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Free all lowercase

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shopify.com/podcast free shopify.com

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slash podcast free I'm

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Alan Olga and this is Clear

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and Vivid, conversations about

0:42

connecting and communicating. I

0:47

think a fine man probably about once

0:50

a day at least on average, but when

0:52

he's describing how molecules move, they get in

0:54

there and they jiggle around, they jiggle, jiggle,

0:56

jiggle, then they turn a different state. And

0:58

I was thinking of that today when I was

1:00

heating up some food for lunch and I was

1:03

thinking, why, why is it that foods, one, one

1:05

piece of food, whatever it is, can taste totally

1:07

different at one temperature. And then you put a

1:09

little heat on it, tastes totally different. And then

1:11

if you put it in a pan versus an

1:13

oven, totally different. And I

1:15

thought, you know, that's fine man. I,

1:17

I think about these things because he

1:19

has taught me to be curious about

1:22

the ways in which the molecules jiggle.

1:24

And then if you pull that out

1:26

on a grand scale, you start to

1:28

think about our planet, nature, the universe.

1:30

It's exciting. It's just exciting. That's

1:33

Steven Dubner. He's talking

1:36

about the physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman

1:39

was an extraordinary communicator decades

1:42

ago in his first book for the

1:44

public called Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

1:47

He was able to present himself as a fellow

1:49

human being, which made it easier

1:51

for the public to think about science as

1:54

a normal human activity. Above

1:56

all, he was a model of curiosity. His books made it

1:58

easier for the public to think about science as a normal human

2:00

activity. curiosity contagious. Curiosity

2:02

was one of his traits that guided me

2:05

during the year I played Feynman on the

2:07

stage. And it's one

2:09

of the things Stephen Dubner celebrates

2:11

in the three-part series devoted to

2:13

Feynman on Dubner's podcast Freakonomics Radio.

2:16

Feynman has affected both our lives and we thought

2:19

it would be fun to get together on clear

2:21

and vivid and talk about what

2:23

Feynman has meant to us. This

2:26

is really interesting because you and I both

2:28

have a deep interest in Richard Feynman. You

2:31

doing a three-part series on your podcast

2:33

and me spending years getting a play

2:35

ready for production and then playing it

2:38

for a year where I played Richard

2:40

Feynman as a character. So

2:42

we've both gotten into him into his life

2:44

to a great extent. How did you first

2:46

get interested in Feynman? I think

2:48

I probably read Shirley or joking around

2:51

the time it came out. I think it was about

2:53

1985 or 6 and for some reason as a very

2:56

you know deep middle-age adult

3:03

now I somehow started

3:05

reading him again quite a bit maybe 8, 5,

3:07

8, 10 years

3:09

ago and I just liked his voice in

3:11

my life. I felt like he was a

3:14

mentor that I never knew. As

3:17

Bill Gates once put it I believe he

3:19

was the best teacher I never had and

3:21

so I honestly felt that you know I've

3:24

been doing my podcast for a long time

3:26

by now and I pretty

3:28

much do the topics that I want to do

3:31

and I thought damn it you

3:34

know why bother to work so hard to do

3:36

to make this show every week if I can't

3:38

do something that I really just deeply love and

3:41

so I decided to take a flyer on

3:43

Feynman and you know fortunately it came

3:45

out pretty well and the audience liked it. They didn't

3:47

tell me to get lost. I can

3:49

imagine they did because you

3:52

can admire Feynman for the brilliant work

3:54

that he did which

3:56

is So brilliant that it's not accessible

3:59

to most of us. Especially me.

4:02

Won the Nobel Prize for

4:04

his work on quantum electrodynamics.

4:07

But. I think that. Many. Of

4:09

us who revere the memory of

4:11

Fineman. Is not so much for the

4:13

work he did, but for the way he thought. He.

4:16

Demonstrated curiosity,

4:18

honesty, I.

4:20

Think that's that's what appeals to. People.

4:23

Who don't get it on? of the

4:25

other scientific a mathematical level, Because

4:28

he was astonishingly curious. He

4:31

was endlessly and also all the words

4:33

you said I like a lot and

4:35

I would agree with the other one

4:37

that I feel when I read Hammer

4:39

listen to him or when I I

4:41

read the play that you were in

4:43

that you commissioned and I loved that.

4:45

Plan for it's I never got to

4:47

see it but are written by a

4:49

peter partner with a wonderful job. Yarn

4:52

for Fineman had so many parts

4:54

to it manifests, he did God.

4:56

We thought we'd have a play

4:58

ready within a year. Six

5:00

Years is still an Rv, always hashing

5:03

it out weekly. Finally said. Maybe.

5:05

We should just do a play about three

5:07

Guys are assessed as a writer me in

5:09

the directors in a hotel room and arguing

5:11

for two hours and he finally get nowhere.

5:15

That's a different play that would

5:17

probably be it, and okay play

5:19

also, you know, of all the

5:21

things you mentioned about him, I

5:23

sing. One other word comes

5:25

to mind is yeah, I mean Brilliant.

5:27

Curious. To the

5:29

nth all of those, but also integrity

5:31

and maybe in a look. who we

5:33

explored is into Hot in his entire

5:36

life in our series and he did

5:38

some things that he wasn't proud of.

5:40

He did some things that other people

5:42

didn't like. These are mostly personal things.

5:44

lot of a lot of them around

5:47

his relationship with women quitting, women he

5:49

was with, and women he wasn't with.

5:51

But when it came to his intellectual.

5:54

Activity I think he just was. He

5:56

had be pure integrity, he won to

5:59

know and understand how things worked and

6:01

he would go to any lengths to

6:03

figure that out. Now within that he

6:05

was also you know, competitive and he

6:08

could be a bit of a jerk

6:10

two people Sometimes he he would make

6:12

people feel bad about their inability. To

6:15

understand the wait he understood things but

6:18

really only if they were peers are

6:20

trying to be beers to do the

6:22

people like us. He seemed to be

6:24

pretty pace and and I was actually

6:26

thinking of Fineman. I. Think if

6:29

I'm in. Probably. About.

6:32

Once a day. at least on average. But

6:34

to that you know one of his favorite

6:36

words I can remember that was in your

6:38

player. Not when he's describing how molecules move.

6:40

Maybe because he's you know, a Jewish guy

6:42

from Queens. He would. He would use language

6:44

that felt very much as part of my

6:46

family language. So he would say you know

6:48

the molecules, They didn't their legal around the

6:50

juggle juggle juggle, then they turn a different

6:52

states And I was. I was thinking that

6:54

today when I was sitting up some food

6:56

for lunch and I was thinking why, why

6:58

is it that foods one one piece of

7:00

food? Whatever it is contests Totally. Different at

7:02

one temperature. And. Then you put

7:05

a little heat on it. Taste totally

7:07

different than if you put in a

7:09

pan versus an oven. Totally difference. And

7:11

I thought, you know that's fine Men

7:13

I I think about these things because

7:15

he has taught me to be curious

7:17

about the ways in which the molecules

7:19

jiggle. And then if you pull that

7:21

out on a grand scale, you start

7:23

to think about our planet, nature of

7:25

the universe. It's exciting, It's just exciting.

7:28

Madame what does as you How. Being

7:30

so close to find man's life with the

7:33

things you've read Howard how it's changed your

7:35

life sounds like a centralized with everything you

7:37

look at you with whatever explore alla fine

7:39

man that's a very generous interpretation. the less

7:42

centers interpretation be really you spent a year

7:44

and a half manga series up. Finding I

7:46

can think about is whether the chicken is

7:48

gonna taste different if you micro hit reason

7:51

for you put it in the fried. that's.

7:54

Exactly what sign of would have done. The

8:00

other thing that I admire

8:02

and that I wish we had more of in

8:04

the world, and this is really the reason we

8:06

made this series, is that,

8:08

as you well know, Feynman was not

8:10

at all afraid to speak truth to

8:12

power. He wasn't anti-authoritarian,

8:14

I wouldn't say, but,

8:17

you know, he spent his

8:19

entire life associated with institutions,

8:21

right? He was in university,

8:24

then he was, you know, with the

8:27

Manhattan Project, which was an institutional authority

8:29

system, a total institution

8:31

is what psychologists call it, and then even

8:33

though he had a lot of adventures beyond

8:35

that, he stayed affiliated with

8:37

Caltech for the rest of his life

8:39

after Cornell. And it was always

8:42

curious to me why he

8:45

stayed a fairly traditional institutional

8:47

life, and I asked people,

8:49

and, you know, I have

8:51

a couple really smart friends who profess that one

8:54

of the best attributes you can have if you

8:56

want to be productive is to be lazy. I

8:59

said, what do you mean? How does laziness lead to

9:01

high productivity? Yeah, how does it? Well,

9:03

they say if you're lazy, you really

9:05

don't want to do the things you don't want

9:07

to do, and so you find a way to

9:10

get out of them. And

9:12

so you really focus your life around

9:14

the things that you love and care about, and

9:16

then it doesn't feel like work. And

9:19

so Feynman, I think, did keep himself

9:21

in a position at Caltech as a university

9:24

professor where all he really had to do

9:26

was focus on the things that he really

9:28

loved. But when it

9:30

came to authority figures

9:34

either pretending they knew more than they did

9:37

or using their

9:39

power to do things that he

9:41

thought were immoral or unjust or

9:43

just plain stupid, he would

9:46

rise to that occasion. So we saw it in

9:48

the very beginning of the Manhattan Project. We saw

9:50

it toward the end of his life when he

9:52

was on this presidential commission to figure out what

9:54

happened with the Challenger Space Shuttle. He

9:57

Spoke truth to power. I

10:00

view there's not enough of that in

10:02

the world now from people who actually

10:04

be no have the have the knowledge

10:06

in the wherewithal the way he did.

10:09

And he he really did go against

10:11

the authorities in that case because. Everything.

10:14

I've read indicates. That. The

10:16

people running the commission to find out what happened.

10:19

Had Ronald Reagan's request wanted

10:21

everybody to go easy on

10:23

Nasa. But. There

10:26

was a problem with the ovaries which he

10:28

only had to do once he understood the

10:30

problem was to put a rubber whole ring

10:32

in Ice was innocent and was he couldn't

10:35

stand the cold. And that was

10:37

is a problem. But.

10:39

The idea of following what interests you.

10:41

As we were working on the play

10:43

about Fineman. It seem

10:45

to me to be pivotal says a whole. Life.

10:49

He lived. When. He

10:51

went to Cornell. After working

10:53

at Los Alamos on the Bomb. And

10:56

he's honest enough to admit, in his book.

11:00

That. Working on the bomb. Didn't.

11:02

Carry with it the sense of

11:05

destruction and. Hard. That it

11:07

did after the bomb or has used ranked.

11:09

He's honest enough to say. He

11:11

was an exciting. Challenge and we

11:14

were really caught up in solving the

11:16

problem. Which. Doesn't come to

11:18

the level of admission. In. The movie

11:20

up and I'm that's right, that's right, Yeah,

11:22

but he's honest enough to admit it. But then

11:25

he got so depressed when he realized what

11:27

had have member that seen sitting in if I

11:29

think sitting in a restaurant in Times Square.

11:31

Yeah. Plotting. The destruction out

11:33

from that point with his mom no

11:35

less. Oh, that's right, I forgot that.

11:38

Yeah, and then he got he got when

11:40

he said cornell. He. He

11:43

said work he soon too depressed.

11:46

And that that wonderful thing with a played every

11:48

every time we got together to talk about the

11:51

flavor is stage of development I say where's the

11:53

story with the plate. with

11:55

had what's your version of the story what do you were yeah

11:57

i'm curious how long how many draft of the play it took

11:59

you to get the plate in there. Yeah, you know,

12:01

I'll be honest, this is one of those, uh, this

12:04

is one of those foundational Feynman

12:07

stories that reminds me that

12:09

I'm not Feynman. So the story is about,

12:11

as you said, he's in either a cafeteria

12:13

or a dining hall at Cornell. Um, and,

12:17

and, and some guys are goofing

12:19

around, throwing these dinner plates up

12:21

in the air and they

12:23

have a, an insignia, maybe it's the

12:25

school logo. And as he observes

12:28

them, he notices that the

12:31

plate itself, let's say the circumference of the

12:33

plate seems to be spinning at one rate.

12:35

Whereas the logo, which is obviously attached to

12:38

the plate seems to be spinning at a

12:40

different rate or wobbling as I think he

12:42

put it. Right. That's how you had it

12:44

in your play. And, uh, and

12:48

when I hear this, I think, uh, yeah,

12:50

so like what's the big deal? But

12:53

he, but Feynman is like, wait

12:55

a minute, wait a minute.

12:57

What's going on? This is either

13:00

a, uh, a

13:02

visual trick of some kind that my mind is

13:04

playing on me, or there's

13:06

something involving force and inertia and momentum

13:08

that I need to figure

13:11

out. And of course he was right. And he did

13:13

figure it out. And then his, his

13:15

mentor Hans Bethe who had recruited him

13:17

to Cornell, having worked with him at

13:19

Los Alamos, he said, you

13:21

know, Dick, why does this

13:23

matter? What's the, what is the

13:26

importance of this? And Feynman said, you

13:28

know, zero, no importance, but, uh, you

13:30

know, I thought it would be fun

13:32

to figure out. And you're right, Alan,

13:34

the fun is what triggered

13:37

him and got him back onto a very productive path.

13:40

So if anyone's looking for

13:42

life lessons or for inspiration,

13:44

yeah, do, do what you

13:46

love to do. It may not always

13:48

lead to value, but it's, it's certainly,

13:50

um, it's certainly worth trying. And

13:52

as far as the importance of it is concerned, it

13:55

wasn't the very thing he won the

13:58

Nobel prize for, But I, There's

14:00

been in from what he hinted at in his writing

14:02

and with other people said was that. Much.

14:05

Of what. He did of the

14:07

figuring he did and why the

14:09

played wobbles and spine at different

14:11

rates. That. Contributed to his

14:13

work that for which he won the

14:15

Nobel prize. Say never know where. It's

14:18

kind of how how it is going

14:20

to be important just getting to understand

14:22

things and know more about things. Yeah,

14:24

eventually reaches a point in the horizon

14:26

where they converge. Yeah, that's right, and

14:28

you know this may be an obvious

14:31

point, but. The. The purpose

14:33

of this sell of yours, as I

14:35

understand it, Is.

14:37

Exactly derived from what Fineman

14:39

was great at, which was

14:41

communicating any kind of scientific

14:43

matter in a way that

14:45

is both honest and accessible

14:47

to anyone that wants to

14:49

be. And if you think

14:51

about. You. Know

14:53

I don't mean to go ah

14:55

a philosophical or deep on us

14:57

but if you think about the

15:00

purpose of human kind civilization ah

15:02

I'm if there's something deeper than

15:04

trying to figure out the world

15:06

and our place in it and

15:08

share that knowledge with other people.

15:10

I don't know what it is.

15:12

personally you know. Where

15:14

you're right about what's driving.

15:17

This show is clarity. Which.

15:19

He was so good at. He spoke

15:21

about the most complex things and his lectures

15:24

in every day terms Use one of the

15:26

people who said. That deadline

15:28

is a quarter to a number. scientists as

15:30

if I can't explain it and or simple

15:33

ordinary words are probably don't understand it and.

15:36

You know, I wish I wish more people

15:38

would think along those lines. Now I'm. I.

15:40

Started hanging out with academics a bunch

15:43

of years ago. my you know I

15:45

wrote this. I wrote these Freakonomics books

15:47

with Steve Levitt was an economist at

15:49

me overseas ago. Very unusual economists to

15:51

had interested a lot of different topics.

15:55

And when I'd known quite a few

15:57

academics before then, but this was a

15:59

real emerge then. For the last fifteen

16:02

or twenty years I've I've spent a

16:04

lot of time with many economists, but

16:06

some other fields as well. And I'm

16:09

I've come to the conclusion that if

16:11

you're truly. Quote. Smart. However,

16:13

we want to define that. That's

16:15

a hard thing to define. Then

16:17

you should be able to explain

16:19

what you do. even if it's

16:21

a fairly technical thing. you should

16:24

be able to explain it pretty

16:26

well to. It's in a way

16:28

that the average, you know. Let's

16:30

say, high school sophomore can understand.

16:32

And yeah, I find that many,

16:34

many, many people who consider themselves

16:36

very smart when they open their

16:38

mouths, I just hear words. salads

16:40

of jargon and I realize. Partly

16:44

it's because. Academia

16:46

trains you to speak and

16:48

write in a jargon, but

16:50

I feel as much as

16:53

we had the the country,

16:55

the taxpayers fund, research scum

16:57

A in academic research and

16:59

elsewhere, I mean, this is

17:01

we. We kind of deserve

17:03

to know what this stuff

17:05

means. Whether it's new cancer

17:07

research, whether it's about the

17:09

best way to design a

17:11

transportation system, Whatever. And

17:13

so I personally am very impatient with

17:15

people resort to jargon. They might tell

17:18

you that they speak that way because

17:20

you know they. They want to be

17:22

careful not to put their thumb on

17:25

the scale and so on. I think

17:27

that many times it's because they don't

17:29

really know what they're talking about and

17:32

that was Fireman's real pet peeve. Is

17:34

people not? you know the same as

17:36

thing about the difference between knowing the

17:39

name of something and how the thing

17:41

actually works. To me that is hugely.

17:43

Important and I wish some I wish more

17:45

people would embrace that. When

17:53

we come back from our break, Stephen Dubner

17:55

and I explore what Richard Fineman med play

17:57

a quote it was on his blackboard promote.

18:00

That his career. He was also on

18:02

the blackboard behind me when I played

18:04

Fineman in the play Kiwi D. The

18:06

quote was if I take created I

18:09

can't understand. Just

18:14

a reminder that clear and visit his

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19:50

this is clear and vivid and now

19:53

back to my conversation with stephen dubner

19:55

perhaps would characterize richer signed and more

19:57

than anything else was is insane curiosity.

20:03

He was curious about everything and

20:06

this show is dedicated in a way to

20:08

not just science but everything in the same

20:10

way. His diagrams clarified

20:12

things by putting them into

20:15

pictures, interactions between these subatomic

20:17

particles that could up until

20:19

then were mostly described in

20:22

math and now you could

20:24

have a picture in your head of what was happening. So

20:27

you could picture the molecules jiggling

20:29

around in your chicken broth in

20:31

the same way he could. But he said

20:33

something once that really brought it down to

20:36

real life. It wasn't about science at all.

20:38

He was on a panel, you may remember

20:40

this, he was asked to be on a panel. One of

20:42

the first times, maybe it was

20:44

in Washington or something, it was a panel

20:46

of very smart people and he said he

20:48

was surprised to hear that very smart

20:51

people only said things once.

20:54

Oh that's really interesting. Those of us who

20:56

are less smart than that will say it,

20:59

then we'll say it again, then we'll

21:01

change the word slightly and say it again because we

21:03

were in love with what we just said. I don't

21:05

know why we do it. Wow. But

21:07

isn't that interesting insight? Really

21:10

interesting. They expect you to get it. This

21:12

is what I have to say now. You got it. Now you tell

21:14

me what you think. That is

21:16

really interesting. You know I didn't know about

21:18

that. I wish I

21:21

had. I would have included that. It

21:23

reminds me of something

21:25

else that someone said which is when

21:28

he was maybe

21:30

talking to another professor, even

21:33

a graduate student, he would kind of

21:35

play dumb and ask

21:37

them to explain like which is the

21:40

you know which is the positive and which

21:42

is the negative here and wait wait wait

21:44

which direction is that moving in again? Which

21:47

I love the notion of doing that because

21:49

to me the best teachers are the ones

21:51

who you know first

21:53

of all there's a there's a line in

21:55

the Talmud that I love which is something along the

21:57

lines of who is wise He

22:00

who is wise, the wise person is

22:02

the one who sits at the knee

22:04

of anyone and everyone. You can learn

22:06

from anyone all the time. And I

22:08

believe Feynman, as confident as he was

22:11

in his knowledge, he really was looking

22:13

to learn all the time. But

22:15

I also think he was, you

22:17

know, it's funny to think about saying

22:20

things only once, and then I think about

22:22

the Feynman diagrams that you mentioned. It

22:26

takes to me a greatly

22:28

organized mind to take

22:30

something complex and simplify. So

22:33

he did a kind of two-stage conversion.

22:35

He first converted in his

22:37

mind these trillions of

22:40

layers of activity in the universe into,

22:44

you know, substances and motions, and

22:46

then he created a shorthand

22:48

to depict it for anyone to look at.

22:51

And you just, if

22:54

that had been the one thing that he would have

22:56

done, there would be books written about him, and yet

22:58

that was one of, you know, a hundred. There was

23:00

an interesting quote of his that

23:03

was on the blackboard behind

23:05

me as I did the play that

23:08

was on the blackboard behind him up until

23:11

the end of his life. If

23:13

I can't create it, I don't understand it. Yeah,

23:16

yeah. What did you make of that?

23:18

I want to talk about that with you. Yeah, well, tell me

23:20

what you made of it. We spoke

23:22

with the current Richard Feynman

23:25

chair or whatever, a physics at Caltech for

23:27

some time. His name is John

23:29

Preskill, and he had a very full view of

23:31

Feynman, mostly positive, but he wasn't afraid to say

23:33

the negative. And he said, you know, one of

23:35

the negative was Feynman believed that

23:39

his route to understanding something

23:41

was to build an understanding

23:43

from the ground up. He

23:47

wasn't one to read other physicists'

23:49

books or papers. He

23:52

didn't really want any passed

23:54

on wisdom to him. He wanted to

23:56

understand it for himself. And Preskill said

23:59

that not as a pure negative thing,

24:01

but as a way to say if he had

24:03

kind of joined the fraternity a little bit more

24:06

fully, he might have been even more productive because

24:08

he could have been building on top of what

24:10

others had built. And I understand

24:12

that criticism. On the other hand, I find

24:16

a lot of validity in Feynman's approach. I'm

24:18

not saying I would endorse it for everyone

24:20

and for every field, but I find validity

24:22

in his approach and I find

24:24

myself practicing it. So for instance, if

24:26

I'm going to do an episode on

24:28

whatever, I definitely read a good bit

24:30

and prepare and we have guests and

24:32

I do some research on them. But

24:35

what I don't want to do is I don't

24:38

want to read a book that is trying

24:40

to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish or

24:42

listen to a radio show that's very similar

24:44

because I do want to

24:46

build my understanding from the ground up. And

24:48

I don't want to come

24:50

in with preconceptions about, oh, well,

24:52

of course everybody knows this. This

24:55

is the way it is. And so I

24:57

see real positives to that. And I do

24:59

see negatives too, which is that if science

25:01

is going to continue to advance, part

25:05

of the duty of the scientist, and

25:07

I would say part of the duty

25:09

of the modern political leader or business

25:11

person, etc., is to understand what

25:13

came before them. That would be an argument in

25:15

favor of really knowing your history. And that

25:17

was somewhere where Feynman, I don't know whether

25:20

it was out of just his temperament

25:22

or a kind of arrogance, but

25:25

he wasn't really interested in hearing

25:28

you explain your comprehension

25:32

of a particular process because

25:34

he wanted to get there himself. I

25:37

had the feeling that it might have come

25:40

from an evaluation of his own personal

25:42

way of understanding things,

25:45

that unless he went through not

25:48

in every field in every case, he

25:51

didn't have to reinvent general relativity.

25:54

But to really fully understood it and to be able

25:56

to move on from there, I

25:58

think he felt he had to. experience something

26:02

with his own hands, with his own mind. And

26:05

an example of that for me

26:07

is how he was always experimenting

26:09

on himself, on his way

26:11

of thinking, trying to

26:13

estimate how much time had

26:16

elapsed. Remember that? I do. Just

26:18

keep quiet for a while and say, okay, two

26:20

minutes is up and see if he was off

26:22

by two seconds or something. And

26:25

he didn't get better, right? That was the weird

26:27

thing about that. I forgot that. He didn't get

26:30

better. If I recall, he did it

26:32

a few times to test himself. I

26:35

guess he assumed it was a natural process. There would

26:37

be a natural mode of

26:39

improvement, and he didn't, which

26:41

is, you know, it's good. Look, that's what

26:43

data is. Data tells you the reality. We

26:46

dilute ourselves all the time. As he liked

26:48

to say, we dilute ourselves all the time,

26:50

and you yourself are the easiest person to

26:52

fool. Yeah, don't fool yourself.

26:54

Don't fool anybody else. Don't fool yourself, and

26:56

you're the easiest one. Yeah,

26:59

that's right. So you

27:01

started to talk about how we could

27:03

use him now and his way

27:05

of thinking. Why does he matter so much

27:07

now? You know, it's funny. Physics

27:11

and people like him were

27:15

at their peak in terms of

27:17

public reputation quite a while ago

27:19

now. Physicists,

27:22

as everybody who's seen Oppenheimer now knows, you

27:24

know, physicists were really important for the war

27:26

effort. And it wasn't just the physicists at

27:28

Los Alamos. There were a lot of scientists

27:30

involved doing different important

27:32

things plainly. The

27:35

bomb, as tragic as it

27:37

was for our now-allied Japan,

27:39

and that's a, you

27:42

know, side note, but that's a

27:44

thought I try to remind myself

27:46

of daily, which is that as we're in

27:48

the middle of all these geopolitical problems,

27:53

you look at who two of the U.S.'s

27:56

staunchest allies are these days, and they're Japan

27:58

and Germany. And that is... And that

28:00

brings me some comfort, I have to say, in

28:02

a world where it seems like every time somebody

28:04

threatens someone else, you know they're never going to

28:06

become an ally ever again. But

28:09

when you think about the way leaders,

28:13

people who run institutions, teachers,

28:16

elected officials and so on,

28:19

the way that they describe what's going

28:21

on in the world, I

28:24

feel like there is so much

28:26

ulterior motive or self-interest, let's call

28:28

it. And Feynman

28:30

as an individual may have had self-interest

28:33

like we all do, but as a

28:35

physicist, he liked to describe what he

28:37

actually saw and try to prove it.

28:40

And that was a mode of communication

28:42

and teaching that had a lot of credence

28:44

for a long time, especially after the Second

28:46

World War. Physicists were

28:48

really kind of superstars and they were

28:51

rewarded with trillions of dollars in funding

28:53

that led to many, many things including

28:55

space travel and many other

28:57

things, some of which proved out to

28:59

also be very successful for commerce and

29:01

for society and so on. But I

29:04

feel in the last 30 or 40

29:06

years or so, computer scientists who are

29:08

quite a lot like physicists but they

29:11

work with different materials, they've

29:14

really gained a lot

29:16

of momentum and that comes in

29:18

part because the products that

29:21

they can marshal have

29:24

such commercial value. And

29:27

so I feel that now we don't

29:29

really have a sense of how

29:31

the physical world works very much

29:33

anymore and we defer more and

29:35

more authority to machines,

29:38

to computers. I think one of

29:40

the most interesting arguments about AI

29:42

and what's going to happen, how

29:44

we will integrate with AI, one

29:47

of the most interesting arguments I've heard is that if

29:49

AI really becomes

29:52

sentient and omnipresent in a way

29:55

that it's just beginning to

29:57

gain a foothold, might

29:59

we... humans revert to

30:02

something like the

30:04

pre-enlightenment where religious thinking dominated,

30:06

where rather than thinking for

30:08

yourself about natural processes

30:11

and decision-making and so on, you kind

30:13

of defer. In the old days, many,

30:15

many, many people deferred to some kind

30:18

of deity. Is it possible

30:20

that in the near term, people will defer to

30:22

a different kind of supernatural

30:26

intelligence in the form of AI and

30:28

therefore stop thinking so

30:30

much for ourselves? And if that's the case,

30:32

what are we humans going to do? Are

30:34

we going to take what we do well

30:36

and do that even better or are we

30:39

going to kind of give up and let

30:41

ourselves turn into ... The

30:44

way we treat our dogs now in

30:46

society, in wealthy countries, we often

30:48

care about them more than we care about our

30:51

fellow humans. It wasn't like that

30:53

a couple hundred years ago. Dogs were work

30:55

animals. So are we bound to become the

30:57

pets of the AI or do we have

30:59

something more to contribute? So

31:01

I think these are the big fundamental

31:04

questions that we're all wrestling with. I

31:06

think Feynman would have been a phenomenal

31:08

person to think about that. So

31:11

that's what I mean by the statement that

31:13

we could all use a little bit more Feynman

31:15

in our lives now to kind of sort the

31:17

weak from the chaff, the

31:19

BS from the reality to sort

31:22

the pompous,

31:24

self-aggrandizing behavior from the

31:27

intelligent behavior. So

31:30

yeah, even though I never knew him, I

31:32

miss him. Yeah. And

31:35

I think to do what you're suggesting,

31:37

to bring Feynman's thinking and way of

31:39

approaching life more

31:41

to the front now as we're

31:43

threatened by the good

31:46

and the bad of AI, it

31:48

takes courage and it takes

31:50

stamina. You make me think of

31:53

when Feynman was dying from

31:55

cancer and he said to his

31:58

doctor, as I'm dying, I'm dying. I

32:00

don't want you to give me morphine or anything that'll

32:03

take me out of the experience. If I'm going to die,

32:05

I want to know what it's like. Not

32:08

that you can reflect on it later or write

32:11

a book about it later. You never know, but

32:13

he just wanted it. Well, I'm pretty sure that

32:15

wasn't in his head. But

32:17

I think the idea of having

32:20

the experience and to some extent

32:22

understanding the process perhaps a

32:24

little better was what he

32:26

was driven by. I like that

32:28

word you used courage. It's

32:32

an old-fashioned word. I feel

32:34

it's something we

32:36

have a shortage of in public society, maybe

32:38

in private as well. And

32:41

I think about it with Feynman, not just

32:44

on the big stuff, testifying in Washington and

32:47

so on. That's an obvious example. But

32:49

he had a sort of weird personal courage

32:52

that I really am envious of. He would

32:54

go on these adventures. He'd go down to

32:56

Brazil to teach. He was

32:58

an adventurer. He really was. And

33:01

most of us don't even like to

33:03

go to a nice

33:05

hotel on a trip by

33:07

ourselves. Most people won't even eat dinner

33:09

in a restaurant by themselves. We're

33:12

so dependent on, you

33:15

know, we want to be seen by the world

33:17

in a certain way. And he

33:19

just didn't give a hoot. He had

33:21

the courage to be himself, I think,

33:24

pretty much every minute of every day.

33:26

And now not everybody was in love

33:28

with Feynman the way he always was.

33:31

But that takes the courage too to accept that,

33:33

you know, hey, some people are going to find

33:35

me a little obnoxious or whatnot. But this is

33:37

who I am. This is

33:40

how I'm going to act. And

33:42

that's why I think that, you know, that's another

33:45

element, his courage that I think we could use

33:47

more of. Well, we

33:49

could both go on wishing that same

33:52

thing for hours together, but our time

33:54

is running out. And

33:56

we always end every show with seven quick questions.

33:58

Got it. Okay, first

34:01

question. Of all the

34:03

things that are to understand, what

34:05

do you wish you really understood? What

34:10

makes people happy? More

34:12

satisfied. I'd say satisfied because that's hard to

34:14

pin down. Okay,

34:17

how do you tell someone they have their facts

34:19

wrong? First

34:23

gently and then firmly. What's

34:28

the strangest question anyone has ever asked

34:30

you? I

34:35

am blanking. I guess I'm so consumed with asking

34:37

the questions that I don't let anybody get a

34:39

question in edgewise. I

34:41

let you ask me this very good question and I

34:44

can't even... I would say the strangest question

34:46

and oh, I know what it would be.

34:51

A friend of mine who

34:53

did not and does not have children,

34:56

when my wife and I had our first

34:59

child, he asked me, why would anyone ever

35:01

want to have a child? That

35:03

to me was... I don't think it's a

35:05

bad question, but that was a strange question. It's

35:08

an unusual question. How

35:10

do you deal with a compulsive talker? I

35:14

actually engage more. I laugh

35:16

along. I interject. I say, uh-huh.

35:18

I show I'm there with them for the ride.

35:22

And at some point, maybe they'll let me get in the seat and

35:25

drive a little bit too. That's

35:27

an interesting technique. Suppose

35:29

you're sitting at a dinner table next to someone you

35:32

never met before. How do you begin a

35:35

genuine conversation? I

35:37

once made a podcast with a friend of mine named

35:39

James Altucher and I asked him some version of this

35:41

question. He gave me

35:43

an answer, Alan, that I thought was not very good.

35:45

This was years ago and now I realize it was

35:47

very, very, very, very good. It's

35:50

a very simple question. Where are you from? And

35:53

that question, it's not just one little piece

35:55

of factual geographic location. It is an invitation

35:58

to that person. to

36:00

say, tell me who you are. Tell me

36:02

the version of who you are that you want

36:04

to tell me, and then we'll take it

36:06

from there. And it's just also as non-invasive as

36:09

it gets, you know? Yeah. Unless they're from, you

36:11

know, unless they were born in a gulag

36:13

in Siberia or whatnot. Yeah, that

36:15

is interesting. Okay, next to last.

36:18

What gives you confidence? This

36:23

is a bad, not a bad, it's

36:25

a true answer, but what gives me

36:27

confidence is accomplishment, is a little bit

36:29

of success. The problem is if you

36:32

go for a long time without success,

36:34

it's hard to have confidence. And so

36:36

that's the great paradox, you know? That's

36:38

why years ago in education, they tried

36:41

to teach kids just to have high

36:43

self-esteem, but it's hard to have high

36:45

self-esteem unless you've

36:47

earned it. So... Yeah,

36:49

yeah. I reacted to

36:51

the self-esteem trope. After

36:54

I made a movie in a prison where

36:57

I was surrounded by convicts for three weeks,

37:00

I never saw a group of people with higher

37:02

self-esteem than them. Last

37:06

question. Okay. What

37:08

book changed your life? Well,

37:14

it'd be easy to say one of the

37:16

Feynman books, and that's not untrue, but the

37:18

book that I really, that really changed my

37:20

life was an easy

37:23

to read novel that has never been

37:25

very well regarded in literary circles. It

37:27

was written long before I was born,

37:29

and it's called The Tree Grows in

37:31

Brooklyn, which I'm guessing you remember, Alan.

37:33

It was from a while back. Yeah,

37:36

I do. And the reason it changed

37:38

my life is my parents were a

37:40

pair of Brooklyn-born Jews who had both

37:42

converted to Catholicism before

37:44

they met each other and then proceeded

37:47

to live this very, very, very Catholic life,

37:49

and I was their eighth and last child.

37:51

And so when I found this

37:53

book and read it, it

37:56

was in our home growing up in upstate New

37:58

York. To me, it was... a

38:01

skeleton key that unlocked this world

38:03

of Brooklyn in the 19, whatever

38:05

it was, it was a depression era of Brooklyn when my

38:08

parents were kids. And

38:10

it somehow changed my, I

38:13

wouldn't have known to call it then a mental

38:15

model, my mental model of who I was and

38:17

where I came from. And so

38:21

I've never recovered from that and I'm very

38:23

grateful. I think it's wonderful

38:25

that you ask yourself, where are you from?

38:29

You're very observant. That's a good point.

38:32

I had great talking with

38:34

you, Stephen. Thanks so much for being on

38:36

the show. It was very interesting and I

38:39

thank you and congratulate you. My pleasure. Bringing

38:41

Feynman to the fore. I

38:43

loved every minute and I've gotten so

38:45

many hours of joy of watching you

38:47

perform and I just admire your

38:49

career and your brain and so I thank you

38:51

for having me, Alan. That's very kind. This

39:01

has been clear and vivid. At least I

39:04

hope so. My thanks

39:06

to the sponsor of this podcast and to

39:08

all of you who support our show on

39:10

Patreon. You keep clear and

39:12

vivid up and running. And

39:14

after we pay expenses, whatever is left

39:16

over goes to the Aldess Center for

39:19

Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. So

39:21

your support is contributing to the better

39:23

communication of science. We're very

39:26

grateful. Stephen Dubner

39:28

is host of the podcast Freakonomics

39:30

Radio, which launched in 2010 early in the

39:34

podcasting boom. It's

39:36

since posted more than 500 episodes. Stephen's

39:40

three-part series on Richard Feynman premiered

39:42

earlier this year and it's

39:44

available now at the click of a button at

39:47

freakonomics.com. This

39:50

episode was edited and produced by

39:52

our executive producer Graham Ched with

39:55

help from our associate producer Jean

39:57

Chumet. Our publicist is staring

39:59

at us. Hill. Our researcher

40:01

is Elizabeth Ohini and

40:03

the sound engineer is Erica Huang. The

40:06

music is courtesy of the Stefan Koenig

40:09

Trio. This

40:20

is the last episode in season 24 of Clear

40:22

and Vivid, but season 25 is just around

40:25

the corner. Graham Chet and I

40:27

will be back next week to share with you some

40:29

of the guests we'll be featuring, including

40:31

the person who'll be kicking off

40:34

the season, famed historian and author

40:36

Doris Kearns Goodwin. She'll

40:38

be talking about her new book, An

40:40

Unfinished Love Story. Bye-bye for

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