadian 24 -hour normal range, a little higher, a little lower than normal.

[772] So complex systems, whether it's ants or economies or the cells in your body, their interactions have to be governed by negative feedback loops.

[773] So that's the how of homeostasis.

[774] Negative feedback loops predominating over positive feedback loops.

[775] I mentioned economies.

[776] What's bad for an economy?

[777] When you've eroded negative feedback loops, so positive feedback loops predominate, so the Great Depression, there were no rules governing how banks could lend money, how business could borrow money, massive explosion of capital upwards, followed by collapse.

[778] Then you put the Glass -Steagall Act, where they legislated in the years after the Great Depression, oh, we need some regulations on the banking system.

[779] These are the rules for negative feedback loops that could provide homeostasis.

[780] And it worked.

[781] You had a thriving economy that could take on World War II and not only survive it, but expand even more, which is why my grandfather thought the U .S. would be a great place to come after the war, because in England, not so much.

[782] But then Democrats and Republicans get into the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, they start to erode the Glass -Steagall Act.

[783] The negative feedback loops, the regulations, allowing for greater freedom, but the result is positive feedback loops, the 2008 bubbles and collapse.

[784] So we have the Dodd -Frank Act, and they come back in, and they put in more negative feedback loops.

[785] Negative doesn't mean bad.

[786] Negative means homeostasis, healthy comfort.

[787] Isn't the Fed rate our lever for the negative feedback?

[788] Exactly.

[789] They talk about, oh, the economy's heating up too much.

[790] We want to cool it down.

[791] It's like the air conditioner.

[792] We grew too fast.

[793] We've got to make money more expensive, so it grows slower.

[794] So in the body, we have an example of fevers.

[795] Another example, cells interacting with each other as a complex system.

[796] They regulate each other.

[797] They keep each other from doing too much.

[798] So what cancer is, normally cells in our bodies are paying attention to each other.

[799] Not too much activity, not too little activity.

[800] They turn each other up.

[801] They turn each other down.

[802] One way, for example, is contact inhibition.

[803] You have a sheet of cells, and as long as they've got cells on all sides, of them, they don't divide.

[804] But if a cell dies off, in my field, you have hepatitis and you lose a liver cell, the liver cell next to it, divides, reestablishes contact amongst all its neighbors by doing so.

[805] Now there are two cells, a cell filling that hole, and they stop dividing.

[806] So that's negative feedback.

[807] Oh, there's an empty space, need to divide.

[808] Oh, there's no empty space, stop dividing.

[809] But some cells, because of epigenetic or genetic changes, if a cell loses its ability to experience contact inhibition, then it divides, and it divides, and it divides, and you have a tumor.

[810] And that could be a benign tumor.

[811] It's going to grow and keep growing fibroids of the universe in the uterus.

[812] Fibrites of the universe.

[813] You know, you have a wart on your skin.

[814] Those would be benign tumors that to some extent what's happened there is they've lost contact inhibition amongst other things.

[815] But if you lose a few more things, like, you know, like, oh, I'm a cell that needs to bind to other cells.

[816] Oh, I don't need to bind to other cells.

[817] I can move without binding to another cell.

[818] Then they start to travel and you've got cancer.

[819] Right.

[820] Exactly.

[821] Now, with cancer, what happens is you're losing negative feedback loops.

[822] In some cases, you're also increasing positive feedback loops by your mutations or the epigenetics.

[823] And the result is you have rapid expansion, energy wasting, just like an economic bubble, and then eventually collapse.

[824] So again, it's the same basic principles.

[825] We can talk economies, we can talk cancer.

[826] It's the same thing.

[827] Here comes the mysteriousness.

[828] Okay, so the part that I really, really enjoyed as well is I think many of us hold this notion that we could get down to the foundational element.

[829] Right.

[830] So we're looking at the human body.

[831] I'm looking at you, and I think you're one thing.

[832] But no, you're a bazillion cells.

[833] And then we look at cells and what do we find within cell?

[834] Oh, good.

[835] We found it.

[836] Here's the foundational element.

[837] When we talk about Western medicine and Western biology, that's what we mean.

[838] Western medicine and biology were reified, institutionalized, conceptualized when microscopes were invented.

[839] So before we had microscopes, the question of what our bodies were made of was a philosophical question.

[840] Going back to the Greeks, is the body an endlessly divisible fluid?

[841] Or is it, if you divide it and divided and divided and divide it, do you eventually reach some indivisible subunit called an atom?

[842] And so biology is where the word atom comes in, that existence, that bodies arrived at some indivisible subunit.

[843] And it was a philosophical debate.

[844] Then microscopes were invented.

[845] And the first thing they could see were cell walls and cell membranes, sort of in the shape of a box.

[846] Well, if you subdivide a box, you don't get smaller boxes.

[847] You get fragments of edges and walls and corners, right?

[848] So there's no box.

[849] So the microscope said, oh, there is a smallest unit, an atom of, you know, of the universe.

[850] our bodies.

[851] And that looks like a box.

[852] And we'll call it a cell because it looks like a room, the cell of a monk or a prisoner with no furniture in it.

[853] And that's where the word comes from.

[854] This is like confirmation bias in action, which is like, we know there is one thing.

[855] We found it.

[856] We're done.

[857] Exactly.

[858] And then a few decades go by and they develop chemicals that can stain the components of cells so you can see them under the microscope, which is what I do all day long.

[859] I'm still using the same stains they invented a couple hundred years ago, mostly.

[860] And then they saw the nucleus and other things in the cell, the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi, mitochondrium.

[861] And so the furniture filled in.

[862] But what if the microscope had allowed you to see something different?

[863] What if the first thing it allowed you to see were nuclei?

[864] Then you would have said, oh, look, the body microscopically is an endlessly divisible fluid continuum with these little balls floating in.

[865] We'll figure out what the balls are later.

[866] And then you start doing stains, and you'd see the cell membranes, and you wouldn't say, oh, we were wrong.

[867] It's made of cells.

[868] You would have said, oh, look, there's semi -permeable partitioning of the fluid, but it's still fluid.

[869] So cell doctrine is the body is made of cells, and every cell comes from a prior cell, and that's Western medicine and biology.

[870] A fluid doctrine would have said, no, it's endless fluid and its molecules self -organizing in water.

[871] Now, it turns out both of the things are true, Because the cell, while it looks like a thing, if you go down to the nanoscopic level, to the level of molecules, there's no cell there.

[872] The way the flock disappeared to become just interacting birds, the cell disappears to become interacting molecules floating in water.

[873] We're there.

[874] We got molecules.

[875] Right.

[876] So what are molecules?

[877] Are molecules the fundamental thing?

[878] Well, no, they're just self -organizing atoms.

[879] Oh, Jesus.

[880] Okay, so atoms.

[881] We got atoms.

[882] We got atoms.

[883] We got atoms.

[884] We got atoms.

[885] We call them atoms, right?

[886] But no, they're just protons, neutrons, and electrons, no. And they're subatomic particles.

[887] It's not an infinite regress.

[888] It's not turtles all the way down, infinitely.

[889] What does turtles all the way down mean?

[890] I'd have to now go look it up.

[891] Can we look it up?

[892] Yeah, I'm curious.

[893] Because I've been saying, is that part of his job?

[894] Rob's on top of the computer.

[895] He's many things.

[896] First and foremost, a rascal.

[897] I want to say it's a Babylonian.

[898] Incredibly helpful.

[899] And incredibly lucky he didn't go back to Chicago.

[900] And cute is.

[901] Do you see how cute is?

[902] Whenever we pull them out on stage, the girls go, what?

[903] That's what Wabiwob looks like?

[904] It's maddening.

[905] The three of you are doing just fine on the L .A. looks meter.

[906] Oh, thank you.

[907] That's very kind.

[908] I think in order, it's Monica and rub and me. Well, we don't need to order it.

[909] We got it.

[910] We're going down in scale.

[911] Or in height.

[912] It's an expression of the problem of infinite regress.

[913] 17th and 18th century.

[914] Hindu mythology.

[915] Ah, Hindu.

[916] Cor.

[917] Would be.

[918] Yeah, exactly.

[919] But how do we know it doesn't go down infinitely?

[920] Because every time we get to what we assume is the fundamental thing, then we are inclined to say that we've found it.

[921] But isn't what we've learned at this point, there is none?

[922] Right.

[923] So this is where going to Israel when I was 16 to study at the Weitzman Institute to study particle physics for the summer, because that's what I did with my bar mitzvim money.

[924] It's a bummer you didn't have a cell phone to capture all the great content.

[925] Right.

[926] What an Instagram post that No, it was still just me, the nerdy boy It wouldn't be very exciting So this is where quantum physics comes in Right, we've all heard quantum physics And no one knows what it means Including me, but that's okay, I can talk about it I have a quantum physicist named Minascafatos And I check everything I say with him And he goes, yep, that's it And then I'm like, okay, yeah And it's working with him That has allowed me to develop Some of the ideas that we're talking about now.

[927] My first quantum physics book was the 30 years that shook physics, which I found in the West Hartford Public Library when I was in seventh grade.

[928] Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[929] My father really did not know what to do with me. Like, this is your pick?

[930] Yeah, he just left the room.

[931] But, okay, that's fine.

[932] We made paper airplanes together.

[933] That's where we met.

[934] So what quantum physics tells us is that there are subatomic particles smaller than atoms.

[935] Smaller than electrons.

[936] An electron is a subatomic particle.

[937] Protons and neutrons are made of quarks, which are their subatomic particles.

[938] and there are other subatomic particles that pass between them that allow them to bind together, like luans, and there's a whole bunch of them.

[939] That's the standard model of particle physics.

[940] And then people argue about what comes next.

[941] Some people say strings are what comes next.

[942] Other people talk about quantum loops.

[943] There's no consensus about that.

[944] What there is consensus about is that there is ultimately a smallest measurement of size and a smallest measurement of time.

[945] These are called plonk units of space, and time.

[946] Max Planck was the founder of quantum physics, and you can't get smaller than these.

[947] So there is a limit.

[948] Can I ask why you can't get smaller?

[949] We just know that we can't.

[950] See, that's a hard answer for me. Yeah, it's a hard answer, but the way he figured it out, so if you take the major constants of physics, they all have units of distance and time and mass, etc., within them.

[951] And if you take those and play with them, you realize that to get those, you can only get down to this small size.

[952] Those constants imply that the basic nature of spacetime, which Einstein described as being smooth, we all have that image of gravity being like you put a ball on a sheet and throw a smaller ball around it and it goes into orbit like the moon, and that works for relativity.

[953] But at the quantum level, it isn't smooth.

[954] It's particulate.

[955] And it has smallest unit of space, of length.

[956] That's the Planck length.

[957] and since the speed of light is the fastest something can travel, the time it takes to travel the plonk length is the shortest unit of time.

[958] And so there's general consensus in the quantum physics community that that's as small as it gets.

[959] You can only see my skepticism, which is we've been at this point, numerous times throughout history.

[960] Right.

[961] As we'll get to, I don't think that's necessarily the bottom or the top ceiling.

[962] Everything we have points to that being correct, but you're absolutely right.

[963] We revise things all the fucking time.

[964] But right now, that's where we're sort of settled.

[965] And so have we arrived then at the smallest thing?

[966] Well, what is felt to be going on at that level is that we think of space as being empty.

[967] We talk about it as being a vacuum, but it's not implied by the mathematics of quantum physics.

[968] And quantum physics isn't something easily dismissed as, oh, we'll get to something that replaces it, because it's the most successful scientific theory there is.

[969] The reason we have cell phones is because quantum physics works.

[970] It just works.

[971] It predicts everything.

[972] And it predicts things we can't imagine.

[973] If you've heard of things like quantum entanglement and non -locality, those are things that are mind -boggling and quantum theory predicts them.

[974] And Einstein really had a problem with these crazy things.

[975] And so was resistant to quantum theory and he helped establish it.

[976] But the fact is, even the craziest stuff that quantum theory predicts has turned out to be true.

[977] Won the Nobel Prize, quantum entanglement and non -locality last year.

[978] So this stuff is fairly solid.

[979] That's the story of Oppenheimer, right?

[980] He happens luckily to be in Germany at a time where it's being talked about and lectured on, not in the States, and then he comes home in the atomic bomb.

[981] Right.

[982] Hello.

[983] You know, unintended consequences.

[984] So what happens when we get down to space time is that it turns out it's not a vacuum.

[985] It's not empty and it's not smooth.

[986] It's an energy rich field.

[987] And because of relativity, E equals MC squared, the energy that fills it, it's a high energy rich field, that energy will sometimes turn into mass. And it does so usually in matter -antimatter pairings.

[988] And so if you remember from Star Trek, matter and antimatter, let's say an electron and a positron.

[989] Positron is an electron, but with a positive charge.

[990] If they hit each other, they annihilate and become energy again.

[991] So you have these particles popping up and self -annihilating and sinking back down into the energy field.

[992] So that's called the quantum foam.

[993] I love that.

[994] This idea that the smallest levels of scale, it's just this bubbling, seething foam of particles coming in and out of existence.

[995] Sometimes those particles don't self -enihilate.

[996] Sometimes they survive long enough to interact with each other.

[997] When they do that, what are they doing?

[998] They're interacting.

[999] And they fulfill all the principles of a complex system, all four rules.

[1000] So they interact with each other to become larger subatomic particles.

[1001] Those interact to become atoms, to become molecules, to become cells and everything else in the entire universe.

[1002] So the entire universe is one complex system, and there is no thing identifiable anywhere that is, in fact, a thing.

[1003] Because at the lowest level of scale, it's just the quantum foam.

[1004] Foam, quantum foam.

[1005] Yeah.

[1006] I've got to get some of that.

[1007] Yeah.

[1008] I'd like to order some of Amazon.

[1009] I'd like do a shot of quantum foam every morning to kick things.

[1010] to hide gear.

[1011] But we are quantum phone.

[1012] Sure, sure.

[1013] There's no piece of us that isn't quantum phone.

[1014] You already have it.

[1015] Can I take more?

[1016] I want more of everything I have, though.

[1017] This is very consistent with my personality.

[1018] I want more quantum phone.

[1019] So this is where we go next.

[1020] This is how you get all the quantum phone.

[1021] Oh, I got it.

[1022] I see the segue coming.

[1023] Right.

[1024] You look at an ant colony from a distance, and it looks like a thing.

[1025] You go in closer and it's just ants.

[1026] Then you go into the ants closer, and it's just cells.

[1027] At different levels of scale, you have a different appearance.

[1028] What else changes as you go across scales?

[1029] So at this level of scale, there are four people in this room.

[1030] We are separate, and our edges are our skin.

[1031] And that's the way we grow up thinking of ourselves.

[1032] Yeah, we have like boundaries.

[1033] Right.

[1034] But when you go down to the cellular level, where are your boundaries?

[1035] So the first thing is that you're sloughing dead skin cells off the top of your skin all the time, and that's a lot of the dust in our rooms, which is really a little disgusting when you think about it.

[1036] We just had the grossest episode of our life with someone that rented an Airbnb and their psoriasis over the course of two months.

[1037] The person thought that someone had taken a bag of flour and thrown it all over the room.

[1038] And we were like, whoa.

[1039] Perfect.

[1040] So where is the boundary of that person with psoriasis?

[1041] Where are our boundaries?

[1042] It's at least the space that you sit in, your homes, your offices, et cetera.

[1043] But that's dead stuff.

[1044] Now we know about the microbiome.

[1045] Have you had a show about the microbiome?

[1046] Cut some people on have talked about it.

[1047] This is a kit to measure my microbiome health.

[1048] In your GI tract.

[1049] In my GI -I -I -Rect.

[1050] It's your gut health.

[1051] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1052] So the microbiome are all the bacteria as well as other things, viruses, fungi, et cetera, that line all of your skin and line all the crevices inside you.

[1053] And what we now know is that without your microbiome, you cannot be a functioning human being.

[1054] If you eliminate your microbiome, you'll die within a day or two.

[1055] because your skin will start to crack.

[1056] You'll get infections.

[1057] Your immune system will collapse.

[1058] You won't be able to absorb food in your digestive tract.

[1059] We can't be humans if we only have our human cells.

[1060] Current estimates are 50 % of our body is microbiome cells.

[1061] 50 % is the human cells you got from your parents.

[1062] Wow, wow, wow.

[1063] So foreign, foreign items.

[1064] Non -you, but without which you can't be you.

[1065] Yeah.

[1066] They are you.

[1067] They are part of you.

[1068] And we each have signature microbiomes that are our own microbiome.

[1069] The ultimate fingerprint.

[1070] Except that.

[1071] If you have people you live with and pets like cats and dogs, for example, within a short time, your microbiomes merge into a single microbiome.

[1072] Like a household microbiome.

[1073] Like a household microbiome.

[1074] Oh, here we go.

[1075] And everything you touch, you're leaving microbiome behind, and you pick it up from other people.

[1076] So you kiss someone, microbiome exchange.

[1077] You touch a doorknob and someone else touches that doorknob, Microbiome exchange, keyboards, pencils, forks, knives, couches.

[1078] And so where are your boundaries at the cellular level?

[1079] Your boundaries are at least as wide as the spaces you inhabit.

[1080] Which is the whole world.

[1081] Yes, but we're getting there.

[1082] But ultimately out there your microbiome sort of like, you know, diffuses out into, you know, to some extent.

[1083] But it includes your workspace.

[1084] Any place you hang out, the gym.

[1085] And if you're touching the crosswalk, you're touching the crosswalk thing, you watch someone else touches it next.

[1086] And we know how important this is because when hyper -cleannliness, like my mother liked to practice, when we don't let our kids play out in the dirt so that they can pick up microbiomes from the world and other kids, then they wind up with immune system dysfunctions and have things like eczema and asthma, etc. So the exchange of microbiomes is part of what makes us human too.

[1087] The fact that our boundaries include all these things that are non -self or what makes us alive and healthy.

[1088] So at the cellular level, the complex systems of our cells involves all sorts of species and necessarily involves exchange across those boundaries.

[1089] So at the lower level of scale, our boundaries got out further.

[1090] That's a spatial version, but how about in time?

[1091] If you take your body and all your cells, your human cells, and go back to yesterday, all your current cells derived from cells yesterday.

[1092] If you go back 10 years, they derive from those cells.

[1093] If you go back to your teenage years from those, all in continuity, no separation, go back to your childhood years, your toddler years, your infant years, and then you reenter your mother's womb, and you go back to being an embryo, and you go back to that sperm and that egg.

[1094] And that egg in your mom was present in her body at the time she was born.

[1095] There's no separation between you, your mom, your grandmother.

[1096] Keep going back, go back 300 ,000 years to when we weren't even Homo sapiens, we're Homo erectus.

[1097] Back to Homo habilis.

[1098] Yeah, thank you.

[1099] I'll stroll up in the scene, aphorinsis.

[1100] That's farther than I can go.

[1101] But then all the way back to early animals, down to as best as we can tell, there was a single -celled progenitor.

[1102] I know we even like to compartmentalize evolution.

[1103] We like to think of it as having all this punctuation.

[1104] Right.

[1105] There's no separation.

[1106] There are no boundaries.

[1107] So at the cellular level in time, we're part of the whole biomass of the planet.

[1108] Everything alive, right.

[1109] Which mirrors perfectly how we think about looking at the beginning of the universe.

[1110] Which is where we're headed.

[1111] Buckle up, you're.

[1112] So at the molecular level, where are our boundaries?

[1113] Similarly, the biomass, most simply, I breathe out carbon dioxide.

[1114] Are there plants in this room?

[1115] Unfortunately, no. Can you open a window?

[1116] So if you open a window, the carbon dioxide from us goes out.

[1117] and feeds the plants, they're oxygen and come and feed us.

[1118] So at the molecular level, we are in a unity with the entire biomass of the planet.

[1119] How about the atomic level?

[1120] Well, there's no atom in our body that we didn't breathe, eat, or drink from the planet.

[1121] So we can think of ourselves as these beings that are separate walking around on top of this rock we call planet Earth, or we are the Earth that has, at the atomic level, self -organize its atoms over three and a half billion years to people who have the misconception that they're separate.

[1122] But in fact, our boundary is the entire planet.

[1123] So what about when we get down to subatomic?

[1124] Then we're in the quantum realm.

[1125] And at the quantum realm, we know that particles aren't actually particles.

[1126] They're fields.

[1127] And those fields extend to the boundaries of the entire universe and overlap with each other.

[1128] There's nothing outside of anything else.

[1129] The boundary is the universe and everything of the universe is within it.

[1130] So just as the earth isn't a rock we're walking around on, The universe isn't an empty box in which we live.

[1131] We are the universe that has self -organized itself to think of itself as separate individuals.

[1132] And also, in our case, to have the capacity to do science and understand what we're made of and see ourselves for what we are.

[1133] And what science tells us we are isn't the materialist view that says, oh, we're independent individuals and politically, oh, we should all have certain freedoms, et cetera.

[1134] All of that's true at this level of scale, but it's also true that we are simply expressions of the universe in every moment.

[1135] And we are seamless and not separate from each other.

[1136] And the key thing for me is that these are not two opposed ideas.

[1137] Religion and science are not two opposed ideas.

[1138] They're what we call complementarities.

[1139] So the example I often use is you have that classic picture of two faces in profile looking at each other, and the space between them looks like a vase.

[1140] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1141] Is it two faces, or is it a vase?

[1142] Well, if you say it's two faces, you're missing half the story.

[1143] You're missing the vase.

[1144] If you say it's a vase, you're missing the two faces.

[1145] But you can't express them at the same time.

[1146] At the quantum level, this word complementarity, Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum physics, coined the term, or applied the term, complementarity, is light waves or particles.

[1147] Well, it depends on how you look at it.

[1148] If you do the experiment in one way, light behaves like a wave.

[1149] If you do the experiment another way, with a conscious observer, paying attention to what's happening, they behave like particles.

[1150] So existence depends on whether there's conscious observation or not.

[1151] And both of these things are true, but you can't see them at the same time.

[1152] But leaving any one of them out means you don't have the full picture.

[1153] It's really, really, I think, personally an abstract thought that the observer changes the object.

[1154] That's really complex.

[1155] Yeah.

[1156] I think it's the key to everything going forward.

[1157] Because I want to get to, people want to think of consciousness or our mind, the mind, as a product of this machine, the brain, and this mechanical thing, creates consciousness.

[1158] It's good you mention the machine aspect, because that's part of the issue for our society and our culture.

[1159] Well, AI.

[1160] Oh, well, reading all this, it's like, where does AI fit into this thing that doesn't have divergence stuff?

[1161] Let's make that a coda.

[1162] before we even get there.

[1163] We talk about Newtonian mechanics, the universe as a machine.

[1164] That means if you knew what everything was doing in a given moment, you could predict the next moment or the next moment or the next moment.

[1165] The world is a machine.

[1166] Our bodies are machines.

[1167] This is the Sam Harris point of view.

[1168] Yeah.

[1169] We talk about bioengineering.

[1170] So the dominant metaphor for what humans are, for what the universe is for a few hundred years, has been the universe as a machine.

[1171] And the fact that we can't predict every moment that follows from us is because of our limited knowledge.

[1172] But what complexity tells us is, no, in every moment, because of the randomness, there's an array of possibilities with varying degrees of possibility, and it's referred to by a friend and mentor of mine, Stu Kaufman, as the adjacent possibles.

[1173] The adjacent possibles for this current moment include the next moment, as well as a whole bunch of others, many of which will be adaptive and allow the organism or living thing or complex system to continue, some of which won't.

[1174] There'll be a mass extinction event.

[1175] But the key thing here is that in the next moment, one of those possibilities manifest, and then there's a new array of adjacent possibles.

[1176] So the universe isn't a machine that's predictable.

[1177] It's an endlessly unfolding range of possibilities.

[1178] That they themselves give rise to different unforeseen possibilities.

[1179] Right, because of the limited randomness in the system.

[1180] Now, just to touch on the mass extinction idea, because I think it's important, Let's go back to complexity existing at the boundary between chaos and order.

[1181] That boundary isn't a linear line mathematically.

[1182] It's a fractal.

[1183] And fractals mathematically don't stop at the twigs of the tree, and you have like eight or nine branchings and then you stop.

[1184] That's infinite.

[1185] So where you plop down a complex system mathematically, you might think would be a single point in that field, and then you've labeled this complex system with this set of numbers or equations.

[1186] But because of the randomness, actually, it moves around in that fractal zone.

[1187] And given enough time, it will stumble out of that zone just by happenstance, either into chaos or rigid order.

[1188] Either way, you get a mass extinction event.

[1189] Part of the system or the whole system dies.

[1190] It no longer can adapt and respond because you have too little randomness on the one hand or too much randomness on the other.

[1191] So what allows us to be creative and adaptive, what allows us to be alive, is this low -level randomness.

[1192] And the implication of that low -level randomness is, given enough time, you will cease to exist.

[1193] A part of the system will collapse or the entire system will collapse.

[1194] And that's unavoidable.

[1195] If you want to be alive, you're going to die.

[1196] There's no such thing as eternal life or a fountain of youth, et cetera.

[1197] Another contemporary thing, the idea of increasing longevity so that it's open -ended, well, you can stretch it out.

[1198] But if you're alive, you're a complex system, you're going to have a mass extinction.

[1199] Yeah, we're attempting to control all the divergent properties.

[1200] In essence.

[1201] Negative feedback loops, like remove them.

[1202] Right.

[1203] But we know that ends in implosion, ultimately.

[1204] You might get some success to a point.

[1205] I'm hoping so.

[1206] So, that was a mouthful.

[1207] That was a lot.

[1208] And everyone's brain just went on a whole voyage.

[1209] And we haven't gotten to consciousness yet.

[1210] Well, we're there, though.

[1211] You're presenting that our observation of the universe is actually maybe first in order.

[1212] Yeah.

[1213] And you asked about a concrete example.

[1214] And, you know, I give you the light wave particle duality thing.

[1215] And it actually happens in front of you.

[1216] It's not a hypothetical.

[1217] You can see, do the experiment this way, you get waves.

[1218] Do it this way.

[1219] You get particles.

[1220] You can actually see it.

[1221] And physicists believe both are true.

[1222] We know both are true because both are true, depending on how you perform the experiment.

[1223] But the complexity adds layers to this.

[1224] So I'm a physician and you've got some medical issue.

[1225] How am I going to see your body in order to help therapeutically intervene?

[1226] So if you break a bone, then I'm fine working at this level of scale.

[1227] If I try to work at the atomic level, what is it going to get you?

[1228] Right.

[1229] We need to pin your bone and let your body do what it's going to do.

[1230] So that's a mechanical thing.

[1231] That's at this level of scale.

[1232] But you're chronically depressed and you need an antidepressant or you'll kill yourself.

[1233] Well, then we're talking about the molecular level.

[1234] So I intervene at the molecular level.

[1235] And when I'm intervening at the molecular level, I'm not looking at you as this everyday person.

[1236] I'm thinking we're working at that molecular level.

[1237] So we're constantly interacting with the world from different levels of our body.

[1238] And usually we're not aware of all the things.

[1239] things that are going on because we're focused at one level.

[1240] So we're walking down the street and listening to our music.

[1241] You're thinking about the music and who's singing it.

[1242] And yet your body is making these micro adjustments to avoid bumping into people at a level of scale that you're not even paying attention to.

[1243] But it's real.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] So you turn your attention to that.

[1246] First off, see how easy it is to avoid bumping into people if you're actually trying to monitor it.

[1247] And then you stop hearing the music because your attention has been brought to something else.

[1248] And then you trip.

[1249] You stop listening to the music.

[1250] You recover.

[1251] The music comes back.

[1252] We're always moving across these level of scale.

[1253] What I get to do professionally is I move consciously for hours a day to the cellular level.

[1254] I've come to see it as a real privilege.

[1255] But another place you experience it, anyone who's been in an airplane, particularly when it's new to you and you're paying attention, when you're coming down to land at an airport, you're above the world, you're above the world, and then you get to a level somewhere around the rooftops and suddenly you're in the world.

[1256] And you feel this shift happen.

[1257] Pilots get to do this all the time.

[1258] They're above the world at that level of scale and they look down and they see cars moving along roads like ants do or like watching blood cells go through capillaries and then suddenly they're in it and it's a different experience.

[1259] These are all complementarities and they're all real and where we put our attention determines how we experience the world and how we interact with the world and therefore what the world becomes in the next moment.

[1260] It's all about where we put our attention.

[1261] So it's not just quantum physics.

[1262] My collaborator, Manas Kaffatos and I, I think that's a contribution we've made is drawing attention to the fact that complexity points to complementarities at all levels of scale.

[1263] The universe is filled with complementarities and we're always choosing perspectives with which to experience, view, and interact.

[1264] I think I focus most on how much, how we see the world is dictated simply by being a social priming.

[1265] We can't comprehend something not having a beginning and an end because everything we've ever witnessed has a beginning and end.

[1266] It's beyond our comprehension to really think of something that's always existed or will always exist, just because where we grew up and how carbon life forms exist, right?

[1267] No. No. Okay, great.

[1268] Because that's our communal view.

[1269] That's how we've been culturally conditioned.

[1270] But there are practices one can employ, and anyone can employ them, although everyone can play a piano.

[1271] Some people will play chopsticks.

[1272] Some people will be Mozart.

[1273] So there are different levels of ability.

[1274] But everyone has the possibility, for example, this isn't the only path, but this is what I explore in the book, is if you meditate and turn your mind inwards to explore your own mind, people can experience realms in which time ceases to be a thing.

[1275] So the fact that we don't spend any time doing that is kind of a fun.

[1276] function of our cultural perspective.

[1277] That's not something we in our culture bother doing.

[1278] And in fact, many in our culture say, well, that's just woo -woo.

[1279] I think we're making the same argument.

[1280] What I'm saying is we have this huge predisposition to do a lot of things because of what kind of animal we are.

[1281] It's because of the kind of animal we are in this particular culture.

[1282] So if you go look at prior to, let's say, extractive agriculture, prior to when we're settling in permanent communities and moving the world around to suit us and we're hunter -gather, People used to think that the bee hunter gatherers meant you had to spend all your time looking for food.

[1283] Yes, we know it's a three and a half hour a day or not.

[1284] But I'm going back much further than that.

[1285] I'm saying a social primate will always be conscious of hierarchy.

[1286] We have to assemble ourselves in a hierarchical order because we're a multi -member group.

[1287] That's an imperative.

[1288] If you're a leopard who lives on its own, it has no sense of gauging social status in moving up and down in social status.

[1289] But I would disagree.

[1290] I think that if you have the time to just be present in the world, you're not distracted.

[1291] What are your opportunities if you've got 20 and a half hours free?

[1292] To some extent, you're going to be interacting and doing social games.

[1293] You're going to be having sex, telling stories, sleeping, etc. Some of that time, you're just going to be present in the world.

[1294] And just as you know full well that you're at, let's say, a concert.

[1295] And there are moments where suddenly you're not a person in the crowd.

[1296] The crowd is something you're part of that so transcends what you are.

[1297] And you have that moment of transcendence.

[1298] We have to go to great lengths in our society to experience that.

[1299] I think that was routinely available once upon a time.

[1300] So it's primates who have evolved to the point we've made ourselves so separate from the planet and so separate from each other and so busy with distractions that we think that that's some special kind of situation.

[1301] That's our birthright.

[1302] Yeah, I totally agree with that.

[1303] When we're born, we don't think ourselves as, oh, I was just born.

[1304] It's my birthday.

[1305] You come into the world and you cry and then there's food and that boob seems to be part of you.

[1306] You gradually then discover, oh, I have toes.

[1307] And then you start to discover you're separate.

[1308] I'm not convinced that all of us don't have some remnant of that experience of being seamlessly connected to everything and that we're When people talk about, I know that there's something missing, that's what we're missing.

[1309] We all had that experience when we came into the world.

[1310] And then neurodevelopment, training, culture took us away from it.

[1311] And then the structures of our culture, like learning to control the environment rather than simply being part of the environment when we learned how to do agriculture.

[1312] And then you build communities and cities and you have fire so you don't even see the night sky anymore.

[1313] And then you arrive to where we are now.

[1314] That's what people in our culture label woo -woo.

[1315] You're talking about oneness.

[1316] I'm feeling one with the world.

[1317] That's a hallmark greeting card.

[1318] And a lot of people think it's nonsense.

[1319] I know people think it's nonsense because you should see the comments about my book.

[1320] But when I give a talk on this stuff, the way the state changes in the room of an audience, even when I've got people in the audience who are kind of hostile, because it sneaks up on you.

[1321] And that's part of why I realized, oh, maybe this should be a book.

[1322] You go step by step.

[1323] And each step is really scientific.

[1324] Each step is mathematical.

[1325] And yet suddenly you wind up in this place where where are your boundaries?

[1326] Right.

[1327] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1328] And what are you choosing to experience in the world?

[1329] So I agree with you.

[1330] I mean, the primate stuff conditions us, of course.

[1331] Where I think I diverge from you or what I at least interpret from what I think you believe in is, I think there's this inclination to put something hierarchical, the ultimate alpha.

[1332] Humans will fail us.

[1333] So we create this theoretical, ultra -high status, the true alpha of everything.

[1334] I think this is the appeal of God.

[1335] It feels so natural to us to think that way.

[1336] But I'd only argue that had we somehow evolved as a solitary primate, I don't think that's where our mind would go.

[1337] Oh, that's entirely possible, that our instincts conditioned our metaphors.

[1338] So just like you have to think about how the observers running the experiment, I think we always are helped by remembering how were we designed to, function with each other.

[1339] And that's a big, perhaps hurdle one has to step over to start to acknowledge the reality of this experience.

[1340] Sure.

[1341] All the ways in which being human within a community of humans, and we know we don't exist really well when we're on our own.

[1342] From that standpoint, you're absolutely right.

[1343] But I only give that so much weight.

[1344] But do you believe in a grand intelligence of some sort?

[1345] So let's take the consciousness dive.

[1346] Yeah, yeah.

[1347] And this is where we get the answer to the question of me 14 thinking, oh, would God's eye view explain the Holocaust, et cetera, et cetera, and the problem of suffering and how do we exist in the world?

[1348] So where consciousness is concerned, there are kind of three basic possibilities philosophically.

[1349] One is, and this is the most common one in our society, the brain is a machine for making mind.

[1350] The second, which until recently had sort of been shunted aside a little bit, is that the brain doesn't make mind.

[1351] but that smaller things have mind, and when you assemble them, they become a more complicated mind.

[1352] From a complexity standpoint, what they would say is that the cells and molecules and electrical signaling of the brain, et cetera, like the ants interacting with each other, like us interacting on the street, give rise from the local interactions to emergent property of consciousness on the larger scale.

[1353] And when I first read about complexity theory, I went right there.

[1354] It was like, oh, this is what consciousness is and how it comes from the brain.

[1355] There's a problem for this, and that's called the hard problem of consciousness.

[1356] This was formalized by a philosopher named David Chalmers, and he said, no one's come up with an answer to this.

[1357] We can explain how you see the color red of a rose.

[1358] It's a classic example of roses, and I use it in the book.

[1359] The color red, light bounces off of it, some light is absorbed, red is reflected, it hits your retina, which perceives red, sends a chemical signal to your optic nerve, feeds back into your visual cortex, and you see red.

[1360] So we know the pathway.

[1361] That doesn't explain how you experience redness.

[1362] So close your eyes, and I tell you to imagine a red rose, and you experience the color red, but there's no red light.

[1363] There's no signaling from your retina.

[1364] Where is the redness happening?

[1365] It's happening in your conscious awareness, but where is that?

[1366] in your brain.

[1367] You can't find it in your brain.

[1368] Could that be memory?

[1369] But where does memory locate?

[1370] And you could say, well, scientists are showing how the brain does this all the time.

[1371] But if you'll notice all the cognitive neuroscientists who are doing elaborate imaging of the brain, whether it's through sophisticated EEGs or functional MRIs, they never say this is consciousness.

[1372] They never say this is where redness is.

[1373] We can only see where electrical activities are occurring.

[1374] And so what they say is these are neural correlates of consciousness.

[1375] When you experience red, we see the brain doing this.

[1376] Causation versus correlation.

[1377] Right.

[1378] But in our culture, everyone, because of the Vienna circle and this general view our society was moving towards, we want to say the brain activity causes the experience of red, but no one shows how that leap happens.

[1379] And I think they can't.

[1380] And we're talking tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of papers, and no one can free themselves from having to say this is simply a correlate.

[1381] It's a cause.

[1382] And the failure of this has led people to think, well, maybe the crazy idea of panpsychism is actually what explains consciousness.

[1383] So panpsychism says that consciousness is out in the universe.

[1384] Many things are conscious.

[1385] And so some people would say cells are conscious.

[1386] They just have tiny little consciousnesses, less complex than ours.

[1387] But when they get together, they create a more complex consciousness.

[1388] So there's emergence again.

[1389] Panpsychism also could use a complexity theory analysis and say, well, little consciousnesses become bigger ones.

[1390] But that doesn't answer the hard problem of consciousness.

[1391] It just shifts it down in scale.

[1392] So some people say, well, maybe there are quantum particles that are bearers of consciousness.

[1393] But then you have the problem of assembly.

[1394] How do small consciousness become bigger ones?

[1395] still doesn't solve the hard problem.

[1396] Some people say space time itself is where consciousness is arising.

[1397] Doesn't solve the hard problem.

[1398] The third possibility is actually the oldest in Western thought, and the third possibility is that consciousness is what comes first.

[1399] And this comes down to us in Western philosophy through Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel.

[1400] It's not like this is foreign to Western philosophy, even though today we think, well, Western says science in math.

[1401] So this is a possibility.

[1402] Quantum physics was the first bit of science that said, we have to take it seriously.

[1403] Because when you get down to, does light behave like a wave or a particle in an experiment, depends on whether there's a conscious observer.

[1404] If there's an observer of the experiment, it behaves like particles.

[1405] If not, it behaves like waves.

[1406] The way the founding fathers of quantum physics, with the exception of Einstein, he thought this was a terrible idea and never became comfortable with it.

[1407] But Planck said you can't get behind consciousness, meaning that it's consciousness that determines the nature of reality in a given moment.

[1408] Therefore, consciousness is what comes first and everything else follows.

[1409] Now I'm coming in with complexity theory and saying, oh, your conscious attention determines the nature of existence and what happens in the next moment, depending on where you place your conscious awareness.

[1410] So we're taking it up in scale.

[1411] To put it in a colloquial term, this is weirdly like your story.

[1412] This very popular notion of, you know, we tell ourselves a story, we have a narrative, and we exclude all contrary information that denies the narrative, and we only see confirmation of the narrative.

[1413] It's very similar to consciousness.

[1414] It's like where you're placing your attention is not random.

[1415] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1416] When I told you to close your eyes and picture the rose, and you weren't seeing the rain.

[1417] You were experiencing redness.

[1418] Where was that happening?

[1419] What are the dimensions of the field of your awareness?

[1420] He ain't got none.

[1421] There's no way to describe that.

[1422] So quantum physics and now complexity points at the idea that maybe conscious awareness is what's fundamental.

[1423] And Minas and I, when we write about it in academic papers, we call it fundamental awareness.

[1424] What about math?

[1425] Because math should be able to describe the entire universe.

[1426] and we think that if we do math correctly, in full, it will consistently and completely explain everything.

[1427] And so math can save us where the physics doesn't.

[1428] I was reading a Kafka short story, and it's all the same AI fear.

[1429] There'll be no free will once we get math right.

[1430] And no free will, why?

[1431] Because the world is a machine.

[1432] And if we get all the math right, we will know every moment that happens following us.

[1433] Yeah.

[1434] This is kind of my favorite part of the book, Kurt Gertl.

[1435] So he's this young guy so smart that in his very early 20s, I think he was 22, he's invited to join the Vienna Circle, which are all these older philosophers, and he just sits there quietly listening to them.

[1436] Now, it turns out that he believed that Plato was right, that when it came to mathematics, we didn't invent math to count bushels of wheat or count stars in the sky.

[1437] That's what the Vienna Circle would say.

[1438] That's what materialists would say.

[1439] That's what people who say science and math or everything would say.

[1440] we invented this as a tool.

[1441] Gödel and mathematical platonists say that, no, math is something we discover that exists in a realm beyond us.

[1442] So he listened to the Vienna Circle going back and forth and very quietly disagreed with them and really kept his counsel until he was ready to blow them out of the water.

[1443] What the Vienna Circle believed, and this was a belief of the larger community, most mathematicians at the time, this is what Kafka is referring to there, is that mathematics, if you develop the system completely and consistently it will explain the universe as a machine, which the math will predict moment by moment.

[1444] What Goetal showed, people talk about his proof of this as being like the building of a Gothic cathedral or the fugues of Bach.

[1445] It's really hard, I think I do a decent job paraphrasing it in the book, but basically what he showed definitively that no one has ever been able to escape since then is that if you have a system of mathematics that is complete, meaning it describes everything, It will necessarily contradict itself, and therefore it will not explain anything because two mutually exclusive things are going to be possible at the same time, and the system will fail.

[1446] You can't build proofs on things that contradict each other.

[1447] More interestingly, the flip side is if you have a system that is consistent with itself, it will necessarily be incomplete.

[1448] And what that means is there will be statements outside of the system that are true that you can't prove from within the system.

[1449] but you can intuit them to be true.

[1450] And so what Goetel did was open the idea in mathematics that intuitions could give you truth of existence, the true nature of reality, that you cannot prove mathematically.

[1451] You'll never prove it mathematically, but we can know them to be true.

[1452] And so just like with quantum physics, conscious intuitions, intuitions arising in your awareness, suddenly become a route to understanding reality.

[1453] Many in your audience, and you guys have probably heard of Alan Turing, who's the father of computer science, the Enigma Project in England.

[1454] Benedict Cumberbatch.

[1455] Yeah, Benedict Cumberbatch.

[1456] So Alan Turing describes something called the Turing machine, which is the theoretical basis for all computer science that we do.

[1457] It was another way of proving Goetles in completeness theorems.

[1458] So when we talk about the importance of Turing and all of our computer systems, it was reasserting what Goethe said.

[1459] mathematics can't completely prove everything and so if you're left with intuitions well what kind of intuitions the kind of intuitions you might have for example if your mind looks at your mind from within itself when we talk about empirical science we mean we have a scientist who's the subject studying an experiment which is the object and there's a separation so we know what great lengths we have to do if we're doing an experiment in health care for example because we know the doctor, if he has too much knowledge of the patient or what the test is, it's going to influence the patient.

[1460] You have to work really hard to separate them.

[1461] What quantum physics showed is there's no separation of subject and object at the quantum level.

[1462] What complexity is showing is that there's no separation.

[1463] We draw boundaries around each other.

[1464] I'm separate from you.

[1465] You're my subject.

[1466] A map of the US.

[1467] Right.

[1468] We've penciled in a lot of states.

[1469] Right.

[1470] But the fact is that those only are real at a certain level.

[1471] level of scale.

[1472] And at a different level of scale, it's complete interpenetration.

[1473] There's no separation.

[1474] So what all of this leads to is that when the mind turns in to study itself, it's studying itself.

[1475] There's no separation of subject and object.

[1476] It isn't a scientific experiment.

[1477] It can't be.

[1478] It can't be formalized by mathematics either, but it can be experienced as intuitions.

[1479] This is what Goetal showed.

[1480] And so what about this consciousness that the world arises from its fundamental nature is to not separate subject and object it's pure awareness it's just awareness of being aware and then the magic happens and this is where the different spiritual traditions come in to fill this in very sophisticated intuitions from people who have been meditating deeply you know not just casually i felt like that was a dig on me because i no no it's a dig for 20 minutes No, it's a dig on all of us.

[1481] Everyone, yeah.

[1482] No, no, no, no, no, believe me. So where this comes together is the consciousness, the platonic ideal in Plato's terms, is this fundamental awareness that is pure awareness that is aware simply of the state of being aware.

[1483] This is the mind in which the experience of redness arises.

[1484] We all have access to this.

[1485] What are the limits of your awareness in which you experience that redness?

[1486] It's limitless.

[1487] It's non -dual, meaning there's no subject and object within it.

[1488] It's just pure awareness.

[1489] But for whatever reason, as it starts to become aware of its being aware of itself, it starts to shimmy apart into a subject and object.

[1490] These ideas come from Vedanta.

[1491] They come from Jewish mysticism, Buddhism, Kashmary Shakespeare.

[1492] which we talk about in the book probably goes into the most detail.

[1493] And as it shimmies a part into a subject and object and they separate, well, how do you have separation?

[1494] You have to have separation in dimensions.

[1495] You have to have space.

[1496] You has to have time.

[1497] Maybe others.

[1498] And so as fundamental awareness becomes aware of itself and separates into subject object, you get space time.

[1499] And then you get an energy -rich field, which produces the quantum foam, and you get subatomic particles and atoms and molecules, and the entire universe springs into existence, out of awareness.

[1500] So at this level of scale, we see ourselves as separate.

[1501] But we have the portal in our own minds.

[1502] It's like you're going into a cave and you see a bunch of pools of water, and if you dive in, you discover that there's this huge watery cavern underneath that goes off in all directions.

[1503] Another metaphor that's good is you have the ocean, and then you have the waves on top of the ocean.

[1504] The waves think that they're separate.

[1505] Try and watch a wave.

[1506] It's really the ocean.

[1507] It's just movement within the ocean.

[1508] We're nothing but phenomena of awareness being aware of itself, trying to understand itself.

[1509] And that's where existence comes from.

[1510] So when people talk about God, that's what I'm talking about.

[1511] It's that fundamental awareness that is all of us.

[1512] And it's not directive.

[1513] Duality is this is good and this is bad.

[1514] Binaries.

[1515] This is pretty.

[1516] This is ugly.

[1517] This is all the same.

[1518] stuff our minds do on a moment -to -moment basis, we're judging.

[1519] This is dangerous, this is safe.

[1520] This is good food.

[1521] This is poison.

[1522] But at that level, there's just what is unfolding in every single moment.

[1523] And that's the level of scale where it doesn't answer my question of what's suffering in the world.

[1524] But it does point to how in the face of the inevitability of mass extinction events, because that's what happens.

[1525] These concepts are useless.

[1526] You guys.

[1527] listening to me, this is not going to help you in the slightest.

[1528] Right.

[1529] The meteor hits.

[1530] Right.

[1531] But if you spend time in some sort of practice that opens you up to this flexibility of views across scales, whether it's through contemplative practice like meditating, or whether it's in service to other people or devotional practice, those sorts of things open one up to the possibility that there are other perspectives, that you can have an experience of those other perspectives.

[1532] And in the midst of a mass extinction event, maybe you'll have a little bit of a different view to allow you to modulate the mass extinction.

[1533] Or if it's unavoidable, maybe you'll be a little bit more resilient in the face of it.

[1534] I grew up in a community of Holocaust survivors and there were people who were destroyed by it, but there were people who could experience great joy and great resilience in their lives.

[1535] What was the difference?

[1536] That flexibility of view.

[1537] And another thing I touch on this in the book, I came of age as a gay man in New York City during the AIDS crisis.

[1538] Most of the people I know who died died in fear or pain or anger, but I knew people who died in bliss states.

[1539] And those of us who survived it, some were wrecked by the experience, and some of us developed a kind of resilience that allowed us to face what was coming.

[1540] Oh, I found the most comfort during COVID in my AA meetings where I had four or five older gay dudes who had gone through this, where at some point you're going to evaluate, do I live as an island?

[1541] or do I love and touch and be whatever the consequences?

[1542] They'd already have the biggest trial by fire of that.

[1543] So their perspective going into COVID was so unique and interesting for me. Yeah, my husband and I was sort of like, oh, again.

[1544] And then two years later, monkey pox?

[1545] Are you fucking kidding me?

[1546] None of the ideas we've talked about today are helpful.

[1547] Except insofar as they can direct us to the best.

[1548] current state of our society's understanding of the true nature of reality in terms of science and mathematics.

[1549] On their own terms, tell us that it's not just science and mathematics, that consciousness comes first and that there are ways to touch into that consciousness moment to moment for every single person so that you can respond to the environment to what the array of adjacent possible is by being attentive to this moment and be resilient with whatever comes.

[1550] And being smart about what you give your attention to.

[1551] Right.

[1552] I have one last question.

[1553] If it's a mean one.

[1554] Go for it.

[1555] Do you think it's better to use on our one trip on planet Earth the time to contemplate what it is or to accept it and enjoy it and experience it without obsession of figuring it out?

[1556] You've come all this way to come to this point.

[1557] My question is, if someone dropped someone from another point, planet inside Disneyland they had one day there would you recommend they try to figure out how the rides work or just ride the fucking rides so number one given that we are seamlessly entwined with this fundamental awareness what does one life mean you're this one little hole in the bottom of the cavern or you're this one little wave so I disagree with the assumption that you have one life okay it's not one trip on planet earth there is one single trip of everything in the universe.

[1558] It is what the universe experiences.

[1559] It's that trip.

[1560] We're all on that trip.

[1561] But for each of us, I'm the nerdy kid.

[1562] For me, this was the root to understanding things.

[1563] But not separate.

[1564] I would not have come to these things without having a 35 -year meditation practice, mostly Buddhist.

[1565] But I would have loved my mother to start meditating.

[1566] And then it took me a while to realize that when I watched her light her candles on Friday night, her devotional practice was everything she needed to attain this kind of resilience and bliss.

[1567] We're each a different being.

[1568] It's just as a question I ask myself all the time.

[1569] I'm endlessly introspective.

[1570] I'm endlessly fascinating trying to figure out how all this works.

[1571] And another little voice in my head says, just be here.

[1572] Fucking quit it.

[1573] But that's your practice, right?

[1574] I mean, you and I are similar in that way.

[1575] What has all this meditation and intellectual study?

[1576] Yeah, et cetera, et cetera, led me to.

[1577] Here's my hunch.

[1578] And it's why I asked where everyone comes from before I find out what they study.

[1579] My hunch is this is the route that allowed you to feel safe or increase safety.

[1580] And we start with a perhaps hereditarily past original trauma.

[1581] And really, we're all cobbling together something to help us feel safe.

[1582] I wouldn't argue with that.

[1583] The bulk of my life's work has been dealing with fear.

[1584] It's a scary fucking rock hurtling through space.

[1585] Right, right.

[1586] But I can honestly say in the last few years that I'm no longer afraid of the dark.

[1587] How that happened is a story, but it's part of this.

[1588] I'm no longer afraid of bumpy plane rides.

[1589] We talked before we started recording.

[1590] I had a couple of strokes a couple of months ago.

[1591] I'm not particularly afraid of that either.

[1592] A friend of mine who's dealing with recurrent triple negative breast cancer, and thank God so far, Pupupa is doing.

[1593] well in a clinical trial.

[1594] But her oncologist said to her, most of my patients are always asking, why me, why me?

[1595] And my friend, who's a fellow Zen student, we've been in this from the beginning together, her response was, well, that's the wrong question.

[1596] The question is why not me?

[1597] There are these roses along the bike path at the bottom of the Hudson River where it turns to go to the Staten Island terminal.

[1598] And they're the most fragrant roses I've met in Manhattan.

[1599] And I don't go by without stopping.

[1600] even if I'm in a hurry to get somewhere and usually when I pedal in the city I'm New Yorker, I'm going very fast but I stop to smell the fucking roses and no one ever stops and notices there's this dude losing himself in a rose bush what's going on here.

[1601] No one ever does it and I think that's where I'm getting to what's important is this one moment and I've got plenty of work to do God knows here I am doing book promotions I still want things but how am I in the present?

[1602] moment and how do I deal with the array of possibles around me and what do I sweat about it?

[1603] I fear a lot less now.

[1604] Right.

[1605] That's a great outcome because you can white knuckle it on this ride.

[1606] Well, that was incredible.

[1607] Yeah, so fascinating.

[1608] What a journey from ants to the big question.

[1609] Oh, man. Everyone read notes on complexity, a scientific theory of connection, consciousness, and being.

[1610] I wish you so much luck with this book.

[1611] It's so incredible.

[1612] It's so comprehensive.

[1613] And I enjoyed so much learning about it.

[1614] I thank you.

[1615] Thank you for having.

[1616] And I hope you'll come back.

[1617] Oh, sure.

[1618] We've a lot more to cover.

[1619] Next off is the fact I don't even care about facts.

[1620] I just want to get into your pants.

[1621] Hi.

[1622] Hi.

[1623] How are you?

[1624] Did you have a nice slumber?

[1625] Well, I woke up at eight, but I was still so sleepy.

[1626] I don't know why I'm so.

[1627] so tired.

[1628] I went to bed early.

[1629] What time?

[1630] Well, I got in bed at 9 .30.

[1631] Okay.

[1632] And then what?

[1633] Did you watch some stuff?

[1634] I was watching some videos.

[1635] Cooking?

[1636] Some cooking.

[1637] And then, you know, my favorite podcast, they do a video also.

[1638] Okay.

[1639] And you love that?

[1640] That's preferred.

[1641] Well, I like both.

[1642] Okay.

[1643] Will you listen to the same episode over again and watch it?

[1644] Yeah.

[1645] You will.

[1646] Wow.

[1647] That's incredible.

[1648] I'd imagine you've got to go audio first, then video second.

[1649] Exactly.

[1650] That's correct.

[1651] I think I saw that you posted a clip of their show.

[1652] I did because on one of the episodes, they were talking about their favorite Chinese restaurant.

[1653] Okay.

[1654] And Andy has VIP status there.

[1655] How come?

[1656] How do you achieve that?

[1657] I guess his personality.

[1658] Oh, is it just that he's a repeat customer?

[1659] Like, he's there all the time?

[1660] Yeah, they go a lot, and then, I don't know, I get, I don't know, he's nice to them.

[1661] They text him and stuff when there's things going on.

[1662] It's very.

[1663] They're reaching out to him.

[1664] Now, would you like that if a restaurant, you love, hit you throughout the day, like, hey, open seating, or we just pulled a pan of bread out of the oven.

[1665] Is that the kind of relationship you want with your favorite restaurants?

[1666] I'm just curious.

[1667] No, but I do want them to text me and say like, oh, we're close.

[1668] I mean, look, I'll be, I have that with all time.

[1669] Oh, you do?

[1670] Yeah.

[1671] They'll text you out of the blue and say, what, come in.

[1672] There's a nice piece of fish that just came off the grill or how does it work?

[1673] Depends.

[1674] She'll sometimes say, oh, the wine bar is opening today at three or we're opening.

[1675] You know, she just keeps me in the loop.

[1676] Okay.

[1677] And an event, a chicken, chicken leg.

[1678] She just gives me a heads up.

[1679] And I do feel special.

[1680] It is a really exciting relationship.

[1681] Exactly.

[1682] Anyway, so Andy has this with this Chinese restaurant.

[1683] And there are not, I don't know very many good Chinese restaurants near us.

[1684] I know.

[1685] In Michigan, I had like three favorites.

[1686] But I have zero in L .A. So I texted them when I have.

[1687] heard the episode where he was talking about his VIP status, I texted them and asked what the restaurant was.

[1688] Yeah.

[1689] And Elizabeth told me, and it was a group text, and Elizabeth said, tell them Andy sent you.

[1690] Oh, wow.

[1691] Okay.

[1692] And then Andy waited a few minutes, but then he texted, look, I really respect you both and admire you, but I can't potentially risk this relationship with the Chinese restaurant.

[1693] So you may not mention my name.

[1694] Oh, good for him.

[1695] He had boundaries over this.

[1696] He's got to protect it.

[1697] It's apparently the most important relationship in his life.

[1698] Oh, my gosh.

[1699] Wow.

[1700] So did you go?

[1701] Did you just cold call and go anyways?

[1702] I haven't gone yet, but I'm going to go this week.

[1703] 14 minutes away, I googled it.

[1704] Mm, without traffic.

[1705] I'll go at an off hour.

[1706] You should.

[1707] What's your dish at a Chinese restaurant?

[1708] That's another, I mean, truth but told, I haven't searched one out because all my favorite dishes are not great.

[1709] Like, I like almond chicken and sweet and sour shake.

[1710] Everything's breaded and deep fried and there's like, it's so sugary and delicious.

[1711] It's so good, though.

[1712] It's like candy.

[1713] Candy entrees.

[1714] But I guess you can't eat that anymore.

[1715] I can't do any of that.

[1716] I can't do the gluten, the sugar, that, you know, whatever.

[1717] Well, I can.

[1718] Yeah, you should.

[1719] I'm gonna.

[1720] I like orange chicken is my favorite.

[1721] I love orange chicken.

[1722] I know.

[1723] I know.

[1724] I mean, look, we're pretty basic, but that's okay.

[1725] And do they have orange chicken?

[1726] Did you find?

[1727] Yes.

[1728] They do.

[1729] Okay, great.

[1730] They also have my other favorite thing, which is hit or miss for Chinese restaurants.

[1731] They don't always have it.

[1732] Do you want to guess?

[1733] Wanton soup.

[1734] Close.

[1735] Egg drop soup.

[1736] Yes.

[1737] Wow.

[1738] I'm kind of shocked, I guess that.

[1739] There's so many entrees and advertisers.

[1740] Why, you like an egg drop soup?

[1741] Love.

[1742] Wow.

[1743] That was never for me, but I love wanton soup.

[1744] Again, it's got a dumpling inside, generally, with some gluten.

[1745] I can't fuck with a wonton soup now, but I do, boy, do I. The one that was in Wald Lake Michigan, what was it called?

[1746] Boon Kai.

[1747] Ooh, they had, basically their own version of a Hawaiian sweet roll, and it came out in a clump of four of them, and they were real sweet like the Hawaiian sweet rolls, but they were a little taller.

[1748] Then I get an egg roll, then the wanton soup, then almond chicken, bring the spicy mustard.

[1749] And that was the meal of a century.

[1750] Delicious.

[1751] I think you could get all that food, too, for about $8 .99.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] Yeah.

[1754] Mm, what a deal.

[1755] What a deal.

[1756] Boom Kai.

[1757] If you're in Wald Lake, hit it up if they're still in business.

[1758] Well, now you can eat egg drop soup, so you should try it.

[1759] Oh, yeah.

[1760] What is in egg drop suit?

[1761] It's egg.

[1762] Just an egg?

[1763] It's egg in like a egg.

[1764] yummy broth, but it like cooks in the broth.

[1765] So it's like eggy strands.

[1766] It's so good.

[1767] Like a strudel, egg strudel all over the water?

[1768] What's just?

[1769] I don't know.

[1770] Strudle, I think, no, I'm thinking of funnel cake.

[1771] When they just drip the batter in oil and then it fries in all these shapes.

[1772] It's kind of like that.

[1773] Okay, more of a funnel cake, sitch.

[1774] I feel like we're bastardizing the egg drop soup.

[1775] I don't want to talk about it anymore, but I do want you to try it.

[1776] I'll try it.

[1777] Give this place a shot and then tell me if it's worth the trip.

[1778] Okay.

[1779] 14 minutes.

[1780] For me, it'll be about 19 minutes.

[1781] I'll get it and then you can come to my house to get it.

[1782] So it'll actually be five minutes for you.

[1783] Okay, wow, you're going to get one to go.

[1784] Perfect.

[1785] Yeah.

[1786] Okay, I had a crazy thing happen.

[1787] Oh, perfect.

[1788] Can't wait to hear.

[1789] Okay, I had a crazy thing happen that's sort of a mystery.

[1790] and then I have another mystery.

[1791] Okay.

[1792] These are not, just to be clear, these aren't sim.

[1793] These are mystery now.

[1794] We have another category.

[1795] Correct.

[1796] Although one is a little sip.

[1797] Okay.

[1798] So, okay.

[1799] So yesterday I got my nails done.

[1800] See?

[1801] Yeah, they look incredible.

[1802] Great blue.

[1803] I've almost painted a couple of cars that color.

[1804] Oh, I know.

[1805] This blue is in.

[1806] I didn't make this up.

[1807] It's a light bubble gum blue.

[1808] Yeah.

[1809] People are labeling it blueberry milk.

[1810] Oh, sure.

[1811] Blueberry milk.

[1812] Yeah.

[1813] So I got my nails done yesterday in Studio City.

[1814] And when I was leaving, I was at a stop sign.

[1815] I pulled up to the stop sign.

[1816] Then in front, a Tesla, a white Tesla, Sim, ding, ding, ding.

[1817] I'm back.

[1818] It's been a while.

[1819] It has.

[1820] In fact, I think recently I said, actually, I haven't seen that many.

[1821] You did.

[1822] You just a couple fact checks ago.

[1823] That's why you can't say anything ever.

[1824] Or you jinx yourself.

[1825] But yeah, so a Tesla pulled up in front at the top side.

[1826] But I was first.

[1827] I was going to turn right.

[1828] And before I turned, I looked and there was a guy there.

[1829] He was running.

[1830] And he was mad at me. Another enemy of yours, runners.

[1831] No, I'm a runner.

[1832] Oh, I thought you didn't like when runners are running at you on the sidewalk and they don't move.

[1833] Wasn't that one of your grievances?

[1834] Nope.

[1835] You're mixing up grievances.

[1836] Okay.

[1837] Um, it's when I'm running and people, you don't like pedestrians.

[1838] I don't like when they won't, you know, step at, at least like, make a little room.

[1839] And especially when there's animals.

[1840] Oh, my God.

[1841] Okay.

[1842] Anywho.

[1843] So there was this runner guy and he like threw his hands up.

[1844] Like he was, he was mad at me because I was about to go when he thought I was going to hit him.

[1845] Mm -hmm.

[1846] I didn't really start.

[1847] I just like.

[1848] like started yeah but I didn't like the car had not moved he got mad he like threw his hands up and I was like I just like kind of put my hand up and I was like I see you he didn't hear me because the windows were up one thing about that is I know I was defensive because like right what'd you do right I thought I was like wait I didn't really do anything wrong and he's so mad and I wasn't gonna hit him I hadn't gone yet.

[1849] But I was going to hit him if I had gone.

[1850] Right.

[1851] But I hadn't gone.

[1852] Sure.

[1853] So he doesn't have a grievance, really.

[1854] He had a grievance, I guess, that he wanted to just keep running without ever stopping, would be my guess.

[1855] But as someone who runs, I'm like, no, you can't do that.

[1856] You have to look for cars and you have to be aware that cars might hit you.

[1857] Like, you have to take a little bit accountability.

[1858] I think a lot of runners and bicyclists in L .A. would love to be hit because that's their story.

[1859] They leave the house of the story that no one respects them.

[1860] And so to confirm that story, the ultimate victory would be to get run over.

[1861] Because some bikes, like it went from bikes were on the side of the road.

[1862] You know, they'd be, if there's two lanes, they'd be hugging the shoulder.

[1863] Then they started driving the dead center of the right lane, which is fine.

[1864] Whatever, I get it.

[1865] They've got to protect themselves.

[1866] And then I see them, I see them hovering in the middle lane.

[1867] I'm like, well, geez.

[1868] Now, you.

[1869] You know, I think you want to be in a fight with somebody.

[1870] I know.

[1871] I know.

[1872] But also, if I'm the runner, I am always just going to run behind that car.

[1873] Right.

[1874] If there's no one else, which there wasn't.

[1875] Like, why would you, if you want to keep running, it's on you to figure out a way.

[1876] Yes.

[1877] Or you got to do that silly running in place thing at the light.

[1878] Sure.

[1879] Sure.

[1880] Go ahead.

[1881] Anywho, so that guy was mad at.

[1882] me and I felt a little like, eh.

[1883] And then I turned and went to the light.

[1884] And the Tesla, like, pulled up beside me really slow.

[1885] Mm -hmm.

[1886] And I didn't look, but I knew.

[1887] I was like, he wants to, like, either yell at me or talk to me or something.

[1888] Uh -huh.

[1889] And so -huh.

[1890] Yeah.

[1891] And I was like, who are you?

[1892] Day out of my business.

[1893] But his light was green and he was just slowly, like.

[1894] I thought it was a stop sign.

[1895] Now it's a traffic light.

[1896] I had turned.

[1897] But at this point, I had already turned.

[1898] I got to the light.

[1899] Okay, okay, okay, okay.

[1900] And then he had turned also.

[1901] And then he got up next to you.

[1902] Uh -huh.

[1903] Yeah.

[1904] And then he kept going when his light was green.

[1905] But I was like, e, that guy was going to be mad me too.

[1906] He's probably trying to catch eyes with you and then maybe exchange some flirty glances and then maybe roll his window down and take you to dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

[1907] No. So he was mad at me. Oh, he was.

[1908] So then I'm on my way to Sportsman's Lodge, which is like two minutes away.

[1909] For those interested, Sportsman's Lodge is the hotel that the jury duty jurors stayed in.

[1910] Oh, really?

[1911] Yeah.

[1912] I didn't even know there was a hotel there.

[1913] I just know the outdoor eating area and the shops.

[1914] There's a hotel?

[1915] It's a lodge.

[1916] Oh, okay.

[1917] How does that differ from a hotel?

[1918] Do you park your car in front of the door?

[1919] Is it a motel, but they call it a lodge?

[1920] Uh, maybe.

[1921] I'm not so sure.

[1922] Or maybe they offer hunting packages.

[1923] It's a hotel, but with hunting packages?

[1924] I don't know, but that's where they stayed, which is cool.

[1925] Uh -huh.

[1926] But they have really good shops, and I go there often to work outside.

[1927] It's a nice environment to work.

[1928] So that's why I was going there.

[1929] I was going to work.

[1930] It was very sunny, beautiful day, breezy.

[1931] Mm -hmm.

[1932] And I go into sports.

[1933] Lodge, I park, and immediately right in front of me, a white Tesla pulls in front and parks.

[1934] Like takes the spot you were about to go and do?

[1935] No, is now parked right in front of me. Okay.

[1936] And I just had this bad feeling.

[1937] I was like, it's that person.

[1938] I think they're in love with you.

[1939] No, no, they're so mad that.

[1940] they followed me. Okay.

[1941] Everyone's got a story in L .A., right?

[1942] Everyone's going about their business with all these stories.

[1943] Well, that's so weird.

[1944] And then I was like, well, no, it can't be.

[1945] And I was really trying to talk myself out of it.

[1946] So I was just sitting in my car until they got out of their car.

[1947] And they would not get out of their car.

[1948] Oh.

[1949] Did you glance at them and see what kind of person was in there?

[1950] I was trying, but my eyes are so bad and the light was shining.

[1951] I couldn't really see.

[1952] Right, okay.

[1953] But I'm in the car for a long time waiting.

[1954] When is this person going to get out of the car?

[1955] I'm acting like I'm busy and texting and then checking my computer.

[1956] I mean, this is all taking forever.

[1957] You're running your corporation there in the car.

[1958] Yeah, and this person is still there.

[1959] Their car's on.

[1960] They're not turning it up.

[1961] They're not getting it up.

[1962] out.

[1963] They're not doing anything.

[1964] So I left.

[1965] Oh, my God.

[1966] Really?

[1967] Yeah.

[1968] Oh, wow.

[1969] Yeah.

[1970] I got really spooked.

[1971] Oh, my gosh.

[1972] Huh.

[1973] And I, I think, I'm sure it wasn't that guy.

[1974] But I also, I wouldn't classify myself as a paranoid person.

[1975] Mm -hmm.

[1976] Do you think it was Liz?

[1977] It was weird.

[1978] Not playing.

[1979] No, Liz doesn't know how to drive.

[1980] Oh, my God.

[1981] Original Liz.

[1982] Oh, well.

[1983] Scary Liz.

[1984] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1985] Oh, my God, maybe.

[1986] For people who don't remember or no, we watched a scary date line.

[1987] There was a scary Liz on there.

[1988] And Liz maybe had Frank as a dog and we have Frank now.

[1989] Is that one of the details we figured out?

[1990] Yeah, that Liz originally owned Frank.

[1991] And so Frank's kind of a mole in the house, I guess.

[1992] So, oh, did you bring that up because I was parents?

[1993] paranoid that day, and maybe I am paranoid?

[1994] Well, not intentionally, but now that you connect all those dots, probably.

[1995] Yeah, maybe my instinct was like, well, no, you're kind of paranoid sometimes.

[1996] But I didn't consciously or conspiratorily do that.

[1997] Okay.

[1998] Okay.

[1999] I promise.

[2000] Okay.

[2001] That's fine.

[2002] Maybe I am a little bit.

[2003] Well, you're a tiny little person moving through the world.

[2004] You know, you're going to be a little more careful.

[2005] So I might step on you.

[2006] Well, and there's just crazy people.

[2007] People are crazy.

[2008] I saw that guy do that crazy thing to the Uber driver.

[2009] Like, people have guns everywhere.

[2010] I don't know.

[2011] It's just a scary world.

[2012] So I left, but I wanted to still work.

[2013] Like, I had this plan for the day.

[2014] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2015] And so I ended up parking down the street at Ryan and Amy's and then walking.

[2016] Oh, great.

[2017] You didn't give up on Sportsman's Lodge altogether.

[2018] I was going to, but I was like, I can't let this place.

[2019] person ruined my whole plan for the day.

[2020] It is a real Seinfeld episode.

[2021] Like, I would never end up being in a parking lot, then leaving the parking lot, then parking two blocks away, then walking there with all my year.

[2022] It's really, there's so many steps.

[2023] Well, and then on my walk to Sportsman's Lodge, this woman was like, can you help me?

[2024] And of course, I was like, oh, no. I know.

[2025] I know what you are you just stole from me last week oh i see i see you're paranoid about theft no that's not paranoid that's oh my god of all people if you had just got taken advantage of the week before and the exact same thing was happening you'd be like no i'm not acting holier than thou like we just interviewed somebody for armchair anonymous and i spotted the scam like 12 minutes away like i i only I'm looking at the angle at all time.

[2026] So I'm not claiming I'm not on high alert at all times.

[2027] But I guess the defining difference is like we're both on high alert, I guess, and I'm ready for battle.

[2028] So I don't really care about it.

[2029] I'm just like seeing it come in.

[2030] I'm prepared.

[2031] And then that never arrives, the big battle never arrives.

[2032] Well, yes.

[2033] She was like, can you help me?

[2034] And I was like, with what?

[2035] The woman said, I need to go here.

[2036] She didn't speak very good English.

[2037] And she pointed to her phone.

[2038] She had maps out and it was Arawan.

[2039] Oh, wonderful.

[2040] She's a high -end shopper.

[2041] She too was going to Sportsman's Lodge.

[2042] You're safe.

[2043] But no, you didn't feel safe.

[2044] It didn't really seem, I don't know.

[2045] Anyway.

[2046] For people who don't live in L .A., Arawan, I don't want to get sued by Arawan.

[2047] But I have gone in there and they do have a smoothie for, $28 if you have the right stuff.

[2048] Yeah, it's very high -end.

[2049] It's extremely expensive.

[2050] There we go.

[2051] It's just like niche grocery store that has all these like...

[2052] It's kind of a religion for people in L .A. I think a lot of people make fun of the type of person who shops at Arawon.

[2053] But Aeroon is a great grocery store.

[2054] But it is so expensive.

[2055] And anywho, this lady, I don't...

[2056] Well, you know, whatever.

[2057] You can't judge a book.

[2058] No. I wouldn't have pegged her for an Arawan shopper.

[2059] Mm -hmm.

[2060] I felt like she was meeting someone there.

[2061] That was my whatever.

[2062] She had to get there.

[2063] She didn't know what it was called.

[2064] She didn't know anything about it.

[2065] Right.

[2066] Wait till she sees those prices.

[2067] Oh.

[2068] She didn't know what she was walking in.

[2069] Like, if you're not prepped for that, that'll hit you right across the chin.

[2070] It's a pop out.

[2071] It is a pop out.

[2072] So I was like, just help this person, okay?

[2073] And I pointed, I was like, it's in there.

[2074] And I pointed to sportsman's lodge Because that's where it is I said it's in there And she didn't really understand So I just kept pointing I was like it's in there And then she said something I didn't understand And she said something about gates And I said well if you drive in here It'll be in there And then she said okay But she definitely didn't know And so then I kind of just like waved her Really quick She was a pedestrian right So she doesn't she shouldn't be pulling into any parking lots Right But when she asked about Gates, I thought maybe she did have a car.

[2075] Okay.

[2076] Mm -hmm.

[2077] So, so anyway, I took her there.

[2078] Oh, great.

[2079] Did you hold her hand or you guys just walked next to each other?

[2080] Well, I walked in front of her.

[2081] She didn't smell like poop.

[2082] Okay.

[2083] I walked in front of her a good, like, four feet.

[2084] Okay.

[2085] I don't know how that happened or why that happened.

[2086] But I didn't know how to fix it.

[2087] I would like a wide shot of this.

[2088] I want to see you leading this.

[2089] Was she taller than you or even shorter?

[2090] No. She was either my height, she was around my height.

[2091] Oh, wow.

[2092] Okay, a couple of kids walking into Airwant.

[2093] Well, she was an older lady.

[2094] She wasn't old, but like 60.

[2095] Okay.

[2096] You know what she probably was.

[2097] Ugh.

[2098] She was probably a rich person's nanny.

[2099] Okay.

[2100] Okay.

[2101] This isn't a terrible theory.

[2102] Uh -huh.

[2103] Yeah.

[2104] And that that rich person sent this woman to arrow on.

[2105] For a $28.

[2106] Smoothie.

[2107] Smoothie.

[2108] Yeah, with bee pollen and Ecuadorian.

[2109] Actually, I think that's exactly what it was.

[2110] And rice protein.

[2111] Oh, poor lady.

[2112] Yeah.

[2113] So anyway, I helped her out, got her there.

[2114] And then I felt like whatever I had done wrong was righted.

[2115] Sounds like they sent the nanny on foot.

[2116] Look, too.

[2117] I know.

[2118] Okay.

[2119] All right, great.

[2120] So she got it there.

[2121] Did she give you a wave or anything or a hug or a kiss?

[2122] So I love you.

[2123] No kiss.

[2124] No, no grandma's kisses.

[2125] I love you.

[2126] Okay.

[2127] Well, it was a very indiscriminate accent.

[2128] It just wasn't American.

[2129] She didn't say I love you.

[2130] She said thank you.

[2131] And then I said, sure.

[2132] And then I ran away.

[2133] Wow.

[2134] In case it was still all a plot.

[2135] I had to get out quick.

[2136] I wish we had a timeline of your heart rate from the stop sign to seated doing your business at sportsmen.

[2137] Do you think it was just peaking and popping and spiking?

[2138] Yes, I think my cholesterol spiked.

[2139] Yes, of course.

[2140] Cortisol dump, all the stuff.

[2141] Adrenal glands fatigued.

[2142] I sat down and I did think, this is a weird day.

[2143] I thought that silently out loud.

[2144] in my brain.

[2145] If we do send a film crew to follow you for a reality show, which I'm encouraging you to explore.

[2146] And it's called Nothing to See Here.

[2147] That's the name of the show.

[2148] Oh my God.

[2149] That's great.

[2150] Yeah.

[2151] But yet it's riveting, right?

[2152] You're going to have to vocalize a lot of your internal dialogue to help the crew.

[2153] Okay.

[2154] Although I do have a pretty expressive face.

[2155] Absolutely.

[2156] But they're not always going to be, you're going to be in the backseat during that whole.

[2157] episode with the Tesla in the parking lot.

[2158] So you're going to have to cheat out.

[2159] You're going to have to, like, throw some of your looks sideways, which will feel awkward, but you're going to have to do it.

[2160] And then you're going to have to learn to vocalize some of your internal monologue.

[2161] Okay.

[2162] This is a weird day.

[2163] You've got to have to practice saying that on your...

[2164] Just throw it away.

[2165] I'm going to practice right now.

[2166] Okay, great.

[2167] Well, I'm going to do, like, exactly how it sounded in my brain, okay?

[2168] All right.

[2169] Sitting down.

[2170] Yeah.

[2171] I just sat down.

[2172] You're just now seated.

[2173] Oh, do I have to say that?

[2174] Oh, I'm sitting now.

[2175] Yeah, in case the camera's not on it.

[2176] They're not recording.

[2177] They only have audio.

[2178] Let me sit down.

[2179] Ooh, it feels so good to sit.

[2180] Today's a weird day.

[2181] That's how it sounded in my head.

[2182] That's great.

[2183] That's great, because it's still kind of positive.

[2184] It's still open -ended.

[2185] I haven't decided yet that it's a bad day.

[2186] Yeah, it's just unique and weird.

[2187] But it's a weird day for sure.

[2188] It was a weird day But I ran into two arm cherries yesterday Oh, tell me One was after the big incident Once I got settled A nice arm cherry said I love your podcast Oh I like that She said she'd been listening forever Which was really sweet And then I got up and left In case it was a scam Fing she stole your phone What you should get is a nice phone case that has a chain that connects to your belt to prevent it from ever happening again.

[2189] Well, I know a group that does that.

[2190] Dads who go to Disneyland or Disney World.

[2191] Okay.

[2192] Dilfs at Disney.

[2193] You know that account?

[2194] Oh, wow.

[2195] Yeah, yeah.

[2196] Do you know that account?

[2197] You must.

[2198] There's an Instagram account, Dilfs of Disneyland.

[2199] And Charlie was on it years ago and they put hashtag Stroller Me. You know this.

[2200] You remember this.

[2201] I've blocked this out.

[2202] I made Dilfs of Disneyland.

[2203] It was the very thrilling moment, yeah.

[2204] Oh, my God, how cool.

[2205] Because I knew about it forever, Dilfs at Disneyland.

[2206] It's great.

[2207] What were you wearing in the pick?

[2208] Nothing.

[2209] I had just come out of Splash Mountain and I had to take off all my clothes and get in something dry.

[2210] Oh, wow.

[2211] Okay.

[2212] So then later, I went home, but I had more work to do.

[2213] So I decided to walk to my wine bar.

[2214] Right.

[2215] sit outside the whole day is revolving around working outside right yeah yeah so sit outside with my computer get a glass of wine sit down and a really nice girl shout out dana what's up dana she said are you monica said yes she said i love your show was so sweet love dana okay then i put my headphones in and i'm working and i finished my glass of wine then i look up Dana, like an angel, appears with a new glass of wine.

[2216] Oh, my, but you weren't drinking $1 ,000 glass of wine again, were you?

[2217] No. I don't know.

[2218] I don't know.

[2219] Well, okay, this is how devoted she is.

[2220] She said, it's not tequila.

[2221] Boom.

[2222] She knew it.

[2223] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2224] She made a great joke.

[2225] Yeah.

[2226] And then I felt so guilty I was like all these armchairs are just buying me drinks all the time And I didn't do a reverse back I mean a reverse What did I call it?

[2227] We know reverse back We do but remember I called it something Yeah reverse payback or something I can't remember but Because I always get hung up on reverse back Sure The hottest sex act in America Which we don't know what it is But we know it is hot hot I think this was a reverse payback or something.

[2228] But I didn't even do it.

[2229] And I just, you know, I feel guilty about that.

[2230] Armcherry's, you don't need to buy me drinks.

[2231] It's so kind.

[2232] Yeah.

[2233] It's so sweet.

[2234] You know, armchairs, if you love Monica, send a water over.

[2235] That's what she doesn't fucking drink.

[2236] No. Yes, always send her a big glass of water.

[2237] And then right on the cup, you're going to die if you don't drink this.

[2238] No, I'm not ever drinking that.

[2239] Okay.

[2240] Dana actually was reading my mind because I was thinking, I need another glass of wine, but I don't really want to get up because the computer.

[2241] I was like, do I take the computer in?

[2242] You know, it's that weird thing.

[2243] Do I take my purse?

[2244] And what if my seat gets taken?

[2245] You can also get a chain connected to your belt for your computer, too.

[2246] You could have all your electronics chain down there.

[2247] Anyway, she read my mind and got me dehydrated just like I needed.

[2248] Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

[2249] Two armchairs, one day.

[2250] It was really nice.

[2251] I, too, had a really nice exchange with an employee of American Airlines.

[2252] And she said, oh, my God, that linguist was so great.

[2253] I learned so much.

[2254] And I'm like, yes, wasn't she phenomenal?

[2255] Oh, cool.

[2256] Yeah.

[2257] American Airlines, nonstop service to Boston, two hours late on the departure time.

[2258] which normally would have been a bummer but I was trying to watch the Formula One race on my iPad.

[2259] Oh.

[2260] So for me, it was a little bit of a blessing, but landing at 11 at night was not a blessing.

[2261] It went from a blessing to not a blessing.

[2262] But it was a lovely flight, you know, no complaints.

[2263] Okay, so you're in.

[2264] Boston, California.

[2265] Wow.

[2266] Boston, Massachusetts, right next to the Commons.

[2267] When this concludes, I'm going to go explore.

[2268] It is drizzling, but I don't think that's stopped the other families.

[2269] They are out and about.

[2270] But yeah, Boston for a day and a half.

[2271] And then tomorrow take a ferry to Martha's Vineyard.

[2272] Fun.

[2273] Yes, very excited.

[2274] So Eric, who's on the trip with you.

[2275] Yeah.

[2276] texted us this morning, me and Molly, his wife, and Erica.

[2277] And he texted us from the toilet.

[2278] Oh.

[2279] What do you have to say?

[2280] Because, well, he was thinking about us during his poop because, you know, we have this conversation sometimes about when you're on group trips or any trip where you don't have your own bathroom.

[2281] Mm -hmm.

[2282] What do you do?

[2283] Do you go to the lobby?

[2284] Mm -hmm.

[2285] Do you just say, I'm a person and I poop and that's that and deal with it?

[2286] Do you poop and then showers so that it's all one thing.

[2287] And by the time your shower's over, the smell is dissipated.

[2288] Yeah.

[2289] That's normally what I do.

[2290] Uh -huh.

[2291] Okay.

[2292] Or I go to the lobby.

[2293] Okay.

[2294] I've never gone to the lobby, I don't think.

[2295] To Pooty, no. And do you just say I'm a person?

[2296] Exactly.

[2297] Life is very short and I'm not going to spend any time, you know, traveling to go dump if I'm next to one.

[2298] So he texted saying, I figured out a new hack.

[2299] Okay.

[2300] Instead of the lobby, he went to the conference.

[2301] room floor and there's a bathroom there and that's very isolated.

[2302] He must have gone to work out and then had to poop and use that.

[2303] There's no way he left his room this morning.

[2304] There's no way.

[2305] Well, I'll find out when I see him.

[2306] Find out.

[2307] Fact check that in the fact check.

[2308] Yeah.

[2309] I mean, I think it's a fair question to put out in the world.

[2310] Like how do you handle yourself poop -wise when you're on.

[2311] a group trip.

[2312] Mm -hmm.

[2313] Mm -hmm.

[2314] What if you just traveled with a candle or some matches?

[2315] Matches are good.

[2316] I like to have that in my bag as a just -in -case.

[2317] But I get anxious about the sound.

[2318] Oh, sure.

[2319] Boy, that would be great.

[2320] I hope when you have your reality show, you let them stand outside the bathroom door so we can get some of those pops and cracks and sneezes.

[2321] Never.

[2322] Absolutely not.

[2323] I turn on the water.

[2324] Uh -huh, sure.

[2325] Old standby, yeah.

[2326] A tactic as old as indoor plumbing.

[2327] Exactly.

[2328] I've wasted so much water because of food.

[2329] I've done that to mask the sounds of, if I think there's going to be some pops and crackles.

[2330] Yeah.

[2331] Then I'll turn on the water.

[2332] I don't really want anyone to hear the pops and crackles.

[2333] See?

[2334] Yeah.

[2335] People don't like that.

[2336] But I like other people's pops and crackles, which is, I don't know why I think no one's going to like mine, but I get insecure.

[2337] about those, yeah.

[2338] I think that's universal.

[2339] What if you had a huge jambox?

[2340] You just fucking started blasting music inside there.

[2341] And we could hear screaming, like, occasionally.

[2342] Like, oh, my God, is that screaming?

[2343] I don't know.

[2344] I can't hear anything over that music.

[2345] Yeah, you wouldn't know.

[2346] It could just be part of the song.

[2347] Okay, so he texted that.

[2348] And then he was saying that maybe he was going to go to Harvard.

[2349] Okay.

[2350] To walk around.

[2351] And then he was like, but maybe that makes me a wannabe.

[2352] Oh, okay.

[2353] I'll tell you one of my favorite days ever is I shot a movie here.

[2354] I was here for two months for the judge.

[2355] And I decided one day, oh, I'm going to go have a picnic.

[2356] I think Lincoln was four months old, five months old.

[2357] So bring a blanket, go to have a picnic.

[2358] And it happened to be drop off day.

[2359] So it was all these parents walking with their kids.

[2360] across the commons, and it was like, I don't know.

[2361] You know, certainly for them, it's their, you know, among the top five best days of their life.

[2362] And you're just witnessing hundreds and hundreds of people have their very top day.

[2363] It was contagious and really beautiful to watch.

[2364] Oh, my God.

[2365] And all those people are about to have just the craziest four -year experience, legendary.

[2366] Or not.

[2367] as we've learned from other Harvard grads, it's just school.

[2368] I know, but college is so fun.

[2369] Yes, college and, yes, in general, but not Harvard specifically, just college in general.

[2370] No, not Harvard specifically.

[2371] I just mean college.

[2372] Like, I'm so jealous of all those kids who are about to start college.

[2373] Yeah, to be adults.

[2374] Oh.

[2375] Is that the year you would relive over and over again?

[2376] Is that your seventh grade?

[2377] First year of college?

[2378] Maybe.

[2379] I mean, that was such a fun time.

[2380] Heightened, yeah.

[2381] So heightened.

[2382] Oh, man. So I told Eric, and I'll put it out there here, too, if while in Boston you come across some goodwill hunting memorabilia.

[2383] Okay.

[2384] Bring it home for you?

[2385] I'd like one.

[2386] Okay.

[2387] You'd like a memorabilia?

[2388] Yeah.

[2389] All right.

[2390] I'll keep my eyes peel.

[2391] Okay.

[2392] You like to peel apples?

[2393] How about peeling them apples?

[2394] Good job.

[2395] I got a number.

[2396] I've been craving it lately.

[2397] I'm going to re -watch maybe tonight.

[2398] Okay.

[2399] Okay.

[2400] Now, I guess we just had a lot to catch up on because we haven't even started facts.

[2401] Right.

[2402] Oh, wait, the second mystery.

[2403] Okay.

[2404] Because maybe people can help with this.

[2405] It was before my new phone.

[2406] I got a text from an unknown number that said, Hey, I'll be in L .A. next week.

[2407] Can we hang out?

[2408] Fingers crossed or something.

[2409] Mm -hmm.

[2410] Or like, love to see you, let's hang out, or something.

[2411] Mm -hmm.

[2412] But I didn't have the number.

[2413] Yeah.

[2414] So I felt like it was a spam.

[2415] Sure.

[2416] Someone got your number off the internet or something.

[2417] So I ignored it.

[2418] But it's been lingering in my head that maybe it's someone I do know.

[2419] that I didn't have the number for.

[2420] So that's a mystery.

[2421] Okay.

[2422] Well, you could always ask who is this.

[2423] It's too late because I don't have that text anymore because I got my new phone.

[2424] Oh, okay.

[2425] I got my new phone, hadn't updated since September, so I don't have any of that.

[2426] I don't think it's someone you know.

[2427] You would have previous texts from them.

[2428] You had none.

[2429] And if they had a brand new phone number, they'd say like, hey, this is Gail going to be in town.

[2430] Yeah.

[2431] They don't live here, it seems.

[2432] Right, clearly, if they're going to be in L .A. Yeah.

[2433] Then say, like, I'm going to be home in L .A. Let's hang out.

[2434] Yeah, it didn't say that.

[2435] Anyway, that's a mystery, but it's probably a scam.

[2436] Okay.

[2437] I'm glad you avoided that one.

[2438] But in case it's not a scam and you're listening.

[2439] And you know, Monica, retext.

[2440] Yeah, retext.

[2441] Yeah, make yourself known.

[2442] Yeah.

[2443] Guess what?

[2444] What?

[2445] Your haircut.

[2446] Yeah.

[2447] matches Brad Pitt's haircut.

[2448] He copied you.

[2449] Okay, so I saw an interview of him.

[2450] He was at the Formula One race.

[2451] He was driving.

[2452] They were filming his movie.

[2453] And it is short, but it's a bit longer.

[2454] And actually, funny you'd say that, I took a screen grab of it.

[2455] And I'm like, okay, that's actually now the length I'm going to have.

[2456] Okay, so you think it's a little longer on top?

[2457] It's a little longer on the sides and the top.

[2458] Okay.

[2459] Oh, my God, you got to hear the craziest thing.

[2460] I played this for the F1 boys.

[2461] Listen to this.

[2462] No, I'm really, really focused on the lines And what we're trying to create in these moments Wait, I want to say, I want to, I want to, for us, I want to say You know, for all the armchair experts out there You gotta give us a little breathing room If you see any spinouts or something like Wow For any armchair experts Wow What kind of ding, ding, ding is that?

[2463] Who was that?

[2464] Brad Pitt, in an interview.

[2465] No. Wait.

[2466] You didn't recognize that voice?

[2467] That's Brad Pitt being interviewed by Martin Brundel.

[2468] Oh, my God.

[2469] I almost shit my slacks when I saw that.

[2470] I had to record it.

[2471] I want to hear it again.

[2472] All right.

[2473] Let me fire it up.

[2474] I thought it was Toto.

[2475] You thought that sounded like Toto?

[2476] I don't know enough.

[2477] Right, here we go.

[2478] Create in these moments.

[2479] Wait, I want to say, I want to, I want to, for us, I want to say, You know, for all the armchair experts out there, you've got to give us a little breathing room.

[2480] If you see any spin -outs or something that looks like it's a stall or something like that, it's by design.

[2481] Oh, wow.

[2482] Come on.

[2483] What are the odds?

[2484] That's so hot.

[2485] Oh, man, oh, man. I feel like we need to take that audio and incorporate it into our transition somehow.

[2486] Oh, my God.

[2487] Well, will we get sued?

[2488] No, let's find out.

[2489] Okay, some facts.

[2490] Give me the facts.

[2491] Really, really heavy episode.

[2492] But in a great way, it reminded me of when we were first listening to Sam Harris's podcast.

[2493] And there were so many episodes that you had to listen to multiple times and it was really in depth.

[2494] That first Jonathan Haidt.

[2495] Exactly.

[2496] Yeah, so it was cool to have someone.

[2497] like that on and go there.

[2498] Yes.

[2499] I thought he was mind -blowing.

[2500] Okay.

[2501] Do starlings pay attention to seven other starlings around them?

[2502] Yeah.

[2503] When starlings coordinate with their seven nearest neighbors, they form their characteristic flocks with the least effort.

[2504] Seven is the number.

[2505] Yeah.

[2506] Once he plants that seed about complex systems being self -organizing, I feel like I witness it all over the...

[2507] Ever since we interviewed him, I just am constantly, even when I passed this person on the stairwell yesterday.

[2508] Yeah.

[2509] I was like, oh, yeah, we just know how to not hit each other, but no one's orchestrating it.

[2510] No one teaches you that.

[2511] Yeah, self -organization.

[2512] So crazy.

[2513] Yeah, I mean, in these flocks of starlings, there's 1 ,200 birds.

[2514] I mean, that's worth saying.

[2515] Oh, my Lord.

[2516] I didn't know they were that big.

[2517] But they're each only paying attention to seven.

[2518] Right.

[2519] It's pretty cool.

[2520] Okay, we talked about how.

[2521] Hitler ruined a lot of stuff.

[2522] Right.

[2523] The swastika being one of them.

[2524] Well, exactly.

[2525] So the swastika is an important Hindu symbol.

[2526] The swastika symbol is commonly used before entrances or on doorways of homes or temples to mark the starting page of financial statements and mandala's.

[2527] Mandalay's?

[2528] I don't know what that word is.

[2529] Constructed for rituals such as weddings or welcoming a newborn.

[2530] Well, you know, across the street from Muir Jr. High, greatest year in my life, was the old Milford High School that had been deserted for years and boarded up.

[2531] And we used to sneak into it all the time.

[2532] Yes.

[2533] And it was probably built in the 20s or something.

[2534] And when you walked into school, there was a mat over it.

[2535] But if you peeled the mat back, there was a mosaic swastika, but reversed like you generally see in the Hindu.

[2536] Yes, it's reversed.

[2537] But yeah.

[2538] And their solution was just to throw a rug over it, not remove it.

[2539] Let's just pop a rug over.

[2540] There's no rugs in this whole high school, but let's put a big rug when you enter.

[2541] Yeah, it means to prevail, meaning well -being, prosperity, or good fortune.

[2542] Yeah, I mean, stupid Hitler.

[2543] Fucking Hitler.

[2544] He really, yeah.

[2545] Really fucked it up.

[2546] He did.

[2547] Okay, the Christmas truce was a. series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914.

[2548] He said 50 % of our body are microbiome cells.

[2549] I'm still struggling with that.

[2550] So he was saying 50 % of our total body mass isn't even us.

[2551] It's micro -bacteria and shit.

[2552] Yeah, it's bacteria.

[2553] It's so, okay, in any human body, there are around 30 trillion human cells, but our microbiome is an estimated 39 trillion microbial cells, including bacteria, viruses and fungi that live on and in us.

[2554] Due to their small size, these organisms make up only about 1 to 3 % of our body mass. Okay, so more of those than our cells, but biomass -wise?

[2555] Correct, small.

[2556] Okay, like the woman crossing the street.

[2557] Yeah, we have...

[2558] We have around 20 to 25 ,000 genes in each of our cells, but the human microbiome potentially holds 500 times more.

[2559] Wow.

[2560] We didn't even know about this like five years ago.

[2561] No. There's so much we don't know.

[2562] Oh, mostly we don't know.

[2563] We don't know shit.

[2564] We don't know shit, yeah.

[2565] It's really true.

[2566] I had a question for you.

[2567] The Kafka story, short story, is it metamorphosis?

[2568] I don't know if I just read an excerpt that was talking about this math is going to predict everything.

[2569] thing.

[2570] I don't remember what it was out of.

[2571] Okay.

[2572] I can't find it.

[2573] Okay.

[2574] But my guess is it's from metamorphosis.

[2575] That's his most...

[2576] That's a popular.

[2577] Popular.

[2578] Yeah.

[2579] And when I googled Kafka math story, sometimes metamorphosis came up and nothing else came up.

[2580] So that's my best guess.

[2581] Okay.

[2582] I accept it.

[2583] But I still couldn't find the thing in it that was the math piece.

[2584] Yeah.

[2585] I read it in a book.

[2586] They had excerpt him in a different book, but I can't even remember what book it was.

[2587] Maybe we should ask George, it's his name, the awesome author we had on.

[2588] He wrote Lincoln and the Bardo.

[2589] Saunders.

[2590] George Saunders.

[2591] He would know.

[2592] He would know.

[2593] Yeah, he's a professor, literature professor, creative writing professor.

[2594] All of it.

[2595] Yeah, he'll do it all.

[2596] One stop shopping.

[2597] Okay, that's all for my facts.

[2598] Oh, really good facts.

[2599] And my mysteries.

[2600] Okay.

[2601] Well, I wonder if we'll find out.

[2602] Maybe stay tuned, Easter egg.

[2603] There might be a resolution to the mysteries.

[2604] Yeah.

[2605] But we got to get nothing to see here up and running.

[2606] All right.

[2607] Well, love you.

[2608] I'm excited to hear if you go to Harvard, if you get, maybe you teach a class.

[2609] By poop in the lobby.

[2610] Yeah.

[2611] Yeah.

[2612] Can't wait to hear.

[2613] Okay.

[2614] Bye.

[2615] Love you.

[2616] Love you.

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