July 8, 2025 • 36 mins
David Hewlett, founder of Tech Bandits, makes learning fun and creates an environment where children—the future generation of scientists—can feel comfortable with curiosity. With host Ari Berman, Hewlett delves into his acting career, which consists of a wide range of scientist roles, and the origins of Tech Bandits. He also shares his thoughts on how science needs to be communicated better (and why scientists need to know how to present their work to the world), what technology can help with regarding the future of life sciences and healthcare, and standardizing data.
Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast delivers your insider’s look at the science, technology, and executive trends driving the life sciences through conversations with industry leaders.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ari Berman (00:01):
Hi everybody.
Welcome to the Trends from theTrenches podcast co-produced by
BioTeam and BioIT World.
I'm your host, Ari Berman, CEOof BioTeam.
I'm so excited to have DavidHewlett on the show today to
help me kick off the new seriesof Trends from the Trenches,
after I took it over from StanGloss last month.
David's a well-known actor, technerd, lifelong learning
advocate and guy who expertlyplays a genius on TV.
(00:24):
He's acted in many TV shows andmovies, including A Dog's
Breakfast, rise of the Planet ofthe Apes, the Shape of Water
Sea, guillermo del Toro'sCabinet of Curiosities, and is
probably best known for his roleas Dr Rodney McKay on Stargate
SG-1, stargate Atlantis andStargate Universe.
Inspired by his childhood fearand fascination with Doctor who,
he wanted to become a genius.
(00:45):
Time lord.
Reality led him to acting.
David created TechBandits.
org, a curiosity-driven science,technology, engineering, arts
and math club for kids of allages that promotes lifelong
learning via YouTube and Twitch,as well as in-person events at
local schools and communitycenters.
His enthusiasm for assistivetechnology led him to partner
with gamer and influencer LanceCarr and Google on Game Face, an
(01:07):
AI-powered head-tracking mousereleased at Google IO 2023.
David also worked with theUniversity of Toronto on his
educational escape room designlearning initiative.
Beyond his creative endeavors,David actively speaks at
conferences and podcastsworldwide.
His goal is to inspire the nextgeneration of brilliant minds
to be brave, be kind and becurious.
Today, david and I will talkabout his journey through
(01:30):
learning in Hollywood, howscience and technology have
influenced his life and careerchoices, and geek out a little
on health and lifesciences-related technology
topics.
It is my great pleasure towelcome my very good friend,
david, to the podcast.
David Hewlett (01:44):
Hey David.
Wow, that was a fantastic leadin there.
I feel like I'm never going tolive up to that.
I think we should just cut itoff right there.
That's fantastic.
Ari Berman (01:51):
Well, you know, that's how I see it, so it works
out.
David Hewlett (01:55):
This is the thing I love about, I mean, I think
Stargate in particular is thatit allows me not only I get to
play geniuses on television, butI get to talk to them now as
well, Like I get to talk topeople who are at the leading
edge of this stuff, and this isa perfect example.
It's like we just met on Ithink it was Twitter at the time
On Twitter.
Ari Berman (02:13):
When it was Twitter.
David Hewlett (02:14):
Yeah, twitter when it was Twitter, and we've
just been friends ever sincebecause we're both giant nerds.
Ari Berman (02:19):
Giant nerds and we geek out for hours and lose time
and it's great.
Yeah, exactly, that's reallyfun.
Well, I know I just sort ofintroduced all the things, but
let's start out about talkinghow you ended up in so many
scientist roles, both very wellintentions and some shockingly
evil ones, like in C Dude.
I didn't know you could be thatevil.
(02:40):
That was awesome.
David Hewlett (02:41):
That was some pretty evil stuff, wasn't it?
Yeah, that was awesome.
That was some pretty evil stuff, wasn't it?
Yeah, that was evil.
The makeup helps, I think.
The makeup, you know, the factthat you've got, you know, like
two and a half hours of peopleputting things on your face to
make you look that evil, is alsopretty great.
It's funny, isn't it?
The scientist thing was, Ithink I've always like you so
beautifully put.
I mean, Doctor who was myinspiration and I thanks to the
(03:04):
way that it's done up.
It was done up here in Canada.
They, in order to have Dr whoon the PBS channel that we had
up here, which was kind of a,which is our TVO, TV Ontario.
They had to A make up for achunk of time at the end of it
because of the British, Britishor real half hours, whereas we
have commercials and things, andalso they needed an educational
mandate.
So they would bring in thesescientists and science fiction
(03:25):
speakers.
There was Dr Dater and theundoctor was this wonderful
Judith who was the sciencefiction writer, and they would
talk about the potential.
You know, just things to thinkabout that were brought up in
the show and I loved that asmuch, if not as much, yeah,
certainly as much as the show,and so the science and the
(03:45):
science fiction became sort ofbound together for me.
So I just always loved thosescience, the way people could,
you know, answer these questions, these massive questions, by
just, you know, sitting down andthinking hard about it and you
know, bringing in other brains,and yeah, so I think that's
where that the love of thatcomes from.
And when you love doingsomething, when you love doing
something, the nice side effectof that is that people like you
(04:07):
doing it and hire you to do itmore.
So, yeah, the science stuff hasreally been a nice niche, I
must say.
Ari Berman (04:13):
Yeah, it really is, and we've talked before about
the rather extensive and rapiddialogue you had to learn for
Stargate.
David Hewlett (04:23):
Yeah, yeah, for some reason I got a reputation
for that.
There's a great story I haveabout RDA.
So this is MacGyver.
So I'm sitting on a planebeside MacGyver and I'm going in
to do our first episode ofAtlantis.
I mean, I'd done SG-1 beforethe original show and I'd met
him there, but so I sort of knewhim.
But he looked like he was busy.
I didn't want to talk to him andand so I I bring out this giant
(04:46):
script for the double episodepilot and I start going through
and I'm highlighting my linesand I'm jotting little notes
down and stuff, and he sort oflooks over and then he reaches
into his bag and pulls out likeone little fact sheet and he
puts it down and it's his linesand he crosses the first one out
, circles the second one,crosses out the second one, the
third one turns to me and saysyou know, if you get them wrong,
they stop giving them to you.
(05:07):
And like an idiot I didn't takehis advice, I got them right.
So they kept giving more andmore and they got to the point
where the writers would jokeabout the fact that they just
kind of wanted to see how much Icould say.
So I was like oh great, I'mlike a little mouse in your
(05:28):
Stargate experiments untilDavid's head explodes, you know.
But a wonderful show to work on.
And, like I say, I think one ofthe great pleasures I got was
people coming up to me after andsaying like, oh, because of
your crazy Rodney McKay guy, I'mnow doing physics or I'm doing,
or I'm in biotech or I'm.
I would, of course, go like ohgreat, tell me about it.
(05:48):
And that's sort of how I gotonto this whole.
I managed to sort of turn itinto a learning, a learning
adventure, lifelong learningadventure for myself, you know,
in the process.
Ari Berman (05:58):
Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
You know, I told you that.
You know your role in Stargateand other things like that sort
of inspired me to bring tech andscience together more.
You know, because I watchedthat show.
I'm like we can do that.
I think, yeah, we can do that.
David Hewlett (06:13):
You know they were very smart writers as well.
Like the writers weredefinitely nerds and they knew
what was going on and they kepttrack of that stuff.
And you know they definitely Ifeel like they're almost, they
were almost, you know frustratedscientists, I think you know.
Ari Berman (06:29):
Right.
I mean, I think one of thethings about it was that so a
lot of sci-fi has a hard timebalancing the human and the
technology and all that stufftogether.
You know, stargate did itbrilliantly Like there was just
a lot of human, a lot ofcharacter development, a lot of
interactions and also a lot ofnon-human and, you know, and a
lot of like really believablecompelling, both ancient history
(06:52):
and far-flung future stuff allthrown in together.
You know.
David Hewlett (06:55):
Yeah, it's fun because there was sort of
pseudoscience stuff but therewas also the real science and
yeah, they definitely had a lotof fun and I had just a ton of
fun doing it as well.
So that's my yeah, theydefinitely had a lot of fun and
I had just a ton of fun doing itas well.
So sci-fi is my world.
I mean I just love, you know,ever since, say, doctor who,
star Wars, all that stuff.
That was all I mean.
Star Wars is more fantasy.
I tend to prefer the Star Trektype of stuff myself because,
(07:17):
just because I like them, it'sthe science that really gets my,
you know, gets me excited whenthey have actual science
advisors on the show.
Right, which they then ignore.
But that's not, you know.
No, actually no, star Trekdoesn't.
But I know that one of the bigissues you get with film and TV
is that it's all very good andwell that we want it to be real,
(07:37):
Like really how much?
Okay, it doesn't have to bethat real.
Let's, you know, like there's alot of that going on, a bit
like the science world, Isuppose, you know.
Ari Berman (07:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean most scientifichypotheses, you know, start
completely as what can I make uptoday?
You know, and can I answer thatquestion that no one's ever
thought to ask and you knowpeople think scientists are
crazy because it's essentially99% abject failure.
David Hewlett (08:03):
So Well, that's it, though, isn't it?
Yeah, it's that classic.
Was it the Ford, or was itEdison who said he had 10,000
failures that brought him to thelight bulb, or whatever it was?
That was Edison, yeah.
Yeah, I think that's just.
That's the beauty of it.
I mean, I remember seeing theTech Bandits kids at one point,
and when something went rightand I was like, ah, damn it, it
worked.
We didn't learn anything.
(08:23):
You know what I mean.
Ari Berman (08:24):
So that's a great segue actually.
So you know, tell me a littlebit about Tech Bandits.
I've always liked, loved thatand you know, watched you a bit
on it.
You know, before we connectedup and then after also.
David Hewlett (08:35):
It's a weird kind of like myself a little bit.
It's, you know, unfocused andchanges weekly.
But I but during the pandemic,specifically before the pandemic
, I was doing some live stuffwith a local school and I would
bring old computers in and we'dpull them apart old printers
they love pulling apart oldprinters and then we started
putting them together intodifferent things and I just used
(08:57):
it as a great excuse to justnot teach anyone anything,
because I'm not a teacher, I'mteacher, I'm a, I'm more about,
I'm almost like more like ascience marketing.
I like to think of myself inthat I, just I.
They've got the collectiveknowledge of the human race
available to them.
All we have to do is inspirethem to look, and so that I felt
like that was my job, that Iwas noticing that the kids come
in and they're.
(09:18):
There's a wonderful sort of likewhen I I would wheel in this,
this giant orange cart oftechnology, whether it was 3D
printers, or I brought in somebiotech stuff.
We had spiders one time thatwere laser vibrometers I would
wheel them in and while I waitedto go up because I was coming
in at the same time every daythis class of kindergarten kids
(09:40):
would come out of their pooltime and they would just beeline
straight to this thing andthey'd be like what's that, what
does this do and what's this?
And I'm like, oh, it'sfantastic, it's this and that we
talked about all sorts of stuff.
And then you go take the stuffup to the class and by grade
four they're like what are youtrying to teach us?
Like what, you know what I mean, Like it's, you know what I
mean, Like it's.
Like they already think oflearning as a bad word and that
(10:04):
was really frustrating to me.
So one of the things I tried toget across very quickly was I'm
not teaching you anything Likethis is.
You know, literally, this is acomputer.
Other than stabbing the screen,which is the first thing one of
the kids did, you know.
I was like take it apart,You're not allowed to cut
anything.
You have to use this.
There's always another screwand they would tricked them into
(10:29):
learning something.
I could trick them intolearning stuff.
So.
But then the pandemic hit.
We tried it online and we triedlike a Zoom thing and it was a
disaster.
Like it was just because youcould hear them playing video
games in the background, theirscreens would disappear and I
was like this is awful.
So my son said, well, we're noton Zoom, we use Discord.
(10:50):
So I started using Discordbecause that was the gaming
platform.
I stopped trying to get theirattention because I knew that
you can't compete with the WorldWide Web and every video game
known to man, so I just let themplay.
And so for like an hour or sowe would sit around and I would
talk about stuff that I foundinteresting and you'd see it,
You'd hear the clicking of videogames and then it would stop
(11:10):
and they'd go whoa, whoa, whoa,wait, what was that?
What's that part, what's that?
And then you go ah, dinosaurfan.
Okay, great, so that's, andthat's sort of how we progressed
.
And then, once the pandemic wasover, I started trying to keep
it.
I tried to sort of keep itgoing.
It dwindled with the number ofpeople who were involved and
then I suddenly went wait asecond, don't want to be online.
(11:30):
So again went back to trying tomake more real world stuff,
which is where the escape puzzlestuff came into play.
And that's been amazing.
They just a U of T just got agrant to do to study the effects
of using using escape puzzlelearning as a way of learning,
as a learning tool for forbiology, for the biology
department up there.
And you know, and that'sbecause that is all because of a
(11:54):
tech bandits we did where Iinvited a guy who made escape
rooms in and we talked aboutstuff and I suddenly went wait a
second, this should be every.
The kids loved it.
I loved it.
I was like why are we?
Why isn't this my final examinstead of a piece of paper?
So I'm babbling, but there butthat's it's.
I mean, that's sort of the wayit's worked is, is I've just I'm
always a bit like the acting,it's just reacting Right.
(12:16):
It's just like what do they?
What do they got?
What do you know?
What do you?
Just the ability to be able to,to, to listen to what they're
and see what they're doing andthen and then and then respond
to that, I think, is just it'sjust been amazing.
It's so much fun.
Ari Berman (12:29):
That's really cool.
There's a important part in,you know, sparking and
maintaining curiosity, becauselearning can be fun.
We've managed to standardize itinto being horrible, right,
yeah, but learning is.
David Hewlett (12:45):
It's fun, but it's.
I think the thing that peopleseem to forget is that it's
uncomfortable.
Learning is uncomfortable.
It's not, you know, if it's allgoing, you're not learning
anything.
If you're just sitting thereand it's washing over you, it's
when you have to stop and go.
Ah, I don't get that.
It's the finishing of thatlearning process.
That is the part, that's thelearning, and I worry that we're
(13:08):
getting rid of that, that we'retrying to make it as easy as
possible, as easy as possible,and I think we're losing part of
the learning in the process.
Ari Berman (13:17):
Well, there's a great book I think I have over
here somewhere called theScientist in the Crib, oh yeah,
and it's sort of about how playis science.
It's kids teaching themselvesabout the world.
It's why they like to stab ascreen.
Yeah, what happens?
I've never been able to do that.
Yeah, no one's, let me do thatbefore I don't have to do that
(13:38):
again.
David Hewlett (13:38):
And I never let them do it again.
Ari Berman (13:40):
Yeah right, Exactly Well, because we discovered the
glass goes everywhere, it's veryhard to find where the glass is
, and yeah, so, yeah, exactly,anyway, yeah.
So I think we can go a lotfurther.
I think people who choose to gointo science-related fields are
people who enjoy self-learning,because, while there is a lot
(14:00):
of school learning, especiallyin life sciences, laboratory
science and other appliedsciences, getting a PhD is about
doing stuff.
You sit down and you have tolearn how to do a whole thing
that no one's ever done before,and then you have to write it
down and someone else can do it.
David Hewlett (14:20):
Right, exactly, yeah, and then, and the whole
point of people trying todisprove other people's stuff or
prove it or, you know, recreateit is, is a, it's just a.
The whole scientific process iswonderful that way.
The issue you have with biologyI've discovered, and the reason
why we focused on that with theescape puzzle stuff, the reason
(14:41):
why I wanted to focus on thatwas because biology requires a
huge amount of background.
You need to know so many wordsand so many concepts before you
can get into the actual creatingof this stuff, and so I thought
how do we make that more fun?
If do we?
You know, if you're trying tosolve puzzles, it's very similar
to looking things up and tryingto figure out how they work.
You know, is there a way thatthat stuff could be sort of
(15:03):
facilitated through this processinstead of just sitting down
and looking at a book?
Because one of my biggestfrustrations with biology was,
you know, when I was in school.
You know, you've got a terriblephotocopy of a cell that you're
supposed to label the parts onand you can barely make out what
they are, and it's just a, it'sjust an illustration.
I was very frustrated to see myson doing the same thing in his
biology class, you know, athousand years later.
(15:24):
So you know, I was like what dowe got out there?
We've got 4k video of thisstuff happening.
Why are we, why are we pointingat at static drawn images in a
textbook?
It seems crazy to me Becauseit's affordable.
Ari Berman (15:38):
Yeah, yeah, and it's always worked.
Why not keep doing it?
Yeah, exactly yeah.
David Hewlett (15:43):
Well, and the other problem with education
that we find is that is that youknow a lot of it becomes
focused by what, what your kid,where your kid is at in the
process.
So you've got problems in gradefour.
You do your best to sort outgrade four, but then you're on
to grade five so nothing getsfixed, it's just get through
that.
It's very rare that people goback and look at the problems
that their kids have had.
(16:03):
They're constantly lookingahead.
Ari Berman (16:06):
Yeah, standards-based learning is like
that.
Right, it's about checkingboxes and getting funding versus
actually fixing memories in thebrain and science is messy.
David Hewlett (16:16):
Science doesn't click, but it's about little
boxes.
I mean, you know it's.
It's one of the things I loveabout it is that it, it, it
demands, uh, you know it, it.
We're trying to put order tothe, to the wonderful chaos
that's.
That's that, that is the planetaround the world, around us,
and and I, I that we, you know.
This is why I find what you doso fascinating, because you are
(16:37):
trying to quantify some of thisstuff.
You are trying to take thesemassive amounts of data and that
scientists can produce.
But you know, we've gotscientists sitting there
watching things happen anddocumenting things and I'm like
whoa, whoa, whoa.
There's like AI that can youknow.
There's machine learning modelsand such that we can use that
can help process all this amountof data and we can speed things
(17:00):
up.
And yeah, I mean I just I lovethe idea of like speeding up
science.
I think is a wonderful, it'sjust a wonderful mission to have
.
Ari Berman (17:06):
Yeah, it keeps us going for sure.
I mean, you know, not to bringup a potential bad word here,
but you know, COVID, the worldwatched science unfold in real
time and a lot, and theunderstanding of science was
obviously not well penetratedinto the world, because you know
, there was all this.
(17:27):
Well, make up your mind, whatis it?
Right, right, because they'd say, unfortunately, definitively oh
, it's this, this.
And then, a week later, it'sthis.
And they're like well, which isit?
It was like well, we learnedsomething, it's this, but that's
not how they communicated it.
So everyone's like they can'tmake up their mind, they don't
know what they're doing and it'syou know, but that was, that
was science unfolding in realtime, and why science,
(17:47):
communication is so important.
David Hewlett (17:48):
I mean, is that?
You know what I mean?
I think that's the the biggestthing.
I think scientists tend to livein their.
They get their little bubbles,like we all do, you know, and
there's a tendency whenever Italk to scientists, the first
thing they always say is like oh, what I do is boring.
I'm like, no, no, what I do isboring.
I sit around on set waitingwith a cup of coffee, waiting to
say my lines that I already.
It's, in a way, that's almostas important as the science
itself.
Ari Berman (18:16):
I think it might be more important in some ways.
Right that science is reallyimportant, but and you and I
have talked about this a lotright that being able to
effectively communicate scienceto a broad audience reduces the
amount of ignorance, and so muchof science communication is
just done wrong by notscientists.
(18:37):
And I think you, through ourrandom chats, I think we
identified that you actuallyenjoy science communication.
I love it.
David Hewlett (18:46):
Absolutely love it.
Ari Berman (18:47):
Actors, essentially, are communicators, right,
expert communicators and so youand I talked about that, and
that led to you doing a keynoteat BioIT World.
Yeah, yeah.
David Hewlett (18:59):
How wild is that?
I had a few friends' eyebrowsraised on that one.
I was like because the funnything which I haven't mentioned
is I'm a high school dropout.
I hated school in everypossible way.
I absolutely hated it.
I would read the books and thennot do the essays, but I've
always loved learning.
So it's just kind of a certainirony of being at a bio IT
(19:19):
conference talking, but I thinkyou know, having spoken to you,
I mean a huge part of obviouslyis talking to you and seeing how
you work and what your companywas doing and stuff, how what
your company was doing and stuffand and seeing the the sort of
the pain points that you have,which is which is about, I think
you see, a lot of regulationissue stuff.
You see a lot of people pushingback on something.
(19:41):
The first question I had on theradio show that we did an
interview for radio show whilebio IT was going on and they're
like, okay, so you know, are we,are, you know should, should we
be concerned that you're goingto grow something horrible in
the lab type thing?
As always, we go straight toHollywood and these ridiculous
stories of it, whereas if youcan take control of the story
and I think the story tends tobe with scientists, tends to be
(20:03):
about the technology, and Ithink what they're missing is
that we need to know the peoplewho are making this stuff,
because you trust a companybecause of their actions and
what they do, if you don't knowthe story behind them, if you
don't know the genesis of this.
You had an uncle who had cancerso I was very interested in
(20:26):
cancer research.
I think understanding thepeople and the story behind
these inventions you know willturn CRISPR into the potential
you know, world-changingtechnology that it is, as
opposed to this ridiculousbacklash from people who don't
(20:47):
understand what's going on, andI think Hollywood's got a huge
responsibility with that.
We tend to go for the goodstory.
The good story is not a labexperiment gone well.
Ari Berman (21:03):
Although you all did that quite a lot on Stargate,
which I think was one of thecool things, is that
occasionally things went wrongand I know you love people
bringing this up like you know,destroying a solar system
Partial, Partial Right, exactly,Not the whole thing.
That was something gonehorribly wrong and I know you
love people bringing this up,like you know, destroying a
solar system, but partial,partial, partial right.
Exactly, that was somethinggone horribly wrong, but you
know.
But often it was about thingsgoing right, right.
David Hewlett (21:22):
And it's also.
It's it's what is the humanresponse to this stuff too.
I think that's what I lovedabout about Stargate was it was
like it was like it's the hereand now, at the time, now, 20
years ago.
But, and you know what, withour own current understanding of
the world and science, do webring to this and we make
mistakes.
And I think that you know, oneof the beautiful parts of
science fiction is thespeculative aspect of it.
(21:44):
There's a wonderful YouTubercalled Isaac Arthur who does
this wonderful spec.
He's a physicist by training, Iguess, guess, but he's gone off
and started just doingspeculative science fiction.
Basically, it's not, it's notabout people, it's all about the
technologies and like how do webuild these ships, how do we
maintain ourselves on these, inthese, in these, um, on longer
(22:06):
joy voyages and such?
So it's that speculative sideof the stuff that is really
fascinating to me.
And also, again and we're partof it like I think we keep sort
of separating ourselves from thetechnology and the stuff that
is really fascinating to me andalso, again, we're part of it
Like I think we keep sort ofseparating ourselves from the
technology and the stuff thatwe're building.
We are a part of this.
You know, when we go to anotherplanet, we're a part of the
planet.
It's not, you know, humankindgoing to another planet.
(22:32):
It's a green tendril from Earthreaching out.
You know, we can't separateourselves from the, from the
environment and the and theplanet we live on.
Ari Berman (22:37):
So yeah, for sure, and I think one of the things
that overwhelms people is thebreadth of information that's
out there.
Announcement (22:44):
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Ari Berman (23:01):
Yeah, we've talked before.
You know these lovely devices.
You now have the entire world'sknowledge in the palm of your
hand and a lot of not knowledgein the palm of your hand, yeah,
and so it's hard to sort through.
You know, and you know.
That's where sciencecommunication comes in.
It's too complex for mostpeople to follow.
David Hewlett (23:22):
It's difficult because, unfortunately, to make
stuff up and put out garbagetakes no thought and can be done
at an incredible pace, as wecan see by many of the sort of
country or state-basedmisinformation things.
But the real stuff takes timeand I think, unfortunately, the
(23:43):
way social media has gone, it'sreduced a lot of our attention
spans and I think we wantquantum mechanics explained in a
30-second video.
It's just not going to happen,nope.
But the hope is that you can atleast get someone excited
enough about it with that 30seconds that they will dig
deeper, but unfortunately, a lotof people.
It's funny.
I stopped getting a lot ofscience stories from social
(24:05):
media and I started just goingto newsletters because I felt
that I was just.
I felt like I was.
I'm already a little scattered,so picking things up, a little
bit of this, a little bit ofthat, a little bit of that, and
not knowing anything, whereas ifI could just find I could get a
newsletter interesting story, Icould dig in and I could cover
that with my email of awesome,awesomeness every week.
(24:26):
Just cover a few topics that Ithink are interesting.
Whether they're particularlycurrent or not, it almost
doesn't matter.
Yeah, and those are really good.
I mean they're they'reapproachable.
Ari Berman (24:40):
It brings up Certainly approachable, I don't
know.
I mean you know, like I readthe one this week and you know,
you know you brought up this,you know neurosensor sheet,
which was really interesting.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Hewlett (24:54):
I mean this, this stuff is, is.
This is what I love.
I love the bleeding edge oftechnology.
I love, you know, I love thisstuff.
But just basically, they'vecome up with a system that can
grow with an organism.
So, while you know, while thebrain of an axolotl is, is, is
of a custard consistency, theycan, they can layer in these,
these, these, this sort of thisintelligent not an intelligent
mesh, but a mesh that allowsthem to interact with this brain
(25:15):
matter that then folds with itand becomes the brain and they
can track this whole process.
It's like going from a staticimage of every here's it at one
week, at two weeks, at threeweeks.
Now you're basically watching a4K video of this thing forming,
which, of course, is going toinform us about how brains
develop and stuff.
(25:36):
And this wonderful.
I've always been fascinated, Ithink probably since Neuromancer
, the wonderful William Gibsonbook, this idea of the
brain-computer interface, stuff.
I'm just I'm fascinated by thatbecause I feel like if we can
hack All of these things, theseheadphones and screens and
glasses and everything, all itis is an awkward way of trying
(25:58):
to sort of trick our brain.
I can't wait to get into thatbrain and go like okay, you want
to see a movie, let's show youthe dream I had last night.
You know, like hacking, theactual wetware is very
interesting to me.
Ari Berman (26:10):
And that's going to take some time.
I mean, there's a whole area ofneuroscience for brain-machine
interfaces that they've beenworking on for a long time.
Two of the big areas thatthey've made the most progress
are blind people being able tosee transistor-based CCD
materials that are connecteddirectly into the occipital lobe
(26:32):
and can do that occipital lobeand can do that.
And then the other one is forparaplegics, where they're using
technology to sort of bridgelack of sensory input and being
able to control your musclesstraight into your spinal cord.
David Hewlett (26:47):
Yeah, it's amazing stuff, it's the
assistive stuff is something I'mfascinated to buy as well.
I think it's part of thebrain-computer interface stuff
that I love so much.
So I have a weird sort of it'sa fascination with accessibility
.
It's one of the reasons why Iended up um, so partnering up
with with lance carr, becauselance uh, lance has a form of
muscular dystrophy and we shouldyou know, you should have him
(27:09):
on one day because he absolutelyyeah, that'd be great talking
about his, about theaccessibility stuff.
But he was interested in inwhat sort of like home diy stuff
he could be playing with and Iand I and so we, we sort of
bonded on that and thendiscovered we're like the same
age, with the same interest inscience fiction and stuff
although he's a little too starwars for me and and we started
doing a podcast about, aboutreally disability rights and
(27:31):
accessibility, um, andaccessible tech as well.
I I'm more the tech, he's morethe rights, but honestly, right
now there's just so much goingon to talk about from that
aspect.
Ari Berman (27:42):
Yeah, that's awesome .
All right, In our last fewminutes I want to say ask you,
you know, what would you like tosee in the future in life
sciences and healthcare?
Like, what do you thinktechnology can really help with?
David Hewlett (27:52):
Well, you got me dreaming way back when one of
the first conversations we had,when you talked about trying to
standardize the data that'scoming out, and when I go and
visit these university profs andgo to the labs and talk to
these various differentcompanies doing all these
wonderful experiences I've beenhaving talking to people for
this time with Genius, the chatchats that I do do was that it's
(28:17):
a mess.
No one's doing things the sameway.
How do we, how do we organizeall this stuff?
So I just and I don't know whatit is I'm a, you know like, I
love, I love collecting, youknow, collector cards and stuff
like that.
The organizing is part.
So the idea that we couldsomehow start pulling down these
separate pillars of knowledgethat we have about these
(28:38):
different special areas ofexpertise and then sort of have
that open up to other, where yousuddenly go wait a second, oh,
you've got that, we've got thisthat just blew my mind because I
thought so.
I think one of the biggestthings for me is how do we
process this massive amount ofdata and not just in one little
(28:59):
area, because once we've suckedup that and figured out how to
work with that and allowing itto talk to other databases just
seems absolutely extraordinaryto me.
Yeah, that's certainly one ofthe areas that I'm most excited
about.
And then, you know, as we talkedabout with the recent email of
(29:20):
awesome awesomeness, there'sthis lab, a company called
Cortical Labs, that's now putout this they call it the CL1.
And it's something like 800,000human neurons on a chip,
800,000 human neurons on a chipand we can, and we can use it to
to read and write and and andfigure out how our, how our
(29:41):
brains work.
I am, you know, that that stuffis just, it's just
extraordinary.
But, again, you can't do any ofthat unless you've got the data
.
And so it all.
To me, it just, it's always, itjust comes down to data for me.
I took a Google analyticscourse because I you know this
high school dropout took aGoogle analytics course for fun,
because I realized data isthat's data's king, like that's
what we got to figure out whatto do with this stuff, you know,
(30:01):
and a good reason to protect itas well.
We want to make sure that stuffstays around, because even data
I talk to scientists now whoare working in areas that are
going back and going like whoa,there's all this data we've got
from before, the computer stuff.
Could we use that as?
Oh, we can, you know.
So it's new technology allowingus to process old data.
(30:22):
You know you sort of thinkabout it like, oh, that's out of
date, but no, it's fantasticfor looking back at stuff.
Ari Berman (30:27):
Yeah, especially for big longitudinal studies that
can last for hundreds of years,where the data before 30 years
ago are encoded into scannedpdfs from papers that were
published in.
How do you get all that?
That's one thing that ai canhelp with.
Fine, um, it's either that or awhole lot of graduate students
you know um typing things intodatabases well, that's it, that
(30:49):
was the.
David Hewlett (30:49):
That was the wonderful like.
Look, while I was taking thegoogle analytics course, it
changed.
Like I was using, I was usingperplexity and and going back
and forth with some of the stuffto to, you know, as a, as a
sort of a search engine for howto write the right commands for
python or whatever, to do the,the homework, and then suddenly
up popped another module calledai and ai and, and, and, uh, and
(31:11):
and, analytics, and, andbasically started telling me all
the things that I was doing waswhat we're going to be doing.
And I was like, well, wow, thisis like.
I'm literally we're right onthat ride, in that wave right
now.
You know it's the.
The tools that are available, Ithink, are just extraordinary,
and I worry very much about,about again, the story behind
this stuff, because if we wekeep thinking of, of, as you put
(31:34):
in your talks, if we think,terminator and Skynet, how are
we going to convince anyone touse these tools?
Ari Berman (31:42):
You know, like, yeah , and you know, ai made a big
break onto the public stage,into the public consciousness,
with OpenAI's ChatGPT coming outand everyone was like, oh,
that's AI, it's like, eh, kindof it's part of it, it's a cool
tool.
There's a lot of cool tools.
David Hewlett (32:02):
We've been using it for years.
I mean, google's been using itin the background for stuff
autocorrect, for God's sake.
Ari Berman (32:08):
Autocorrect is AI.
Voice recognition is AI.
You talk to Siri.
Talk to Siri, or you knowGoogle or whatever.
That's all AI.
David Hewlett (32:18):
Noise cancellation, I mean all that
stuff.
Ari Berman (32:22):
Which, by the way, was just a simple regression
algorithm before, and now it canadapt, and the adaptive part is
the AI Right.
David Hewlett (32:30):
Of course.
Ari Berman (32:31):
And you know, some people say, machine learning
basically is just linear,nonlinear regression.
You know, it's just really acomplicated version of it.
But yeah, it's, it'sfascinating.
And the data thing, you'reright, I mean that's that's a
big tear that we've been onforever, and you know, because
there's power in that data ifyou can pull it together and
(32:54):
with so many different formatsand people.
You know the description of thedata, the metadata, is not
being, you know, consistent.
You just can't do it and youknow.
I think I've described thisbefore.
But data is king, as you said,but as data it's just data.
To gather knowledge from it,you have to interpret it Right.
(33:15):
Data doesn't turn intoknowledge without interpretation
and if it's all super siloed,we lose power in that.
David Hewlett (33:20):
It just gathers dust rather than gathering data.
Ari Berman (33:23):
Yeah, that's right.
It gathers cosmic rays andloses bits and degrades over
time.
Well, this is the.
David Hewlett (33:32):
I mean, every so often I have these little panics
about the fact that, you know,everything we do is digital,
like what happened.
I mean, you know, is theregoing to be at some point?
Are we going to be acivilization that, if we lose
that, there's no trace of like,there's no art, there's no music
, there's no, you know, there'sno science, because it's all
digital.
(33:53):
But, that said, the advantageof the digital side of stuff is
just.
I mean, I feel so lucky becauseI've grown up as one has viewed
to some extent and watched theworld go from a very analog
world to a very computerizedworld and then a network world,
and now, with the next, I reallyfeel like AI.
I don't want to be too sort ofPollyanna, but I understand
(34:14):
there are issues, but I thinkthat a lot of these issues can
be combated by just peopleunderstanding it better.
You know, I love my mom.
My mom is like I don't knowshe'll kill me for saying this,
but she's like 80 or something,but she, I think this is where I
got my lifelong learning stuff.
She went back to school whenshe was 30 to do history.
Well, the other week she goesoh, I can't come to coffee.
(34:37):
I'm doing an AI course andshe's listening to the
University of Toronto.
The guy who literally just wona Nobel Prize has a talk and
she's there.
She goes.
Oh, I don't understand it, butI you know, but I you know, but
the fact that she's still tryingto understand this stuff is, I
think, just I don't understandwhy everyone isn't always.
I don't feel like there'senough hours in the day, there's
(34:58):
too much to learn.
Ari Berman (35:00):
Lead with curiosity, not judgment.
David Hewlett (35:02):
That's it, yeah.
Ari Berman (35:02):
Right.
David Hewlett (35:04):
You know the way I'm good at judgment too.
I got to say that's the act.
Ari Berman (35:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's that petty nature
to humans, of course.
Yeah, I embraced it, just do it.
Uh, david man, this has beengreat.
I always love talking to you.
I'm sure we could go on forhours, as we usually do, but uh,
thank you so much for doingthis.
David Hewlett (35:21):
I, I, I, I really appreciate you being the
kickoff of a new series here Iam so, so flattered and I am so
excited to to see what you dowith this, because I, I, you,
you're up to and, like myself, Ilove how many things you can
get into doing.
It's amazing that one companycan be involved in so many
(35:44):
different aspects of this stuff,and I can't wait.
I really really enjoy it.
I've enjoyed what Stan wasdoing before, but I'm really
looking forward to seeing whathappens now.
Ari Berman (35:54):
Awesome.
Well, david, as always.
Thank you so much.
I'm sure we'll catch upsometime soon.
A pleasure indeed.
We shall indeed Take care Iwon't hold you up from your
filming any longer before theyknock your door down.
David Hewlett (36:06):
I've got to be whisked away now.
Ari Berman (36:09):
Awesome.
Thanks so much, I reallyappreciate it.
David Hewlett (36:10):
Thank you so much .
Thanks everyone.
Hi everybody.
Welcome to the Trends from theTrenches podcast co-produced by
BioTeam and BioIT World.
I'm your host, Ari Berman, CEOof BioTeam.
I'm so excited to have DavidHewlett on the show today to
help me kick off the new seriesof Trends from the Trenches,
after I took it over from StanGloss last month.
David's a well-known actor, technerd, lifelong learning
advocate and guy who expertlyplays a genius on TV.
(00:24):
He's acted in many TV shows andmovies, including A Dog's
Breakfast, rise of the Planet ofthe Apes, the Shape of Water
Sea, guillermo del Toro'sCabinet of Curiosities, and is
probably best known for his roleas Dr Rodney McKay on Stargate
SG-1, stargate Atlantis andStargate Universe.
Inspired by his childhood fearand fascination with Doctor who,
he wanted to become a genius.
(00:45):
Time lord.
Reality led him to acting.
David created TechBandits.
org, a curiosity-driven science,technology, engineering, arts
and math club for kids of allages that promotes lifelong
learning via YouTube and Twitch,as well as in-person events at
local schools and communitycenters.
His enthusiasm for assistivetechnology led him to partner
with gamer and influencer LanceCarr and Google on Game Face, an
(01:07):
AI-powered head-tracking mousereleased at Google IO 2023.
David also worked with theUniversity of Toronto on his
educational escape room designlearning initiative.
Beyond his creative endeavors,David actively speaks at
conferences and podcastsworldwide.
His goal is to inspire the nextgeneration of brilliant minds
to be brave, be kind and becurious.
Today, david and I will talkabout his journey through
(01:30):
learning in Hollywood, howscience and technology have
influenced his life and careerchoices, and geek out a little
on health and lifesciences-related technology
topics.
It is my great pleasure towelcome my very good friend,
david, to the podcast.
David Hewlett (01:44):
Hey David.
Wow, that was a fantastic leadin there.
I feel like I'm never going tolive up to that.
I think we should just cut itoff right there.
That's fantastic.
Ari Berman (01:51):
Well, you know, that's how I see it, so it works
out.
David Hewlett (01:55):
This is the thing I love about, I mean, I think
Stargate in particular is thatit allows me not only I get to
play geniuses on television, butI get to talk to them now as
well, Like I get to talk topeople who are at the leading
edge of this stuff, and this isa perfect example.
It's like we just met on Ithink it was Twitter at the time
On Twitter.
Ari Berman (02:13):
When it was Twitter.
David Hewlett (02:14):
Yeah, twitter when it was Twitter, and we've
just been friends ever sincebecause we're both giant nerds.
Ari Berman (02:19):
Giant nerds and we geek out for hours and lose time
and it's great.
Yeah, exactly, that's reallyfun.
Well, I know I just sort ofintroduced all the things, but
let's start out about talkinghow you ended up in so many
scientist roles, both very wellintentions and some shockingly
evil ones, like in C Dude.
I didn't know you could be thatevil.
(02:40):
That was awesome.
David Hewlett (02:41):
That was some pretty evil stuff, wasn't it?
Yeah, that was awesome.
That was some pretty evil stuff, wasn't it?
Yeah, that was evil.
The makeup helps, I think.
The makeup, you know, the factthat you've got, you know, like
two and a half hours of peopleputting things on your face to
make you look that evil, is alsopretty great.
It's funny, isn't it?
The scientist thing was, Ithink I've always like you so
beautifully put.
I mean, Doctor who was myinspiration and I thanks to the
(03:04):
way that it's done up.
It was done up here in Canada.
They, in order to have Dr whoon the PBS channel that we had
up here, which was kind of a,which is our TVO, TV Ontario.
They had to A make up for achunk of time at the end of it
because of the British, Britishor real half hours, whereas we
have commercials and things, andalso they needed an educational
mandate.
So they would bring in thesescientists and science fiction
(03:25):
speakers.
There was Dr Dater and theundoctor was this wonderful
Judith who was the sciencefiction writer, and they would
talk about the potential.
You know, just things to thinkabout that were brought up in
the show and I loved that asmuch, if not as much, yeah,
certainly as much as the show,and so the science and the
(03:45):
science fiction became sort ofbound together for me.
So I just always loved thosescience, the way people could,
you know, answer these questions, these massive questions, by
just, you know, sitting down andthinking hard about it and you
know, bringing in other brains,and yeah, so I think that's
where that the love of thatcomes from.
And when you love doingsomething, when you love doing
something, the nice side effectof that is that people like you
(04:07):
doing it and hire you to do itmore.
So, yeah, the science stuff hasreally been a nice niche, I
must say.
Ari Berman (04:13):
Yeah, it really is, and we've talked before about
the rather extensive and rapiddialogue you had to learn for
Stargate.
David Hewlett (04:23):
Yeah, yeah, for some reason I got a reputation
for that.
There's a great story I haveabout RDA.
So this is MacGyver.
So I'm sitting on a planebeside MacGyver and I'm going in
to do our first episode ofAtlantis.
I mean, I'd done SG-1 beforethe original show and I'd met
him there, but so I sort of knewhim.
But he looked like he was busy.
I didn't want to talk to him andand so I I bring out this giant
(04:46):
script for the double episodepilot and I start going through
and I'm highlighting my linesand I'm jotting little notes
down and stuff, and he sort oflooks over and then he reaches
into his bag and pulls out likeone little fact sheet and he
puts it down and it's his linesand he crosses the first one out
, circles the second one,crosses out the second one, the
third one turns to me and saysyou know, if you get them wrong,
they stop giving them to you.
(05:07):
And like an idiot I didn't takehis advice, I got them right.
So they kept giving more andmore and they got to the point
where the writers would jokeabout the fact that they just
kind of wanted to see how much Icould say.
So I was like oh great, I'mlike a little mouse in your
(05:28):
Stargate experiments untilDavid's head explodes, you know.
But a wonderful show to work on.
And, like I say, I think one ofthe great pleasures I got was
people coming up to me after andsaying like, oh, because of
your crazy Rodney McKay guy, I'mnow doing physics or I'm doing,
or I'm in biotech or I'm.
I would, of course, go like ohgreat, tell me about it.
(05:48):
And that's sort of how I gotonto this whole.
I managed to sort of turn itinto a learning, a learning
adventure, lifelong learningadventure for myself, you know,
in the process.
Ari Berman (05:58):
Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
You know, I told you that.
You know your role in Stargateand other things like that sort
of inspired me to bring tech andscience together more.
You know, because I watchedthat show.
I'm like we can do that.
I think, yeah, we can do that.
David Hewlett (06:13):
You know they were very smart writers as well.
Like the writers weredefinitely nerds and they knew
what was going on and they kepttrack of that stuff.
And you know they definitely Ifeel like they're almost, they
were almost, you know frustratedscientists, I think you know.
Ari Berman (06:29):
Right.
I mean, I think one of thethings about it was that so a
lot of sci-fi has a hard timebalancing the human and the
technology and all that stufftogether.
You know, stargate did itbrilliantly Like there was just
a lot of human, a lot ofcharacter development, a lot of
interactions and also a lot ofnon-human and, you know, and a
lot of like really believablecompelling, both ancient history
(06:52):
and far-flung future stuff allthrown in together.
You know.
David Hewlett (06:55):
Yeah, it's fun because there was sort of
pseudoscience stuff but therewas also the real science and
yeah, they definitely had a lotof fun and I had just a ton of
fun doing it as well.
So that's my yeah, theydefinitely had a lot of fun and
I had just a ton of fun doing itas well.
So sci-fi is my world.
I mean I just love, you know,ever since, say, doctor who,
star Wars, all that stuff.
That was all I mean.
Star Wars is more fantasy.
I tend to prefer the Star Trektype of stuff myself because,
(07:17):
just because I like them, it'sthe science that really gets my,
you know, gets me excited whenthey have actual science
advisors on the show.
Right, which they then ignore.
But that's not, you know.
No, actually no, star Trekdoesn't.
But I know that one of the bigissues you get with film and TV
is that it's all very good andwell that we want it to be real,
(07:37):
Like really how much?
Okay, it doesn't have to bethat real.
Let's, you know, like there's alot of that going on, a bit
like the science world, Isuppose, you know.
Ari Berman (07:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean most scientifichypotheses, you know, start
completely as what can I make uptoday?
You know, and can I answer thatquestion that no one's ever
thought to ask and you knowpeople think scientists are
crazy because it's essentially99% abject failure.
David Hewlett (08:03):
So Well, that's it, though, isn't it?
Yeah, it's that classic.
Was it the Ford, or was itEdison who said he had 10,000
failures that brought him to thelight bulb, or whatever it was?
That was Edison, yeah.
Yeah, I think that's just.
That's the beauty of it.
I mean, I remember seeing theTech Bandits kids at one point,
and when something went rightand I was like, ah, damn it, it
worked.
We didn't learn anything.
(08:23):
You know what I mean.
Ari Berman (08:24):
So that's a great segue actually.
So you know, tell me a littlebit about Tech Bandits.
I've always liked, loved thatand you know, watched you a bit
on it.
You know, before we connectedup and then after also.
David Hewlett (08:35):
It's a weird kind of like myself a little bit.
It's, you know, unfocused andchanges weekly.
But I but during the pandemic,specifically before the pandemic
, I was doing some live stuffwith a local school and I would
bring old computers in and we'dpull them apart old printers
they love pulling apart oldprinters and then we started
putting them together intodifferent things and I just used
(08:57):
it as a great excuse to justnot teach anyone anything,
because I'm not a teacher, I'mteacher, I'm a, I'm more about,
I'm almost like more like ascience marketing.
I like to think of myself inthat I, just I.
They've got the collectiveknowledge of the human race
available to them.
All we have to do is inspirethem to look, and so that I felt
like that was my job, that Iwas noticing that the kids come
in and they're.
(09:18):
There's a wonderful sort of likewhen I I would wheel in this,
this giant orange cart oftechnology, whether it was 3D
printers, or I brought in somebiotech stuff.
We had spiders one time thatwere laser vibrometers I would
wheel them in and while I waitedto go up because I was coming
in at the same time every daythis class of kindergarten kids
(09:40):
would come out of their pooltime and they would just beeline
straight to this thing andthey'd be like what's that, what
does this do and what's this?
And I'm like, oh, it'sfantastic, it's this and that we
talked about all sorts of stuff.
And then you go take the stuffup to the class and by grade
four they're like what are youtrying to teach us?
Like what, you know what I mean, Like it's, you know what I
mean, Like it's.
Like they already think oflearning as a bad word and that
(10:04):
was really frustrating to me.
So one of the things I tried toget across very quickly was I'm
not teaching you anything Likethis is.
You know, literally, this is acomputer.
Other than stabbing the screen,which is the first thing one of
the kids did, you know.
I was like take it apart,You're not allowed to cut
anything.
You have to use this.
There's always another screwand they would tricked them into
(10:29):
learning something.
I could trick them intolearning stuff.
So.
But then the pandemic hit.
We tried it online and we triedlike a Zoom thing and it was a
disaster.
Like it was just because youcould hear them playing video
games in the background, theirscreens would disappear and I
was like this is awful.
So my son said, well, we're noton Zoom, we use Discord.
(10:50):
So I started using Discordbecause that was the gaming
platform.
I stopped trying to get theirattention because I knew that
you can't compete with the WorldWide Web and every video game
known to man, so I just let themplay.
And so for like an hour or sowe would sit around and I would
talk about stuff that I foundinteresting and you'd see it,
You'd hear the clicking of videogames and then it would stop
(11:10):
and they'd go whoa, whoa, whoa,wait, what was that?
What's that part, what's that?
And then you go ah, dinosaurfan.
Okay, great, so that's, andthat's sort of how we progressed
.
And then, once the pandemic wasover, I started trying to keep
it.
I tried to sort of keep itgoing.
It dwindled with the number ofpeople who were involved and
then I suddenly went wait asecond, don't want to be online.
(11:30):
So again went back to trying tomake more real world stuff,
which is where the escape puzzlestuff came into play.
And that's been amazing.
They just a U of T just got agrant to do to study the effects
of using using escape puzzlelearning as a way of learning,
as a learning tool for forbiology, for the biology
department up there.
And you know, and that'sbecause that is all because of a
(11:54):
tech bandits we did where Iinvited a guy who made escape
rooms in and we talked aboutstuff and I suddenly went wait a
second, this should be every.
The kids loved it.
I loved it.
I was like why are we?
Why isn't this my final examinstead of a piece of paper?
So I'm babbling, but there butthat's it's.
I mean, that's sort of the wayit's worked is, is I've just I'm
always a bit like the acting,it's just reacting Right.
(12:16):
It's just like what do they?
What do they got?
What do you know?
What do you?
Just the ability to be able to,to, to listen to what they're
and see what they're doing andthen and then and then respond
to that, I think, is just it'sjust been amazing.
It's so much fun.
Ari Berman (12:29):
That's really cool.
There's a important part in,you know, sparking and
maintaining curiosity, becauselearning can be fun.
We've managed to standardize itinto being horrible, right,
yeah, but learning is.
David Hewlett (12:45):
It's fun, but it's.
I think the thing that peopleseem to forget is that it's
uncomfortable.
Learning is uncomfortable.
It's not, you know, if it's allgoing, you're not learning
anything.
If you're just sitting thereand it's washing over you, it's
when you have to stop and go.
Ah, I don't get that.
It's the finishing of thatlearning process.
That is the part, that's thelearning, and I worry that we're
(13:08):
getting rid of that, that we'retrying to make it as easy as
possible, as easy as possible,and I think we're losing part of
the learning in the process.
Ari Berman (13:17):
Well, there's a great book I think I have over
here somewhere called theScientist in the Crib, oh yeah,
and it's sort of about how playis science.
It's kids teaching themselvesabout the world.
It's why they like to stab ascreen.
Yeah, what happens?
I've never been able to do that.
Yeah, no one's, let me do thatbefore I don't have to do that
(13:38):
again.
David Hewlett (13:38):
And I never let them do it again.
Ari Berman (13:40):
Yeah right, Exactly Well, because we discovered the
glass goes everywhere, it's veryhard to find where the glass is
, and yeah, so, yeah, exactly,anyway, yeah.
So I think we can go a lotfurther.
I think people who choose to gointo science-related fields are
people who enjoy self-learning,because, while there is a lot
(14:00):
of school learning, especiallyin life sciences, laboratory
science and other appliedsciences, getting a PhD is about
doing stuff.
You sit down and you have tolearn how to do a whole thing
that no one's ever done before,and then you have to write it
down and someone else can do it.
David Hewlett (14:20):
Right, exactly, yeah, and then, and the whole
point of people trying todisprove other people's stuff or
prove it or, you know, recreateit is, is a, it's just a.
The whole scientific process iswonderful that way.
The issue you have with biologyI've discovered, and the reason
why we focused on that with theescape puzzle stuff, the reason
(14:41):
why I wanted to focus on thatwas because biology requires a
huge amount of background.
You need to know so many wordsand so many concepts before you
can get into the actual creatingof this stuff, and so I thought
how do we make that more fun?
If do we?
You know, if you're trying tosolve puzzles, it's very similar
to looking things up and tryingto figure out how they work.
You know, is there a way thatthat stuff could be sort of
(15:03):
facilitated through this processinstead of just sitting down
and looking at a book?
Because one of my biggestfrustrations with biology was,
you know, when I was in school.
You know, you've got a terriblephotocopy of a cell that you're
supposed to label the parts onand you can barely make out what
they are, and it's just a, it'sjust an illustration.
I was very frustrated to see myson doing the same thing in his
biology class, you know, athousand years later.
(15:24):
So you know, I was like what dowe got out there?
We've got 4k video of thisstuff happening.
Why are we, why are we pointingat at static drawn images in a
textbook?
It seems crazy to me Becauseit's affordable.
Ari Berman (15:38):
Yeah, yeah, and it's always worked.
Why not keep doing it?
Yeah, exactly yeah.
David Hewlett (15:43):
Well, and the other problem with education
that we find is that is that youknow a lot of it becomes
focused by what, what your kid,where your kid is at in the
process.
So you've got problems in gradefour.
You do your best to sort outgrade four, but then you're on
to grade five so nothing getsfixed, it's just get through
that.
It's very rare that people goback and look at the problems
that their kids have had.
(16:03):
They're constantly lookingahead.
Ari Berman (16:06):
Yeah, standards-based learning is like
that.
Right, it's about checkingboxes and getting funding versus
actually fixing memories in thebrain and science is messy.
David Hewlett (16:16):
Science doesn't click, but it's about little
boxes.
I mean, you know it's.
It's one of the things I loveabout it is that it, it, it
demands, uh, you know it, it.
We're trying to put order tothe, to the wonderful chaos
that's.
That's that, that is the planetaround the world, around us,
and and I, I that we, you know.
This is why I find what you doso fascinating, because you are
(16:37):
trying to quantify some of thisstuff.
You are trying to take thesemassive amounts of data and that
scientists can produce.
But you know, we've gotscientists sitting there
watching things happen anddocumenting things and I'm like
whoa, whoa, whoa.
There's like AI that can youknow.
There's machine learning modelsand such that we can use that
can help process all this amountof data and we can speed things
(17:00):
up.
And yeah, I mean I just I lovethe idea of like speeding up
science.
I think is a wonderful, it'sjust a wonderful mission to have
.
Ari Berman (17:06):
Yeah, it keeps us going for sure.
I mean, you know, not to bringup a potential bad word here,
but you know, COVID, the worldwatched science unfold in real
time and a lot, and theunderstanding of science was
obviously not well penetratedinto the world, because you know
, there was all this.
(17:27):
Well, make up your mind, whatis it?
Right, right, because they'd say, unfortunately, definitively oh
, it's this, this.
And then, a week later, it'sthis.
And they're like well, which isit?
It was like well, we learnedsomething, it's this, but that's
not how they communicated it.
So everyone's like they can'tmake up their mind, they don't
know what they're doing and it'syou know, but that was, that
was science unfolding in realtime, and why science,
(17:47):
communication is so important.
David Hewlett (17:48):
I mean, is that?
You know what I mean?
I think that's the the biggestthing.
I think scientists tend to livein their.
They get their little bubbles,like we all do, you know, and
there's a tendency whenever Italk to scientists, the first
thing they always say is like oh, what I do is boring.
I'm like, no, no, what I do isboring.
I sit around on set waitingwith a cup of coffee, waiting to
say my lines that I already.
It's, in a way, that's almostas important as the science
itself.
Ari Berman (18:16):
I think it might be more important in some ways.
Right that science is reallyimportant, but and you and I
have talked about this a lotright that being able to
effectively communicate scienceto a broad audience reduces the
amount of ignorance, and so muchof science communication is
just done wrong by notscientists.
(18:37):
And I think you, through ourrandom chats, I think we
identified that you actuallyenjoy science communication.
I love it.
David Hewlett (18:46):
Absolutely love it.
Ari Berman (18:47):
Actors, essentially, are communicators, right,
expert communicators and so youand I talked about that, and
that led to you doing a keynoteat BioIT World.
Yeah, yeah.
David Hewlett (18:59):
How wild is that?
I had a few friends' eyebrowsraised on that one.
I was like because the funnything which I haven't mentioned
is I'm a high school dropout.
I hated school in everypossible way.
I absolutely hated it.
I would read the books and thennot do the essays, but I've
always loved learning.
So it's just kind of a certainirony of being at a bio IT
(19:19):
conference talking, but I thinkyou know, having spoken to you,
I mean a huge part of obviouslyis talking to you and seeing how
you work and what your companywas doing and stuff, how what
your company was doing and stuffand and seeing the the sort of
the pain points that you have,which is which is about, I think
you see, a lot of regulationissue stuff.
You see a lot of people pushingback on something.
(19:41):
The first question I had on theradio show that we did an
interview for radio show whilebio IT was going on and they're
like, okay, so you know, are we,are, you know should, should we
be concerned that you're goingto grow something horrible in
the lab type thing?
As always, we go straight toHollywood and these ridiculous
stories of it, whereas if youcan take control of the story
and I think the story tends tobe with scientists, tends to be
(20:03):
about the technology, and Ithink what they're missing is
that we need to know the peoplewho are making this stuff,
because you trust a companybecause of their actions and
what they do, if you don't knowthe story behind them, if you
don't know the genesis of this.
You had an uncle who had cancerso I was very interested in
(20:26):
cancer research.
I think understanding thepeople and the story behind
these inventions you know willturn CRISPR into the potential
you know, world-changingtechnology that it is, as
opposed to this ridiculousbacklash from people who don't
(20:47):
understand what's going on, andI think Hollywood's got a huge
responsibility with that.
We tend to go for the goodstory.
The good story is not a labexperiment gone well.
Ari Berman (21:03):
Although you all did that quite a lot on Stargate,
which I think was one of thecool things, is that
occasionally things went wrongand I know you love people
bringing this up like you know,destroying a solar system
Partial, Partial Right, exactly,Not the whole thing.
That was something gonehorribly wrong and I know you
love people bringing this up,like you know, destroying a
solar system, but partial,partial, partial right.
Exactly, that was somethinggone horribly wrong, but you
know.
But often it was about thingsgoing right, right.
David Hewlett (21:22):
And it's also.
It's it's what is the humanresponse to this stuff too.
I think that's what I lovedabout about Stargate was it was
like it was like it's the hereand now, at the time, now, 20
years ago.
But, and you know what, withour own current understanding of
the world and science, do webring to this and we make
mistakes.
And I think that you know, oneof the beautiful parts of
science fiction is thespeculative aspect of it.
(21:44):
There's a wonderful YouTubercalled Isaac Arthur who does
this wonderful spec.
He's a physicist by training, Iguess, guess, but he's gone off
and started just doingspeculative science fiction.
Basically, it's not, it's notabout people, it's all about the
technologies and like how do webuild these ships, how do we
maintain ourselves on these, inthese, in these, um, on longer
(22:06):
joy voyages and such?
So it's that speculative sideof the stuff that is really
fascinating to me.
And also, again and we're partof it like I think we keep sort
of separating ourselves from thetechnology and the stuff that
is really fascinating to me andalso, again, we're part of it
Like I think we keep sort ofseparating ourselves from the
technology and the stuff thatwe're building.
We are a part of this.
You know, when we go to anotherplanet, we're a part of the
planet.
It's not, you know, humankindgoing to another planet.
(22:32):
It's a green tendril from Earthreaching out.
You know, we can't separateourselves from the, from the
environment and the and theplanet we live on.
Ari Berman (22:37):
So yeah, for sure, and I think one of the things
that overwhelms people is thebreadth of information that's
out there.
Announcement (22:44):
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Ari Berman (23:01):
Yeah, we've talked before.
You know these lovely devices.
You now have the entire world'sknowledge in the palm of your
hand and a lot of not knowledgein the palm of your hand, yeah,
and so it's hard to sort through.
You know, and you know.
That's where sciencecommunication comes in.
It's too complex for mostpeople to follow.
David Hewlett (23:22):
It's difficult because, unfortunately, to make
stuff up and put out garbagetakes no thought and can be done
at an incredible pace, as wecan see by many of the sort of
country or state-basedmisinformation things.
But the real stuff takes timeand I think, unfortunately, the
(23:43):
way social media has gone, it'sreduced a lot of our attention
spans and I think we wantquantum mechanics explained in a
30-second video.
It's just not going to happen,nope.
But the hope is that you can atleast get someone excited
enough about it with that 30seconds that they will dig
deeper, but unfortunately, a lotof people.
It's funny.
I stopped getting a lot ofscience stories from social
(24:05):
media and I started just goingto newsletters because I felt
that I was just.
I felt like I was.
I'm already a little scattered,so picking things up, a little
bit of this, a little bit ofthat, a little bit of that, and
not knowing anything, whereas ifI could just find I could get a
newsletter interesting story, Icould dig in and I could cover
that with my email of awesome,awesomeness every week.
(24:26):
Just cover a few topics that Ithink are interesting.
Whether they're particularlycurrent or not, it almost
doesn't matter.
Yeah, and those are really good.
I mean they're they'reapproachable.
Ari Berman (24:40):
It brings up Certainly approachable, I don't
know.
I mean you know, like I readthe one this week and you know,
you know you brought up this,you know neurosensor sheet,
which was really interesting.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Hewlett (24:54):
I mean this, this stuff is, is.
This is what I love.
I love the bleeding edge oftechnology.
I love, you know, I love thisstuff.
But just basically, they'vecome up with a system that can
grow with an organism.
So, while you know, while thebrain of an axolotl is, is, is
of a custard consistency, theycan, they can layer in these,
these, these, this sort of thisintelligent not an intelligent
mesh, but a mesh that allowsthem to interact with this brain
(25:15):
matter that then folds with itand becomes the brain and they
can track this whole process.
It's like going from a staticimage of every here's it at one
week, at two weeks, at threeweeks.
Now you're basically watching a4K video of this thing forming,
which, of course, is going toinform us about how brains
develop and stuff.
(25:36):
And this wonderful.
I've always been fascinated, Ithink probably since Neuromancer
, the wonderful William Gibsonbook, this idea of the
brain-computer interface, stuff.
I'm just I'm fascinated by thatbecause I feel like if we can
hack All of these things, theseheadphones and screens and
glasses and everything, all itis is an awkward way of trying
(25:58):
to sort of trick our brain.
I can't wait to get into thatbrain and go like okay, you want
to see a movie, let's show youthe dream I had last night.
You know, like hacking, theactual wetware is very
interesting to me.
Ari Berman (26:10):
And that's going to take some time.
I mean, there's a whole area ofneuroscience for brain-machine
interfaces that they've beenworking on for a long time.
Two of the big areas thatthey've made the most progress
are blind people being able tosee transistor-based CCD
materials that are connecteddirectly into the occipital lobe
(26:32):
and can do that occipital lobeand can do that.
And then the other one is forparaplegics, where they're using
technology to sort of bridgelack of sensory input and being
able to control your musclesstraight into your spinal cord.
David Hewlett (26:47):
Yeah, it's amazing stuff, it's the
assistive stuff is something I'mfascinated to buy as well.
I think it's part of thebrain-computer interface stuff
that I love so much.
So I have a weird sort of it'sa fascination with accessibility
.
It's one of the reasons why Iended up um, so partnering up
with with lance carr, becauselance uh, lance has a form of
muscular dystrophy and we shouldyou know, you should have him
(27:09):
on one day because he absolutelyyeah, that'd be great talking
about his, about theaccessibility stuff.
But he was interested in inwhat sort of like home diy stuff
he could be playing with and Iand I and so we, we sort of
bonded on that and thendiscovered we're like the same
age, with the same interest inscience fiction and stuff
although he's a little too starwars for me and and we started
doing a podcast about, aboutreally disability rights and
(27:31):
accessibility, um, andaccessible tech as well.
I I'm more the tech, he's morethe rights, but honestly, right
now there's just so much goingon to talk about from that
aspect.
Ari Berman (27:42):
Yeah, that's awesome .
All right, In our last fewminutes I want to say ask you,
you know, what would you like tosee in the future in life
sciences and healthcare?
Like, what do you thinktechnology can really help with?
David Hewlett (27:52):
Well, you got me dreaming way back when one of
the first conversations we had,when you talked about trying to
standardize the data that'scoming out, and when I go and
visit these university profs andgo to the labs and talk to
these various differentcompanies doing all these
wonderful experiences I've beenhaving talking to people for
this time with Genius, the chatchats that I do do was that it's
(28:17):
a mess.
No one's doing things the sameway.
How do we, how do we organizeall this stuff?
So I just and I don't know whatit is I'm a, you know like, I
love, I love collecting, youknow, collector cards and stuff
like that.
The organizing is part.
So the idea that we couldsomehow start pulling down these
separate pillars of knowledgethat we have about these
(28:38):
different special areas ofexpertise and then sort of have
that open up to other, where yousuddenly go wait a second, oh,
you've got that, we've got thisthat just blew my mind because I
thought so.
I think one of the biggestthings for me is how do we
process this massive amount ofdata and not just in one little
(28:59):
area, because once we've suckedup that and figured out how to
work with that and allowing itto talk to other databases just
seems absolutely extraordinaryto me.
Yeah, that's certainly one ofthe areas that I'm most excited
about.
And then, you know, as we talkedabout with the recent email of
(29:20):
awesome awesomeness, there'sthis lab, a company called
Cortical Labs, that's now putout this they call it the CL1.
And it's something like 800,000human neurons on a chip,
800,000 human neurons on a chipand we can, and we can use it to
to read and write and and andfigure out how our, how our
(29:41):
brains work.
I am, you know, that that stuffis just, it's just
extraordinary.
But, again, you can't do any ofthat unless you've got the data
.
And so it all.
To me, it just, it's always, itjust comes down to data for me.
I took a Google analyticscourse because I you know this
high school dropout took aGoogle analytics course for fun,
because I realized data isthat's data's king, like that's
what we got to figure out whatto do with this stuff, you know,
(30:01):
and a good reason to protect itas well.
We want to make sure that stuffstays around, because even data
I talk to scientists now whoare working in areas that are
going back and going like whoa,there's all this data we've got
from before, the computer stuff.
Could we use that as?
Oh, we can, you know.
So it's new technology allowingus to process old data.
(30:22):
You know you sort of thinkabout it like, oh, that's out of
date, but no, it's fantasticfor looking back at stuff.
Ari Berman (30:27):
Yeah, especially for big longitudinal studies that
can last for hundreds of years,where the data before 30 years
ago are encoded into scannedpdfs from papers that were
published in.
How do you get all that?
That's one thing that ai canhelp with.
Fine, um, it's either that or awhole lot of graduate students
you know um typing things intodatabases well, that's it, that
(30:49):
was the.
David Hewlett (30:49):
That was the wonderful like.
Look, while I was taking thegoogle analytics course, it
changed.
Like I was using, I was usingperplexity and and going back
and forth with some of the stuffto to, you know, as a, as a
sort of a search engine for howto write the right commands for
python or whatever, to do the,the homework, and then suddenly
up popped another module calledai and ai and, and, and, uh, and
(31:11):
and, analytics, and, andbasically started telling me all
the things that I was doing waswhat we're going to be doing.
And I was like, well, wow, thisis like.
I'm literally we're right onthat ride, in that wave right
now.
You know it's the.
The tools that are available, Ithink, are just extraordinary,
and I worry very much about,about again, the story behind
this stuff, because if we wekeep thinking of, of, as you put
(31:34):
in your talks, if we think,terminator and Skynet, how are
we going to convince anyone touse these tools?
Ari Berman (31:42):
You know, like, yeah , and you know, ai made a big
break onto the public stage,into the public consciousness,
with OpenAI's ChatGPT coming outand everyone was like, oh,
that's AI, it's like, eh, kindof it's part of it, it's a cool
tool.
There's a lot of cool tools.
David Hewlett (32:02):
We've been using it for years.
I mean, google's been using itin the background for stuff
autocorrect, for God's sake.
Ari Berman (32:08):
Autocorrect is AI.
Voice recognition is AI.
You talk to Siri.
Talk to Siri, or you knowGoogle or whatever.
That's all AI.
David Hewlett (32:18):
Noise cancellation, I mean all that
stuff.
Ari Berman (32:22):
Which, by the way, was just a simple regression
algorithm before, and now it canadapt, and the adaptive part is
the AI Right.
David Hewlett (32:30):
Of course.
Ari Berman (32:31):
And you know, some people say, machine learning
basically is just linear,nonlinear regression.
You know, it's just really acomplicated version of it.
But yeah, it's, it'sfascinating.
And the data thing, you'reright, I mean that's that's a
big tear that we've been onforever, and you know, because
there's power in that data ifyou can pull it together and
(32:54):
with so many different formatsand people.
You know the description of thedata, the metadata, is not
being, you know, consistent.
You just can't do it and youknow.
I think I've described thisbefore.
But data is king, as you said,but as data it's just data.
To gather knowledge from it,you have to interpret it Right.
(33:15):
Data doesn't turn intoknowledge without interpretation
and if it's all super siloed,we lose power in that.
David Hewlett (33:20):
It just gathers dust rather than gathering data.
Ari Berman (33:23):
Yeah, that's right.
It gathers cosmic rays andloses bits and degrades over
time.
Well, this is the.
David Hewlett (33:32):
I mean, every so often I have these little panics
about the fact that, you know,everything we do is digital,
like what happened.
I mean, you know, is theregoing to be at some point?
Are we going to be acivilization that, if we lose
that, there's no trace of like,there's no art, there's no music
, there's no, you know, there'sno science, because it's all
digital.
(33:53):
But, that said, the advantageof the digital side of stuff is
just.
I mean, I feel so lucky becauseI've grown up as one has viewed
to some extent and watched theworld go from a very analog
world to a very computerizedworld and then a network world,
and now, with the next, I reallyfeel like AI.
I don't want to be too sort ofPollyanna, but I understand
(34:14):
there are issues, but I thinkthat a lot of these issues can
be combated by just peopleunderstanding it better.
You know, I love my mom.
My mom is like I don't knowshe'll kill me for saying this,
but she's like 80 or something,but she, I think this is where I
got my lifelong learning stuff.
She went back to school whenshe was 30 to do history.
Well, the other week she goesoh, I can't come to coffee.
(34:37):
I'm doing an AI course andshe's listening to the
University of Toronto.
The guy who literally just wona Nobel Prize has a talk and
she's there.
She goes.
Oh, I don't understand it, butI you know, but I you know, but
the fact that she's still tryingto understand this stuff is, I
think, just I don't understandwhy everyone isn't always.
I don't feel like there'senough hours in the day, there's
(34:58):
too much to learn.
Ari Berman (35:00):
Lead with curiosity, not judgment.
David Hewlett (35:02):
That's it, yeah.
Ari Berman (35:02):
Right.
David Hewlett (35:04):
You know the way I'm good at judgment too.
I got to say that's the act.
Ari Berman (35:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's that petty nature
to humans, of course.
Yeah, I embraced it, just do it.
Uh, david man, this has beengreat.
I always love talking to you.
I'm sure we could go on forhours, as we usually do, but uh,
thank you so much for doingthis.
David Hewlett (35:21):
I, I, I, I really appreciate you being the
kickoff of a new series here Iam so, so flattered and I am so
excited to to see what you dowith this, because I, I, you,
you're up to and, like myself, Ilove how many things you can
get into doing.
It's amazing that one companycan be involved in so many
(35:44):
different aspects of this stuff,and I can't wait.
I really really enjoy it.
I've enjoyed what Stan wasdoing before, but I'm really
looking forward to seeing whathappens now.
Ari Berman (35:54):
Awesome.
Well, david, as always.
Thank you so much.
I'm sure we'll catch upsometime soon.
A pleasure indeed.
We shall indeed Take care Iwon't hold you up from your
filming any longer before theyknock your door down.
David Hewlett (36:06):
I've got to be whisked away now.
Ari Berman (36:09):
Awesome.
Thanks so much, I reallyappreciate it.
David Hewlett (36:10):
Thank you so much .
Thanks everyone.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.