Brian Keating: I’m Spending $200 Million To Explore Existence! How God Fits Into Science Explained!

this is the shrapnel of an exploded star and this is a meteorite schem from over 4 billion years ago and this is what Elon will kill for Wow and all of this is to understand that fundamental question people want to know how did we get here and how does the question of God tie into all of this well for the first time in history we might be able to answer that question with scientific hard data Brian keting is an astrophysicist and Professor whose groundbreaking research and digestible explanations uncover everything we want to know about the

universe and what lies Beyond let me go way back 400 years ago a genius named Galileo looked through a telescope and he realized that we are not the center of the universe and now we know the universe is vaster than you or I can comprehend how big would Earth be on this table small not even a grain of sand Even in our galaxy it wouldn't be a grain of sand but we still don't know how the universe began and so one experiment took me to the South Pole to the bottom of the planet and we

thought we discovered the creation of time and space itself took me to the brink of a novel prize we were on the front page of every newspaper but it turned out we didn't see that at all what we saw was and we were [Music] crushed I don't get too emotional but we had to retract these discoveries and it was the most crushing experience the scientists can have but you cannot stop doing experiments to answer these questions now you've launched this $2 million project yeah and the data that this experiment is seeing is exquisite because now

we know 100% that [Music] this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this

show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much Dr Brian keing what is the mission that you on I think I'm the luckiest man on earth I get to get paid not that much but I get to get paid to study the questions that I was most interested in as a 12-year-old pimple face kid in Upstate New York which is how did we get here and I think it's the

question that people just want to know it's the only question you can't know right what happened before you were born you you have to rely on other people's word for it right you have to ask questions and be curious and what is the only event that ever happened for which there was nobody around to ask and that's the origin of our universe and the universe contains everything contains life Minds Consciousness everything down to you know podcasters and and uh and daily life what are some of the most sort of controversial existential questions that you seek

to answer with all the research that you do so you've talked about this before on the show uh the the question of of you know finite versus infinite games and what we do in science science is an infinite game right you can't win science but along the way there's many many finite games in other words fixed competitions for which there's only one Victor right I got you know uh offered a professorship at UC San Diego that means 399 other people didn't get that job I got tenure a lot of people don't get tenure I got

this I got that and then eventually I didn't get you know spoiler alert my first book's called losing the Nobel Prize but there's only you know at most three people that can win a Nobel Prize every year in my field the the the infinite game is comprised of many many finite games and the most important questions that generate the most controversy the most heat the most passion have to do with the nature of the origin of our universe it's actually not a settled science it's it's not actually known for a fact whether our universe came

once existed in a certain way eternally in a way I can describe went through cycles of creation and destruction and or it follows sort of a Biblical creation narrative these are all kind of open questions in a certain sense and because they're not yet resolved and because the only way to resolve them is through data we cannot actually answer these so the human mind is in a hybrid it's in a super position we kind of have a lot of knowledge but we have a lot of questions we have a lot of solutions but we have

don't have a lot of answers we're trying to understand that fundamental question and I always say I want to know what happened on the Tuesday before the Big Bang imagine this a day before which there was no yesterday you couldn't even speak about it if you were there obviously nobody was there to witness it but even conceptually speaking how does time progress if time starts right we think about time and time is very Mercurial it's very hard to describe and Define what time is is time what a watch measures is time how your my hair

gets gray over the years is is time how you know we perceive it sitting on a hot stove versus being with a pretty girlfriend are are those methods unequal are they equally valid but at at its base layer if the universe began if it truly had a singular origin then time came into existence at that as well and how does the question of God tie into all of this and what are the sort of I guess the most controversial question is is there a god or is there not a God right and then a sub

question to that would be what form does this God take are these questions that you SE to answer me personally yes my colleagues tend to shy away from it it's considered somewhat anathema or distasteful for a real honest to goodness you know work a day scientist to talk about to even contemplate the possibility of God and for me I I call myself a practicing very devout agnostic in the sense that uh I I take my Judaism in my case I'm I'm a I'm a practicing Jew but the question of what to take on faith which

uh which in which in Hebrew by the way the the word amen comes from the Hebrew word amuna which means faith it means to believe in something I always say I don't believe in gravity you know if I take this rock and I I I don't have to believe in it I have evidence for it science the word science means knowledge it doesn't mean you know uh faith it doesn't mean you know religion or theology but for me thinking about God provides a certain the most um the most luxurious or the most delightful sort of

spice to the research to the hard work that I'm doing knowing that the the team and I that are trying to answer these questions we can possibly resolve the question of whether or not the universe began as for example it begins in the Torah the Old Testament the biblical narrative that underpins the Judaism and Christianity and and Islam as well of you know half the world's population what if we could substantiate that narrative what if we could refute it a good scientist has to be open to both so for me personally I've always been interested

in those existential questions I I I I don't put myself out there as a you know as a rabbi or as some Exemplar of perfect as religion but I'm trying I'm trying to improve I'm trying to dedicate my life to answering questions that others have posed and stand on their shoulders to hopefully get a closer glimpse of truth but it's absolutely 100% in my mind inexorably linked the question of a Creator and the question of the its creation or his creation if you will but as I say for the first time in history myself my

colleagues and I we might be able to start to answer that question with scientific hard data the question of whether there's a God or not and which God is most accurately represented by the science yeah and the creation stories that those religions tell themselves or tell the world you've raised the 200 million project what does that mean and what what is the question you're seeking to fundamentally answer with that $200 million project yeah let me take a step back so for 2,000 years most scientists people believe the universe was eternal had been around forever and

then not not far from here in uh north of north of Hollywood is a telescope a 100 inch diameter telescope you know five meters across and that telescope was used by Edwin Hubble Hubble observed that every single Galaxy that he could see is moving away from the Milky Way galaxy so every Galaxy which are collections of a 100 billion Suns just like our sun is expanding away from us how could he see that through a telescope uh so he used What's called the red shift so the red shift is an effect that is related to

what Christian Doppler discovered called the Doppler shift you ever heard an ambulance and it's coming towards you and it gets higher in frequency it goes away that's the Doppler shift the waves of sound are piling up their frequency is getting short uh getting higher and higher the wavelength is getting piled up in the direction it's going the the the source and it's getting lower in the opposite direction the same exact thing happens with light instead of getting higher pitch in and lower pitch lower frequency means redder colors so red is a longer wavelength of light

than is blue light he saw everything is moving away from it Us in the Milky Way it was a very puzzling Discovery it went against 2,500 years of received wisdom he observed it with data it was incontrovertible every single Galaxy is moving away from the Milky Way galaxy our galaxy he said either you know we didn't put on our Cosmic deodorant and no one wants to be around us or the universe is getting bigger tomorrow it will be bigger than it was today the separation between galaxies will be larger than it is today the implication

Stephen if you go back another day before today yesterday things were closer keep playing that movie backwards you come to a point perhaps a singularity where all the matter all the energy everything that is was or ever will be was concentrated effectively at a single point that's the big bang and so in the Big Bang cosmology the universe starts at a particular moment time comes into existence the elements come into existence all the elements you know in in water you know instead of hydrogen in water rather they all come into existence and then over billions

of years those elements come together over the force of gravity they uh will eventually fuse two hydrogens together to make helium and so forth and you get the heavier and heavier elements eventually those objects called Stars they eventually burn up and blow up in what's called a supernova and before they blow up they create all sorts of other matter that we're made of calcium oxygen nitrogen iron and in their death throw in their explosive fireworks like ending of their lives they give life to us because they blast out into the cosmos into the Galaxy the

material that we're made of so literally as Carl Sean said we are star stuff and I brought some star stuff here today so this is these are different byproducts this is the shrapnel of an exploded star this is mostly made of iron here I brought these and I give these away on my website I made a special website for your listeners briank king.com diary this is a meteorite Stephen you ever seen a meteor in the atmosphere that's a rock like that a mineral coursing through our atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour how'

you know how do we know we measure their velocity we can track them on radar how do you know that this is a meteor oh this has all the characteristics of a meteorite it's composition its density it's a structure it has that weird pattern on it but if you're really curious what we could do so where's this come from then or this one was found in uh in uh in Argentina in a place called the field of the stars and this could have come from anywhere in the universe exactly this came from this is basically

a fragment of an asteroid that EX existed before the Earth Steven this is a fragment a fossil relic of our solar system from over four billion years ago older than our Earth because our Earth formed at its core our Earth has iron inside of it it has an iron core just like that that's pretty heavy right that's not and it also made this here this if you give this to your sweetheart if you compress this by 100 thousand times and give it to your sweetheart she'll be really happy about that that's pure carbon so that'll

turn into a diamond that'll turn into a diamond I like to say you know pressure is what turns dust into diamonds for anyone that can't see this right now it looks like a a dice it's it's almost identical to like a black dice exact yep it's very light now contrast that to and here's a piece of rock this is mostly volcanic rock I collected that in uh in Antarctica I've been to Antarctica twice to the South Pole I collected that specimen there it has holes in it see the holes those come from bubbling escaping volcanic

gases so there's volcanoes down at the the South uh at the in Antarctica not the South Pole and then here's this one this is found oh gosh Namibia so this is a meteorite formed in found in Namibia also from the same process that formed our solar system this was found by the natives that lived there uh several hundred or maybe even a thousand years ago this one's particularly nice if you're not watching it it looks like a human foot and I can't explain how unbelievably heavy that is yes I didn't think I've held something thing

that's this size but this heavy before it's extremely dense it's one it's the dense so what happens when a star tries to make the iron in that it takes more energy to make that fuse that nuclei of iron than is given off in the fusion process so therefore the star can't support its weight it collapses it explodes and rebounds now when your listeners or viewers you know go to my website and if they win one um uh you'll see how attractive these things are to magnets it's a very uh powerful it's called a rare earth

magnet neodymium magnet Jesus so attach it to the meteorite it's fine to do that you can do that wow that sound I love that sound a ping so this material is highly magnetic and iron which is primarily the constitution of this meteorite is has the exact same chemical structure as in your blood there's a molecule called hemog globin mhm it's almost identical to the chlorophyll molecule that plants have except chlorophyll has a magnesium atom at the center of its chemical Matrix but in hemoglobin that's going through your veins right now is iron that iron came

from that Supernova eventually your mother you know and the food that you eat has some iron in it and your body starts to produce blood and that blood has the same chemical composition as the Stars so this 200 million what are you doing okay we gonna give back back to the money y exactly so what is the fundamental question you're seeking to answer so let's say you see someone shooting a f a gun right you want to see the but you see the smoke from the gun you see the bullet moving at great speed but

you'd like to see who actually shot it was it God you know was it was it mother nature was it some Quantum fluctuation in the Multiverse and so we're trying to capture that to to take a picture of the infant Universe to take the earliest baby picture possible using sensors that are sensitive to in to uh microwave light that we cannot see that's invisible to us we could capture a pattern which would only be present if the universe had a singularity if it went through this incredible rupture of SpaceTime called The Big Bang the details

of the experiment were worked out over several years we realized we had to go down to the South Pole to the bottom of the planet a place that was only reached 112 years ago and the enemy of what I'm trying to detect is water water absorb absorbs microwaves that's how your microwave oven Works to heat up coffee so we we took that telescope there we made an observation we claim we detected that baby picture that snapshot that reverberations of the creation of time and space itself called inflation we were heralded around the world that this

is the greatest discovery of all time in science literally there was just one problem when we made this measurement we were aware that we could fool ourselves into seeing what we wanted to see because we knew how important this discovery would be but we kind of convinced ourselves that we had seen the true birth pangs of the Big Bang but it turned out we didn't see that at all instead what we saw were trillions and trillions of tons of dust in our galaxy for technical reasons it mimicked the signal of the big bang and we

were crushed it literally dust we saw Cosmic dust the leftover byproducts of exploded Stars just want to be clear here so I'm um I don't want to move on until I fully understand so you you went down to the South Pole yeah you looked up expecting to see these sort of these waves that show that the universe is expanding yes what you actually saw like lines of dust right is that a simplified way of say but you thought you'd s seen these sort of microwaves of the universe exping exactly simplifying it perfectly we made this

discovery and then immediately effectively in scientific terms 6 months later this is an early 2015 we basically had to admit we were wrong and fortunately for me and for the universe as a whole um I was very close with a man named Jim Simons he was a Monumental scientist mathematician without peer effectively and he said Brian I I've been thinking about this experiment and um I want to I want to have a lger so he put together this this dream team and we're still together to this day we're building an observatory in Chile not the

South Pole in Chile to do what bicep couldn't do bicep being the telescope you built in the South South po y that lost the Nobel Prize in my first Books language and we're just now getting data it got first light a month before Jim Simons passed away and so we were able to show him the data that this experiment is is is seeing I can't show it to you is as confidential as a diary is you hope nobody's looking but you don't know if anybody is I can't show it to you but the data is

exquisite so what do you um what do you suspect is the origin of the universe well uh is it God is it some kind of strange Cosmic reaction that took place for no reason at all I know you must have a suspicion you know if the universe began with a singular Big Bang if it began on a certain day or it didn't I just want to know the truth the interpretation of it that's going to be going on for I mean people are battling about as I said we thought we detected that signal right so

we already have um a simulation of what will happen when this is discovered for good finally and no dust right we know exactly what the media will say at that time on one side of the equation were the greatest you know religious thinkers and theologians of the time saying this proves the existence of God that God created the universe in a singular moment let there be light Fiat Lux that's exactly what the Torah the Old Testament the Bible says so they said it it agrees with our hypothesis on the other side there were militant atheists

Richard Dawkins you know other people saying this proves there's no need for a God the universe came into existence like you said meaningless Quantum field the fluctuation out of nothingness it proves nothing about God in fact it invalidate literally Stephen there were people publishing articles in major newspapers everywhere that proves God proves no God so it's not like I'm going to think that I have the tarity to say I'm going to be the final word or we're going to be the final word I know this is going to resonate and echo through the through the

you know anals of history but at the same time we could also see nothing and that's the hardest thing when you see nothing the human mind doesn't like ambiguity you know like you can talk about um something very uh you know non-controversial let's talk about abortion rights let's talk about trans rights let's no these are incredibly controversial things right so what does the human mind do it selects a side it says no abortions abortion for everybody no trans rights yes trans rights uh immigration no immigration yes IM the human mind hates that and for good

reason there's an old Yiddish expression he who stands in the middle of the road gets hit by both sides of the traffic so the human mind Cleaves to one side or the other I don't think you know in terms of you know religion or whatever that we'll be the defendant of final word on it but it's sort of a privilege to play the game what is the most compelling evidence that you've ever encountered that there might be a god this is a long uh long question well I I hope you'll find it someday too um

at least in my religion in Judaism God is the Creator and he's the organizer he creates um light and darkness he creates day and night he creates Heaven and Earth he creates beasts and um and Earth and fishes and so forth and then he creates man and we can't really emulate God even if you don't believe in God you can imagine what a God would be like right you can conceptualize imagine you know King Charles you know times a trillion or whatever like the all powerful force but at the same time we're told God as

a father Our Father who art in heaven right um and he's a Lord he's he's like a politician he's a king he's their father in this judeo-christian concept it's hard to kind of reconcile what that means because we don't really have analogies to it but the one analogy we do get is the one thing that we can create which is a which is a human now I think for that reason men and women have a stake in what it means to feel a connection to God women much more so it's almost impossible to for a

man to comprehend what it's like to have the ability to be a vessel for life's creation I think that's part of the evidence for it um I also think that there's some there's some Clues but again it's not proof you cannot prove God exists you cannot prove God doesn't exist you have to be comfortable with that ambiguity and very few people are if we came from a single cell organism as some people say then there was then giving birth seems to be quite a New Concept because you know if you think about some of the

evolutionary stories of you know the single cell organism that then divided and then you know darwinism's theory that it was the environment that defined how we give birth and different animals give birth or replicate in different ways so if you go back far enough it seems that like giving birth as we know it which is this like process where the baby comes out and they cut the cord is actually quite recent in the history of Consciousness but also just like living organisms does that make it more or less miraculous or it's so amazing but it

it doesn't feel like it gives me I don't know there's something in my mind that thinks if a single cell organism I don't know gazillion years ago split because of some mutation which caused more single cell organisms to split I mean I guess it's still creation isn't it and then you could ask the question what if there was a Creator and this Creator not only um you you know created that first cell but created within that cell the possibility the propensity and had the knowledge you know we can't comprehend it but but had the knowledge

that that will eventually make a person and have Consciousness and be able to conceptualize God now I'm not saying that's evidence for it but just you can you can you can see which would be a greater miracle that like God encrypted in the DNA code that eventually there'll be a Steven Bartlett or Brian keing or you know that those are natural processes that are the inevitable conclusion of of creation of life and evolution as you say in darwinian theory for which we have abundant evidence right I don't know which is more miraculous and and that's

why you know Miracles humans are pretty new aren't they so oh yeah mam mammals like how old is the conscious human the conscious I mean the first like Homo sapiens that are of our species probably 200,000 years old maybe so it's only been for 200,000 years that we've been even been able to think about the possibility of God which is almost a weird way way it almost you could say God has only existed for 200,000 years right yeah that's was a good way of putting it and and in fact many people I like to say

this you know to you like what's your favorite day of the year like on the calendar I was going to say day okay I always ask people that I say like what's your favorite day and usually I'll get um Christmas uh my anniversary my birthday my first kid's birthday whatever but those are all Origins we fascinated by Origins cuz you weren't like you can't witness like the whole process of your birth you have to rely on mother and your father and maybe there's some pictures and a nurse but now go back to the beginning of

the universe well maybe there was only one entity you know maybe it was only God and why did God make the universe and then of course there's many many questions the the most kind of stringent you know are are or perhaps most challenging question is you know why does evil exist why would a good God create suffering you know childhood leukemia like it doesn't make any sense so the the standard answer for that question question is that to not have Randomness to not have chaos to not have um variability in life would would necessitate a

predetermined existence and a lot of people believe that I've talked Sam Harris in my podcast he's been on here um he believes strict determinism every single thing what's happening to us right now the words that are coming out of my mouth your uh ear twitching or whatever it's to that's all determined there's no control there's free will is a complete and utter illusion and uh because of that then there doesn't have to be an explanation of why there's you know leukemia in children or whatever and and yes that is that is an unanswered question and

I think but but I don't think it's a sufficient question not to do stuff people would ask why does a child get leukemia but they won't ask why do um humans experience uh the highest the highest Pleasures the highest Sensations both physically viscerally but also emotionally and spiritually that we unique among all the Creations on earth have this ability to appreciate our finite existence to have love to have you know whatever this connections are that's what makes life living now we can't answer why is that like do we deserve that so for me the evil

and good and like Pleasure and Pain make lots of sense from an evolutionary perspective it makes a lot of sense as to why you would feel this overwhelming sense of like love and protection when you gave birth when your your your son or your daughter arrives in the world because that that feeling is passed down from your ancestors and your ancestors had that feeling so they survived and their offspring survived and that feeling gets stronger as it's passed down because those that have it are more likely to pass on their DNA so the DNA of

that feeling keeps passing through the through the generation so I get that and then with the with evil I also I can also understand that pretty well um because you know if we think of evil maybe as a feeling or something that happens or a disease I can understand that evil is human is is human related there's no evil cancer cancer is not evil and even that I can understand because I can understand the brain is so fragile and I can understand all these human instincts and chemicals and jealousy and you know all of even

love comes with it you know if some if if a woman dies it's probably a husband statistically so like I understand you know that's evil isn't it but but it's love as well so I understand that the complexities of all of that what I can't understand is what role God is playing in any of this stuff and yeah I was I was religious until I was 18 and then I think I I fell down a rabbit hole listening to like Richard Dawkins and some of the others and Sam Harris and it left me in a

position where I would probably Define myself as being agnostic but there's still this big question mark which hangs above my life which is like where did where did human life come from and is there is it possible that it just didn't come from anyone is it possible that there was a big bang you know at the very start of all of this it caused lots of reactions one such reaction was fusing some chemicals which fused in the right order over millions and millions of years and it started to move in a way that like plants

can't move and that then LED rise to the sort of evolutionary process and now here I am and my brain was just bigger 200,000 years ago than the other monkeys so now that I've develop this thing called conscious where I can think about things and here I am trying to figure it all out now that I have this bigger brain thanks to wian evolution is that is that the game and it's and you know when people hear me say that they probably think oh you know the the natural reaction to that is because it threatens

your sense of like purpose and belonging and it threatens Justice your natural reaction to that is no I hope it's not and so let me think of ways that that can't possibly be true but I'm I'm not tempted by that I'm tempted by figuring out what's true irrespective of how warm and fuzzy it is MH and um I still don't know but I'm hoping science has some answers for me well yeah sorry to disappoint right now the the the connection that logical chain that you that you produced has a lot of so-called missing links but

I you said something that's very interesting to be you said you consider yourself an agnostic it sounds like in other words it sounds to me like you're more you're doing things that an atheist does like you're not going to church you're not um you know observing mass or whatever you would do if you're but what do you do do do and they because if you're an agnostic there should be some Behavior that's similar to a theist why because then you're just an atheist right I mean in other words how do you what practices I'm a

behaviorist in in in my life you know so I judge people on how they act and how they behave and and you know a lot about this so how do you do you behave as if there could be a god do you you said maybe you want science to explain it you didn't say like I would like to have a personal revelation from Jesus I I would like to encounter him or whatever V I don't care what religion is but how do you in practice live your life such that if God does exist that that

it would make a difference in the way that you're perceived or judged if you will yeah well I I I don't because I guess I don't know what I don't know what practice because I don't know what God exists or what story is true I don't know what practice is true do you think of god let's say you were um Hindu right yeah let's say let's say you're not Hindu let's say you are what you are Presbyterian or the Church of if I had a practice wouldn't that make me religious well I'm saying do you

think if there is a God we have to do this Matrix right we have to say God exists God doesn't exist even behaves like he's religious Steph doesn't behave like he's religious right so right now you're in one of those quadrants you you're not sure God exists um so you're behaving maybe as if he doesn't exist and I'm asking you and now he could exist or he could not exist so imagine you move into another quadrant you say I'm going to behave like I'm Hindu or come down to my temple in San Diego whatever you're

going to behave in some religion do you think if God exists he's GNA say oh God Stephen you picked the wrong one it's not it's not uh it's it's jism it's it's um it's whatever it's it's um it's um uh Latter-Day Saint I I don't think I think a revolutionary statement I think God has common sense if he exists if he doesn't exist it doesn't matter what you do right but if God exists he must have common sense meaning that if you make make an Earnest attempt to understand or at least engage yourself religiously not

believe and force yourself to believe not make excuses for evil that happens in the world or cancer for kids but if you behave in a certain way I don't think if God exists big if you'll be judged harshly I this is exactly the conclusion that stopped me being religious when I was 18 really yes exact conclusion because so we'd go to um church every week we grew up going to church read the Bible all of those things and then I when I was younger I was operating under the assumption that I was going to go

to hell and burn if I didn't like obey this this person in the sky then I read these books I St Richard Dawkins books and a bunch of other books on the subject matter and I heard that God was omnipotent and omniscient which makes a lot of sense because if you create this world and you can you know you're you're active in it you must be pretty powerful and pretty knowing and then I concluded that if I basically concluded God would have common sense and I thought he would understand that I'm struggling and he would

understand that as long as I live a good life and I'm not murdering people and I'm not mean to people and I'm kind and I'm respectful to people and I'm a net positive on the earth then if Heaven does exist any God that I would want to support anyway would let me in and he would understand that I didn't have enough information to to put my flag in any particular religion so he would let me in so my my thesis then became well just be a good person and you're kind of hedging your best because

any decent God that's I think worth supporting would go that was a decent person he couldn't quite see it you know whatever but but you wouldn't see it a little I sorry to push back but if you if you let's say I say I want to get in shape Stephen and and yeah I deserve it got kids you know I want to be healthy live a long life but you see me eating you know I wouldn't eat cheeseburgers kosher but hamburgers french fries you know just just and I'm say well like you know whatever we'll

understand like I in other words you you would agree that if you knew God exists you would do you would behave very radically different L right if if I if you had an encounter with god well Jesus or or God himself right it depends if I knew for sure that he existed and a particular book and Doctrine was correct I would 100% behave in line with that book IND Doctrine but if I knew he existed but I didn't know which book was correct then I probably would behave exactly how I do now so because the

behavior the practice the Sabbath comes from one of those books or doctrines so right but but even if you couldn't choose right what if it's like um what if it's possible that all of them are right and all of them are wrong in other words you um we are so frail fragile and and and inadequate to the task of understanding what the true nature of God is that he made it such that again I'm not saying this is true but but it made it possible that there would be ways of interpretation for how he existed

right like I as a Jew don't believe in Jesus's Divinity right but I don't I don't fult my friends friends you know jbot a CH I don't fault him I don't in fact I think it's beautiful that that's his Avenue for worship he believes that Jesus died for his personal sins now you would admit that you would have uh Jesus will still die for your sin or you know he did die for your sins if you're an Axe Murderer you know so I just think that level of saying it's um as long as I don't

murder anybody you know it's like me saying well you know if I'm destined to get into shape I'll get in shape you know my metabolism will work it out without me taking this the the serious action and working hard because you do it in your rest of your life right and I'm not by the way I'm not prosing it's actually forbidden in My Religion I'm not Pros but but the but that concept of God is uh that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in I also don't believe in that like he's omniscient he's gonna prevent you know

babies from dying from caner he's going to do this or that like that's where they make fun of it um or they they they relegate it to the a friend in the sky you called it right I I don't believe there's a friend in the sky I don't think that even makes sense um but I believe that we are seeing something so heavily refracted again if it exists it's it's like uh showing a microwave telescope you know showing bicep or the Simon's Observatory uh to you know Gog who lived in a cave 200,000 years ago

like there's no way to get from there to here but that doesn't mean like there isn't an ultimate there an Ultimate here for me I I let me just say the final thing I want to say because I don't want to make too much about this but but um there's a value in practicing even if you don't believe just like I say sometimes like even if you got divorced like you should still get married because it changes you and it opens you up to the full panoply of human experience that a lot of people don't

get to experience and when people have the capacity the capability to do it they should in my opinion uh by the way I'm not advocated to get divorced either but but the point being uh you obviously wrestle with it and and um interestingly enough the word Israel which is the central you know country of of judaic faith means fight with God it means wrestle with God L is God Israel means fight so how do you wrestle with it do you wrestle with it do you think about it or do you say you know I'm not

going to read these books that I read before I was 18 because it seems so childish to me now and so I I do I certainly wrestle with it so when I say wrestle with it not in a way that is causing me any pain or Agony or deep frustration but it's it's yeah it's a recurring thought and I actually think from doing this podcast and just um like maybe growing up and uh the journey I've been on I have more questions now than I ever have since I became agnostic at 18 so I have

more questions now it's funny I've been on this bit of an arc where I was certain when I was younger that God was real and then I was really um certain that the god I believed in probably wasn't real and now i' kind of find myself going back to a position where I'm like almost like I'm starting the research project again to figure out what actually is what actually is real I sometimes wonder if I'm looking for the wrong thing cuz I think because we've been so sort of indoctrinated into this idea that it is

a man in the sky and all these the white beard and stuff so we're like looking for evidence of that but maybe I should be searching for evidence of something else is it like a feeling I'm searching for is it it's interesting that you said that it REM reminds me of Einstein Einstein said um he never asked his father what would happen daddy if I was traveling at the speed of light and I looked at myself in a mirror and he said it was good I didn't ask those questions when I was five because my

dad would have given me this standard answer of the 1800s which was you know you see a reflect or whatever and then Einstein said I would have just accepted that and then I would never have gone on to create the theory of relativity what you said Echoes what he said because if you if you had asked these questions and just accepted the belief that you had when you were 12 you would not be approaching them with the maturity of a Steven Bartlett at age 32 right and now you have this perspective you have a wisdom

that you've accured from your life experiences from the the millions of people that you've helped around the world to expose them to different things and you're on a journey yourself so anyway I I I just I don't so I don't have tolerance for scientists that dismiss it and say it's stupid and I'm like but I also I I I find that religious people are too comfortable saying everything is described by God everything happens because of God and I see this a lot with religious children um sometimes I'll go into kids school and teach them uh

you know about science I'll bring these you know props and stuff uh but when I talk to them sometimes I'll say like oh look there's a rainbow over there oh that's great where did it come from they'll say God made it I think that's I joke that's a form of child abuse you know if you just say that God made it you're a completely ignorant about the science but B you're also diminishing God's power right if you say No actually that's an effect of of water droplets which are formed hydrogen oxygen and here's their chemistry

and here's how they form uh different state of matter when they're in Collective and here's how that causes light to defract at different wavelengths and here's wavelength electromagnetic radiation where does that come and you keep asking the question why why why why only when you get to the question the answer the final answer I don't know that's the only time I would say Okay God could come in there but that takes you back you know that whole chain of refraction of light of dialectric material of of of wavelengths of of color all that that takes

you back till almost to the Big Bang which then intersects with what I do you said um that you think of God as almost like a force do you think it's a conscious Force I if you if I sit down and pray to this God will they hear me I honestly kid say I don't know but I know that you'll change I know that you'll hear yourself okay if you can go down to the ocean student if you can go down to the Pacific Ocean and just be isolated and just pour yourself out for an

hour I guarantee it will change your life you will be in tears but no one will see you that's the thing that's why you have to be alone you cannot do it with any other person you must do it on your own because there's no Sam Harris meditation waking up app it's not going to do the same for you as as just you alone and not knowing is part of the point I think but what's that got to do with God what's me going down to the beach and pouring my heart out which would get

me into my amigdala it'll get me thinking about you know it'll make me emotional I can imagine you know even listening to certain music can make you feel that what what role is God playing in in that moment because if God exists I do believe that he's inside of you and that you can connect with him again you can't detect him with an MRI machine or you can't detect him with a laser but you know can if again it's a big if I'm not guaranteeing you know I'm sorry to disappoint I'm not that kind of

doctor you know I I can't give you a prescription that'll make you believe but to have access to it you have to be open to a communication right imagine you got you know a a you know an email and you just never respond to it like people remember the movie Interstellar You' seen that movie so uh there you know the the people on Earth are communicating with the people you know Matthew mcc's daughter and she she doesn't know if he's listening he doesn't and he knows that she's but in that sense he's kind of like

this like he has knowledge that she doesn't have but if she doesn't try maybe she wouldn't maybe just the aspect of trying the attribute of trying is what opened her up to that return signal the communication that she eventually received so interesting because when I asked the question about can God hear me and if he can hear me I guess the second question is can he do anything about what he's hearing um there's so much evidence in the world that he can't hear you and he's not going to do anything about it but again you

say that but like what if uh you know know who knows if if you're if your parents you know like they were a lot of the stories in the early in Testament are about sterile Barren women that couldn't conceive you know from Sarah Rebecca to to Rachel all these women they couldn't conceive they cried out they they prayed and again women are closer to God in many ways because they contain life within them um again in what sense are you not already the recipient of the beneficence of something that we just don't understand like potentially

yeah but but but when I ask this question about like could I if I pray is it going to influence my outcomes in any way you know there's a I don't believe it does I I I don't believe it does for the reason I said before like people were praying here for the Dodgers I'm sure there were equally virtuous people praying for the an that's what I mean if you think about the scientific method that's why I said I don't we could we could apply that and say does prayer work right and you could get

I don't know look through history at the Holocaust or look at some other world natural disaster and think it has praying swayed the the probabilities of bad things happening to people so I don't believe that at all but I do believe that fundamentally a a person who believes that their um that their actions have some impact will feel at least a sense of gratitude let me let me give you an example you're familiar in Christianity you know people say a blessing before the meal like grace before a meal so in Judaism you do that before

the meal after the meal sometimes during the meal uh but the point is the more you Express gratitude you you cannot be a happy person and be being an ingrate Yeah the more you're grateful for like the sound of you know of of you know a song that is just so meaningful to you the sight of a painting or a sunset the more that you're s and in Judaism we say blessings for those things like we say if we see a meteor shower we say a blessing it's hard for me as an astronomer you got

to say blessing a rainbow another thing those are like kind of things we become desensitized to in life and we just take for granted when you taste a a fine wine or you taste you know some delicious food again it could just be chlorophyll here's Stephen have here's your plate of agar gum like okay great I could live here's whey powder that's all you ever get to eat and you'd be like this sucks I know what I'm Ahad and if I could only go back to it after I get out you know of the situation

I'm going to be so grateful to me that grateful gratitude connects to the ultimate source of that provided that we can't understand it's true I cannot give you and I told you I have problems with prayer because I don't like to be told what to do I don't like to be told I have to say this in this order stand up sit down fast on this day do this thing not eat that delicious pink guy with the curly tail like but when you do that you know this the more you're disciplined the happier your life

is you know who's who's more happy the guy who eats everything he wants or Joo you know like the the the person who just gives into all their Temptations of alcohol the person who abstains and and elevates what they do and I think we want to elevate ourselves above the level of an animal of the animals but I can have all those behaviors of like a gratitude practice I can have a meditation practice I go down to the beach I can do all of those things and I still I can still do all of those

things without the need of a god oh sure and I'll get all the benefits of those things I'd get when I when I Express gratitude before I eat or sometimes when I'm getting on a plane and I I I touch the plane to remind myself and I can always make myself emotional just thinking about how remarkable it is that I get to do some of the things I've been able to do in my life to the point of like physical emotion yeah um but without the presence of of needing to equate that to a god

in any way so I'm I'm trying to find I guess I'm searching for where God fits in all of this why why is why is God why is a god required is it just because I have so many blessings that I should be thankful to someone for these things which I do contem with I go okay and let me think about how my life has changed in the last 10 years of you know from going from some of those shoplifting pizzas to sitting here and getting to do these it's it's remarkable you you start to

think you're a little bit in the Treeman show if you're not if you think about it too deeply but um and you do feel you think who do I thank for this so you think do I thank my parents like right do I thank myself so you do I thank a god um but I but is that the reason it just to just just to be thankful but then I go there's a bias there because there's kids in the town in Botana that I was born in that are still in the town in Botswana that

I was born in and they're not doing so good so they do they have did God not like them did and then if you go no God likes both of you then I go okay well then God isn't responsible for this it was something that I did or my parents did that responsible for this so I should thank them so where does God fit again and I just go around in these loops and I go I don't know what are we trying to create a God to make sense of the things we feel and the

experiences we have and the baby that grabs our finger and the Gratitude and the the the the solar eclipse and the the sunset are we trying to trying to give that to someone because it's just so the a is just so much or did God give that to us well I mean the perspective that you're bringing is obviously you've thought about this a lot and obviously your attitude is healthy and I think that you have you know unbalanced I think yeah obviously living as a a good life even if you I'd never say that an

atheist can't be a good person or can't be happy or any of these things the question is what where does it augment and affect your life like for example I don't know if I would give 10% of my income to charity before tax income to charity if I if it wasn't a commandment in My Religion but I don't shame for that I don't feel like oh you needed religion to tell you this because again I'm still searching just as much as I think that you are I don't feel like uh as untroubled by the answers

of it right I don't feel like that not knowing for sure that God exists which I don't believe is possible anyway that that should be an impediment to me practicing giving charity being in a community um uh raising my kids with an appreciation of their history and their culture um and and just the contrib R butions of their religion of your religion whatever to to the world so if you found out from this new project that you've you've launched this 2 million $200 million project that you've launched to figure out the existence of I guess

where the not the existence but the origin of the universe the origin of life if you found out unequivocally that God isn't real convinces you to the point that you now believe that God is not the creator of the universe and that I don't know you figure out some other way we can create universes in little Labs maybe a thousand years from now we can create our own little universes from nothing somehow or we find out we're in simulation yeah whatever yes exactly how does that change you because I'm a behaviorist I I I don't

I really don't feel like my life would be better to act as if God doesn't exist in other words if I know God doesn't exist then I'm gonna act like he doesn't exist right that's a logical assumption yeah right so I'm going to stop giving charity like is that going to make me happy in life is that going to benefit Society or my or you know Zeus or whatever doesn't exist like I already know that's not true right so I've kind of done this experiment like all these other gods I know I don't believe in

raah you know a so you wouldn't do anything differently benefits to my life are so substantive that I would not change my behavior but you you're being guided then by your be your behavior and the rewards from Behavior which is pretty much my life yeah well okay so right the breath work and the meditation I'm being Guided by like if gratitude feels good I do it if going down to the beach feels good I do it if having a baby feels good I'll do it you know so like it could be dangerous to Dev add

God to my life or take it away my behaviors are going to be the same because I'm I'm being Guided by the things that are making me feel good but I don't think so you're not like those hidden istic Instagram influencers no because that would make me feel good like a donut I've run the experiment and eating the donut makes me feel okay for the time it's touching my tongue but then bad for 12 hours when my gut starts reacting badly so I don't do that anymore well let me ask you this question so if

they found out that uh working out is uh eventually it's it's actually going to shorten your life or it's going to do the opposite of what you're intending it to do necessarily would you keep working out how much is it going to short My Life by um every uh every uh you know ab crunch you do every bench press takes a an hour off your life or something or a couple minutes off your life oo this it's an interesting one um I would probably live 10 years less to live like 10 years better like to

have a better health span so I Pro if you told me I was going to live to aund 100 with without working out or I could live to 90 but I'm going to be strong and fit for those 90 years I'll take the 90 years so in my analogy that's exactly right so I feel like that level of of perfecting or enjoyment and the Ary benefits of gratitude uh and and happiness that I've received tangibly you cannot convince me as I can't convince you that working out feels I couldn't convince you working out is bad

it feels bad for you it does something to you physically mentally emotionally um I won't say spiritually but for me to see the benefits to see the things that I've seen like like look Stephen I've buried my father okay and in in Judaism one of the core tenants is that it's the highest it's sort of the highest Mitzvah it's the highest commandment to take care of someone who's died why because they can't reciprocate most of what we do in life we have some kind of contract you know we play by the rules we do things

nicely we have contractors we invest in Dragon's Den whatever we're going to get some there's nothing good there's nothing that will come out of it that will benefit you I've seen things I've seen people that are saints that I can't aspire to even be in their presence of but it's made my life better I wouldn't Chang the things that I've done or seen and you couldn't convince me it wasn't good for me and as I said before maybe you think I'm weak but I wouldn't have done it if I didn't feel it was commanded to

me you you mentioned the word simulation yeah a second ago this is something that I've been thinking a lot about what is just for people that don't know what is the simulation Theory and are we living in a simulation great question so the simulation Theory was really conjectured by a British philosopher or he's actually Swedish or I believe Nick Bostrom he conjectured the following he said compute is getting so phenomenally powerful in just our recent time Horizon so the notion that Nick and others had proposed is that if this is extrapolated indefinitely into the future

whether or not that can happen is a question about planetary resources you know part of the reason Elon wants to go to Mars and I do want to talk to you about Mars in a bit um and that uh that extrapolation leads in exra Le to the to the conclusion that compute will be effectively free and it'll be infinite it'll be completely democra democratized it will be completely demonetized it will be almost you know as I said too cheap to to to measure the expense of computing and it'll be everywhere uh in just a short

amount of time I mean remember the the phone that we have uh the iPad that you're using these are like these things would literally be a mythological witchcraft you know 80 years ago and now they're they're in common place and so the the notion that Nick proposed Boston proposed is that that Trend continues into the future that basically the capability of those computers would be to be able to model entire planets entire ecosystems even cultures communities maybe even people themselves so we let's take a parallel um uh DeTour for just a bit you're not seeing

me necessarily you're seeing photons are coming into your retinas right photons are packets of energy form of light they travel at the speed of light they have different wavelengths the wavelengths we call color they're going into your uh cornea getting bent a little bit then they're going to your lens getting bent more then they're going to your retina and they're getting detected on this basically uh a detector just like a a sensor in a camera which has pixels except it has trillions of pixels instead of millions of megapixel or few megapixels and those are being

transduced the color gets transduced on on cells that are called con cells the intensity is Rod cells um and and those are getting transduced into electrical impulses that go from the uh optic nerve right into your brain and remember Andrew hin told you on the show The Retina is the only part of the human brain that's outside of the cranium it's outside of the skull um and so it's a part of your brain that's outside so it transduces it makes electrical impulses those electrical impulses then get conducted like wires conducting electricity uh and then those

go into your brain and synapses in your brain and the neural Pathways in your brain can reproduce those now you have an apple Vision Pro I think I I saw you with once um so that can you know kind of simulate it could make very accurate representation of me holographic perhaps and you would want to reach out and touch me now imagine instead of just uh instead of just the um just the raw chem the physical Electronics of a of a headset Apple Vision Pro you just inject the electrical signals into the brain so that's

plausible it's it's just purely physical material processes uh photons converted to electrons get converted to neuron signals get processed in the brain and so all you have to do is get that input sensory input you can have a digital retina a fake retina and you stimulate it goes into your brain they're working on that same with sound sound is even easier you put a little speaker in your ear and you'd hear um but uh so the notion is that we could physically just be disconnected brains in a vat right we could just be uh in

in this vast system just Bunches of brains don't ask how they got there but we're all just receiving stimuli and we're just being fed I'm being fed an image of you over there you're being fed an image of me over here I don't know why nobody knows why this would occur but the computing power is there if you think that the Apple Vision Pro if if you were alive in 1971 uh you could not have necessarily predicted the Apple Vision Pro it was too far Advanced from from what we have right from what we had

at that point in time but imagine it just keeps increasing at any rate you like eventually there'll be a point where every bit of information every atom in the universe every Photon in the universe could theoretically be simulated again I don't know why this is but it would be indistinguishable from our reality according to people like Nick Bostrom and others that suggests this is so so that our existence is we are essentially in a simulation so the notion is that we're all these characters in this literal simulation run on some computering device some Hardware device

that we don't necessarily understand at this point and we're calling that God well that was I was going to get to uh So eventually you get to a point where if you could simulate everything then you would have to ask there must be some simulator right there must be some master simulator so let's say I'm a simulation well who simulated me and then oh who simulated them and then who simulated them so that's the recursion that's infinite regress you can't actually get to a base level of um you know a final simulator and if you

did it would kind of be like God like you're talking about this brain in a jar that's created out of silicon and and and oxygen and whatever we're made of but it's physically created by human beings what if you can't pay the power bill that week and um you know you have to choose between unplugging your refrigerator or unplugging the brain like is that killing something you know like it starts to enter into the realm of ethics and maybe even these concepts of a deity what I've heard and I find quite plausible is um remember

I said the the implication of having infinite Compu is that you can simulate everything in the universe yeah uh but can it simulate itself so I want to digress into what's called complexity Theory there are two different types of of difficult things there's like a complex thing like building an Airbus 320 it's very complicated right you can do it if I give you all the parts all the instructions give you the right order and I keep you energized like anybody can follow the instructions and make it the Earth's weather pattern state right now is complex

there's there's no way that you can actually create that like you would need another plane sized thing to create that that's called irreducibly complex you cannot make it simpler and then Build It Up from simpler and simpler things unlike an Airbus you can build it up from smaller and smaller parts and as long as you follow the recipe you know if you follow the recipe for the Simon Observatory you'll get the Simon's Observatory but if you try to simulate and it may be the simulate the weather you do need another planet like we' need another

planet just like the Earth and then we'd introduce carbon dioxide as certain rate and we see is it really going to cause it like that's totally impractical right so the question of these things is um is it really a simulation if it's not 100% like you could make a very very good weather simulation we do have that uh but but famously they're only accurate for a few days right so so how do you build up you know an accurate simulator it have to be the same so in other words do we need like another is

there another Universe where the simulators are that's equally complex to the simulation creation that they made and then did they stop like did they get are they made of silica are they artificial are they so there are proposals that you could detect the presence it's kind of like you mentioned the chman show where how all computers work right now is is on this binary code zeros and ones five volts zero volts um but um and that means that the world is fundamentally discretized it's broken into little chunks like the screen on your computer or your

iPad it's pixelated in space we call called voxels volume elements um and so you can um you can have an a large number of them but it's a big difference between a large number and infinity to really have a continuous like like um temperature is continuous like go from 0 degrees to 100 degrees and there's every step in between but in the simulated world because you couldn't have you need an infinite number of computer power to simulate just from 0 degrees to one degree not let alone from 0 to 100 or every possible combination so

at some level you you'd see if you zoomed in really close on the on the thermometer you'd see there's a little jump so you could detect the presence of the simulator it's more complicated actually it's done using astrophysical sources called Gamay burst and other things that are um that have properties that are seemingly incompatible with their being a simulation at the most distant and therefore earliest moments in the universe so right now there's zero evidence for it Nick Bost will tell you and you should have them on uh that that you know that that's basically

a copout and and there are ways around that that uh that fail safe mechanism aliens do aliens exist yes aliens do exist uh there's an old joke they're called hungarians hungarians are there's so many countries um so I I yes there's all joke there are aliens they're Klingons and they're around Uranus but I wanted to give this to you Stephen as one of the gifts I've brought for you today this is some soap for you this is soap Uranus soap it's Uranus soap so you want to keep Uranus clean um thank you so much in

all seriousness uh there's no evidence for aliens there's no there's what's I call possibility does not equal probability the existence of so many stars in the universe means there's so many planets which is true we found almost every single star has maybe 10 planets around it and we have a 100 billion in our galaxy alone there's a 100 billion galaxies in our universe we're talking a one with 24 zeros after it that's how many planets there are in the observable universe planets planets people say that means that it's got to be life in the universe

no it doesn't mean anything there could be uh so many hurdles for life to get started let alone to create complex technology producing life like us that we're essentially we're it and I'm not saying we are it but I'm saying there's been 0.00% evidence that life exists beyond the earth I know you've had Lou alzando on U the claims that he's making are controversial they're not scientific they're government I'm not dismissing his experiences of people he talks about they're not persuasive they're not addressing fundamental characteristics the universe is vaster than you or I can comprehend

you know if this was our solar system the nearest star would be like near in San Diego there's almost no way for us to comprehend how enormous our solar our universe is let alone how vast the cosmos is how much of it can we see we can see technically we can see a lot of the universe but most of that is way before even molecules formed in other words there's no possibility of life let's restrict ourselves to the Milky Way galaxy which is the only Galaxy we'll ever be able to explore Etc at least unless

we invent Wormhole travel like Interstellar uh but but for now we have sent probes the farthest probe we've ever sent was launched in 1977 it's one light day away from the earth okay so that means traveling at the speed of light the fastest speed possible which is how much miles an hour 186,000 m per second 300,000 km per second it's only quote it's only gone one light day away the nearest star is 1,200 times farther away than that it's four light years away so it'll never get to that other star I mean it took and

it took 50 years to get one light day so it need 1,200 times 50 years call it 100 so you're talking like vast numbers of of Millennia to get to the nearest star and that star we don't even know if it has on it or not and it's not actually going to that star but the point is the UN the Galaxy itself is so large and the types of environments in which life can take hold are so so precarious it's it's actually we we tell ourselves a story like you said with molecules and then they

start to evolve and then they get it's it's really not known how life got created it's not known how life came from non-living material from hydrogen helium oxygen how that turned into a cell it's a it's a vast Challen challenge in what's called organic uh synthetic organic chemistry and the formation origin of Life uh and then to say that those entities then evolved into some kind of technologically produced know if we found a dinosaur on Mars that would be the the discovery of the of the UN of the history of the planet of of all

time right a or whatever even a bacterium on Mars there would be an incredible Discovery so some people try to defeat this notion and say well life didn't have to necessarily uh get started in all these planets it could have started once and then get brought to those other planets through meteorites yeah this was actually created this theory was created by the same Fred Hoy who came up with the Big Bang Theory they called it panspermia sounds dirty but it's not so these meteorites could carry genetic material and they could land on another planet they

could have landed on Earth that's one theory that life on Earth originated from another planet that had life on it and in fact this is one of your lovely pardon gifts um this is what Elon will kill for I'm going to give you something that Elon doesn't have this is a piece of Mars This is a real piece of Mars it's 1.52 four gram of another planet I want you to touch it you can see it's a little bit reddish like the planet Mars This is much better than the butt soap you gave me I

gave you a piece of Uranus and a piece of Mars here's some information about it I give out as I said these meteorites on my website Brian king.com to Lucky winners each month and I give out the information this was found in Africa and how did it get here well a meteorite hit the planet Mars shattered off debris that debris orbited around Mars for millions of years perhaps eventually had plowed into the Earth and landed in Africa they found it they said this they knew it came from space they analyzed it it has the same

chemical composition molecular structure as the Landers that are on Mars right now measure for Mars so we know 100% that's for Mars it's incredible so Elon is desperately trying to get there that's your little piece please than keep it keep it safe and that's one way that life could have gotten to Mars from the Earth right the same thing happens on the earth as happened to Mars so it could have hit uh Earth blasted off um some amibas some orcas some kangaroo whatever and whatever was on the earth at the time and then eventually landed

on Mars with the DNA of it but it didn't take hold right so planets exchange DNA it is possible but we don't see Life on Mars if we think about this table yeah um give to put in context how big the universe is if the universe was the size of this table how big would Earth be on this table uh incomprehensive sensibly small not even a grain of sand no no not far far small fraction Even in our galaxy it wouldn't be a grain of sand even if this were our galaxy wouldn't be a grain

of sand no no no our solar our whole solar system would be perhaps yes one grain of sand If This Were a Milky Way galaxy which is 100,000 light years across it would be like one tiny little grain of sand what would be of the solar system out to the planet Neptune so the what's that 10 planets what something well we have uh there's eight planets in our solar system including the Earth used to be nine but Pluto is no longer a planet um so and we're about onethird of the way from the edge of

the disc of the Milky Way so traveling all across there yes we would be perhaps the entire solar system actually smaller than maybe half a grain of sand and can we travel to the end of the solar system well we sent uh this object it's gone well beyond it so the edge of the solar system is about four light hours so we in 50 years Stephen we've only gone quote and I'm not D this is a historic accomplishment we actually put on these on these spacecrafts um digitize pictures of human life of voices of songs

from every continent of culture of recipes of laughter of children crying of babies they put this called the Golden Disc Carl Sean was responsible for this and they mounted it to it and it's now uh well as I said 24 light hours away and the farthest edge of our solar system the planet Neptune is is four light hours sorry 24 light hours is the Voyager spacecraft so we've only gone one six of we've gone only six times the diameter of our solar system so our entire solar system would be a grain of sand on this

table less even yeah about half a grain yeah half a grain of sand on this this table this table is about 2 and a half met roughly big and how many tables are there that's a very good question we think at least 100 billion tables each one with 100 billion grains of sand there are more there are more grains uh sorry there more stars in the entire universe that we can observe than every grain of sand on every Beach on every continent on our planet that's really wobbled in my head so there's our entire solar

system is half of grain of sand on this sort of 2 three meter Table and there are a hundred billion tables so you know when you hear that you go okay we really don't matter like we're really it's it's so bizarre that we've fallen into the Trap of believing that we're like important in any way and then that for me that even throws another Market towards religion but the other thing it makes me go is surely there's got to be some other life on one of these grains of sands on the hundred billion tables again

the well let me just address the first thing so um you're uh about 10 maybe 15 trillion times bigger than a virus or bacteria um can that bacteria affect you or a virus hurt you of course it can so size doesn't really make that big a difference in this context right Jupiter is a 100 times you know bigger in diameter than the earth does it make it more important I think the Earth is much more important I like the earth a lot better um the sun is a hundred times bigger than Jupiter like would you

like to live there so the point I'm trying to make is size isn't really that important numberers not really that important and remember don't ever forget we're the only conscious you know entity that we know about in the universe right there's there's literally 70 different types of of primates right like monkeys you talked about before a bonobos arut none of them have what we have none of them can have this probabilistically let me give you an example uh I've been to Antarctica twice for bicep experiments when I go there Antarctica is the seventh continent to

be discovered on Earth it's approximately 12% of the land mass of the Earth it's a huge enormous continent with extreme mountains weather uh extreme cold but one thing it doesn't have as much life but if you did that same thing I said look Stephen there's this continent you could hardly walk across it in you know five or six years even if you're a great athlete you know people do it but you it would be very challenging to do it um it's enormous it's got all the support for life it's got um hydrocarbons it's got heat

it's got um rocks you can build shelter you can have water which the most important thing how much life do you think is there let me just tell you Stephen there's uh it makes up 13% of the Earth's surface there's 8 billion people on Earth how many how many people do you think live there I mean as a scientist you don't have to be a scientist you say I think there's probably you know maybe 800 million people there there's zero people there basically so just the probability I'm not saying it's impossible probability is not determined

by possibility because the the thing with the South Pole is okay so there's no one there and if if you put me there and said is there life and I got a telescope out and I looked around I'd go there's no life here I can't see anything I think I'd say I'm the only the only person here and then i' opposit meaning to myself I'd say I must be really important I might think that I'm a God if if I'm the only life there I'd look around I for miles and I'd walk for days and

days and days and send out pigeons and whatever and I go there's no one it's just me but then little do I know that although this little space is inhabitable if you go get on a plane and go a little bit further you get to the land of the free right but what if we can't do that what if there's no plane what if there's nothing what if this is all we have I think that a lot of the sightings and stuff I've interviewed the top fighter pilot um you know in the world that claim

to have witnessed these encounters um I've um you know interviewed the top you know people that claim these things exist I've interviewed AI lob he's a good friend at Harvard who runs a project he claims he's discovered material from uh Interstellar you know technology perhaps like a Garbage barge that was floating throughout friend he's a very eminent scientist at no point do I ever understand the fundamental answer to the question how did they get here what properties what physics properties do they use you know they always say oh well they defy the laws of physics

well I'm a physicist you know I can understand some of the most deep physics you want um and by the way there are many times in history where if I showed you something that was made by the US government you would say that is witchcraft magic like the iPad thing you said iPad is just one thing you know that in the movie 2001 in Space Odyssey do you know the by the way I have to tell you this uh if you don't know the word podcast do you know that comes from the movie 2001 A

Space Odyssey oh yeah I read the article for it was a yeah it was an engineer at uh at uh who called it an iPod and the iPod came from the pod in 2001 so we owe podcast to 200 so in that movie there are iPads they're guys communicating with iPad but they thought it was like technology of like 20 centuries from now no I'm talking about the technology it would take to make traversable distances out of this incomprehensible Cosmos that talked about when you apply that thinking to God it changes though because earlier you

said we just can't fathom mhm we can't fathom this Creator and the factors that would go into this Creator so we almost have to you know some people just choose to believe right yeah and the same can be applied to this thinking of how they got here was like listen Maybe we don't know their technology because it's just unfathomable like the iPod or the iPad was 100 years ago you're absolutely right so if they're just a hundred years ahead of us technologically we would think that they were doing witchcraft we would we wouldn't understand the

basis of the technology that they used to travel here sure but uh people like Lou will talk about things that are exactly um scientific claims one of the things in his book uh which I read he he hasn't come on my podcast I'd like to talk to him but um he talks about these these craft and and the properties of them and how when you're inside of them they're bigger than they are when you're outside of them um and how they affect and they they interact with human biology and cause Burns and and so forth

and the technology he's talking about it's not like some fifth force that I don't know about it's using the properties of of general relativity of SpaceTime uh we do know enough about these things whereas God you're right I'm not I'm not being um so so critical maybe when it comes to this notion of God but remember I said I don't I don't have to say I believe in gravity or in string theory or whatever we can have evidence for it so when they make claims that have to do with physics they should be tested by

the laws of physics when you talk about God saying I'm stipulating you can't test those with law with laws and therefore I can't prove God exist despite how much I would like to or not like to so what do you think the probability is that we are alone do you think we're alone in the universe I think it's very high you think it's high I think it's very high that we're alone let me make an analogy um for us to be here we Earth had to have the following circumstances happen we had to have can

you pass me the Moon the Moon yeah and actually can you pass the there's a globe behind you love to have that perfect okay so I put here a globe and I put here the moon and these are almost an exact ratio of size this is about how big the Moon is compared to the earth now originally before the moon didn't exist when the Earth was was first formed the the Earth condensed out of a giant version of trillions and trillions and trillions of tons of these meteoritic materials they sank to the bottom made the

core of the earth the earth earth's core is made of iron heavier lighter elements like carbon nitrogen oxygen they kind of accreted onto it and eventually this super planet formed and that planet or the the early Earth was called Thea and it was called that because eventually there was a planet the size of that give me that beach ball please Ste a planet about this size maybe a little bit smaller just for people that are AR watching yeah so there's a beach ball that's a little bit smaller than the globe that we're looking at it

impacted this early Eartha blasted out material into the solar system and over millions and millions of years some of that material condensed and formed the Moon the Moon and then the Earth formed as we know it today uh now the Moon is 250,000 miles away from the earth it's exactly at the right place in size that we have tides on the earth we have ocean tides four times a day so right now I'm showing where high tide would be say where this part of the moon's uh gravity is pulling on the ocean here so it

rises it up that means that some of the tides on the other side are also also high tide and then right angles low tide low tide oh so that's how the tides work basically wherever the Moon is it's pulling the ocean up yeah it's actually pulling the Earth and the Earth is surrounded by this this this sphere of water and so it slash that moves the Earth within that water and the water gets turned into like a lazen shape so the High Tides will be twice a day and the low tides will be twice a

day right angles to them so that happens and we believe that that process is what was necessary to make the materials from the ocean is where life started and eventually get that on land and fertilize and make people eventually okay so remember I'm trying to explain how we got here so there had to be this enormous Collision from an a pre-existing object in our solar system to create the Moon and the Earth as we know them now but that wasn't enough then there had to be these giant icebergs called comets comets bombard the Earth over

periods of millions of years the Comets brought the ocean bearing material that brought water to the Earth's surface and minerals and so forth to the Earth's surface eventually the Earth cooled down and those oceans covered about 70% of the earth's surface is covered by ocean as shown here so that comment had to occur that bombardment and the and the um the fertilization of water or providing of water hydration of the earth came courtesy of comets then lastly for us to be here These Guys these are dinosaurs here I brought a actual representation of dinosaurs dinosaurs

were roaming the Earth we know that right uh 65 million years ago an asteroid about this size which is about an inch across hit the Earth traveling 250,000 uh miles per hour something like that hit it near uh Mexico in the Yucatan Peninsula right here created this enormous Devastation this crater that obliterated the atmosphere filled the atmosphere with pollution and and basically made like nuclear winter like you and Annie talked about and that cut off light to uh plants and eventually the Dinosaurs most of the Dinosaurs all the dinosaurs died now that allowed mammals the

first mammals were little tiny rodents rats right and I believe all evolution is true right so those little rats then eventually evolved and made whales and people and and bats and all sorts of cool stuff and eventually we came from that so I've described to you three very important bombardments of the Earth One Earth's Moon form from a huge Collision two comets bombard the Earth flooding it with water just the right amount not too much not too little is perfect and three a meteor kills off the dinosaurs if any of those came in a different

order we would likely not be here so not only do they occur three incredibly improbable things that she would never predict would occur in that order happen to occur and they happen to occur in the right order the first two created life though right say again it was the first two of those three that created life potent allowed for life to exist yes you're right but remember I'm trying to explain how doac occurs right for us to be here if there dinosaurs here if the dinosaurs had a space program you know where they could zap

away with a laser and they could deflect the asteroid they would have done it and we wouldn't be here likely okay so you're right but let's say those events occurred in a different in a different uh pattern the small asteroid hit the Earth First nothing happens there's no dinosaurs to kill uh then the Comets come in flood the Earth with ocean but then this huge uh you know uh this Thea hits the the Earth forms into its Moon that would have boiled off all the ocean as well so we wouldn't have any water there for

life to exist on and then the dinosaurs wouldn't even need to exist so those are just three things Stephen by the way we have also the planet Jupiter I talked about before Galileo discovered its moons Jupiter is like a bodyguard it protects the Earth from almost every major deadly impact the Moon is also like a bodyguard see all the craters on this Moon that my son 3D printed he's proud to show it to you yeah these are death strikes that could have taken out the earth look how big some of them are they're as big

as the Earth as the dinosaur killing meteorite in some cases so we have all these conditions now I've only named five or six imagine each one of the five or six only occurs with a probability of one in 10,000 one part and 10 to the 4th well guess what happens you take 10 one in 10,000 multiply by 1 in 10,000 1 in 10,000 6 times to say that you get a number that's smaller than the number of planets in the universe in other words the probability of all just those six things I think there's trillions

of things how life formed the cell formed the chemistry the biology and and the culture whatever all those things that form to make us technological I think the probability is is extremely small which is why I said I think the probability is low that we are that there are other life forms or in another way to say it I think it's very high that we are alone and that might be for a reason you know there might be some reason maybe we're meant to really take care of Earth maybe we're meant to really appreciate the

blessings of what we have on Earth if you're an entrepreneur you're probably going to want to listen to this it's a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast which is LinkedIn if you've listened to me on this podcast for a while now you'll know that I've been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur and one of those Evolutions that has become clearer and clearer as I've matured is that the single most important thing in building a business in building a company is hiring the definition of the word company

is actually group of people and that is the first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on but surprisingly most don't about 80 % of my team have been hired from LinkedIn and I think there's very few platforms if any in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate with that much information and data on their profiles it usually costs money but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me I've got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn just go to linkedin.com doac to post your free

job ad today that's linkedin.com doac terms and conditions apply this is quite interesting 85% of Internet users have heard of VPN but only 55% know what they do if you're in that group let me explain vpns enable your location online to differ from where you actually are geographically to help you browse and stream sites that would otherwise be unavailable to you I use nordvpn who are a sponsor of this show to watch Manchester United games online no matter where I am in the world and Indie from my team uses them whenever she's booking flights back

home to New Zealand having a different online location mean she can take advantage of dynamic pricing and get cheaper prices for her flights nordvpn is the fastest VPN in the world and just one account can be used across 10 devices and they've shared a generous offer for my listeners a discount and four additional months free on a 2-year plan it's also completely risk-free with nd's 30-day money back guarantee so head to nordvpn.com doac or click the link in the description below star signs and horoscopes yeah is there any possibility in your view from everything you've

you've done in your research and your studies of the universe is there any possibility that anything up there in the stars is determining our outcomes and our personality and whether he's goingon to dump me or I'm gonna do well on bitcoin is there anything uh no there there's there's no evidence for it in the sense that you can do randomized control trials or double blind surveys you can do exact simulations as I said it the the theory that the position of Jupiter at the moment that you were born can literally be replicated there's something like

a million people born every day and then at the exact same time there's probably you 14,000 or what you know you could do the math and figure it out um for them all to have for no person to ever have you know sort of duplication of luck or circumstance the the effect in terms of physical forces the gravity of Jupiter the the pull of of the Sun the position of the Earth in the day you were born now there are correlation effects right so you have to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation right

so some I'm actually born on the most um frequently frequent birthday uh on all the calendar September 9th now what is septe September 9th is about nine months after the holiday season right so in a western culture you know women are party maybe my mom and my dad had a nice you know New Year's Eve or Christmas party or whatever and that's led to me being here right so there are correlation and then that so that means that there's a lot of people that are Virgos born on September 9th none of which are like me

or in the southern hemisphere versus the Northern Hemisphere a woman who has gestation during the summer might feel differently than if she's gestating during the winter even though the babies are born at the same day right they're just born on opposite sides of the earth so they will have very different personalities whereas astrology says they should be the same it's interesting because people will especially people that are precious about horoscopes and astrology and those kinds of things will say I have just as much evidence for my thing as you do for your thing like they

because they they almost consider it to be a religious belief the people that I know literally some people have designed their entire lives and the meaning of their life around meaning that they're finding out in by looking up at the stars how's it different from religion astrology um there are elements of religion yeah certainly It came it came out of religion I don't think people now worship you know constellations or I don't think there's many major religions that are based on astrological you know contemplation but maybe without the worship part but they they're seeking guidance

in their lives they're getting answers from the Stars they're making decisions based on it much of their moral compass is being determined like M much of their um yeah much of their morals and ethics and decisions and behaviors are being determined by by it in the same way that it's being determined by someone that believes in a God yeah it's hard to you know it's I'm a wrong person ask some why why do people need this people need answers to to to contemplate the universe first of all it's a scary Universe right we we we

confronted by things that none none of us can understand entirety of uh no brightest Nobel Prize winners the the greatest scientists the greatest thinkers can't really contemplate it so we we go through life we try to make the best of it but we also have this sense of self and this theory of self the theory of mind that you know we can relate to other people and we want answers we want and I think that is in common I think you're right religion is very I almost wish I did you ever wish that you were

more religious I mean yeah I wish I was too and I'm not and I hopefully my kids won't hear no I heard from a psychologist once he said you should Endeavor in your life that you pass on only half of your Neurosis to your kids Neurosis um crazy anxieties fears weird pathology you know psychological deficiencies because if every parent did that you know the species is going to get better and better but if you keep making everyone as anxious as nervous and there's no progress in history a lot of the zodiac religions that you talked

about or astrological religions they view time as a as a circle in other words a flat circle a spiral goes into the future that's Western Civilization that's progress in science that's forward moving to the Stars to wherever we're going to go and more and more human knowledge and flourishing but if you just say I'm committed to I'm going to be repeating every year on the birthday I'm going to be repeating what all that my ancestors did that's very depressing and it doesn't lead to Innovation to find cures for diseases to find explanations for fields and

forces and technology that we have so what is the what the meaning of life ah glad you asked um to me the meaning of life is to do as many things that if taken away from you would be devastating to you that which you do should be so consequential that to not have done it or not have it would literally destroy you to your core for me it's my kids those connections the the bonds the the the hopefulness for the future I never said this Stephen but I don't get too emotional but I think about

death a lot more you know especially in my case since October 7th last year A lot of my friends and family were impacted by that in Israel and it's I've never cried so many times than I have in the past year but thinking about all those you know kind of tears and and emotions and saying do I wish I never f that do I wish I didn't have the pain if I meant I didn't have the joy of having those people in my life and I'm not ready to die I'm hopefully you know maybe middle

age I don't know I don't know if I live to 104 but hopefully you know maybe I will but I've done a lot in my life I've done things that you know I didn't think I could do when I was a kid I've married the love of my life I've brought incredible Souls into the world if I did die I'm not scared I don't want to I'm working on my body I'm working on my diet I'm trying to do what's right for me and so I can be her as long as possible but the meaning

of life is making connections it's making these bonds such that you know you hope that people will be sad devastated even when you're gone so too the connections that I've made I can't see my life without them I don't want to I don't think think about it it's morbid to me it's make those connections while you can not I mean when I listen to that episode that you did with Annie Jacobs it's terrifying right and you were like visibly scared in that episode she's amazing we don't know I mean God forbid I don't think it's

super as likely maybe as she maybe it is maybe it isn't maybe I'm na but the point is we don't know the point is we're here now the point is we might be alone but that should fill us with meaning to do what we can do uniquely so before you had kids what was the meaning of your life uh it was very easy I wanted to win a Nobel Prize and that's changed now it has it has uh partially because my father was a great scientist I want to show him up he never won a

Nobel Prize he won a lot of awards I want to show him up now he's dead you know there's no one to prove stuff to you know you should live life to impress yourself and I feel like yeah if they gave me the Nobel Prize if someday I would Merit it with my team of these brilliant scientists just that's pretty unlikely but let's say it happened it doesn't it doesn't mean what it once meant to me when I was your age when it when when I was your age it wasn't Idol to me it was

a God Like You Win it you're as close to Scientific royalty and Godlike status as possible to imagine much more than Oscar gold medal in the Olympics it is every there's only 200 or so I've ever won it it's like a small book and actually I've talked to people that have won it actually the forward to the my second book into the apostles was written by Barry barish he won the 2017 Nobel Prize he told me Brian um because I always ask my final question I know we're getting to the end here like your final

question I learned from you I have my own final question it's um if you could go back in the past and meet your 20-year-old self what would you say to him to give him the courage to do as you've done to go into the impossible and he said to me Brian I would say to stop having the impostor syndrome and I said well you know yeah you just tell me you won the Nobel Prize and he won't no no no I have the impostor syndrome now said Barry you're kidding me you won the Nobel Prize

how could you possibly have impostor syndrome he said Brian let me tell you something when you win a Nobel Prize you go to Stockholm you meet the king of Sweden they give you this buffet dinner you're dressed in white tie not Black Tie white tie you get this huge gold medal solid gold you get a million dollars possibly and they want to make sure you're not going to come back and say hey uh Gustav there uh where's my money where's my so they make you sign a ledger not unlike The Ledger in front of you

and it has your signature I Barry bars received the Nobel Prize and Barry said I took that book the first thing I did is I turned the P who won it last year who won it the year before who wanted I saw Richard Fineman I saw Marie curee I saw Albert Einstein he said I don't deserve to be in the same universe as Albert Einstein let alone in the same book how could they give the same prize to me they gave to him and I realized this was like an idol to him too I said

Barry I've got good news for you Albert Einstein had the impostor syndrome he's like you're kidding me I said no no no Barry he had the impostor syndrome and his hero was Isaac Newton Einstein said Isaac Newton did more for Science and Western Civilization than any human being before or since that's a pretty tall order How Could Einstein live up to that but I said Barry go one step deeper Isaac Newton had the impostor syndrome what the heck how could he he's a greatest might invented calculus discovered the laws of universal gravitation the principles of

Optics invented this telescope no no no he felt wholly entirely Unworthy of his hero Jesus Christ so much so Stephen that he attempted to do the same thing that Jesus Christ did he knew he couldn't work miracles he knew he couldn't walk on water and turn loaves into fishes but he could do it was in some sense a greater struggle which was to die a virgin as Jesus did and so he did so the lesson is impostor syndroms normal don't don't idolize something literally get a Graven golden image of a man who who cares he's

a man I don't care I I take time home with my family over that on a Shabbat as I invite you down to come to me in San Diego anytime you want I didn't realize that all of these great individuals felt like imposters themselves which is um I think will liberate a lot of people from the way that they feel I mean we I feel this every day like people int introduce me on stage as like an interview or a podcast I'm like what the just was never conceivable to me and I know Jack's talked

about the same thing like it's never conce able to me that I'd be doing a podcast and it' be big and that people would think you're good at it in some way for some bizarre reason no you're not just good Stephen come on you're an elite level you're a no PR what is that what is that though I mean and how did that happen I didn't go to school for that I just sat here and started asking people questions in my kitchen and then more people tuned in and they said you're good at it I'm

like what what does good mean I don't do it the same as Rogan and Rogan's good at it and huberman's good at it I've been with them all look you're you have a unique angle that that is not rep replicable but I want to leave you with the mission that kind of has guided me and again I've learned a lot from you for you know it's no secret I have the high energy opening to the into the can you imagine how hard it is to take like someone who studied like some chemical pathway and some

thermodynamic system to make it like the hype show that you guys open each epe with I learned that from you but Carl Sean said what an amazing thing a book is in it you have the words of a long dead author and you're reading it to yourself and he or she is communicating with you across the ages nowadays people millions of people have you in their ears and you're communicating potentially across the generations and you're again I don't want to keep be you know be like a Jewish mother but your kids your your grandkids they're

going to have access to this it's not going to be some some even a book which is wonderful but it's going to be visceral Audible and it's going to have an impact you can't even imagine right now creep me out I'm like wow the meteors didn't do it crazy to think about the the impact and the lasting impact that this medium might have because of the internet but just even I mean even books now the books are turned into audio books into digital books and such um look at this the last election this was like

the podcast election right not going on a podcast going on a podcast um and and there are many people that attempt to imitate what you do and and you know it it's it's I I don't do it for money I don't do it it's not my career I do it for fun because I want to give back to to Young people the way that I learned from Carl San or Isaac azimoff I read their books it inspired to me to be a scientist when Co hit in 2020 they couldn't do book tours and so I

invited all my scientist friends to come on I had some Nobel Prize winners come on and it just keeps amplifying but I view it as you know for me it's a it's a passion project but it's a way of giving back returning to the community from whom I've taken so much I've learned so much with that in mind with this knowledge that what we're creating what all of us are creating whether you have a podcast or not or you're just writing on the internet whatever it might be with the knowledge that it's going to sustain

and it's going to be here potentially in many generations to come how does that how is that supposed to change how someone creates because I'm thinking you just said that to me I was like Jesus Christ that's quite profound but then seconds later I was like almost like the simulation Theory I just thought it crack on do you know what I mean just carry on with what you're doing because if you can you can get too deep into it that you can either distract yourself or ruin yourself from the essence of what makes the thing

special so am I meant to Chang in any way with that knowledge I think you I think you are I think you're doing it already I mean you've spoken again I've you know try to study the the the glimpses of of morsels that I can comprehend the experimentation process is a process of fundamentally being dissatisfied with the current product even though it's wonderful and it's great it's top top you know leading in its category but still just not being satisfied you always want to make it a little bit better see what works see what doesn't

work that's pleasurable because you even when you get a failed there's no such thing as a failed experiment I tell my students you always learn something and that brings you closer to truth and that's what is so meaningful what I was wondering what I thought you were going to say is like when you're out in public and people see you and I asked this of Lex and Joe I want to ask you to has put on my podcast or how turn the microphone to you um there's a there's a scene in the book Animal Farm

um where there's this donkey named Benjamin and he's talking to the pig um and the pig says to the donkey um you know I love your tail it's so big I got this short little curly tail it's good for nothing you got this beautiful tail it could sweep away the the Flies and the donkey says yeah but you know what I wish I didn't have the Flies so I wouldn't need the tail I want ask you do you ever worry about the attention would you ever trade the attention the fame the lack of privacy the

intrusions the you know everything for for the alternative I don't know would you it's funny because when I go towards that question and I remove the all the downsides from my life they're like glued to the upsides so I'm like so it's always a question of like is the trade-off worth it is the question that I ask myself all the time every week every month and I remind myself sometimes I said this to Trevor no but he told me that it gets to a point where you can't just reverse the decision right I try to

remind myself that there's I could delete this podcast I could quit Dragon Den I could delete all my social media channels and I could right now go to Barley and I was playing this out the other day in my head I was thinking you know if if if I say to myself that I'm optimizing for peace in this season of my life then why the hell am I doing all this stuff this is peace necessarily um and then I play out the scenario I okay so I'll move to Barley I'll I'll I'll chill out there

I've got the the financial means to just live there for the rest of my life I'll chill and then I'll start I know you're this is where it goes it okay and then I'll start I'll start writing yeah and then and then you know I might start making videos about what I'm writing about because that's what I'll behind the diary yeah and I'll start painting and you start creating again and then if the Creations are good you want to show it and then you going to share it to someone and then they're going to buy

and whatever and then you're back here again look I think that's what you're meant to do I think you know people have a mission in life you know I don't have a body you know to be an Olympic Athlete you know but you know I have a mind or curiosity this is what you good at this is what you should lean in I always feel like do I teach my students to like overcome their deficiencies or do I teach them to lean into their successes I always feel like progress feels good no matter what I'm

trying to lose weight I lose a pound it feels so much better to lose a pound than gaining you know it feels awful to gain an ounce you know so the the fact is are you useful are you doing you know Freud said there's only two things in life work and love it's all you got to do you were doing your work doing your love take your vacation and uh enjoy Bali for a while it lasts and then come right back Brian we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a

question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for and the question that's been left for you is if you found out that the world was ending in 10 minutes who would you want to speak to and what would you tell them a it's easy I mean it's horrifying but it's but it's easy well first of all i' you know call my friends at Nasa and tell them to direct the giant space La no it would be my wife my wife you know it's funny to to think about how I'm

probable Life Is But when I got fired I told you from Stanford she was actually an undergraduate there and luckily we missed because I'm eight and a half years older than her and I'd be some lecherous 28y old when she was 20 I got fired I felt it was horrible turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me it got me a job that job led to this experiment called bicep that experiment called bicep took me to the South Pole took me to the brink of a Nobel Prize but it also brought

me to San Diego which is her hometown we would not have met there's no we didn't meet at Stanford we were literally 100 feet away from each other at one point we wouldn't we wouldn't have met she was meant to be if I hadn't gotten fired if I hadn't been dreaming and fantasizing about experiments that I wanted to do not to be someone else's employee but to be my own CEO my own world my own laboratory my own brand I wouldn't have met her I wouldn't have my precious precious kids there's no doubt it would

be to call her what would you what would you tell him I would just reminisce about how we met and what we brought into the world and you know kind of uh sure we'd laugh and cry Brian thank you really appreciate it it's been such a wonderful conversation and I highly implore everybody that's listening to go and check out your show to go and read your books all of which I'll link below super fascinating and also to go to your website if they want to be in with a chance of winning some of this space

material which is I'm so it's amazing that I have this I'm such a big fan of space so and SpaceX and everything that's going on out there in the universe so thank you so much for this present you can keep the Uranus soap um but I'll keep the piece of Mars um the work you're doing is so important because it's helping to demystify and helping us to understand the nature of some of these really profound questions not ever because you know we're seeking to figure it all out so that we can change how we live

but just because there's so much Beauty and joy and um meaning that is derived irrespective of what the answer is and I and I I it's people like you that blow our minds open in a way that helps me even though I'm never going to build a telescope and I'm never going to go to this the the South Pole and I'm never going to point it at the sky and I'm not never going to seek to answer these questions in my life but your work expands my mind it expands my my like thoughts of like

possibilities and as an entrepreneur as a Creator I think that's a net positive for for everyone that receives the work that you do um it's so Wonder it's so bizarre that we're so we're so curious about about the stars but it's such a beautiful thing um and long may you continue there's very few people like you and I was thinking the minute we got going today I was thinking there's very few people in the world that are both smart which is I think pretty common but but then able to communicate and that is really I've

met you and Neil de degrass Tyson who have this remarkable ability to communicate science in a way that inspires galvanizes and sort of cultivates curiosity it's a really wonderful thing I appreciate that and it's exceptionally rare that combination of forces like you said about the probability of the Comet hitting the universe and that bouncing off and creating a moon the probability of those two things happening in the same place is so exceptionally rare but it's wonderful that we have people like you in this world of podcasting because you know maybe once upon a time the

um it would have been harder to hear your voice but now everybody can go and listen to you um and I highly recommend they do your YouTube channel is exceptional so thank you so much Brian thank you it's been it's been an absolute pleasure it's been an honor for me thank you Stephen this diary won't change your life but the Habit it teaches you definitely will the most unhelpful advice that I ever received don't sweat the small stuff you have to sweat the small stuff I sweat the small stuff I always have and I always

proudly will because small things that are easy to do are also easy not to do it is easy to save a dollar so it's also easy not do it is easy to brush your teeth so it's also easy not to it is easy to make a 1% Improvement so it's also easy not to understanding the power of compounding 1% you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life it is n about drastic Transformations or quick wins it's about the small consistent actions that have a lasting change on your outcomes so two years ago we started

the process of creating this beautiful diary and it's truly beautiful inside there's lots of pictures lots of inspiration and motivation as well some interact developments and the purpose of this diary is to help you identify stay focused on develop consistency with the 1% that will ultimately change your life we're only going to do a limited run of these Diaries so if you you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team then head to the diary.com right now I'll link it below [Music] [Music] h