March 24, 2020 • 40 mins
Daniel and Jorge discuss the science fiction book "Recursion" by Blake Crouch. Blake comes on for an interview to discuss his thoughts and method. Pickup your own copy of Recursion. It's a thrilling novel!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Daniel and Jorge from Daniel and Jorge
Explained the Universe. We interrupt this podcast for a special announcement.
This Friday March We're having our first ever Daniel and
Jorge Explained the Universe live stream event. So join us
as we record an episode in real time and take
questions from listeners like you. You can submit your questions
(00:20):
live on air, or send them to us ahead of
time at questions at Daniel and jorghead dot com. To
tune in, just go to YouTube dot com slash PhD
Comics this Friday March at ten am Pacific. That's one
pm Eastern, six pm Europe. That's two am in Tokyo
and four am in Australia. What time it's out of Mars, Daniel?
(00:40):
You know, in case aliens want to tune in? Do
you think aliens want to ask us questions? Um? May not,
you may they might have engineering questions. You know, well
I got questions for them. So tune in this Friday,
March twenty seven at ten am Pacific at YouTube dot
com slash PhD Comics and bring your questions about the universe. Hey, Daniel,
(01:11):
what's your fondest memory? I have a lot of great
memories of finishing a wonderful book. Oh yeah, that's your
happy place, sitting down reading a sci fi novel. I
love reading a science fiction novel and being totally confused,
like what's going on? How does this make sense? And
then coming to the end of it and getting some
incredible idea to the author had to pull it all
(01:31):
together and deliver it to the reader. That's wonderful. Do
you remember the bad science fiction novels? Do you have
less than fond memories of sci fi novels. I don't
remember finishing bad science fiction novels, because I usually don't.
You often tossed them across the room and say, I'm
not reading that anymore. Really, you're not a completest. I
do not finish every novel I start. Now if I
(01:53):
get too fed up because the story doesn't make sense,
I'm just done with it. Well, do you ever wish
you could maybe go back in time, or at least
go back in your memories and wish that you hadn't
even started the book? I do. In fact, there was
one set of novels as a kid that I deliberately
never read the last page of because I didn't want
to finish it. I didn't want to be done with
it and have it in my past. These days, I
(02:15):
love seeing my kids read some of those books because
it's sort of like getting to re experience them. That's right.
Kids are sort of a replay button. Yeah, except they're
guaranteed just remake all of our mistakes. Well, there might
be a universe, Daniel where that is possible. Hi. I'm
(02:46):
or hammy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and avid science fiction reader,
and apparently I take science fiction personally. I've seen you
get worked up about interesting novels you read, and movels
D like less. Yeah, well, you know, a good work
of art will make people get worked up, It'll evoke
reactions in them, it will make them think. And to me,
(03:07):
the wonderful thing about science fiction is that when it
makes me think about another science fiction universe and the
laws of physics there, the laws of physics here, How
does it all fit together? Well? I wonder if you're
sort of a science fiction writer's worst nightmare. You know,
a particle physicists trained physicist read trying to make sense
of a science fiction work. If it wasn't fiction, new
just be called the science book probably, And fortunately for
(03:29):
those authors, there are not a lot of us particle
physicists around, so we don't sway the market very much. Well,
Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio, a podcast in which
we usually explore the real universe and take you on
a tour of everything that's out there that's incredible, that's amazing,
peel back a layer of reality to show you how
(03:50):
things actually work. That's right. Does this part of a
genre called science reality or science nonfiction? Is that a
redundant word, reality nonfiction. It's podcast in which we do
try to sort of explore the universe and take you
to all the furthest reaches of the cosmos and all
the smallest places in uh, this place that we call home.
That's right, because we think that the intellectual questions of
(04:12):
the universe are questions for everybody. We think everybody wants
to know how the universe got started and what its
fate will be, in what it's made out of. So
normally our job is to take you there and explain
it to you. In a way that we hope educates
and entertains. Yeah, so it's a big universe, and actually
nobody really knows if this is the only universe or
if there are other universes out there. But there are
(04:34):
sort of people in this universe that create whole universes,
not just in their heads but also on the page.
And we are big fans of people who do this
sort of mental exploration, who wonder what kind of things
could happen in this universe, what other laws of physics
might there be. And I've long thought that science fiction
authors are sort of on the vanguard of intellectual exploration.
(04:55):
They're the ones out there wondering what we could build
in our universe and how the universe might be there front.
Really you put them at a little higher than scientists.
Oh yeah, absolutely. You got experimentalists trying to discover stuff,
theorists trying to think about what experimentalists should discover, and
then science fiction authors thinking about the things that theorists
should be thinking about. I like Asimov to say Needson
(05:17):
to Daniel Whitson, Well, that's an illustrious group, but sure,
I'll take it now. I think that science fiction authors,
you know, they're not as constrained by reality like particle
theorists are. They just sort of think broadly and they
get to consider their unchained They get to consider what
other universes could look like and how things might work.
And not just that. They also write technology fiction. You know,
(05:37):
they think, in our universe, could we do this, could
we have tricorders, could we build teleporters? Could we travel
faster than light? It's a it's fascinating and important work.
They think of a stuff and it makes physicists and
it tickles the imagination of scientists and maybe that it's
burs ideas about what to explore or what kinds of
questions to ask right about this universe. Yeah, and it
(05:59):
gives real sciences, real ideas, and there are real examples
of people reading something in science fiction and then trying
to make it real. But there's a challenge there. You know,
when you are writing in another universe, you don't just
get to follow the rules of the universe. You know,
you have to make up the rules and then tell
a story in that universe. So you're sort of playing
both sides of the equation. And I think with that
(06:20):
comes some extra responsibility. Yeah, with great pros comes great responsibility,
isn't that what Spider Man said? Yeah, well, they are
sort of gods of that universe. You know, they get
to decide what the rules are and then they get
to tell the story you know, that follows those rules. Well,
we thought it would be interesting for our listeners to
talk to some sci fi authors here on the podcast,
(06:42):
and so we we we have this series now where
we talked to science fiction authors who are doing really
great and interesting work out there right now, that's right,
And we don't just talk to them about their book.
We are interested in how did they build that universe?
What laws of physics happen in their universe, and why
did they make those choices? Or if they are living
in our universe, do they think that the technology that
(07:05):
they're creating is real, is something that could actually happen. Yeah,
and so a little bit recently, we had an episode
where we talked Daniel talked to me and like you,
and we talked about the science in her science fiction book.
And so if you've heard of and like you and
are interested in her book, an Selary Justice, check it
out in our archive. But today we're talking to an
author that we've mentioned in this podcast before and that
(07:27):
Daniel has thrown a little shade at Maybe that's right.
I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but
somehow Blake Crouch's book Dark Matter came up and I
made a not necessarily positive comment about the science in
that book. Yeah, because you were saying that the title
was called dark matter, but it didn't feature dark matter
in it. I kept waiting, where is the dark matter?
(07:50):
I kept waiting for it to show up. I think
it's ironic that a physicist would complain about the naming
of something not being accurate. But I digress. I'm hunting
for dark matter in real life, and so then I'm
reading a book about dark matter, and I'm like waiting,
I'm looking for the dark matter, and so I'm left unsatisfied.
To the end, I still have not found dark matter.
And it is dark matter? Actually dark Daniel? Is it really, Diana?
(08:12):
For sure? It doesn't admit anything. We are not aware
of any emissions from dark matter, either the book or
the actual kind of Does it matter, actually, Daniel, it
does matter. It is matter, and it does matter, And
I think it also matters to get the science right
in your book. I think go ahead and create a universe.
That's fine, but make sure the rules makes sense. Make
(08:32):
sure you follow those rules, or if you live in
our universe, get the rules right, you know, don't do
science miscommunication. Well may it sort of label as science fiction.
So I don't think anyone sort of reads it and
thinks that it's necessarily real. A lot of people just
read it because it's fun and it's interesting to sort
of bend the rules, isn't it. Yeah, absolutely, And you're
free to create whatever universe you like and make up
(08:53):
whatever rules. But I think a story is only good
if you're following the rules. You know, if you're telling
a detective story and you're looking at the clues and
wondering who could have murdered Mr White in the library
or whatever, then you want there to be rules. Otherwise
you have no chance of figuring it out. And if
it comes in the end it was it was a
magic genie that appeared and disappeared, and so all the
clues are irrelevant. That's not really a very satisfying story.
(09:15):
So I like it when it follows the rules. Anyway,
said to be on the program, we'll be talking to
Blake Crouch and talking about the science in his book
called Recursion, and so to the on the program, we'll
be covering the science fiction universe of Blake Crouch's Recursion.
So there's a book you read recently, Daniel, I did. Yeah.
(09:37):
So after I mentioned Blake Crouch on air and invited
him to come on the program and defend his universe,
we reached down to Blake and said, hey, would you
come on the podcast and talk about the science fiction universes.
And it turns out he has a more recent book,
um than Dark Matter. It's called Recursion, and so I
read it and talked to him about it. Was he
aware that you're sort of a peaky physicist's flooring, agreed
(10:00):
to talk talk with us on air. I thought about
this carefully. Um. I didn't want to antagonize him, or
attack him or insult him. So I made sure that
he knew that I was not going to be throwing
him softball questions about what's it like to be a
famous writer, but instead that I was going to be
probing him kind of deeply about the science of his universe. Oh,
I see, so you gave him advance the questions kind
(10:22):
of or gave him a flavor for the questions. Yeah,
I didn't tell him the questions in advance because I
wanted his sort of spontaneous reactions and thoughts to them.
But I did let him know that we would be
going a little bit deeper in the physics than maybe
his typical interview. Well, if you're interested, please check it out.
And then the name again is Blake Crouch and the
book is called Recursion, And so Daniel said, let's step
me through before we listen to the interview about what
(10:44):
this book is about and what is the basic idea
of it. So Recursion is a really fun book to read.
It's sort of near future fiction. It takes place in
the universe you will find familiar. It's not some kind
of thing that takes place in a galaxy far far
away with crazy stuff happening. And a book starts out
where a scientist is working on memory. She's trying to
(11:04):
essentially find a technological solution to Alzheimer's. The idea is,
build some device that can map your brain and like
record your memories digitally somehow and then later reinject them.
Like let's say you and I have lunch and we
had a great time. Then you get Alzheimer's and you
forget it, and then later you want to remember that
lunch because it was so good, but it's faded from
(11:26):
your memory. Then in this book, they've developed machine that
will let you do that. You sit in a special chair,
it reimplants those memories and you can re experience them. Wait,
it reads your memories first, or do you have to
remember it and while you're remembering it sort of reads
those memories. Yeah, you call it up in your mind
and while you're remembering it, it stores it, and then
later you can come back and it will reinsert them.
(11:47):
And as I was reading this, I was thinking, Wow,
this is technically pretty Harry. I mean, we don't understand
the brain like at all. To interpret what's going on
inside of the brain with neurons firing and translate that
into digital code that you can then re upload, that
seemed pretty crazy to me. But you know, suspension of disbelief,
assume there's some technology they can do that. And he
(12:07):
did a good job of investigating like what kind of
technology you would need in order to probe the brain
and reimplant this stuff using like a scanner, and he
has like you know, magnets and all sorts of stuff
you would need to focus the energy and induce these spikes.
That is sort of how they do these neural prosthetics.
I don't know if he knows, but I worked at
caltag on a new prosthetics lab, and that is sort
(12:29):
of how how they do it. They just kind of
record you moving your arm, for example, or or looking
sideways in different directions, and they just sort of record
the raw data and then you know, you don't have
to make sense of it, but you just sort of
take it in as raw and then you interpret that
and say that means right, that means left. That relies
on like understanding which part of the brain to record,
(12:49):
Like you could record the entire brain, and but then
you don't want to replay the entire brain. You want
to record the entire brain and somehow pull out the
memory part of it and then reinject just that part it,
so that part. I don't really know if we could,
you know, interpret some random person's brain patterns to know
which part was the memory and which part was you know,
them breathing, and which part was them controlling other parts
(13:11):
of their body. Isn't the brain pretty separated, like there
are memory parts, and there are breathing parts, So I
mean it's I'm just saying it's it doesn't seem technically impossible. No,
not technically impossible, like you know, maybe stretching the ability
of what we could do. But you could imagine people
could figure that out. So that's cool, that's clever. So
the idea is you sit in a chamber and it
you think of it a memory, and it records it. Yes,
(13:33):
But then the book takes a big twist. And this
is a bit of a spoiler, but the book has
been out for a while, so I don't feel bad
spoiling it. But it turns out that when you reinsert
the memory, you go back and you say, oh, I
want to re experience that memory of having lunch with Daniel.
You're sit in a chair, you turn it on. You
don't just remember it. It actually takes you back to
(13:54):
those events. It like transforms the universe somehow. So you
are back at that lunch and so I need to
sit back down in the same chair. It flashes and
then and suddenly I'm transported to that time. Yes, transported,
teleported timeported memory ported something ported back into that memory.
That memory becomes real again. And not like virtual reality.
(14:15):
I'm experiencing it, but I'm not really there, but like
you are really there, you can order something different and
have a different future playout. Okay, so uh, I'm transported
through this memory machine to that time, and i still
have my memories that I've gained since. Like I'm wiser
and I'm replaying the moment, and I can do different things.
(14:36):
I can order something different for lunch. That's right, you
can decide, you know what. That didn't work out so well,
I had stomach cramps all afternoon, so I'm not going
to get the you know, Beef Tartar and the world
you left behind is sort of like, well, it's not gone.
It's weird because say you go back in time ten
years in his novel, you then have ten years to
live your life and do things differently. After ten years
(14:57):
have passed, when you come back to the moment that
you jumped from, then everybody else in that new universe,
that new sort of memory line that you're now in,
gets the memories from the old timeline and they suddenly
all remember them. Suddenly everyone remembers your new choices. Everybody
in the new timeline suddenly remembers all the old stuff
that they never actually experienced. Okay, you kind of just
(15:18):
lost me. Yeah, it's it's it gets complicated, so let's
keep let's go back for our lunch. So I went
back to lunch. I order something different, and then I
hung out in my office and not that I have
an office, but hu I hung out, and then it
was time for we reached the time where I sat
down on the machine originally. So then what happens. So
let's think about it from my point of view. I'm
(15:39):
having lunch with you in the new timeline. I'm not
aware that you've jumped back. It's just Daniel having lunch
with Jorge, and you're like, oh, I'm glad you didn't
eat my banana this time. Well, I don't know that
there is any other time. I'm new Daniel. Right, I'm Daniel,
and he's just glad I didn't eat your banana. No,
so new Daniel. It just lives his life. But then
we get to later that afternoon, the time when in
(15:59):
the original timeline you jumped back into the chair, and
when we crossed that moment, I get old original Daniels memories.
So I'm new Daniel in the new timeline. But then
I remember all this stuff which sort of like never
happened to me, but happened to a different Daniel. And
so suddenly you have two memories. Yes, you remember having
lunch with me one where I took your banana, and
(16:20):
you remember having lunch where I didn't take your banana.
That's right. How can I have two memories? It's confusing.
And one of the themes of the book is sort
of like memory makes you who you are, and if
you don't have your memory, or if your memory is
corrupted or manipulatable, then who are you really? And that's
a lot of the theme. And you know, there's elements
where characters go back in time and redo things so
(16:43):
they avoid tragedies or you know, don't make mistakes they
made the first time around, and it changes their lives.
And you know, it has all ripple all sorts of
ripples downstream and changes things. And it gets very complicated
because then there's multiple chairs and different people are jumping
back and forth and try to erase other people's memories
of the chair because they want to control the chair.
(17:04):
And it got pretty tangled pretty quickly. I have a
sheet of notes I kept trying to map the timeline
of this thing. It was crazy. Wow, it made you
you have to take notes. Oh yeah, I had to
take notes because I want to know, like, wait, is
this right? Is he just making this up? Like I
wanted to make sure we were following the rules. For me,
it's important, Like he set up some rules for this universe.
(17:25):
Whether the physics of it makes any sense at all,
we'll talk about it in a minute, But he set
up some rules from this universe, and I want to
know that the characters are constrained by those rules. You know,
like you won't actually know this at this moment, so
you don't know to jump back, or you can't erase
this other purpose person's memory of the chair because they
didn't know it yet or something. You know. You stok
a sci fi writer's nightmare to a new level, Daniel.
(17:46):
Now now they're all imagining physicists not just reading their books,
but like reading it and taking notes and taking us
or I am like the perfect reader drawing diagram. Yes,
this guy spent more than a year of his life
imagining this universe, taking characters through it really carefully, you know,
and I'm sure he prefers to people take his work seriously.
They don't just sort of like skim and go. I
(18:06):
don't really understand what's happening, but whatever, I'm sure it's fine.
You know, he probably wants people to deeply engage with it. No,
maybe that's so sure. But now now it seems like
a question, Daniel. Let's get a little bit more into
the science in whether or not it makes sense, and
then we'll play the interview with Blake Crouch. But first
let's take a quick break. We're talking about Blake Crouch's
(18:42):
book Recursion, in which you can sort of store your memories.
When you replay them, you're reliving them. Yeah, you are
really there again. It's like time travel, but memory travel.
Sort of at first class, it sort of sounds like
we just jumped into fantasy. Um. But you know, maybe
I'm thinking, you know, maybe there's something about that, like
what would make this possible? Like what if what if
(19:04):
we're all just in a simulation, Daniel, And so you know,
when you remember something, you're somehow skipping the software code
that we're you know, all based on, and somehow you
are sort of reliving it. Going into your memories is
like hacking the source code of the universe. Yeah, you somehow,
like you know, you cause some kind of oh recursion,
there you go, and it somehow breaks the code and
(19:26):
and somehow the code is not meant meant to handle that.
I guess that requires like some flaw in the coding
of the universe. If the simulated universe is correctly coded
and accurately coded or well written, you shouldn't be able
to break out of it, shouldn't be able to break
those rules. That's sort of like a breaking of those rules, right,
But you're assuming it's well coded, you assuming it's well coded. Yeah,
I mean the universe side is a heck. Yeah, And
(19:49):
you know, that's an interesting, plausible idea, but it requires
basically breaking the rules of that universe, or revealing that
the universe is larger one with different rules. I guess
that wasn't in the book. He didn't say that the
world was a simulation. It wasn't in the book. Also,
I'm not sure that would work because you have multiple
people with multiple memories, and each of them can change
the universe, and so it's more of a branching, right,
(20:10):
It's not that you can't have one consistent picture of
the universe. Anymore when multiple people can use their experiences
to change the external reality. What if it's something like
the multiverse, you know, because in an infinite multiverse, there
are an infinite number of universes, and so there there
is a universe in which I sort of have the
memories of having gone back and you have the memories
(20:30):
of me having gone back. Yeah, that's plausible. There could
be a multiverse, of course, we don't know, and it
could be that multiverse contains other things that might have
happened in our universe. And so it's not that you're
actually going back to your memory, but you're like jumping
to another version of the universe that's a little bit different,
and that that's plausible. But you know, then the question
(20:51):
is like, well, how you getting there? And how is
it that remembering that somehow gets you to the right
location there? This is you need a connection somehow between
what's happening in your brain and what's happening in the
external reality. You know, normally, just thinking about something doesn't
change what's happening out there. Right, I can think there's
ice cream on my counter, I can really imagine. It
(21:12):
doesn't make ice cream appear on my counter at least
I've tried it a bunch of times and it's never worked. Hey,
you try it every day, all right. Well, it sounds
like a pretty interesting premise for a book, and you know,
just to kind of get you to think about memories,
and you know, I guess it's sort of a mix
of like a time travel story where you sort of
wonder what you would do differently and how you can
(21:33):
hack that and affect other people. But it maybe also
has this layer of like thinking about your memories and
what makes you you, and you know what if someone
change your memory? Right? Yeah, And there's a lot of
nice things to say about this book, like it's really
fun to read, it's exhilarating. Blake Craft is really good
at writing fast paced, exciting stuff like I'm turning the pages,
I want to know what happens next, and there's not
(21:54):
a slow moment like this stuff happening. And I definitely
finished this book that was not going to be a
problem for me. And there and you're right, he's created
a universe where there are new rules and those tell
you different things about the characters. Right, what is it
like to have this option? Would you rather go back
and relive this stuff or just make the same mistakes.
Lots of really fascinating questions to answer there, So that
was really fun. But you know, I feel like there's
(22:16):
there's a layer of the science that would could have been,
you know, handled a little bit more deeply. Like, you know,
this question of can you really control your external reality
from your memories bothered me a little bit because you know,
if we all believe in one external reality, how do
we each individually control it? Right? There's a lot of
conflicts there, like can I change the reality but you
(22:37):
can also change the reality? Like how many realities are there?
Are we jumping into different multiverses or the same one?
That whole bit was kind of confusing to me. There's
sort of the question of whether we are all in
the same reality, right, Well, there is sort of a
deep philosophical question like I know that I'm in my
reality and I don't know if the external reality exists
at all. But from that point of view, you're all
just in my reality. And there's no way that if
(22:59):
you sit in a chair should somehow change where I
am and what I know and and what I am
what my experiences are. Right you sitting in a chair
and frying your brain in this machine shouldn't change the
universe for me, but in this book it sort of does.
I see. So it's more of a cause and effect
you were, you were thrown up by the cause and
effect that he that the rules in his universe seemed
(23:20):
to follow. Yeah, and it wasn't sure that it was
always that it always made sense, you know, like this
bit where the memories from the old universe can somehow
get transported into the new universe at a certain moment um.
But you know, that's fine. He made up some rules,
and I think he really did a good job of
trying to follow them and telling the stories that came
from that. All right, Well cool, Well you actually got
(23:41):
the chance to talk to Blake. You interviewed him over
the phone, right or over Skype? Yeah, I talked to
him over Skype and we had a really fun conversation
about the science of his universe and how he thought
about it and uh, and also about technical consulting with
a physicist that he talked to. Oh. Interesting, Yeah, he
talked to Cliff Johnson, who we both know. Yeah, and
you see, Yeah, so we're going to play the interview
(24:02):
with you now, and so Daniel. What can we expect
from the interview? Was it a fun? It was a
lot of fun, and he was a great sport answering
you know, what you might consider grumpy questions about physics
from basically nobody. And you know, for those of you
who don't know, Blake Crouch is not just some random guys.
A New York Times bestselling author and so he doesn't
have to take his time and answer people's questions about
(24:24):
his work, but he was nice enough to do so.
So thank you, Blake very much for taking your time
to talk to me. Yeah, thank you. And so here's
the interview with Blake Crouch. Hello Blake, and welcome to
the program. Would you introduce yourself to our audience. I'm
Blake Crouch, a novelist and screenwriter. I wrote the trilogy
Wayward Pines and more recently Dark Matter and Recursion. Well,
(24:48):
thanks again for coming on the program. I've been looking
forward to talking to you. But before we dig into
your novel, I'd like to ask you a couple of
warm up questions to sort of get to know you
a little bit and how you think about science and
science fiction. So the first question is what technology that
you see in science fiction? Would you like to see
become real? And the stuff in my books is so disrupting,
(25:13):
and you know it might take your life if you
play around with it too much. I can't actually recommend those,
but I love like teleporters and things like that. I
really I would love someone also to finally like build
a tricorder from Star Trek. Like I happen to know.
One is actually being um contemplated right now and they're
trying to kind of put it together. Obviously not on
(25:35):
the spectrum of of something in Star Trek, but something
that you could actually take out into the field and
immediately diagnose a variety of illnesses just by a scan.
I don't know. I think that's uh. I think that'd
be pretty cool. On the topic of Star Trek, I
have a philosophy question for you. So where do you
land on whether Star Trek transporters actually move you from
(25:57):
place to place or whether they disassemble you, kill you
and create a clone somewhere else. Oh, I think they
kill you and create a clone somewhere else. Yeah, for sure,
And yet you still like to see them become reality.
Would you be willing to use a teleporter? I would, yeah,
absolutely to not have to engage in commercial airline travel
(26:18):
absolutely would be worth death. It would be worth death, Yeah,
and maybe worse. This is really fascinating stuff. But let's
take a quick break. We'll be right back with the
rest of Blake Crouch's interview. Let's talk about your book Recursion.
(26:45):
In my mind, the core concept of this novel, the
idea that you built this story around, is this concept
of vividly reimagining a memory and then having the universe
actually take you there, like time traveling to the moment
the memory it was created. Is it a fair description
and the core nugget of the story scientifically, it is.
(27:05):
It is the notion of you know, remembering something so
vividly and essentially just being transported back into this memory
by some quantum or time associated phenomenon that maybe we're
not sure of what it is. When I was working
on the back half of the book, I kind of
was trying to play around with notions of of what
(27:26):
it might be. And you know, there's some talk of wormholes,
especially tiny little wormholes, and getting sucked into other dimensions,
which is little portals into these old, old memories. Yeah,
that is the true Conceit I really don't think of
the book as a time travel novel. I think of
it very much as a memory travel. One of the
things I came away with just it wasn't even so
(27:48):
much as from the research or anything that I that
I stumbled across. It was just more from living in
this space for several years where memory was such the focus.
I just started to think of of memory as being
in some ways maybe more fundamental than time. And we
have these things like we have time, and and we
have matter, we have space, and we look at these
(28:08):
in sort of isolation, But I said, I try to
look at them as what is the underlying feature that
gives rise to it? In other words, like if we
think about consciousness, if you and I subscribe to like
what Max type Marks says were an infinite complexity gives
rise to consciousness. So what is the thing that is
(28:28):
getting giving rise to the to the e notion or
to the illusion of time. Memory seem to fit that
bill really really neatly. Then in your book you take
it one step further, because it's not just an exploration
of what you remember and who you are. It's a
journey into that memory literally physically transported into those moments.
(28:51):
What made you take that extra step? Did you start
from the story you wanted to tell and that's sort
of the science fiction that you needed, or did you
start from what would happen if you could do this
cool science fiction thing and then find the story with recursion.
And with most of my books, they don't start with
the character. It doesn't start really with a setting. It
starts with this with the notion of a kind of
(29:13):
a very large concept. And when I had finished Dark
Matter and I was like, what I want to do
something else big? I started thinking, like, what is like?
What is like the most sort of fundamental element of
humanity and not just humanity but consciousness? And I just
kept coming back and back to the idea of memory,
because you take a lot of things away from us.
(29:35):
I mean, you take our bodies away, and I mean theoretically,
if we have some mechanisms upload us to the cloud,
we could still be us. You take a lot of
things away from us. But if you take away our memories,
you really start taking away identity, and you start taking
away the notion really of time itself. When I kind
of landed upon just the idea of memory as the
(29:55):
cential core of the novel. I knew that that's what
I wanted to do early on, I didn't know that
I have my characters actually returning to a memory and
sort of living their life forward again from that point.
That came a bit later. Because that's quite a leap, right.
It makes a lot of sense to imagine exploring your
memories and to think about how your memories to find
(30:17):
who you are, and you know that's quite rich and fascinating.
But then to say that your memory is reality and
they if you change your memory, you can change your
external reality. That's a big leap. So let me ask
you if you believe in an external reality beyond like
your experience of it. In other words, would the universe
(30:38):
be here if we weren't here to experience it. Are
you saying that the universe is here because we observe it,
and without our observation that it doesn't exist. It seems
to me that your book is suggesting that, because it
makes this connection between memory and reality, if you change
your memory in your book, you actually change the external reality.
(30:58):
I guess I do believe that. I'm not sure I've
ever explicitly thought of it in those terms, But as
you say it. Yeah, that it lines up exactly with
sort of just the general theory and in worldview that
I put forward in both like dark matter and recursion.
I mean, consciousness is so weird, unbelievably weird, the idea
that that it kind of our consciousness is the engine
(31:22):
behind giving life and breath to the universe. And if
you take us out of it, what does that look like?
Or if you take any sort of conscious entity out
of it, is doesn't still exist? Yeah? I mean that
that is what I'm basically writing about kind of over
and over again. It's fascinating and it's a question that's
deep and important, but also difficult to probe scientifically. I mean,
(31:43):
how do you do the experiment of a universe without observers?
You literally cannot observe that experiment. Once AI becomes truly
uh sentient, and we can start having a I almost
be a stand in for this, maybe we can start
to get around that. We can ask the AI philosophers
to chime in on that question. Yeah, or are we can?
(32:04):
Are we you know, there's some experiment you can use
where you know, once you have you know, I think
synthetic or digital consciousness is the same thing. I don't
think it's any less than bio consciousness. So maybe maybe
down the road we get some truly digital, uh sentient beings,
and there's some experiments to be had. This is the
(32:26):
concept that I had a bit of struggle with digesting
when I was reading the book, The idea that if
there's an external universe, how can me remembering something different
change that external universe? How can I influence the facts
out there? Just by thinking about things? It made me
wonder how do you think about the physics of it?
Do you try to limit yourself to the physics of
(32:47):
our universe in your book or did you think, hey,
there's a spectrum of different universes that might exist. This
could happen in some universe. Another way to ask this
is what are the laws of physics in or universe? Well,
I knew or suspected I was maybe infringing on some
of the laws of like creation and destruction of matter. Theoretically,
(33:11):
people could be going back into their memories as often
as they use this uh you know, the chair, and
then they're kind of creating a new universe at the
point in which they returned. So you know, it's described
in the book that sort of the universe that they
leave becomes this dead timeline. It's kind of great out
noir atmospheric thing that is sort of like, I don't
(33:32):
know how what you call it matter um in state,
in pure stasis. It's probably in a universe with the
laws of physics are a little different than ours because
I am technically creating kind of a lot of new
matter each time, right, And so how deeply did you
think about the laws of physics of that universe and
try to apply them consistently or did you sort of
(33:53):
leave some of those details aside? Well, I thought about
it to a point. The whole notion of dark matter
dark matter not the book, but dark matter and dark energy. Um,
it's still so unknown and it's still so speculative. I
feel like it gives uh sci fi novelists like me
a little bit of cover to mess with what we
think of as the laws of phy six good point.
(34:15):
I mean, like, what's the other nineties six percent or
whatever it is of unobservable matter that's out there? Are
Those are those other universes, other worlds, other dimensions wrapped
up in themselves, where you know, matters a fraction of
of itself out here. I don't know. Well, that's certainly
a fair point. I think there's a lot we don't
know about this universe, and so a lot of questions
(34:36):
remain about what the laws of physics actually are and
what they allow. Speaking of which I see in the
acknowledgments that you worked with cliff Johnson as a consultant.
I have great respect for him, of course as a colleague.
But tell me what was that like for you? Did
he shoot down a bunch of stuff or did he
give you ideas? What's it like to work with the
science consultant? He's so fantastic. He also did worked on
(34:58):
dark matter with me. So there's this thing called the
Science and Entertainment Exchange, and it puts people like me
and screenwriters and show owners in touch with people like
Clifford who it gives you a subject matter matter expert
who is a tune to working in the entertainment industry,
which means they're not coming in to just break down
what you've created, the trying to help you take in
(35:22):
the spirit of what you want to do and make
it as plausible as possible. So, yeah, with Recursion, I
finished my first draft without basically telling him at all
what was going on. And then we had a phone
call and I was like, here's kind of what's happening.
I'd love to just send you the book and then
you hit me back with you know, anything that you
think you can improve on or that I'm completely off base.
And he helped me a lot with the technology behind
(35:45):
the memory retrieval process. And he also helped me a
little skirts some of the speculation of of how someone
might return to the memory, because there's some some talk
deep into the book about wormholes, black holes. Can't remember.
I think I took out white hole. I honestly don't
remember if that's there anymore. He gave some suggestions for
how to talk about it and much more plausible not
(36:09):
getting anyone's back up kind of ways. All right, so
he was okay with creating entire universes. Yes, all right, great,
well again, thank you Blake very much for your time
and for coming on our podcast to answer our rather
nitpicky physics questions. It's been a pleasure, of course. All right,
pretty fun interview with Blake Crouch there, the author of Recursion,
(36:32):
which is a sci fi novel. And so Daniel, what
were what were some of you were taking aways from
talking to Blake. I thought he made a lot of
really good points. You know, he clearly thought about the
universe he was creating, and he thought about it sort
of up to a point. He didn't worry about whether
physicists today had an idea for how this might actually happened.
He was like, you know, here are the rules, and
I'm going to tell the story. And I was also
(36:53):
impressed with it, with the point he made that, like,
we don't know much about what's going on in the universes.
We like to say on this podcast all the time
time there's a lot about the universe we don't know.
And so did he throw you off a little bit
when he said that, Were you like, oh, I have
to concede that point. And I was happy to concede that.
I love that point about the universe, that we don't
know what's going on. And as I said earlier, that's
one of the roles of science fiction authors to imagine
(37:16):
what else is in those gaps and and to be
creative about it, to think outside the bounds of what
sort of academia is considering. And so absolutely that's wonderful.
And I also really enjoyed hearing about his experience talking
to a cliff and what that's like to, you know,
try to incorporate the comments from a real working physicist
into your fiction universe. I wonder if a lot of
(37:37):
what what you take away from these sci fi novels
has to do with the language, Daniel, Like, I feel like,
you know, if it wasn't called science fiction, and maybe
it was called speculative fiction, and you know, maybe it
didn't use some of the same words that you use
in your work in real science, you would, maybe, you know,
enjoy this book a little bit more and just be
(37:58):
more opening your disbelief in and just going alone for
the right I can't tell if that's a question or
a suggestion, but you know, I also like fantasy novels,
and the ones I like the most are the ones
where they think careful about what the rules are, you know,
like Robert Jordan's his world. He has magic and that
magic follows rules, which means like you can cast a
spell in these moments, but you can't in those other moments. Okay,
(38:19):
I think I'm getting more of a sense here, Daniel.
It's all about the rules for you. Well, look, I'm
a physicist. My entire goal in life is to figure
out what are the rules of the universe, because it's
those rules that constrain our lives. Why can't I go
to Alpha Centauri right now because there's a rule against that,
Otherwise I would totally be there. So it's all about
bumping up against the rules and figuring out how they
(38:42):
constrain the stories we tell and the lives we live.
So if we find out that the universe doesn't have
consistent rules, Daniel, are we gonna be critiquing in on
our podcast as well? Yeah? Right, I'm going to talk
to the creator of the universe and given my notes
or her my notes or podcast, Daniel talks to God.
That's selling author of the universe, Daniel and the other universe,
(39:07):
the universe without Daniel, after God deletes me from making comments. God,
Why isn't the universe hard science fiction? Anyway? To wrap
up about Blake, CRUSH's Recursion is a totally fun book
if you're really interested in sort of like fast moving
stories with cool technology that take place in other universes.
I really recommended I wouldn't consider it like the hardest
(39:29):
of science fiction. It's not like Alistair Reynolds. That really
delves deeply into the physics underlying the story. But he
did a good job of making it consistent and telling
a fun story sort of within that universe. But thank
you to Blake Crush for coming on the program. And
it's great to hear from him and learn from him.
And it's great to think about the ideas in his
book but memory and about time travel. Yeah, so it's
(39:51):
a lot of fun. Thank you very much, Blake. All Right,
we hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. Before
you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
(40:12):
Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening,
and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,
Hey, this is Daniel and Jorge from Daniel and Jorge
Explained the Universe. We interrupt this podcast for a special announcement.
This Friday March We're having our first ever Daniel and
Jorge Explained the Universe live stream event. So join us
as we record an episode in real time and take
questions from listeners like you. You can submit your questions
(00:20):
live on air, or send them to us ahead of
time at questions at Daniel and jorghead dot com. To
tune in, just go to YouTube dot com slash PhD
Comics this Friday March at ten am Pacific. That's one
pm Eastern, six pm Europe. That's two am in Tokyo
and four am in Australia. What time it's out of Mars, Daniel?
(00:40):
You know, in case aliens want to tune in? Do
you think aliens want to ask us questions? Um? May not,
you may they might have engineering questions. You know, well
I got questions for them. So tune in this Friday,
March twenty seven at ten am Pacific at YouTube dot
com slash PhD Comics and bring your questions about the universe. Hey, Daniel,
(01:11):
what's your fondest memory? I have a lot of great
memories of finishing a wonderful book. Oh yeah, that's your
happy place, sitting down reading a sci fi novel. I
love reading a science fiction novel and being totally confused,
like what's going on? How does this make sense? And
then coming to the end of it and getting some
incredible idea to the author had to pull it all
(01:31):
together and deliver it to the reader. That's wonderful. Do
you remember the bad science fiction novels? Do you have
less than fond memories of sci fi novels. I don't
remember finishing bad science fiction novels, because I usually don't.
You often tossed them across the room and say, I'm
not reading that anymore. Really, you're not a completest. I
do not finish every novel I start. Now if I
(01:53):
get too fed up because the story doesn't make sense,
I'm just done with it. Well, do you ever wish
you could maybe go back in time, or at least
go back in your memories and wish that you hadn't
even started the book? I do. In fact, there was
one set of novels as a kid that I deliberately
never read the last page of because I didn't want
to finish it. I didn't want to be done with
it and have it in my past. These days, I
(02:15):
love seeing my kids read some of those books because
it's sort of like getting to re experience them. That's right.
Kids are sort of a replay button. Yeah, except they're
guaranteed just remake all of our mistakes. Well, there might
be a universe, Daniel where that is possible. Hi. I'm
(02:46):
or hammy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and avid science fiction reader,
and apparently I take science fiction personally. I've seen you
get worked up about interesting novels you read, and movels
D like less. Yeah, well, you know, a good work
of art will make people get worked up, It'll evoke
reactions in them, it will make them think. And to me,
(03:07):
the wonderful thing about science fiction is that when it
makes me think about another science fiction universe and the
laws of physics there, the laws of physics here, How
does it all fit together? Well? I wonder if you're
sort of a science fiction writer's worst nightmare. You know,
a particle physicists trained physicist read trying to make sense
of a science fiction work. If it wasn't fiction, new
just be called the science book probably, And fortunately for
(03:29):
those authors, there are not a lot of us particle
physicists around, so we don't sway the market very much. Well,
Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio, a podcast in which
we usually explore the real universe and take you on
a tour of everything that's out there that's incredible, that's amazing,
peel back a layer of reality to show you how
(03:50):
things actually work. That's right. Does this part of a
genre called science reality or science nonfiction? Is that a
redundant word, reality nonfiction. It's podcast in which we do
try to sort of explore the universe and take you
to all the furthest reaches of the cosmos and all
the smallest places in uh, this place that we call home.
That's right, because we think that the intellectual questions of
(04:12):
the universe are questions for everybody. We think everybody wants
to know how the universe got started and what its
fate will be, in what it's made out of. So
normally our job is to take you there and explain
it to you. In a way that we hope educates
and entertains. Yeah, so it's a big universe, and actually
nobody really knows if this is the only universe or
if there are other universes out there. But there are
(04:34):
sort of people in this universe that create whole universes,
not just in their heads but also on the page.
And we are big fans of people who do this
sort of mental exploration, who wonder what kind of things
could happen in this universe, what other laws of physics
might there be. And I've long thought that science fiction
authors are sort of on the vanguard of intellectual exploration.
(04:55):
They're the ones out there wondering what we could build
in our universe and how the universe might be there front.
Really you put them at a little higher than scientists.
Oh yeah, absolutely. You got experimentalists trying to discover stuff,
theorists trying to think about what experimentalists should discover, and
then science fiction authors thinking about the things that theorists
should be thinking about. I like Asimov to say Needson
(05:17):
to Daniel Whitson, Well, that's an illustrious group, but sure,
I'll take it now. I think that science fiction authors,
you know, they're not as constrained by reality like particle
theorists are. They just sort of think broadly and they
get to consider their unchained They get to consider what
other universes could look like and how things might work.
And not just that. They also write technology fiction. You know,
(05:37):
they think, in our universe, could we do this, could
we have tricorders, could we build teleporters? Could we travel
faster than light? It's a it's fascinating and important work.
They think of a stuff and it makes physicists and
it tickles the imagination of scientists and maybe that it's
burs ideas about what to explore or what kinds of
questions to ask right about this universe. Yeah, and it
(05:59):
gives real sciences, real ideas, and there are real examples
of people reading something in science fiction and then trying
to make it real. But there's a challenge there. You know,
when you are writing in another universe, you don't just
get to follow the rules of the universe. You know,
you have to make up the rules and then tell
a story in that universe. So you're sort of playing
both sides of the equation. And I think with that
(06:20):
comes some extra responsibility. Yeah, with great pros comes great responsibility,
isn't that what Spider Man said? Yeah, well, they are
sort of gods of that universe. You know, they get
to decide what the rules are and then they get
to tell the story you know, that follows those rules. Well,
we thought it would be interesting for our listeners to
talk to some sci fi authors here on the podcast,
(06:42):
and so we we we have this series now where
we talked to science fiction authors who are doing really
great and interesting work out there right now, that's right,
And we don't just talk to them about their book.
We are interested in how did they build that universe?
What laws of physics happen in their universe, and why
did they make those choices? Or if they are living
in our universe, do they think that the technology that
(07:05):
they're creating is real, is something that could actually happen. Yeah,
and so a little bit recently, we had an episode
where we talked Daniel talked to me and like you,
and we talked about the science in her science fiction book.
And so if you've heard of and like you and
are interested in her book, an Selary Justice, check it
out in our archive. But today we're talking to an
author that we've mentioned in this podcast before and that
(07:27):
Daniel has thrown a little shade at Maybe that's right.
I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but
somehow Blake Crouch's book Dark Matter came up and I
made a not necessarily positive comment about the science in
that book. Yeah, because you were saying that the title
was called dark matter, but it didn't feature dark matter
in it. I kept waiting, where is the dark matter?
(07:50):
I kept waiting for it to show up. I think
it's ironic that a physicist would complain about the naming
of something not being accurate. But I digress. I'm hunting
for dark matter in real life, and so then I'm
reading a book about dark matter, and I'm like waiting,
I'm looking for the dark matter, and so I'm left unsatisfied.
To the end, I still have not found dark matter.
And it is dark matter? Actually dark Daniel? Is it really, Diana?
(08:12):
For sure? It doesn't admit anything. We are not aware
of any emissions from dark matter, either the book or
the actual kind of Does it matter, actually, Daniel, it
does matter. It is matter, and it does matter, And
I think it also matters to get the science right
in your book. I think go ahead and create a universe.
That's fine, but make sure the rules makes sense. Make
(08:32):
sure you follow those rules, or if you live in
our universe, get the rules right, you know, don't do
science miscommunication. Well may it sort of label as science fiction.
So I don't think anyone sort of reads it and
thinks that it's necessarily real. A lot of people just
read it because it's fun and it's interesting to sort
of bend the rules, isn't it. Yeah, absolutely, And you're
free to create whatever universe you like and make up
(08:53):
whatever rules. But I think a story is only good
if you're following the rules. You know, if you're telling
a detective story and you're looking at the clues and
wondering who could have murdered Mr White in the library
or whatever, then you want there to be rules. Otherwise
you have no chance of figuring it out. And if
it comes in the end it was it was a
magic genie that appeared and disappeared, and so all the
clues are irrelevant. That's not really a very satisfying story.
(09:15):
So I like it when it follows the rules. Anyway,
said to be on the program, we'll be talking to
Blake Crouch and talking about the science in his book
called Recursion, and so to the on the program, we'll
be covering the science fiction universe of Blake Crouch's Recursion.
So there's a book you read recently, Daniel, I did. Yeah.
(09:37):
So after I mentioned Blake Crouch on air and invited
him to come on the program and defend his universe,
we reached down to Blake and said, hey, would you
come on the podcast and talk about the science fiction universes.
And it turns out he has a more recent book,
um than Dark Matter. It's called Recursion, and so I
read it and talked to him about it. Was he
aware that you're sort of a peaky physicist's flooring, agreed
(10:00):
to talk talk with us on air. I thought about
this carefully. Um. I didn't want to antagonize him, or
attack him or insult him. So I made sure that
he knew that I was not going to be throwing
him softball questions about what's it like to be a
famous writer, but instead that I was going to be
probing him kind of deeply about the science of his universe. Oh,
I see, so you gave him advance the questions kind
(10:22):
of or gave him a flavor for the questions. Yeah,
I didn't tell him the questions in advance because I
wanted his sort of spontaneous reactions and thoughts to them.
But I did let him know that we would be
going a little bit deeper in the physics than maybe
his typical interview. Well, if you're interested, please check it out.
And then the name again is Blake Crouch and the
book is called Recursion, And so Daniel said, let's step
me through before we listen to the interview about what
(10:44):
this book is about and what is the basic idea
of it. So Recursion is a really fun book to read.
It's sort of near future fiction. It takes place in
the universe you will find familiar. It's not some kind
of thing that takes place in a galaxy far far
away with crazy stuff happening. And a book starts out
where a scientist is working on memory. She's trying to
(11:04):
essentially find a technological solution to Alzheimer's. The idea is,
build some device that can map your brain and like
record your memories digitally somehow and then later reinject them.
Like let's say you and I have lunch and we
had a great time. Then you get Alzheimer's and you
forget it, and then later you want to remember that
lunch because it was so good, but it's faded from
(11:26):
your memory. Then in this book, they've developed machine that
will let you do that. You sit in a special chair,
it reimplants those memories and you can re experience them. Wait,
it reads your memories first, or do you have to
remember it and while you're remembering it sort of reads
those memories. Yeah, you call it up in your mind
and while you're remembering it, it stores it, and then
later you can come back and it will reinsert them.
(11:47):
And as I was reading this, I was thinking, Wow,
this is technically pretty Harry. I mean, we don't understand
the brain like at all. To interpret what's going on
inside of the brain with neurons firing and translate that
into digital code that you can then re upload, that
seemed pretty crazy to me. But you know, suspension of disbelief,
assume there's some technology they can do that. And he
(12:07):
did a good job of investigating like what kind of
technology you would need in order to probe the brain
and reimplant this stuff using like a scanner, and he
has like you know, magnets and all sorts of stuff
you would need to focus the energy and induce these spikes.
That is sort of how they do these neural prosthetics.
I don't know if he knows, but I worked at
caltag on a new prosthetics lab, and that is sort
(12:29):
of how how they do it. They just kind of
record you moving your arm, for example, or or looking
sideways in different directions, and they just sort of record
the raw data and then you know, you don't have
to make sense of it, but you just sort of
take it in as raw and then you interpret that
and say that means right, that means left. That relies
on like understanding which part of the brain to record,
(12:49):
Like you could record the entire brain, and but then
you don't want to replay the entire brain. You want
to record the entire brain and somehow pull out the
memory part of it and then reinject just that part it,
so that part. I don't really know if we could,
you know, interpret some random person's brain patterns to know
which part was the memory and which part was you know,
them breathing, and which part was them controlling other parts
(13:11):
of their body. Isn't the brain pretty separated, like there
are memory parts, and there are breathing parts, So I
mean it's I'm just saying it's it doesn't seem technically impossible. No,
not technically impossible, like you know, maybe stretching the ability
of what we could do. But you could imagine people
could figure that out. So that's cool, that's clever. So
the idea is you sit in a chamber and it
you think of it a memory, and it records it. Yes,
(13:33):
But then the book takes a big twist. And this
is a bit of a spoiler, but the book has
been out for a while, so I don't feel bad
spoiling it. But it turns out that when you reinsert
the memory, you go back and you say, oh, I
want to re experience that memory of having lunch with Daniel.
You're sit in a chair, you turn it on. You
don't just remember it. It actually takes you back to
(13:54):
those events. It like transforms the universe somehow. So you
are back at that lunch and so I need to
sit back down in the same chair. It flashes and
then and suddenly I'm transported to that time. Yes, transported,
teleported timeported memory ported something ported back into that memory.
That memory becomes real again. And not like virtual reality.
(14:15):
I'm experiencing it, but I'm not really there, but like
you are really there, you can order something different and
have a different future playout. Okay, so uh, I'm transported
through this memory machine to that time, and i still
have my memories that I've gained since. Like I'm wiser
and I'm replaying the moment, and I can do different things.
(14:36):
I can order something different for lunch. That's right, you
can decide, you know what. That didn't work out so well,
I had stomach cramps all afternoon, so I'm not going
to get the you know, Beef Tartar and the world
you left behind is sort of like, well, it's not gone.
It's weird because say you go back in time ten
years in his novel, you then have ten years to
live your life and do things differently. After ten years
(14:57):
have passed, when you come back to the moment that
you jumped from, then everybody else in that new universe,
that new sort of memory line that you're now in,
gets the memories from the old timeline and they suddenly
all remember them. Suddenly everyone remembers your new choices. Everybody
in the new timeline suddenly remembers all the old stuff
that they never actually experienced. Okay, you kind of just
(15:18):
lost me. Yeah, it's it's it gets complicated, so let's
keep let's go back for our lunch. So I went
back to lunch. I order something different, and then I
hung out in my office and not that I have
an office, but hu I hung out, and then it
was time for we reached the time where I sat
down on the machine originally. So then what happens. So
let's think about it from my point of view. I'm
(15:39):
having lunch with you in the new timeline. I'm not
aware that you've jumped back. It's just Daniel having lunch
with Jorge, and you're like, oh, I'm glad you didn't
eat my banana this time. Well, I don't know that
there is any other time. I'm new Daniel. Right, I'm Daniel,
and he's just glad I didn't eat your banana. No,
so new Daniel. It just lives his life. But then
we get to later that afternoon, the time when in
(15:59):
the original timeline you jumped back into the chair, and
when we crossed that moment, I get old original Daniels memories.
So I'm new Daniel in the new timeline. But then
I remember all this stuff which sort of like never
happened to me, but happened to a different Daniel. And
so suddenly you have two memories. Yes, you remember having
lunch with me one where I took your banana, and
(16:20):
you remember having lunch where I didn't take your banana.
That's right. How can I have two memories? It's confusing.
And one of the themes of the book is sort
of like memory makes you who you are, and if
you don't have your memory, or if your memory is
corrupted or manipulatable, then who are you really? And that's
a lot of the theme. And you know, there's elements
where characters go back in time and redo things so
(16:43):
they avoid tragedies or you know, don't make mistakes they
made the first time around, and it changes their lives.
And you know, it has all ripple all sorts of
ripples downstream and changes things. And it gets very complicated
because then there's multiple chairs and different people are jumping
back and forth and try to erase other people's memories
of the chair because they want to control the chair.
(17:04):
And it got pretty tangled pretty quickly. I have a
sheet of notes I kept trying to map the timeline
of this thing. It was crazy. Wow, it made you
you have to take notes. Oh yeah, I had to
take notes because I want to know, like, wait, is
this right? Is he just making this up? Like I
wanted to make sure we were following the rules. For me,
it's important, Like he set up some rules for this universe.
(17:25):
Whether the physics of it makes any sense at all,
we'll talk about it in a minute, But he set
up some rules from this universe, and I want to
know that the characters are constrained by those rules. You know,
like you won't actually know this at this moment, so
you don't know to jump back, or you can't erase
this other purpose person's memory of the chair because they
didn't know it yet or something. You know. You stok
a sci fi writer's nightmare to a new level, Daniel.
(17:46):
Now now they're all imagining physicists not just reading their books,
but like reading it and taking notes and taking us
or I am like the perfect reader drawing diagram. Yes,
this guy spent more than a year of his life
imagining this universe, taking characters through it really carefully, you know,
and I'm sure he prefers to people take his work seriously.
They don't just sort of like skim and go. I
(18:06):
don't really understand what's happening, but whatever, I'm sure it's fine.
You know, he probably wants people to deeply engage with it. No,
maybe that's so sure. But now now it seems like
a question, Daniel. Let's get a little bit more into
the science in whether or not it makes sense, and
then we'll play the interview with Blake Crouch. But first
let's take a quick break. We're talking about Blake Crouch's
(18:42):
book Recursion, in which you can sort of store your memories.
When you replay them, you're reliving them. Yeah, you are
really there again. It's like time travel, but memory travel.
Sort of at first class, it sort of sounds like
we just jumped into fantasy. Um. But you know, maybe
I'm thinking, you know, maybe there's something about that, like
what would make this possible? Like what if what if
(19:04):
we're all just in a simulation, Daniel, And so you know,
when you remember something, you're somehow skipping the software code
that we're you know, all based on, and somehow you
are sort of reliving it. Going into your memories is
like hacking the source code of the universe. Yeah, you somehow,
like you know, you cause some kind of oh recursion,
there you go, and it somehow breaks the code and
(19:26):
and somehow the code is not meant meant to handle that.
I guess that requires like some flaw in the coding
of the universe. If the simulated universe is correctly coded
and accurately coded or well written, you shouldn't be able
to break out of it, shouldn't be able to break
those rules. That's sort of like a breaking of those rules, right,
But you're assuming it's well coded, you assuming it's well coded. Yeah,
I mean the universe side is a heck. Yeah, And
(19:49):
you know, that's an interesting, plausible idea, but it requires
basically breaking the rules of that universe, or revealing that
the universe is larger one with different rules. I guess
that wasn't in the book. He didn't say that the
world was a simulation. It wasn't in the book. Also,
I'm not sure that would work because you have multiple
people with multiple memories, and each of them can change
the universe, and so it's more of a branching, right,
(20:10):
It's not that you can't have one consistent picture of
the universe. Anymore when multiple people can use their experiences
to change the external reality. What if it's something like
the multiverse, you know, because in an infinite multiverse, there
are an infinite number of universes, and so there there
is a universe in which I sort of have the
memories of having gone back and you have the memories
(20:30):
of me having gone back. Yeah, that's plausible. There could
be a multiverse, of course, we don't know, and it
could be that multiverse contains other things that might have
happened in our universe. And so it's not that you're
actually going back to your memory, but you're like jumping
to another version of the universe that's a little bit different,
and that that's plausible. But you know, then the question
(20:51):
is like, well, how you getting there? And how is
it that remembering that somehow gets you to the right
location there? This is you need a connection somehow between
what's happening in your brain and what's happening in the
external reality. You know, normally, just thinking about something doesn't
change what's happening out there. Right, I can think there's
ice cream on my counter, I can really imagine. It
(21:12):
doesn't make ice cream appear on my counter at least
I've tried it a bunch of times and it's never worked. Hey,
you try it every day, all right. Well, it sounds
like a pretty interesting premise for a book, and you know,
just to kind of get you to think about memories,
and you know, I guess it's sort of a mix
of like a time travel story where you sort of
wonder what you would do differently and how you can
(21:33):
hack that and affect other people. But it maybe also
has this layer of like thinking about your memories and
what makes you you, and you know what if someone
change your memory? Right? Yeah, And there's a lot of
nice things to say about this book, like it's really
fun to read, it's exhilarating. Blake Craft is really good
at writing fast paced, exciting stuff like I'm turning the pages,
I want to know what happens next, and there's not
(21:54):
a slow moment like this stuff happening. And I definitely
finished this book that was not going to be a
problem for me. And there and you're right, he's created
a universe where there are new rules and those tell
you different things about the characters. Right, what is it
like to have this option? Would you rather go back
and relive this stuff or just make the same mistakes.
Lots of really fascinating questions to answer there, So that
was really fun. But you know, I feel like there's
(22:16):
there's a layer of the science that would could have been,
you know, handled a little bit more deeply. Like, you know,
this question of can you really control your external reality
from your memories bothered me a little bit because you know,
if we all believe in one external reality, how do
we each individually control it? Right? There's a lot of
conflicts there, like can I change the reality but you
(22:37):
can also change the reality? Like how many realities are there?
Are we jumping into different multiverses or the same one?
That whole bit was kind of confusing to me. There's
sort of the question of whether we are all in
the same reality, right, Well, there is sort of a
deep philosophical question like I know that I'm in my
reality and I don't know if the external reality exists
at all. But from that point of view, you're all
just in my reality. And there's no way that if
(22:59):
you sit in a chair should somehow change where I
am and what I know and and what I am
what my experiences are. Right you sitting in a chair
and frying your brain in this machine shouldn't change the
universe for me, but in this book it sort of does.
I see. So it's more of a cause and effect
you were, you were thrown up by the cause and
effect that he that the rules in his universe seemed
(23:20):
to follow. Yeah, and it wasn't sure that it was
always that it always made sense, you know, like this
bit where the memories from the old universe can somehow
get transported into the new universe at a certain moment um.
But you know, that's fine. He made up some rules,
and I think he really did a good job of
trying to follow them and telling the stories that came
from that. All right, Well cool, Well you actually got
(23:41):
the chance to talk to Blake. You interviewed him over
the phone, right or over Skype? Yeah, I talked to
him over Skype and we had a really fun conversation
about the science of his universe and how he thought
about it and uh, and also about technical consulting with
a physicist that he talked to. Oh. Interesting, Yeah, he
talked to Cliff Johnson, who we both know. Yeah, and
you see, Yeah, so we're going to play the interview
(24:02):
with you now, and so Daniel. What can we expect
from the interview? Was it a fun? It was a
lot of fun, and he was a great sport answering
you know, what you might consider grumpy questions about physics
from basically nobody. And you know, for those of you
who don't know, Blake Crouch is not just some random guys.
A New York Times bestselling author and so he doesn't
have to take his time and answer people's questions about
(24:24):
his work, but he was nice enough to do so.
So thank you, Blake very much for taking your time
to talk to me. Yeah, thank you. And so here's
the interview with Blake Crouch. Hello Blake, and welcome to
the program. Would you introduce yourself to our audience. I'm
Blake Crouch, a novelist and screenwriter. I wrote the trilogy
Wayward Pines and more recently Dark Matter and Recursion. Well,
(24:48):
thanks again for coming on the program. I've been looking
forward to talking to you. But before we dig into
your novel, I'd like to ask you a couple of
warm up questions to sort of get to know you
a little bit and how you think about science and
science fiction. So the first question is what technology that
you see in science fiction? Would you like to see
become real? And the stuff in my books is so disrupting,
(25:13):
and you know it might take your life if you
play around with it too much. I can't actually recommend those,
but I love like teleporters and things like that. I
really I would love someone also to finally like build
a tricorder from Star Trek. Like I happen to know.
One is actually being um contemplated right now and they're
trying to kind of put it together. Obviously not on
(25:35):
the spectrum of of something in Star Trek, but something
that you could actually take out into the field and
immediately diagnose a variety of illnesses just by a scan.
I don't know. I think that's uh. I think that'd
be pretty cool. On the topic of Star Trek, I
have a philosophy question for you. So where do you
land on whether Star Trek transporters actually move you from
(25:57):
place to place or whether they disassemble you, kill you
and create a clone somewhere else. Oh, I think they
kill you and create a clone somewhere else. Yeah, for sure,
And yet you still like to see them become reality.
Would you be willing to use a teleporter? I would, yeah,
absolutely to not have to engage in commercial airline travel
(26:18):
absolutely would be worth death. It would be worth death, Yeah,
and maybe worse. This is really fascinating stuff. But let's
take a quick break. We'll be right back with the
rest of Blake Crouch's interview. Let's talk about your book Recursion.
(26:45):
In my mind, the core concept of this novel, the
idea that you built this story around, is this concept
of vividly reimagining a memory and then having the universe
actually take you there, like time traveling to the moment
the memory it was created. Is it a fair description
and the core nugget of the story scientifically, it is.
(27:05):
It is the notion of you know, remembering something so
vividly and essentially just being transported back into this memory
by some quantum or time associated phenomenon that maybe we're
not sure of what it is. When I was working
on the back half of the book, I kind of
was trying to play around with notions of of what
(27:26):
it might be. And you know, there's some talk of wormholes,
especially tiny little wormholes, and getting sucked into other dimensions,
which is little portals into these old, old memories. Yeah,
that is the true Conceit I really don't think of
the book as a time travel novel. I think of
it very much as a memory travel. One of the
things I came away with just it wasn't even so
(27:48):
much as from the research or anything that I that
I stumbled across. It was just more from living in
this space for several years where memory was such the focus.
I just started to think of of memory as being
in some ways maybe more fundamental than time. And we
have these things like we have time, and and we
have matter, we have space, and we look at these
(28:08):
in sort of isolation, But I said, I try to
look at them as what is the underlying feature that
gives rise to it? In other words, like if we
think about consciousness, if you and I subscribe to like
what Max type Marks says were an infinite complexity gives
rise to consciousness. So what is the thing that is
(28:28):
getting giving rise to the to the e notion or
to the illusion of time. Memory seem to fit that
bill really really neatly. Then in your book you take
it one step further, because it's not just an exploration
of what you remember and who you are. It's a
journey into that memory literally physically transported into those moments.
(28:51):
What made you take that extra step? Did you start
from the story you wanted to tell and that's sort
of the science fiction that you needed, or did you
start from what would happen if you could do this
cool science fiction thing and then find the story with recursion.
And with most of my books, they don't start with
the character. It doesn't start really with a setting. It
starts with this with the notion of a kind of
(29:13):
a very large concept. And when I had finished Dark
Matter and I was like, what I want to do
something else big? I started thinking, like, what is like?
What is like the most sort of fundamental element of
humanity and not just humanity but consciousness? And I just
kept coming back and back to the idea of memory,
because you take a lot of things away from us.
(29:35):
I mean, you take our bodies away, and I mean theoretically,
if we have some mechanisms upload us to the cloud,
we could still be us. You take a lot of
things away from us. But if you take away our memories,
you really start taking away identity, and you start taking
away the notion really of time itself. When I kind
of landed upon just the idea of memory as the
(29:55):
cential core of the novel. I knew that that's what
I wanted to do early on, I didn't know that
I have my characters actually returning to a memory and
sort of living their life forward again from that point.
That came a bit later. Because that's quite a leap, right.
It makes a lot of sense to imagine exploring your
memories and to think about how your memories to find
(30:17):
who you are, and you know that's quite rich and fascinating.
But then to say that your memory is reality and
they if you change your memory, you can change your
external reality. That's a big leap. So let me ask
you if you believe in an external reality beyond like
your experience of it. In other words, would the universe
(30:38):
be here if we weren't here to experience it. Are
you saying that the universe is here because we observe it,
and without our observation that it doesn't exist. It seems
to me that your book is suggesting that, because it
makes this connection between memory and reality, if you change
your memory in your book, you actually change the external reality.
(30:58):
I guess I do believe that. I'm not sure I've
ever explicitly thought of it in those terms, But as
you say it. Yeah, that it lines up exactly with
sort of just the general theory and in worldview that
I put forward in both like dark matter and recursion.
I mean, consciousness is so weird, unbelievably weird, the idea
that that it kind of our consciousness is the engine
(31:22):
behind giving life and breath to the universe. And if
you take us out of it, what does that look like?
Or if you take any sort of conscious entity out
of it, is doesn't still exist? Yeah? I mean that
that is what I'm basically writing about kind of over
and over again. It's fascinating and it's a question that's
deep and important, but also difficult to probe scientifically. I mean,
(31:43):
how do you do the experiment of a universe without observers?
You literally cannot observe that experiment. Once AI becomes truly
uh sentient, and we can start having a I almost
be a stand in for this, maybe we can start
to get around that. We can ask the AI philosophers
to chime in on that question. Yeah, or are we can?
(32:04):
Are we you know, there's some experiment you can use
where you know, once you have you know, I think
synthetic or digital consciousness is the same thing. I don't
think it's any less than bio consciousness. So maybe maybe
down the road we get some truly digital, uh sentient beings,
and there's some experiments to be had. This is the
(32:26):
concept that I had a bit of struggle with digesting
when I was reading the book, The idea that if
there's an external universe, how can me remembering something different
change that external universe? How can I influence the facts
out there? Just by thinking about things? It made me
wonder how do you think about the physics of it?
Do you try to limit yourself to the physics of
(32:47):
our universe in your book or did you think, hey,
there's a spectrum of different universes that might exist. This
could happen in some universe. Another way to ask this
is what are the laws of physics in or universe? Well,
I knew or suspected I was maybe infringing on some
of the laws of like creation and destruction of matter. Theoretically,
(33:11):
people could be going back into their memories as often
as they use this uh you know, the chair, and
then they're kind of creating a new universe at the
point in which they returned. So you know, it's described
in the book that sort of the universe that they
leave becomes this dead timeline. It's kind of great out
noir atmospheric thing that is sort of like, I don't
(33:32):
know how what you call it matter um in state,
in pure stasis. It's probably in a universe with the
laws of physics are a little different than ours because
I am technically creating kind of a lot of new
matter each time, right, And so how deeply did you
think about the laws of physics of that universe and
try to apply them consistently or did you sort of
(33:53):
leave some of those details aside? Well, I thought about
it to a point. The whole notion of dark matter
dark matter not the book, but dark matter and dark energy. Um,
it's still so unknown and it's still so speculative. I
feel like it gives uh sci fi novelists like me
a little bit of cover to mess with what we
think of as the laws of phy six good point.
(34:15):
I mean, like, what's the other nineties six percent or
whatever it is of unobservable matter that's out there? Are
Those are those other universes, other worlds, other dimensions wrapped
up in themselves, where you know, matters a fraction of
of itself out here. I don't know. Well, that's certainly
a fair point. I think there's a lot we don't
know about this universe, and so a lot of questions
(34:36):
remain about what the laws of physics actually are and
what they allow. Speaking of which I see in the
acknowledgments that you worked with cliff Johnson as a consultant.
I have great respect for him, of course as a colleague.
But tell me what was that like for you? Did
he shoot down a bunch of stuff or did he
give you ideas? What's it like to work with the
science consultant? He's so fantastic. He also did worked on
(34:58):
dark matter with me. So there's this thing called the
Science and Entertainment Exchange, and it puts people like me
and screenwriters and show owners in touch with people like
Clifford who it gives you a subject matter matter expert
who is a tune to working in the entertainment industry,
which means they're not coming in to just break down
what you've created, the trying to help you take in
(35:22):
the spirit of what you want to do and make
it as plausible as possible. So, yeah, with Recursion, I
finished my first draft without basically telling him at all
what was going on. And then we had a phone
call and I was like, here's kind of what's happening.
I'd love to just send you the book and then
you hit me back with you know, anything that you
think you can improve on or that I'm completely off base.
And he helped me a lot with the technology behind
(35:45):
the memory retrieval process. And he also helped me a
little skirts some of the speculation of of how someone
might return to the memory, because there's some some talk
deep into the book about wormholes, black holes. Can't remember.
I think I took out white hole. I honestly don't
remember if that's there anymore. He gave some suggestions for
how to talk about it and much more plausible not
(36:09):
getting anyone's back up kind of ways. All right, so
he was okay with creating entire universes. Yes, all right, great,
well again, thank you Blake very much for your time
and for coming on our podcast to answer our rather
nitpicky physics questions. It's been a pleasure, of course. All right,
pretty fun interview with Blake Crouch there, the author of Recursion,
(36:32):
which is a sci fi novel. And so Daniel, what
were what were some of you were taking aways from
talking to Blake. I thought he made a lot of
really good points. You know, he clearly thought about the
universe he was creating, and he thought about it sort
of up to a point. He didn't worry about whether
physicists today had an idea for how this might actually happened.
He was like, you know, here are the rules, and
I'm going to tell the story. And I was also
(36:53):
impressed with it, with the point he made that, like,
we don't know much about what's going on in the universes.
We like to say on this podcast all the time
time there's a lot about the universe we don't know.
And so did he throw you off a little bit
when he said that, Were you like, oh, I have
to concede that point. And I was happy to concede that.
I love that point about the universe, that we don't
know what's going on. And as I said earlier, that's
one of the roles of science fiction authors to imagine
(37:16):
what else is in those gaps and and to be
creative about it, to think outside the bounds of what
sort of academia is considering. And so absolutely that's wonderful.
And I also really enjoyed hearing about his experience talking
to a cliff and what that's like to, you know,
try to incorporate the comments from a real working physicist
into your fiction universe. I wonder if a lot of
(37:37):
what what you take away from these sci fi novels
has to do with the language, Daniel, Like, I feel like,
you know, if it wasn't called science fiction, and maybe
it was called speculative fiction, and you know, maybe it
didn't use some of the same words that you use
in your work in real science, you would, maybe, you know,
enjoy this book a little bit more and just be
(37:58):
more opening your disbelief in and just going alone for
the right I can't tell if that's a question or
a suggestion, but you know, I also like fantasy novels,
and the ones I like the most are the ones
where they think careful about what the rules are, you know,
like Robert Jordan's his world. He has magic and that
magic follows rules, which means like you can cast a
spell in these moments, but you can't in those other moments. Okay,
(38:19):
I think I'm getting more of a sense here, Daniel.
It's all about the rules for you. Well, look, I'm
a physicist. My entire goal in life is to figure
out what are the rules of the universe, because it's
those rules that constrain our lives. Why can't I go
to Alpha Centauri right now because there's a rule against that,
Otherwise I would totally be there. So it's all about
bumping up against the rules and figuring out how they
(38:42):
constrain the stories we tell and the lives we live.
So if we find out that the universe doesn't have
consistent rules, Daniel, are we gonna be critiquing in on
our podcast as well? Yeah? Right, I'm going to talk
to the creator of the universe and given my notes
or her my notes or podcast, Daniel talks to God.
That's selling author of the universe, Daniel and the other universe,
(39:07):
the universe without Daniel, after God deletes me from making comments. God,
Why isn't the universe hard science fiction? Anyway? To wrap
up about Blake, CRUSH's Recursion is a totally fun book
if you're really interested in sort of like fast moving
stories with cool technology that take place in other universes.
I really recommended I wouldn't consider it like the hardest
(39:29):
of science fiction. It's not like Alistair Reynolds. That really
delves deeply into the physics underlying the story. But he
did a good job of making it consistent and telling
a fun story sort of within that universe. But thank
you to Blake Crush for coming on the program. And
it's great to hear from him and learn from him.
And it's great to think about the ideas in his
book but memory and about time travel. Yeah, so it's
(39:51):
a lot of fun. Thank you very much, Blake. All Right,
we hope you enjoyed that. See you next time. Before
you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,
please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
(40:12):
Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at
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