Episode Transcript
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0:08
Hi, this is Lawrence Krauss
0:10
and welcome to the Origins podcast. For
0:13
this podcast I have my guest
0:16
Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi who is
0:18
an astronomer, physicist
0:21
and also president of the Black Society
0:23
of Physicists in the US. His
0:27
story is a remarkable
0:29
one. If you had to pick someone
0:32
who you would imagine would never get to college,
0:36
much less post college experience
0:38
and then becoming a faculty member at a university in
0:41
physics and astronomy, you would
0:43
have picked Hakeem. He's
0:46
written about it in a book that he produced
0:48
a while ago. We talked about his
0:50
origins and not only the things that got him
0:52
interested first in science but
0:55
the many, many challenges he had to overcome to become
0:59
a scientist. It's inspiring
1:01
and enjoyable and actually
1:04
also he's a
1:06
remarkably pleasant and jovial
1:09
fellow to talk to about this and other
1:11
things. We also talked about a more
1:13
recent experience of his and another challenge he had
1:15
to face in a remarkable piece
1:18
of work following the claims made
1:20
by some people that James Webb was
1:23
a homophobe and racist who
1:26
while administrator
1:28
of NASA had
1:30
excluded those people from
1:34
positions and also spoken out against
1:37
them. Hakeem did a
1:40
remarkable piece of what I would almost call investigative
1:43
journalism or historical journalism.
1:46
He was at NASA and he went
1:48
through all of the materials to see
1:51
if this was corroborated because he was quite
1:53
concerned when he heard it. And
1:56
what he discovered was that of course
1:58
the claims were untrue.
1:59
For that
2:02
he should have been celebrated. What happened
2:04
immediately afterwards was he was vilified by
2:06
the same people who had been promoting this
2:08
notion that the James Webb
2:10
Space Telescope name should be changed, who
2:13
acted in an anti-scientific manner in the
2:15
sense that they assumed the answer before
2:17
they had the evidence. He provided the
2:19
evidence and he didn't have a position
2:24
on this, he just wanted to find out what the truth was exactly
2:26
as a good scientist or scholar should do. And
2:29
he was vilified for it in ways we talked about
2:31
and unduly. And
2:34
so I think the lessons we
2:36
learned from this are that keep focused
2:39
on the truth, keep working hard
2:42
and that you can overcome a lot of difficulties and also
2:45
once again to be willing to change your mind
2:47
in the presence of evidence. It's a great
2:50
discussion, I really enjoyed talking with
2:52
Hakeem and I hope you enjoy the discussion as
2:54
well. You can watch it without
2:58
advertisements on our Critical
3:00
Mass or you can watch it after that on the YouTube
3:03
channel for the Origins Podcast. Either
3:05
way I hope you enjoyed, you can also of
3:07
course listen to it on any podcast site.
3:10
And by the way if you happen to be in Southern California
3:14
on
3:15
October 15th or 17th the Origins Project
3:18
will be having two events, one
3:20
in Santa Ana on the 15th and another in San
3:22
Diego. I'll be joined
3:25
by Brian Keating and we'll be filming
3:27
actually this podcast and his podcast at
3:29
the Air and Space Museum there on the 15th at the
3:32
Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. And
3:34
I'll also by the way be lecturing two days earlier
3:36
in Vancouver for those of you up north. So
3:38
I hope I get a chance to meet some of you in
3:41
person as well. With no further
3:43
ado our podcast with
3:45
Hakeem Olushehi.
3:55
Okay Hakeem Olushehi which I
3:58
think I got right.
3:59
It's really good
4:02
to have you on. I wanted to have you on, talk to you for
4:04
a while, as you know, we've been going back and forth. And
4:06
I have to say, in all honesty,
4:10
what originally I want to talk to you about, and we'll get to
4:12
it, is James Webb and the James S.A. Celskope
4:14
and the supposed controversy regarding
4:17
the naming of it, which you played a key
4:19
role in. And I also wanted
4:22
to talk to you, and I will talk to you, because you're
4:24
president of the National Society of Black Physicists. And
4:26
I wanted to have a frank conversation about that as well. But
4:29
this is the Origins podcast, and
4:31
I don't know if you've ever seen any of it, but what I try
4:33
and do is go into people's origins at the beginning to try
4:36
and find out what got them turned
4:38
on to what they're doing. And
4:40
I was
4:41
going to do that, and I have done
4:43
that, but you helped me in a way, because
4:45
what happened is, you said, by
4:47
the way, I got this book called The Quantum Life,
4:50
My Unlikely Journey from the Streets to the Stars.
4:53
And I asked for a PDF, and I spent the last four
4:55
days reading it. And so I
4:57
now know about your origins, which are even more
4:59
fascinating than I had assumed.
5:02
So I want to, before
5:04
we get to those things, and I
5:06
also want to talk about your work as well. I
5:08
want to talk about what sort of ultimately
5:11
led you to become the man and the scientist
5:13
and writer
5:14
that you are. And so the
5:17
first thing I knew was that before
5:20
age 13, you'd been to lived in a whole bunch
5:22
of places, 9th Ward
5:24
of New Orleans, Watts, South Park,
5:26
Houston, 3rd Ward
5:28
of...is that the 3rd Ward of New Orleans
5:30
or Houston? Houston, 3rd Ward. And all
5:33
awful places to be. And then rural
5:35
Mississippi. Yeah.
5:39
Your book begins when you were four years old,
5:42
when your family got busted apart for the first time.
5:46
And you
5:48
had this experience of growing
5:50
up in both what one might
5:53
call urban ghettos and the rollback
5:56
woods of New Orleans
5:58
and Mississippi and Maryland. particular.
6:01
And I found it obviously fascinating.
6:05
Your unlikely journey is indeed an unlikely
6:07
journey and a remarkable one, a truly
6:10
remarkable one. I found the read fascinating.
6:12
I also found it interesting.
6:15
I was wondering whether I had noticed specifically
6:17
when in your writing
6:22
when you quote yourself, when you're
6:24
younger, you're quoting yourself and
6:27
the way you speak is very different than when you quote yourself
6:29
when you're older. I shouldn't that was with Malice
6:32
and forethought or you,
6:34
the way. Right. So I wanted to be true
6:36
to my voice. Right. And so my voice evolved.
6:38
Like I showed up in graduate school.
6:41
So I was in Mississippi from the age of 13 to 24.
6:43
Yeah. Before that I was in inner
6:45
cities. Okay. Yeah. And you
6:48
know, all of these places have their unique
6:50
accents. New Orleans does. Right. So
6:53
man, I show up to Stanford
6:55
university at the age of 24 for graduate
6:57
school and no one can understand
7:00
a word I say. Okay. So
7:02
I, you know, I basically have to change
7:04
the way I speak in order for people to understand
7:07
me. Yeah. And, and I'll tell you what's funny
7:09
is that, you know, I love, you know, I, I
7:11
love the diversity of human cultures
7:14
and you know, America has so many subcultures
7:16
and my deep woods location.
7:18
I just love to take people there. Right.
7:21
And I do, they all react about
7:23
the same way around day two or three,
7:26
they'll put me to the side and they'll go,
7:28
Hakeem, do you really understand
7:30
what these people are saying? Are you faking it?
7:32
You know, you know, my ears trained,
7:35
you know, Yeah, no. And it's funny, you know, people
7:37
change the way they speak. And a lot of people think it's sort of
7:39
a feat and it really is not,
7:42
it's not the case. I remember my wife
7:44
lived in Australia and her accent,
7:46
she grew up in America, but her accent
7:49
was very difficult to place. And
7:52
what, and she worked for the government of Australia.
7:54
And what, what she said was at some point, it
7:57
wasn't a matter of wanting to suddenly have
7:59
an Australian
7:59
It was a matter of being understood by the people
8:02
you work with right? That was exactly that's exactly
8:04
is a hundred percent Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean
8:06
I feel cursed on occasion, you know, but There's
8:10
so many different features of the of your upbringing
8:12
that want to hit on but one I want to start
8:14
right away Which is
8:16
before we get to the I mean and you know, there's so
8:18
many obstacles. There's there's parents
8:20
who break up. There's poverty a little
8:23
access to good education Drug
8:25
dealing so many and potential
8:27
violence all around you all of those things that you
8:29
might imagine for a
8:32
poor black man young man in
8:34
many places and for a poor person in many places
8:37
but one of the things I ask people who become scientists
8:40
is To what extent reading
8:42
impacted on there becoming scientists
8:44
and in your case You know
8:47
the first thing that comes out is is
8:49
is how Reading saved you and you
8:51
want to tell the story of the book of the month Club because I kind
8:54
of found that kind of Interesting one.
8:55
Yeah. So, you know, I discovered I fall in
8:58
love with books and I have
9:00
this older friend Darren Brown Yeah,
9:02
who is pretty successful in his own
9:04
right? He grew to be the highest ranking African-american
9:07
in the US Navy submarine fleet
9:09
and his last post was to
9:13
Run the the Navy base there at Ames in
9:16
San Jose, but you know Darren was
9:18
a couple years older than me He was a smart kid
9:20
and he was like Giving
9:22
me advice and so one of the things
9:24
he told me was that as a minor I
9:27
can't be held accountable to a contract.
9:29
Yeah, so I signed up for Time
9:31
Life books, you know And I received books
9:34
on you know, the weird stuff. Yeah, you know
9:36
what the irony of it is I grow up
9:38
to write a book with Time Life. Yeah,
9:41
and I confess to them. They're like, okay, we forgive
9:44
you By the way, I had
9:46
a subscription Time Life books when I was younger first year
9:48
book of the month But then yeah, I had all the timeline
9:50
books. In fact, it's it's not behind me But
9:52
but there's a bookcase you can see all that. I have
9:54
the 24 volumes or whatever it was It
9:57
took many years to get them and when I and
9:59
they were one I spent my entire allowance
10:01
on them, but oh that you'd book of the month,
10:03
but I think it's a great idea that you yeah now
10:06
But I forget what how
10:08
you knew you want it you love books because
10:10
there was the Bible in your house But was
10:12
there something else that you saw before
10:15
before the book of the month Club? I know that roots event. I'll
10:17
be able to play the role, but yeah, so long the fact.
10:19
Yeah, so long before that I was a seven-year-old
10:23
in Elementary school to my sister
10:25
was in middle school and she brought home
10:27
Edith Hamilton's Mythologies,
10:30
oh man. I just ate that
10:32
up. You know, I love everything superhero, right?
10:34
Yeah Yeah, and so a year later,
10:36
you know I'm living in New Orleans and there I am with Darren
10:39
Brown and you know Darren and I you know Darren
10:41
sees me everything He sees me how to play chess. He
10:43
sees me how to play football You know
10:45
and and we're in the woods But
10:48
the next year I get to Mississippi and
10:50
I'm introduced to comics Marvel and DC
10:52
Comics might say comics. That's right
10:55
Yeah, they have crates and crates of comics,
10:57
right so up until this time I'm not really,
10:59
you know, Edith Hamilton is as close as I've gotten
11:01
a reading in adult books Yeah, but
11:04
you know again, there were the time life books that
11:06
had you know, go You know Oak
11:08
Island Loch Ness Monster all this weird stuff.
11:10
I loved it, right? Yeah, and at
11:13
the same time, you know Once I moved
11:15
to the country once I moved to
11:17
rural Mississippi
11:18
man when winter hits, you know, it's
11:21
a lot more boring, right? I
11:24
live in Canada. I don't think rural Mississippi
11:26
is exactly the same. It's all
11:28
relative man It's all relative, you know, it gets down to 60 you're
11:31
free. No, we had a fire, you know 60 and
11:33
we got our T-shirts on anyway,
11:36
it would be 80 my aunt Minnie who I live with she'd be
11:38
like build a fire. Yeah But
11:41
man I
11:42
Was so bored this you
11:45
know at this time period and everybody was talking
11:47
about this book roots and lo and behold There it is
11:49
in the house. And this is the first time I really
11:51
read a novel Don't yeah,
11:53
and it really just blew my mind and
11:56
how vivid the pictures
11:59
in my mind were
11:59
how emotionally invested I
12:02
was in the story. And so, you
12:04
know, coming out of it, it was like awakening to
12:06
me like, you know, whoa, that's awesome. Let's do
12:08
it again. Yeah, absolutely.
12:10
I think well, you know, I want to come back then
12:13
a second, but you mentioned comic books and I'd forgotten
12:15
about that part. And, you know, I
12:17
again used to spend my weekly allowance where my brother
12:19
and my brother would get me to spend my weekly allowance
12:22
on comic books that we both read. But but
12:24
but, you
12:25
know, that's a great way of young
12:27
kids beginning to learn to read. And and
12:29
and and
12:30
and, you know, I encourage that, you know, who
12:32
cares what the subject matter is. It's a way
12:34
of getting gripping with stories. And
12:37
and then the root story. Yeah,
12:40
it's as far as I could tell, it was the first book that really grabbed
12:42
you and to go way ahead. I
12:44
was going to talk about the end, but it might as well in some
12:47
ways in the circularity
12:49
of Oregon, go on the story of your life. It had an
12:51
impact because ultimately you changed your name.
12:54
That's right. And to some extent,
12:56
it's because of, of course, the hero
12:58
of roots being forced to change his
13:01
name.
13:01
You know what, man? I did not have that
13:03
thought until I was writing this book. You know,
13:06
as I'm thinking about my life and,
13:08
you know, you know, I took a year to really like
13:10
think that, you know, Josh, the guy I wrote a book with, you
13:12
know, we spent a year just talking about these stories
13:14
to try to narrow it down. I had like a billion.
13:17
Yeah, not literally anecdotes.
13:19
But how do you create a weave, a narrative out
13:21
of it? What are the important stories? And,
13:23
you know, I started to see things that I had never seen before.
13:26
And once I, you know, I talked
13:28
about how big that story of Kunta Kinte
13:31
and being forced to change his name, the big emotional
13:34
impact it had on me. Yeah. And as I was
13:36
thinking, I was like, wait a minute, could that have influenced me
13:38
when I decided to change my name? I
13:41
can't say that it did not. I can't say that it did. But
13:43
it's about employment. Well, whether
13:47
an influence you're not. Yeah. Jumping
13:50
ahead. We might as well. So if we write up, you
13:52
did change your name rather late, right? In the last
13:55
years of graduate school. That's right. Yeah. And
13:57
your PhD. Yeah. It's nice to have a new I mean,
13:59
having your. So if you're going to, in some sense, reinvent
14:01
yourself, that's a good time. But
14:04
what was, was it more than that? What
14:06
caused it at that instant and nowhere
14:08
before after? You know, man, a big part
14:10
of it was that I felt like I
14:12
was a new person. Like that's the reality. But,
14:14
you know, when I showed up, you know, I had been
14:16
in, and this was
14:19
relevant for this time, right? Because
14:21
when I get to Stanford and I discovered their libraries, talk about
14:24
books, you know, creating libraries, you
14:26
know, I'm like, I'm not going to do any
14:29
library became my second home,
14:32
if not my primary home,
14:34
right? And so, you
14:36
know, we were born into this world and we're given
14:39
all these narratives. Yeah. And,
14:41
you know, I would hear all these narratives
14:43
about, you know, so there's like what school
14:45
is telling me, but there's what the older brothers in
14:48
the hood are telling me, right? You know, they
14:50
pull me to the side and they
14:51
say things like, well, you know, black men created
14:53
civilization, a black man, you know, and I'm like, what
14:55
the hell? And I felt like, you
14:57
know what? Let me find out for
14:59
myself. Let me get into this library
15:02
and unwind human history. I
15:04
want to under, I wanted to, you know, I used to play this game
15:06
with people, you know, tell me a year, tell
15:08
me a century, and I'll tell you what a dominant power is wearing
15:11
the world. What was happening in that? And, you know, pretty
15:13
much Eurasia and Africa at that
15:15
time, you know, the rest of the world, I really didn't have a good view
15:17
on, and I wanted to understand human
15:20
religions, right? I wanted to understand
15:21
the, not just the, the,
15:23
the Western traditions from
15:25
the fertile, from the Levant, right? Yeah. Judaism
15:28
and Islam and Christianity
15:32
or the Eastern philosophies of Hinduism
15:34
and Buddhism, but also, you know, what was going on
15:36
around Africa, what were the Native American beliefs? And
15:38
so I did all of this studying and at the
15:40
same time I'm learning everything
15:43
that humanity knows about the natural world
15:45
for the most part as a physicist. Right? So
15:47
this history, this physical
15:49
world, and man, let me tell you,
15:51
it was as if I took my head, poured
15:53
out a lot,
15:54
everything I was born with, right? Refilled
15:57
it. And I'm like, okay, now I'm this new dude. And,
16:01
you know, I want to claim, cause I
16:03
also did have that idea of self-determination.
16:06
And I'll tell you what's funny is funny,
16:08
not funny, but you know, I always saw
16:11
myself, I'm African-American, clearly
16:13
I'm descended from slavery. Well
16:15
it turns out that there's not that much in
16:18
my ancestry, right? You know, once we did our
16:20
family history, it turns out my mother's paternal,
16:23
or both my paternal lineage, my
16:25
father's paternal lineage and my mother's paternal lineage,
16:27
there was no slavery, but on the maternal
16:29
lineages there was, right? So
16:32
it's a, but even then, you know, my father's
16:35
mother is, you know, half
16:37
Choctaw Native American, right? Yeah.
16:40
So I'll tell you, you know, so as I'm doing this studying and
16:43
I find out my father's lineage, what's really crazy
16:45
about it is that both of his grandfathers were Irishmen,
16:48
white Irishmen.
16:49
Interesting. Right? Yeah. Get
16:53
this. His paternal grandfather,
16:55
his father's father had two families.
16:58
He had his white family and
17:00
he had his black family with which he had four
17:02
kids. One of whom
17:05
was my grandfather, Charlie
17:07
Plummer, right? But here's the crazy thing.
17:09
All right. My dad was born in 1933. I
17:12
don't know what year his dad was born, but
17:14
this white guy clearly is born at some point in
17:17
the mid 19th century. When
17:19
he died, he left us, his black
17:21
family, a ton of land in Mississippi.
17:24
That's the land I grew up on. Wow. The
17:26
Plummer land in Clark County, Mississippi. Wow.
17:29
That does go against the narrative, doesn't it? You're supposed to have been forgotten
17:31
when he dies. Yeah. You're supposed
17:34
to be like, Oh, I don't claim you. Right? But
17:36
no, he
17:37
provides the land that I grew up on. Well,
17:39
this is good. There are a number of times I want
17:42
to talk to you and sort of challenge
17:44
the
17:45
traditional narratives or at least ask questions
17:48
because the big thing, I mean, you got the right
17:50
guy. Well, and I hope, yeah, I
17:52
do. I think I do. And you got the right guy
17:54
for me in the sense that nothing is sacred for me. So
17:56
I'm going to ask questions. And some people say, how dare
17:59
you ask that question? Nothing sacred buddy.
18:01
Every question is Nerds
18:05
that you know feel like we're from another planet Okay,
18:07
good. Um, objectively not
18:10
like we're members of the human species Before
18:12
we leave the books which we and we sort of circled
18:14
around them for a while, but this is great I have no, you
18:17
know agenda in that sense You
18:19
went from the novels though The one thing that really
18:21
I was intrigued by and it was clear
18:23
to me that that was
18:24
Your desire to have an encyclopedic knowledge
18:27
came from the fact that the first Books you really
18:29
had access to were encyclopedias and you ate
18:31
them up You got this world book encyclopedia
18:34
and you started to read it from a to
18:36
z Absolutely. And as far as
18:38
I can tell been obnoxious to everyone around
18:40
you by telling absolutely Yeah,
18:43
mama, you know, my mom had to pull me to the side
18:46
and you know inform me, you know how
18:48
to interact with the humans Especially,
18:51
you know in the deep south man a kid correcting
18:54
an adult.
18:54
Yeah, they say something correct
18:56
You know that that's not gonna fly, you know that could
18:59
Especially if you correct a teacher and which which
19:01
I know you did and I remember I had that experience But
19:03
for you and especially I don't and there may have
19:06
been a different amix with correcting a white
19:08
teacher and we'll we'll talk about that I don't know
19:10
if yeah, I think most many teachers were offended
19:12
either way if a kid would correct them Right,
19:15
right, but there may have been even more if it
19:17
wasn't a white kid only at this one school, man
19:20
At this one school is one teacher in quitman,
19:22
Mississippi And you know, that's the that's the other thing about the
19:24
narrative that is, you know, that
19:26
is interesting is that You
19:28
know whatever group of people you you interact with they're
19:31
gonna be people that are gonna be great to you They're gonna be but are gonna be awful
19:33
to you. Yeah, most people gonna be a spectrum and
19:36
different You're gonna be a spectrum, right? So yeah, I
19:38
ran into that person that was awful
19:40
to me in that way That happened to sit
19:43
in a teacher's desk. Sure now if I
19:45
had to judge teachers as a whole
19:47
Love them teachers. We're gonna get to because
19:49
I as far as I can see teachers were incredibly important I
19:52
want to challenge the narrative because one of
19:54
the things I want to Look, I'll
19:56
I want to talk later about many claims of systemic
19:58
racism, which I don't buy And I want to
20:00
talk to you about them because I you know but
20:03
but But
20:06
yeah, there's so the world book encyclopedia you
20:08
you correct me you always you know You correct
20:10
people around you and that was great. That was I love
20:13
myself and and I you know cuz I
20:16
cuz even in my new book I point out that the
20:18
one thing that parents and teachers don't say enough
20:20
is I don't know which is right Oh,
20:22
you always got to seem to know when you're a teacher and
20:24
that's not the way it should be it should be you know
20:26
What I don't know. Let's discover that together. Let's
20:28
let's because that's discovery
20:30
but so so the world was a good idea, but the other
20:32
thing that Cyclopeia introduced you to when
20:35
you finally got to e and
20:36
I think was under e and not a Albert
20:39
Einstein Einstein absolutely
20:42
That was a huge profound
20:44
moment in your life. Am I am I right? Absolutely,
20:46
man It was you know, love at first
20:49
read love at first sight whatever have
20:51
you? You know, I because
20:53
think about it this way, right I was so in love
20:55
with the natural world, you know I was watching
20:57
jock who stole wild America.
21:00
I just lived in the woods in Mississippi Just
21:02
you know, I was just fascinated by everything fire.
21:04
I was a huge pyromaniac And
21:08
oh man in the country, you know, I had gunpowder
21:10
kerosene gasoline burnt I
21:12
trash had a fireplace we were
21:14
doing it all right the natural world and
21:16
weird stuff that I talked about earlier I get the
21:18
time life books, you know
21:20
What's that's relativity man? That's you
21:22
know, you bring those two things together weirdness and
21:25
the natural world and not only that I
21:27
now have this esoteric knowledge that nobody
21:29
around me know how it makes you that superpower
21:32
Which you've been craving in the comic books to some extent.
21:35
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so it all came together
21:37
man But you know think for me though Is
21:39
that it was almost like a puzzle in a challenge at
21:41
the same time? Because I wanted to really
21:44
really get it and understand it. Yeah Yeah,
21:47
and I became obsessed with just reading reading reading
21:49
and quickly realize hey man, I'm gonna have to learn
21:52
some math here
21:53
Eventually,
21:55
if there's some math and you have a bunch of times
21:57
where people you were good at you were really good at certain
21:59
parts of math and your mother encouraged you to do that.
22:03
She was very excited when you could count well and
22:06
solve problems.
22:07
You know, to think about one of
22:09
my big discoveries
22:11
as an adult scientist who also
22:14
interacts with the education world, because
22:16
I've come to understand that you get well educated
22:18
in math by the time you graduate high school, in
22:20
one of two ways. Either it's
22:22
in your house or
22:24
you're lucky. I
22:27
was neither. Most Americans
22:29
are neither. But if you go to school and learn math well,
22:31
oh, you got lucky. Let me tell
22:33
you. But because the mathematics
22:36
of special relativity is so simple. Yeah,
22:38
really, it's high school. It's even, well,
22:41
depending on where you go. In Europe, it's
22:43
middle junior. It's public school. In the US, it's
22:45
high school or university. But I was able
22:47
to reason my way through it. And so by the time I'm like 14,
22:50
I'm getting it. I understand
22:52
it. And computers come out.
22:54
And I'm 16.
22:55
And I'm like, hey, I can code this
22:57
up. Yeah, we'll get to the science first. Because I'm trying
22:59
to think. In many cases, I want to
23:02
see what the key elements are that make
23:04
people scientists. But in your case, it's even
23:07
for the same reason you wrote the book. It's even
23:09
more interesting because it's such an unlikely journey.
23:12
These things is a factor that when
23:15
we think of the kind of things we can do to help
23:19
more kids climb out of a
23:22
future that's unfortunately determined for them when they're born
23:25
otherwise, think of what are the things that can
23:27
help? Well, obviously books are one
23:29
thing. The other, I'm a, they're
23:31
Jaron Brown,
23:33
man. Yeah, you're having a friend. A kid that's two years older than
23:35
me. One peer is all it takes. One peer.
23:37
All it takes, one peer.
23:39
I remember even when I was a kid was a son
23:41
of a neighbor who was an engineer who had a model
23:44
of an atom. My mother wanted me to be a doctor,
23:46
so I thought doctors were scientists. But when I saw the model
23:48
of the atom, I remember that. And then it was a book
23:51
on Galileo for me. But the
23:53
other thing, I'm trying to think of the other things that, you
23:55
know, some people might have think of are disadvantages
23:58
from having come where
23:59
But there were advantages, because everything
24:02
can be, you know, everything cuts
24:04
two ways. And in this world of everyone suddenly
24:06
being a victim, people realize that
24:08
sometimes, you know, what you think of as a victim, it can be an
24:10
advantage to you,
24:12
building a strength out of the building. I'll give you one example. Okay,
24:14
good. I'll give you one example. I arrive at Stanford
24:16
University,
24:17
and I spent the summer before
24:19
at Berkeley, working in Bernard Soutolle's research
24:22
group. Yeah, yeah. An
24:24
old friend of my colleague. Oh, nice, yeah. I worked
24:26
on some of the papers you were working on later, but anyway, it doesn't
24:28
matter. That was my very first physics research
24:30
of my life. So I knew
24:32
that I was vastly under educated, compared
24:34
to everybody else, from my Berkeley experience, right? I ran
24:36
the Sall Pearl Mudder, who was a buddy, but
24:39
you know, Sall, as a postdoc at the time,
24:41
was not pulling punches, let me tell you. Yeah,
24:43
okay, okay, okay. He was being pretty
24:46
frank, but anyway. Okay.
24:48
But I appreciate that, right? I appreciate,
24:51
I appreciate knowing where I need to shore things up.
24:54
So anyway, I show up at Stanford,
24:56
and I'm looking at different
24:59
things about the people around me. I'm looking at
25:01
their intelligence, and I'm looking
25:03
at their education. And I'm like,
25:05
oh,
25:06
what I see is that
25:08
you guys are, I would not consider you to be intrinsically
25:10
more intelligent than the people I knew that
25:12
were uneducated. Yeah, sure.
25:14
But you're way better educated, for
25:17
sure. But then I said, but you know
25:19
what? Can anyone in here outwork me?
25:22
Because, you know, I was forced
25:24
to do hard manual labor, like
25:26
this moment you hit double digits. And
25:29
you know, when you learn that resilience of,
25:31
I'm gonna, you know, the pain doesn't exist. I must
25:33
drive forward and get this done.
25:36
You, we both went to the same place. I was thinking,
25:38
I was thinking, I was reading, I'm looking at my notes, your
25:40
book, and you said that your rural backwards,
25:42
rural backwards Mississippi was a training
25:45
ground for life as a research scientist. Heck
25:47
yeah. You learned to work hard.
25:49
You learned to work hard, and you learned to
25:51
solve problems, man. You weren't, you know,
25:53
when you didn't have money, you weren't calling somebody to fix
25:55
anything. You were doing everything,
25:58
no matter how complicated it was. you know
26:00
the interesting thing is again one might think okay
26:02
your father was was ultimately an addict
26:05
your mother was you know Watch your mouth.
26:07
I'll kick your anyway Yeah, yeah,
26:09
and but they're both you know, they so they were both negative
26:12
influences one way But they're both incredibly positive influences
26:14
another way your mom Well,
26:16
let's go your dad first. Your dad was knew how
26:18
to do everything you okay, and
26:21
he and he and he and he taught you Yeah,
26:23
I think it's really a great thing and
26:25
often he you know, you can see that
26:28
influence in you and your mom For
26:30
all of her other, you know Pluses
26:32
and minuses was excited
26:34
for you
26:36
By because of your intelligence and
26:38
encouraged it. I mean there was a chemistry set at some
26:40
point. She bought a computer You
26:42
know, these are amazing things You
26:45
get me. Yeah, Ira it could go
26:47
the other way. I remember yeah, just to
26:49
give you an example. I remember when I was a
26:52
Chair of a physics department at cleveland. I tried
26:54
to get and my university we
26:56
donated Old scientific
26:58
equipment to some of the inner city schools that would because
27:00
they need it then cleveland There's nothing and there
27:02
was but there was a really neat school there called the cleveland
27:04
school for the arts Which was right next to the university and
27:06
I used to go there and I was a I think I
27:09
was I was involved with it Because we donated
27:12
old physics equipment to their science labs And
27:15
and I remember going to a play. I mean these were kids
27:17
that were gifted artistically and
27:20
I saw this girl young woman
27:23
Performance she was great and afterwards I
27:25
saw her come out and I just saw her mother
27:28
yelling
27:28
or why did you spend there? Why didn't you come home? And I thought
27:31
you know That's the difference between a parent
27:33
who you know When your kid does excel to
27:35
someone who just puts them down for excelling and
27:37
that's a and you know It's a really big difference
27:40
And so I was really pleased to see how tickled
27:42
your mother was at a variety of times In
27:44
your life and how for your father in spite of introducing
27:47
a drug dealing and ultimately
27:50
Ultimately becoming you know,
27:52
a unfortunate addict
27:54
Nevertheless
27:56
taught you how to work hard learn
27:58
things solve problems
27:59
And and those are there was another aspect
28:02
that I thought of that
28:03
of being in rural, Mississippi
28:05
You know, I'm gonna interrupt you here, man I'll
28:08
interrupt you you interrupt me. That's the way it works. You know
28:10
you say being a drug dealer There's
28:12
being an honest drug dealer He
28:15
taught me how to be straight. Yeah
28:18
where professional honest in that
28:20
world Oh, absolutely important things
28:22
like not go out in the street and sell, you know, all
28:24
sorts of things He you know, he gave you wise
28:26
street wisdom Exactly.
28:29
And don't treat people because you're gonna it's gonna come
28:31
back and get you in the end. Exactly No, no, it was it
28:33
was really he taught you to be in that sense.
28:35
He was an entrepreneur when he was absolutely
28:38
He was an entrepreneur. He was in a prize. He had
28:40
he brought money into the house That
28:42
was essential for living which which which
28:45
was uh, you know and buying that that
28:47
club, uh, the oh, yeah I would have called a nightclub
28:49
I guess and getting everyone working and it was Yeah, I mean
28:52
I was fascinated by that But the other thing that
28:54
it seemed to me that you got
28:55
out of that rural That one
28:58
some people might think it was a negative was the night
29:00
sky I remember the fact when
29:02
you came from a city To suddenly the
29:04
first time when you went saw the night sky when you
29:07
were in the country Again
29:09
a pivotal moment. I don't know if it determined
29:11
why you wanted to be an astronomer and astrophysicist,
29:13
but tell me about it
29:15
Man, listen, I look, you know, I
29:17
was amazed and I had no references
29:20
to know Okay, here's what you know, all I knew
29:22
was the big dipper and of course
29:24
Just like everyone else thought the pleiades was a
29:26
little dipper. Yeah, right. Yeah, but I'd
29:28
see the planets And I knew that there was something different
29:31
and amiss with them. Yeah, right. I
29:33
didn't figure it out until to go that those were planets
29:35
Yeah Meanwhile,
29:37
too, so it's okay You know
29:40
the cities where everything where they air is so bad You really
29:42
can't see the fact that they don't twinkle and you get yeah
29:44
Well, I didn't know this, you know, like like basically in
29:47
the country We had two channels channel seven channel 11
29:50
only channel seven came in for the most part until
29:52
people got to the point where you get that Antenna
29:54
outside your house where you go outside attorney antenna.
29:56
Yeah Like
29:59
we literally do
29:59
in a trailer in the woods, you know?
30:03
And so having information to
30:05
tell me here's what I'm seeing in the sky,
30:07
I did not have that. But as far as like
30:09
being there and just being fascinated by it,
30:11
right? But here's the funny thing is
30:13
that again, as I started to learn
30:16
once I went to Tougaloo, you know, I'd come home
30:18
because you know, they had a library, they had people that knew
30:20
things about astronomy. I took an astronomy class. Just for
30:22
people, just for people, our listeners, Tougaloo
30:24
was the first university you went to. Some of them may have not heard
30:27
of Tougaloo. Okay, but we'll get there. Tougaloo
30:29
College. I like to say it's so exclusive. We don't
30:31
even tell people to be there. Perfect.
30:33
But it's
30:35
funny because one of my good high school friends,
30:37
this guy named Jackie Pugh, he passed
30:39
in 2022. But he was hilarious,
30:42
man, because once I started learning, you
30:44
know, I wanted to tell everybody, you know, being annoying again.
30:46
Yeah. And Jackie, he would always
30:48
say, you know, if I see somebody, I'm like,
30:50
Hey, you see that right there? And Jackie
30:53
would always go, Oh, he go with
30:55
that shit again. Yeah, they would
30:57
tease me about
30:59
it, but
31:01
they love me for it. You know, well, you know, I never
31:03
I interesting thing is it really hit me
31:06
because it was a long I lived, I grew up in a city
31:09
and you know, I liked that I even had a telescope
31:11
and I remember once to a little show with
31:13
a friend of mine and we had just telescopes.
31:16
But I never really knew what the sky looked like
31:18
for years and years and years because I never went to the country.
31:21
And you know, and I and where I live now, it's just I've,
31:24
I've almost 360 degrees like living in a
31:26
planetarium. It's just dark. But
31:29
the first time you go out and see the night sky
31:31
without being in a city, it's just a different
31:33
experience. It's totally really because it's not just out
31:35
there. It's it's all around you. It
31:38
is almost it's almost it's if I
31:40
believed in the word spiritual, I'd say it's a spiritual
31:42
man. I mean, you know, you feel connected. Yeah, you feel connected.
31:45
I was just saying to someone, you know, I wrote in one
31:47
of my books in South America, you
31:52
understand why, you know, they used to view
31:54
the Milky Way as a river continuation
31:56
of Amazon. And the reason is why because
31:58
it's it's around you. It's not just out there. And
32:01
it's the kind of feeling you can't understand until
32:03
you've seen it yourself anyway.
32:05
Oh man, yeah. Okay,
32:08
so let's go to the next thing. I'm
32:10
trying to think of the things that I, from reading your
32:13
history,
32:15
that were important to developing
32:17
you. The encouragement to do math and your mom's encouragement
32:20
to at least be good accounting. And accounting.
32:23
You know, I'm from a world where nobody really
32:26
knows what math is. As a matter of fact, you
32:28
know, at Tougaloo College, you know, when I got there. So
32:30
first thing was, I went to the Navy after high
32:33
school. Yeah, yeah. And there, you know,
32:35
I was in this program that was designed
32:37
to take enlisted people and
32:39
turn them into officers, right? So the way it worked
32:42
is they gave you a year of academic
32:44
and really hardcore military
32:46
training run by the Marines, right? And
32:49
there were two math classes. The regular math
32:51
class and the remedial math class.
32:53
In the remedial math class, we
32:55
were taken from arithmetic
32:58
through calculus in one year. I
33:00
have atopic dermatitis, which you're not allowed
33:02
to be in the Navy with. Yeah, that's the reason you
33:04
had to leave.
33:05
Reason I had to leave. But luckily
33:08
I learned algebra right before I got kicked
33:10
out. That's what you said. The Navy gave
33:12
you algebra and also exposure
33:14
to systemic racism. But we'll get, maybe we'll get there. But
33:17
those are two things the Navy gave. But it was great.
33:19
I mean, it gave you, and a kind of a new kind
33:21
of discipline, although we'll get to the, I
33:24
love the definition of Mr. Cross's version of
33:26
this. Oh yeah. We're gonna
33:28
get to. Man, I almost already had a billion times. Yeah, well, it's
33:31
a wonderful phrase. And I think we'll repeat it right
33:33
now. Because the other thing I wanna talk about is the
33:36
other thing that was really important, and I've met, and I've
33:38
talked a lot of scientists and other people
33:40
about the importance of teachers. And I've been
33:43
amazed for some people, like
33:45
my friend Neil deRast-Seis, he said teachers didn't matter
33:47
to him. He had no good teachers. But for
33:49
the rest of us, we didn't. For you, you made
33:52
the beneficiary of a few key
33:54
good teachers. And the other thing was interesting,
33:56
was a number of them are white teachers, right?
33:58
Oh, absolutely.
33:59
And I remember later
34:02
on you were surprised when you went to the science, it's
34:04
a music camp,
34:05
and you got these prizes that people weren't,
34:07
that people respected you, you know, they weren't, they
34:10
were white, yet they gave you all the prizes, and you thought, why
34:12
should they be prejudiced against me? But you didn't
34:14
expect it in the scientists, which I thought was interesting.
34:16
So early on, you'd been, you had
34:18
this experience of these, and it's, you're
34:21
probably right, a bunch of these guys came down to the Freedom
34:23
March and decided to stay. Yeah,
34:25
yeah, that's right. But Mr. Cross, well, Dr.
34:27
Teal, the, yeah, the McGinnis,
34:30
Bruno, I
34:31
wrote the book, I'm
34:33
impressed by all of these teachers
34:35
who really not
34:37
only put their faith in you, but went out to bat
34:39
for you and, and really took you
34:41
under the wing and said, I see something in you,
34:43
and I'm going to help. And so, and
34:46
I think, man, you know, that's,
34:48
you know, that I hate where our country
34:51
is. So, Lawrence, I've been to 44 countries at
34:53
this point in my life. You know, I didn't, I didn't leave
34:55
until I was 32. Wow. All
34:58
right. Now I'm 27. Yeah.
35:01
Compared to me, I want you to know that. Okay.
35:04
So, um,
35:06
I see that every country has
35:09
these identity hierarchies. And so
35:11
the thing that, that, that was interesting to me,
35:13
you know, when you live in a single locale, you
35:15
buy into the, the,
35:17
the one of your location
35:21
and you buy into the one that's
35:23
recent, right? The ideas that are
35:25
recent, you know, and so it
35:27
gets painted with this brush. And
35:30
sometimes in your cultural narrative,
35:32
you're still living the fight of three,
35:34
four generations ago. Yeah. Right.
35:38
And, and, and so like, I'll be honest with you, you know, when you talk about narratives,
35:40
when I left, so we, we talk about the
35:43
Navy and systemic racism, I'll give you an
35:45
example of what it is, what it really has
35:47
to do with man. I think in large
35:49
part is character. Yeah. Yeah.
35:53
And here's what I mean by that. If
35:55
you're a bully, if you're somebody that's going to pick
35:57
on somebody, if you're somebody and they're around us.
36:00
Right. Most people are concerned with themselves.
36:02
There are a few people that are really good. There's a few jerk
36:04
stuff. Yeah, okay They're
36:07
looking for the vulnerable. Yeah or
36:09
the who those who are perceived to be
36:11
vulnerable. So let me give you an example of
36:13
myself Before
36:15
I left, mississippi Man, I was
36:17
pulled over by the cops. I left at the age of 24. Okay Dozens
36:22
of times yeah, you know between 15
36:25
and 24 like it was routine routine You
36:27
know by the time that to do is like lie down
36:30
search your pockets. All right, I go
36:32
to stanford. I start speaking differently
36:34
Yeah, okay. I dress differently. Yeah
36:37
Now I get pulled over by the police. Uh-huh.
36:40
It plays out completely different. Yeah the
36:42
second I start speaking they're like Oh, yeah,
36:44
I noticed that you swerved a little bit These are you
36:46
know because i'm no longer perceived
36:49
as vulnerable As as like a
36:51
late teenage kid who dresses like
36:53
he's from the hood and talks like he's from the hood Yeah, right,
36:56
you know, so The
36:58
the the and you know these people can be anybody
37:00
like man i've been forcing people's perceptions
37:03
in advance and people People, you
37:05
know, you we all whether we like or not make
37:07
quick assessments And one of the
37:09
first ways where they dress the way to speak. I mean, it's
37:11
just exactly
37:12
Exactly. Exactly. And and and
37:15
you know, that's what I say about too about going
37:17
to stanford One of the greatest lessons I learned
37:19
was class camouflage, right? People
37:21
would see me like five miles away Oops is one
37:23
of them. But now they're like, oh dr. Olu.
37:26
Shay. Come on in Think
37:28
to the president of the country the ceo, you know,
37:30
it's like hi there They're
37:32
like, oh i'm your big fan like oh P
37:35
crumpets But
37:38
you know the the the
37:41
But
37:42
I how you interpret things
37:45
is based on your narrative. Yeah, so when
37:47
I left the south Where
37:50
I did experience, you know because think
37:52
about it this way i'm having conflicts with
37:54
black guys and white guys Sure, right
37:56
i'm having black guys who love me and white guys
37:58
who love me. Yeah Right. But what
38:01
are they going to pick on you about when they come
38:03
at you? If they're trying to hurt you, right? So
38:05
the black dude might say something about my crooked teeth, my
38:07
nappy hair, my big lips, right? The white dude,
38:10
he's going there nine times out of 10, Mississippi,
38:13
right? That's where he's going to go with it. Yeah. So
38:15
what you do to, to self
38:18
survive, to manage your own mind, you don't
38:20
want to encounter those sorts of
38:22
statements, right? Because it hits you a certain way, right?
38:25
Yeah. So, you know, like, like, somebody
38:27
being like, I guess you say
38:29
you're Jewish, which I didn't know. But if somebody says
38:31
something anti-Semitic to you, it
38:34
hits differently than someone just saying something jerky.
38:36
Yeah. You know, for me, I guess it's just something, and that's
38:38
why I've said this before. It may be a
38:41
character flaw. All it did was make me think they
38:43
were stupid. Yeah. Well, I
38:45
grew into that, right? I grew into that,
38:47
right? Because what I'm praying to do is, Oh, if I
38:49
hear this certain word, I'm supposed to lose
38:51
my mind, get really angry and be violent.
38:54
Right? Yeah. And then after a certain point,
38:56
I'm like, why? That's your problem. That's the
38:58
problem. Yeah, exactly. So you
39:01
own how you react to things like that. You own how
39:03
you feel like a victim or whether you don't
39:05
in some sense. Right. But when
39:07
you're a young man, when that's the narrative
39:09
that you're in. So I leave Stanford University.
39:12
I mean, I leave Mississippi head to Stanford University
39:14
at the age of 24. And I'm like, Oh, every white person
39:16
is a racist. Yeah. So I had ample evidence
39:18
to the conference. Like I said, I had these white dudes that
39:20
love me. Yeah. Yeah. And all
39:23
the science fairs and the music camp
39:25
and all of the. And I had a black dude that
39:27
punched me in the face. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
39:30
So anyway, what I learned though, you know,
39:32
cause you have
39:34
this racist radar to avoid
39:37
these people. And one of the things that trigger
39:39
it is when people talk to you like they're superior
39:41
to you. Okay. Well, guess how academics talk
39:43
to people quite often. Guess how physicists in particular
39:45
thought. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I
39:47
had to learn, Oh, you're not a racist.
39:50
You're an asshole. Right. And
39:53
it impacts me. You know, and so,
39:55
but you know, now as I mature and
39:57
as I age, right, I get to.
39:59
the humans with whom I interact.
40:02
And they run the gamut. And
40:05
what I see is, if we look at our narrative
40:07
publicly, you
40:10
think we're a country where everybody's at each other's throats
40:12
over partisan politics and race.
40:14
But in my everyday, man, that
40:17
is not what I experienced and see at all.
40:19
I interact with people
40:22
that are extremely liberal, extremely conservative,
40:25
and everything in between. People of all
40:28
races.
40:29
We're all getting along. Big reasons
40:31
we're all well-fed and housed, right? You
40:34
put us under some stress, things may change, but. You
40:37
know, again, I'll jump ahead, but
40:39
obviously what your second father figure was your
40:42
PhD, Art Walker. And
40:45
he said something which I think
40:47
was really important. When you talk about the experience
40:50
of having the
40:55
failure in the graduate
40:58
qualifying exams and what appears
41:00
to be people taking it out on you. And
41:03
I'll talk about that later. Because having been a professor,
41:05
I'm gonna put on the other hand and say why
41:07
one might have assumed that you were ready to fail.
41:10
But anyway,
41:11
what he said was an organization's like
41:13
a bell curve, but it's not just an organization, it's society.
41:15
It's the center of the vast majority.
41:18
They're indifferent. They're apathetic. They're self-centered.
41:20
That's what he just said. A small minority will help,
41:23
and there's a small minority that'll be hostile. Don't
41:25
let that small group of doubters derail you.
41:27
And I think that's the key point. If we
41:30
always, in any organization,
41:33
we're gonna find people who are assholes.
41:35
And if we label them
41:37
and nothing else, we're gonna say that there's a systemic
41:40
something in that thing, where in fact it's just a spectrum.
41:43
And part of being, whether you're African
41:45
American, whether you're Jewish, whether you have
41:48
red hair, whether you're a woman, whether
41:50
you're gay, or whatever, is to
41:52
recognize that if you assume
41:55
that everyone is
41:57
reacting because of a certain trait,
41:59
than just because who they are and
42:01
learn how to deal with
42:03
it
42:04
then the world just becomes this view of
42:07
power and
42:09
racism that just distorts it
42:11
and ruins it for you and everyone else it seems to
42:13
me.
42:14
No I see what you mean there
42:17
and I agree with it in large measure. You do
42:19
control how you react. You do need the
42:21
resiliency to say I'm not so fragile that
42:23
you being unkind to me
42:25
is not going to stop me. Yeah and
42:28
the resiliency is all
42:30
well behaved right yeah but
42:33
I'll tell you what a systemic part comes into
42:35
and I think I stated earlier. Yeah. It's what
42:37
is the default right so just like people buy
42:39
into narratives yeah there's
42:41
a lot of narratives about that are bought into so
42:43
if you look at African Americans in
42:46
physics right if there is a criticism
42:48
they seem to fall into typical
42:51
categories right that seem to be reminiscent
42:54
of how African Americans or how Black folks
42:56
were represented you know prior
42:59
to us being a more enlightened society and that
43:01
is you know not as good mathematically uh
43:03
not as creative and not as hard
43:05
working right. I mean you say that yeah I remember
43:07
you said that later on and it and it's
43:09
interesting to say that narrative I mean I guess I just
43:13
like for example I think about that experiment. I think
43:15
of being good at math do people buy into
43:17
it. I think of my friend Jim Gates who I knew when
43:19
I was at MIT and then Harvard. Yeah I just saw him at
43:22
MIT a few weeks ago. Okay and so Jim
43:24
Gates is pretty good in math
43:26
and and and and and so I
43:28
never I guess I never and everyone knew that. What
43:30
did Jim Gates say to me?
43:32
What was that?
43:33
Let me tell you what Jim Gates said to me. Okay. So
43:35
I left uh
43:38
academia and went to industry yeah
43:41
and then I decided this stuff is boring I want to come back I
43:43
want to do some cosmology yeah all right so
43:45
in 2004 I was at the University of Chicago and
43:48
I had been seeing Jim Gates since the 80s when
43:50
I was a undergraduate student 88. Yeah and
43:52
you made a big point that Jim was really good at trying
43:55
to mentor. Oh yeah well let me tell
43:57
you what he did. He walked up to me and my poster
43:59
there on the Super for Nova acceleration pro satellite if
44:01
you remember that. Like he had never met
44:03
me in his life and grilled me on
44:06
the hardware, the theory, the
44:08
systematics. And then
44:10
after I answer all of his questions, he goes,
44:14
good to see you, right? Good
44:16
to see you, right? So I say to him, I was like, hey
44:18
man, remember, Cauley Institute was new at
44:21
Stanford at the time. They were hiring
44:23
people, Roger Blantford, others. And I was like,
44:25
hey man, you think they're gonna hire you?
44:27
And Jim pauses. And
44:29
he goes, if you
44:31
think these people will,
44:35
can believe that a person descended
44:37
from Africa is capable
44:40
of a creative thought, you
44:42
have a few things to learn. Jim
44:44
said that. No, yeah, he said, no, I do not
44:46
expect that. I do not expect that
44:48
invitation. That's what Jim said.
44:51
So man, you know,
44:53
there are people in our field that don't even talk to
44:55
people that don't have a PhD.
44:57
I know what academia is like.
45:00
I know I'm always that good. The thing is,
45:02
is that you can't wipe it with a
45:04
broad brush. You have to say it's this individual,
45:07
that individual, this individual, right? And
45:09
the other thing that happens is, I'll
45:11
give you another example. I sat on the NSF
45:14
post-doc panel for many, many years.
45:18
And so at this time when I was doing it, it
45:20
was a lot of
45:22
planetary exoplanet science, right? And
45:25
so I see these same letters from these same professors
45:27
at these same top universities and they make comparisons,
45:29
right? It's like kind of the same every year. Oh, this
45:32
person is my top- Yeah, I use
45:34
those letters myself so I know. But
45:36
then they make comparison to other people in the field.
45:39
And I noticed that one person who
45:42
they were comparing with like, oh sure, they're
45:44
way better than this person, was one African-American
45:47
guy. You know what I'm just like, why
45:49
is he always the foil? You
45:52
know, but I didn't do a systematic study of
45:54
all the letters. It was a small sample. And
45:57
maybe I just happened to get a biased sample. But
45:59
in three- second of years, this guy was the,
46:02
you know, and this guy has top positions,
46:04
has had top positions at multiple institutions,
46:06
right? Multiple top institutions. So,
46:08
you know, in some people's
46:11
minds, man, just like there are people
46:13
that are anti Semitic, there are people that are misogynist,
46:15
there are people that are, you
46:18
know, James Webb, right? Dead white
46:20
man, you know, there, you know, there are
46:22
people that I
46:23
can't even be wearing a blue shirt. I hate blue shirts.
46:26
Think of this, how often do you see a scientist
46:29
on television that gets prominent like you and
46:31
me that has a strong southern accent?
46:34
Right? I mean, there's all these little biases
46:37
that people have. And I think that's the real story.
46:39
It's not that none of them exist, is that
46:41
they do exist, but they
46:43
exist more on and you know, you have to look
46:46
at things, you have to judge people individually,
46:49
you don't paint people with groups. And
46:51
so that group ideas
46:53
that we have, because let me tell you, man, you know,
46:55
I don't know if you ever done interracial dating, and got to live
46:57
with people of other cultures. What,
47:00
you know, who they talk about, you know, but
47:02
people have wild ideas. And even,
47:04
you know, in my youth, I would think about
47:07
people in groups, right, not as individuals,
47:09
you know. So, you know, when people say
47:11
they're colorblind, I hope
47:13
that's what they're saying is that I judge people
47:16
on an individual basis. I see, you
47:18
know, I love the culture, the diversity,
47:20
you know, I love to go to another country,
47:23
eat their food, hear their music,
47:25
do their thing and be them with them. I love
47:27
that richness, right?
47:30
And so I love
47:32
that, right? But we can't let
47:35
that, you know, especially here in America, man,
47:37
because as a pluralistic society, you
47:39
know, and again, here's another narrative,
47:41
right? How America's so torn apart, dude. Yeah.
47:45
The way our country is constructed is a recipe
47:47
for nonstop conflict. But yet we
47:49
are peaceful as hell.
47:50
Right? Well, I'm not sure I agree with the
47:53
last part. But you're right. I think the recipe
47:55
for nonstop conflict is built into the country.
47:57
We don't have militias running around.
48:00
We're not taking up arms against each other
48:03
in a systematic way. Not yet. It
48:05
happened once, right? And, you know, I'll
48:07
remind people that was white people versus white people.
48:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you think about
48:12
it, it sounds like it was a race war, right? But
48:15
it's not. Because if you look at modern
48:18
society in America, if you
48:20
listen to different groups talk
48:22
about their
48:25
politics,
48:28
it seems like it's a different reality
48:30
that each group is living in. Yeah,
48:33
yeah, I guess. And you're absolutely right. And
48:36
there's, and there's, and people, as I said,
48:38
people pick up, people are used to certain things.
48:41
People have stereotypes, not necessarily racist, but we all have
48:43
preconceptions
48:45
of things. And the great thing about being
48:47
a scientist that scientists should
48:49
train you to do is ultimately be suspicious of your preconceptions
48:52
as we'll talk about at the end. Just want to
48:54
learn over and over again. And it'd be great if more
48:56
people just more generally learn to
48:58
be suspicious of their preconceptions. But
49:02
I do worry about
49:03
labeling as Bob Broth. I mean,
49:05
not just, when I look at, and
49:08
you're pretty frank about your history
49:10
at Stanford, and I know all the people, because a lot of them are
49:12
colleagues, and I've known them for, I mean,
49:14
you're professors, I've known them for a long
49:16
time, one way or another.
49:19
And there were people who
49:22
were hard on you, and
49:25
maybe unfair to you. That
49:27
happens to everyone.
49:28
But on the whole, the community
49:31
you were in,
49:32
ultimately, and
49:34
it wasn't just art, I don't think, ultimately,
49:37
you know, treated you with respect, ultimately treated
49:40
you with respect as a scientist that you have ultimately
49:42
gained. And
49:45
so I don't, I guess it's not, I don't,
49:48
the question is, in what sense is there, were
49:51
there systemic barriers or are there systemic
49:53
barriers?
49:54
When I read your history,
49:57
I think of it as a, I mean, it's a heart-wrenching.
49:59
warming and such an
50:02
uplifting
50:03
story. It really is. There's no doubt about it. I
50:05
mean, throughout, I, you know, I would constantly
50:07
smile. You were crying. You were crying. Well,
50:10
you know, I don't want to cry. But I was but I was
50:12
I was I was smiling anyway.
50:15
My more usual case than crying, although it's
50:17
not. But anyway, so there were a lot of people,
50:19
you know, you were supporting a high school and then you know, the faculty.
50:23
Let's go. You know, why not? You know, you're absolutely right, man. There
50:25
was one person who was over the line.
50:28
Yeah,
50:32
over the line. And you talk about that one person, I think. But
50:35
but here's the other thing, right? The other thing is,
50:38
is that, you
50:40
know, as a as a mentor,
50:43
as a leader myself, yeah, I
50:46
have people that we oversee, not
50:48
oversee, that's maybe not a bad word. But
50:50
we, you know, we mentor, we look out
50:53
for them, we manage them. And one
50:55
thing that I had to figure out,
50:57
and it's hard to figure out is for this particular individual,
51:01
what is the best thing forward for them
51:03
encouragement or a kick in the pants?
51:05
Yeah. Right. So for me, I'm
51:08
the type of guy that if you tell
51:10
me, Oh, I don't think you can do it, or you're not good
51:13
enough.
51:13
Yeah, I'm like, I'll show you right. But
51:16
that's not how the average person in my experience
51:19
reacts. Yeah, that's right.
51:21
But I was reading your story. And I was, I
51:23
was looking at both ways. Because, you
51:25
know, when I was a student, I experienced some
51:28
things that were not too dissimilar in
51:30
one or two cases. Well, what I remember,
51:32
I just remember when I taught at Yale, I just remember,
51:35
there were some students that we all and I hate to have
51:37
to do it. So you know, what,
51:40
it's really appropriate you leave the program. And
51:42
then ultimately, you, you, you, you
51:45
really felt like you were doing them a favor earlier
51:48
rather than later. The earlier that
51:50
they learned that they weren't really, it
51:52
wasn't the right
51:54
road for them, it wasn't, shouldn't be the end of their life, it
51:56
just wasn't the right direction. And it was hard
51:59
to do.
52:00
And on paper, you know, after having
52:02
to having to take undergraduate courses
52:04
when you're
52:05
a graduate student and then and
52:07
then not doing well in the exam first time after
52:09
four years, I could see how independent
52:12
of color or anything else I would I
52:14
would be willing to say, you know, what is, you
52:16
know, maybe,
52:17
maybe this isn't the right. I'm gonna
52:21
go to the premise of this topic here. Yeah. Because
52:24
it's almost sounds to me like somehow
52:26
you read if you read my book,
52:28
I never level an accusation
52:31
of racism. No, no, no, no, no, no,
52:33
no, no, absolutely. No, no, you don't. And
52:36
it's right. And you never
52:38
do. In fact, and I think you take that attitude
52:41
of arts that some people are going to be. I
52:43
tell the story of here's what happened. And I don't go to
52:45
their motivations of why I think happened. And
52:48
some people in there, you know, and so I'll give you. And you're
52:51
great, by the way, let me just interrupt. I think
52:54
the person who was probably in charge of the
52:57
qualifying exams was the one who said to you, hey,
53:00
you're gonna fail it again, you should be prepared, you should
53:02
get a master. He was trying to do the right thing. And
53:04
then when you got a PhD, I know him
53:06
well, he's a man.
53:22
two
53:37
groups of faculty, there were the lower, the
53:39
younger faculty who were not in favor of this thing
53:41
that they had been doing of, you
53:44
know, because, you know, for people who don't know, between 79
53:47
and 89, Stanford graduated 30 black
53:49
PhDs in physics. Not
53:52
doing it through affirmative action, but basically recruiting
53:54
the top physics undergraduates who
53:56
were African American come to Stanford. And they were
53:58
motivated to do so because William Shockley
54:01
was an outspoken racist guy who made him look
54:04
bad. So that's what they were doing to
54:08
repair. But by the time
54:10
I show up, things are now changing. The
54:12
attitude has changed in the department. And here
54:14
is the thing. And
54:17
it has to do with gatekeepers
54:19
and how they draw judgments on who
54:22
is worthy to come through the gate and who isn't. So
54:24
here's something that I've struggled with as
54:26
an educator. So there was this
54:28
one young lady in my class when I first started teaching my
54:31
very first I was working in Silicon Valley teaching at a
54:33
junior college. And this young lady, her
54:35
first name was Teresa Latino young lady man,
54:37
she worked her butt off, sat
54:40
on the front row of the class asked me all
54:42
kinds of questions, did not
54:44
get it at all. Okay.
54:47
She earned a C and I gave her a C.
54:50
Okay. And I regretted it from that
54:52
moment until today. Right.
54:55
I should have get you know, I have that after that
54:58
I put in a bonus like,
55:02
you know, this sort of
55:04
class participation thing points. So
55:06
I could swing. Yeah, I know. But would
55:08
it have been a favor? No, I don't know. I mean, I've
55:11
I told look, you know, ultimately, you got
55:13
to grow to my growth. I'm
55:15
not saying college, she worked hard. Yeah.
55:18
I mean,
55:19
she grew. Yeah. So if you grow
55:22
from, you know, it's like American Idol
55:24
to show American Idol. Yeah. One of the worst
55:26
things that can happen to you is just killing it
55:28
on the first day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:30
Right. Nobody, you know, they want to see you grow.
55:32
Yeah, yeah. So I was not taking
55:35
people's growth into account. Yeah,
55:38
I can understand that.
55:39
So when you're, when you're a gatekeeper,
55:41
you should be looking at I think resilience
55:44
and growth. It's like if you have a child, right,
55:46
you're concerned about their, you
55:49
know, Oh, is there something wrong neurologically?
55:51
Well, do they actually learn? Are they improving?
55:54
That's the question. And so in my case,
55:57
you know, my reputation was being super hardworking.
55:59
But I was coming from so deep a hole.
56:02
Sure. Right?
56:03
That, you know, that, that, that
56:06
if you saw my, my relentless, I
56:08
don't think it's a situation where you can't get there.
56:11
Your mind, Hakeem, your mind doesn't came because here's what Art
56:13
Walker, here's the other thing. There
56:15
are the people that work closely with you and what
56:17
they think of you. And some people on the committee
56:19
who never work closely with you and see how you
56:21
think. Yeah. Right? So if all the
56:23
people who work closely with you see you one way,
56:26
but then other people say, Oh, look at this number.
56:28
I don't like. Man, I got students
56:30
working in the community right now that were
56:32
terrible on paper. And I, and
56:35
I, you know, like one, you know, a couple that work
56:37
at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is one here
56:39
in Charlottesville, one in New Mexico.
56:41
Yeah. And you know, the people called me up like,
56:43
Hey, and I'm like, dude, forget about the grades.
56:46
This person is amazing. And they, and they've kicked
56:48
butt, you know, in their, in their work life. Right?
56:51
Yeah. So
56:52
I was prejudged man by certain
56:55
people. Sure. Sure. I didn't blame it on
56:57
race. Yeah. It's not as
56:59
people just look at numbers as one way.
57:02
And it's, and, and, and the point is that everyone, you
57:04
know, stereotypes are just that and they're meant to be
57:06
changed. And you're absolutely right.
57:08
I've known, you know, we, we, it,
57:11
what's, it's not,
57:12
it's not, you're not an awful person for,
57:14
for having, having prejudgment. You're
57:17
awful person. If you don't want to ever change
57:19
that prejudgment, the face of evidence and
57:21
that, and that's, and that's the, that's the difference.
57:23
I think that's the difference. I
57:26
don't want to harp on that too much, but, but I think, you
57:28
know, and, and I think you, you
57:30
know, I relate to the fact that, you know, you
57:33
write in the, in the, in the book, whenever you did really
57:35
poorly, it was useful
57:38
for you to know you don't really poorly because it was a kick
57:40
in the pants. Absolutely. Say, Hey, I, this
57:42
is a reality check. Hey, I thought
57:44
I was cool. I thought I knew it. I would say, Hey,
57:46
I did, I got A's in high school and,
57:48
you know, and, and then, Hey, now
57:52
I have something to learn. Now other people, when they
57:54
get a board rate, that's it that they're
57:56
done. And so it, of course, it depends on how
57:59
you. You've got to be realistic with
58:01
people, but it's still encouraging and I think you know art
58:03
was clearly both when art was disappointed
58:05
with you He told you why but he oh, man,
58:08
I mean there's that episode where you with the Of
58:12
that of that rocket.
58:14
Yeah, when he when you were clearly it mattered
58:17
a lot
58:18
To you that he was disappointed
58:20
in you at the time. Oh, absolutely But
58:22
he was one when I when you quote him, however,
58:25
right?
58:25
Um
58:27
You quote he talks like he
58:29
dealt with racism much of his
58:31
academic life Yeah, that was a generation
58:34
or so before you that's right. And and and
58:36
I think things have changed Um, oh, yeah
58:38
things absolutely have changed things have changed drastically
58:41
over the course of my life Yeah, of course and mine too.
58:43
Yeah, and and uh, um, and
58:45
I feel I felt badly interestingly enough I
58:47
was surprised though when when he said that people
58:50
Still question his intelligence. They never
58:52
accepted a black man as their intellectual equal
58:54
or you can make an original
58:57
I was surprised when he said that because he was a full professor
58:59
at stanford
59:00
Yeah, which usually is again. It's a pre-judgment
59:03
When someone comes into room they're a full professor
59:06
at stanford You make some assumptions
59:08
about them and i'm surprised that
59:10
that didn't give him
59:11
A leg up or at least he didn't perceive
59:14
it as giving him a leg up at the time Well, you know what?
59:16
It was really weird because there was two things happening.
59:18
So it turns out that the very you know Private
59:21
students talk to each other. Right?
59:23
So
59:25
There was this one guy he's now a professor at north
59:27
western He comes
59:29
in and he works with this other professor,
59:31
but he had started working with art first Yeah, and
59:34
he comes back to the group. He's like, oh man, you should have heard
59:36
what this professor said about art now when
59:39
I Started in this world of physics,
59:42
right? You know you get accepted to some university
59:44
you go in there and you go and you talk
59:46
to every professor in the department You have a meeting with each one of
59:48
them, right? Then you go to silicon valley and you
59:50
go talk to every manager Then you
59:53
go to this other universe for how you talk to everybody
59:55
and you know at these top
59:57
tier places Subprecision folks,
59:59
maybe a quarter
59:59
a quarter or a half are going to talk trash about
1:00:02
their colleagues, about how they're not as smart,
1:00:04
how they're right. Yeah. And
1:00:06
so the thing about that sort of dynamic
1:00:09
is, is that certain groups of people feel like,
1:00:12
yeah, it happens to everybody. If you're a white dude,
1:00:14
heterosexual, you're involved in your great
1:00:16
grandpa, like Parker, of the Parker
1:00:18
Solar Probe. He would talk trash about Parker
1:00:20
in Solar Physics, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,
1:00:23
and what he knows, right? The living people.
1:00:26
And so my point is, is that
1:00:29
if you're like from certain groups, it
1:00:31
almost always finds you. You
1:00:34
know what I mean? Like, like suppose you'll be like, oh, I was at
1:00:36
this one institution and somebody came at me with this craziness,
1:00:38
oh, I'm happy that didn't happen. But if you find
1:00:40
that the craziness happens to you at every institution,
1:00:43
but why is that it? Because
1:00:46
that person that wants to do a misdeed is
1:00:48
looking for the one they perceive as vulnerable.
1:00:51
And because you're an outlier, they
1:00:53
perceive you as vulnerable, right?
1:00:55
Now when people try that with me, they learn quickly.
1:00:58
So I have a rep, I've always had a reputation, right?
1:01:00
Because art, just like my dad taught me how to do
1:01:02
things properly, art taught me how to do things properly.
1:01:05
Right? So, so, you know, I've
1:01:07
had to confront, you know,
1:01:11
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And
1:01:14
all it did was make you more, you know, more determined.
1:01:17
And that's because of the first work, which
1:01:19
was from your upbringing, which some people might say,
1:01:21
you know, having to deal with the dangers
1:01:23
and the street and everything else would say was
1:01:25
a disadvantage actually was an
1:01:28
advantage. Because academics
1:01:30
can't be anywhere near as scary
1:01:33
as a dope dealer on the street, no matter
1:01:35
how hard they try. And going
1:01:37
back to the beginning, this whole thing about web. Yeah,
1:01:40
the thing that was so crazy about this to me
1:01:42
is that when I released my article
1:01:44
in January 2021 on web,
1:01:47
and my colleagues
1:01:50
responded,
1:01:52
and then they tried to respond by bullying
1:01:54
me, you know, like cyberbullying me, I'm
1:01:57
like, you got the wrong guy. You got the wrong guy.
1:01:59
Well, I want to get
1:01:59
Because I I just want to I want I want I don't
1:02:02
want to be all about
1:02:04
What we're talking about now, although you know, you know
1:02:06
You did say when when art presented
1:02:08
his first full this solar image is
1:02:11
using his new technology Some celebrated
1:02:13
while is challenging on Fantasity
1:02:15
images
1:02:16
and doubts among some of his peers, but I think
1:02:18
I've seen that every I mean not always happen Let me
1:02:20
give you let me tell you what what you're absolutely right. It was
1:02:23
you know what it was It was one of these cases like
1:02:25
Einstein with the cosmological constant. Yeah. Oh,
1:02:28
I know what nature is doing Yeah,
1:02:30
because the data does not reflect that there
1:02:32
are something wrong with the data. Yeah.
1:02:34
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I Actually,
1:02:37
well anyway that when I first proposed
1:02:39
dark energy in 95 I
1:02:41
proposed it but I was absolutely certain something was wrong
1:02:43
with the data and my proposal
1:02:46
I said basically the data only is me
1:02:48
and Mike Turner the data only With
1:02:51
things if if there's dark energy,
1:02:53
I tried to sell saw permutation wrong,
1:02:55
but you know what's interesting I had a very similar Conversation
1:02:59
with all striker. He's like, yeah, you know, I predict the dark
1:03:01
energy before you know, yeah Yeah, no,
1:03:03
I mean, you know, they you might get a read the paper and I
1:03:05
really did because of my point was to say Hey, some
1:03:08
of the observers there must be something wrong because this is so
1:03:10
crazy It's only consists with us and
1:03:12
no one was more surprised than me
1:03:14
when it turned out to be exactly what what we
1:03:16
predicted And in fact, as I say solid
1:03:18
come when I lectured at Berkeley on that he said what
1:03:21
pretty wrong and then didn't but it Was it was
1:03:23
mostly device from the data that the
1:03:25
data had to be wrong and it was shocking to see it Right,
1:03:28
but anyway, and that's and by the way, that's
1:03:30
the internal story in Berkeley and how Re
1:03:33
published before saw because yeah,
1:03:36
I was around during it all. I was trying to it's everyone I
1:03:38
was going around giving colloquia saying there's this dark energy
1:03:41
and and Caltech and Berkeley and and
1:03:43
I'm and I remember it Spent a term spent the summer
1:03:45
there and I'll be Ellen and and
1:03:48
everyone just slightly smile This was
1:03:50
between 95 and 97 and all
1:03:52
later on when in 98 when they discovered
1:03:54
it was I mean it was satisfying
1:03:56
but it was interesting to to see how But
1:04:00
you know, I understood myself because I didn't believe it. I proposed
1:04:02
it, but I thought it was really so ridiculous
1:04:05
That that it had to be because some
1:04:07
of those wrongs Now let me I want
1:04:10
to get to the science in a second. There's
1:04:13
one thing I want to ask you I can't help it Yeah,
1:04:15
I Still have to understand
1:04:17
this and and you can help me
1:04:21
And I know it's it maybe it's just I
1:04:23
don't know if it's an editorial decision and I've seen
1:04:25
it in a variety of publications um
1:04:29
So black is is capitalized everywhere
1:04:31
and white isn't I know that friend and
1:04:33
I wondered I gotta ask why cuz I
1:04:36
yeah You know, we asked the publisher that
1:04:38
right? So it's funny because Josh did that
1:04:40
to me. He's like Hakeem.
1:04:42
Why are you?
1:04:43
Capitalizing black but not the W
1:04:45
and white and I was like, that's how I've always seen.
1:04:48
Yeah I know and I've always seen it I'm wondering what the argument
1:04:50
is and so it goes to the publisher
1:04:52
and we write a specific little paragraph like yeah You
1:04:55
know, what is the story here? And
1:04:58
the publisher is like, yeah, that's the way it's done black is
1:05:00
capitalized W is it so it's sort of one of
1:05:02
those things like It's
1:05:04
just the story the lottery. Yeah. Yeah.
1:05:07
No, I know. I just think I know the way it is.
1:05:09
Yeah It
1:05:11
was probably the point of at one point, but I just
1:05:13
think here's the question Would you would you
1:05:15
would you capitalize a word like Caucasian?
1:05:18
Is that capitalized? I Think
1:05:20
yeah, because it's a label. I think it's a so
1:05:23
I think that the reason why is because
1:05:26
Black you know, there was
1:05:28
no You know Negro
1:05:31
fell out of favor. Yeah. Yeah, right, you know,
1:05:33
African-american is a mouthful. Yeah.
1:05:35
Yeah. Yeah And so whites
1:05:37
don't you know your race and it's
1:05:40
really interesting because I think when you say black you really
1:05:42
mean African-american Generally, you know, you
1:05:44
don't you don't mean although,
1:05:46
you know, I try to get a Someone
1:05:48
a job in mind when I was chair who was who
1:05:50
was black But he was an African-american
1:05:53
and and what amazed me was the
1:05:55
rules were so ridiculous
1:05:57
He was really good. He's a good physicist from from
1:05:59
Urbana
1:06:00
That I couldn't get him in because he wasn't minority
1:06:02
and I anyway If
1:06:07
you're from like I tell
1:06:09
my friends, you know So I have like I said all over
1:06:11
the the gamut and you know I have friends that are very
1:06:13
afrocentric, you know, and since I've been all
1:06:16
over Africa. Yeah, of course I know Great
1:06:18
jobs working with South. I mean the end of your book
1:06:21
talking working with the South African kids
1:06:23
is really for me well among the most heartwarming part of it
1:06:25
in the last part of your book where you see them
1:06:27
succeed and You know and I and I and
1:06:29
I just admire
1:06:30
what you did there so much. I just have
1:06:32
to thank you Thank you. Well, but the point is
1:06:34
is that I tell my friends like look man. I've been all over Africa
1:06:36
I can't find black a stand nowhere. Yeah,
1:06:39
because people have actual
1:06:41
identities. They have actual I'm an
1:06:43
evil I'm a luco. I'm a luya. I'm a
1:06:45
kissy. I'm a Zulu You know and
1:06:48
and you take that from them You know if you're
1:06:50
French or if you're Irish or if you're German
1:06:52
and you come to an America and you're white like, you know
1:06:55
I've been all over Europe. There's no white Linda in
1:06:57
Europe, you know, you have a you know, but but
1:07:00
here's the thing man I think
1:07:02
that you know, and I didn't think this in my youth, but we're freaking
1:07:04
Americans but that's you know, we're all in this
1:07:06
together and you know,
1:07:09
we whatever your
1:07:12
Recent ingredients are cuz you know, we think
1:07:14
of them as our origins, but they're really our ingredients
1:07:16
nobody Yeah, you know, we're all worms,
1:07:19
right? All that yeah and Petropod
1:07:23
right. Yeah, and we're also probably at some
1:07:25
very basic level all black at all white. But anyway,
1:07:28
right exactly Well, especially a mixed up
1:07:30
person like myself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely
1:07:33
But but the thing is man is that
1:07:35
you know, I think that Give
1:07:38
you know having this I have a representative sample
1:07:40
of the planet. Yeah, you know I haven't
1:07:42
been all over the damn place And
1:07:45
and I think that what's going on in the US is really special
1:07:47
and it's somewhat miraculous And it needs
1:07:50
to be preserved and it needs to be protected
1:07:53
this pluralistic
1:07:55
peaceful
1:07:57
society that is
1:07:59
you know, it's
1:08:01
not to be taken for granted. And you know, we think
1:08:04
our infrastructure. It's as exceptional as you think it is, most Americans
1:08:06
do. I mean, I grew up in Canada, having lived in a few
1:08:08
different countries,
1:08:09
you know, I just. Have you been to the
1:08:11
developing world? I mean, you've been to the brand. Yeah, I've been
1:08:13
to the developing world, no, I know. Look, I'm lucky. I'm
1:08:16
accident,
1:08:17
every day, the accident of my
1:08:19
genes is lucky. I mean, the accident of my circumstances,
1:08:22
yeah, I could have been born, you know, in
1:08:24
so many places in the world where I wouldn't have had a chance.
1:08:27
Maybe you can appreciate it. I tell
1:08:29
my friends, I'm like, listen, man, America is so,
1:08:32
and the same of Canada, it's so prosperous. Our
1:08:34
houses just sit out in the open. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
1:08:36
Right? So in most places, right? You're either
1:08:39
in the slums or behind a wall. It has
1:08:41
razor wire and spikes, right? You
1:08:44
know, and- No, no, I know. Well, not most,
1:08:46
but a lot of them. Yeah, I mean, we just, we have
1:08:48
to be thankful. And that's the other thing. I
1:08:51
mean, I think a lot of this
1:08:53
sense, I hadn't planned to go here, but
1:08:55
I'll tell it. A lot of this ridiculous
1:08:57
sense of victimization that
1:08:59
we're seeing people, this identity
1:09:01
politics, it's people not having enough
1:09:03
to complain about. I mean, if they
1:09:05
were, if they, yeah,
1:09:08
I've been invited because of this one
1:09:10
little thing, but you go to most countries, my God,
1:09:12
you'd be killed. Or what, you know, it's- Yeah,
1:09:15
man, yeah, it's tough. Well,
1:09:17
you know, I think the other reason why there's a lot of victimization
1:09:20
that takes the character that it does,
1:09:22
there was a book I was reading several years ago. I forget
1:09:24
which one it was, but it gave the statistic.
1:09:27
When you have concentrated, tough
1:09:30
living situations. So minorities, you
1:09:33
know, it was something like, if you
1:09:35
are of this particular race and
1:09:37
you're below this particular income level, what's
1:09:40
the probability of your neighbors being
1:09:42
in the same demographic
1:09:45
boat? And so for minorities, it was
1:09:47
much higher than for a white person. When you concentrate
1:09:50
the sort of, you
1:09:53
know, the school issues, the
1:09:55
issues earning money, the issues with
1:09:58
violence and crime.
1:09:59
because you know it's not
1:10:01
when you live in the hood
1:10:03
it's also a Gaussian. Yeah sure
1:10:06
yeah right and those people are just you
1:10:08
know you go to any hood in the morning and you're
1:10:11
gonna see a train of people going to do their mental
1:10:13
waste job right yeah yeah
1:10:15
but
1:10:16
the cats that you see publicly out of the street
1:10:19
are the ones that are the really ends of the
1:10:21
Gaussian yeah are the ones that people
1:10:23
yeah just like on social media you see
1:10:25
the noisy and and and
1:10:28
they're the ones that and they
1:10:31
get and that's the unfortunate thing that you're
1:10:33
right right now is again really good people are before
1:10:36
they know they never you know you wouldn't ignore
1:10:38
them and now we still should ignore them but
1:10:41
they end up getting a voice that they didn't have before
1:10:43
yeah man twitter is that let me
1:10:45
ask you two other things um yeah uh
1:10:49
in this regard and then i wanna as i say i promise
1:10:51
i want to move first to science and then to yeah
1:10:53
web
1:10:54
um the
1:10:59
well let me add it's yeah just
1:11:01
it's because of the timing this i don't know when this will appear
1:11:04
but it's it's it's honest to say that yesterday
1:11:06
affirmative action was what the supreme
1:11:08
court you
1:11:11
know ended up in principle and i think
1:11:13
in practice it won't in academia yeah well
1:11:15
yeah but i think my own feeling is the university is
1:11:17
to get around it one way or another but but um
1:11:20
and i have to say i have mixed feelings about affirmative
1:11:22
action i and and
1:11:25
namely in the sense that
1:11:26
i think
1:11:27
if i think of your case and i want to present
1:11:29
it to you frankly and honestly
1:11:32
because i think we can do that and some people may be
1:11:34
shocked that i'm saying some of these things but i don't really care
1:11:36
um the so you
1:11:39
you went to tugolu
1:11:40
yeah
1:11:41
and it was a great it was a great
1:11:43
place for you and because you were able
1:11:45
to excel there yeah
1:11:47
okay
1:11:48
and if you had let's say if you
1:11:50
had somehow been aware and
1:11:52
this is the big problem you didn't even know your point
1:11:54
is was you said it somewhere when you
1:11:56
went to the navy you didn't even know about college
1:11:59
or how to get in and I think
1:12:01
that's part of the problem. I used to go into inner
1:12:03
city schools in Cleveland. My wife
1:12:05
at the time volunteered in them and I talked
1:12:08
to these kids about
1:12:10
the world. You know I tell them that Lake
1:12:13
Erie was right. They didn't even know they were two miles from the lake much
1:12:15
less than anything else but I talk about
1:12:17
being a son. They had no idea. I mean it was
1:12:19
just a different universe and they didn't see there was
1:12:21
any way to go from here to there. They
1:12:24
just didn't know how and you literally didn't
1:12:26
know how either. Absolutely. Had
1:12:28
no idea it existed. Yeah exactly and you
1:12:30
were lucky enough that some people somehow
1:12:32
showed those options to you. But had
1:12:35
you gone to Stanford as an undergraduate
1:12:38
instead as a graduate student
1:12:39
you would have just crashed
1:12:42
and burned. Exactly.
1:12:43
Yeah. And so
1:12:45
it's I think that's me. Well don't
1:12:47
extrapolate me to everyone else. But there are always tales
1:12:49
or people are gonna succeed no matter what. There are people
1:12:52
who aren't.
1:12:53
The question really is one of whether
1:12:56
when it comes to tertiary education.
1:12:59
Look there are inequities
1:13:02
in our society that I am aware of
1:13:04
as much as you and I become more aware
1:13:06
of when I read books like yours and others.
1:13:08
But
1:13:09
are we gonna solve it by at
1:13:13
that stage in a person? Shouldn't we not be
1:13:15
spending more if we're interested in affirmative
1:13:17
action? Should we not be spending more money making
1:13:19
sure young kids get the opportunities
1:13:22
and knowledge so that they know what
1:13:24
the options are for them in life and some education
1:13:27
and have good books in their schools and
1:13:29
have teachers that encourage them and environments
1:13:31
that encourage them. It seems to me that's the ultimate
1:13:34
only way out of the thing. That's a big ask. I know it's a
1:13:36
big ask but it's the ultimate. How are you
1:13:38
gonna construct that? I mean we haven't done it so
1:13:40
far. But does affirmative action solve
1:13:42
the problem? I'm not gonna solve it. I'm
1:13:46
being the devil's advocate here. I'm not scared. I ain't
1:13:49
scared Lawrence. No I know and I'm not scared
1:13:51
of asking. Let me go there. I'm
1:13:55
not scared of asking. I'm
1:13:56
not scared of asking. and
1:14:00
I, you know, you know how it is. Good people are hard to find.
1:14:02
Yeah, absolutely. And I have
1:14:05
had to hire lots of people. You know, my group
1:14:07
was typically, you know, 15 students
1:14:09
at a time, right? Undergrads, graduate students. And
1:14:11
there were these cats who would come to me, like some of the people
1:14:13
I mentioned to you at NRO, they're basically C
1:14:16
students. Now, if I, the one person,
1:14:18
for example,
1:14:19
I had met him because he was in nanotechnology
1:14:21
lab. Dude came across brilliant as hell.
1:14:24
He came across focus. He came across, and that's
1:14:26
exactly what he was. If you looked at his
1:14:28
transcript, it didn't reflect that at all. Yeah.
1:14:31
So if I am a gatekeeper, and
1:14:34
so that's what we're talking about. Affirmative action. It's probably the
1:14:36
gatekeepers. You're right. And I'm
1:14:38
looking at identifying talent.
1:14:41
What am I basing it on? Am
1:14:43
I basing it slowly, solely on grades
1:14:45
and test scores? Now I will tell you this.
1:14:48
I have been around the block enough to know that,
1:14:51
you know, I always wondered myself, Oh, why
1:14:53
is it black? Because
1:14:55
when I got to Stanford for the first time in my life,
1:14:57
the
1:14:58
black folks around me were not other poor
1:15:00
black folks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I'm
1:15:02
like, they're different. Yeah. That's the point.
1:15:05
You said it. There's a different from you. You joined the sorority
1:15:08
or whatever, or fraternity, and they're
1:15:10
different from you as anyone else. Right. Exactly.
1:15:12
And so I'm just like, yo, you know,
1:15:15
what about us back home in Mississippi? And,
1:15:17
and,
1:15:18
and so I think there's two things. I
1:15:20
also think that there's something you want for the
1:15:22
health of your society. And
1:15:25
that is, for example, here in America,
1:15:27
sometimes, you know, you hear conservatives talk about
1:15:30
the, uh, attacking
1:15:32
the, the, the, the safety net, the societal
1:15:34
safety net, the free money safety net, right? Yeah.
1:15:36
Yeah. Now
1:15:37
what our
1:15:39
ancestors in America had to deal with is
1:15:41
something that modern Americans have not had to deal with,
1:15:43
but we're starting to get there. And that is slums.
1:15:46
Yeah. Right.
1:15:47
You're in Johannesburg, South Africa,
1:15:50
just cause you live in the upper middle-class place,
1:15:52
you're not safe when you have slums. Yeah.
1:15:54
Yeah. Right. You're not going to be able to live without a
1:15:57
wall around your house. You're getting carjacked
1:15:59
in your own driveway.
1:15:59
Yeah, right. So that safety net
1:16:02
you might think is free money But what is doing
1:16:04
is that's protecting you from slums at
1:16:06
which point none of us are safe. Yeah, right. Yeah
1:16:08
Yeah, and so I
1:16:10
May I forgot the question?
1:16:13
Oh You
1:16:15
said but I remember that question
1:16:17
so here's the point though, right so take a
1:16:19
guy like me In
1:16:22
my community in rural Mississippi where I live going
1:16:24
to college people only did that to be teachers and
1:16:27
it rarely happened Alright, yeah, so
1:16:29
I have a nice I'll tell you the story of my niece Monique.
1:16:31
So I'm gonna tell you about the impact of you
1:16:34
know
1:16:35
how It
1:16:38
is that you can make an investment that
1:16:41
is is Pays off bigger
1:16:43
than you can imagine So my
1:16:45
niece was she was a sophomore in high school I
1:16:47
started encouraging her to attend college because
1:16:50
I saw how my life was transformed by my Stanford
1:16:52
education. Yeah, and She
1:16:54
wasn't hearing me man. She was like, no, I don't like school
1:16:57
I want to go to work and because we're in rural
1:16:59
America the job that she could get was working
1:17:01
at the chicken plant Alright, so after
1:17:03
three years working a chicken plant she announces
1:17:05
to me that she's now going to go to college
1:17:08
So
1:17:09
I go home for the holidays
1:17:11
This other family comes over and they
1:17:14
bring up the topic of how they're trying to encourage
1:17:16
their younger family member to go to college So
1:17:18
to poke fun at Monique, I said
1:17:21
hey just get him a job at the chicken plant
1:17:24
Playing got Monique to go to college And
1:17:26
Monique with her little attitude goes
1:17:28
that ain't why I'm going and I'm like
1:17:31
really why are you going? And she goes you
1:17:34
I see your life and that's what I want now.
1:17:37
Monique has a master's degree in education She's
1:17:39
an assistant principal to the leader in
1:17:41
education and people started
1:17:44
going to college From that community
1:17:46
because no one had ever seen anyone do it Yeah,
1:17:49
what was on the other side of that and even
1:17:51
though you see other people do it You
1:17:53
feel like you're so different from them Like
1:17:56
when I went to when I started college thinking
1:17:58
about becoming a medical doctor
1:17:59
See you to me like becoming president. Yeah
1:18:02
now that I've been through the education system I'm like, oh it's
1:18:04
super easy to become a medical doctor, right and way
1:18:06
easier to get the phd in physics
1:18:09
But
1:18:10
the average person doesn't see it that way. Yeah,
1:18:12
you just don't know you know and just like for
1:18:14
example as a as a Supereducated
1:18:17
phd scientist and I
1:18:19
looked at the mathematics I do every day to involve
1:18:22
numbers and i'm like, wait a minute All I ever do is
1:18:24
add subtract and multiply the single digit numbers.
1:18:26
That's you know, what is all this other stuff? You
1:18:29
know Well, you know,
1:18:31
but I think your point is right that it's nice Look,
1:18:34
I get the point. I think it's important for people to see
1:18:37
the possibility in themselves And
1:18:40
and and therefore giving some people
1:18:43
leg up, especially those who can succeed is
1:18:45
great Um is is
1:18:47
a good example for others, but one could also say
1:18:49
and again, i'm i'm to some extent taking the
1:18:51
devil's advocate position You're not entirely because I have
1:18:54
issues. I think my What
1:18:58
you said earlier actually really resonates with
1:19:00
my thinking which is hey what
1:19:02
we really got to do
1:19:04
Is
1:19:05
treat people as individuals and
1:19:07
try and look beyond the transcripts beyond
1:19:10
the but but that doesn't mean Labeling
1:19:13
them by race or by whatever
1:19:15
else is to see what is to is
1:19:17
to really look at them enough to say What
1:19:20
have they overcome? What what are
1:19:22
they really good in and what are the options?
1:19:24
And so In that sense, I kind
1:19:26
of agree with the screen court that having one
1:19:28
box that somehow gives you a leg up
1:19:31
Isn't the same because exactly what you said the
1:19:33
black kids who were at
1:19:35
stanford already had 10 legs up uh
1:19:39
before they got to stanford most of them and they
1:19:41
they didn't you know, so what you want to do is
1:19:43
give kids like you Who may not?
1:19:46
Well, actually look good on paper or
1:19:48
because you did well at tugaloo But but
1:19:50
I mean kids or like the kids you were talking about who
1:19:52
were really Intelligent and
1:19:55
hard working, but it may not be reflected
1:19:57
in a transcript or other things. You want to look
1:19:59
at those other?
1:19:59
Characteristics and schools are gonna end up doing that
1:20:02
which is they're gonna start giving more emphasis
1:20:04
to trying to see the life story and for me
1:20:07
The affirmative action should be to find
1:20:09
people who who for one reason
1:20:11
or another have had to overcome adversity Yeah,
1:20:15
you know and race isn't the only For
1:20:17
everyone not for everyone is race and adversity
1:20:20
there are other adversities and for some people race is an
1:20:22
adversity But take it on an individual
1:20:24
level Great
1:20:26
if we could but you know, there's so many biases
1:20:29
every way Yeah, you're in human minds that it's hard,
1:20:31
you know, even though we come up with these ideals. It's it's
1:20:33
hard to really
1:20:34
Implement them in real life. So I guess
1:20:37
what people were saying what affirmative action is like Okay,
1:20:40
even though we're trying to be objective about it.
1:20:42
We still like like like, you know, I'll
1:20:44
give you another example
1:20:45
Uh-huh
1:20:47
at the end of graduate school, you know, I had a NASA
1:20:49
GSRP fellowship It ended I was still
1:20:51
in graduate school. So I started teaching Kaplan
1:20:53
M cat Okay. All right. Okay,
1:20:56
and man, I it was so eye-opening.
1:20:58
I was like damn back at Tougaloo
1:21:00
We all just went and took these tests. Yeah,
1:21:02
right. Yeah. Yeah There's no way
1:21:05
someone could just walk it in could compete
1:21:07
against my students. I thought mcat physics my
1:21:09
students were
1:21:11
They were maxing the physics on mcat,
1:21:13
right? Yeah, exactly Because I remember
1:21:15
I when I was I grew up in Canada, I took the graduate
1:21:18
entrance exam I didn't I walked in I never
1:21:20
heard of it before then I learned that there, you know
1:21:22
Now I realize your kids taking classes
1:21:24
in it in advance to do it
1:21:26
Yeah, and so what you what's gonna happen is
1:21:28
is that if you base it on test scores if you base
1:21:30
it on Grades like like another
1:21:33
example my son, right? I have a son You
1:21:35
know, I homeschooled a kid till he was 10 But
1:21:38
you know, his sister is in large part responsible
1:21:40
for him learning to read All right, and this
1:21:43
kid could read like an adult when he was
1:21:45
three and a half. All right
1:21:47
So my mom says to me when he was very young,
1:21:49
you know, I think he's smarter than you are And
1:21:52
I was like no the hell he ain't his daddy
1:21:54
got a phd in physics He's one of my parents graduated
1:21:57
high school. It makes a difference. Yeah, it
1:21:59
looks like you want
1:21:59
to send your kids to the best school, having
1:22:03
parents who are educated in what
1:22:05
schools care about. Like, don't get me wrong,
1:22:07
right? We're all educated by our parents and
1:22:09
what they have to offer.
1:22:12
But not many of them have what's
1:22:14
going to get you into Harvard to offer, right? But
1:22:16
if they came from Harvard, they definitely do have it
1:22:18
to offer, right? Well, some
1:22:20
of them, or some of them's parents gave
1:22:23
a lot of money, but you never know. That's true too.
1:22:25
I get to Stanford. Three
1:22:27
guys in my research group, their father's a PhD physicist.
1:22:29
I know what he wrote about in the book. And I knew and I knew some
1:22:31
of their father. I rented a house from Bill Willis once
1:22:34
when I was a kid. Oh, no way. You know, I
1:22:36
got really, I got in contact with Tom Willis again.
1:22:38
We talked like back during the pandemic. Made me
1:22:40
feel old when I read your book because I knew the, I knew
1:22:43
the parents that you were talking about. Oh man,
1:22:45
that is wild. So did you know Max
1:22:47
Allen's father? Because he's from, I think he was at
1:22:49
McGill. Yeah, you know, Canada's a big
1:22:51
country. No, I didn't know. No, it ain't.
1:22:54
It's a big geography. It's a sliver. You
1:22:59
like Canadians early on. I read that. But anyway,
1:23:01
I still love Canadians, man. I work with these Toronto
1:23:04
production companies. Yeah. It's a blast up there.
1:23:06
Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it has, it has,
1:23:08
anyway, it has advantage. I've now
1:23:10
sampled both back and forth and there's advantages.
1:23:12
Yeah, I love both. Exactly. And you said something
1:23:15
when you're talking about, about your son and, and,
1:23:18
and education. I was going to, I didn't want to interrupt
1:23:20
you, but I lost that train of thought now, but
1:23:22
I think, but the bottom line is, oh yeah,
1:23:25
look,
1:23:25
I, when I was at Yale, when I taught at Yale, I,
1:23:29
I never got involved in undergraduate missions, thank God. But,
1:23:31
but I taught students and I
1:23:33
thought,
1:23:34
these Yale students aren't any different than, I
1:23:36
mean, the mean, it's a distribution. The difference
1:23:38
was the tail, the distribution was really
1:23:40
long,
1:23:41
but the middle ones I taught, you know, they were, I remember
1:23:43
teaching them, we were football players. They stuck to me. They could
1:23:46
have been football players anywhere. I don't know how they got into Yale.
1:23:48
Yale got a football team? Yeah, probably.
1:23:50
And, and, when I liked about being
1:23:53
at MIT as they didn't, but anyway,
1:23:55
the, the, I always said,
1:23:57
when it came to even graduate school, you know,
1:23:59
people,
1:24:01
I was on some selection committees there and
1:24:03
you know, there are transcripts and there are these tests and
1:24:06
I always basically said, you know I think we could
1:24:08
just throw all the applications down the stairs and take
1:24:10
the ones that fell to the bottom We'd end up getting
1:24:12
you know, the ability to know in advance who's
1:24:15
gonna who's gonna succeed wasn't I'm Very
1:24:18
dubious about all of these details like
1:24:20
but nevertheless I think I think the whole approach
1:24:23
of trying to look at each kid and realizing
1:24:25
that adversity Isn't
1:24:28
you can't I'm so much against
1:24:30
identity politics You can't say in advance on
1:24:32
the bait necessarily the basis of someone's race
1:24:35
their religion or sometimes even
1:24:37
even their economic level Oh economic level
1:24:40
probably a better determiner. You can't really
1:24:42
say whether to what extent they've suffered Well,
1:24:44
they they've had to overcome things or benefited
1:24:46
from things but one thing that I want to ask you
1:24:48
both and then we're gonna leave I promise is
1:24:51
Some people say oh look you chose a black
1:24:55
advisor and
1:24:58
and
1:24:59
And the book in the way you describe
1:25:02
it you chose it because you're really turned on by what he was doing
1:25:05
Not because he's black
1:25:07
Is that true? Well, it's it's
1:25:09
uh
1:25:13
It's hard to unpack It's
1:25:16
hard to know in advance because here's
1:25:18
the thing that happened and I talked about this in the book
1:25:20
as well After doing my summer
1:25:23
research programs, I've met a lot of
1:25:25
disgruntled about to graduate
1:25:27
graduate students Yeah, yeah, and they armed
1:25:30
me with these questions to ask The
1:25:33
people now, here's the other thing about
1:25:35
this There is diversity in
1:25:37
the diversity. Yeah, right. I've
1:25:39
never met a black dude like Art Walker before.
1:25:41
Yeah, sure at that age
1:25:44
He I would have called him what
1:25:47
I have been called Which is white
1:25:49
wash. Yeah In the book you
1:25:51
thought he was white wash. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't
1:25:53
like odd. He's my man, right? It wasn't
1:25:55
like that at all. But when I hit him with those questions,
1:25:58
dude, this dude came across so sincere
1:25:59
You know, and he came across
1:26:02
like he really did care about because that's what they were
1:26:04
saying make sure
1:26:06
Your advisor that you choose cares about
1:26:08
humans and yeah Great
1:26:10
thing to tell students because I've met so many advisors
1:26:13
who don't and I'm yeah, I'd to be an advisor
1:26:15
who does But yeah, and he
1:26:17
mailed that man and then I then I challenged
1:26:19
him was like, oh, yeah Well, what are your students doing
1:26:21
now? Yeah, yeah started with Hal Tompkins
1:26:24
that slack And then he goes and you may have heard of my other students
1:26:26
Sally ride Yeah, I should
1:26:28
have booked you. Yeah, that's all he had to
1:26:30
say for you. And then you Okay, you want
1:26:32
you overwrite that I'm like man, man.
1:26:34
We showed those solar photographs that yeah,
1:26:37
right with research class That's who that
1:26:39
that's yeah, then you clearly captured
1:26:42
you know, that's you Who's the photo
1:26:44
and I want to get to the solar photographs in a second? Yeah
1:26:46
the reason I'm saying is that some people say their
1:26:49
big problem is is they
1:26:51
don't see people that look like themselves
1:26:54
and Therefore they can't and
1:26:56
that's a big impediment
1:26:58
to going ahead and doing these I can understand
1:27:01
it to some extent Except I never saw people
1:27:03
that look to me. I always still felt
1:27:05
like an outsider and to free Frank.
1:27:07
Yeah, so and
1:27:10
my supervisor Was
1:27:13
a black PhD graduate from Stanford. Okay.
1:27:15
Yeah, whoo
1:27:16
Roscoe Giles his name I've
1:27:20
been talking to Roscoe all month. Yeah. Okay
1:27:22
Roscoe is and I chose Roscoe not
1:27:24
because You know, he looked like me cuz
1:27:27
he didn't but cuz he was really nice and
1:27:29
really smart And he
1:27:31
also said I was the kind of guy who had
1:27:33
to work on what I was interested in What someone
1:27:36
else was working and he did all of that and
1:27:38
he was a wonderful man and I didn't need so And
1:27:43
then us because for me I could have cared
1:27:45
what someone looked
1:27:46
like or where the back room was Let me ask you directly
1:27:48
man So so, you know, some people gonna hate me for
1:27:51
saying this but I noticed this when I was at to the loop
1:27:53
We would go to the summer research program. Yeah, and
1:27:55
I I said You
1:27:59
know
1:27:59
the students come back from the summer, so I'll
1:28:02
be like, oh, I went to this program. I was the only black student
1:28:04
there. It was horrible.
1:28:05
And I always joke that I'd be like, yeah, I was
1:28:07
the only black student there. It was great. Right? Not
1:28:10
because I was the only black student there. I'll give you an example.
1:28:13
My very first summer research program, I'm
1:28:15
going to admit this, man. It's in the book. I was a big pothead.
1:28:18
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I beat these white
1:28:20
dudes at University of Georgia. And
1:28:22
the next week, they get busted for selling pots.
1:28:26
But they're right back the next day. But
1:28:28
these guys were like, oh, man, you've
1:28:31
never done psychedelics? And I hadn't. Not that summer.
1:28:34
You don't know Pink Floyd. You don't know
1:28:36
Led Zeppelin. And they want to teach me. And every
1:28:38
day, I'm like hanging out with these dudes. I'm also
1:28:40
hanging out with my frat brothers. I'm also going to
1:28:42
play basketball. I go to the University of
1:28:44
Arizona, right, that summer. Same thing.
1:28:46
White dude takes me rock climbing
1:28:49
in Oak Creek Canyon and all this
1:28:51
kind of jazz.
1:28:53
And so I've always been a very curious
1:28:55
person. And I always knew this.
1:28:58
People of different cultures. So when I show up
1:29:00
at Berkeley in the summer of 91,
1:29:02
I'm very open about, I don't
1:29:05
know this. I don't know that. So I don't know if you know
1:29:07
Rebecca Bernstein at Carnegie Observatories.
1:29:11
So her and her Princeton classmate
1:29:13
and this guy from Haverford
1:29:15
were like, oh, man, we're going
1:29:17
to show you everything. Never had Thai food. Here's Thai
1:29:19
food. Never had an artichoke. Here's an artichoke. Never
1:29:21
had Indian food. Here's Indian food. And I was loving
1:29:24
it. And by the way, we're all Jewish. How come you didn't
1:29:26
know based on our names? I
1:29:28
didn't know. But
1:29:31
I understand, reading
1:29:33
about humans, that people come in a couple of times.
1:29:36
There are those of us that love nudists. And
1:29:38
there are those of us that hate nudists. They want everything
1:29:40
to be the same and that kind of thing. So
1:29:42
just like there are people, I don't understand, who
1:29:44
are like, oh, this person was not speaking
1:29:47
English in public. I'm angry at them. I don't
1:29:49
understand that.
1:29:50
One time I was saying. Yeah, but I guess
1:29:52
the question I'm asking is how important. And then I'm really
1:29:55
asking. Here's where it is important.
1:29:57
It's not important necessarily for inspired.
1:29:59
you into the field. Most of the black
1:30:02
astronomers and astrophysicists, I know in physicists,
1:30:04
they weren't inspired by a black physicist per
1:30:06
se, they were inspired by the universe or Einstein
1:30:09
or somebody like that, right? But where it
1:30:11
does matter is in mentoring,
1:30:13
right? That's what I'm wondering. You got
1:30:15
mentored, yeah, I was gonna ask about that. So
1:30:18
the way that art told me how, taught me how
1:30:20
to handle things, like I've had great mentors like Michael
1:30:22
Levy and Natalie Rowe at Berkeley,
1:30:24
right, were mentors. What they taught me was great mentors
1:30:26
in high school that were also mentored. Yeah,
1:30:29
Mr. Reed. And they were all white teachers. They were great
1:30:31
mentors. Oh yeah, Mr. Reed's, right,
1:30:33
our one white teacher. Yeah,
1:30:36
exactly. And so, you know, most of my adult,
1:30:38
most of my mentors this
1:30:40
century have been white women, actually,
1:30:43
right? Because a lot of it has been in media, and
1:30:46
to the extent that I have decided to like, okay,
1:30:49
I want to do something in another field, let me go find this
1:30:51
Croatian dude, I think he's Croatian, Joko
1:30:53
Ibezic. Oh, you know, I'm interested
1:30:55
in,
1:30:57
continue this project, who's the best at it? Oh,
1:30:59
Josh Bloom and Joey Richards, you know,
1:31:01
let me go work with them. Oh, now I'm interested
1:31:03
in this. Oh yeah, Dave McCammis
1:31:06
at Princeton. So for me, it's
1:31:08
like, I'm interested in a topic, and I'm looking
1:31:10
for a cool person to work with. I'm not looking for a
1:31:12
black person to work with. I'm looking for a cool person
1:31:14
to work with. But at the same time, because I
1:31:17
am a black dude, I'm like, yo, Stefano
1:31:19
Alexander, let's write a paper together, homie, right? You
1:31:21
know, right? Just like I did with my
1:31:23
friend, Dave Santiago, just like I did with my
1:31:25
friend, Nisha Turner, we're like, friends
1:31:27
like, hey, let's write papers together, right? Yeah, yeah.
1:31:29
You know, Lawrence, let's write
1:31:31
a paper together, man. But,
1:31:33
you know, and so I think, though, for
1:31:36
understanding the type of challenges that
1:31:38
you're going to have,
1:31:39
and how people perceive you, you
1:31:42
do have to operate in a certain way, right?
1:31:44
And so, art
1:31:47
taught me, so I'll give an example, in
1:31:49
Silicon Valley, after I left Stanford,
1:31:51
I got challenged. Here I am,
1:31:54
one day this guy, Korean dude,
1:31:56
Nam Han Kim, not Nam Han Kim, Won
1:31:59
Kyung.
1:32:00
whatever, Kim. He says, I
1:32:02
can't come here. I was terrorized
1:32:05
as a dude already. He was really serious. He
1:32:07
said, let me tell you something, man. I've been in this company
1:32:09
for many years. I want to have two black PhDs and
1:32:12
applied materials that had 3000 PhDs out of 22,000 total
1:32:15
employees worldwide. Right? One of two black
1:32:17
PhDs. He said, let me tell you something. Something
1:32:21
he's like, here's how I said it. I've been at this company
1:32:24
for a very long time, 15 years. I've
1:32:26
seen a lot of things. I've heard a lot of things. And
1:32:28
there are certain things I wish I hadn't seen and heard.
1:32:31
And I've heard something about you. And what I want
1:32:33
to let you know is that if you're a member of certain
1:32:35
groups, you get to hear certain things. And if you and
1:32:37
if you're not, you don't. And he was talking
1:32:39
about being a Korean guy. He said something
1:32:42
is about to happen to you. And it was about
1:32:44
to happen to you because you were black.
1:32:46
If I were you, I would go get an attorney
1:32:48
right now. Now, let me tell you how I've always
1:32:50
operated. Unless someone stands
1:32:52
up in a crowded room and starts yelling racial
1:32:55
explicit that I'm not bringing
1:32:57
it up. Yeah, right. So I don't see it
1:32:59
working out in my favor. Right. Yeah.
1:33:02
So when he says that to me, I'm like, Whoa,
1:33:04
dude, I have no idea what you're talking about.
1:33:06
I
1:33:07
don't want no parts of it. And it unfolded
1:33:09
exactly as he said it did. It was going
1:33:12
to.
1:33:12
But because I had Art Walker's training
1:33:15
and how to handle certain
1:33:17
types of injustices, I was already
1:33:19
prepared. And I survived that particular
1:33:22
event. Another thing that happened while
1:33:24
I was working at Applied Materials, I
1:33:27
get a call from the EEOC,
1:33:29
an attorney in
1:33:32
Washington, DC. And he says, Listen,
1:33:34
we have received strong evidence that you have been discriminated
1:33:36
against in hiring. So here's what
1:33:39
happened. I went to the Stanford career fair.
1:33:41
I gave out my CV to various
1:33:43
companies. And one of these Silicon Valley
1:33:46
companies north of
1:33:48
Stanford, not south like Applied Materials was.
1:33:50
Apparently I went and they were evaluating
1:33:52
and somebody in the room felt like I was being
1:33:55
discriminated against because of my race and they reported
1:33:57
it, right. I knew nothing about it. So again,
1:33:59
I'm like, dude,
1:33:59
I don't know anything about this. I can't say anything about
1:34:02
it, right? So this is in a way for me
1:34:04
here say Right not
1:34:07
you know, I don't know when people have come at me I
1:34:09
don't assume they're motivated by
1:34:12
anything other than what I can directly
1:34:14
observe They're being motivated by attitude.
1:34:17
Mm-hmm, right? But at the same
1:34:19
time I still have to handle this situation Yeah,
1:34:22
and I get it white dudes got to handle the situation
1:34:24
to women got it, you know, everybody, you know
1:34:26
It's a tough world out here,
1:34:28
right? Yeah, and so my attitude has
1:34:31
always been
1:34:32
so what but here's the thing
1:34:34
man. I Used to
1:34:36
have two ways of dealing with problems Right
1:34:39
before I met our Walker
1:34:40
moping and punching you in the face So
1:34:44
I needed that training Something
1:34:47
between those two that's not good. He knows
1:34:49
it right didn't the question I know I'm gonna
1:34:51
keep putting
1:34:52
he was a great mentor But
1:34:55
I like to think if I'd been your professor I might
1:34:57
have been able to give you that training too You
1:35:00
know what? It really depends.
1:35:03
It really really depends. Maybe you would have
1:35:05
or maybe you would not even know Yeah, yeah,
1:35:08
no to approach me and let me know
1:35:10
certain things in certain ways Right, like like
1:35:12
I anticipate you're gonna need this. So
1:35:14
let me show you how to do it the right way Yeah,
1:35:17
maybe that's why I'm trying to figure this I'm trying to yeah
1:35:19
I found it eye-opening to read your story because
1:35:22
I you know, I've had perceptions I've of
1:35:24
academia that I've seen and and and I
1:35:27
mean it's it it's it's It's
1:35:31
competitive and there's assholes and if there's
1:35:34
cowardice and there's all the rest at the same time It's
1:35:37
also more one of the more welcoming
1:35:39
enlightening environments And absolutely
1:35:42
and when I hear it talked about as if it's just like,
1:35:44
you know, but here's the thing No, man, it's
1:35:46
that whole vulnerability trick. Yeah Yeah When
1:35:48
you're when you're the vulnerable when there's someone looking to
1:35:50
make you know Like a new manager comes in they want to make
1:35:52
an example they're going right for the ball Yeah, and
1:35:55
I've been at the button of that and I probably for all
1:35:57
I know I've been at the other end too And when I was I
1:35:59
try never to be but but uh
1:36:02
well look let's i'm just gonna close this over here one
1:36:04
second i'm like fat joe y'all
1:36:06
talk that stuff i want that beef what
1:36:08
was that there's a uh line in uh you know there's
1:36:13
this dj college song called over
1:36:16
with all these rappers you know lil wayne and
1:36:19
one of them is fat joe
1:36:20
and he said y'all talk that ish i
1:36:22
want that beef right i
1:36:24
love you know bring me the beef i'll suited
1:36:27
to sleep but i enjoyed
1:36:30
this fight but not you know okay
1:36:32
no this is okay no this is great and i'm glad
1:36:34
we had that this particular frank conversation
1:36:36
about this because i think i think most
1:36:39
people would never yeah maybe people
1:36:41
talk about it i think and and
1:36:43
um
1:36:43
you know and it's it's just not black or white and
1:36:45
it's interesting for me to have seen my attitude towards
1:36:48
the affirmative action decision is different now than it would
1:36:50
have been a few
1:36:51
years ago as i've watched uh
1:36:53
people and but the key thing that art
1:36:55
told you and this was a great segue that
1:36:57
taught you this uh
1:37:00
is is you it's you say near the end of the book
1:37:02
art
1:37:03
art taught me the
1:37:04
the difference between what i believe to be true
1:37:07
and what i know as a scientist to
1:37:09
be true absolutely that's the final measure
1:37:11
of a researcher to be able to challenge one's
1:37:13
own beliefs and prejudices
1:37:15
let evidence tell the story and
1:37:17
like for me that's one of the most important lines in
1:37:20
the book believe or not because that's certainly what
1:37:22
i
1:37:23
i mean i spend most of my life trying to convince people
1:37:25
of is that that's the heart of science
1:37:28
and it's the nature of science and and if he
1:37:30
taught you that that's what really turned you into scientists
1:37:32
forget the mentoring and all the rest of stuff this
1:37:35
you know that's to get along with people he
1:37:37
taught you to get along with people and that's okay and
1:37:39
and it's a secret but scientists are actually people
1:37:42
but but but the really
1:37:44
important thing
1:37:45
that's just that's just wind addressing the really important
1:37:47
thing to be a scientist is that sentence
1:37:50
and that's the nature of science so what
1:37:53
so i want to talk to you about the nate because
1:37:55
i think all of this is also relevant to web we're
1:37:57
going to get to it right when i read this
1:38:00
It indicates to me your approach to James
1:38:02
Webb
1:38:03
was that of a scientist Absolutely
1:38:06
Which is to say the difference between what
1:38:08
I believe to be true and what I know to be true
1:38:10
and to be you know Challenged I
1:38:13
don't do believe Yeah, exactly I don't when
1:38:15
people say what do you believe I say belief isn't the
1:38:17
right no scientists should say that we're belief Things
1:38:19
are likely or unlikely and you can hear the
1:38:21
reasons why and hear the reasons why and yeah We'll
1:38:24
get there, but that's all what I when everyone says
1:38:26
belief and by the way Who hey,
1:38:28
would I ask the politician that what do you do
1:38:30
you believe who cares what you believe? Yeah,
1:38:32
exactly and yeah, and people have said you
1:38:34
believe in this of why it's just not the right word
1:38:37
for science And although I will say one of
1:38:39
the things I didn't cover. I was really amused by
1:38:41
your short career as a preacher. Oh Which
1:38:45
up and and and and Did
1:38:48
you ever come out by the way to the community is
1:38:50
not as not you know because I've
1:38:52
been with a lot of clergy There's a there's a clergy
1:38:54
project.
1:38:55
I've talked to logic clergy people who have
1:38:58
their jobs and they don't believe but they know they're trapped Right,
1:39:00
they can't they can't come out And
1:39:02
and when I saw that you were you were doing a great job
1:39:05
preaching, but there was one problem You didn't believe it
1:39:07
reminds me a lot of clergy people It
1:39:10
really especially with you know in
1:39:12
the book where I talk about my wife, you
1:39:14
know, I get married her dad was a hardcore
1:39:18
Believer man, and I would
1:39:20
you know in your youth, you know You have these
1:39:22
discussions about religions and politics and what's true
1:39:24
and what's not so yeah,
1:39:25
I did that back then So in
1:39:27
a way I did come out, you know, and I did you
1:39:30
never came out to the community that you preach to I assume
1:39:32
right
1:39:33
well But
1:39:36
here's here's the point it is how you define
1:39:39
coming out to them, right? On
1:39:41
the one hand it
1:39:42
was a situation where you know, I I
1:39:45
knew that I didn't know
1:39:46
And so in high school I would
1:39:48
have more been described as more agnostic.
1:39:51
Yeah anything I'm like, okay That's you know,
1:39:54
I don't know. I don't know And so it's not
1:39:56
until I really did the deep dive in
1:39:58
the history and knowledge and everything
1:39:59
in graduate school and I was like, okay, here's now
1:40:02
how I understand the world. Here's how
1:40:04
I understand the world of spirituality and humans
1:40:07
and their interface with it. Here's how I understand the
1:40:09
physical world. You know, and, and, and
1:40:12
came to a place though, where,
1:40:14
you know, I'm more forgiving of people,
1:40:17
you know, and the variation
1:40:19
and diversity of belief and ideas and this
1:40:21
sort of thing. I just want us to be well
1:40:23
behaved. I don't want us killing each other. Right.
1:40:26
You know, I, you know,
1:40:29
I also would like us to be able
1:40:31
to tell what's real
1:40:33
and what's not real. So I've often said, if you've
1:40:35
known me, like one of my biggest fears is going before
1:40:37
a jury of 12 of my peers. Yeah. I know
1:40:39
how I, the transformation I went
1:40:41
through to learn rigor and what
1:40:43
it is to know, you know,
1:40:45
and then I'm like, man, you know, had I
1:40:47
not gone through that, I was accepting
1:40:49
things that's true that I did not know to be
1:40:51
true. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, when
1:40:53
you look at what people do, I witnessed testimony
1:40:56
and I've seen him and her say
1:40:58
testimony. Well, I've seen it and I've, I've seen
1:41:00
it and I've been at various ends of it and it's really,
1:41:03
it's really scary. But, but, but,
1:41:05
so what turned you, so, so let's
1:41:07
talk about the science that he taught
1:41:09
you to, what did you,
1:41:12
what did you,
1:41:16
in your science, what did you most challenge your
1:41:19
prejudice? What was the most surprising result as
1:41:21
a solar physicist? Dude,
1:41:25
when your damn models matched actual reality.
1:41:27
That's right. That's right. The
1:41:30
same way it was with me with dark energy. I couldn't believe
1:41:32
it was right. Yeah, man. You know, you get this data
1:41:34
that you can barely analyze, right?
1:41:36
You build some model that's kind of like a toy
1:41:38
model and you put them one next
1:41:40
to the other and say, Oh, this thing we can't see.
1:41:43
It's more than likely this. Yeah.
1:41:45
And then somebody makes an actual measurement
1:41:47
and it turns out to be that. Right. So
1:41:49
I'll give you two good examples really early
1:41:52
on that turned out to be true. So one thing
1:41:54
is, is that if you look at the sun, you know, there's
1:41:56
the nascent slow speed solar wind
1:41:59
at 400. Columbus for second
1:42:01
there's a high-speed solar when it comes out of coronal holes
1:42:03
at 800 and you see these rate like structures
1:42:05
coming out That look like oh that
1:42:08
must be what's flowing they're called polar plumes out
1:42:10
of there They must be the source of high-speed solar wind
1:42:12
we do our analysis find out. Oh, no,
1:42:15
actually they're not we published that in 1997 the
1:42:17
sumer Spectrograph
1:42:20
on the so-called spacecraft that measures
1:42:22
the flows of these damn things
1:42:24
a few years later and they match exactly
1:42:27
But nobody cites that paper even
1:42:29
though we did it for her. It's probably like your dark energy Then
1:42:32
I say okay What is the nature
1:42:35
of because remember when I told you people
1:42:37
didn't believe arts data one thing they didn't
1:42:39
believe was that you know the higher energy
1:42:42
x-ray
1:42:43
Images that existed before
1:42:45
that you only saw this emission of
1:42:47
the corona in what are called active regions,
1:42:50
right? But now here he presents
1:42:52
this data at 171 angstroms You
1:42:54
know narrow band image and there's emission
1:42:57
covering the entire disk and the community
1:42:59
says dude Your pass
1:43:02
band must be way wider than you
1:43:04
think and you're getting some continuum emission Contamination
1:43:07
coming through because it should only be in the active regions.
1:43:10
So a big part of my PhD was like, oh,
1:43:12
let me model this stuff Oh what we've done
1:43:14
here is we found the nature of the upper
1:43:17
transition region structures and all these
1:43:19
little tiny loops and loop segments And you got
1:43:21
to wait all the way I published that in 98 and
1:43:23
you got to wait all the no 99 You have
1:43:25
to wait all the way to like 20
1:43:28
There's this rocket spectrograph
1:43:30
called iris imaging spectrograph.
1:43:33
I finally Resolved it in this exactly
1:43:35
the same and of course, nobody cites that paper
1:43:37
either. Oh, both of those Were
1:43:40
were pretty cool, but then I go to Silicon
1:43:42
Valley man I never saw a silicon
1:43:44
wafer had no idea how chips were being made. Oh,
1:43:47
yeah I remember time I learned that when I was when
1:43:49
he first developed volumetry
1:43:50
There you go. Right and so here I am The
1:43:53
first thing I do is I apply the
1:43:55
same type of astronomical spectroscopy
1:43:58
that I was doing to to semiconductor
1:44:00
manufacturing. And I developed all these
1:44:04
diagnostics, Institute Spectroscopic
1:44:07
Process Diagnostics that use me like
1:44:09
three different patents. And then I go into
1:44:11
the experimental lab and I actually developed
1:44:13
the techniques for the last generation of planar
1:44:15
transistors, right? I was able to
1:44:18
figure out because they were moving from silicon
1:44:20
or silicon dioxide to tungsten
1:44:23
or some other reactive refractory metal
1:44:25
on high K dielectrics or thin dielectrics.
1:44:28
And so I worked out those edge processes, right?
1:44:30
So
1:44:31
that stuff was
1:44:33
crazy. But then the other thing that happened was more
1:44:35
recent. My graduate student came
1:44:37
to me
1:44:38
and said, hey, I told them to look for
1:44:40
these scale invariant, self-similar
1:44:43
processes and make sure you
1:44:45
look to see
1:44:46
fields that are adjacent
1:44:48
to ours to see if you can apply what we know
1:44:50
to that field. And my graduate student
1:44:52
is like, Dr. O, I see this process
1:44:55
called torsional spine reconnection that
1:44:57
seems to be scale invariant. It happens
1:44:59
in galaxy cores, on star services,
1:45:02
planetary magnetosphere. If we can do
1:45:04
it in the lab, we can harness
1:45:06
this and we can have the world's fastest ion propulsion
1:45:09
technology. Well, guess what we did? We
1:45:11
worked up the theory and simulations for
1:45:13
his thesis. And now he founded a company
1:45:15
and we, you know,
1:45:17
I've just advised them over the last years, but they
1:45:19
built a prototype, a working prototype
1:45:22
in the lab. You know, so
1:45:25
that's also pretty cool. But any damn thing, you
1:45:27
know, I do a lot of lab work. So I also did the
1:45:29
first four-sided multiple packaging for large
1:45:32
detectors, like that's on the
1:45:35
dark energy camera and now going on. So when you consider
1:45:38
yourself, I mean, see my field, the field
1:45:40
of, well, which I came in particle physics, but I mean,
1:45:42
you were the theorist or an experimentalist. But
1:45:45
you consider yourself, I'm
1:45:47
a personary, I'm a science personary. Yeah,
1:45:49
based on both. I mean, it's great if you can do
1:45:51
both. I think it's, I wish I'd been able to do
1:45:53
more experiments or any
1:45:55
experiments. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love
1:45:57
it. But you know, I want to, you know what I want to do, man. I
1:45:59
want my, my, my.
1:45:59
First, you know, I'm getting older and I'm like, look, I want
1:46:02
to do something fundamental, groundbreaking,
1:46:04
cosmological in theory. Yeah. Right?
1:46:07
Yeah. OK. Good. You're telling me.
1:46:09
You're telling me. But you got to
1:46:11
find a good problem. You know, that's the thing. You got to find
1:46:13
a good problem to sink your teeth in. Yeah. And
1:46:15
a problem that's solvable. There are a lot of good problems with
1:46:17
what's the nature of dark energy, but that ain't going to be solved for
1:46:20
a long time. Wow. Yeah, you're telling me, man.
1:46:22
I have bets on that, although the people involved, including
1:46:24
one was Stephen Hawking, they never admitted they lost
1:46:27
their bet. I used to. Stephen
1:46:30
Hawking lost a bet to you? Yeah, but
1:46:32
actually a few other people, one or two noble
1:46:34
prisoners as well. They argued
1:46:36
at the time that they were sure we'd
1:46:39
know the nature of dark energy. This was in 90.
1:46:41
This was in 2004. They said in 10
1:46:44
years. I said, believe me, you're not going to know it in 10
1:46:46
years. You're not going to know it
1:46:47
for anyway. It doesn't matter. We know it, man. We got these crazy
1:46:49
big rammer at the cosmological constant. We're
1:46:51
good to go. Anyway, well,
1:46:54
look, it's this. You're absolutely
1:46:56
right, by the way. I remember once talking to
1:46:58
Stephen Weinberg about this. And
1:47:01
I think he's written about it, too. People don't realize
1:47:04
how intimidating it is. If you're a
1:47:06
theorist like we were, we are.
1:47:09
Certainly, Steve and I were in this field
1:47:12
of particle physics. It's incredibly intimidating to think
1:47:14
that something you're working on late
1:47:16
at night is any
1:47:20
relationship to what's actually out there. Right,
1:47:22
yeah. And it's so shocking
1:47:25
when it works out to be. But it really
1:47:27
is intimidating to think that somehow
1:47:29
the world is a bang, some
1:47:31
rule that you've argued it should be a bang. And
1:47:35
the one or two times in my life that's happened where
1:47:38
it's really been right, it's really kind of the most amazing
1:47:40
thing. And obviously, dark energy is the biggest surprise.
1:47:43
But
1:47:43
I mean, the biggest validation in a way.
1:47:46
But yeah, it's really kind of, if
1:47:48
you're a scientist,
1:47:50
people think that, I mean, you have to have faith.
1:47:52
And I don't like to use the word faith. But you
1:47:54
do have to have, in order to work on
1:47:56
something for a year, and some of my colleagues
1:47:59
have worked on something for
1:47:59
20 years. You have to, in
1:48:02
your heart, think that it's probably right, but
1:48:04
at the same time, there's
1:48:05
a part of you that thinks there's no way it can be
1:48:07
right. It's an interesting dichotomy, the
1:48:11
experience of science that way. And
1:48:13
it's great, and it's a humility, I think. And
1:48:16
people often say scientists are humble, but it's
1:48:18
the recognition, because most of the
1:48:21
time, you
1:48:22
know, I've written a lot of papers,
1:48:24
and most of the time,
1:48:25
the universe hasn't been smart enough to do what
1:48:27
I said it should be. Well, you know, that whole thing
1:48:30
about scientists being humble, too, you know, one of
1:48:32
the things that I always say is, when you look
1:48:34
at the layperson conversation about scientists,
1:48:37
I feel like
1:48:38
a lot of people think that every 50 years
1:48:40
or so, we go in a room, all the world's scientists,
1:48:43
and it's always the same topic. What's
1:48:45
the lie? We're all going to agree on. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
1:48:47
exactly. And the secret handshake. Yeah, climate
1:48:49
change. Yeah, we're in fact, people realize
1:48:52
that most people go to work trying to show their colleagues
1:48:54
wrong. Well, that's the Yeah, we Yeah,
1:48:57
you go you go talk in your own group,
1:48:59
and they just attack you nonstop. Right.
1:49:02
And that's great. And that's the problem with modern education
1:49:04
is people are, right, you know, if it's
1:49:06
that dialectic keeps science going, and yet
1:49:08
some people, how dare you question
1:49:12
my belief? Because I'm triggered.
1:49:14
And now I'm intimidated. Now I'm victimized.
1:49:16
And that's a real problem with undergraduate education. And I'm
1:49:18
in the country I see now is it you can't you
1:49:20
can't you can't have an open conversation
1:49:23
attacking ideas. And it's not people. It's
1:49:25
the idea. That's the idea. You got
1:49:27
to attack the idea, not the people. Yeah, yeah. But
1:49:29
you know, it's the thing. I think that when
1:49:32
you're talking about learners,
1:49:34
and you're talking about people coming in
1:49:37
with cultural, I don't
1:49:39
want to use the word baggage, but basically cultural
1:49:42
stories, right. And
1:49:44
you know, it's so hard to reveal
1:49:46
your ignorance. Like I've always been comfortable revealing
1:49:48
my ignorance, you know, like I will be
1:49:50
in a room at a table tomorrow.
1:49:53
And you use a word I don't know. I'm like, I
1:49:55
have what? Stop the presses.
1:49:57
What's that word? And nobody
1:49:59
treats
1:49:59
me like I'm an idiot for maybe behind
1:50:02
my back they're all saying it but you know to
1:50:04
my face everybody's like you're a smart guy right
1:50:06
but I but I
1:50:08
you know the
1:50:09
magnitude of what I don't know compared to
1:50:11
the tiny freaking sliver that I know
1:50:14
you know I feel like an idiot at all times you know
1:50:16
that's the right attitude yeah hey man
1:50:18
it's the reality right if you look at subtract
1:50:20
what you know from all there is to be known what
1:50:23
are you left with all there is to be known yeah I
1:50:25
have no
1:50:27
I like the new book is
1:50:29
essentially edge of knowledge it's what we know
1:50:32
we don't know but in fact what
1:50:35
the book I'd like to write is the unknown unknowns and
1:50:37
stuff we don't know we don't know but that'd be very short
1:50:39
books if we
1:50:41
knew it we'd call it known unknowns yeah anyway
1:50:44
look it's that training I wanted to know
1:50:46
that ain't oh go ahead yeah it's
1:50:48
a surprise that you're right the willingness
1:50:51
to be wrong yeah that is
1:50:53
so central to science and the and the
1:50:55
willingness to change your mind yeah
1:50:57
and and now I want to go to the what the
1:51:00
reason as I say the reason I first knew
1:51:02
about you the reason yeah I first asked
1:51:04
you to be on this a while ago yeah was this James
1:51:06
Webb story and I'm so happy that it expanded
1:51:09
into other things yeah but
1:51:11
it's an example of exactly that
1:51:14
of of of being of thinking you know
1:51:16
this is likely and this is probably the
1:51:19
case but you know what the evidence doesn't
1:51:21
support it I'm wanting to change my mind and then
1:51:23
coming up with with a reaction of people
1:51:25
who are supposedly scientists supposedly
1:51:28
who are who demonstrate
1:51:30
no characteristics of science
1:51:33
so let's talk about let's talk about James so a lot
1:51:36
of people aren't too aware of this of this controversy
1:51:38
even though even though um
1:51:40
um what what's his name who I liked
1:51:42
a lot uh at the New York Times wrote about it
1:51:45
and oh yeah Michael Powell yeah he's got a
1:51:47
great gig at the Times and I've written him I want to
1:51:49
do a podcast
1:51:50
but um so James Webb's space
1:51:52
telescope I remember when I first heard James Webb I'd never
1:51:55
he was I wasn't thrilled because he wasn't
1:51:57
a scientist but then I you know learned why it was named
1:51:59
and then
1:52:00
When, when do you just give us a quick,
1:52:03
a brief overview of the history starting with 2015 or whatever?
1:52:06
Yeah. Yeah.
1:52:08
So story, you know, I got to know certain people because of this,
1:52:11
the Webb family and the fact that just gave them COVID
1:52:13
and I recovered from
1:52:16
COVID. I had lunch, breakfast with last
1:52:18
week and I gave them COVID. Oh, isn't that nice of you? Well,
1:52:20
I gave my wife COVID. She said anyway. Yeah.
1:52:23
But also Sean O'Keefe and I have had some
1:52:25
dialogue about his reasoning for
1:52:28
naming
1:52:28
the Webb telescope and it's very compelling
1:52:31
man. Okay. And if you look into, I didn't
1:52:33
know anything about Sean O'Keefe, but if you look
1:52:35
into Webb who Webb is, Sean
1:52:37
O'Keefe is sort of like a baby Webb
1:52:39
in a way in the sense that he's a bureaucrat
1:52:42
nerd, administrative nerd, right?
1:52:45
Yeah. So anyway, in 2015,
1:52:47
the first article I read, read is the
1:52:50
one with the title, the problem naming observatories
1:52:52
for bigots. Yeah. By Matthew
1:52:54
Francis, who I understand as a physicist and also
1:52:56
a journalist. Supposedly. Yeah. He
1:52:59
doesn't write like one, but anyway. That's
1:53:01
all the articles I've ever read. I
1:53:03
know when reading that I wouldn't want to pick up any
1:53:05
others, but anyway. Okay. Yeah.
1:53:08
I know it's bad. It wasn't, it wasn't rigorous. Yeah.
1:53:12
But I read it and I was like, Oh, this is shocking
1:53:14
to me. Why would NASA
1:53:17
do that if that's true? So
1:53:19
now let me, you know, I'm the type of guy by
1:53:21
the way, who when I hear a result, you know, I'm
1:53:23
like, if this
1:53:24
holds, you know, I'm not accepting
1:53:26
anything. And let's not
1:53:28
judge the heart. So the claim was that to
1:53:30
step back. Well, here's the claim. Oh, okay.
1:53:33
Here's the claim. So the claim was first officer, the title that
1:53:35
the man is a homophobe. Yeah. The
1:53:38
second thing is, was that he oversaw
1:53:40
the purge
1:53:42
of gay people from federal
1:53:44
service in the late forties, early fifties,
1:53:46
and that he personally fired 92 or 91 employees
1:53:50
between 47 and
1:53:53
early 1950. And
1:53:55
then he had given this Senate testimony and
1:53:57
that he had made this a very
1:54:00
homophobic statement about gay people
1:54:02
not having the being perverted and not
1:54:04
having morals ocean of stability of normal person
1:54:06
or something like that right very specific right
1:54:09
so when I read this I'm like okay that sounds
1:54:11
pretty damning let me google and
1:54:13
see what else I can find and I found an article that
1:54:15
was written five months earlier by Dan Savage
1:54:18
where it basically said exactly the
1:54:20
same thing as that article and then you know that article referred
1:54:22
to as
1:54:25
Wikipedia
1:54:27
page so I went to the Wikipedia page the same quote
1:54:30
is there and then I turned
1:54:32
to our Facebook group that was called equity
1:54:34
and inclusion and science I see that people have been talking
1:54:37
about that and people are like oh someone should confront NASA
1:54:39
that's okay that's it let me clear that's a group
1:54:41
you're a part of then ask for Facebook it was a Facebook
1:54:44
group it's not a group that I was a part
1:54:46
of it was a closed Facebook group that somebody was like
1:54:48
hey join this right so I'm
1:54:50
a lurker right I don't you know yeah
1:54:54
I'm not reading emails I'm not contributing
1:54:56
to groups I'm over here thinking yeah all right
1:54:58
and handling business no I would
1:55:01
go there from time to time but I wasn't a big participant
1:55:04
right I'd go and see what they were talking about so I thought that
1:55:06
was a natural place to go sure yeah absolutely
1:55:08
so I go and look and discover that yeah they had been talking about
1:55:10
it for half a year and people were like someone
1:55:13
should confront NASA and everybody
1:55:15
seemed to accept it was true except this one guy
1:55:18
who said something along the lines of hey
1:55:20
before doing that you should make sure you have the full
1:55:22
story straight so what happens a
1:55:24
year and a half later I find myself working at
1:55:26
NASA headquarters and
1:55:29
once I figure out the lay of the land I go
1:55:31
right to the head of strategic communication I'm like yo
1:55:33
you know about this and they're like no
1:55:36
oh no this looks terrible
1:55:38
let's go talk to
1:55:40
the head of you know they assumed I knew who
1:55:42
Greg Robinson was let's go talk to Greg Robinson
1:55:44
I'm like who's that right they're like oh you know the head
1:55:46
of the web telescopes so we go talk to Gregory
1:55:48
Robinson you know he's a very sober very deliberate
1:55:50
dude yeah and he's like hmm not
1:55:53
very reactions like oh that's news I
1:55:55
came to send me everything you got I sent
1:55:57
it to him I sent the two articles in Wikipedia article
1:56:00
And he says to me a week later, he's
1:56:02
like, I came all I see here are accusations, man.
1:56:04
Can you look into it and see what actually happened? So
1:56:07
I started looking into it. And at
1:56:09
first I started by myself, you know, I discovered,
1:56:11
you know, there was a Truman Library
1:56:14
and there was a web papers and these sort of
1:56:16
things. And I'm looking for this specific
1:56:18
quote from Webb. I'm looking for this specific
1:56:21
congressional testimony from Webb and I can't
1:56:24
find it anywhere. So then I turned
1:56:26
back to the head of strategic communication. We have to be my
1:56:28
direct report. You know, I report directly to her
1:56:30
and she goes, well, you know, we got these great
1:56:33
historians and archivists and
1:56:35
librarians. So I go down there and I get to notice one guy
1:56:38
really well. And he turns me
1:56:40
on the people at Johnson Space Center, people
1:56:42
at, um, in Huntsville at Marshall.
1:56:44
And there is even a graduate student in
1:56:46
history at University of Alabama Huntsville,
1:56:49
who's doing his PhD dissertation on
1:56:51
Webb. And now with all these people give
1:56:53
me is I have no idea about this
1:56:56
stuff. I came, but we do, you know, about this
1:56:58
stuff he did at NASA with diversity. And
1:57:00
so, you know, what's really funny
1:57:03
is when I left NASA in,
1:57:06
uh, end of August, 2019,
1:57:09
I left everything behind. Cause I
1:57:11
was so like, you know, nervous
1:57:13
about government property. You
1:57:18
know who was too, but anyway, go on.
1:57:21
So big thing of the news, but you know what the thing was
1:57:23
this graduate student, man, everybody knows
1:57:25
about how Webb took on George Wallace.
1:57:28
He took on Wallace at the, um,
1:57:30
the governor in Alabama,
1:57:33
but what they didn't know that this guy gave me were
1:57:36
letters between Webb and these Mississippi
1:57:38
Congressman, black Congressman, where they were systematically
1:57:40
taken on segregation in Mississippi
1:57:43
as well. Um, so
1:57:45
now I'm really confused. I'm like, wait a minute, this dude
1:57:47
persecuted gay people. And now he's like
1:57:49
helping black people. Like what the kind of personality
1:57:52
is this dude? Right. So then
1:57:54
this archivist of me goes, Hakeem,
1:57:57
I think it may be a case of mistaken identity. Cause
1:57:59
he.
1:57:59
finds where John purifoy was the person
1:58:02
who had given the congressional testimony.
1:58:05
And then right after this, I find this document
1:58:07
from the Senate, what they talk about with purifoy's
1:58:09
name, when they talk about how they
1:58:12
created the security
1:58:14
apparatus in the Cold War right
1:58:16
after World War two. And you know,
1:58:18
and I find this book and now I'm starting to see the story
1:58:21
unfold. So I realized,
1:58:23
ah, every every every detail
1:58:26
that they had given for web did this web did this
1:58:28
web did this, all of them were actually
1:58:30
done by Carlisle Hubel sign and
1:58:33
john purifoy. Yeah.
1:58:34
All right. So I'm like there's zero
1:58:36
evidence. And if you look,
1:58:38
one of the main people who are pushing
1:58:40
this
1:58:41
had an article in physics today in 2019, where they
1:58:43
go on to say I know use the word
1:58:45
know, yeah, that web prevented gay
1:58:48
people from working at NASA
1:58:50
in the 60s, right? That's very specific web.
1:58:52
Yeah, I know. I it is there to say it
1:58:54
and I know it and I and then and then other people know it because
1:58:56
they wrote it. Yeah. Yeah.
1:58:59
And all of it is untrue. Right. So
1:59:01
I write this and I
1:59:03
expect that you know, not I
1:59:06
don't expect it to be big news. Excited.
1:59:07
You know, I expect it to be like, oh,
1:59:10
a few people are concerned with this, the gay people in the
1:59:12
community may be concerned with this. And now
1:59:14
everybody will be relieved to know that it turns
1:59:16
out it's not true. Yeah. But that is not
1:59:18
what happened. Yeah, I mean, you think that you wrote I remember
1:59:21
in your piece, when you wrote the piece on Reddit is basically,
1:59:23
hey, now finally, astronomers don't have to worry,
1:59:26
we can move on to other things. It should be a relief.
1:59:29
Yeah. In fact, the reaction is the opposite.
1:59:31
Well, I didn't know that there were members of our community
1:59:34
who were actually
1:59:36
had some personal
1:59:38
connection with this
1:59:39
rumor that that somehow was their
1:59:42
item, you know, I didn't I didn't know that if
1:59:44
I had known that I don't know what I would have done differently.
1:59:47
But maybe I would have expected the backlash
1:59:50
that occurred from those specific people.
1:59:53
And the crazy thing about it is this other astronomer
1:59:56
who knew the both of us who knew all
1:59:58
you know, all of us said, Hey, I keep my you guys
2:00:00
had a cordial relationship with one of the two leaders
2:00:02
of this thing. Yeah. One who wrote the article titled,
2:00:05
the straights are here to serve, save us. Yeah. And
2:00:07
I'm like, yeah, I thought we did too. Right. So
2:00:10
I go to that person. He says, why don't you apologize
2:00:13
to them for any hurt feelings you may have caused.
2:00:16
And on day one, I'm like, no way. Right.
2:00:18
But they too, I'm like, oh, I see how you phrase
2:00:21
that any hurt feelings I may have
2:00:23
caused.
2:00:24
So I did it. I wrote to them on Twitter
2:00:26
and my DM, which I still
2:00:28
keep private. And I said, Hey, you
2:00:30
know, I understand that this may have caused some hurt feelings.
2:00:33
Listen, that wasn't my intention.
2:00:35
And if you want, I will use my voice
2:00:38
since I'm somewhat of a public figure to bring
2:00:40
attention to the lavender scare. Yeah. And
2:00:43
man, they weren't having it. They kind of went in at
2:00:45
me and then they say the phrase of, if
2:00:47
you had submitted it to a journal, you'd be
2:00:49
retracting it. And at that point I was done with the conversation.
2:00:52
Right. Because,
2:00:54
you know, if I say
2:00:56
this, like, like, you know how I go home
2:00:58
and people confront me about being
2:01:00
a scientist or like, you know, the
2:01:02
big bang ain't real. And I'll say, okay, well tell
2:01:04
me what specifically is incorrect.
2:01:06
Yeah. A Hubble expansion data, the nuclear
2:01:08
synthesis data, or the college of microwave background radiation
2:01:11
data. Right. Yeah. So just telling me blank,
2:01:13
you know, you'll be retracting it. I'm like, okay, which part
2:01:15
of it is incorrect?
2:01:17
So what they do then is they start creating these
2:01:20
false narratives. Right.
2:01:23
So after this blog, let's make it clear.
2:01:25
They had already created a false narrative. There's
2:01:28
one about web, but it was the
2:01:30
thing that I'm going to work carefully.
2:01:33
Then they refuse to do is once that narrative was
2:01:35
shown to be false, what a real scientist
2:01:37
would do is say,
2:01:38
wow, okay.
2:01:40
That, I thought that was the case, but it's all, but
2:01:42
these people demonstrate that they're ideologues
2:01:45
and they're not scientists. Exactly.
2:01:47
No, we're doubling down. You can't be right.
2:01:50
You can't be right. I believe it's
2:01:52
true. So the evidence says otherwise the evidence
2:01:54
is wrong. Oh, no, no, no. But see, you have to look at their
2:01:56
relationship with evidence. Okay. So one
2:01:59
of the things I like tell people is,
2:02:01
you know, I go to these public talks just like you,
2:02:03
and people come after me, come to me after my talk
2:02:06
and they'll say, sir,
2:02:07
you said that science says
2:02:09
this, but you know, my holy book or
2:02:12
some other source says that. And I'm going to
2:02:14
correct them. I say, listen, that's not the,
2:02:17
you know, I don't talk to them about their face or whatever. I talk
2:02:19
to them about science and understanding how that
2:02:21
works. And the point I make is science
2:02:23
doesn't say anything. Science asks
2:02:26
science says universe, tell me what are you? So
2:02:29
what they went about doing is, let
2:02:31
me see if I can find some piece of evidence that
2:02:33
supports my perspective,
2:02:36
even tangentially. Yeah. And I will
2:02:39
say it does. So what do they do?
2:02:41
They find very quickly this, this
2:02:43
one astronomer associated with them who wasn't part of
2:02:45
their core crew, Adrian, Lucy is like, look, I found
2:02:47
this passage in David K. Johnson's
2:02:50
book. So David K. Johnson is a historian.
2:02:52
He's a gay historian, and he's the person
2:02:54
who actually coined the phrase, the lavender scare.
2:02:57
And in his book, he speaks of this meeting
2:02:59
between Truman and Webb.
2:03:01
And he uses this phrase saying that
2:03:04
human true, Webb had spoken to this
2:03:06
Senator who was going to oversee
2:03:08
the Senate committee
2:03:10
that was going to investigate whether or not, you
2:03:12
know, the way they call it, it was the problem with homosexuals
2:03:15
in federal government, right? And
2:03:18
they made it seem like Truman and
2:03:20
Webb had this special meeting and
2:03:22
that Webb was a planner and
2:03:25
leader of it, which was not the case, right?
2:03:27
Truman and Webb had met regularly for years
2:03:30
because Webb used to run his own agency,
2:03:33
the Bureau of the Budget, right? And one
2:03:35
thing that we all have heard that he created
2:03:38
at that time is called economic indicators,
2:03:40
right? Webb created that. So he's a star
2:03:42
administrative, you know, nerd.
2:03:44
And Truman is looking at what's happening globally.
2:03:47
And he tells his secretary of state, yo,
2:03:50
I'm going to install Webb as your number two, to
2:03:52
which Atchison is like,
2:03:54
who? No. And even Webb
2:03:56
is like, dude, I don't have any
2:03:58
experience in foreign affairs. like, yes, but
2:04:00
you have experience with organizations. That's
2:04:02
what we need, right? So what happens
2:04:04
is, Webb is the unconflicted
2:04:07
party in a battle that's been going
2:04:09
between the senators and the executive
2:04:12
branch. So when Senator Hoey runs
2:04:14
into Webb, he says, hey man, can you and
2:04:16
I talk about this? Because the Senate was
2:04:18
trying to get these personnel papers of
2:04:20
the people who had been investigated for disloyalty,
2:04:23
right, which include communists, which include gay
2:04:25
people, which include people who
2:04:27
were gamblers, who saw prostitutes,
2:04:30
who were cheaters, right? Anybody who could be looked
2:04:33
at as somebody who could be blackmailed
2:04:36
or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
2:04:38
So
2:04:39
Webb
2:04:41
has his regular meeting with Truman
2:04:43
and he tells him at the end of the meeting, it has
2:04:45
several topics, right? At the end of the meeting,
2:04:47
he goes, oh, by the way, Senator Hoey asked me to attend
2:04:49
this meeting on the homosexual
2:04:51
problem.
2:04:52
Should I do it? He's like, oh yeah, tell him we'll find a
2:04:54
way to work
2:04:55
around the challenges with
2:04:58
working together, not finding the modus operandi.
2:05:01
Well, here's the crazy thing. When
2:05:03
they
2:05:04
find this piece,
2:05:05
the NARA, the National Archives
2:05:08
record reference is given.
2:05:10
And Adrian Lucy says, hey, because of the pandemic,
2:05:12
they're shut down. But they know that there
2:05:14
is that
2:05:16
Johnson has paraphrased a
2:05:19
real memo, but instead of waiting
2:05:21
to get the real memo, they go
2:05:23
out and says, this proves that Luea was
2:05:25
a leader and it's in their scientific, American articles and nature
2:05:28
articles.
2:05:28
It's all over the place. Yeah, that's how I first
2:05:31
heard of it from a,
2:05:32
by the way, let me say, you just
2:05:34
remind me, one of my favorite quotes, well,
2:05:36
a lot of favorite quotes from Richard Feynman
2:05:39
of mine. You know, I wrote a book
2:05:41
about him, but, Oh, I didn't know that.
2:05:43
Oh yeah, called Quantum Man, by the way. Well,
2:05:46
before Quantum Life was written, it was called Quantum Man.
2:05:49
There you go. Years ago, but
2:05:51
it's a scientific biography. So, got it, got it. But
2:05:54
as you
2:05:56
know, he said, what you have to do as a scientist is
2:05:58
if you have an idea, You try
2:06:00
and prove it right, but you try equally
2:06:03
hard
2:06:04
to prove it wrong. Prove it wrong. And
2:06:06
that's the thing. So you say, okay, I found this
2:06:08
bit of evidence, but is there evidence that
2:06:10
shows this wrong? And that's the exact,
2:06:12
what they did is the exact thing. We know
2:06:14
that he must have been home of them. We're going to find
2:06:16
anything that suggests he is, and we're not going to think
2:06:18
about anything else, and then we're going to promote it. And
2:06:21
I have to say, the first time I heard about
2:06:23
even a controversy was this Scientific American
2:06:26
article on Scientific American. Unfortunately,
2:06:28
I was on the board of it. It used to be a reputable
2:06:30
magazine. I used to love it. Yeah. I
2:06:32
mean, I wrote about six articles for it, and I
2:06:35
used to have a column, and I was on their board for
2:06:37
maybe 15 years, and now it's just, it's really
2:06:39
deteriorated. But it was, I, you know,
2:06:41
I, I recently talked about the dumbest
2:06:43
article I've read recently, but up to that point,
2:06:46
it was the dumbest article I'd read. I didn't know anything
2:06:48
about it. My first presumption was, well,
2:06:50
here's a guy in the 1950s and 60s, and
2:06:53
I'm assuming that he's no different than other people in the
2:06:55
1950s or 60s, and to impose upon, impose
2:06:59
modern sensibilities on a man at that time is
2:07:01
already silly. But I didn't even know
2:07:03
the details. But then I have
2:07:06
to ask you this, because I remember writing about
2:07:08
this and making fun of it, because
2:07:10
I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever heard when
2:07:12
they suggested that the helicopter
2:07:15
called the Heriot Tubman. Why? Because
2:07:18
on the Underground Railroad, she must have looked
2:07:20
at the North Star, and I thought, are they serious?
2:07:23
Was that the stupidest, was that the dumbest thing? Yeah, that
2:07:26
was pretty, well, I'm not gonna call that dumb, but it was,
2:07:28
it was, yeah, I just couldn't understand, I just thought,
2:07:30
what? Yeah, it's ridiculous. If you want to make yourself
2:07:32
a caricature of ridiculousness, that's, that's a
2:07:34
good thing. Yeah, I mean, it's patronizing, I mean, look,
2:07:36
it's clear they wanted a person
2:07:39
of color to be, but
2:07:41
it's just, it's patronizing to do that. Look
2:07:43
how revealing it is though, right? So
2:07:46
after I showed that they, that Webb did not do what
2:07:48
he specifically did, they immediately go
2:07:50
to literally within 24 hours. Oh,
2:07:52
but he was complicit because he was in management. So
2:07:55
in their articles, they say, yes, we're
2:07:57
saying that anybody who was in management during this time.
2:08:00
Well guess who's in management at NASA with
2:08:03
Nancy Grace Roman. Yeah, Nancy you
2:08:05
made that point Nancy was a man
2:08:07
and no one's running against that telescope Yeah,
2:08:09
they're not arguing the Nancy Grace Roman
2:08:11
and the web telescope both both must
2:08:13
be renamed They didn't make that argument and if they were sincere
2:08:16
they would have made that are yeah And it's it's these counter
2:08:18
arguments when I said I guess I Discounted
2:08:20
the rest of the piece when I read about the suggestion that Harriet
2:08:22
Tubman Be
2:08:23
named it because I figured if there's that level
2:08:25
of seriousness or lack of seriousness
2:08:28
Then I've got us then the rest of the history is suspect.
2:08:30
So that's all I present I mean and I could've been wrong. I mean
2:08:32
I made a snap judgment and I could've been wrong
2:08:35
But I thought well This isn't the
2:08:38
article to trust and then I read you know I
2:08:40
read about your work and then the important
2:08:42
thing was that that your work was later
2:08:45
validated by an extra by an exhaustive
2:08:47
NASA so you wrote this piece and you thought okay
2:08:50
everyone's gonna hey got me on the back and say
2:08:52
you you know Thanks for doing the real
2:08:54
research to see what the real situation is instead
2:08:57
and we'll talk about you got Attacked not
2:08:59
just for what you were saying but who you were
2:09:01
and aspersions were
2:09:03
were oh absolutely Yeah, but the first I
2:09:05
heard of it was was really that
2:09:07
week, right? So the same person who wrote
2:09:09
the article is freights are here to save us when that
2:09:11
other astronomer attempted to mediate
2:09:14
He sent me he goes a man this
2:09:17
person said I should research why
2:09:19
you left Florida Tech So I called him up
2:09:21
and I'm like, what's that about and he said Oh
2:09:24
something about sexual harassment and a
2:09:26
title I literally laughed because
2:09:28
I'm like who's gonna believe that about me, dude. I'm the biggest nerd.
2:09:31
I don't come on anybody ever, right? This
2:09:33
is not how I roll. Yeah now
2:09:35
to be honest with you
2:09:37
Lawrence
2:09:38
Clearly, I
2:09:39
must be a very desirable dude because people are coming
2:09:41
on to me all the time And
2:09:43
that includes students man and so but
2:09:45
that's the reality of it is that here
2:09:48
I am
2:09:49
Kicking people back beat it get off me
2:09:51
back up I'm not you know, and then you're gonna be to
2:09:53
accuse the guy who behaves that way
2:09:56
as the one who's I'm like Give me a
2:09:58
break. Anyway, I didn't think anybody would believe it
2:09:59
But then I
2:10:01
start hearing it coming from everybody. Oh, Hakeem,
2:10:03
I was here and I heard someone say
2:10:05
this But let me tell you man, there's
2:10:08
real consequences. I will tell you what it is
2:10:10
so one of the people
2:10:12
Of the two leaders of it not the person who wrote
2:10:14
the article the straights are here to save us at
2:10:17
their university a professor
2:10:20
informed me that there was an internal discussion about
2:10:22
inviting me to be come there and be a speaker
2:10:25
or a major event and a paid speaker and
2:10:28
They didn't say exactly who it is, but it's the exact
2:10:30
same person
2:10:31
University They had a young
2:10:33
astronomy woman. Astronomy woman spoke
2:10:35
up and said oh we can't invite him because he
2:10:38
has these sexual um Misconduct
2:10:40
allegations
2:10:41
right the same person once
2:10:44
I got hired at george mason Actually
2:10:46
tweeted that phrase sexual misconduct with
2:10:49
respect to that hiring, right? But
2:10:51
then in the aftermath of
2:10:53
the new york times article and everything they've
2:10:55
gaslighted the world and said Oh,
2:10:57
I wasn't talking about him when they're writing
2:11:00
Yeah, someone should ask this guy why he left
2:11:02
his university the exact same thing
2:11:04
your colleague said The exact
2:11:06
same phrase you're happening to use
2:11:09
that with reference to me, but it's not about you
2:11:11
know, but
2:11:12
so it's it's
2:11:13
You know, they thought they knew something about web. They thought
2:11:16
they Similarity that's
2:11:18
that's the that's the I mean the ironic part about this is
2:11:20
that yeah making claims about
2:11:22
web And then making claims about
2:11:25
you in yeah, and
2:11:29
In either case the point is that that that
2:11:31
the the scientific thing to do is to
2:11:34
see Is to is to see the evidence
2:11:36
and the the similarity between the
2:11:38
two is kind of remarkable It's it's a it's
2:11:40
a proper and I don't want to criticize people
2:11:42
so much we have been but it's a thought Process
2:11:46
it's it's the ideology. That's the anti-this
2:11:50
Sorry antithesis of science,
2:11:52
which is instead of being upset When
2:11:55
you're wrong and refusing to be
2:11:57
and then attacking uh the people
2:11:59
you know, demanding that your narrative
2:12:02
be true,
2:12:03
under all circumstances, and finding
2:12:05
reasons to
2:12:06
denigrate or reduce
2:12:09
the credibility of those people this week, the
2:12:12
whole point of science is to say, hey, this is amazing,
2:12:14
I'm wrong.
2:12:15
And that's the great
2:12:17
thing about science. And, and, and,
2:12:21
you
2:12:21
know, I will say that, that the,
2:12:25
well, let's get to
2:12:27
the, let's end this and then, and
2:12:29
then end with one other thing.
2:12:31
The one I want to ask is, what can we do?
2:12:33
I'm seeing this so often,
2:12:35
to
2:12:36
step back from James Webb
2:12:38
to step back from the attacks on you, is
2:12:41
this mentality that we're seeing
2:12:43
of the intrusion that I've written about it for the Wall Street Journal,
2:12:46
and, and other places, the intrusion of ideology
2:12:49
into science. What can we
2:12:51
do?
2:12:52
You know, it's
2:12:55
a debate, right? It needs to be an open
2:12:57
debate. But the problem is, there's so many people that
2:13:00
wish to, what's the phrase,
2:13:03
performative,
2:13:05
virtue signaling. Virtue signaling,
2:13:08
yeah. I mean, they
2:13:11
think that they're on the right side.
2:13:13
So when someone comes to them with grievance,
2:13:15
so I'll tell you, there's another, the same
2:13:17
person, there was a, there's
2:13:19
a person who wanted MacArthur prize, who's
2:13:21
a famed current
2:13:24
black writer, also from Mississippi.
2:13:27
And that person agreed to blur my book. We
2:13:29
became buddies after we were both speaking
2:13:31
at Trinity College in San Antonio
2:13:34
in early 2020. I've spent a tragedy in
2:13:36
the old days, before you were born, maybe, but anyway,
2:13:39
I was born in the sixties. But anyway,
2:13:41
anyway, I know it's late, but anyway,
2:13:45
he says to me, you know, a week before he's like, Oh man,
2:13:47
I can't blurb the book. And I'm like, why not? He's
2:13:50
like, my friends say they'd be very hurt if I did
2:13:52
that. So that friend is the same person,
2:13:55
right? Yeah. Now, again, there
2:13:57
are two prominent female professors at
2:13:59
two major universities that both used
2:14:01
to reach out to me often. They
2:14:04
publicly are working with this person and
2:14:06
for the last year and a half they don't know
2:14:08
me anymore. I contact them no reply
2:14:11
and I'm like
2:14:13
okay I can't wait to see
2:14:15
one of them in person so I can say hey the reason why
2:14:18
you suddenly don't know me after this engagement
2:14:20
is because you know and that's the thing is
2:14:22
that if someone says to me
2:14:25
rumor about this person
2:14:27
always say to that person well you know
2:14:29
I'll find out for myself about that person. Yeah
2:14:31
but not many people are that way.
2:14:34
I mean I just wrote a piece and then I had a
2:14:36
guest post in my honor about
2:14:38
this guilt by association that's happening where
2:14:41
people and so that's why I think your
2:14:43
friends are acting that way and it's the
2:14:45
innate cowardice of academics which
2:14:47
is to keep your head low not get involved in
2:14:50
any any controversies better
2:14:52
better your virtue signal
2:14:54
and be safer
2:14:55
and if we if as long as as long
2:14:57
as you get
2:14:58
as long as the benefit of virtue signaling outweighs
2:15:01
the negatives of inappropriately
2:15:05
making claims then
2:15:08
it's going to continue and universities are going to virtue signal
2:15:10
and and and it's always going to be a
2:15:13
calculation what let's say so
2:15:15
is dropping Hakim as a friend is that going to be
2:15:17
more or or throw him under the
2:15:19
bus is that going to be a more negative
2:15:21
thing for me than to virtue signal
2:15:24
and and gain within the community
2:15:26
right some rights as opposed to being guilt by
2:15:28
association I know him and like him well
2:15:30
if you like him then you too must be and
2:15:32
so exactly so you know who suffered that will
2:15:35
kitty yeah yeah this third
2:15:37
party who doesn't know me ever yeah
2:15:40
tweeted right before the the the new york times
2:15:42
article came out because will kitty was like it's wrong
2:15:44
the way you guys are doing this
2:15:46
dakim this woman tweets oh
2:15:49
when you see people uh
2:15:50
protecting abusers
2:15:53
that usually means their abusers themselves
2:15:55
watch out for these two yeah yeah no
2:15:58
that's the kind of that and that but that's
2:17:53
triggers
2:18:00
me and therefore you take their name off
2:18:02
the bigger paper and that's just the antithesis
2:18:05
of science because you're saying I'm taking you
2:18:07
know, I'm not giving we used to call plagiarism if you
2:18:09
don't put someone's paper before and
2:18:11
so anyway, it is a problem and I think
2:18:13
it's important to talk about the problem because I think more
2:18:16
academics have to stand up
2:18:18
Ultimately, it's not going to be solved until the academic
2:18:20
community says
2:18:21
we won't put up with this nonsense anymore You're
2:18:24
empowering we care about the ideas
2:18:26
and you and and it's not and you we don't care
2:18:28
about We care about the ideas
2:18:31
and and that's what matters and and
2:18:33
and so I do want
2:18:35
to segue back to one question
2:18:37
I have for you and then it relates to to Interestingly
2:18:42
it covers also the the web because I
2:18:44
think I think Anyway,
2:18:47
you'll see what I mean in a second. All right, um, I
2:18:50
have to ask you and I understand
2:18:53
more having read your book and looking
2:18:55
at the organizations that
2:18:57
That impacted on you the the
2:18:59
black fraternities and the and and
2:19:01
the back professional organizations. Yeah
2:19:05
My attitude has always been skeptical of
2:19:08
groups like the National Society
2:19:10
of Black Physicists And
2:19:14
because you know, I would never I mean
2:19:16
obviously I would never become part of a National
2:19:18
Society of white physicists or for That matter
2:19:20
a National Society of Jewish physicists or
2:19:23
natural I mean, I just you know, I never
2:19:25
want to be a member of the HABBA is a member anyway
2:19:27
All right, but so why why
2:19:30
the National Society of Black Physicists? I think I understand
2:19:32
it more having ready to go But I'd like to hear you say right. Yeah
2:19:34
Well,
2:19:35
if you look at the inception of the
2:19:37
organization is written on the history of the website, right?
2:19:40
and so there was some event that happened national
2:19:42
event and the black physicists at the
2:19:44
time felt like the Professional
2:19:47
societies and organizations that existed on this
2:19:50
racial issue were not being
2:19:58
Sensitive their particular
2:20:01
concerns and what they needed
2:20:03
to felt like needed to be said. And
2:20:05
so they said, Okay, for this reason, we might need
2:20:07
to start our own organization.
2:20:09
But then it morphed,
2:20:11
right, it began to morph. Because
2:20:13
what it became was a gathering
2:20:16
where they get together annually, you know,
2:20:18
you don't see another black physicist for your whole
2:20:20
year and annually, hello, fellow black
2:20:23
person. And you know what,
2:20:25
again,
2:20:27
African Americans are a different
2:20:29
type of ethnicity. Like, when I
2:20:31
live in a community, I love to go to things like, oh,
2:20:33
the Greek church, you know, they have their annual thing,
2:20:36
and they do their traditional Greek dance. Or,
2:20:38
you know, we go to India week, and you see an Indian
2:20:40
culture and food. The fact
2:20:42
that you gather together,
2:20:44
culturally,
2:20:46
in order to celebrate yourselves,
2:20:48
and in order to, you know, look
2:20:53
at what may concern challenges
2:20:55
to your community specifically, and these
2:20:57
sort of things. I see that as
2:20:59
a good thing, no matter what it is, right?
2:21:01
If it's not an exclusionary, oh, we're
2:21:04
gonna get together and take over the world and hate and kill everybody
2:21:06
else. Okay, that's bad. But if it's like,
2:21:08
Oh, you know, we all are the great,
2:21:10
great grandchildren of George
2:21:13
Washington, and we're gathering together every year
2:21:15
to celebrate this, right? But what
2:21:17
happens is,
2:21:19
is that the African American population
2:21:21
is going through a different evolution
2:21:24
than the rest of America, right? Because it goes
2:21:26
from this evolution of being in the state
2:21:28
of race based shadow slavery,
2:21:31
then reconstruction, then Jim
2:21:33
Crow, and there's a relationship
2:21:35
with education and access to education,
2:21:38
right? And the other thing about
2:21:40
it is, is that all societies in
2:21:42
America, no matter what your race is,
2:21:44
nobody's interested in science, and no,
2:21:46
and certainly nobody's interested in physics. And
2:21:49
I like to point out that for a quarter of a century,
2:21:52
we've been pushing this STEM thing so hard,
2:21:54
because it's so important to national health.
2:21:56
Yeah.
2:21:57
But yet only 18% of our undergraduates
2:21:59
graduates today graduate with STEM degrees. And
2:22:03
so these black physicists at a certain time
2:22:05
started saying, hey, let's
2:22:08
use this to mentor each other, the
2:22:10
youth, but also now
2:22:12
around the nineties when I started, right?
2:22:15
They started in 77.
2:22:16
Let's start creating what people call
2:22:19
a pipeline. Let's start dealing with students
2:22:21
and mentoring students to bring them into
2:22:23
it. Because even if you're interested in this stuff,
2:22:25
you have no way of knowing
2:22:27
how to go about it. And I find that, I mean, I
2:22:30
get to appreciate more when I saw your life. And
2:22:33
also Jim Gates, who I saw at MIT,
2:22:35
Jim was mentored by someone and I saw him mentoring a graduate
2:22:37
student. Oh yeah.
2:22:39
Anyway. Yeah. And
2:22:41
so what happens is now, you know, I, on
2:22:43
the one hand is I do see the conflict. I
2:22:46
see things that people don't talk about, right? I
2:22:48
say a lot of things that are different.
2:22:50
Like I say like, oh yeah, I was abused
2:22:53
by black police and white police. I've had
2:22:55
guns put on me by black guys and white guys.
2:22:57
I'm lucky. I see that it's not a
2:23:00
race thing, you know, it's not a, you know,
2:23:02
it's a, you know, it's people
2:23:04
behaving badly thing.
2:23:06
But
2:23:07
historically it is a race
2:23:09
thing. Historically, if you
2:23:11
don't have somebody in your home who got
2:23:14
education,
2:23:15
you know, good luck
2:23:18
navigating that process. My
2:23:20
life, like, you know, I couldn't compete with my own
2:23:22
son,
2:23:23
you know, if, you know, his, him coming out
2:23:25
of high school and me coming out of high school, completely
2:23:27
different universes of people. But
2:23:30
again, I am what you would call
2:23:32
with a, you know, legacy heritage, African-American.
2:23:35
That's different from somebody who's coming from the Caribbean
2:23:38
or Africa. America
2:23:40
is the land of opportunity, right? They've
2:23:43
had a hardcore mathematics, English
2:23:45
system background
2:23:47
versus me in America, getting educated in Mississippi,
2:23:50
right? So you see a step on Alexander.
2:23:52
You see a, what's
2:23:54
my man's name at University of Illinois, right? Anadia
2:23:57
Mason, you know, you see Art Walker, right? He's from
2:23:59
that Caribbean tradition.
2:23:59
You know, you interface
2:24:02
differently.
2:24:03
And so
2:24:04
on the one hand, the NSVP serves
2:24:06
as a mentor network to
2:24:10
help people navigate
2:24:13
making it into this field. But here's the
2:24:15
thing,
2:24:15
we are not exclusionary. What do I
2:24:18
do as an NSVP mentor? I say, hey,
2:24:20
yo, Lawrence, you're an expert on this.
2:24:22
I got this great student, they're interested in that co-work.
2:24:25
So when we have our mentor networks,
2:24:27
we're not all connected with black businesses. We're
2:24:29
connecting with the top business in the field.
2:24:31
So who do we have relationships with? The
2:24:34
Simon Foundation, the Heisen Simon Foundation.
2:24:38
Our students aren't working with black scientists, they're
2:24:41
working with scientists that are the top
2:24:43
in the field at what they do. So
2:24:46
I am a big tent
2:24:48
guy, I am a not exclusionary.
2:24:50
You know, I'm a like,
2:24:52
let's build bridges, let's do this. But you have to
2:24:54
recognize that just like when they created
2:24:57
that
2:24:57
welfare state to prevent us from falling
2:25:00
in the slums and all of that, we
2:25:02
still have to
2:25:04
go to every community that identifies
2:25:06
as a community and get these people engaged
2:25:09
for one, if I was running the country, right?
2:25:12
If I had a nation and I'm like, you know, I'm
2:25:14
Hakeem. So if I am running a nation, I'm
2:25:16
looking at taking over the world than the galaxy.
2:25:18
What
2:25:21
do I want my nation to be? The galaxy just won is a hundred billion.
2:25:23
You know, it's a million. And in the universe, right?
2:25:25
Give me the, I want the infinity
2:25:27
gauntlet. But, and
2:25:29
Thanos was wrong. He shouldn't have killed 50%
2:25:32
of everybody. That's one doubling time, right?
2:25:34
He should have killed the minimal viable population.
2:25:36
That's what should remain. But anyway, the point
2:25:40
is that, you know,
2:25:45
if you isolate yourself as a people,
2:25:48
that is a recipe for death.
2:25:50
For disaster, diversity
2:25:52
shouldn't be exclusionary. That's not
2:25:54
what we're doing. We're making
2:25:56
part of an operative with all the best. You
2:25:58
forget what I see it as.
2:25:59
And I think I understood it more reading the book
2:26:02
is as a saying. Hey,
2:26:03
we have an opportunity
2:26:05
To mentor to help and
2:26:07
we're gonna use that opportunity and if you want to have
2:26:10
a group I mean, it
2:26:11
wouldn't be acceptable But I mean we know but I
2:26:13
guess
2:26:14
you know There'd be any other group that wants to
2:26:16
use a common cultural
2:26:18
or ethnic hook as
2:26:20
a way to help people
2:26:23
It's great. Of course from my point of view. I
2:26:25
just rather help everyone without an ethnic hook, but that's
2:26:27
just the way I am but But well, here's the thing.
2:26:29
It's like black colleges, right black colleges
2:26:31
don't exclude white people from attendees I had black
2:26:33
white students at my black college, right?
2:26:35
But the thing is that if that black college
2:26:38
isn't there and there's no black there's
2:26:40
no place for a lot That's the
2:26:42
point is to provide an opportunity
2:26:44
Yeah And I see that and and the reason and the
2:26:47
reason I'm saying believe it or not that it connects
2:26:49
in the end and up to To
2:26:51
the James Webb thing
2:26:52
is it's I think the same people
2:26:54
that were arguing about this
2:26:57
Ideology at Jim Webb
2:26:59
produced when it comes to physics kind of
2:27:01
the
2:27:01
same kind of hate exclusionary
2:27:05
Attitude and the one person who wrote I think
2:27:07
wrote one of these pieces Wrote
2:27:10
a piece, you know on on white epistemology
2:27:13
Which I made fun of in a different point of view somehow
2:27:15
saying that that that the
2:27:18
problem with physics is it wasn't it's not objective
2:27:20
because they don't value black women and
2:27:22
it was somehow it would be and I was shocked
2:27:24
and one of the examples that was Used was string
2:27:26
theory,
2:27:28
you know, they're willing to believe in 11 dimensions,
2:27:30
but not believe in black women I felt like saying well, you know,
2:27:32
Jim Gates is a great drink there and
2:27:34
I you know it demonstrated an extreme a
2:27:37
willingness to throw out this was a physics
2:27:39
article to throw sensible physics
2:27:42
to make an Ideological point and
2:27:44
to be exclusionary. Oh Dark
2:27:47
matter is somehow racist. Yeah. Yeah
2:27:49
whiteboards are somehow racist. There's no articles on
2:27:51
it, but but the same That
2:27:54
somehow these people get academic positions that
2:27:56
are willing to throw out physics
2:27:58
for the sake of ideology
2:27:59
before, before
2:28:02
there was woke, there
2:28:04
was, you know, this thing called being Afrocentric.
2:28:07
Yeah. And within the black community
2:28:09
of America, they started to make fun
2:28:12
of certain types of ways of thinking, right?
2:28:15
You know, the guys who will be like, why
2:28:17
are the black olives in a can when you can't see
2:28:19
them with the green olives are in a glass,
2:28:21
right? Yeah, if you look at like Wayans Brothers movies
2:28:24
and stuff, they make fun of these guys, right? And
2:28:26
this is that exact same type of thinking
2:28:28
that people make fun of within the
2:28:30
black community.
2:28:31
But for some reason, in this
2:28:34
modern era, you know, and
2:28:36
if you look at that, that, that sort
2:28:39
of
2:28:40
philosophy, you know, it's sort of like an
2:28:43
activist
2:28:44
philosophy. And that is, oh, I must
2:28:46
find something to activate about.
2:28:49
So you go about looking
2:28:51
for evidence. And if there's, you know, I
2:28:54
just don't understand coming up with these
2:28:58
sort of narratives that are just like so
2:29:01
ridiculous, they're ridiculous, but they're being
2:29:03
empowered, the people are afraid to say it because
2:29:06
then but they empower them. And it and
2:29:10
empowers that kind of exactly
2:29:12
it empowers people and and you feel
2:29:14
it if you don't virtue signal, if you don't say, Oh, well, this,
2:29:17
these people have something to say, then,
2:29:19
then,
2:29:20
then you're gonna be attacked. And
2:29:22
we need to, we need to, we need to point
2:29:25
out nonsense where it's nonsense, regardless
2:29:27
of who says it.
2:29:28
And, and,
2:29:31
and yet the same time be positive. I mean, I think
2:29:33
that I think that I want to end on a positive
2:29:35
note, but you can talk about ideas
2:29:38
and their validity and you can attack
2:29:40
ideas, attacking ideas and attacking
2:29:42
people are very different. Very handy.
2:29:45
And, and there's no way well,
2:29:47
I won't even go when people say somehow they're vulnerable. How
2:29:49
dare Hakeem attack
2:29:51
me as a senior. Oh, man, I've been attacked.
2:29:54
Some those people have have they
2:29:56
have their their megaphones and they're not
2:29:58
vulnerable. But, but the, but
2:30:01
I think the whole point is that we need to
2:30:03
look forward and to try and overcome
2:30:05
this two shall pass. It is
2:30:07
the problem. We have to speak about it and I'm glad you
2:30:10
and I spoke about it and I'm sure we're going to raise
2:30:12
hackles by having spoken about it.
2:30:14
But yeah, absolutely. But one thing I want to say, man,
2:30:16
is again, if you look at what's happening
2:30:18
in the labs in the, on the everyday
2:30:20
level, you know, when I go into, you know,
2:30:23
university of Washington lab, right? I went to my university
2:30:25
of Berkeley lab, right? I went to my Princeton lab with the
2:30:27
people I work with. Yeah. I've selected
2:30:29
to work with people like Art Walker said that
2:30:32
are, you know, like, like one joke
2:30:34
I used to tell when I talked to students to be provocative
2:30:37
was the day I forgot I was black. Yeah.
2:30:39
Right. Why did I tell this joke? Because
2:30:42
man, it's on your mind, right? When I met Stanford,
2:30:45
you know, class is an issue, you know, race
2:30:47
is an issue. I go to Silicon Valley is
2:30:49
completely different character, but it's
2:30:52
an issue, right? You know, because it's
2:30:54
more of an immigrant community type thing and more of people,
2:30:56
you know, more as, you know, we're going to stick together. It's
2:30:59
not, I hate you because you're something different, right?
2:31:01
Just like, cause you're something different, but you know,
2:31:03
we're going to gather together and keep our knowledge
2:31:05
proprietary because we're the same. Right. But
2:31:09
then one day I met Berkeley and I'm sitting in the colloquium
2:31:11
like, Oh my God, I forgot I was black. I was sitting
2:31:13
here looking at the science and listening,
2:31:15
right? Because that was the first time
2:31:18
that I was among a group of other professionals where
2:31:22
never really came up like that. Right.
2:31:24
We were, you know, very diverse
2:31:26
group of people from all over the world. And we would focus
2:31:28
on cosmology. And I think that's the important thing
2:31:30
to point also to point out is
2:31:32
that for the most part in
2:31:35
science and in spite of what some
2:31:37
of these noisy people are saying about their inability
2:31:39
to do this or the presence of racism here,
2:31:41
there. Most of the time you're in a, in a scientific
2:31:43
meeting and you're debating and, and, and,
2:31:46
and, and, and for the, and, and happily
2:31:49
science still works because 95% of the time. That's
2:31:53
what it's all about is the ideas and people don't
2:31:55
care. And, and, and it's these fringe
2:31:57
things where people are claiming that all.
2:33:59
come to me and sometimes they say, Oh, something's
2:34:02
going on. This, that, and the other say that. And the
2:34:04
first thing I want to say is what don't be so damn
2:34:07
soft, right? Don't let somebody be real.
2:34:10
Worrying is being punished twice. It's the same
2:34:12
thing. But if you don't feel victimized and
2:34:15
probably, and then that's a huge way
2:34:17
to not be victimized. I'm not saying don't
2:34:19
feel victimized, but if you do feel victimized,
2:34:22
use that as fuel for your fire. Yeah. Yeah.
2:34:24
Say it,
2:34:25
respond, or just say that guy's an idiot. There's
2:34:27
a whole bunch of tools. I'm all about kicking
2:34:29
ass, Lawrence. Yeah. Well, it's
2:34:31
all about going back negative. I
2:34:35
want to go positive. Oh yeah. That's right. Go positive.
2:34:37
That's right. That as I
2:34:40
said, this is your past and science proceeds
2:34:42
and I think it's going to continue to believe because
2:34:44
it does teach us to question ourselves. And
2:34:46
it also teaches us there's
2:34:49
so much more to learn. And I love that. I
2:34:51
think the end of, I think you said
2:34:53
somewhere, the closest thing to infinity. I've
2:34:55
ever observed this hope. I've seen infinity in the
2:34:57
hope, in the faith of hope in the faces and imaginations
2:35:00
of myself,
2:35:01
African students.
2:35:02
And I think what you and I both hope is that,
2:35:05
is that we will see what drives
2:35:07
both of us, I think is the hope that we
2:35:09
can get by turning someone on
2:35:12
so that they can feel amazing
2:35:15
wonder and awe in the universe that you were
2:35:18
lucky enough in spite of a very unusual
2:35:21
beginning to be able to experience. And I've experienced
2:35:24
in many ways also. I mean, neither of my parents
2:35:26
finished high school, but the hope is what
2:35:29
we, what we,
2:35:31
what the message I want to give is that the universe
2:35:34
is too fascinating to get
2:35:35
wrapped up in the nonsense
2:35:37
and let us, let us focus
2:35:39
on the low character people, you know, look at focus
2:35:42
on the low character. It's that I thought the statement
2:35:44
of your advisory had to resonate
2:35:45
with me a lot. There's always going to be a distribution
2:35:48
and if you focus and if we give too much attention
2:35:51
to the low character people, it distorts
2:35:53
the whole thing. And we don't realize how
2:35:56
many people of good will there are and how
2:35:59
interesting and wonderful.
2:35:59
the universe can be
2:36:02
and how lucky we are to be here. I'm
2:36:04
lucky to be able to talk to you.
2:36:06
And I'm lucky you spent the time with me. You sure
2:36:08
are lucky to talk to me. Anyway, I'm... Hey,
2:36:11
by the way, I first met you on
2:36:13
How the Universe Works, man, not in person, but
2:36:16
I saw you. That's how I first discovered that you exist.
2:36:18
And I was like, who is this guy? He's taking
2:36:20
my whole... He explains stuff so well. There
2:36:23
you go. But then I joined you on season three.
2:36:25
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And
2:36:28
now, of course, what that does is, of course, make
2:36:30
me feel old, but I don't mind. I don't
2:36:32
mind. Hey, here's what you got to do, man. You
2:36:34
got to invite me to your backyard
2:36:37
telescope sometime and pay for me to get
2:36:39
there. All right. Okay. Anyway,
2:36:41
it's been great. You take care. I'm really
2:36:43
happy we got to have this chance to talk. I look forward to
2:36:45
doing it in person sometime. You take care. Hey,
2:36:48
man.
2:36:58
I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. This
2:37:01
podcast is produced by the Origins Project
2:37:03
Foundation,
2:37:04
a non-profit organization whose
2:37:06
goal is to enrich your perspective of
2:37:09
your place in the cosmos by providing
2:37:11
access to the people who are driving
2:37:13
the future of society in the 21st century and
2:37:16
to the ideas that are changing
2:37:18
our understanding of ourselves and
2:37:21
our world.
2:37:22
To learn more, please visit originsprojectfoundation.org.
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