00:00:00
this is the shrapnel of an exploded star and this is a meteorite schem from over 4 billion years ago and this is what
00:00:08
Elon will kill for Wow and all of this is to understand that fundamental
00:00:13
question people want to know how did we get here and how does the question of God tie into all of this well for the
00:00:19
first time in history we might be able to answer that question with scientific hard data Brian keting is an
00:00:24
astrophysicist and Professor whose groundbreaking research and digestible explanations uncover everything we want
00:00:30
to know about the universe and what lies Beyond let me go way back 400 years ago
00:00:35
a genius named Galileo looked through a telescope and he realized that we are not the center of the universe and now
00:00:40
we know the universe is vaster than you or I can comprehend how big would Earth be on this table small not even a grain
00:00:46
of sand Even in our galaxy it wouldn't be a grain of sand but we still don't know how the universe began and so one
00:00:52
experiment took me to the South Pole to the bottom of the planet and we thought we discovered the creation of time and
00:00:57
space itself took me to the brink of a novel prize we were on the front page of every newspaper but it turned out we
00:01:02
didn't see that at all what we saw was and we were [Music]
00:01:08
crushed I don't get too emotional but we had to retract these discoveries
00:01:15
and it was the most crushing experience the scientists can have but you cannot stop doing experiments to answer these
00:01:21
questions now you've launched this $2 million project yeah and the data that this experiment is seeing is exquisite
00:01:26
because now we know 100% that [Music]
00:01:32
this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the
00:01:39
show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you
00:01:45
can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to
00:01:52
make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that
00:01:57
you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so
00:02:03
much Dr Brian keing what is the mission that you on I
00:02:10
think I'm the luckiest man on earth I get to get paid not that much but I get
00:02:15
to get paid to study the questions that I was most interested in as a 12-year-old pimple face kid in Upstate
00:02:21
New York which is how did we get here and I think it's the question that people just want to know it's the only
00:02:27
question you can't know right what happened before you were born you you have to rely on other people's word for
00:02:33
it right you have to ask questions and be curious and what is the only event
00:02:38
that ever happened for which there was nobody around to ask and that's the origin of our universe and the universe
00:02:46
contains everything contains life Minds Consciousness everything down to you
00:02:52
know podcasters and and uh and daily life what are some of the most sort of
00:02:57
controversial existential questions that you seek to answer with all the research that you do so you've talked about this
00:03:04
before on the show uh the the question of of you know finite versus infinite games and what we do in science science
00:03:12
is an infinite game right you can't win science but along the way there's many many finite games in other words fixed
00:03:19
competitions for which there's only one Victor right I got you know uh offered a
00:03:25
professorship at UC San Diego that means 399 other people didn't get that job I
00:03:30
got tenure a lot of people don't get tenure I got this I got that and then eventually I didn't get you know spoiler
00:03:36
alert my first book's called losing the Nobel Prize but there's only you know at most three people that can win a Nobel Prize every year in my field the the the
00:03:44
infinite game is comprised of many many finite games and the most important questions that generate the most
00:03:50
controversy the most heat the most passion have to do with the nature of
00:03:55
the origin of our universe it's actually not a settled science it's it's not actually known for a fact whether our
00:04:02
universe came once existed in a certain way eternally in a way I can describe
00:04:08
went through cycles of creation and destruction and or it follows sort of a
00:04:13
Biblical creation narrative these are all kind of open questions in a certain sense and because they're not yet
00:04:19
resolved and because the only way to resolve them is through data we cannot
00:04:24
actually answer these so the human mind is in a hybrid it's in a super position
00:04:30
we kind of have a lot of knowledge but we have a lot of questions we have a lot of solutions but we have don't have a
00:04:35
lot of answers we're trying to understand that fundamental question and I always say I want to know what happened on the Tuesday before the Big
00:04:42
Bang imagine this a day before which there was no yesterday you couldn't even
00:04:48
speak about it if you were there obviously nobody was there to witness it but even conceptually speaking how does
00:04:55
time progress if time starts right we think about time and time is very
00:05:02
Mercurial it's very hard to describe and Define what time is is time what a watch measures is time how your my hair gets
00:05:10
gray over the years is is time how you know we perceive it sitting on a hot stove versus being with a pretty
00:05:16
girlfriend are are those methods unequal are they equally valid but at at its
00:05:23
base layer if the universe began if it truly had a singular origin then time came into existence at that as well and
00:05:31
how does the question of God tie into all of this and what are the sort of I guess the most controversial question is
00:05:36
is there a god or is there not a God right and then a sub question to that would be what form does this God take
00:05:44
are these questions that you SE to answer me personally yes my colleagues tend to shy away from it it's considered
00:05:51
somewhat anathema or distasteful for a real honest to goodness you know work a
00:05:56
day scientist to talk about to even contemplate the possibility of God and
00:06:02
for me I I call myself a practicing very devout
00:06:07
agnostic in the sense that uh I I take my Judaism in my case I'm I'm a I'm a
00:06:13
practicing Jew but the question of what to take on faith which uh which in which
00:06:20
in Hebrew by the way the the word amen comes from the Hebrew word amuna which means faith it means to believe in
00:06:25
something I always say I don't believe in gravity you know if I take this rock and I I I don't have to believe in it I
00:06:31
have evidence for it science the word science means knowledge it doesn't mean
00:06:37
you know uh faith it doesn't mean you know religion or theology but for me
00:06:43
thinking about God provides a certain the most um the
00:06:49
most luxurious or the most delightful sort of spice to the research to the
00:06:54
hard work that I'm doing knowing that the the team and I that are trying to answer these questions we can possibly
00:07:00
resolve the question of whether or not the universe began as for example it begins in the Torah the Old Testament
00:07:06
the biblical narrative that underpins the Judaism and Christianity and and Islam as well of you know half the
00:07:13
world's population what if we could substantiate that narrative what if we could refute it a good scientist has to
00:07:19
be open to both so for me personally I've always been interested in those existential questions I I I I don't put
00:07:26
myself out there as a you know as a rabbi or as some Exemplar of perfect as religion but I'm trying I'm trying to
00:07:32
improve I'm trying to dedicate my life to answering questions that others have posed and stand on their shoulders to
00:07:39
hopefully get a closer glimpse of truth but it's absolutely 100% in my mind
00:07:44
inexorably linked the question of a Creator and the question of the its
00:07:50
creation or his creation if you will but as I say for the first time in history
00:07:56
myself my colleagues and I we might be able to start to answer that question with scientific hard
00:08:01
data the question of whether there's a God or not and which God is most accurately represented by the science
00:08:08
yeah and the creation stories that those religions tell themselves or tell the world you've raised the 200 million
00:08:16
project what does that mean and what what is the question you're seeking to fundamentally answer with that $200
00:08:21
million project yeah let me take a step back so for 2,000 years most scientists
00:08:28
people believe the universe was eternal had been around forever and then not not far from here
00:08:36
in uh north of north of Hollywood is a telescope a 100 inch diameter telescope
00:08:41
you know five meters across and that telescope was used by Edwin Hubble
00:08:46
Hubble observed that every single Galaxy that he could see is moving away from
00:08:51
the Milky Way galaxy so every Galaxy which are collections of a 100 billion Suns just
00:08:57
like our sun is expanding away from us how could he see that through a
00:09:03
telescope uh so he used What's called the red shift so the red shift is an effect that is related to what Christian
00:09:10
Doppler discovered called the Doppler shift you ever heard an ambulance and it's coming towards you and it gets
00:09:16
higher in frequency it goes away that's the Doppler shift the waves
00:09:21
of sound are piling up their frequency is getting short uh getting higher and higher the wavelength is getting piled
00:09:26
up in the direction it's going the the the source and it's getting lower in the opposite direction the same exact thing
00:09:33
happens with light instead of getting higher pitch in and lower pitch lower frequency means redder colors so red is
00:09:40
a longer wavelength of light than is blue light he saw everything is moving away from it Us in the Milky Way it was
00:09:46
a very puzzling Discovery it went against 2,500 years of received wisdom
00:09:52
he observed it with data it was incontrovertible every single Galaxy is moving away from the Milky Way galaxy
00:09:58
our galaxy he said either you know we didn't put on our Cosmic deodorant and no one wants to
00:10:03
be around us or the universe is getting bigger tomorrow it will be bigger than
00:10:09
it was today the separation between galaxies will be larger than it is today
00:10:15
the implication Stephen if you go back another day before today yesterday
00:10:20
things were closer keep playing that movie backwards you come to a point perhaps a singularity where all the
00:10:27
matter all the energy everything that is was or ever will be was concentrated effectively at a single point that's the
00:10:34
big bang and so in the Big Bang cosmology the universe starts at a particular moment time comes into
00:10:41
existence the elements come into existence all the elements you know in in water you know instead of hydrogen in
00:10:47
water rather they all come into existence and then over billions of years those elements come together over
00:10:53
the force of gravity they uh will eventually fuse two hydrogens together to make helium and so forth and you get
00:10:59
the heavier and heavier elements eventually those objects called Stars
00:11:05
they eventually burn up and blow up in what's called a supernova and before they blow up they create all sorts of
00:11:11
other matter that we're made of calcium oxygen nitrogen iron and in their death
00:11:17
throw in their explosive fireworks like ending of their lives they give life to
00:11:23
us because they blast out into the cosmos into the Galaxy the material that we're made of so literally as Carl Sean
00:11:30
said we are star stuff and I brought some star stuff here today so this is these are different byproducts this is
00:11:37
the shrapnel of an exploded star this is mostly made of iron here I
00:11:42
brought these and I give these away on my website I made a special website for your listeners briank king.com
00:11:49
diary this is a meteorite Stephen you ever seen a meteor in the atmosphere
00:11:54
that's a rock like that a mineral coursing through our atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour how' you
00:12:01
know how do we know we measure their velocity we can track them on radar how do you know that this is a meteor oh
00:12:06
this has all the characteristics of a meteorite it's composition its density it's a structure it has that weird
00:12:11
pattern on it but if you're really curious what we could do so where's this come from then or this one was found in
00:12:18
uh in uh in Argentina in a place called the field of the stars and this could have come from anywhere in the universe
00:12:24
exactly this came from this is basically a fragment of an asteroid that EX existed before the Earth Steven this is
00:12:31
a fragment a fossil relic of our solar system from over four billion years ago
00:12:38
older than our Earth because our Earth formed at its core our Earth has iron inside of it it has an iron core just
00:12:45
like that that's pretty heavy right that's not and it also made this here this if you give this to your sweetheart
00:12:51
if you compress this by 100 thousand times and give it to your sweetheart she'll be really happy about that that's pure carbon so that'll turn into a
00:12:58
diamond that'll turn into a diamond I like to say you know pressure is what turns dust into diamonds for anyone that
00:13:04
can't see this right now it looks like a a dice it's it's almost identical to like a black dice exact yep it's very
00:13:11
light now contrast that to and here's a piece of rock this is mostly volcanic rock I collected that in uh in
00:13:17
Antarctica I've been to Antarctica twice to the South Pole I collected that specimen there it has holes in it see
00:13:24
the holes those come from bubbling escaping volcanic gases so there's volcanoes down at the the South uh at
00:13:30
the in Antarctica not the South Pole and then here's this one this is found oh
00:13:35
gosh Namibia so this is a meteorite formed in found in Namibia also from the same
00:13:41
process that formed our solar system this was found by the natives that lived there uh several hundred or maybe even a
00:13:49
thousand years ago this one's particularly nice if you're not watching it it looks like a human foot and I
00:13:54
can't explain how unbelievably heavy that is yes I didn't think I've held something thing that's this size but
00:14:00
this heavy before it's extremely dense it's one it's the dense so what happens when a star tries to make the iron in
00:14:05
that it takes more energy to make that fuse that nuclei of iron than is given
00:14:11
off in the fusion process so therefore the star can't support its weight it collapses it explodes and rebounds now
00:14:19
when your listeners or viewers you know go to my website and if they win one um
00:14:25
uh you'll see how attractive these things are to magnets it's a very uh powerful it's called a rare earth magnet
00:14:31
neodymium magnet Jesus so attach it to the meteorite it's
00:14:37
fine to do that you can do that wow that sound I love that sound a
00:14:43
ping so this material is highly magnetic and iron which is primarily the
00:14:52
constitution of this meteorite is has the exact same chemical structure as in your blood there's a molecule called
00:14:58
hemog globin mhm it's almost identical to the chlorophyll molecule that plants have except chlorophyll has a magnesium
00:15:05
atom at the center of its chemical Matrix but in hemoglobin that's going through your veins right now is iron
00:15:12
that iron came from that Supernova eventually your mother you know and the food that you eat has some iron in it
00:15:18
and your body starts to produce blood and that blood has the same chemical composition as the Stars so this 200
00:15:26
million what are you doing okay we gonna give back back to the money y exactly so
00:15:31
what is the fundamental question you're seeking to answer so let's say you see someone shooting a f a gun right you
00:15:37
want to see the but you see the smoke from the gun you see the bullet moving at great speed but you'd like to see who
00:15:42
actually shot it was it God you know was it was it mother nature was it some Quantum fluctuation in the Multiverse
00:15:49
and so we're trying to capture that to to take a picture of the infant Universe to take the earliest baby picture
00:15:55
possible using sensors that are sensitive to in to uh microwave light that we cannot see that's invisible to
00:16:02
us we could capture a pattern which would only be present if the universe
00:16:08
had a singularity if it went through this incredible rupture of SpaceTime called The Big Bang the details of the
00:16:15
experiment were worked out over several years we realized we had to go down to the South Pole to the bottom of the
00:16:21
planet a place that was only reached 112 years ago and the enemy of what I'm trying to detect is water water absorb
00:16:28
absorbs microwaves that's how your microwave oven Works to heat up coffee so we we took that telescope there we
00:16:36
made an observation we claim we detected that baby picture that snapshot that
00:16:42
reverberations of the creation of time and space itself called inflation we were heralded around the
00:16:48
world that this is the greatest discovery of all time in science literally there was just one problem
00:16:55
when we made this measurement we were aware that we could fool ourselves into seeing what we wanted to see because we
00:17:02
knew how important this discovery would be but we kind of convinced ourselves that we had seen the true birth pangs of
00:17:09
the Big Bang but it turned out we didn't see that at all instead what we saw were trillions
00:17:18
and trillions of tons of dust in our galaxy for technical reasons it mimicked the signal of the big
00:17:25
bang and we were crushed it literally dust we saw Cosmic dust the leftover
00:17:32
byproducts of exploded Stars just want to be clear here so I'm um I don't want
00:17:37
to move on until I fully understand so you you went down to the South Pole yeah
00:17:42
you looked up expecting to see these sort of these waves that show that the
00:17:47
universe is expanding yes what you actually saw like lines of dust right is
00:17:53
that a simplified way of say but you thought you'd s seen these sort of microwaves of the universe exping exactly simplifying it perfectly we made
00:18:00
this discovery and then immediately effectively in scientific terms 6 months
00:18:05
later this is an early 2015 we basically had to admit we were wrong and
00:18:10
fortunately for me and for the universe as a whole um I was very close with a man named Jim Simons he was a Monumental
00:18:19
scientist mathematician without peer effectively and he said Brian I I've
00:18:24
been thinking about this experiment and um I want to I want to have a lger so he
00:18:29
put together this this dream team and we're still together to this day we're building an observatory in Chile not the
00:18:36
South Pole in Chile to do what bicep couldn't do bicep being the telescope you built in the South South po y that
00:18:43
lost the Nobel Prize in my first Books language and we're just now getting data it got first light a month before Jim
00:18:49
Simons passed away and so we were able to show him the data that this experiment is is is seeing I can't show
00:18:54
it to you is as confidential as a diary is you hope nobody's looking but you don't know if anybody is I can't show it
00:19:00
to you but the data is exquisite so what do you um what do you suspect is the origin of the
00:19:06
universe well uh is it God is it some kind of strange Cosmic reaction that
00:19:13
took place for no reason at all I know you must have a suspicion you know if the universe began
00:19:20
with a singular Big Bang if it began on a certain day or it didn't I just want to know the truth the interpretation of
00:19:27
it that's going to be going on for I mean people are battling about as I said we thought we detected that signal right
00:19:33
so we already have um a simulation of what will happen when this is discovered
00:19:38
for good finally and no dust right we know exactly what the media will say at
00:19:43
that time on one side of the equation were the greatest you know religious thinkers and theologians of the time
00:19:50
saying this proves the existence of God that God created the universe in a singular moment let there be light Fiat
00:19:57
Lux that's exactly what the Torah the Old Testament the Bible says so they said it it agrees with our hypothesis on
00:20:05
the other side there were militant atheists Richard Dawkins you know other people saying this proves there's no
00:20:12
need for a God the universe came into existence like you said meaningless Quantum field the fluctuation out of
00:20:19
nothingness it proves nothing about God in fact it invalidate literally Stephen there were people publishing articles in
00:20:26
major newspapers everywhere that proves God proves no God so it's not like I'm
00:20:32
going to think that I have the tarity to say I'm going to be the final word or we're going to be the final word I know
00:20:38
this is going to resonate and echo through the through the you know anals of history but at the same time we could
00:20:44
also see nothing and that's the hardest thing when you see nothing the human mind doesn't like ambiguity you know
00:20:51
like you can talk about um something very uh you know non-controversial let's talk about abortion rights let's talk
00:20:57
about trans rights let's no these are incredibly controversial things right so what does the human mind do it selects a
00:21:04
side it says no abortions abortion for everybody no trans rights yes trans rights uh immigration no immigration yes
00:21:11
IM the human mind hates that and for good reason there's an old Yiddish expression he who stands in the middle
00:21:17
of the road gets hit by both sides of the traffic so the human mind Cleaves to one side or the other I don't think you
00:21:24
know in terms of you know religion or whatever that we'll be the defendant of final word on it but it's sort of a
00:21:31
privilege to play the game what is the most compelling evidence that you've ever encountered
00:21:36
that there might be a god this is a long uh long question well
00:21:42
I I hope you'll find it someday too um at least in my religion in
00:21:50
Judaism God is the Creator and he's the organizer he creates um light and
00:21:57
darkness he creates day and night he creates Heaven and Earth he creates beasts and um and Earth and fishes and
00:22:04
so forth and then he creates man and we can't really emulate God even if
00:22:10
you don't believe in God you can imagine what a God would be like right you can conceptualize imagine you know King
00:22:17
Charles you know times a trillion or whatever like the all powerful force but at the same time we're told God as a
00:22:24
father Our Father who art in heaven right um and he's a Lord he's he's like a politician he's a king he's their
00:22:31
father in this judeo-christian concept it's hard to kind of reconcile what that means because we don't really have
00:22:37
analogies to it but the one analogy we do get is the one thing that we can create which is a which is a human now I
00:22:44
think for that reason men and women have a stake in what it means to feel a
00:22:50
connection to God women much more so it's almost impossible to for a man to
00:22:55
comprehend what it's like to have the ability to be a vessel for life's creation I think that's part of the
00:23:02
evidence for it um I also think that there's some there's some Clues but again it's not proof you cannot prove
00:23:08
God exists you cannot prove God doesn't exist you have to be comfortable with that ambiguity and very few people are
00:23:14
if we came from a single cell organism as some people say then there was then giving birth seems to be quite a New
00:23:22
Concept because you know if you think about some of the evolutionary stories of you know the single cell organism
00:23:28
that then divided and then you know darwinism's theory that it was the environment that defined how we give
00:23:33
birth and different animals give birth or replicate in different ways so if you
00:23:38
go back far enough it seems that like giving birth as we know it which is this like process where the baby comes out
00:23:44
and they cut the cord is actually quite recent in the history of Consciousness but also just like
00:23:51
living organisms does that make it more or less miraculous or it's so amazing but it it
00:23:57
doesn't feel like it gives me I don't know there's something in my
00:24:03
mind that thinks if a single cell organism I don't know gazillion years ago split because of some mutation which
00:24:11
caused more single cell organisms to split I
00:24:16
mean I guess it's still creation isn't it and then you could ask the question
00:24:22
what if there was a Creator and this Creator not only um you you know created
00:24:29
that first cell but created within that cell the possibility the propensity and
00:24:34
had the knowledge you know we can't comprehend it but but had the knowledge that that will eventually make a person
00:24:41
and have Consciousness and be able to conceptualize God now I'm not saying that's evidence for it but just you can
00:24:47
you can you can see which would be a greater miracle that like God encrypted in the DNA code that eventually there'll
00:24:54
be a Steven Bartlett or Brian keing or you know that those are natural processes that are the inevitable
00:25:00
conclusion of of creation of life and evolution as you say in darwinian theory for which we have abundant evidence
00:25:06
right I don't know which is more miraculous and and that's why you know Miracles humans are pretty
00:25:12
new aren't they so oh yeah mam mammals like how old is the conscious human the
00:25:18
conscious I mean the first like Homo sapiens that are of our species probably 200,000 years old maybe so it's only
00:25:23
been for 200,000 years that we've been even been able to think about the possibility of God which is almost a weird way way it almost you could say
00:25:30
God has only existed for 200,000 years right yeah that's was a good way of putting it and and in fact many people I
00:25:36
like to say this you know to you like what's your favorite day of the year like on the
00:25:42
calendar I was going to say day okay I always ask people that I say like what's your favorite day and usually I'll get
00:25:47
um Christmas uh my anniversary my birthday my first kid's birthday whatever but those are all Origins we
00:25:53
fascinated by Origins cuz you weren't like you can't witness like the whole process of your birth you have to rely on mother and your father and maybe
00:25:59
there's some pictures and a nurse but now go back to the beginning of the universe well maybe there was only one
00:26:04
entity you know maybe it was only God and why did God make the universe and then of course there's many many
00:26:10
questions the the most kind of stringent you know are are or perhaps most
00:26:16
challenging question is you know why does evil exist why would a good God create
00:26:21
suffering you know childhood leukemia like it doesn't make any sense so the the standard answer for that question
00:26:28
question is that to not have Randomness to not have chaos to not have um
00:26:34
variability in life would would necessitate a predetermined existence
00:26:40
and a lot of people believe that I've talked Sam Harris in my podcast he's been on here um he believes strict
00:26:46
determinism every single thing what's happening to us right now the words that are coming out of my mouth your uh ear
00:26:52
twitching or whatever it's to that's all determined there's no control there's free will is a complete and utter
00:26:57
illusion and uh because of that then there doesn't have to be an explanation of why
00:27:02
there's you know leukemia in children or whatever and and yes that is that is an unanswered question and I think but but
00:27:11
I don't think it's a sufficient question not to do stuff people would ask why does a child get leukemia but they won't
00:27:17
ask why do um humans experience uh the highest the highest Pleasures the
00:27:22
highest Sensations both physically viscerally but also emotionally and spiritually that we unique among all the
00:27:28
Creations on earth have this ability to appreciate our finite existence to have
00:27:33
love to have you know whatever this connections are that's what makes life living now we can't answer why is that
00:27:39
like do we deserve that so for me the evil and good and like Pleasure and Pain
00:27:45
make lots of sense from an evolutionary perspective it makes a lot of sense as to why you would feel this overwhelming
00:27:53
sense of like love and protection when you gave birth when your your your son or your daughter arrives in the world
00:27:59
because that that feeling is passed down from your ancestors and your ancestors
00:28:04
had that feeling so they survived and their offspring survived and that feeling gets stronger as it's passed
00:28:09
down because those that have it are more likely to pass on their DNA so the DNA of that feeling keeps passing through
00:28:15
the through the generation so I get that and then with the with evil I also I can
00:28:20
also understand that pretty well um because you know if we think of evil maybe as a feeling or something that
00:28:26
happens or a disease I can understand that evil is human is is human related
00:28:31
there's no evil cancer cancer is not evil and even that I can understand because I can understand the brain is so fragile and I can understand all these
00:28:38
human instincts and chemicals and jealousy and you know all of even love
00:28:43
comes with it you know if some if if a woman dies it's probably a husband statistically so like I understand you
00:28:49
know that's evil isn't it but but it's love as well so I understand that the complexities of all of that what I can't
00:28:55
understand is what role God is playing in any of
00:29:00
this stuff and yeah I was I was religious until I was 18 and then I
00:29:05
think I I fell down a rabbit hole listening to like Richard Dawkins and some of the others and Sam Harris and it
00:29:12
left me in a position where I would probably Define myself as being agnostic but there's still this big question mark
00:29:18
which hangs above my life which is like where did where did human life come from
00:29:24
and is there is it possible that it just didn't come from anyone is it possible that there was a big bang you know at
00:29:32
the very start of all of this it caused lots of reactions one such reaction was
00:29:38
fusing some chemicals which fused in the right order over millions and millions of years and it started to move in a way
00:29:45
that like plants can't move and that then LED rise to the sort of evolutionary process and now here I am
00:29:52
and my brain was just bigger 200,000 years ago than the other monkeys so now
00:29:57
that I've develop this thing called conscious where I can think about things and here I am trying to figure it all
00:30:03
out now that I have this bigger brain thanks to wian evolution is that is that
00:30:08
the game and it's and you know when people hear me say that they probably think oh you know the the natural
00:30:14
reaction to that is because it threatens your sense of like purpose and belonging
00:30:19
and it threatens Justice your natural reaction to that is no I hope it's not and so let me think of ways that that
00:30:24
can't possibly be true but I'm I'm not tempted by that I'm tempted by figuring out what's true irrespective of how warm
00:30:31
and fuzzy it is MH and um I still don't know but I'm hoping
00:30:38
science has some answers for me well yeah sorry to disappoint right now the
00:30:44
the the connection that logical chain that you that you produced has a lot of so-called missing links but I you said
00:30:51
something that's very interesting to be you said you consider yourself an agnostic it sounds like in other words it sounds to me like you're more you're
00:30:57
doing things that an atheist does like you're not going to church you're not um you know observing mass or whatever you
00:31:03
would do if you're but what do you do do do and they because if you're an agnostic there should be some Behavior
00:31:10
that's similar to a theist why because then you're just an atheist right I mean
00:31:15
in other words how do you what practices I'm a behaviorist in in in my life you know so I judge people on how they act
00:31:21
and how they behave and and you know a lot about this so how do you do you behave as if there could be a god do you
00:31:27
you said maybe you want science to explain it you didn't say like I would like to have a personal revelation from
00:31:34
Jesus I I would like to encounter him or whatever V I don't care what religion is
00:31:39
but how do you in practice live your life such that if God does exist that that it would make a difference in the
00:31:46
way that you're perceived or judged if you will yeah well I I I don't because I guess I don't know what I don't know
00:31:52
what practice because I don't know what God exists or what story is true I don't know what practice is true do you think
00:31:58
of god let's say you were um Hindu right yeah let's say let's say you're not Hindu let's say you are what you are
00:32:04
Presbyterian or the Church of if I had a practice wouldn't that make me religious well I'm saying do you think if there is
00:32:10
a God we have to do this Matrix right we have to say God exists God doesn't exist even behaves like he's religious Steph
00:32:15
doesn't behave like he's religious right so right now you're in one of those quadrants you you're not sure God exists
00:32:21
um so you're behaving maybe as if he doesn't exist and I'm asking you and now he could exist or he could not exist so
00:32:27
imagine you move into another quadrant you say I'm going to behave like I'm Hindu or come down to my temple in San Diego whatever you're going to behave in
00:32:33
some religion do you think if God exists he's GNA say oh God Stephen you picked
00:32:39
the wrong one it's not it's not uh it's it's jism it's it's um it's whatever it's it's um it's um uh Latter-Day Saint
00:32:47
I I don't think I think a revolutionary statement I think God has common sense if he exists if he doesn't exist it
00:32:53
doesn't matter what you do right but if God exists he must have common sense meaning that if you make make an Earnest
00:32:58
attempt to understand or at least engage yourself religiously not believe and force yourself to believe not make
00:33:04
excuses for evil that happens in the world or cancer for kids but if you behave in a certain way I don't think if
00:33:09
God exists big if you'll be judged harshly I this is exactly the conclusion that stopped me being religious when I
00:33:15
was 18 really yes exact conclusion because so we'd go to um church every
00:33:21
week we grew up going to church read the Bible all of those things and then I
00:33:26
when I was younger I was operating under the assumption that I was going to go to hell and burn if I didn't like obey this this person in the sky then I read these
00:33:33
books I St Richard Dawkins books and a bunch of other books on the subject
00:33:38
matter and I heard that God was omnipotent and omniscient which makes a lot of sense because if you create this
00:33:44
world and you can you know you're you're active in it you must be pretty powerful and pretty knowing and then I concluded
00:33:51
that if I basically concluded God would have common sense and I thought he would understand that I'm struggling and he
00:33:57
would understand that as long as I live a good life and I'm not murdering people and I'm not mean to people and I'm kind
00:34:03
and I'm respectful to people and I'm a net positive on the earth then if Heaven does exist any God that I would want to
00:34:10
support anyway would let me in and he would understand that I didn't have enough information to to put my flag in
00:34:15
any particular religion so he would let me in so my my thesis then became well just be a good person and you're kind of
00:34:22
hedging your best because any decent God that's I think worth supporting would go that was a decent person he couldn't
00:34:28
quite see it you know whatever but but you wouldn't see it a little I sorry to push back but if you if you let's say I
00:34:35
say I want to get in shape Stephen and and yeah I deserve it got kids you know I want to be healthy live a long life
00:34:40
but you see me eating you know I wouldn't eat cheeseburgers kosher but hamburgers french fries you know just
00:34:46
just and I'm say well like you know whatever we'll understand like I in
00:34:51
other words you you would agree that if you knew God exists you would do you would behave very radically different L
00:34:58
right if if I if you had an encounter with god well Jesus or or God himself
00:35:04
right it depends if I knew for sure that he existed and a particular book and
00:35:10
Doctrine was correct I would 100% behave in line with that book IND Doctrine but if I knew he existed but I didn't know
00:35:16
which book was correct then I probably would behave exactly how I do now so because the behavior the practice
00:35:23
the Sabbath comes from one of those books or doctrines so right but but even if you couldn't choose right what if
00:35:30
it's like um what if it's possible that all of them are right and all of them are wrong in other words you um we are
00:35:38
so frail fragile and and and inadequate to the task of understanding what the true nature of God is that he made it
00:35:45
such that again I'm not saying this is true but but it made it possible that there would be ways of interpretation
00:35:51
for how he existed right like I as a Jew don't believe in Jesus's Divinity right but I don't I don't fult my friends
00:35:57
friends you know jbot a CH I don't fault him I don't in fact I think it's beautiful that that's his Avenue for
00:36:02
worship he believes that Jesus died for his personal sins now you would admit that you would have uh Jesus will still
00:36:09
die for your sin or you know he did die for your sins if you're an Axe Murderer you know so I just think that level of
00:36:14
saying it's um as long as I don't murder anybody you know it's like me saying well you know if I'm destined to get
00:36:20
into shape I'll get in shape you know my metabolism will work it out without me taking this the the serious action and
00:36:27
working hard because you do it in your rest of your life right and I'm not by the way I'm not prosing it's actually forbidden in My Religion I'm not Pros
00:36:33
but but the but that concept of God is uh that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe
00:36:38
in I also don't believe in that like he's omniscient he's gonna prevent you know babies from dying from caner he's
00:36:44
going to do this or that like that's where they make fun of it um or they they they relegate it to the a friend in
00:36:49
the sky you called it right I I don't believe there's a friend in the sky I don't think that even makes sense um but
00:36:55
I believe that we are seeing something so heavily refracted again if it exists
00:37:00
it's it's like uh showing a microwave telescope you know showing bicep or the Simon's Observatory uh to you know Gog
00:37:08
who lived in a cave 200,000 years ago like there's no way to get from there to here but that doesn't mean like there
00:37:14
isn't an ultimate there an Ultimate here for me I I let me just say the final thing I want to say because I don't want
00:37:20
to make too much about this but but um there's a value in practicing even if you don't believe just like I say
00:37:27
sometimes like even if you got divorced like you should still get married because it changes you and it opens you up to the full panoply of human
00:37:33
experience that a lot of people don't get to experience and when people have the capacity the capability to do it
00:37:39
they should in my opinion uh by the way I'm not advocated to get divorced either but but the point being uh you obviously
00:37:45
wrestle with it and and um interestingly enough the word Israel which is the central you know country of of judaic
00:37:52
faith means fight with God it means wrestle with God L is God Israel means fight so how do you wrestle with it do
00:37:59
you wrestle with it do you think about it or do you say you know I'm not going to read these books that I read before I
00:38:04
was 18 because it seems so childish to me now and so I I do I certainly wrestle
00:38:09
with it so when I say wrestle with it not in a way that is causing me any pain or Agony or deep frustration but
00:38:18
it's it's yeah it's a recurring thought and I actually think from doing this podcast and just um like maybe growing
00:38:26
up and uh the journey I've been on I have more questions now than I ever have
00:38:34
since I became agnostic at 18 so I have more questions now it's funny I've been on this bit of an arc where I was certain when I was younger that God was
00:38:40
real and then I was really um certain that the god I believed in probably
00:38:46
wasn't real and now i' kind of find myself going back to a position where I'm like almost like I'm starting the
00:38:52
research project again to figure out what actually is what actually is real I
00:38:57
sometimes wonder if I'm looking for the wrong thing cuz I think because we've been so sort of indoctrinated into this idea that it is a man in the sky and all
00:39:04
these the white beard and stuff so we're like looking for evidence of that but maybe I should be searching for evidence of something else is it like a feeling
00:39:11
I'm searching for is it it's interesting that you said that it REM reminds me of Einstein Einstein said um he never asked
00:39:17
his father what would happen daddy if I was traveling at the speed of light and I looked at myself in a mirror and he
00:39:23
said it was good I didn't ask those questions when I was five because my dad would have given me this standard answer
00:39:28
of the 1800s which was you know you see a reflect or whatever and then Einstein said I would have just accepted that and
00:39:34
then I would never have gone on to create the theory of relativity what you said Echoes what he said because if you
00:39:39
if you had asked these questions and just accepted the belief that you had when you were 12 you would not be approaching them with the maturity of a
00:39:45
Steven Bartlett at age 32 right and now you have this perspective you have a wisdom that you've accured from your
00:39:52
life experiences from the the millions of people that you've helped around the world to expose them to different things
00:39:57
and you're on a journey yourself so anyway I I I just I don't so I don't have tolerance for scientists that
00:40:03
dismiss it and say it's stupid and I'm like but I also I I I find that religious people are too comfortable
00:40:09
saying everything is described by God everything happens because of God and I see this a lot with religious children
00:40:15
um sometimes I'll go into kids school and teach them uh you know about science I'll bring these you know props and stuff uh but when I talk to them
00:40:22
sometimes I'll say like oh look there's a rainbow over there oh that's great where did it come from they'll say God made it
00:40:28
I think that's I joke that's a form of child abuse you know if you just say that God made it you're a completely
00:40:34
ignorant about the science but B you're also diminishing God's power right if you say No actually that's an effect of
00:40:41
of water droplets which are formed hydrogen oxygen and here's their chemistry and here's how they form uh
00:40:47
different state of matter when they're in Collective and here's how that causes light to defract at different
00:40:52
wavelengths and here's wavelength electromagnetic radiation where does that come and you keep asking the question why why why why only when you
00:40:58
get to the question the answer the final answer I don't know that's the only time I would say Okay God could come in there
00:41:05
but that takes you back you know that whole chain of refraction of light of dialectric material of of of wavelengths
00:41:11
of of color all that that takes you back till almost to the Big Bang which then intersects with what I do you said um
00:41:18
that you think of God as almost like a force do you think it's a conscious Force I if you if I sit down and pray to
00:41:26
this God will they hear me I honestly kid say I don't know but I know that
00:41:32
you'll change I know that you'll hear yourself okay if you can go down to the ocean student if you can go down to the
00:41:37
Pacific Ocean and just be isolated and just pour yourself out for an hour I guarantee it will change your life you
00:41:44
will be in tears but no one will see you that's the thing that's why you have to be alone you cannot do it with any other person you must do it on your own
00:41:50
because there's no Sam Harris meditation waking up app it's not going to do the same for you as as just you alone and
00:41:58
not knowing is part of the point I think but what's that got to do with God what's me going down to the beach and pouring my heart out which would get me
00:42:04
into my amigdala it'll get me thinking about you know it'll make me emotional I can imagine you know even listening to certain music can make you feel that
00:42:11
what what role is God playing in in that moment because if God exists I do
00:42:17
believe that he's inside of you and that you can connect with him again you can't detect him with an MRI machine or you
00:42:24
can't detect him with a laser but you know can if again it's a big if I'm not guaranteeing you know I'm sorry to
00:42:30
disappoint I'm not that kind of doctor you know I I can't give you a prescription that'll make you believe
00:42:35
but to have access to it you have to be open to a communication right imagine you got you know a a you know an email
00:42:42
and you just never respond to it like people remember the movie Interstellar You' seen that movie so uh there you
00:42:47
know the the people on Earth are communicating with the people you know Matthew mcc's daughter and she she doesn't know if he's listening he
00:42:53
doesn't and he knows that she's but in that sense he's kind of like this like he has knowledge that she doesn't have
00:42:59
but if she doesn't try maybe she wouldn't maybe just the aspect of trying the attribute of trying is what opened
00:43:06
her up to that return signal the communication that she eventually received so interesting because when I
00:43:11
asked the question about can God hear me and if he can hear me I guess the second question is can he do anything about
00:43:17
what he's hearing um there's so much evidence in the world that he can't hear you and
00:43:23
he's not going to do anything about it but again you say that but like what if uh you know know who knows if if you're
00:43:29
if your parents you know like they were a lot of the stories in the early in Testament are about sterile Barren women
00:43:36
that couldn't conceive you know from Sarah Rebecca to to Rachel all these
00:43:42
women they couldn't conceive they cried out they they prayed and again women are closer to God in many ways because they contain life within them um again in
00:43:50
what sense are you not already the recipient of the beneficence of
00:43:55
something that we just don't understand like potentially yeah but but but when I ask this question about like could I if
00:44:01
I pray is it going to influence my outcomes in any way you know there's a I don't believe it does I I I don't
00:44:07
believe it does for the reason I said before like people were praying here for the Dodgers I'm sure there were equally virtuous people praying for the an
00:44:13
that's what I mean if you think about the scientific method that's why I said I don't we could we could apply that and say does prayer work right and you could
00:44:19
get I don't know look through history at the Holocaust or look at some other world natural disaster and think it has
00:44:25
praying swayed the the probabilities of bad things happening to people so I don't believe that at all but I do
00:44:30
believe that fundamentally a a person who believes that their um that their
00:44:37
actions have some impact will feel at least a sense of gratitude let me let me give you an example you're familiar in
00:44:44
Christianity you know people say a blessing before the meal like grace before a meal so in Judaism you do that
00:44:49
before the meal after the meal sometimes during the meal uh but the point is the more you Express gratitude you you
00:44:55
cannot be a happy person and be being an ingrate Yeah the more you're grateful for like the sound of you know of of you
00:45:04
know a song that is just so meaningful to you the sight of a painting or a sunset the more that you're s and in
00:45:10
Judaism we say blessings for those things like we say if we see a meteor shower we say a blessing it's hard for
00:45:16
me as an astronomer you got to say blessing a rainbow another thing those are like kind of things we become desensitized to in life and we just take
00:45:23
for granted when you taste a a fine wine or you taste you know some delicious food again it could just be chlorophyll
00:45:30
here's Stephen have here's your plate of agar gum like okay great I could live here's whey powder that's all you ever
00:45:37
get to eat and you'd be like this sucks I know what I'm Ahad and if I could only go back to it after I get out you know
00:45:42
of the situation I'm going to be so grateful to me that grateful gratitude connects to the ultimate source of that
00:45:49
provided that we can't understand it's true I cannot give you and I told you I have problems with prayer because I
00:45:55
don't like to be told what to do I don't like to be told I have to say this in this order stand up sit down fast on
00:46:00
this day do this thing not eat that delicious pink guy with the curly tail like but when you do that you know this
00:46:06
the more you're disciplined the happier your life is you know who's who's more happy the guy who eats everything he
00:46:13
wants or Joo you know like the the the person who just gives into all their Temptations of alcohol the person who
00:46:19
abstains and and elevates what they do and I think we want to elevate ourselves above the level of an animal of the
00:46:26
animals but I can have all those behaviors of like a gratitude practice I can have a meditation practice I go down to the beach I can do all of those
00:46:32
things and I still I can still do all of those things without the need of a god oh sure and I'll get all the benefits of
00:46:39
those things I'd get when I when I Express gratitude before I eat or sometimes when I'm getting on a plane
00:46:44
and I I I touch the plane to remind myself and I can always make myself emotional just thinking about how remarkable it is that I get to do some
00:46:50
of the things I've been able to do in my life to the point of like physical emotion yeah um but without the presence
00:46:56
of of needing to equate that to a god in any way so I'm I'm trying to find I guess
00:47:04
I'm searching for where God fits in all of this why why is why is God why is a god required is it just because I have
00:47:09
so many blessings that I should be thankful to someone for these things which I do contem with I go okay and let me think about how my life has changed
00:47:15
in the last 10 years of you know from going from some of those shoplifting pizzas to sitting here and getting to do these it's it's remarkable you you start
00:47:22
to think you're a little bit in the Treeman show if you're not if you think about it too deeply but um and you do feel you think who do I thank for this
00:47:28
so you think do I thank my parents like right do I thank myself so you do I thank a god um but I but is that the
00:47:36
reason it just to just just to be thankful but then I go there's a bias there because there's kids in the town
00:47:42
in Botana that I was born in that are still in the town in Botswana that I was born in and they're not doing so good so
00:47:48
they do they have did God not like them did and then if you go no God likes both of you then I go okay well then God
00:47:54
isn't responsible for this it was something that I did or my parents did that responsible for this so I should thank them so where does God fit again
00:47:59
and I just go around in these loops and I go I don't know what are we trying to create a God to make sense of the things
00:48:06
we feel and the experiences we have and the baby that grabs our finger and the
00:48:11
Gratitude and the the the the solar eclipse and the the sunset are we trying to trying to give that to someone
00:48:18
because it's just so the a is just so much or did God give that to
00:48:23
us well I mean the perspective that you're bringing is obviously you've thought about this a lot and obviously
00:48:30
your attitude is healthy and I think that you have you know unbalanced I think yeah obviously living as a a good
00:48:36
life even if you I'd never say that an atheist can't be a good person or can't be happy or any of these things the
00:48:42
question is what where does it augment and affect your life like for example I
00:48:47
don't know if I would give 10% of my income to charity before tax income to charity if I if it wasn't a commandment
00:48:55
in My Religion but I don't shame for that I don't feel like oh you needed religion to tell you this because again
00:49:00
I'm still searching just as much as I think that you are I don't feel like uh as untroubled by the answers of it right
00:49:07
I don't feel like that not knowing for sure that God exists which I don't believe is possible anyway that that
00:49:15
should be an impediment to me practicing giving charity being in a community um
00:49:21
uh raising my kids with an appreciation of their history and their culture um and and just the contrib R butions of
00:49:27
their religion of your religion whatever to to the world so if you found out from this new project that you've you've
00:49:33
launched this 2 million $200 million project that you've launched to figure out the existence of I guess where the
00:49:40
not the existence but the origin of the universe the origin of life if you found out unequivocally that God isn't real
00:49:47
convinces you to the point that you now believe that God is not the creator of the universe and that I don't know you
00:49:54
figure out some other way we can create universes in little Labs maybe a thousand years from now we can create our own little universes from nothing
00:50:00
somehow or we find out we're in simulation yeah whatever yes exactly how does that change
00:50:05
you because I'm a behaviorist I I I don't I really don't
00:50:11
feel like my life would be better to act as if God doesn't exist in other words
00:50:17
if I know God doesn't exist then I'm gonna act like he doesn't exist right that's a logical assumption yeah right
00:50:23
so I'm going to stop giving charity like is that going to make me happy in life is that going to benefit Society or my
00:50:29
or you know Zeus or whatever doesn't exist like I already know that's not true right so I've kind of done this
00:50:35
experiment like all these other gods I know I don't believe in raah you know a so you wouldn't do anything differently
00:50:41
benefits to my life are so substantive that I would not change my behavior but
00:50:47
you you're being guided then by your be your behavior and the rewards from Behavior which is pretty much my life
00:50:54
yeah well okay so right the breath work and the meditation I'm being Guided by like if gratitude feels good I do it if going down to the beach feels good I do
00:51:00
it if having a baby feels good I'll do it you know so like it could be dangerous to Dev add God to my life or
00:51:05
take it away my behaviors are going to be the same because I'm I'm being Guided by the things that are making me feel
00:51:12
good but I don't think so you're not like those hidden istic Instagram influencers no because that would make
00:51:17
me feel good like a donut I've run the experiment and eating the donut makes me feel okay for the time it's touching my
00:51:22
tongue but then bad for 12 hours when my gut starts reacting badly so I don't do
00:51:28
that anymore well let me ask you this question so if they found out that uh working out is uh eventually it's it's
00:51:34
actually going to shorten your life or it's going to do the opposite of what you're intending it to do necessarily would you keep working
00:51:41
out how much is it going to short My Life by um every uh every uh you know ab
00:51:48
crunch you do every bench press takes a an hour off your life or something or a couple minutes off your life oo this
00:51:54
it's an interesting one um I would probably
00:52:00
live 10 years less to live like 10 years better like to have a
00:52:07
better health span so I Pro if you told me I was going to live to aund 100 with without working out or I could live to
00:52:12
90 but I'm going to be strong and fit for those 90 years I'll take the 90 years so in my analogy that's exactly
00:52:18
right so I feel like that level of of perfecting or enjoyment and the Ary
00:52:26
benefits of gratitude uh and and happiness that I've received tangibly you cannot convince me
00:52:33
as I can't convince you that working out feels I couldn't convince you working out is bad it feels bad for you it does
00:52:38
something to you physically mentally emotionally um I won't say spiritually but for me to see the benefits to see
00:52:45
the things that I've seen like like look Stephen I've buried my father okay and
00:52:51
in in Judaism one of the core tenants is that it's the highest it's sort of the highest Mitzvah it's the highest
00:52:57
commandment to take care of someone who's died why because they can't reciprocate most of what we do in life
00:53:03
we have some kind of contract you know we play by the rules we do things nicely we have contractors we invest in
00:53:08
Dragon's Den whatever we're going to get some there's nothing good there's nothing that will come out of it that
00:53:14
will benefit you I've seen things I've seen people that are saints that I can't
00:53:21
aspire to even be in their presence of but it's made my life better I wouldn't
00:53:26
Chang the things that I've done or seen and you couldn't convince me it wasn't good for me and as I said before maybe
00:53:32
you think I'm weak but I wouldn't have done it if I didn't feel it was commanded to me you you mentioned the
00:53:39
word simulation yeah a second ago this is something that I've been thinking a lot
00:53:45
about what is just for people that don't know what is the simulation Theory and
00:53:51
are we living in a simulation great question so the simulation Theory was really conjectured
00:53:57
by a British philosopher or he's actually Swedish or I believe Nick Bostrom he conjectured the following he
00:54:04
said compute is getting so phenomenally powerful in just our recent time Horizon
00:54:10
so the notion that Nick and others had proposed is that if this is extrapolated indefinitely into the future whether or
00:54:17
not that can happen is a question about planetary resources you know part of the reason Elon wants to go to Mars and I do
00:54:22
want to talk to you about Mars in a bit um and that uh that extrapolation leads
00:54:27
in exra Le to the to the conclusion that compute will be effectively free and
00:54:33
it'll be infinite it'll be completely democra democratized it will be completely demonetized it will be almost
00:54:40
you know as I said too cheap to to to measure the expense of computing and it'll be everywhere uh in just a short
00:54:46
amount of time I mean remember the the phone that we have uh the iPad that you're using these are like these things
00:54:52
would literally be a mythological witchcraft you know 80 years ago and now
00:54:57
they're they're in common place and so the the notion that Nick proposed Boston proposed is that that Trend continues
00:55:04
into the future that basically the capability of those computers would be to be able to model entire planets
00:55:11
entire ecosystems even cultures communities maybe even people themselves
00:55:16
so we let's take a parallel um uh DeTour for just a bit you're not seeing me
00:55:24
necessarily you're seeing photons are coming into your retinas right photons are packets of energy form of light they
00:55:30
travel at the speed of light they have different wavelengths the wavelengths we call color they're going into your uh
00:55:35
cornea getting bent a little bit then they're going to your lens getting bent more then they're going to your retina and they're getting detected on this
00:55:42
basically uh a detector just like a a sensor in a camera which has pixels except it has trillions of pixels
00:55:48
instead of millions of megapixel or few megapixels and those are being transduced the color gets transduced on
00:55:55
on cells that are called con cells the intensity is Rod cells um and and those are getting transduced into electrical
00:56:01
impulses that go from the uh optic nerve right into your brain and remember Andrew hin told you on the show The
00:56:07
Retina is the only part of the human brain that's outside of the cranium it's outside of the skull um and so it's a
00:56:12
part of your brain that's outside so it transduces it makes electrical impulses those electrical impulses then get
00:56:18
conducted like wires conducting electricity uh and then those go into your brain and synapses in your brain
00:56:24
and the neural Pathways in your brain can reproduce those now you have an apple Vision Pro I think I I saw you
00:56:30
with once um so that can you know kind of simulate it could make very accurate representation of me holographic perhaps
00:56:37
and you would want to reach out and touch me now imagine instead of just uh instead of just the um just the raw chem
00:56:45
the physical Electronics of a of a headset Apple Vision Pro you just inject the electrical signals into the brain so
00:56:52
that's plausible it's it's just purely physical material processes uh photons converted to electrons get converted to
00:56:59
neuron signals get processed in the brain and so all you have to do is get that input sensory input you can have a
00:57:04
digital retina a fake retina and you stimulate it goes into your brain they're working on that same with sound
00:57:09
sound is even easier you put a little speaker in your ear and you'd hear um but uh so the notion is that we could
00:57:16
physically just be disconnected brains in a vat right we could just be uh in in
00:57:21
this vast system just Bunches of brains don't ask how they got there but we're all just receiving stimuli and we're
00:57:28
just being fed I'm being fed an image of you over there you're being fed an image of me over here I don't know why nobody
00:57:33
knows why this would occur but the computing power is there if you think that the Apple Vision Pro if if you were
00:57:39
alive in 1971 uh you could not have necessarily predicted the Apple Vision Pro it was
00:57:44
too far Advanced from from what we have right from what we had at that point in time but imagine it just keeps
00:57:49
increasing at any rate you like eventually there'll be a point where every bit of information every atom in
00:57:56
the universe every Photon in the universe could theoretically be simulated again I don't know why this is
00:58:02
but it would be indistinguishable from our reality according to people like Nick Bostrom and others that suggests
00:58:09
this is so so that our existence is we are essentially in a simulation so the notion is that we're
00:58:15
all these characters in this literal simulation run on some computering
00:58:21
device some Hardware device that we don't necessarily understand at this point and we're calling that God well
00:58:28
that was I was going to get to uh So eventually you get to a point where if you could simulate everything then you
00:58:34
would have to ask there must be some simulator right there must be some master simulator so let's say I'm a
00:58:41
simulation well who simulated me and then oh who simulated them and then who simulated them so that's the recursion
00:58:47
that's infinite regress you can't actually get to a base level of um you know a final simulator and if you did it
00:58:54
would kind of be like God like you're talking about this brain in a jar that's created out of silicon and and and
00:58:59
oxygen and whatever we're made of but it's physically created by human beings what if you can't pay the power bill
00:59:04
that week and um you know you have to choose between unplugging your refrigerator or unplugging the brain like is that killing something you know
00:59:11
like it starts to enter into the realm of ethics and maybe even these concepts of a deity what I've heard and I find
00:59:19
quite plausible is um remember I said the the implication of having infinite
00:59:25
Compu is that you can simulate everything in the universe yeah uh but can it simulate itself so I want to
00:59:31
digress into what's called complexity Theory there are two different types of of difficult things there's like a
00:59:37
complex thing like building an Airbus 320 it's very complicated right you can
00:59:44
do it if I give you all the parts all the instructions give you the right order and I keep you energized like
00:59:49
anybody can follow the instructions and make it the Earth's weather pattern state right now is complex there's
00:59:56
there's no way that you can actually create that like you would need another plane sized thing to create that that's
01:00:02
called irreducibly complex you cannot make it simpler and then Build It Up from simpler and simpler things unlike
01:00:08
an Airbus you can build it up from smaller and smaller parts and as long as you follow the recipe you know if you follow the recipe for the Simon
01:00:14
Observatory you'll get the Simon's Observatory but if you try to simulate and it may be the simulate the weather
01:00:20
you do need another planet like we' need another planet just like the Earth and then we'd introduce carbon dioxide as
01:00:26
certain rate and we see is it really going to cause it like that's totally impractical right so the question of
01:00:31
these things is um is it really a simulation if it's not 100% like you
01:00:37
could make a very very good weather simulation we do have that uh but but famously they're only accurate for a few
01:00:42
days right so so how do you build up you know an accurate simulator it have to be the same so in other words do we need
01:00:49
like another is there another Universe where the simulators are that's equally complex to the simulation creation that
01:00:55
they made and then did they stop like did they get are they made of silica are they artificial are they so there are
01:01:02
proposals that you could detect the presence it's kind of like you mentioned the chman show where how all computers
01:01:09
work right now is is on this binary code zeros and ones five volts zero volts um
01:01:16
but um and that means that the world is fundamentally discretized it's broken into little chunks like the screen on
01:01:21
your computer or your iPad it's pixelated in space we call called voxels volume elements um and so you can um you
01:01:30
can have an a large number of them but it's a big difference between a large number and infinity to really have a
01:01:36
continuous like like um temperature is continuous like go from 0 degrees to 100 degrees and there's every step in
01:01:43
between but in the simulated world because you couldn't have you need an infinite number of computer power to
01:01:50
simulate just from 0 degrees to one degree not let alone from 0 to 100 or every possible combination
01:01:56
so at some level you you'd see if you zoomed in really close on the on the thermometer you'd see there's a little
01:02:01
jump so you could detect the presence of the simulator it's more complicated actually it's done using astrophysical
01:02:07
sources called Gamay burst and other things that are um that have properties that are seemingly incompatible with
01:02:13
their being a simulation at the most distant and therefore earliest moments in the universe so right now there's zero evidence for it Nick Bost will tell
01:02:20
you and you should have them on uh that that you know that that's basically a copout and and there are ways around
01:02:26
that that uh that fail safe mechanism aliens do aliens
01:02:33
exist yes aliens do exist uh there's an old joke they're called hungarians
01:02:39
hungarians are there's so many countries um so I I yes there's all joke there are
01:02:44
aliens they're Klingons and they're around Uranus but I wanted to give this to you Stephen as one of the gifts I've
01:02:49
brought for you today this is some soap for you this is soap Uranus soap it's Uranus soap so you want to keep Uranus
01:02:55
clean um thank you so much in all seriousness uh there's no evidence for
01:03:00
aliens there's no there's what's I call possibility does not equal probability
01:03:07
the existence of so many stars in the universe means there's so many planets which is true we found almost every single star has maybe 10 planets around
01:03:14
it and we have a 100 billion in our galaxy alone there's a 100 billion galaxies in our universe we're talking a
01:03:21
one with 24 zeros after it that's how many planets there are in the observable universe planets planets people say that
01:03:29
means that it's got to be life in the universe no it doesn't mean anything there could be uh so many hurdles for
01:03:36
life to get started let alone to create complex technology producing life like us that we're essentially we're it and
01:03:44
I'm not saying we are it but I'm saying there's been 0.00% evidence that life exists beyond
01:03:50
the earth I know you've had Lou alzando on U the claims that he's making are controversial they're not scientific
01:03:57
they're government I'm not dismissing his experiences of people he talks about they're not persuasive they're not
01:04:03
addressing fundamental characteristics the universe is vaster than you or I can
01:04:09
comprehend you know if this was our solar system the nearest star would be like near in San Diego there's almost no
01:04:16
way for us to comprehend how enormous our solar our universe is let alone how
01:04:21
vast the cosmos is how much of it can we see we can see technically we can see a
01:04:26
lot of the universe but most of that is way before even molecules formed in other words there's no possibility of
01:04:32
life let's restrict ourselves to the Milky Way galaxy which is the only Galaxy we'll ever be able to explore Etc
01:04:38
at least unless we invent Wormhole travel like Interstellar uh but but for now we have sent probes the farthest
01:04:45
probe we've ever sent was launched in 1977 it's one light day away from the
01:04:52
earth okay so that means traveling at the speed of light the fastest speed possible which is how much miles an hour
01:04:57
186,000 m per second 300,000 km per second it's only quote it's only gone
01:05:03
one light day away the nearest star is 1,200 times farther away than that it's
01:05:09
four light years away so it'll never get to that other star I mean it took and it took 50 years to get one light day so it
01:05:16
need 1,200 times 50 years call it 100 so you're talking like vast numbers of of Millennia to get to the nearest star and
01:05:23
that star we don't even know if it has on it or not and it's not actually going to that star but the point is the UN the
01:05:29
Galaxy itself is so large and the types of environments in which life can take hold are so so precarious it's it's
01:05:37
actually we we tell ourselves a story like you said with molecules and then they start to evolve and then they get
01:05:42
it's it's really not known how life got created it's not known how life came from non-living material from hydrogen
01:05:50
helium oxygen how that turned into a cell it's a it's a vast Challen
01:05:55
challenge in what's called organic uh synthetic organic chemistry and the formation origin of Life uh and then to
01:06:01
say that those entities then evolved into some kind of technologically produced know if we found a dinosaur on
01:06:08
Mars that would be the the discovery of the of the UN of the history of the planet of of all time right a or
01:06:15
whatever even a bacterium on Mars there would be an incredible Discovery so some
01:06:20
people try to defeat this notion and say well life didn't have to necessarily uh
01:06:26
get started in all these planets it could have started once and then get brought to those other planets through
01:06:32
meteorites yeah this was actually created this theory was created by the same Fred Hoy who came up with the Big Bang Theory they called it panspermia
01:06:40
sounds dirty but it's not so these meteorites could carry genetic material and they could land on another planet
01:06:47
they could have landed on Earth that's one theory that life on Earth originated from another planet that had life on it
01:06:55
and in fact this is one of your lovely pardon gifts um this is what Elon will
01:07:02
kill for I'm going to give you something that Elon doesn't have this is a piece of
01:07:08
Mars This is a real piece of Mars it's 1.52 four gram of another planet I want
01:07:15
you to touch it you can see it's a little bit reddish like the planet Mars This is much better than the butt soap
01:07:22
you gave me I gave you a piece of Uranus and a piece of Mars here's some information about it I give
01:07:27
out as I said these meteorites on my website Brian king.com to Lucky winners each month and I give out the
01:07:33
information this was found in Africa and how did it get here well a
01:07:39
meteorite hit the planet Mars shattered off debris that debris orbited around
01:07:47
Mars for millions of years perhaps eventually had plowed into the Earth and
01:07:52
landed in Africa they found it they said
01:07:57
this they knew it came from space they analyzed it it has the same chemical composition molecular structure as the
01:08:04
Landers that are on Mars right now measure for Mars so we know 100% that's for Mars it's incredible so Elon is
01:08:12
desperately trying to get there that's your little piece please than keep it keep it safe and that's one way that
01:08:20
life could have gotten to Mars from the Earth right the same thing happens on the earth as happened to Mars so it
01:08:26
could have hit uh Earth blasted off um some amibas some orcas some kangaroo
01:08:32
whatever and whatever was on the earth at the time and then eventually landed on Mars with the DNA of it but it didn't
01:08:38
take hold right so planets exchange DNA it is possible but we don't see Life on
01:08:44
Mars if we think about this table yeah um give to put in context how big the universe is if the universe was the size
01:08:51
of this table how big would Earth be on this table uh incomprehensive sensibly small not even a grain of sand no no not
01:08:58
far far small fraction Even in our galaxy it wouldn't be a grain of sand even if this were our galaxy wouldn't be a grain of
01:09:04
sand no no no our solar our whole solar system would be perhaps yes one grain of
01:09:10
sand If This Were a Milky Way galaxy which is 100,000 light years across it
01:09:15
would be like one tiny little grain of sand what would be of the solar system out to the planet Neptune so the what's
01:09:22
that 10 planets what something well we have uh there's eight planets in our solar system including the Earth used to be nine but Pluto is no longer a planet
01:09:28
um so and we're about onethird of the way from the edge of the disc of the Milky Way so traveling all across there
01:09:34
yes we would be perhaps the entire solar system actually smaller than maybe half a grain of sand and can we travel to the
01:09:40
end of the solar system well we sent uh this object it's gone well beyond it so the edge of the solar system is about
01:09:45
four light hours so we in 50 years Stephen we've only gone quote and I'm
01:09:50
not D this is a historic accomplishment we actually put on these on these spacecrafts
01:09:56
um digitize pictures of human life of voices of songs from every continent of
01:10:02
culture of recipes of laughter of children crying of babies they put this called the Golden Disc Carl Sean was
01:10:09
responsible for this and they mounted it to it and it's now uh well as I said 24 light hours away and the farthest edge
01:10:16
of our solar system the planet Neptune is is four light hours sorry 24 light hours is the Voyager spacecraft so we've
01:10:22
only gone one six of we've gone only six times the diameter of our solar system so our entire solar system would be a
01:10:28
grain of sand on this table less even yeah about half a grain yeah half a grain of sand on this this table this table is about 2 and a half met roughly
01:10:35
big and how many tables are there that's a very good question we think at least
01:10:41
100 billion tables each one with 100 billion grains of sand there are more there are more
01:10:48
grains uh sorry there more stars in the entire universe that we can observe than
01:10:55
every grain of sand on every Beach on every continent on our
01:11:01
planet that's really wobbled in my head so there's our entire solar system is
01:11:08
half of grain of sand on this sort of 2 three meter Table and there are a hundred billion tables so you know when
01:11:15
you hear that you go okay we really don't matter like we're really it's it's so bizarre that we've fallen into the
01:11:20
Trap of believing that we're like important in any way and then that for me that even throws another Market
01:11:25
towards religion but the other thing it makes me go is surely there's got to be some other life
01:11:33
on one of these grains of sands on the hundred billion tables again the well let me just
01:11:39
address the first thing so um you're uh about 10
01:11:45
maybe 15 trillion times bigger than a virus or bacteria um can that bacteria affect you
01:11:52
or a virus hurt you of course it can so size doesn't really make that big a difference in this context right Jupiter
01:11:59
is a 100 times you know bigger in diameter than the earth does it make it more important I think the Earth is much
01:12:05
more important I like the earth a lot better um the sun is a hundred times bigger than Jupiter like would you like to live there so the point I'm trying to
01:12:12
make is size isn't really that important numberers not really that important and remember don't ever forget we're the
01:12:19
only conscious you know entity that we know about in the universe right there's
01:12:24
there's literally 70 different types of of primates right like monkeys you talked about before a bonobos arut none
01:12:31
of them have what we have none of them can have this probabilistically let me give you an example uh I've been to
01:12:38
Antarctica twice for bicep experiments when I go there Antarctica is the
01:12:43
seventh continent to be discovered on Earth it's approximately 12% of the land
01:12:48
mass of the Earth it's a huge enormous continent with extreme mountains weather
01:12:54
uh extreme cold but one thing it doesn't have as much life but if you did that same thing I said look Stephen there's
01:12:59
this continent you could hardly walk across it in you know five or six years even if you're a great athlete you know
01:13:05
people do it but you it would be very challenging to do it um it's enormous it's got all the support for life it's
01:13:11
got um hydrocarbons it's got heat it's got um rocks you can build shelter you can have water which the most important
01:13:18
thing how much life do you think is there let me just tell you Stephen there's uh it makes up 13% of the Earth's surface there's 8 billion people
01:13:24
on Earth how many how many people do you think live there I mean as a scientist you don't have to be a scientist you say I think there's probably you know maybe
01:13:30
800 million people there there's zero people there basically so just the probability I'm not saying it's
01:13:36
impossible probability is not determined by possibility because the the thing with
01:13:42
the South Pole is okay so there's no one there and if if you put me there and said is there life and I got a telescope out and I looked around I'd go there's
01:13:48
no life here I can't see anything I think I'd say I'm the only the only person here and then i' opposit meaning
01:13:54
to myself I'd say I must be really important I might think that I'm a God if if I'm the only life there I'd look
01:13:59
around I for miles and I'd walk for days and days and days and send out pigeons and whatever and I go there's no one
01:14:05
it's just me but then little do I know that although this little space is inhabitable if you go get on a plane and
01:14:11
go a little bit further you get to the land of the free right but what if we can't do that what if there's no plane
01:14:17
what if there's nothing what if this is all we have I think that a lot of the sightings and stuff I've interviewed the
01:14:24
top fighter pilot um you know in the world that claim to have witnessed these encounters um I've
01:14:29
um you know interviewed the top you know people that claim these things exist I've interviewed AI lob he's a good
01:14:36
friend at Harvard who runs a project he claims he's discovered material from uh Interstellar you know technology perhaps
01:14:43
like a Garbage barge that was floating throughout friend he's a very eminent scientist at no point do I ever
01:14:50
understand the fundamental answer to the question how did they get here
01:14:56
what properties what physics properties do they use you know they always say oh well they defy the laws of physics well
01:15:01
I'm a physicist you know I can understand some of the most deep physics you want um and by the way there are
01:15:06
many times in history where if I showed you something that was made by the US government you would say that is
01:15:12
witchcraft magic like the iPad thing you said iPad is just one thing you know that in the movie 2001 in Space Odyssey
01:15:19
do you know the by the way I have to tell you this uh if you don't know the word podcast do you know that comes from
01:15:24
the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey oh yeah I read the article for it was a yeah it
01:15:29
was an engineer at uh at uh who called it an iPod and the iPod came from the pod in 2001 so we owe podcast to 200 so
01:15:38
in that movie there are iPads they're guys communicating with iPad but they thought it was like technology of like
01:15:44
20 centuries from now no I'm talking about the technology it would take to make
01:15:50
traversable distances out of this incomprehensible Cosmos that talked about when you apply that thinking to
01:15:57
God it changes though because earlier you said we just can't fathom mhm we
01:16:02
can't fathom this Creator and the factors that would go into this Creator so we almost have to you know some
01:16:08
people just choose to believe right yeah and the same can be applied to this thinking of how they got here was like listen Maybe we don't know their
01:16:14
technology because it's just unfathomable like the iPod or the iPad was 100 years ago you're absolutely
01:16:20
right so if they're just a hundred years ahead of us technologically we would think that they were doing witchcraft we would we wouldn't understand the basis
01:16:25
of the technology that they used to travel here sure but uh people like Lou will talk about things that are exactly
01:16:32
um scientific claims one of the things in his book uh which I read he he hasn't come on my podcast I'd like to talk to
01:16:38
him but um he talks about these these craft and and the properties of them and how when you're inside of them they're
01:16:44
bigger than they are when you're outside of them um and how they affect and they they interact with human biology and
01:16:51
cause Burns and and so forth and the technology he's talking about it's not like some fifth force that I don't know
01:16:58
about it's using the properties of of general relativity of SpaceTime uh we do
01:17:04
know enough about these things whereas God you're right I'm not I'm not being um so so critical maybe when it comes to
01:17:10
this notion of God but remember I said I don't I don't have to say I believe in gravity or in string theory or whatever
01:17:17
we can have evidence for it so when they make claims that have to do with physics they should be tested by the laws of
01:17:22
physics when you talk about God saying I'm stipulating you can't test those with law with laws and therefore I can't
01:17:29
prove God exist despite how much I would like to or not like to so what do you think the probability is that we are
01:17:35
alone do you think we're alone in the universe I think it's very high you
01:17:40
think it's high I think it's very high that we're alone let me make an analogy um for us to be here we Earth had to
01:17:48
have the following circumstances happen we had to have can you pass me the Moon the Moon yeah and actually can you pass
01:17:55
the there's a globe behind you love to have that
01:18:01
perfect okay so I put here a globe and I put here the moon and these are almost
01:18:07
an exact ratio of size this is about how big the Moon is compared to the earth now originally before the moon didn't
01:18:14
exist when the Earth was was first formed the the Earth condensed out of a giant version of trillions and trillions
01:18:20
and trillions of tons of these meteoritic materials they sank to the bottom made the core of the earth the
01:18:25
earth earth's core is made of iron heavier lighter elements like carbon nitrogen oxygen they kind of accreted
01:18:31
onto it and eventually this super planet formed and that planet or the the early
01:18:37
Earth was called Thea and it was called that because eventually there was a planet the size of that give me that
01:18:42
beach ball please Ste a planet about this size maybe a little bit smaller just for people that are AR watching
01:18:48
yeah so there's a beach ball that's a little bit smaller than the globe that we're looking at it impacted this early Eartha blasted out material into the
01:18:56
solar system and over millions and millions of years some of that material condensed and formed the Moon the Moon
01:19:03
and then the Earth formed as we know it today uh now the Moon is 250,000 miles
01:19:09
away from the earth it's exactly at the right place in size that we have tides on the earth we have ocean tides four
01:19:15
times a day so right now I'm showing where high tide would be say where this part of the moon's uh gravity is pulling
01:19:20
on the ocean here so it rises it up that means that some of the tides on the other side are also also high tide and then right angles low tide low tide oh
01:19:27
so that's how the tides work basically wherever the Moon is it's pulling the ocean up yeah it's actually pulling the
01:19:33
Earth and the Earth is surrounded by this this this sphere of water and so it slash that moves the Earth within that
01:19:38
water and the water gets turned into like a lazen shape so the High Tides will be twice a day and the low tides
01:19:44
will be twice a day right angles to them so that happens and we believe that that process is what was necessary to make
01:19:51
the materials from the ocean is where life started and eventually get that on land and fertilize and make people eventually okay so remember I'm trying
01:19:57
to explain how we got here so there had to be this enormous Collision from an a pre-existing object in our solar system
01:20:03
to create the Moon and the Earth as we know them now but that wasn't enough then there had to be these
01:20:10
giant icebergs called comets comets bombard the Earth over periods of
01:20:17
millions of years the Comets brought the ocean bearing material that brought water to the Earth's surface and
01:20:23
minerals and so forth to the Earth's surface eventually the Earth cooled down and those oceans covered about 70% of the
01:20:29
earth's surface is covered by ocean as shown here so that comment had to occur that bombardment and the and the um the
01:20:36
fertilization of water or providing of water hydration of the earth came courtesy of comets then lastly for us to
01:20:43
be here These Guys these are dinosaurs here I brought a actual representation
01:20:48
of dinosaurs dinosaurs were roaming the Earth we know that right uh 65 million years ago an asteroid about this size
01:20:56
which is about an inch across hit the Earth traveling 250,000 uh miles per hour something like
01:21:04
that hit it near uh Mexico in the Yucatan Peninsula right here created this enormous Devastation this crater
01:21:11
that obliterated the atmosphere filled the atmosphere with pollution and and basically made like nuclear winter like
01:21:18
you and Annie talked about and that cut off light to uh plants and eventually the Dinosaurs most of the Dinosaurs all
01:21:24
the dinosaurs died now that allowed mammals the first mammals were little tiny rodents rats right and I believe
01:21:32
all evolution is true right so those little rats then eventually evolved and made whales and people and and bats and
01:21:38
all sorts of cool stuff and eventually we came from that so I've described to you three very important bombardments of
01:21:46
the Earth One Earth's Moon form from a huge Collision two comets bombard the
01:21:51
Earth flooding it with water just the right amount not too much not too little is perfect and three a meteor kills off
01:21:58
the dinosaurs if any of those came in a different order we would likely not be here so not only do they occur three
01:22:06
incredibly improbable things that she would never predict would occur in that order happen to occur and they happen to
01:22:13
occur in the right order the first two created life though right say again it was the first two of those three that created life potent allowed for life to
01:22:20
exist yes you're right but remember I'm trying to explain how doac occurs right for us to be here if there dinosaurs
01:22:26
here if the dinosaurs had a space program you know where they could zap away with a laser and they could deflect
01:22:31
the asteroid they would have done it and we wouldn't be here likely okay so you're right but let's say those events
01:22:36
occurred in a different in a different uh pattern the small asteroid hit the Earth First nothing happens there's no dinosaurs to kill uh then the Comets
01:22:43
come in flood the Earth with ocean but then this huge uh you know uh this Thea
01:22:48
hits the the Earth forms into its Moon that would have boiled off all the ocean as well so we wouldn't have any water
01:22:55
there for life to exist on and then the dinosaurs wouldn't even need to exist so those are just three things Stephen by
01:23:01
the way we have also the planet Jupiter I talked about before Galileo discovered its moons Jupiter is like a bodyguard it
01:23:07
protects the Earth from almost every major deadly impact the Moon is also like a bodyguard see all the craters on
01:23:13
this Moon that my son 3D printed he's proud to show it to you yeah these are death strikes that could have taken out
01:23:18
the earth look how big some of them are they're as big as the Earth as the dinosaur killing meteorite in some cases
01:23:23
so we have all these conditions now I've only named five or six imagine each one
01:23:29
of the five or six only occurs with a probability of one in 10,000 one part and 10 to the 4th well guess what
01:23:36
happens you take 10 one in 10,000 multiply by 1 in 10,000 1 in 10,000 6 times to say that you get a number
01:23:43
that's smaller than the number of planets in the universe in other words the probability of all just those six things I think
01:23:50
there's trillions of things how life formed the cell formed the chemistry the biology and and the culture whatever all
01:23:56
those things that form to make us technological I think the probability is is extremely small which is why I said I
01:24:02
think the probability is low that we are that there are other life forms or in another way to say it I think it's very
01:24:08
high that we are alone and that might be for a reason you know there might be some reason maybe we're meant to really
01:24:15
take care of Earth maybe we're meant to really appreciate the blessings of what we have on Earth if you're an
01:24:21
entrepreneur you're probably going to want to listen to this it's a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast which is LinkedIn if you've listened to
01:24:27
me on this podcast for a while now you'll know that I've been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur and one of those Evolutions
01:24:33
that has become clearer and clearer as I've matured is that the single most important thing in building a business
01:24:39
in building a company is hiring the definition of the word company is actually group of people and that is the
01:24:47
first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on but
01:24:52
surprisingly most don't about 80 % of my team have been hired from LinkedIn and I think there's very few platforms if any
01:24:59
in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate with that much information and data on their profiles
01:25:05
it usually costs money but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me I've got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn just go to
01:25:11
linkedin.com doac to post your free job ad today that's linkedin.com doac terms and
01:25:18
conditions apply this is quite interesting 85% of Internet users have heard of VPN but only 55% know what they
01:25:26
do if you're in that group let me explain vpns enable your location online to differ from where you actually are
01:25:32
geographically to help you browse and stream sites that would otherwise be unavailable to you I use nordvpn who are
01:25:38
a sponsor of this show to watch Manchester United games online no matter where I am in the world and Indie from my team uses them whenever she's booking
01:25:44
flights back home to New Zealand having a different online location mean she can take advantage of dynamic pricing and
01:25:51
get cheaper prices for her flights nordvpn is the fastest VPN in the world and just one account can be used across
01:25:57
10 devices and they've shared a generous offer for my listeners a discount and four additional months free on a 2-year
01:26:03
plan it's also completely risk-free with nd's 30-day money back guarantee so head to nordvpn.com
01:26:10
doac or click the link in the description below star signs and horoscopes yeah is there any
01:26:18
possibility in your view from everything you've you've done in your research and your studies of the universe is there
01:26:24
any possibility that anything up there in the stars is determining our outcomes
01:26:30
and our personality and whether he's goingon to dump me or I'm gonna do well on bitcoin is there anything uh no there
01:26:37
there's there's no evidence for it in the sense that you can do randomized control trials or double blind surveys
01:26:44
you can do exact simulations as I said it the the theory that the position of Jupiter at the moment that you were born
01:26:51
can literally be replicated there's something like a million people born every day and then at the exact same
01:26:56
time there's probably you 14,000 or what you know you could do the math and figure it out um for them all to have
01:27:03
for no person to ever have you know sort of duplication of luck or circumstance
01:27:08
the the effect in terms of physical forces the gravity of Jupiter the the
01:27:13
pull of of the Sun the position of the Earth in the day you were born now there are correlation effects right so you
01:27:20
have to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation right so some I'm actually born on the most um
01:27:26
frequently frequent birthday uh on all the calendar September 9th now what is septe September 9th is about nine months
01:27:33
after the holiday season right so in a western culture you know women are party maybe my mom and my dad had a nice you
01:27:39
know New Year's Eve or Christmas party or whatever and that's led to me being here right so there are correlation and
01:27:44
then that so that means that there's a lot of people that are Virgos born on September 9th none of which are like me
01:27:49
or in the southern hemisphere versus the Northern Hemisphere a woman who has gestation during the summer might feel
01:27:55
differently than if she's gestating during the winter even though the babies are born at the same day right they're just born on opposite sides of the earth
01:28:01
so they will have very different personalities whereas astrology says they should be the
01:28:07
same it's interesting because people will especially people that are precious about horoscopes and astrology and those
01:28:14
kinds of things will say I have just as much evidence for my thing as you do for your thing like they
01:28:20
because they they almost consider it to be a religious belief the people that I know literally some people have designed their entire lives and the meaning of
01:28:27
their life around meaning that they're finding out in by looking up at the stars how's it different from religion
01:28:34
astrology um there are elements of religion yeah certainly It came it came out of religion I don't think people now worship you know constellations or I
01:28:41
don't think there's many major religions that are based on astrological you know contemplation but maybe without the
01:28:47
worship part but they they're seeking guidance in their lives they're getting answers from the Stars they're making
01:28:54
decisions based on it much of their moral compass is being determined like M much of their um yeah much of their
01:29:01
morals and ethics and decisions and behaviors are being determined by by it in the same way that it's being
01:29:07
determined by someone that believes in a God yeah it's hard to you know it's I'm
01:29:12
a wrong person ask some why why do people need this people need answers to to to contemplate the universe first of
01:29:20
all it's a scary Universe right we we we confronted by things that none none of us can understand entirety of uh no
01:29:28
brightest Nobel Prize winners the the greatest scientists the greatest thinkers can't really contemplate it so
01:29:33
we we go through life we try to make the best of it but we also have this sense of self and this theory of self the
01:29:39
theory of mind that you know we can relate to other people and we want answers we want and I think that is in
01:29:45
common I think you're right religion is very I almost wish I did you ever wish that you were more religious I mean yeah
01:29:52
I wish I was too and I'm not and I hopefully my kids won't hear no I heard from a psychologist once he said you
01:29:57
should Endeavor in your life that you pass on only half of your Neurosis to
01:30:03
your kids Neurosis um crazy anxieties fears weird pathology you know
01:30:08
psychological deficiencies because if every parent did that you know the species is going to get better and better but if you keep
01:30:15
making everyone as anxious as nervous and there's no progress in history a lot of the zodiac religions that you talked
01:30:20
about or astrological religions they view time as a as a circle in other words a flat circle a spiral goes into
01:30:28
the future that's Western Civilization that's progress in science that's forward moving to the Stars to wherever
01:30:34
we're going to go and more and more human knowledge and flourishing but if you just say I'm committed to I'm going
01:30:39
to be repeating every year on the birthday I'm going to be repeating what all that my ancestors did that's very
01:30:45
depressing and it doesn't lead to Innovation to find cures for diseases to find explanations for fields and forces
01:30:50
and technology that we have so what is the what the meaning of life ah glad you
01:30:56
asked um to me the meaning of life is to do as many
01:31:03
things that if taken away from you would be devastating to
01:31:09
you that which you do should be so consequential that to not have done it
01:31:16
or not have it would literally destroy you to your core for me it's my kids
01:31:23
those connections the the bonds the the the hopefulness for the future I never said this Stephen
01:31:30
but I don't get too emotional but I think about death a lot more you know
01:31:35
especially in my case since October 7th last year A lot of my friends and family were impacted by that in Israel and it's
01:31:43
I've never cried so many times than I have in the past year but thinking about all those you know kind of tears and and
01:31:51
emotions and saying do I wish I never f that do I wish I didn't have the pain if
01:31:57
I meant I didn't have the joy of having those people in my life and I'm not
01:32:02
ready to die I'm hopefully you know maybe middle age I don't know I don't know if I live to 104 but hopefully you
01:32:08
know maybe I will but I've done a lot in my life I've
01:32:14
done things that you know I didn't think I could do when I was a kid I've married
01:32:19
the love of my life I've brought incredible Souls into the world if I did die I'm not scared I don't want to I'm
01:32:28
working on my body I'm working on my diet I'm trying to do what's right for me and so I can be her as long as
01:32:34
possible but the meaning of life is making connections it's making these bonds such that you
01:32:42
know you hope that people will be sad devastated even when you're gone so too
01:32:48
the connections that I've made I can't see my life without them I don't want to I don't think think about it it's morbid
01:32:56
to me it's make those connections while you can not I mean when I listen to that episode that you did with Annie Jacobs
01:33:03
it's terrifying right and you were like visibly scared in that episode she's
01:33:08
amazing we don't know I mean God forbid I don't think it's super as likely maybe as she maybe it is maybe it isn't maybe
01:33:14
I'm na but the point is we don't know the point is we're here now the point is
01:33:19
we might be alone but that should fill us with meaning to do what we can do uniquely
01:33:25
so before you had kids what was the meaning of your
01:33:31
life uh it was very easy I wanted to win a Nobel Prize and that's changed now it
01:33:37
has it has uh partially because my father was a great scientist I want to show him up he never won a Nobel Prize
01:33:44
he won a lot of awards I want to show him up now he's dead you know there's no one to prove stuff to you know you
01:33:50
should live life to impress yourself and I feel like yeah if they gave me the Nobel Prize if someday I would Merit it
01:33:56
with my team of these brilliant scientists just that's pretty unlikely but let's say it happened it doesn't it
01:34:02
doesn't mean what it once meant to me when I was your age when it when when I
01:34:07
was your age it wasn't Idol to me it was a God Like You Win it you're as close to
01:34:13
Scientific royalty and Godlike status as possible to imagine much more than Oscar
01:34:19
gold medal in the Olympics it is every there's only 200 or so I've ever won it it's like a small book and actually I've
01:34:26
talked to people that have won it actually the forward to the my second book into the apostles was written by Barry barish he won the 2017 Nobel Prize
01:34:33
he told me Brian um because I always ask my final question I know we're getting to the end here like your final question
01:34:40
I learned from you I have my own final question it's um if you could go back in
01:34:45
the past and meet your 20-year-old self what would you say to him to give him the courage to do as you've done to go
01:34:51
into the impossible and he said to me Brian I would say to stop having the impostor syndrome and I said well you
01:34:58
know yeah you just tell me you won the Nobel Prize and he won't no no no I have the impostor syndrome now said Barry
01:35:05
you're kidding me you won the Nobel Prize how could you possibly have impostor syndrome he said Brian let me
01:35:12
tell you something when you win a Nobel Prize you go to Stockholm you meet the king of Sweden they give you this buffet
01:35:17
dinner you're dressed in white tie not Black Tie white tie you get this huge
01:35:23
gold medal solid gold you get a million dollars possibly and they want to make sure
01:35:29
you're not going to come back and say hey uh Gustav there uh where's my money where's my so they make you sign a
01:35:35
ledger not unlike The Ledger in front of you and it has your signature I Barry
01:35:41
bars received the Nobel Prize and Barry said I took that book the first thing I did is I turned the P who won it last
01:35:46
year who won it the year before who wanted I saw Richard Fineman I saw Marie curee I saw Albert Einstein
01:35:54
he said I don't deserve to be in the same universe as Albert Einstein let alone in the same book how could they
01:36:01
give the same prize to me they gave to him and I realized this was like an idol to him too I said Barry I've got good
01:36:07
news for you Albert Einstein had the impostor syndrome he's like you're
01:36:12
kidding me I said no no no Barry he had the impostor syndrome and his hero was
01:36:18
Isaac Newton Einstein said Isaac Newton did more for Science and Western
01:36:24
Civilization than any human being before or since that's a pretty tall order How
01:36:29
Could Einstein live up to that but I said Barry go one step deeper Isaac
01:36:34
Newton had the impostor syndrome what the heck how could he he's a greatest might invented calculus discovered the
01:36:42
laws of universal gravitation the principles of Optics invented this telescope no no no he felt wholly
01:36:50
entirely Unworthy of his hero Jesus Christ so much so Stephen that he
01:36:57
attempted to do the same thing that Jesus Christ did he knew he couldn't work miracles he knew he couldn't walk
01:37:03
on water and turn loaves into fishes but he could do it was in some sense a greater struggle which was to die a
01:37:09
virgin as Jesus did and so he did so the lesson
01:37:16
is impostor syndroms normal don't don't idolize something literally get a Graven
01:37:22
golden image of a man who who cares he's a man I don't care I I take time home
01:37:27
with my family over that on a Shabbat as I invite you down to come to me in San Diego anytime you
01:37:34
want I didn't realize that all of these great individuals felt like imposters themselves which is um I think will
01:37:40
liberate a lot of people from the way that they feel I mean we I feel this every day like people int introduce me
01:37:46
on stage as like an interview or a podcast I'm like what the just was never conceivable to me and I know Jack's talked about the same thing like
01:37:52
it's never conce able to me that I'd be doing a podcast and it' be big and that people would think you're good at it in
01:37:57
some way for some bizarre reason no you're not just good Stephen come on you're an elite level you're a no PR
01:38:02
what is that what is that though I mean and how did that happen I didn't go to school for that I just sat here and started asking people questions in my kitchen and then more people tuned in
01:38:09
and they said you're good at it I'm like what what does good mean I don't do it the same as Rogan and Rogan's good at it and huberman's good at it I've been with
01:38:16
them all look you're you have a unique angle that that is not rep replicable
01:38:22
but I want to leave you with the mission that kind of has guided me and again I've learned a lot from you for you know
01:38:27
it's no secret I have the high energy opening to the into the can you imagine how hard it is to take like someone who studied like some chemical pathway and
01:38:33
some thermodynamic system to make it like the hype show that you guys open each epe with I learned that from you
01:38:39
but Carl Sean said what an amazing thing a book is in it you have the words of a
01:38:46
long dead author and you're reading it to yourself and he or she is communicating with you across the ages
01:38:53
nowadays people millions of people have you in their ears and you're communicating potentially across the
01:38:59
generations and you're again I don't want to keep be you know be like a Jewish mother but your kids your your
01:39:05
grandkids they're going to have access to this it's not going to be some some even a book which is wonderful but it's
01:39:11
going to be visceral Audible and it's going to have an impact you can't even imagine right
01:39:16
now creep me out I'm like wow the meteors didn't do it
01:39:23
crazy to think about the the impact and the lasting impact that this medium might have because of the
01:39:29
internet but just even I mean even books now the books are turned into audio books into digital books and such um
01:39:35
look at this the last election this was like the podcast election right not going on a podcast going on a podcast um
01:39:42
and and there are many people that attempt to imitate what you do and and you know it it's it's I I don't do it
01:39:48
for money I don't do it it's not my career I do it for fun because I want to give back to to Young people the way
01:39:54
that I learned from Carl San or Isaac azimoff I read their books it inspired
01:39:59
to me to be a scientist when Co hit in 2020 they couldn't do book tours and so I invited all my scientist friends to
01:40:05
come on I had some Nobel Prize winners come on and it just keeps amplifying but I view it as you know for me it's a it's
01:40:10
a passion project but it's a way of giving back returning to the community from whom I've taken so much I've
01:40:16
learned so much with that in mind with this knowledge that what we're creating what all of us are creating whether you
01:40:21
have a podcast or not or you're just writing on the internet whatever it might be with the knowledge that it's going to sustain and it's going to be
01:40:28
here potentially in many generations to come how does that how is that supposed to change how someone creates because
01:40:34
I'm thinking you just said that to me I was like Jesus Christ that's quite profound but then seconds later I was like almost like the simulation Theory I
01:40:41
just thought it crack on do you know what I mean just carry on with what you're doing because if you can you can
01:40:46
get too deep into it that you can either distract yourself or ruin yourself from the essence of what makes the thing
01:40:52
special so am I meant to Chang in any way with that knowledge I think you I think you are I think you're doing it already I mean you've spoken again I've
01:40:58
you know try to study the the the glimpses of of morsels that I can comprehend the experimentation process
01:41:05
is a process of fundamentally being dissatisfied with the current product even though it's wonderful and it's great it's top top you know leading in
01:41:11
its category but still just not being satisfied you always want to make it a little bit better see what works see what doesn't work that's pleasurable
01:41:16
because you even when you get a failed there's no such thing as a failed experiment I tell my students you always learn something and that brings you
01:41:22
closer to truth and that's what is so meaningful what I was wondering what I thought you were going to say is like
01:41:27
when you're out in public and people see you and I asked this of Lex and Joe I want to ask you to has put on my podcast
01:41:33
or how turn the microphone to you um there's a there's a scene in the book Animal Farm um where there's this donkey
01:41:40
named Benjamin and he's talking to the pig um and the pig says to the donkey um
01:41:46
you know I love your tail it's so big I got this short little curly tail it's good for nothing you got this beautiful
01:41:51
tail it could sweep away the the Flies and the donkey says yeah but you know what I wish I didn't have the Flies so I
01:41:59
wouldn't need the tail I want ask you do you ever worry about the attention would
01:42:04
you ever trade the attention the fame the lack of privacy the intrusions the you know everything for for the
01:42:12
alternative I don't know would you it's funny because when I go towards that question and I remove the all the
01:42:17
downsides from my life they're like glued to the upsides so I'm like
01:42:23
so it's always a question of like is the trade-off worth it is the question that I ask myself all the time every week
01:42:29
every month and I remind myself sometimes I said this to Trevor no but he told me that it gets to a point where you can't just reverse the decision
01:42:34
right I try to remind myself that there's I could delete this podcast I could quit Dragon Den I could delete all
01:42:41
my social media channels and I could right now go to Barley and I was playing this out the other day in my head I was thinking you know if if if I say to
01:42:48
myself that I'm optimizing for peace in this season of my life then why the hell am I doing all this stuff this is peace
01:42:54
necessarily um and then I play out the scenario I okay so I'll move to Barley I'll I'll I'll chill out there I've got
01:42:59
the the financial means to just live there for the rest of my life I'll chill and then I'll
01:43:05
start I know you're this is where it goes it okay and then I'll start I'll start writing yeah and then and then you
01:43:11
know I might start making videos about what I'm writing about because that's what I'll behind the diary yeah and I'll start painting and you start creating
01:43:18
again and then if the Creations are good you want to show it and then you going to share it to someone and then they're going to buy and whatever and then
01:43:23
you're back here again look I think that's what you're meant to do I think you know people have a mission in life you know I don't have a body you know to
01:43:29
be an Olympic Athlete you know but you know I have a mind or curiosity this is what you good at this is what you should lean in I always feel like do I teach my
01:43:36
students to like overcome their deficiencies or do I teach them to lean into their successes I always feel like
01:43:42
progress feels good no matter what I'm trying to lose weight I lose a pound it feels so much better to lose a pound
01:43:48
than gaining you know it feels awful to gain an ounce you know so the the fact
01:43:53
is are you useful are you doing you know Freud said there's only two things in life work and love it's all you got to
01:43:58
do you were doing your work doing your love take your vacation and uh enjoy
01:44:04
Bali for a while it lasts and then come right back Brian we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest
01:44:09
leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for and the question that's been left for you is if you found out that the
01:44:18
world was ending in 10 minutes who would you want to speak to
01:44:24
and what would you tell them a it's easy I mean it's horrifying but it's but it's easy well first of all i' you know call
01:44:30
my friends at Nasa and tell them to direct the giant space La no it would be my wife my wife you know it's funny to
01:44:37
to think about how I'm probable Life Is But when I got fired I told you from
01:44:43
Stanford she was actually an undergraduate there and luckily we missed because I'm eight and a half
01:44:48
years older than her and I'd be some lecherous 28y old when she was 20 I got fired
01:44:54
I felt it was horrible turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me it got me a job that job led to this
01:45:00
experiment called bicep that experiment called bicep took me to the South Pole
01:45:06
took me to the brink of a Nobel Prize but it also brought me to San Diego which is her hometown we would not have
01:45:11
met there's no we didn't meet at Stanford we were literally 100 feet away from each other at one point we wouldn't
01:45:18
we wouldn't have met she was meant to be if I hadn't gotten fired if I hadn't been dreaming and fantasizing about
01:45:24
experiments that I wanted to do not to be someone else's employee but to be my own CEO my own world my own laboratory
01:45:30
my own brand I wouldn't have met her I wouldn't have my precious precious kids there's no doubt it would be to
01:45:37
call her what would you what would you tell him I would just reminisce about how we
01:45:45
met and what we brought into the world and you know kind of uh sure we'd laugh
01:45:52
and cry Brian thank you really appreciate it it's been such a wonderful conversation and I highly
01:45:57
implore everybody that's listening to go and check out your show to go and read your books all of which I'll link below
01:46:03
super fascinating and also to go to your website if they want to be in with a chance of winning some of this space material which is I'm so it's amazing
01:46:10
that I have this I'm such a big fan of space so and SpaceX and everything that's going on out there in the universe so thank you so much for this
01:46:15
present you can keep the Uranus soap um but I'll keep the piece of Mars um the work you're doing is so important
01:46:21
because it's helping to demystify and helping us to understand the nature of some of these really profound
01:46:26
questions not ever because you know we're seeking to figure it all out so that we can change how we
01:46:32
live but just because there's so much Beauty and joy and um meaning that is
01:46:40
derived irrespective of what the answer is and I and I I it's people like you
01:46:47
that blow our minds open in a way that helps me even though I'm never going to build a telescope and I'm never going to
01:46:52
go to this the the South Pole and I'm never going to point it at the sky and I'm not never going to seek to answer these questions in my life but your work
01:46:59
expands my mind it expands my my like thoughts of like possibilities and as an
01:47:04
entrepreneur as a Creator I think that's a net positive for for everyone that receives the work that you do um it's so
01:47:10
Wonder it's so bizarre that we're so we're so curious about about the stars but it's such a beautiful thing um and
01:47:17
long may you continue there's very few people like you and I was thinking the minute we got going today I was thinking there's very few people in the world
01:47:23
that are both smart which is I think pretty common but but then able to
01:47:28
communicate and that is really I've met you and Neil de degrass Tyson who have this remarkable ability to communicate
01:47:35
science in a way that inspires galvanizes and sort of cultivates curiosity it's a really wonderful thing
01:47:42
I appreciate that and it's exceptionally rare that combination of forces like you said about the probability of the Comet
01:47:48
hitting the universe and that bouncing off and creating a moon the probability of those two things happening in the same place is so exceptionally rare but
01:47:55
it's wonderful that we have people like you in this world of podcasting because you know maybe once upon a time the um
01:48:01
it would have been harder to hear your voice but now everybody can go and listen to you um and I highly recommend they do your YouTube channel is
01:48:07
exceptional so thank you so much Brian thank you it's been it's been an absolute pleasure it's been an honor for me thank you
01:48:13
Stephen this diary won't change your life but the Habit it teaches you
01:48:19
definitely will the most unhelpful advice that I ever received don't sweat the small stuff you have to sweat the
01:48:25
small stuff I sweat the small stuff I always have and I always proudly will
01:48:31
because small things that are easy to do are also easy not to do it is easy to
01:48:36
save a dollar so it's also easy not do it is easy to brush your teeth so it's also easy not to it is easy to make a 1%
01:48:43
Improvement so it's also easy not to understanding the power of compounding
01:48:48
1% you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life it is n about drastic Transformations or quick wins
01:48:55
it's about the small consistent actions that have a lasting change on your outcomes so two years ago we started the
01:49:02
process of creating this beautiful diary and it's truly beautiful inside there's lots of pictures lots of inspiration and
01:49:08
motivation as well some interact developments and the purpose of this diary is to help you identify stay
01:49:15
focused on develop consistency with the 1% that will ultimately change your life
01:49:20
we're only going to do a limited run of these Diaries so if you you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team then head to
01:49:26
the diary.com right now I'll link it below [Music]
01:49:50
[Music] h
