Ep. 85 - The Mindful Universe with Dr. Marcelo Gleiser

This is a wide-ranging conversation covering topics such as Newtonian physics, the Copernican revolution, life in space, genetics, the interconnectedness of life and teaching. It kept coming back to teaching and the type of education we should be bringing to the classroom.

This conversation can affect the way you teach. It can refocus you on a modern approach to education and dare I say, what really matters. And, what really matters first and foremost is our relationships with the students, followed by our relationships with the curriculum, and getting to the heart of learning through stories that connect the brain to the heart…and it’s in that place that lasting learning takes place. It's there that students begin to learn, not because they have to but because they want to.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to speak with Dr. Gleiser. Be sure to check out all these links to his website and publications and socials and also to his latest book, which will soon be in my school’s library.

Website: https://marcelogleiser.com
YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3fqH16afbPKHx7ABOyQ0soOWyy0RlUOP&si=l5nfcWPscnzHajJj
Twitter: @MGleiser
Instagram: @Gleiserofficial
Blog series: https://bigthink.com/13-8/
Templeton page: https://marcelogleiser.com/media-templeton-prize
Templeton prize website: https://www.templetonprize.org

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Mmmm. Welcome back to another episodeof Science three sixty. This is Tim
Stevenson, your host, and onthis episode I have Templeton Prize Laureate doctor
Marcello Gleizer. And when you checkout his track record and all the content

(00:22):
he's produced, and his blogs andhis videos and his books, you'll understand
why this was a special opportunity forme and a real joy and a privilege
to speak with him. This podcastis a proud member of the Teach Better
Podcast Network, Better Today, BetterTomorrow, and the podcast to get you

(00:44):
there. Explore more podcasts at wwwdot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dot com. Now
let's get onto the episode. Whatif I were to come into contact with
someone as big into space as Iam, You know, someone who marvels
at the magnitude of the universe andnotices the incredible connections between the work conducted

(01:10):
by stars and the chemistry of ourbodies. And what if I were to
bump into this person and find outthat there's fascinated as I am with the
stories of science, the lives ofthe scientists, as they were about the
science itself. On top of that, what if I found this person to
be a teacher somebody who places theemotional connections and the meaning and the relevance

(01:32):
of science far ahead of the formulasand the equations and the answers, but
instead tries to create a learning environmentfor their students that's memorable, filled with
purpose, that will affect their futureyears beyond the test. If I were
to come across this person, I'dbe pumped, and I think that their

(01:53):
name would be Doctor Marcello Glizer.Doctor Gliser is a theoretical physicist and a
professor of physics and Astronomy at DartmouthCollege in New Hampshire. His research ranges
from cosmology to astrobiology, to thephilosophy of science and how science and culture
interact. He has books published ineighteen languages, including his latest book,

(02:15):
The Dawn of a Mindful Universe.It should also be noted that doctor Gliser
is a recipient of the twenty nineteenTempleton Prize. This is an award that
honors individuals whose exemplary achievements advanced SirJohn Templeton's philanthropic vision, which was the
harnessing the power of the sciences toexplore the deepest questions of the universe and

(02:37):
humankind's place and purpose within it.This is a wide ranging conversation, covering
topics such as Newtonian physics, theCopernican Revolution, life in space, genetics,
the interconnectedness of life, and teaching, and it kept coming back to
teaching and the type of education thatwe should be bringing to the classroom.

(02:58):
This conversation can and affect the wayyou teach. It can refocus you on
a modern approach to education. Anddare I say what really matters? And
what really matters first and foremost isour relationships with the students, followed by
our relationships with the curriculum and gettingto the heart of learning through stories that
connect the brain to the heart.And it's in that place that lasting learning

(03:22):
takes place. It's there that studentsbegin to learn, not because they have
to, but because they want to. It was a real pleasure and a
privilege to speak with doctor Gleiser.Be sure to check out the show notes
for links to his website and socials, and also to his latest book,
which will soon be in my school'slibrary. So, without further ado,

(03:44):
here's my conversation with doctor Marcello GeiserThe Dawn of a Mindful Universe, and
I have a quote here also fromyour acceptance speech actually from the Templeton Foundation

(04:05):
When You Speak book back in twentynineteen, and this is basically the quote,
and it'd be a great way tomaybe start to get a comment from
you on this. And it says, there's something very special about Earth,
something very special about us. Weare self aware molecular machines capable of wonder
and awe and that is something thatshould be celebrated every day. And I've

(04:29):
written that on my classroom door.U right now, that's what? Wow?
Okay, that's great. Yeah.So I have been always a little
dissatisfied with the notion of the Copernicanprinciple, you know, because Copernicus obviously
did the right thing right, Sojust to refresh because memories, you know.

(04:51):
Fifty forty three, Copernicus publishes hisbook on the Revolution of the Heaven
the Fears, where he claimed correctlythat the Earth is not the center of
the case. There was the universe, the Solar system was, but is
the Sun, and that the Earthis just on a planet. So that's
all good. Obviously we know thatthat's the case, no questions there.

(05:15):
However, from there, what happenedwas this thing called Copernicanism, which became
almost like an ideology that is followedin the physical sciences, especially you know,
like physics astronomy, which is thisthat, yes, the Earth is
just a planet. There are lotsof other planets in our Solar system.

(05:36):
And now, of course we knowthat just in our galaxy alone, there
are about two hundred billion stars andthat pretty much all of those stars also
have planets going around it, whichif you do the math and you say,
let's say about five ish planets perchstar, you talk about one trillion

(05:57):
one with twelve zeros, and thenyou say, you see, Earth is
nothing. And then of course ourgalaxy is just one galaxy among hundreds of
billions of other galaxies. And thenyou know, the more we learn,
this is the rhetoric of the socalled Copernican principles that the more we learn
about the universe, the less importantwill become consistently right. And in the

(06:23):
twentieth century, not just we haveall these galaxies, but they are moving
away from one another, and sowe're getting farther and farther away from our
galactic neighbors. And then the materialcomposition of dinners, what is the universe
made of. Right, So ourstuff protons, electrons and all the stuff

(06:43):
that makes it atoms. That's onlyfive percent of supposedly what's out there.
So our Earth is nothing, ourgalaxy is nothing. The matter we're made
of is nothing. And hence youhave this sort of despondent approach where you
know, science is telling us thatwe have no value. That is the

(07:08):
problem. And that is why Ioffered that quote, right that. I'm
so happy that you have that inyour classroom so that your students can look
at it, right, because thatis exactly the opposite of the story.
And in this book, you know, the dawn of a mindful universe,
I argue why that's the case,why we have to change the way with

(07:30):
all that story. Yeah, itreminds me a little bit of the movie
Contact by Carl Sagan, where theybring into question we're this small and yet
are we Are we small and insignansignificant or or are we rare and precious?
Which is a beautiful line from thatmovie. I always like to think

(07:51):
of the I don't know where Iheard this before, but maybe you can
comment on it. The cow canenjoy the shade of a tree and hot
summer day but the cow does notponder the universe. You know, that's
up to us. We can ponderthe universe. This molecular machine, it
see, seemed to be the onlyone who can. We don't know,

(08:11):
right, But what we can sayis that and that's not to say that
humans are above other animals. Thisis the point that I try to make
on and on in this book.You know, this book is exactly about
what I call the life collective,you know, and how we need to
change the way we relate to ourplanet and to all forms of life in
it in order to preserve our projectof civilization. So what we do.

(08:39):
We are mammals, yes, youknow, and my dog is a genius,
right, and dolphins are amazing,and crows can count to like three
or four or five whatever. Butas you just said, you know,
they don't build radio telescopes, theydon't write poetry, they don't ponder if
the universe is a mathematic machine ornot. And we do these things.

(09:03):
And that makes a profound difference,right because on the surface of it,
if you look genetically at least,we're really really close to chimpanzees. But
yet we are completely different from them, right because they're also not doing any
of these things. And they've beenaround for longer than we have. You
know, there was a split inthe evolutionary history of our species and we'd

(09:28):
separated from them over six million yearsago, and they are still doing the
same stuff, right, I mean, they haven't changed, but we have.
So what's going on and why didit happen to us? And why
does this matter? You know?And so I'm trying to in a sense,
recover not the idea of you know, anthropocentric notions that we are the

(09:52):
center of everything, because clearly weare not, but we are extremely important
in this big cosmic narrative that startedwith the Big Bang, and now it's
us twenty first century telling the storyof the universe, you know. And
that is why I think I wrotethis book, you know. And what
and if you look at the veryend when I talk about the so called

(10:13):
Manifesto for the future of humanity,you're going to see something that I hope
you like, which is that everyschool curriculum you know, of any kind
of age group, it doesn't matterif it's first grade or PhD level,
should tell the story of the universe, should tell how this interconnectedness exists and

(10:39):
has been demonstrated by science, becausethat's so profoundly important for us. Well,
and what's profoundly important for me,And this is why I find it
so exciting to be able to talkto you about this. I want to
pick your brain a little bit.Is as a school teacher, you know,
there's a tradition within high school atraditional science curriculum, math curriculum,
English, procularm But we're in anew era now and we're learning more and

(11:03):
more things. And the example Ihad kind of prepared, you know,
you think of physics eleven is largelyNewtonian, where we have one mass will
affect another mass, where whereas withEinstein he said, well, really a
mass effects space and matter will respondto that. And these are heady topics,

(11:24):
but at a high school level,like what you how deep into this
should we go and what levels shouldhigh school students? How should the curriculum
morph to incorporate some of these moreheavier and almost philosophical or metascience type issues.
Yeah, so that's a very goodquestion. So when I joined Dartmouth
here in the US, you know, a long time ago, we had

(11:46):
an older physics professor who was Firemnth's, you know, the famous only good
student ever, you know. Andhe was a very well known professor,
you know. And and he insistedthat we had to teach physics starting with

(12:07):
relativity and not with Newtonian physics,right, and so relativity, the Einstein
relativity, not because there was relativitybefore, right, that Galileo had relativity.
He talked about how you can addand subtract velocities, even talks about,
you know, if you have anobserver on a ship that is singing

(12:30):
something, you know, and andis that person that is moving with some
speed because of the wind going tosee the same thing and the person that
is on land, and how dothey compare the results? So the addition
of velocities, all that stuff wasalready in Galilean times, you know,
like sixty hundred. So there wasrelativity, you know, but not the

(12:50):
Einstein relativity, you know. Andso my answer to you is this is
that I think it makes a lotof sense to follow his I don't agree
with Lyis Huggins, who is thisprofessor. I think it makes a lot
of sense to follow the historical eraof time in each how we made sense
of things as we learned more aboutthe universe. I tend to think historically

(13:16):
a lot. This book and manyother my other books are very much about
the history of physics in the sense, but there's no reason why you cannot
have as a compliment to the wholenotion of Newtonian physics a few classes where
you talk about the concepts of thespecial and the general theory of relativity,

(13:39):
the concepts of quantum physics, whichI think they're doing honors chemistry. They
do talk about you know, thebar at them and discreet doors, jumping
up and down and stuff like that, but not so much relativity as far
as I know. And I developeda course of Dartmouth, for example,
which is the Physics for pop itsclass meaning yeah, so it's a physics

(14:03):
for liberal arts students. Okay,so in a sense meaning if you're not
going to major in physics or chemistryor engineering, you still need to learn
some science, you know, youstill need to learn the basics of physics.
But you don't have the calculus,you don't have the math. So
what do you do? So whatI do is what we call we you

(14:24):
know, in fancy words, iswhat it's called an intellectual history of ideas.
You know, so how our conceptionof the universe and of laws of
motion and the nature changed in time. So I start with the Greeks,
you know, I talk about thePrisocratics and play it on Aristyle, and
then I move on to Copernicus,and then I move on to Kepler and

(14:46):
the cart and Newton, and thenI go on to basically, I go
through the whole history of physics,explaining all the ideas of waves. Is
like a wave or a particle?How can it the difference? So how
did that come about? Without asingle equation, And the students eat it

(15:07):
up because they say, wow,So I can actually at least grasp the
conceptual foundations of what was going onincluding and I go on. I don't
stop at quantum physics. I goto quantum field theory. I talk about
the vacuum. I talk about cosmology, the expansion of the universe, and
again without a single equation, andthey get the history, they get the

(15:31):
ideas behind the revolutions that happen inscience. And there's zero reason why this
couldn't be done at the junior seniorlevel in a high school. Well,
in fact, you're describing my astronomycourse almost exactly. A quote I like
to use is rocket science doesn't haveto be rocket science. And so if

(15:52):
I can explain something non mathematically,I find that the students can now then
walk away understanding basically. Uh,for example, the expansion of the universe
is a theory based off of redshiftand this interesting cosmic microwave radiation. Really
these two things, and if youcan get a sense for those, you

(16:15):
kind of understand why we think thatthe universe is expanding. And thus we
have sort of the basis for cosmology. And now this student walks away going,
oh, I didn't do any math, but I kind of get it.
And now if it comes up indiscussion they have something to say.
They can join the concession discussion becausethey're now educated on a conversational level.
Yes, so that's wonderful day todo that. So yeah, so I

(16:38):
teach a physics course like this andan astronomy course like this very similar notions
that it is possible and not justpossible. I think it's essential to be
honest with you, to tell thisstory at an accessible level, even for
non STEM students, you know,and the sooner the better, I mean,
there's no you can go to afifth grade class and explain more or

(17:03):
less what a black hole is,and they will understand because you're going to
put pictures, You're going to talkabout drains, you know, and and
stuff like this, and look howthings swirl around the drain. Well,
the same thing is happening to thematter into this big hole in space,
and they love it and so tobe. And I would say that the

(17:23):
reason why this is not as widespreadas it should be it's a little bit
of because of the disconnect between theprofessors at the university levels that are doing
this research and the professors that don'tteach this kind of science, and the

(17:44):
high school teachers and curriculum designers asa whole. There should be much more
of a conversation between the two.I agree, I believe you know,
and I trying to do that.So I'm super glad that you're doing this
in your school already. Well,and I think I've seen the same thing
with my students, whereby they theydo eat it up and I think they

(18:07):
do enjoy understanding because you know,they'll all come in and one of the
first questions is what's a black hole? So obviously I have hanging from my
ceiling, a PDC pipe eight footcircle with a big black tarp hanging on
it in a bowling ball in thecenter, and there's all kinds of things
I can describe with this. Now, some will say, well, the
problem with that demonstration is you needgravity to demonstrate gravity, and it really

(18:29):
shows it shows gravity on a planeas opposed to the multi dimensions of all
of the universe. Okay, well, there are some flaws with the demonstration,
but you kind of get it though, right, yes, And it's
a translation. You know, you'retranslating something, and every time you translate
something you lose something, right,and that's just part of it. But
you get the gist of the thing, you know, and you understand that

(18:52):
it's if mass bands space, thatcould be a limit where the space is
so bantered that not you can escapefrom it. And that's the black hole.
Right. The harder part is tosay, well, but wait,
black holes are not completely black.They actually doing its radiation. And then
then it gets more tricky how howyou actually explained. But you can do
it. You can do it throughpictures, analogies, stories, and and

(19:15):
it serves a very important purpose,which is to situate those students as future
you know, active members of thesociety, as people that actually understand how
science is done. And so muchdiscussion is relay these days about how science's

(19:36):
main problem over the decades is wewrite in such a way that's not either
readable or not understandable, and sopeople don't read it. So you can
write all your scientific reports you want, but nobody's going to read it.
But more and more I hear peoplelike yourself saying, you know, what
we need to We need to bringscience to a level where people will be
entertained, be emotionally attached and ingender curiosity, and and they can understand

(19:59):
it. Yeah, and you know, just to speak in a more sort
of grandiose way, you know,science is one of the framers of the
our cultural worldview. You know,we look at the world nowadays, not
exclusively through science, but definitely ourdiscoveries of science are coloring our glasses of
what reality is all the time.I mean, we are here talking to

(20:23):
each other because you know, becausethere are billions of transistors in these little
things, you know, in ourcomputers, and there are radioa's and there
are microa's, and so all ofthis is possible because of what we're doing,
and people not just have the rightto know, they should know because
the worldview that we VIUEWD depends onour scientific knowledge so much. I mean,

(20:48):
the big questions that we have rightnow in the society, from global
warming to AI as friend of foeright, or genetic engineering. These are
things that I'm always writing about ina more public platform, so to speak.
And how can you even participate inthis conversation if you don't know the

(21:11):
basics of science, you can't youstay behigh. Then you start what fall
for fake news, fall for youknow, trends. They have nothing to
do with reality, because you know, if science is good for one thing
apart from all our gadgets and toysand a better quality of life is a

(21:32):
protection against BS right. I mean, if you are faced with something you
don't understand, but you have theanalytical ability to kind of think critically about
this information, where is it comingfrom, what is it saying? How
can I compare it to other things? Then you're not a completely you know,
puppet in the hands of people thatknow how too many plate to others,

(21:55):
and in our days, I thinkthat's so important, So it in
my opinion any professor, any teacherat any level, has the duty to
tell the students that this is theworld we live in, is the world
where technology is dominant, and henceyou have to inform yourself without the detriment.

(22:17):
And this is my part, youknow, because science dostn't stop right
there, I would say, withoutthe detriment of the humanities, which to
me as fundamental as the scientific view. Well, art, art leads to
science. Science science. Uh,it could be considered a creative process,
and creativity is born within the art. So you've got to blend the two.

(22:40):
We'll we'll, well, we'll doart lessons in my astronomy class because
the you know, for instance,we're talking about a black hole, what
does that look like to you?Or if we're talking about a ship that's
going to take a crew across greatdistances interstellarly, well, what does that
ship look like? You know?Created in yourn and then try to put

(23:02):
it on paper. And of coursesome kids will say, well, I'm
not a very good artist. Wellthat doesn't matter. Just do your best
and let your creativity flow, becauseout of creativity comes ultimately scientific discovery.
Is that not correct? Yeah?And you don't even need to compartmentalize.
I think science and art. Youcan say creativity is part of being human.

(23:22):
And the way you're going to channelthat is through many different ways.
You can be an artist in amore traditional sense. You could also be
a scientist, you could be awriter, you could be an athlete.
There are many ways in which youcan be creative in your life, because
that's really a human urge to createmeaning, right, I mean, that's
really what we are. We areanimals that crave meaning. We want to

(23:47):
live a life of purpose. Soand the way we're going to express that
need for purpose is really an expressionof who you are, the context that
you grow up in, and soience, philosophy, religion, art, just
different ways in which we engage.This is what's beautiful about this whole thing,
in my opinion, is that thatyou engage with the unknown. You

(24:11):
know. I say that what isscience about science is about all we don't
know of the universe, you know, we don't know of nature. We're
always on the edge of the known, right, This is exactly it's to
flirt with the unknown. You know, we're sort of like pushing the boundary
of what we know and and andputting our toes in this I have I

(24:32):
have a book called The Island ofKnowledge, which is the sizely that that
we're trying to push into this thingthat we don't know about the world.
And that's what's so fascinating. Andartists are doing the same thing with feelings,
with ways of expressing emotions and ideas, and so are philosophers. They're

(24:52):
always questioning, you know, theknown and the unknown and the unknowable,
and so these are all parts ofthis mystery of how we started the conversation.
What the heck is it that wehumans do that we have this urged
to make sense of things? Andyou're drawing into the conversation the people or
the part of the population that doesplan to go on to a career in

(25:15):
science, but they have every rightto understand the basics of under you know,
science and and and as long asyou know, we're on this topic
of art and creativity. You know, students will learn these things more readily
if they're kind of emotionally attached tothem. And you've mentioned stories a couple

(25:37):
of times. It's so important tounderstand the stories, isn't it to be
able to draw them in with knowingcomes caring and with caring comes action.
And so yeah, what's your commenton how, you know the lessons that
we teach should should incorporate sort ofthis emotional side of things as well.
Well, I'm a big big defenderof that, you know, and I

(26:00):
so what I tend to do inthose class. First of all, my
first class in those courses we're talkingabout before, it's about creation myths of
different cultures across the world, youknow. So how because every culture we
know of has a story of theorigin of everything, the origin of the
world, the origin of life,where did everything come from? So why

(26:22):
is that? Well, because weare storytellers, you know, we humans
tell stories more than anything else,That's what we do. And because as
you tell a story, you sortof situate yourself in the moral context of
your group. Right, So youmay tell a story as a Christian,
or as a Muslim, or asa Hindu or as a Maori from New

(26:44):
Zealand, it doesn't matter. Thepoint is that you're going to tell that
story, and that story is goingto give you a sense of community,
a sense of value, and it'san explanation, a description of the mystery
of existence. Right, And canyou not be emotional about this, right,
because these stories are dramatic, rightthey And to me, science is

(27:07):
a continuation of those stories, youknow, because this urge to understand the
mystery of existence is very much wherewell, what drove philosophy, what drove
religion, what drove science to avery big extent, you know, clearly.
You know, if you're working ona new microchip for the iPhone fifteen

(27:29):
or sixteen wherever it is now,it's fifteen, I guess then you may
not be thinking that way all thetime, but you are in the sense
of I am trying to find somethingthat no one has found before about the
world, and by doing that,I am engaging with the world, with
the material world, and flirting withthis mystery, which is my next step.

(27:53):
So even in knowledge, so eventhe most abstracts of science merge with
the most pragmatic kinds of science becausethey are both expressions of our urge to
kind of make sense of reality,you know, And to me, that's
a very emotionally charged thing. Andyou know this. I mean, you

(28:15):
go to a sometimes go to atalk on string theory, right, and
it's like super technical, but there'sso much passion in the right. I
mean, because that guy or theperson in front of the stage, he's
telling a story, the story thatthis is how I've done my research.

(28:36):
And I love the word research becauseit means you search and your search and
you search and over, searching overand over, and it's a quest,
and a quest reminds us of heroes, right that we are going out into
the world to solve the problem,to kill the dragon, whatever it is,
but with the sense of finding somethingthat will expand the way we are.

(29:00):
And so when I talk about thesethings, I really bring up this
notion of the heroic and emotional sideof science all the time because it's there,
you know, it's part of whowe are. Whenever I teach these
things, I try to incorporate stories. I really like the story, for

(29:22):
example, of how they discover thecosmic microwave radiation. I love the story
of the pigeons, you know,and how they thought it was the noise
caused by these pigeons. I lovehow they thought it was New York City.
So they turned that telescope down towardsNew York City, and they found
that New York City doesn't reverberate atthat wavelength. So it's not New York
City. But then they one dayended up at a lecture by Robert Dickie

(29:45):
and he was describing his research intothis possible and I think that Penzias and
Wilson were looking at each other going, oh, my gosh, I think
what he's talking about is what we'vediscovered. We got to have this guy
come out to our lab and seeand what a great story. But how
did I learn that story? Becausefrom a practical level as a teacher,
maybe someone's listening to this thinking,well, I don't know all these stories,

(30:07):
Like how have I collected these stories? How have you collected these stories?
Where do we go to get thesestories so we can relate them to
our students? That's interesting? Wheredo you call it? You know,
it's funny to say that, Ibecause I have written all these things in
my books. So I have abook called The Dancing Universe, which is
the history of cosmology, so tospeak, and of all the physics,
and it tells exactly the story JustinapenziWilson and cleaning the Big Antenna with the

(30:34):
pigeon Doodoo that I call the amorphousdielectric substudies, you know, and and
the whole thing about the Princeton groupwith with Dicky and young John Peebles was
there, I know, Jim Pebbleswas there, the guy who got the
Nobel Prize like a few years ago, Dave Wilkinson and yeah, yeah,

(30:56):
the so and Yeah Wilkinson, allthose guys. And they missed it,
right, I mean, they wereafter it and they didn't find it.
These other guys at Bell Labs foundit right because they didn't even know what
they were looking for. They werelooking for noise in there, you know,
like because they're looking at satellite communicationsand they had this microwave antenna and

(31:18):
there was this noise everywhere, andthe question was what is causing this?
And so if we were not thepigeons, and we always ask so,
who did go in there to cleanthe pigeon poop? You know, you
don't know, is it? Wilsonis right, but I think it was
them. I think they did it. They both of them did. Maybe.
But the point is that the senseof community here that worked. You

(31:42):
know, it's the idea that weare working as a community of people that
are trying to make sense of things. And they just got lucky that they
were so close to Princeton. Youknow, this could have been a seminar
call tech and they would never knowthat's true, Yeah, right, because
they were right there in New Jersey. So it's in those stories. I
also love the stories of Kepler,you know, and with Tikobri and how

(32:07):
the two of them had this horrendousrelationship for eighteen months, and and and
because do you know, these thingshumanize science. That's it exactly, That's
exactly what it is. Yeah,because it goes against the stereotype of the
scientists as a data crunching code machinethat has no feelings, no, and

(32:27):
and we're like, no, no, no, we are very human indeed,
you know, just look at thesepeople. And then of course the
way you teach them, hopefully theway I teach as well. By teaching,
by being that way, we areshowing the students that you actually,
science is a very humanistic approach toknowledge, you know, even if it

(32:49):
uses technical language to express its knowledge, you know, but the urge is
what makes us human. Yeah,Like I think of Gregor Mendel and because
somebody had said to me on adifferent podcast episode I had recorded earlier this
year that there may be a casefor eliminating the historical aspect of science because

(33:12):
there's so much progression moving forward.Do we need to keep memorizing, for
example, the four stages of mitosisand that sort of thing. However,
when I think of Gregor Mendel,what an incredible story because I picture him
in this greenhouse with rows upon rowsof the garden peek, being so careful
not to allow bumblebees into his sothat he doesn't have any cross pollination.

(33:34):
He wanted to be completely in control. And what an incredible task than of
counting thousands of these crazy plants forvarious characteristics. And I try to teach
how what would it have taken forthis guy to organize his experiment in such
a way? And he started toenvision him going into this room and it
becomes a story. And somewhere inthere I might mention mitosis or something of

(33:55):
genetic punnet squares or something, butI think it's more significant understand the human
nature of research and learning. AndI try to draw that out, you
know, out of the science,out of the traditional science lessons, and
that's essentral. That's so great thatyou do that. And and of course
now we have to face this scienceyou know, the story of what's going

(34:17):
on with the world right now,which is the story of this book that
I'm writing, because you know,the narrative is, we need to define
a new human You know what doI mean by that? I mean,
you know, so instead of thatstory that we've been telling ourselves for about
ten thousand years since the beginning ofour grand civilization, that we are above
nature, that we can control nature, that we can do whatever we want,

(34:42):
we can do whatever we want withthe animals. You know, that
story is not sustainable anymore. Youknow, we need to change this story.
And so and the new story isthis, in my opinion, this
beautiful confluence of some indigenous knowledge thathas been around for thousands of years,
which is look, the world givesyou stace, sustenance. The world is

(35:07):
a sacred place. It deserves ourrespect and deserves our care because we humans
do have the power to mess thingsup, clearly, but we also have
the power to kind of help preservewhat we're doing without messing things up.
So what is the choice? Sothat's number one. And then the second

(35:28):
part of the narrative comes from astrobiology. So the new study of life in
other worlds as we're talking about before, which shows how Earth, even though
yes, it's just another planet,given the Copernican idea, is not just
another planet. And once you thisnotion that there are many worlds earth like,

(35:50):
you know, it's, oh,let's look for an earth like planet
out there. What what do peoplemean about, you know, you know,
with earth like and earth like faran astronom are a physicist simply means
a planet that is obviously rocky,so it has the same or approximately the
same mass and radius as our planet, so it can calculate the density once

(36:13):
it's two and that is orbitween thestar, and its a habitability zone,
a habitable zone which just means thatif there is water on the surface,
it's going to be liquid. That'swhat nowadays people characterize a planet as earth
like. But Earth is so muchmore than just that, you know,

(36:37):
and because you cannot even begin tocalibrate what an earth like planet is if
you don't put biology into the game. And so the whole claim is that
once you put life into the picture, the story changes completely because life is
not a very simple repeatable experiment,you know, in the universe. Because

(37:05):
if you just look at the planets, you have this incredible diversity. Right,
So, one thing that we knowfor a fact is that there are
trillions of planets out there, andno two are alike, No two are
the same, not alike, Notwo are the same. There is no
such thing as Earth two point zero. And why is that? Well,
many reasons, but the most importantone, which I think is really fascinating,

(37:28):
is that if you look at thehistory of the planet Earth or any
other planet, but let's focus onour planet so far and a half billionaires
of age, and of which therewere all sorts of things that happen here
during those four and a half billionaires. The formation of the Moon right at
the beginning, which was a collisionwith a big proto planet. Then the

(37:52):
bombardment that lasted for about seven hundredmillionaires. Talk about it MC class just
today. Actually you did so therethe age of the Great the Great bombar
right, So that's about when,like about when the Earth was about six
seven hundred million years old or solike write three two point eight billion years

(38:15):
ago. And then that allowed forlife to appear somewhere in between three point
eight and two point five billion yearsago. How did that happen? We
have zero clue. Geochemistry became biochemistry. Yeah, when did that happen?
Nobody knows. I mean, I'veworked for the last two decades fifteen years

(38:37):
on the origin of life, andit's an incredibly fascinating question that we have
no idea how to answer. AndI can even go a little deeper if
you want afterwards about what I meanby that. But the point is that
then there were mutations. Life showedup. There were mutations. Those early
bacteria became photosynthectic. That was nota plan, and because of that,

(39:00):
they started to eat sunlight and COtwo and produce oxygen. Eventually, after
billion years of that, they completelychanged the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
It became reaching oxygen that allowed formulticellar organisms to evolve because they needed much

(39:21):
more efficient metabolic reactions. You know, they had to eat and digasom or
efficiency. Oxygen helps with that.And then then you had this crazy notion
of simple cells becoming ekaryotic cells likethe mitochondria being absorbed. Nobody knows how
any of these stabs happened, andeach one of them is unique, and

(39:43):
then boom, the asteroid comes andkills you know, all the dinosaur sixty
six million years ago. That completelychanges the evolutionary history of life on the
Earth. And so if you changeand this was only the fifth big extinction,
there were four bigger ones before that. And if you change any of
these stories, life as we knowit would be different and we wouldn't be

(40:06):
here. So contingency when life comesin is essential on this narrative. And
so that has a bunch of interestingconsequences. Number one, which I explained
in the book. Number one isI can tell you, and you know
scientists don't like to be one hundredpercent sherif things, but I can tell

(40:27):
you with confidence that we are theonly humans in the universe. There will
be no other human species in theuniverse. And that to me is profound
because yes, you can have lifeinvolving other planets, could even be complex.
Life could even be with the bilateralsymmetry, because that's kind of useful,
you know, to look around andto use the work right to work.

(40:51):
You can have opposible But each oneof these steps, you know,
is a contingency, and there willbe no other one like us exactly.
So the fact that Earth is arare planet. Life evolves through all these
contingencies. We as a species,we are extremely rare for sure in our

(41:12):
solar system, and I would betin our whole galaxy. I'm not saying
we're the only ones, but I'msaying we are extremely rare, and we
are the ones that tell the story. Then, since we invoke Carl Sagan,
you know, you can say thatwe are really how the universe is
telling its own story. So weare the causing of storytellers, and that
is huge, and so that bringsus back to the center stage of things,

(41:37):
you know, like we are tellinga story that only we can tell
about the universe and our belonging tothe universe. How we are made of
stardust, you know, and thatis really profound. You know, without
our voice, no one will betelling this and nobody would know about this,
and we don't want to destroy allof that, you know. I

(42:00):
kind of think of the question Iasked a few minutes ago about how do
teachers get the stories? You know, you're kind of answering that because here's
the answer to how do teachers getstories to tell? How about listen to
podcasts. I know, listen toyour podcast. You get the number of
stories I've picked up from having Ithink I have eighty five episodes. Now.

(42:21):
I've picked up so many stories bytalking to people and hearing their story,
and then I turn around and Itell them to my students, and
they think I just know everything.I don't just because I talked to people.
I'll read their books. I've hadseveral guests on who have written books.
I'll read their book and guess whatyou learn things. I love the
book A Short History of Nearly Everythingby Bill Bryson. It's a great summary

(42:43):
of so many scientific concepts. Andthat's how you're not born with these stories.
You go after them. You haveto chase after these stories. But
that's the joy and the privilege ofbeing a teachers. You get to do
all these things. And I lovethat you use the expression I don't know
or I'm not sure or science isn'tsure, because there's this perception that science

(43:06):
or the science hallway, that's whereall the smart people are. They have
all the answers. And then whatwe do is we come along and we
give tests and we say, ifyou know as many things as I know,
I'll give you a high mark inthe test. But if you don't
know, I'm going to give youa failing grade, and now students walk
away feeling disillusioned that I'm not assmart as that person because I got a
lower grade. And it's just sounfortunate that that's the way it is.

(43:29):
But the point I wanted to chaseafter is this idea of humility. And
I think of the one of theclosing remarks in Newton's Principia is how gravity
actually works. I don't know.I'll leave that up to my readers,
and to me, that's an incredibleexample of humility from one of the greatest

(43:50):
minds of humanity. And I knowthat one of your themes is humility and
science should be humble. Yes,And to plug my book again, even
this this dawn of the mind foryou, of I'll tell that story in
detail, you know, And andit's a really cool one because it shows
how Newton's mind actually worked, youknow, and what kind of person he

(44:15):
was. Because we always in school, especially in high school. You know,
maybe your exception, but in mosthigh schools. I mean, my
son, I have a senior inhigh school and he's taking physics honors right
now, and it's really you know, the laws of motion, you know,
this is the force because an aand you know what happens when you
have a block going down, youknow, which is fine, it's necessary,

(44:36):
but that's all. And then doyou know who Newton was? What
kind of person was he? Youknow, do you know his life?
You know what happened to him whenhe was a child, and why he
became such a socially anxious person whonever wanted to be out in the world,
you know, And why did henever marry or I had, as

(44:57):
far as you know, any romanticrelationship. And then I didn't realize that
he wasn't just the scientist, thathe spent more time as an alchemist and
as a bibli let's see biblical chronographer, meaning he wanted to use the science
to date when certain events in theBible happened historically. Yeah, so he

(45:21):
thought that that the Bible, especiallythe Old Testament, was a historical document
and that those things on many ofthose things actually happened. And so for
example, a famous one is Noah'sArk and the you know, the Great
flood flood. And so the theorythat he and Haley, you know,
Hailey from the Comet developed as therewas a giant asteroid collision in the Caspian

(45:46):
Sea, and that thing created ahuge amount of waves that went out,
and that's the big flood, youknow. And so they tried to date
things. And so the point isthat Newton, and furthermore super important,
he was also a deeply religious guy. So for him, God was a

(46:07):
permanent presence in the universe, right. He was what we call a theist
with a te which means not Godnot just exists, but interferes all the
time. So for him to explainthe stability of planetary orbits and the stability
of the whole universe, you know. So after he published the Principia,

(46:30):
he exchanged letters with this guy fromOxford called Richard Bentley, who wanted to
use the new theory of gravity toprove the existence of God. And then
Newton said, definitely, let's doit. So so Bentley is asking these
questions, and one of them being, look, if you have a force,

(46:51):
which is the force of gravity,that is attracting everything, if the
universe is finite, how come allthe matter is not balled up in the
set because you know little and andNewton thought about this and his answer is
super important. He says, well, because the universe is not finite,

(47:12):
is infinite. And in an infiniteuniverse, when you have an infinite number
of stars, they will be atany point that you are the force,
the net force of all the starsin all directions will be the same,
and that to be in an unstableequilibrium point. However, then bens But
what if a comet comes by anddestabilizes this arrangement, because Newton compared it

(47:37):
to putting a bunch of pins ontheir heads. And then newton answer was,
well, God would come in andmake sure things stay where they should
be. So he was like acosmic mechanic. Now to me, you
know, believe or not believing God, that's not important. It shows you
what kind of person he was thathe was doing all this work because he

(47:59):
wants to understand both the mind ofGod. Right, Stephen Hawking many years
later kind of said the same thingin a different context. But so that's
the motivation of the guy. Youknow, it's not just to be a
machine to kind of calculate things andsolve calculus, invent and solve calculus problems,
and that to me is so important. So yeah, and he does

(48:22):
say not just about I don't knowwhat gravity is and there is something very
important here, which is the differencebetween the why and the how. You
know if you ask me. Thatwas Newton said, Look, I don't
know why two masses close to eachother far away attract each other with that
formula that I gave you, butI know how they do it. And

(48:45):
to do science, to do physics, he called it. Let's see if
I remember he called it. Itwas a natural empirical philosophy to do that
kind of science just to describe what'sgoing on. I don't need to know
the wise, only the house.And then he says, I know,

(49:07):
I feign no hypothesis, meaning I'mnot going to guess. But if you
read the letters to Richard Bentley,he does go back to this story,
which is really cool. He says, I don't know what the cause is.
If it's material or immaterial. Thereyou go. But to me,

(49:29):
I'm talking about I'm quoting him now. To me, any person that has
a mind of understanding these matters,to attribute the forces that come from matter
to material forces without an inherent causedoes not know what he is talking about.

(49:52):
Meaning to him, when he talkedto the theologian from Oxford, you
know, he says, the onlyexplot that I have for this is that
there is the hand of God.There's some spirit or something like that.
So but in the Principia, whichis his technical book, he doesn't say
anything like that, although if youread the whole, you know, the
end of Principia, he does talkabout his faith in God and the theory

(50:16):
what they call the Panto creator,you know, the creator of everything,
you know, God, the PentoCreator. That's it. And but we
never tell the kids this stuff,you know, so they think the Newton
was just there was weirdo, thatall he did in his life was calculate,
And that's just not the case atall. Newton was three laws,

(50:37):
you know, he's he's talked aboutmotion, and as long as you know
those three laws, you've kind ofgot it all wrapped up, right,
and gravity and optics the lot andI mean basically in calculus, right,
so like all the technical stuff,right, I mean, not all these
other things, which I think arereally really interesting, you know, especially

(50:59):
if you just train an engineer byyour training a human being who happened to
also be an engineer, Well that'sso important. And that's what I think
is one of my themes has becomemy themes over my career is we're teaching
humans about humans, and the storyof what they've accomplished is oftentimes what they'll
remember, more so than the threelaws that Newton is sort of what we're

(51:22):
testing. So I encourage people tolearn these stories, which you've described in
detail in your latest book. Rightyou talked? This story you just told
is actually in your book, isn'tit? Yes? It is? Yeah,
Yeah, I have a question foryou. How old are we really
when we think that the calcium inmy bones or the iron in my blood,

(51:45):
they all came from the stars.So those atoms existed before I did,
and they'll exist long after I wasso am I is age really based
on a number of orbits around thesun? Or how should we date ourselves?
I think I've heard you speak aboutthis topic. I'm curious what your
comment is. Yeah, so Iwould say you have many different kinds of
birthdays, right, So you haveyour human birthday, which is when you,

(52:07):
in this human configuration were born,right, and that's, as you
said, the number of revolutions aboutthe sun, and that's okay, But
the stuff that you're made of,right, so you can have bricks,
you know, they are piled upin you know, some some house,
in lots of houses in some depot, right, So we have the bricks

(52:30):
are there, and they're just thebricks. But then somebody twenty five years
later decides to make a house outof those bricks. So the house is
going to be new, but thebricks already, you know, these twenty
five year old bricks that have beenhanging in that depot for for a long
time. And so us for us, it's kind of like that, but

(52:51):
it's even more dramatic because this humanform of ours is made of atoms which
came out when stars exploded about fivebillion years ago or even right, because
that is the history of how solarsystems and stars are born. You know,
stars are born, and I knowyou know this, but it's just
for you, you know. Sowhen stars are born, the stuff that

(53:15):
does not go into star, theleftover stuff is what become planets and their
moons, right. And when thestar is being formed and the whole we
call it the we call it theproto planetary nebula. Right, So this
whole thing is happening. The stuffthat is in this nebula is not just

(53:35):
hydrogen, but it's also all theseother atoms that traveled interstellar distances because their
progenitor stars when super and over,they exploded billions of years before and traveled
across those distances to irrigate. Icall it to seed. You know,
those clouds, cosmic the cosmic JohnnyAppleseed, totally exactly right. So there's

(54:01):
this amazing dance if you want oflife and death of stars, you know.
So star Dice explodes as it does, so not just it just fused
hydrogen into all the elements all dayto iron, so fifty six, but
then it keeps going on after itexplodes with the supernova, and so all

(54:22):
this chemistry from the periodic table spreadsacross space, goes into a new Nabla
baby. We call it a stellarnursery, right where maybe stars are being
born with their planets, and thoseatoms are the ones that eventually become a
tree of butterfly, a person,a rock, whatever. So yeah,

(54:45):
so we are billions of years old, which basically tells us something really beautiful
I think and profound about us again, and all forms of matter in this
planet, which is we belong tothe history of the universe were actually part.
Each one of us carry in usbillions of history of cosmic evolution,

(55:08):
right, and nobody stops to thinkabout that. And that's sort of like
a big wow kind of thing,right. I mean, what so whenever
I'm giving talks to general public andI tell this and said, just pause
for a second and think about this, and then eventually you what's making you

(55:28):
up? As you said, thoseatoms are going to dissolve, They're going
to be part of the ecosystem.Eventually the Sun is going to explode.
Earth is going to kind of dissolveinto this explosion when the Sun goes red
giant. Those atoms again are goingto circulate across interstellar distances, and who
knows where you or parts of youare going to end up. It's like

(55:51):
the rain water that falls on meas I walk out to my car may
well have one day fallen on theback of a bronze saurus. It's just
sort of the water cycle. Butthis is the atomic cycle. And you
know, like the very fact thatI have I have gold on my finger,
the very fact that this gold isevidence that we're orbiting at the very
least a second generation star. Yeah, this nebula from which we were formed

(56:15):
must have come from a previous supernova. Otherwise, how would we have gold
Adam number seventy nine. Yeah,exactly, And you say, people don't
really think about these sort of things, but scientifically we can. And they're
fun stories to consider. They're funand they're meaningful and they're really important.
You know. That's the thing thatbecause like we know this, we need
to preserve this, and we onlyknow this and preserve and because we are

(56:38):
in this planet, because the planetallows us to be here, right,
and we have to mentalize that.And students, you know, science students
have to understand this story before anybodyelse really, so that they can tell
the story to all the other ones, you know, so it should be
like a chain reaction. And earlierwhen we were talking, you were really

(57:00):
what you were doing was describing theDrake equation about the different you know,
how do we indicate life and otherplanets? While there has to be the
proper star and there has to bethe proper habitable zone, and then is
it life, but is it multicellularlife? And if it's multi cellular life,
is it intelligent life? But ifit's intelligent like dolphins are intelligent,

(57:23):
but they're not building cell phone towers. You know, is it intelligent life?
It can create electronics. And sowe've done all of those things.
And yet with the Drake equation,I know Carl Sagan went through the process
and estimated there maybe could be tenother civilizations like ours in the galaxy.
And of course if there's a trilliongalaxies, that could be then ten trillion

(57:45):
civilizations, which begs the question thenwhy have we not heard from them?
But then I ask also this otheridea, which is is if we were
to find other forms of life,would we expect to see at need,
thymine, cytosine, and guani inthe four letters of the genetic code?
Or will that be unique to Earthor is that going to be universally distributed

(58:08):
across Like what are the scientific theoriesaround the universality of genetics. Yeah,
that's a very hard question. I'msure there's no answer to that. In
fact, when we I mean thepractical aspects of this thing, is that
when we meaning NASA and all thedifferent agencies that are looking for signs of

(58:31):
life elsewear, we are looking forlife as we know it, which means
carbon is water soluble sort of likeso you you know, when nase is
a mars, you know we arefollowing the water, right, you follow
the water essentially you're looking, whoa, there's water. There may be life
now, of course we don't know, right, And there are reasons why

(58:54):
carbon is so important. Carbon isan incredible, incredibly versatile element because it
can chain up so efficiently right breakup. It can create this huge diversity of
biochemical compounds which no other element doyou know, not even silicon, same

(59:19):
valent structure, but can't do thesame things that carbon can. Silicon it
would be an accident line, butit's a distant second. So there could
be a silicon based by chemistry,but it wouldn't be as efficient, you
know, as versatile, and lifeneeds this versatility in order to survive for

(59:39):
long term, right, otherwise willjust go away. Same with water versus
ammonia. So ammonia is considered sometimesa possibility as well, but then again
you know it has different freezing andboiling points much lower, and so it
doesn't have the same So carbon andwater are really hot prospects I think for

(01:00:05):
life in other places. However,genetics is a different ball game, right,
because we have no idea. Wedon't know, as we talked about
before, we don't know this howthis jump from non life to life happened.
We think, you know, youformed amino acids, and then those
amino acids are sort of like ifyou think of a protein is as a
pearl necklace, right, those aminoacids are like the pearls. So you

(01:00:30):
change them altogether and you get thisbig protein and then you go to like
RNA and DNA. That jump isgigantic because a DNA has billions of atoms.
So that can't be the way lifestarted, you know, it must
have started much simpler, you knowthan that, with a much simpler way

(01:00:52):
of reproducing itself. Right, andtheir models I've written, I've done a
few, many other people have doneothers, but we really have no idea,
right and so right now, NASA, for example, has this thing
called the Agnostic Biosignatures Laboratory, whichbasically means life as we don't know it.

(01:01:15):
If there is life activity in aworld, it will imprint it.
If it's widespread, it will imprintitself into the atmosphere of that world.
So the question is what kind ofimprints, which we call biosignatures, the
signatures of life would we find inthis world which are not necessarily like here,

(01:01:38):
which would be methane and oxygen andozone. This is life on ours.
So if an alien is looking atus, say oh, look at
that planet. It has a tonof water as oxygen, has ozone.
If they're really good, they're goingto say, oh, it has chlorophyll,
so it has to have life,you know. But if you're not
looking at Earth, if you're lookingat our place with a different kind of

(01:01:59):
biosignature, questions what they look for. And so because life, if it
evolves, becomes so biochemically complex,it will mess up somehow the atmosphere of
that planet, right, And sothen maybe ways of saying there is something
weird going on with that planet,which is indicative of complex biochemistry and non

(01:02:22):
equilibrium termodynamics, so that there issomething moving about in the surface that is
not an equilibrium. So you know, maybe maybe not. That's an area
of research that I'm working on rightnow, you know, on all these
biosignatures from distant planets, and whatcan we find, you know, what

(01:02:44):
could we find? And it's anopen question, and we don't know if
genetics we know the laws of physicsand chemistry. I actually was just I'm
translating my book to Portuguese because I'mfrom Brazil and we're going to publish it
there. To Dave Coincidentally, Iwas exactly writing about this that we know

(01:03:06):
for a fact that the laws ofphysics and chemistry are the same across the
universe. And we know that becausewe look at stars, we look at
discent galaxies, we take their spectra. Oh, there is hydrogen, there
is helium, and so we can'tsay a lot of things. We have
no clue if the laws of biologyare the same. You know, probably
evolution by natural selection is a goodone because if you're a living system,

(01:03:31):
you have to eat and you haveto adapt and you have to reproduce.
So it's kind of like you know, and the better you adapt, the
more chances you are of being alive. Right. So one thing that I
say is that life is that wedon't have a definition for life, right,
but we say I say life ismatter with intentionality. Everything that is

(01:03:55):
alive wants to remain alive and willdo whatever it can to stay alive.
It doesn't matter if it's a bacterialooking for sugar in a solution, or
if it's a human being looking forfood, that's what life does. Irock
doesn't do that. And so becauseof this search for food and life ruling

(01:04:16):
prints itself in other worlds in differentways. And if it's advanced life,
which is the last term of theseven terms of the Drake equation, which
is if it's a technological civilization,and how long do they live? Yeah,
that's the gloomy term, right,So we may we may receive a
signal from some distant civilization and whoknows if they're even in existence still,

(01:04:41):
because that travel that may have traveledfive thousand, maybe traveled fifty thousand years
to get here, Well, theymay long be gone by this time.
And remind me, I'm so gladto hear you say that the periodic table
is universal, because this is sucha commonly held belief that other civilizations will
have metals or have things that arefar different than ours. Or there's a

(01:05:03):
story about Roswell when the fellow whofound the metal, he says, I
took a sledgehammer to it, andthe sledgehammer just bounced off of it,
made no dent, and it wasonly as thin as the foil from a
cigarette wrapper. Well, namely,which element on the periodic table could you
hit with a sledgehammer that's that thinand have no effect on it? Well,

(01:05:25):
that doesn't exist, So how inthe world. So it perpetuates this
notion that Well, other places they'llhave things that we've never seen before,
other elements we've never heard of before. Well, no, the laws of
atomic theory are universal, aren't they. Yeah. I mean you look at
galaxies which are ten billion light yearsaway from us, so way out there,

(01:05:45):
and you take their spectra and youfind out and sodium and so you're
not finding anything element why it betakappa? You know, you're finding those
guys because these are the only guysthat are there. What they can do
this is different though. What theycan do is they can create blends of

(01:06:08):
different alloys of some sort, alloysthat's the right word, alloys that we
have not made that could be veryresistant. You know, that's technology,
right, I mean, there's thisI love this quote by Artistic Clark that
says that every sufficiently advanced technology isindistinguishable from magic. Right. And so

(01:06:32):
you know, if you look,if you gave your great grandfather your cell
phone and made a video call,like, what, Right, it's inconsiderable.
How could that possibly happen in theeighteen hundreds, right? And yet
here it is so. Meaning ifyou have a super advanced civilization that they're
not self destroy which is the lastterm of the Drake equation, they could

(01:06:56):
have technologies that we don't know about, but they're not with new chemicals,
not with new chemical elements. Right, it's just that they just work out.
I mean, you can create artificialchemical elements in the land, this
is true, but they're very shortlived, they're very unstable. These are
the ones at the far end ofthe periodic table, beyond uranium. Yeah,
there's another theme that I really wantedto hit before we finished, and

(01:07:19):
that is I know you speak quitea bit about the theme of interconnectedness,
and I wanted to know what yourcomment was on A lot of people will
look at images of dark matter comparedto an image of a neuron, compared
to even the micro rhizal networks thatwe're learning more and more about that exist

(01:07:39):
underground, these largest organisms in theworld, these fung guy, Or isn't
it interesting that an atomic structure isvery similar to a solar system? There
seems to be a central point withthings whizzing around it. There seems to
be an interconnectedness between all of nature, and yet we continue to dominate and

(01:08:00):
extract, and you know, wecontinue to sort of destroy all based on
our own whims and pleasures. Whatare your comments on where are we at
with our understanding and interconnectedness and howdo you think that should find us way
into school education. So there aretwo parts of this which are really interesting.
I think one of them is thereis the interconnectedness, which is the

(01:08:25):
story that we were just talking aboutof how we are totally connected to the
history of the universe and the planet. Yeah, and life of the planet,
right, because not just how atomscame from stars that blew up billions
of years ago, and those starsstarted with the hydrogen that was synthesized when
the universe was four hundred thousand yearsold, and that hydrogen came from protons

(01:08:47):
that were synthesized when the universe wasa second ode. So any atom of
hydrogen carries with it the whole historyof cosmology since the beig almost Okay,
so that's just boom, right,And then if you advanced though, so
that's physics but the end chemistry withthe chemera. But then if advanced to
life, we now know that alllife on Earth is also a variation on

(01:09:15):
our common ancestor, we call itthe less universal common ancestor, the Luca,
which was a bacterium that lived aboutthree billion years ago. So we
can actually trace back the genetic originsof all living and dead creatures to that
life. That was one of thefirst lives that we know of living things

(01:09:36):
that we know of, So alllife is connected that way. So and
what I mean all life, Ireally mean all life. I mean us
and fungi and sequoias and butterflies andcrocodiles whatever, right, and the covid
virus because we're all coded for byATC and G. Everything is coded for
by those four right letters of thegenetic code, with the exception of the

(01:10:00):
virus. So that was a badexample. But apart from that, everything
so this interconnection is really deep,right, So there is that part of
the story, right, And thenthe other part of the story is once
you realize that there is this interconnectivity, right, that we are essentially part

(01:10:24):
of the universe itself, I thinkour relationship and this is where the moral
dimension of this whole thing comes in, you know, is that our relationship
to life and to the planet shouldchange because these are relatives folks, you
know, I mean, we areconnected with all these things, you know,
from a cockroach to an eagle.You know, they're all part of

(01:10:47):
this chain of life. And morethan that, we're totally codependent with them.
We cannot imagine that we can survivewithout them. Kill the bees,
We're doomed, right, So thereis this beautiful connection. And then when
you look at the structure of howmatter organizes in different sizes and levels,

(01:11:11):
which I think is why you're talkingabout, you realize that there is a
repetition of patterns. So that's whereyou go and you talk about Look,
you know, the old model ofthe atom is like a mini solar system,
and you find that because of gravity, a galaxy is a big agglomerate
of things, you know, pulledtogether, and galaxies orbit other galaxies to

(01:11:35):
form you know, these global clustersand things like that, which basically means
that those patterns they tend to repeatthemselves. And the reason for that is
that they are optimized designs. Youknow. The other way you can think
of it is, look, atour shape our body, right, our
body is a body of forking paths, so to speak. So you have

(01:11:59):
the main and then you have thearms and legs, and then you have
the fingers. Well, rivers dothe same thing, right, because that's
an efficient way of distributing liquid andfluid and nutrients, you know. And
so those things keep coming back becausenature found that these are the best designs

(01:12:19):
to optimize the intake of energy,you know, to make things sustainable.
So it's a beautiful interconnectivity absolutely,you know. And the sustainability here is
not just about eating, is aboutchanging gravitational potential energy so big stuff into
a star shining, you know.And so the repetition of patterns is in

(01:12:43):
a sense of signature, is ina sense the signature of a natural system
that satisfies not just the laws ofmechanics, but also the laws of thermodynamics,
you know, the laws of heatand the distribution of energy different size
structures like that, I think it'sprobably possible that to kind of move forward

(01:13:05):
in a sustainable way, we needmore and more to be teaching students about
this interconnectivity so they see how we'reall related. I mean, your vascular
system is so similar to a riverdelta starts with the broad vessel and it
gets to a smaller one, anda smaller one and a smaller one,
just like we see in rivers aroundthe world. That's a very I hadn't

(01:13:26):
ever thought of that particular one before. That's kind of interesting. And that
Luca. I have a student inmy class name Luca. Actually, so
the last universal common as ancestor,Yeah, Luca, Luca. I hadn't
heard of that term before either.Yeah. So you have this deep interconnectivity
of the shapes of nature, oflife, of the atoms that make up

(01:13:47):
everything that exists. And so therewas this I quote him in this book,
you know, this wonderful Buddhist monkcalled tick knat Han talks about this
concept called inter being, right,and he says, you know, you're
reading a poem or you're reading thisbook and you look at that page,

(01:14:10):
Well, what is that page?Well, is a piece of the tree.
And he says that page contains thewhole universe in it. And then
he goes on to explain why.He says, well, the page only
exists because it's made of a pieceof a tree. The tree only exists
because there were clouds in the skythat made up rain, so that the
tree could be there. That water, where did that water come from?

(01:14:30):
From outer space? And so itgoes on and on and on and on
to show that the whole universe isn'ta piece of paper that you're reading this
book, you know, and Ithink, like, poof, that's exactly
it. You know, that's yeah, And we're gonna we're going to solve
a lot of world problems if wecan realize that we're not disconnected from nature,

(01:14:50):
but we're immersed in nature, We'rea part of nature. Natures within
us, the universe is within us. We got to teach some people about
this stuff. Absolutely. That's oneof my items in the manifesto. You
know, we have to tell thehistory of the universe in those ways,
you know, so that people canunderstand how precious this whole thing is.

(01:15:12):
Just as we close, you know, you're you're talking mostly to a group
of high school teachers. You know, you're and you're presenting a scientific philosophy
and educational philosophy that's so different thanthe tradition of education, but it's so
important. Is there one last sortof piece of advice you would give to
a high school science teacher about howthey teach, what they teach, why

(01:15:33):
they teach. Absolutely, I thinkthat the most efficient way of teaching,
in my opinion I've been teaching forthirty something years at Dartmouth, is to
all your students constantly, you know, and yes, there are technical parts

(01:15:53):
to him, you know, whenyou teach you know, quantum mechanics or
whatever it is that you're teaching.Yes you have the technical parts, but
that doesn't mean that you need toempty out the idea of wonderment. You
know, like, look what's goingon here? And that's so to go
back to that course. And Ibet you guys could do this at any
course in high school too, maybeat a different way, but here's an

(01:16:16):
idea, okay for everyone. Sowhen I teach these courses at the college
level without the math, you know, the physics of poets, the astronomy
for poets, whatever you want tocall it, I teach my last class
is not a lesson a class,but it's a conversation. So what I

(01:16:36):
do is I pose questions to thestudents, divide them into groups, let
them come up with answers to thosequestions, and then we have a discussion,
open discussion about those questions, andthe questions are not what is the
second law of mechanics? You know? The questions are can you connect mechanics

(01:16:59):
with the ocean, free will andfreedom? How do you do that?
You know? Or can you connectthe motivation of this or that science to
his or her religious views? Andis it possible to reconcile science and religion
or not? And why not?And then on the weekend they have to

(01:17:21):
write a one page essay about theconversation why do you do that? Because
then they say, oh, scienceis not just about the compulations or the
ideas, which are these you know, very concrete ideas, but it's also
about an expression of what it meansto be human, and that changes the

(01:17:42):
way people think about it. Andby the end of the course they have
a mini journal of all these topicsthat we discussed, you know, every
week, and they carry that forever. I mean, I have students that
graduated fifteen years ago saying professors stilllook at that stuff once in a while
to by myself and what we're doing, because that's what stays with people.

(01:18:03):
It's not the information, it's theemotion that you receive that information. That's
beautiful. That's exactly my philosophy ofeducation summed it up in such a nice
way. It's not necessarily a science, but almost. It's like the meta
science. It's the meta understanding behindthe knowledge that brings about wisdom really and

(01:18:28):
probably analysis and understanding. Boy,we got to get after that in high
schools as well. Do not worryso much about memorizing the three laws,
but learn about the person as well. And you can only do that by
engaging in conversation, which we've doneand I think, yeah, go ahead,
no, just to say that youcan take ten minutes of your class,

(01:18:49):
five minutes of your class and bringin a little story. Yeah,
and the class is going to befine and are going to cover the material
need to cover and you can dojust every class ends with a story about
who is this person? What wasgoing on? And you know, and
to me, that makes a hugedifference. Now you have students rushing the
class to say, what are wegoing to learn about today? They're there

(01:19:13):
because they want to be, notbecause they have to be, And this
is the goal. So if youguys want some material, I have a
book called The Dancing Universe, whichis exactly full of those stories all the
way from the beginning of science tothe Big Bang. Oh my gosh,
I've got to get my hands inthat book. So The Dancing Universe easy

(01:19:33):
to find. In fact, youcan probably get it in pdf. I
will even sell it. But thepoint is that I think it would be
a great book for people to takea look at, especially teachers of all
levels, but high school definitely.You know, well, we'll get all
the links or you know, thissort of information, will put it into
the show notes that people who canjust click on and as well as information

(01:19:57):
about we'll post your we site thereand people can learn more about the work
that you do as well. Butthank you so much for coming on.
I've asked you most of my questionsI had planned, but I probably have
another ten or twenty. Maybe we'llhave to save that for another time.
Yeah, we'll come back next year. Why Yeah, thank you again so
much. I appreciate you coming onthe show today. My pleasure. Tim,

(01:20:19):
Thank you for having me, andgood luck to everyone. Bye.
Thank you for listening to this conversationwith doctor Marchello Gleiser and I I really
hope you enjoyed it and got alot out of it. At this point,
please go over to the show notesand click on all the links that
I've included. There's so many differentarticles and blogs and videos and books that

(01:20:45):
doctor Gleiser has put together, somany resources that are valuable to teachers to
equip you with knowledge and stories andinsights and wisdom that you can only enrich
and make better the experience of yourstudents in your science classroom. Please consider
leaving a rate and a review onthis podcast. I hope you enjoyed it,

(01:21:09):
and be sure to check out someof the other titles on my podcast.
Until the next time, have agreat day, have a great week.
Hope everything's going great for you.Bye for now.