Summer Reading 2018, Part 1

It's a summer tradition! Once more, Stuff to Blow Your Mind devotes a summer episode to the discussion of fiction, non-fiction and children's books that the hosts read over the course of the last year. So listen in and maybe one of these books will accompany you on your next beach trip.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. How
are you doing today, Robert, on this fine summer morning. Well,
I'm doing great because we're we're about to jump into
our our annual summer reading episode. Every year, I feel

(00:26):
like we end up doing these two late in the
summer and everybody's already gone to the beach, so their
beach reading time is gone, and they ended up just
reading whatever was in the beach house they went to
or something. I bet you've had that experience before. I've
never been forced to read the books in the beach house,
but I always check them out. It's always it's always,
I always approached when I find the stash of books. Uh.

(00:48):
It always built up a sense of excitement because you
pretty much know what to expect. It's gonna be your
Tom Clancy books, right, It's gonna be or what you're
Daniel Steel. Why is it that everybody who owns beach
front property is into Tom Clancy. I don't know. There's
a strange confluence of characteristics of a person. It does
seem like the the the type of person who owns

(01:09):
a beach house seems to have Tom Clancy books or
is it the other way around? People who go to
beach houses tend to bring tom Clancy books with them
and then leave them. Like if you're into kind of
like like cold war military technology and uh, nuclear submarines
and stuff like that, you just end up with a
lot of extra money and real estate and investments. I

(01:30):
don't know. But again you can say, well, yes, Tom
Clancy books were highly popular, But why do I see
more Tom Clancy books seemingly without actually doing like a
scientific study of this, Why does it seem like they
are more Tom Clancy books than say, Stephen King books
or Michael Crichton books. Though I have to say that
occasionally I get lucky and find some some cool gym

(01:50):
like some seventies horror or that the last time I
went to a beach house, uh, there there happened to
be some some German books, like German language books. I
can't remember what they were off hand, but it was
exciting to find something new. I'm just remembering. I think
one time you told me about going to a beach
house in the summer and finding a werewolf spy book. Yes, yes,

(02:10):
to cover Werewolf. That was one I think I had
to take a picture of. I I cannot remember the
the author um or the title, but it was I
think it was a seventies or the eighties publication. Well, anyway,
there's still time in the summer, still time to read
summer reading books. So we're here with our picks for
the summer of But before we get into that, I
think we need to remind you real quick that we're

(02:31):
about to go on tour. That's right, we have a
we have a mini tour coming up, and this is
gonna be in September, specifically September. We're going to be
in Boston at the Armory September six. We're gonna be
in New York City at the Cutting Room. September seven,
We're going to be in Philly at at Underground Arts,
and then then on then on the ninth, we're gonna
be in Washington, d C. At Union Stage. So if

(02:54):
you've ever wanted to experience stuff to blow your mind live,
if you want to check out like you nique stuff
to blow your mind experience, uh, this is the opportunity
to do it. This is gonna be a special episode.
We're really excited about what we're putting together. Yes, So
if you are interested in coming out to see us,
you can click on the tour tab on our website
that stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and you

(03:14):
can go ahead and get your tickets today. Yeah, I
got to stuff to blow your Mind dot com Live
shows Tabor right at the top. Click on it and
buy your ticket. Get ready to go. But now back
to Summer Reading, which which really this whole episode is
always like the final minutes of an episode of Reading Rainbow.
Do you remember watching Reading Rainbow as a child, Well,
of course I remember it. About what happened in the
final minutes. You would have just a few different children

(03:37):
would present a book that they had read and loved,
and essentially it was like a mini book report. Over
the years, it's we've had different host arrangements. Sometimes we've
had guests, either guests from other How Stuff Works podcasts
or guests from outside the organization. Uh. This this year
is just just Joe and UH and me. But still

(03:58):
we have some some really exciting books to discuss here. Uh,
some books that so many of you out there have
already read uh others, others of you are going to
be introduced to some new reads for the first time,
all minor Tom Clancy books. One quick caveat this is
gonna be a two parter. Uh so this is gonna
we started talking about books and then we went for
two hours. So uh sorry or or I guess not

(04:21):
sorry about that. Everybody loves talking about books and cool concepts.
So yeah, be prepared. This one is going to be
split into you know, I don't know about you, Joe,
but personally, the nonfiction part of summer reading is always
a challenge for me because I find that almost all
of my nonfiction reading is usually podcast research, and if
I stumble across a new fiction nonfiction book that I'm

(04:43):
interested in, then I'll probably shoot to cover it on
an episode exactly. So um So this year I made
sure that I picked out something that I've been meaning
to read for a long time and something that felt timely.
Uh you know, especially given some of our recent episodes. Yeah,
I know what you mean that choosing which ones to
talk about it can be difficult because, for example, uh,

(05:05):
one of my favorite books I read this year, I
know was was Carl Zimmer's Awesome book She Has Her
Mother's Laugh, which we interviewed Carl about on the podcast
in June. And so you're thinking about that, and I say, well,
that's that is definitely one of my favorite books I
read this year, But we already did an episode about it,
so it doesn't make sense to like really recommend that again.
Uh So, I I tried in this episode to pick

(05:27):
books that I hadn't talked about or hadn't talked about
much on the podcast already. Yeah, likewise, I had I
had a similar problem with with fiction choices because when
it comes to literature, I'm kind of I guess I'm
kind of a selfish lover. I will if I really
dig a work of fiction, I'm probably going to talk
about it on the show. So both of my fiction
choices this year, my main choices that I made, I

(05:50):
have discussed at least in passing a few past episodes,
but I haven't really I think, you know, chewed them
up properly on the show. Um. But on the other hand,
one of my absolute favorite books from the last year
was our Scott Baker's The Unholy Consult, And we actually
had Scott on the show to talk a little bit
about that book. So I'm not going to talk about

(06:11):
it anymore. Here is that the one A bunch of
people were mad about, Well, I don't know a bunch
of people were mad about. There was some division among
the fans about like what the ending meant. You know,
it's stuck, It's stuck with you. And I felt like
it was very much in keeping with the trajectory of
all the previous books. Well, let's get right into our

(06:33):
book selections. All right, Robert, I think you are starting
with a classic, aren't you. Yeah, a classic that I
had I had never read. Uh, so this was the
first time for me, but I was well from familiar
with it. By reputation, The Demon Haunted World Science as
a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan from So
the author here, of course has Carl Sagan, noted astrophysicist, author,

(06:57):
cosmos television host and one of the most important and
enduring science communicators of the twentieth century. And now that
this is one of those big this is like one
of the great science communication tomes. Yes, yeah, And and
this was also the next to last book written in
Sagan's lifetime, as he died of pneumonia after a battle
with cancer. So, yeah, I picked it up recently following

(07:20):
our most recent episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
on science communication and the dangers, particularly of the illusory
truth effect. Oh yes, So we had a two parter
on that recently, and that's the concept that's now been
shown in multiple studies replicated over and over that simply
exposing somebody to a claim and then repeating that claim
over and over actually does provably make people believe the

(07:41):
claim more. Yeah, and it really made us think about
about the show, about some of the things we talk about.
Sometimes we talk about erroneous theories or um, let's say,
radical hypotheses, and and you know, to what extent, uh,
should we do that too? You know what what is
what is our respond instability? What as a as science communicators?

(08:03):
I think I have come away thinking I thought about
this a lot since the episode. I think I've come
away thinking, as I originally did, that it doesn't make
sense to say we can never discuss bad ideas on
the podcast. I mean, that's that's a lot of what
we do. And yeah, yeah, that's it's an extremely important
thing to do. It's not like once an idea looks

(08:23):
unlikely or has been disproven, you should never speak of it.
But I think that the point is that whenever you
speak of those things, you should make clear that simply
repeating the thing and then saying it's not true isn't
the whole story that you give the alternative account that
you get, that you analyze, you explain, you give people
context that's memorable so they can understand what the truth is. Yeah,

(08:47):
and so you know, and I've been thinking about this
as well, and I realized this would be a perfect
book to to seek out again because, you know, given
Sagan's expertise in science communication and his willingness to engage
in ah the sort of open minded yet optical thinking
that we really try and pull off on the show.
So I picked it up and inject it out. So
in this book, Sagan set out to explain just what

(09:09):
science offers us as a culture, how pseudoscience and magical
thinking work against it, and indeed why many of us
are sucked into these ideas when science can both better
amaze us, I mean, and improve our our lives and
our understanding of the world. That that is one of
the key tragedies that the science communicator has to observe
over and over again. Is that like, say, you see

(09:31):
somebody gets sucked in by ancient aliens literature and they
you know, they they say, you can't explain the pyramids
unless aliens came in and did it. One of the
worst things about that is it's not just wrong, but
it cuts you off from understanding the fascinating reality of
how ancient people with very limited technology accomplished this amazing

(09:51):
feed of engineering and construction. The truth is actually more interesting,
but it's it's sometimes harder to communicate how interest thing
it is. Pseudo scientific ideas are often more interesting in
a shallower way that they've got something that can grab
you in one sentence, you know what I mean? Yeah,
So Sacand makes this point as well, But it is

(10:11):
this uh, you know, authentic shortcut to awe when the
real story can provide all. It's just it's just more
difficult to show how it provides all. Yeah. In the
early stages of the book, he talks about writing in
a taxi cab with his character that he he nicknames Buckley. Uh,
and Buckley is very interested in the world. Buckley's asking say,

(10:33):
like he recognizes sagan Um eventually and civilizes He's the
TV science guy. So he starts asking him all these
questions about ancient aliens and the Lost City of Atlantis
and all these questions, and Sagan is just kind of
having to break his heart over and over again, saying, well, yeah,
there's no evidence for that. The evidence is super shaky
and that and and he you know, he points out

(10:54):
that that Buckley here is not you know, he's not
a dumb dumb He's he's a he has this q
reosity about the world. He wants to be odd. He
wants science. But for various reasons that that that Sagan
gets to it gets into in the book Um, the
media and and science communicators even have not reached him,
have not provided in the meal that he he that

(11:16):
he really wants and he and that he needs UM. Instead,
he's left with the junk food of pseudoscience, and that's
all he has to feast on. Yeah, and it's unfortunate
that that's the dynamic, But you can see why it
is because giving good explanations based on facts and real
evidence and rigorous analysis, that that is all constrained. You know,

(11:38):
it's constrained by all these limits imposed by reality. There
are only so many things you can say that are
actually logically correct and follow from your premises. There are
only so many things that you can actually prove with
real hard evidence. You can use your imagination to make
up all kinds of alternative, crazy things to say that
can be interesting, and you're not constrained by those problem blums. Yeah,

(12:01):
and you know, back back to the idea of like
how do you communicate science, then how do you discuss
crazy ideas and balance them? Um? You do see a
lot of this done very well in uh Sagan's book here,
for instance, he talks about UFOs a bit because it
was then, as it is now, still a topic of
of of of great interest. You know people here about UFOs.

(12:23):
If you're like like me, you grew up watching unsolved
mysteries and you're just bombarded with these ideas. So I
feel like UFOs are less discussed now than they used
to be. I feel like that was a much bigger
domain of pseudoscience in decades past. Yes, but we saw
these stories of UFOs um that we're that we draw
on right. And one thing that that Sagan does really well,

(12:43):
and this is that he talks about say that the
Cold War sightings of UFOs and to what extent the
government was looking into these, and he goes into say,
weather balloons, observation balloon to high altitude balloon technology, and
we've all heard that brought up as a as as
an explanation for unidentified flying objects before, but taking as

(13:07):
a great job in this of really breaking down like
what sort of technology balloon based technology was being used
at the time, not only for observational purposes, but also
for intelligence purposes uh by the United States against the
Soviet Union, and how this would have played into possible
reports of unidentified flying objects. And this is a case where, yeah,

(13:29):
we've all heard the essentially the boring story at this
point of somebody seeing something unexplainable in the sky and
thinking it's aliens and having to embellishment or turn to
embellishment to to make sense of it. But these real
stories of of of of weather balloon technology and what
we were doing with them at the time is is
even more fascinating, just because I feel like fewer people

(13:53):
have heard the story, and indeed it's the story I
wouldn't mind returning to in a future episode. Well, another
thing I would say, though, is that virtue of being
true that story also connects with an ecosystem of other
true ideas, whereas pseudo scientific beliefs don't lead you anywhere.
You know, they don't lead you anywhere fruitful, like a

(14:13):
true belief leads you to other true discoveries and a
mistaken or false or embellished belief does not. Yeah, I mean,
because it seems like you're If you're suddenly interested in
hollow Earth ideas, then you're at best you're gonna wind
up reading about more ridiculous myths about like Nazi super

(14:33):
science or something, and how Hitler's on the moon now
or something to that effect. I guess with with it's
gonna vary depending on what your pseudoscience is, I guess
there are examples where, Yeah, if you're interested enough in
ancient aliens, you might find yourself learning more about say
Mayan or as tech civilization than you would have otherwise.
But it's going to be a painted understanding of it, right, Well,

(14:55):
you can only really get there by abandoning or ignoring
your initial premise. What I'm saying is like pseudo scientific
beliefs and stuff don't become useful premises in future arguments
or discovery. You can't really build a house on that foundation. Right. Yeah,
So this is a this is a book that of
course is as relevant now as it as it ever was,

(15:15):
especially with talk of post truth, alternative facts, uh, and
just stay disgustingly anti science trend and American politics of late.
So that's why there's a book I startling or strongly
recommend to everybody. It's available in all reading and listening
formats right now. Um. He Sagan spends a lot of
time in this discussing the allure of pseudo science, but

(15:38):
also how it gains power, and he points, uh, he
points the to the role of of our relinquishing of
civil controls and scientific education and how this allows for
the infection of pseudoscience and pseudo scientific belief to spread.
Points two examples in in pre war Germany also a
post communist Russia, a situation whereas the as sort of

(16:00):
the the controls are are relaxed, there is less science,
less scientific understanding in the in the among everyday common people.
Not talking about the the scientific establishment of the Soviet Union,
which of course uh was significantly advanced, but the the
average person, when the controls are loosened, what do they

(16:20):
have to turn to? They end up turning to some
of these science pseudo scientific ideas. Sagan argues, so it's
a good cautionary tale for for for today, for any age. Really,
I just want to read a couple of quick quotes
from the book itself, just to give you some Sagan's words.
Um for a short one he points he makes this point.
He says, pseudoscience is embraced. It might be argued in

(16:41):
exact proportion as real science is misunderstood, which I think
is is an interesting way of looking at a very
very apt way of looking at it. Kind of zero
sum competition between them. It's not like you can both
build up your scientific understanding and your embrace of pseudoscience
at the same time. They sort of they exist in
necessary competition with one another, and one undermines the other.

(17:05):
So if you hold one, it's undercutting your stock of
the other. Right, you know, one of the most important
things in this area, which I've been thinking about a
lot lately, is the danger of when you're talking about
embrace of scientific thinking, critical thinking, skepticism, rationality, all these
subjects that are very useful and very important, that you

(17:27):
want to be careful not to let it turn into
a kind of back padding exercise, where like, you know,
we do such a such a good job of being
rational and being skeptical, and there are all these other
people out here who have all these mistaken beliefs and
and and letting it um. I don't know. I feel
like I see this occasionally and say the skeptic community

(17:48):
is a kind of um over reliance on self congratulation
for being skeptical, Whereas really the greatest job we have
to do in this is being critical of ourselves. I
know it It's easier to say that than it is
to actually do it. I mean, I know I'm very
often not sufficiently critical of myself. But but that's what

(18:09):
we should really be focusing on, like remembering like this
isn't something other people do, this is something I do. Yeah,
And I agree, and I I say that I have
to say that I I have to watch myself as well,
you know what I mean? And I have to ask myself, well,
this particular hypothesis, Yeah, am I Why am I attracted
to it? Like it is? It is it's speaking truth

(18:29):
to reality? Or is it speaking to some other need
inside me? You know, some religious need perhaps that is
not being fulfilled by something else in uh in culture, Yeah,
I feel like I have to be. One of the
ways in which I have to be very careful here
is like I feel that I am irrationally attracted to
overly interesting or cool ideas. I've brought this up a

(18:51):
lot when we talk about the bicameral mind idea. Now,
of course, as I've said before on the show you Know,
we did an episode about this last year. It's come
up a good bit since then. It's one of the
most interesting hypotheses I've ever come across. I wouldn't say
it's just like you know, it's just flagrant pseudoscience. Like
Janes was a psychologist, he brings a lot of evidence
and interesting argument, But then again, it's a radical hypothesis.

(19:14):
He asks you for, you know, to go along with
a very radical path with him, and so I don't
ultimately accept his hypothesis. I think he was probably wrong,
But I wonder if I give it even more credence
than it deserves, just because of how thought provoking and
cool it feels in my mind to contemplate well by
cameral mind hypothesis. One way I have of looking at

(19:37):
it is that I asked myself, is it a better
hypothesis for for the human experience than other uh theories
of consciousness. And I have to say largely no, I
think we have some better working theories of what's going on,
such as say, attention schema theory. You know, just what
ways of thinking about how are limited cognitive ability is

(20:00):
are focused on particular tasks. On the other hand, if
you say, is it a better hypothesis than say, established religion,
then I would say yes. And that's I think that's
one of the reasons that that I'm drawn to It
is the part of me that wants to make sense
of tales in which men speak to God's or or
God speak to men, the part of me that wants

(20:22):
that magic to be real. Um, then in those cases,
the bi cameral mind is a far better explanation than
God's are real, or that magical beings and spirits and
elves are an actual reality. You know, you can almost
like use it as a personally satisfying mythology, even if
you don't think it's necessarily a successful scientific theory. Yeah.

(20:44):
So it's I feel like it's a weird duck for
me and that I can't think of another hypothesis that
kind of uh, you know, it occupies that middle ground.
But we'll get back to to the bi cameral mind
and a little bit. Actually, I'm gonna close out the
section on on Sagan though by reading one more quote
um from a candle in the dark. Science is more

(21:06):
than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children
or grandchildren's time, when the United States is a service
and information economy, when nearly all the key manufacturing industries
have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers
are in the hands of a very few and no

(21:26):
one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues,
when the people have lost the ability to set their
own agendas or knowledgeably questioned those in authority, When clutching
our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes are critical faculties
and decline. Unable to distinguish between what feels good and
what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition

(21:52):
and darkness. Now what what year was? This? This was?
This is? But I don't want to I know that
sounds grim, but but ultimately this book is making the
argument and Sagan is making the argument. I think there's
an argument that holds true is that we don't don't
have to slip into darkness. We have to value science,

(22:12):
we have to value scientific thinking, scientific education, and we
have to to think skeptically about the world around us.
Um but there, but but as long as we don't
abandon these pillars that have that are that are holding
up civilization, um there is hope. It makes you realize
how important, how functionally practically important inspiring all in the

(22:38):
natural world really is. Because if you inspire people to
feel a sense of all with real science and real
discoveries and critical thinking about the natural world and all
of its phenomena, then that is a motivation to make
people want to know more about what's true about the
natural world, which is a motivation for them to be scientific,

(22:59):
to be skeptic, goal to be critical thinkers, and so so,
inspiring us to have a sense of awe about what's
true and what's real literally creates a better society, right,
And so yeah, I would urge everyone out there, if
you value these uh these ideas, then uh then celebrate them,
share them with others, and certainly vote with them as well.

(23:21):
Wherever you happen to be. If you have the power
to vote where you live. Think about this when you
consider the people, uh and the organizations that you throw
your support behind. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,
and when we come back, we're gonna jump in with
one of Joe's recommendations for this year's summer reading. Thank you,
thank you. Alright, we're back. Al Right. So, as I

(23:42):
mentioned before, I wanted to talk about a book that
hadn't really come up on the podcast before, and that book,
the first one I've picked for this episode is a
book called Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer
Space by Janel Levin. This was first published in and
Janel Levin is an astrophysicist and an author. She's a
professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, which is

(24:05):
part of Columbia University, and she's written several popular science books,
including a novel about Kurt Girdle and Alan turing Um.
But in this book, Black Hole Blues, it's an account,
almost what I would call a non fiction novel, about
the search for gravitational waves and the quest to build
the Ligo Facility or the laser interferometer Gravitational Wave Wave Observatory.

(24:30):
We discussed this a little bit on our in our
black Hole episodes we did earlier this year. Yes, uh,
and so this this book is focused specifically on gravitational waves.
And I call it almost a novel because for a
science book, this one spends a lot of time, a
lot of well invested time, I would say, richly portraying
its characters, so much so that kind of like when

(24:51):
Lovin quotes them from interviews, I felt like I could
see them and hear their voices and imagine them speaking.
But of course, these characters aren't just characters. They are
real scientists, and the work that they're doing is leading
up to one of the biggest scientific discoveries of our lifetime. Now, Robert,
do you remember when the gravitational waves observation was announced

(25:12):
in I think it was announced in twenty sixteen, but
the observation happened in September. You remember what you thought then?
I remember when. Yeah, I remember when I first heard
about it. I have to admit that I was like,
this is a big deal, but I don't really I
would not be able to explain to you why it's
a big deal yes, same here. I had to go
looking stuff up, and so I was reading a lot

(25:33):
about at the time, trying to understand what was important
about it um And so a lot of people I
think had that experience. They understood that it was a
big deal, but they didn't know exactly why it was
a big deal. In fact, I remember when the announcement
came out, I was here in the office and I
was talking to one of our colleagues here, and you
can imagine our colleagues here in the office, smart people

(25:54):
interested in science. But he was saying to me, basically,
he was like, yeah, the scientists are saying this is
I porton, but I can't figure out why it's so
interesting or important like it, I think to a lot
of people that had the texture of a kind of
dry observations. So it's like, okay, so we saw some waves,
what what does that mean? Like, there was nothing very

(26:15):
There are no strong image people could latch onto about it.
There was nothing that had all that much of a
personality about it. Right. It's it's in that that astro
physics black hole territory we've discussed before, where it's it's
really hard to have much in the way of personal
engagement with the topic. But if you if you get
into the subject, you realize this is one of the
most profound and awe inspiring things we have ever discovered

(26:39):
as human beings. I remember people saying that similar things,
like in when physicists announced that experiments of the large
hat around collider had found a particle they believed was
the Higgs boson, And I remember and then a lot
of people were like, well, I get that the physicists
are excited about this, but I don't really understand what
it means or why it's important. So if if you
felt that way about gravitation sational waves at the time,

(27:01):
this is a great book to read. It explains the
significance of the discovery, it puts it in context, it
gives you all that awe. But it also mainly focuses
on telling a story about the project to detect gravitational waves,
how it eventually succeeded despite all these many obstacles. And
I want to discuss that aspect of an a minute,

(27:21):
but first I just want to give you a taste.
So I want to read a passage from Levin's opening
chapter of her book, And the opening chapter has been published,
I think in a couple of places online, So you
can go read that yourself if you want to check
that out before you decide whether or not you want
to get the rest of the book, but just to
read from her her very opening quote. Somewhere in the universe,
two black holes collide, as heavy as stars, as small

(27:44):
as cities, literally black, the complete absence of light. Holes,
empty hollows tethered by gravity. In their final seconds together,
the black holes course through thousands of revolutions about their
eventual point of contact, churning up space and time, until
they crash and merge into one bigger black hole, an

(28:06):
event more powerful than any sense the origin of the universe,
outputting more than a trillion times the power of a
billion sons. The black holes collide in complete darkness. None
of the energy exploding from the collision comes out as light.
No telescope will ever see the event. That profusion of
energy emanates from the coalescing holes in a purely gravitational form,

(28:29):
as waves in the shape of space time as gravitational waves.
An astronaut floating nearby would see nothing, but the space
she occupied would ring, deforming her, squeezing than stretching. If
close enough, her auditory mechanism could vibrate in response, she
would hear the wave. In empty darkness, she could hear

(28:51):
space time ring. Barring death by black hole. Gravitational waves
are like sounds without a material medium. When black hole collide,
they make a sound that's wonderful. I feel like that's
good writing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially again when you're
dealing with something that can be so difficult to grasp. Um. Yeah,

(29:12):
she she manages to to to bring it to beautiful
life there. But another thing that I think is fantastic
about this book is about the way she tells the
story of the Ligo project and the discovery and all
the characters involved. She really explores the role of personality
and politics and money and ego in one of these
most important scientific projects in recent history. Like you can

(29:36):
often get the feeling when you're reading about science just
from you know, say, articles in the news or in
Scientific American whatever, that scientists are often presented as sort
of like mechanistic uh discovery machines. Like a scientist appears
you've never heard of them before. They're quoted in an
article saying what they found in a new study so

(29:59):
the version that the face of them you get is
a person who appears to deliver a newly discovered piece
of information. And for some reason I feel like this,
at least in my mind, it can contribute to this
feeling that they're just sort of like machines whirring in
the background that eventually churn out information. Yeah, like with

(30:21):
with Lego in particular, I remember when when we're reading
up on this for the black Hole episode. Uh, I
certainly had the thought, like, I wonder if at any
point someone had to pitch this to a politician, And
this book is all about that, and I mean, you can,
perhaps you can, you can clude me out here, but

(30:41):
I can only imagine how difficult it would be able
to to explain what this was, especially with pictures, to
a politician who generally speaking, it's it's an exceedingly safe
bet that if you're talking about a politician, you're talking
about somebody with very limited scientific understanding. Well, you don't
even have to get to the politician level before politics
become an issue, because there's politics within the groups of

(31:04):
scientists who are anticipating the politics of politicians, because what
they're having to do is figure out Okay, we we
want to try to make experimental progress, but we know
funding is going to be limited, So what do we
do in order to get the best chance at getting
the funding that would get us to the experimental result?

(31:25):
And so their arguments about like, should we try to
do this incrementally in small little waves of experiments they
get bigger and bigger, or should we try to go
in all at once and build a huge facility that
can really prove what we want to show um And
they're serious debates about this, And the characters in it
are human. They're very human, and there's something just truly
fascinating and surprising about the story. This book tells that somehow,

(31:50):
from the meta organism of science, powerful profound, objective discoveries
are sort of cobbled together and achieved by collections of squabbleing,
flawed individuals through this sort of tape together ramshackle process.
It's not a book about the genius of anyone individual scientists,
though there are very smart scientists in it. It's a

(32:11):
book about a sort of emergent, impersonal genius, a collective
genius through process. And I mean that really goes back
to what we're talking about earlier with some of Sagan's
points about how like one of the points he made
in in in the in that book is that is
that you can't just teach like what science does. You
can't just teach the triumphs of science. You have to

(32:31):
teach the also the failures of science, the necessary failures
of science. There are a lot of failures in this book. Yeah,
I mean it's it's it's essential to understanding it. So
I means so that when a particular failure or or
a particular study that gets rejected whatever. We've all seen
examples of this, when that makes the news, people aren't
going but don't think, well, I guess we can't trust

(32:53):
these scientists because they got it wrong. Because them getting
it wrong is essential. Yeah. Yeah, it's in the intial
part of the process, and and it actually makes the
process work. Um. I also wanted to say just the
epilogue to this book is amazing. It gave me goose
bumps multiple times, both in its account of the lego
scientists trying to verify the first recorded signal and then

(33:15):
when it sort of placed that observation in the context
of the entire history of the observable universe. So I
would say this is a great book if you want
to know more about physics in a way that's very
clear and easy to understand. It's very well written, and
even more than that, it's a great book about the
nature of science and scientists themselves, and not as all
knowing gods, not as discovery machines, but as kind of scrappy, weird, clever,

(33:40):
deeply human characters who have systems of thought and tools
in place that eventually help them get it right. Awesome,
But we're gonna take one more break, and when we
come back we'll discuss some fiction. Thank alright, we're back.
So here's another one I don't think I've mentioned on
the podcast before, and this one is a book called

(34:03):
The Soul of an Octopus, A Surprising Exploration into the
wonder of Consciousness by Si Montgomery from uh So uh Sy.
Montgomery is a naturalist and author. She's written books about
other Most of her books seem to be about animals,
but this is the only one of hers I've read.
Um But so, I already think I knew sort of

(34:23):
how interesting octopuses were, at least in theory. Like you know,
I'd read all of their crazy feats of escape, they're
inquiring play behaviors, the way they they play with different
objects and sort of penetrate locked boxes and things like that.
They're surprising predation strategies. The way they squeeze through holes
only a tiny fraction of the size of their bodies.

(34:45):
The way they seal themselves in their dens with rock
coverings or armor themselves with coconut halves, the way they
taste with their skin and change color to mimic their
surroundings with this kind of frightening accuracy. All this stuff.
But what I did not know before reading this book
was how emotional I could feel about an octopus. So,
so you're you're not recommending this to like hardcore sushi enthusiasts.

(35:08):
Definitely not if you if you wanna keep eating octopus
without thinking about a book that made you cry. Uh,
this book is just an absolute delight. I'm not sure
exactly what genre to call it. I would say it's
partially a science book about zoology biology marine invertebrates, primarily
the octopus, so it cites a lot of research in

(35:29):
it and talks a lot about observations of octopus behavior.
But that's only part of it. It's also partially a
personal memoir specifically about and I am not kidding one
bit here, love, affection, and the complicated personal relationships between
humans and cephalopods. There is a lot of human and
octopus love in this book. And it's also partially a

(35:51):
philosophical and occasionally theological reflection on the nature of consciousness
and mind and people's beliefs about the soul and how
those concepts could or could not and should or should
not be applied to animals like the octopus. So this
book's really kind of got it all. It's full of
interesting facts and observations and anecdotes from experts about octopuses,

(36:13):
but it's also got this moving personal narrative that I'm
pretty sure if you have feelings, will make you cry
about octopuses. And I mean really, I literally cried about
an octopus in the first chapter of this book. And
it is uh. It's a It's got a thoughtful and
earnest consideration of what consciousness consists, of whether other animals

(36:33):
possess it, what it would be like to have the
mind of an octopus. Um, there's here's just one example
of the kinds of thoughts about octopus consciousness that are
explored in this book. So you have to consider the
way the octopus nervous system is put together. It is
very different than our mammalian nervous system, where we've got
a brain where most of our neurons are, and then

(36:55):
you've got a spinal column and you know, nerves reaching
out throughout the body that can send information back and forth.
But but basically we think pretty much all of the
bulk of the information processing happens in the brain. An
octopus has a brain, but in a significant way, it
looks like the body itself and not just the brain
does a lot of the thinking with with neurons loaded

(37:19):
in different parts of the body. Specifically, it's individual arms,
and the arms pass nerve signals along within each other
that never even seemed to reach the brain. So, if
you have a nervous system like this, and if you
consider what would happen if there is such a thing
as consciousness or experience in an animal like this, what
would that consciousness be like? Would it even make sense

(37:41):
to believe it was confined to a single sensation of self? Like?
Could it be possible um to have consciousness without having
a sense of self? You are conscious, but you have
no concept of I. Instead, there are sort of like
multiple networks all can acted that are having an experience

(38:02):
but don't necessarily identify themselves as a self. I mean,
this is the sort of thing that it really makes
makes me sound I mean, it makes me feel silly
when we do ask questions like what is the what
is the mind of the octopus? You know, like like
in the sense that we are trying to, uh, just
compare it to what we have like this this this

(38:24):
narrow human you know, cognitive dimension that we we place
so much emphasis on what is the octopus is human mind?
Like yeah, and it's like it doesn't have a human mind.
It has this this other form of of of of cognition,
of of of of of neural control. And it's by

(38:46):
trying to compare it to us and using our minds
as the gold standard. Uh, it just it sets up
this in this impossible task right where we just say, oh, well,
it's not like it's not like what we have, so
it it can't be. It can't be on the same level.
It's like what kind of car too does this animal have?
What doesn't have a car? It has a motorcycle? A
well it's unless you're being You've just heard the call

(39:08):
for an octopus motorcycle gang movie. I would watch it. Well,
they made were Wolves on wheels, why not octopods on wheel?
It would make one rad um. What do you call it?
The cut? The motorcycle jack hut or whatever. Yeah, but
they caught it a cut. I think kind of sons
of anarchy, Sons of anarchies where I get most of
my biker knowledge that in Wear Wolves on Wheels. I

(39:30):
don't know much about biker lowre that's not in Wearwolves
on Wheel. I'm just say it would make a cool
uh MC logo. Yeah it would. But then again, I
think about how so if an octopus was to drive
a motorcycle, it might have trouble. It might have trouble
because I wonder if it's arms that are controlling, say,
the different handles of the bike would really coordinate all
that well. Because another thing that's very weird that the

(39:54):
book talks about is the concept that the individual arms
of an octopus us have individual personalities as much as
individual octopuses have different personalities than one another, and they
very much seem to like there. There are lots of
people who work with octopuses who have found that an
octopus will have continually more shy or bold arms. It's

(40:19):
almost just as if the arms are minds within the
overall body that can express themselves in different ways. That
is fascinating. So what if you had a shy arm
and a bold arm, or like a peaceful arm and
an angry arm. It seems like that kind of thing
could actually be possible with an octopus. But like I

(40:39):
mentioned earlier, a lot of this book is also it's
sort of narrative memoir. It's like about the relationships between
the author and other humans and octopuses, and these relationships
often seem, if this makes any sense, to actually be
based on mutual friendship and affection. There are these large
passages about people, including the author, just touching octopuses and

(41:02):
letting octopuses touch them, and it you know, it's possible.
Maybe the love and relationship is an illusion, like a
mere projection from the minds of the people who spend
a lot of time touching and feeding octopuses, but they
seem very convinced and just as a point of comparison,
like what if somebody told you that your relationship with
your favorite pet your dog or whatever was just a

(41:24):
projection of your mind, and your dog had no mind
or experience. It was just exhibiting stimulus response behavior. You know,
you can't rule that out as a possibility, we have
to say scientifically, as far as we know, that's possible,
just really doesn't seem true to people's experience. And then again,
on the other hand, the human relationship with the octopus
is such an alien kind of relationship. These are these

(41:47):
are not dogs, these are not mammals, they're not even
vertebrates that they might as well be from another planet.
They're clearly very intelligent based on their behavior and their
problem solving abilities, but the nature of their intelligence is
so unbelievably strange to us. And one part of the
book talks about that. You know, so they're they're all
these sort of like cuddling sessions between humans and octopods

(42:10):
in this book. And so you've got these sessions where
octopuses and aquariums are cuddling with their caretakers, embracing voluntarily
with their arms, stroking each other in a way that say,
a human and a dog would share physical contact and affection.
But then this often ends with the octopus pulling, pulling,
with this enormous strength, trying to pull you down into

(42:31):
the water into its tank. So what's it doing there?
I mean, it seemed to be excited to see you
showing positive displays when you show up, it wants to
touch you and all that, and then it starts to
pull you in. What's going Is it trying to eat you?
Is it trying to drown you? Is it trying to
come see if you'll come into the water and play
with it. There's so many wonderful mysteries to consider about

(42:52):
the mind of an octopus, if such a thing exists,
and we can't even necessarily comprehend the cognition behind in
the behavior is even though there's clearly something complex going on.
That reminds me a bit of a Jonathan Colton song
about I think it was called I Crush Everything. I
could be wrong on that, but it's the It's a
tragic love song of of a giant squid that falls

(43:15):
in love with love with ships and he goes to
embrace them, but it cannot help a crush and pull
them under. That's fantastic. I'd like to hear that. But
another thing so but so I will say Um. I
want to offer a couple of caveats about the book
in a second, but I wholeheartedly recommend this book, despite
whatever disagreements I have with the author on individual points. Uh.

(43:35):
She she's a great writer. It's a great story. It'll
really make you think about other animals. Uh. And the
cool part is I also noticed she writes a lot
of children's books, and I imagine she would be great
at this. Yes, and I'm actually pretty excited about one
that is sadly not out yet. It doesn't come out
until September September twenty, I believe that this year. But

(43:56):
it's titled Inky's Amazing Escape, How a Very Smart Octopus
Found his Way Home. Uh and and it is by
sy Montgomery, and then it's illustrated by Amy Schimmeler Safford.
And I've I've looked at some of the pages that
are available you and it looks it looks wonderful. What's
going to deal with an octopus that escapes from, you know,

(44:17):
a human habitat and uh and and I believe it's
going to be an exploration of some of the themes
that we've just we've just discussed. But of course, uh,
aimed and condensed for for for children to read or
for parents to read with their children. Uh, it looks great.
It's available for preorder now. Uh. I accidentally purchased another
octopus book when I was looking for this one. Other

(44:39):
octopus children's books. Yes, yeah, so not The Soul of
an Octopus, but the children's right. I accidentally past thinking
I was, I was grabbing, uh, the sy Montgomery book.
I grabbed one called Octopus Escapes Again by Laurie ellen
Angus that is currently available for purchase. And uh, and
this one is actually really great too. This one is
a beautifully all straded book that just shows a instead

(45:02):
of an octopus escaping from human captivity, it's an octopus
trying to feed, trying to is trying to sustain itself
in the natural world and having to elude various predators
to do so. And it's one of these these wonderful
kids books that it doesn't anthrop anthropomorphies or or overly
anthropomorphizes an animal. It depicts actual um predatory and in

(45:27):
defense activities by and behaviors by the animal, but also
in a very relatable and child appropriate way. Well that's
a happy accident. Yeah, yeah, I read that one to
my son this morning, and he he loved it. While
I'm on the topic of children's literature, uh, since it
seems like I read a lot of children's literature this
day of these days, since you have a six year old, um,

(45:49):
and I don't have time, of course, to to highlight
all of the really cool children's books out there. I
love it when a children's book does a great job
of making a scientific topic, UM enjoyable and and and
grasp able by a child. Uh and uh. And there
I read a lot of dinosaur books because my my child,
like a lot of children, really loves dinosaurs, and and

(46:11):
well he should. But I recently ran across one titled
Explorer Dinosaurs Dinosaurs and all caps with an exclamation point.
And this is a book by Nick Forshaw and Andy
for Shaw, and it's part of the Explorer series with
books on bugs, mammals, and plants. And it's it's just
so good that technically it's illustrated by Andy Forshaw and

(46:33):
written by Nicholas Forshaw, Patrick Skipworth and Christopher Lloyd, not
back Christopher Lloyd, different Christopher Lloyd. Uh. And it's published
by What on Earth Books. It delivers in ways that
a lot of children's dinosaurs books do you know. It
has some wonderful illustrations of the creatures, uh, you know,
depictions of their anatomy, and discussions of paleontology. But I
do find that, first of all, this one goes a

(46:55):
little deeper than a lot of kids dinosaurs book dinosaur books.
For instance, it gets into the k T extinction event,
it talks about various other are major extinction events that
have occurred, uh during the Earth's history, even the one
that we are seemingly in right now. And uh. And
the the illustrations as well in this book are are

(47:17):
are a different type of illustration that I've seen recently
in children's dinosaurs books, because generally what I I I see,
I see, of course, like sort of classical realistic examples
of paleo art, you know, where you have some really
gorgeous dinosaurs that look real and I love that kind
of stuff. Then you have like terrible c g I,
which there's way too much of in dinosaur books for children.

(47:40):
And then you have it in books not like straight
up books. You'll see book after book where your computer
generated images in books print of dinosaurs, and it seems
like it's been a popular thing less twenty years, and uh,
I hate most of it. Even if the content is good,
it's like there's a terrible dinosaur illustration. I'm instantly thrown off.
And then likewise, sometimes it's stuff is too cartoony, but

(48:01):
this stuff strikes a really wonderful balance. These illustrations feel
like animals, but there's just enough like a cartoonish whimsy
to them that they feel unique. So this is a
This is a wonderful book. It also has a six
foot fold out of dinosaurs presented in chronological order, so
I highly recommend that one as well. And finally, but

(48:22):
before we close out the nonfiction portion of the podcast,
we receive a lot of free books from publishers here
at the show promoting new publications. Most of these look awesome,
and we don't have time to really even use most
of them on the show. Others were getting around too.
We have like a growing stack of books and and
authors and experts that were like, oh man, we've got

(48:43):
to We've gotta have this author on to discuss this book,
and sometimes it takes several months or a year to
get around to it. Um, but I wanted to highlight.
Uh just really quickly. Here a book called How to
Live in Space Everything you Need to Know for the
not so distant Future. I Colin Stewart, who's a fellow
at the Royal Astronomical Society and an accomplished astronomy journalists.

(49:06):
This one is going to be published by Smithsonian Books
also this September, but it's but it is also available
for pre order, so if you I would recommend this
if you were a space sci fi writer, pick it up.
If you're planning to go into space, maybe read a
copy just in case you miss something. But it's a
perfect crash course in the history, the present, and the
future of space exploration, in space, travel, of humanities, life

(49:29):
beyond our Planet. Is divided into three sections. You have training,
Life in Space and the Future, which deals with space tourism,
the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and interstellar travel. So again I
highly recommend this book if you're if you're into space,
if you want to write some sci fi, if you're
just into science fiction, um, it's definitely worth picking up.

(49:52):
Very very readable. So I do want to say before
we leave the subject of the octopus. The Soul of
an Octopus by Si Montgomery while while I do think
it is a fantastic book, I also want to say
that I do not necessarily agree with all of the
ideas she expresses in the book, because there's an ongoing
debate about animal cognition, animal consciousness and all that stuff, right,

(50:13):
and Montgomery is clearly opinionated, Like you can definitely tell
she believes that an octopus has some form of consciousness,
and she often reads intentions into animal behavior in a
way that would probably not be strictly appropriate if she were, say, like,
researching animal behavior in a lab. But the book is
not necessarily intended as an unbiased scientific investigation. It's sort

(50:37):
of about the facts and the science about octopuses, but
also about the felt experience of having a relationship with
a non human animal and a potential alien mind. And
as I mentioned earlier, we know what that feels like
if you've got like a dog, right, and an unbiased
observer in a lab, but might not want to speculate
about what a dog's mind is like. But if you've

(50:57):
got a pet dog and you interact with it all
the time, you're gonna attribute a mind to it. Almost
everybody does, and so a lot of the book is
just about that experience, but not with a dog with
something very slimy and writhing that sometimes wants to pull
you into the deep. One last idea I want to
mention before we move on is the idea of the
words soul. So soul is there in the title of

(51:19):
the book, and I often am really frustrated that there
is not a widely used secular word for soul, divorced
of all the supernatural connotations of the soul, like I
think the soul is such a useful concept and doesn't
have to be bound up in supernatural ideas like dual
is um or ghosts or the soul surviving the body.

(51:41):
What I mean is soul in the sense of the
most enduring and important parts of your personality, your integrity,
your values, and your value uh the core of who
you are as a person. And I think soul in
that sense is a useful concept, and it's a very
powerful word that no other word in English really substitutes for.
Or I sometimes find myself wondering if it can be

(52:03):
rescued for this usage without always implying something about supernaturalism
to people. I find myself using and thinking about the
term mind state more and more like that as a
sort of a less loaded term for soul. Yeah, but
I feel like that that doesn't convey all of those

(52:23):
kind of um permanent and important qualities that sold does.
You know, Like you you could tell somebody that that
their behavior, you know, reflects something about their soul, and
that's saying something different than saying it reflects something about
their mind state. Though if you say soul, the person
thinks you're talking about something magic. I think it's part
of the problem. The right soul has come to represent

(52:45):
a number of ideas that that that at the very least,
like speaking kindly about them, cannot be proven. Uh. And
and I'm not just talking about the idea that there's
something in us, there's something of us that survives death,
uh the eye deea, that there is this kind of
like moral creature within all of us, that sort of thing. Yeah,

(53:06):
It's obviously got connotations that branch out in all different
kinds of directions. Uh. Though if anyway, if you if
you do explore the book, there is an interesting part.
It's very brief, but she does also contemplate the theological
implications of octopus minds and octopus souls. Uh. And and
I thought that was an interesting consideration to sort of
from a religious perspective that I had never considered before,

(53:27):
Like is there an afterlife for an octopus? Uh? No,
not so much that, but like a responsibility, like the
responsibilities of a religious person to an octopus. No, more
like straightforwardly, like if there is such a thing as
a soul, do octopuses have souls? Like do dogs have souls? Well?
Do octopuses have souls? And would they have one soul

(53:48):
or would they I don't know each limb, like you say,
like multiple souls or maybe even that doesn't make sense. Yeah,
it's almost like this is a problematic term that that
doesn't really apply to anything in the natural world, or
does it. The discussion continues, but anyway, soulivan octopus, big
thumbs up from me. Okay, looks like we're gonna have
to call it there for today, because, as we mentioned,

(54:10):
we started talking about books and then we talked for
way too long for a single podcast episode. So we're
gonna make this part one of our two parts Summer
Reading episode. If you want to continue the conversation, join
us again next time. That's right. In the meantime, head
on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you will find all the podcast episodes, including
past Summer reading episodes. Uh and oh yeah. If you

(54:31):
want more information, you want links, you want titles, you
want the specific spelling for some of these authors were discussing.
There will be a list of the books discussed here
on the landing page for this episode at stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. If you want to support
the show, rate and review us wherever you have the
power to do so, big thanks as always to our
wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Terry Harrison. If you

(54:53):
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Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

(55:19):
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