The Poster Boy of Genius with Samuel Graydon

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1:34Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

2:08Anyways, let's get to it.

2:17Joining us now on Open Book, Samuel Graydon. He's an author and science editor of the Times Literary Supplement. But boy, you wrote a phenomenal book, Sam. I want to congratulate you on that. It's called Einstein in Time and Space, A Life in 99 Particles. And so first off, congratulations on the book. I am sharing with all my friends and some of my adult children. When people think of Albert Einstein, they think of a genius. but your book i think even walter isaacson's book in some ways uh gave him a little bit of a a human side but why did you decide to hone in on this angle well so as you mentioned and thank you by the way thank you saying the book is nice um i am the science editor of the tls the times and so i get sent a lot of science books and you know i read them or i get them reviewed and read the reviews.

3:12And I noticed, as I read most of the science books that were being published over so many years, that if the book was about physics, any aspect of physics, Einstein was invariably mentioned. He was always mentioned with respect. He seemed to be some kind of progenitor, an archetype, and somehow always foundational in any aspect of modern physics. And I thought, well, I just have to get to know, it seems too important to ignore. I should get to know him. And the more I read about him, the more fascinated by his life I became. I sort of, the science is truly amazing. But the more I read about him, the more his life stood out to me as a story worth telling in its own right.

3:59Okay, so the book goes through 99 99 snapshots, or let's, as you call them, particles of Einstein's life. How did you go about selecting those and remind us why the number 99, which I think is fascinating, tell us why 99 is so significant? Yes, that is one of the particles in itself. And that is to do with the element Einsteinium, which is right at the end of the periodic table, not quite anymore, but it was right at the end of the periodic table when it was discovered. And it was discovered in the aftermath of hydrogen bomb explosion in the Bikini Atoll. Drones were flown through the air with filter paper and they picked up some of the coral that had been obliterated by the blast and sort of investigated that.

4:55And they discovered a new element had been created by the force of the blast. And they decided to name it after Einstein for various reasons. One, Einstein had just died, and it was a way in effect of honoring him for that. But there was a sort of intention. The idea that he was the founder of the atomic bomb was still sort of in the air at the time. And the idea that E equals MC squared is pivotal to it played into this. And I just latched onto the idea that Einstein as a man was so multifarious, as I was saying, his life is fascinating. And he comes across as a far more complicated human than I expected.

5:40and I latched onto the idea that just as with an atom, you know, an element, it is composed of all of these different parts. And I thought that so was Einstein composed of particles, you know, quotation marks. He composed all these different parts that make up a whole. So that was the metaphor anyway. I mean, I love that. And you also go into his upbringing, his parents, his sister. I believe I'm pronouncing her name right, Maja, I believe is her name. Maleva Marek, who was his first wife. Tell us a little bit about those relationships, and who do you think was most influential on them? That's a good question.

6:27I think Maya. Maya is how I've been saying it anyway, his sister. Maya, okay, I'm sorry. No, no, I may well be wrong. but she I mentioned her early on because she's one of the sort of constant relationships that he has that's sort of quite good also has reasonably volatile relationships with those close to him and apart from his sister except that I tell a very early anecdote of him I think hitting her over the head with a bowling ball I think he was quite violent as a child when he didn't get his way which actually is pretty indicative of how he is as an adult. He wasn't hitting people over the head with bowling balls when he was an adult, but he liked to get his own way.

7:11But I think out of the ones you mentioned, particularly his first wife, Mileva Marriage, is a hugely influential figure on him. And their relationship is a kind of slightly tragic story, really. They were very desperately in love at university. His parents opposed the marriage and he sort of fights for it. and then through one particular tragedy, but is tipped over into a sort of bitterness that eats away at their marriage until really it's a very acrimonious divorce at the end. And the one incident that I think kind of tips it over, I mean, Einstein, I think they would have divorced anyway. He just hated constraint of any kind.

7:54Marriages were not really for him. But they have an illegitimate daughter, So they give marriage, gives birth to a daughter outside of marriage with Einstein. But that was enough at the time for society to effectively not have given Einstein a job. So he was on a job search for several years and he got this job lined up and then marriage gave birth to a daughter. And so they just kept a secret. They simply didn't tell anybody about her existence, not Einstein's parents, not his friends. Eventually, when he did have two sons with Marich, they never found out about her. They almost erased her existence completely.

8:35It wasn't until about the 1980s that she was first known about. And so we don't quite know what her fate is, but she was definitely given away. And it seems likely that she would have died at some point, at the age of two, possibly. Eisheim literally never saw her, never once went to see his daughter. And the death or certainly the sort of permanent separation from the daughter, I think, kind of twisted that relationship in such a way as to kind of lead it on a road to a very nasty divorce. I was dying to ask you this question when I was reading your book. Do you think genius or this type of thought pattern that led to all of these great discoveries by Albert Einstein, it comes with some exegesis of abnormal social behavior?

9:27or is that a one-off I'm overly reading into it? Or do you think that it's just part and parcel for being this sort of nonconformist, out-of-the-box sort of thinker? It's a very interesting question, particularly in relation to Einstein. And that's because I think I went into the book thinking that Einstein would be this sort of unrelatable character that I couldn't, because he was a genius. He was sort of on another plane of existence almost that was somehow removed from my kind of understanding of everyday existence. But what I found was that he was really quite normal, much more normal than I thought Einstein.

10:08He was a genius. I think that having spent about three years with him, I find it categorically true that he was a genius. His work is just so groundbreaking. But it's achieved against a backdrop of very solid work. he's not this sort of transcendental genius who sits back in a chair and then a lightning bolt gives him an idea. He works very hard. And indeed, in moments of personal distress, he sort of works even harder. He buries his head in the sand. I think he says that. He says, I bury my head in the sand like an ostrich after his first breakup. Even when he's 60, he says that that's what he does in a very accurate self-analysis that remains true all of his life.

10:49But also he isn't just, he isn't sort of monomaniacal either. He's not just this sort of crazed physicist who only cares about atoms. He's very much of the world and very outspoken about his politics and very outspoken about sort of the general intellectual trends. He loved music. He had a lot to say about music. He thought Mozart was top and and he really, really cared about that. And so he was a sort of active and quite – he had loads of friends. He wasn't a recluse. He was admired and loved by basically everyone he met, excluding his family. So, yeah, he was – I think that he sort of – There was some anti-establishment nonconformity to his personality, right?

11:38I can identify with that, by the way, because I'm a little bit like that. Yes, certainly. I'm not a genius. I'm just a nonconformist. Yes, you're right in the sense that, so there's a nice anecdote I tell in the book about C.P. Snow, who is a physicist and author, he goes to visit Einstein on Long Island, where Einstein is summering. and Snow sort of writes up this very nice essay about his meeting with Einstein and there's a point at which Einstein and him are discussing Britain Snow is English and he says oh why don't you move to Britain and Einstein says oh well I've been to Britain and I think he got shown around these stately homes and then he got shown around Oxford and he said I was just there were butlers everywhere and I was changing in and out of evening dress all the time.

12:29He just sort of imagined Britain as this place where you were constantly shifted between clothes and butlets. And Snow says, oh, no, no, it's not like that. Einstein says, no, I want no zwang. This is German word, zwang. And zwang means constraint in the broadest possible sense. In societal, intellectual, that's why marriages are not very good for him, particularly any kind of constraint on him, he wanted to rail against. And I think that the kind of anti-establishment stuff that he comes up with. So as I said, he's very outspoken about politics. He hated McCarthyism, for example, and was very vocal about that and told by various people to go back to Russia and things as a result.

13:18But I think that comes from this personal sense of a complete sort of instinctive want of freedom, individual, intellectual, emotional freedom. And I think that that's where that kind of originates and then goes out from there. Raise the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sails solution? Reach sails professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one.

14:01Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. Now, he also, sort of interesting, I didn't know this since I read your book, he was offered the presidency of Israel.

14:47And so very senior role in Israel. There's a prime minister and a president. He would have been the second president of the state of Israel. So I'm going to wrap two questions into that. One is tell us about his relationship with Judaism in general, because you write about it beautifully in terms of ages 9 to 12, how he was developing his faith, and then how he had a little bit of a revelation related to the faith. But there he is in the 40s being offered this. He says no, of course, but take us through the story, take us through his relationship there, and how does a Nobel Prize winning scientist get offered such a high profile political job?

15:28Yes, it's a very good question. I was surprised when I learned about it. So his relationship with Judaism, as you say, starts really when he's about nine. His family were not religious in a traditional sense. They didn't practice Jewish rituals. But he, when he's nine, sort of develops this complete fervor for religion. He writes his own hymns. He sings them on the way back from school. He obeys kosher dietary laws and his family doesn't. And so he completely immerses himself in Judaism. And then as quickly as that comes, it goes at the age of 12, just before he is due faithfully to have a Bar Mitzvah serenity.

16:13But I think, again, it's somewhat related to this idea of constraint. I think the idea of sort of formally committing to Judaism did play a part in his then casting it off. But also he put it down to the sort of scientific awakening. So the idea that he then struggles with the idea of God and he comes to the opinion that God doesn't exist. or he comes to a very Azoic-Socratic idea of God which is based on Spinoza and it's the idea that the universe is God effectively but it's not orthodox to say the least and that really is his sort of religious phase of his life entirely he never comes back to religion however when he moves to Germany but to Berlin kind of in 1914 he starts to become kind of more pleased with the idea, more accepting of the idea of belonging to a community of the Jewish people.

17:16And he sees it, I think, as well as a community of tribal companions as opposed to religious fellows. The idea that sort of outside of religion he is a Jew. And that's partly in response to growing antisemitism in Germany at the time. and that's partly as a result of meeting Jews in Germany who have assimilated into the culture. So I think he describes it as combating anti-Semitism by getting rid of everything Jewish, is what he says, the idea that you kind of adopt local, you know, national customs rather than Jewish ones. And he dislikes his idea entirely and so kind of awakens him to the idea of being Jewish.

17:58And he sort of funnels that into, he funnels his sort of Jewish awakening into Zionism, the idea of creating a Jewish homeland. So he's against the idea of creating a Jewish state, but is for a Jewish homeland. And he then campaigns very vigorously for that, for the remainder of his life. It's about 1922 is his first visit to America, and that's to raise money for the Zionist cause. He's a complete celebrity. He's, you know, hoisted onto the arms of people. They come motorcade after motorcade and he goes around America to raise money. It's very successful. And he sort of throws his weight behind the cause for the rest of his life.

18:36And that is slightly answering your question of why do they offer him this? It's because he's been a very prominent Zionist. But also, I think in the newspapers at the time, they say, of course, this must go to our sign. He is the most famous Jew in the world. That's basically, I think, a direct quote. And David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister, basically says, well, yes, of course, he is the most famous Jew in the world. We have to have him as president and then immediately regrets the decision. So there's obviously a persecution angle, right? He feels the need to flee the Nazis in Europe. He comes to the United States.

19:11He writes this incredibly famous letter to Franklin Roosevelt, describing what he thinks is the capabilities, the physical properties to create a nuclear weapon. We learn in the movie Oppenheimer that he's urging Roosevelt to build the bomb, but then he went through a journey of pacifism. Talk us through some of Einstein's regrets about his contributions to the Manhattan Project, which was the project that led to the development of the bomb. Yes. It's interesting. Actually, Einstein had no role actually in the Manhattan Project. And so he sends his very famous letter to Roosevelt saying, I think, sir, you should set up a nuclear program.

20:01And that is kind of what gets the wheels turning. Then when the Manhattan Project is set up a few years later, because of the absolutely enormous FBI files that is on Einstein, the FBI are kind of trying to get Einstein. They just suspect that he's a communist and kind of sort of hate him really on a personal level. He's denied security clearance to work on the project. So he has no role, despite being one of the most famous scientists in the world and having quite extensive direct knowledge of the physics that's going on at the Manhattan Project, he is refused because they suspect that, or the FBI suspect that he would be a communist spy.

20:43And that's just, I mean, the communist, sorry, the FBI file is fascinating. It's a truly mad document, but it doesn't really relate to his regrets about the nuclear bomb, which were severe um he even within his lifetime was seen as the father of the nuclear bomb and has to at some point our right state you know he says to a newspaper i am not the father of the bomb um because it's drawing on some of his science but he didn't play such a direct contribution and nevertheless he he did feel a sort of deep personal responsibility for the up-to-date destruction that he saw from the bombs. And he was a committed pacifist, really.

21:25So it was a very sort of tense battle in him for the remainder of his life. It's just this amazing paradox. You have these brilliant people that are generally pacifists, and they create the greatest war weaponry in the history of mankind. Yes. let's go to something a little bit more fun which i loved about your book einstein's a ladies man tell us about that sam yes to put it mildly i think a flirt and more um yes he was he had about i almost a countless amount of affairs i think if i had tried to put every affair he had into the book it would be several hundred pages longer um he as i said zwang he did not want constraint he tells his second wife outright that he is going to have affairs that he doesn't believe that people are monogamous and he's not going to be faithful um and they have and she goes through the marriage but she had they have quite severe rows about it there's one one of his um mistresses comes and every time that she visits their summer house brings pastries for Elsa, his second wife, who then of course goes off crying while Einstein goes sailing with his mistress and has sex with her.

22:45So he does have this, again, with his family, he's almost verging on the edge of cruel a lot of the time. And I think that that is just simply because he doesn't want any sort of constraint on what he can do and what he wants to do and what he's very good at doing is having affairs he he really is an incredibly fantastic incredibly charismatic man you don't you get that not just from the the affairs but the amount of friendships he has and the amount of very strong friendships that he has he he when i was reading all of the various accounts of you know people have met him charlie chaplin or you know, the queen of Belgium or whoever, or whoever it was, they all in their writing just conveyed that they were totally in love with Einstein.

23:37It must have just been such a joy to know if you were not his wife and gained pastries from his mistresses. So there's a very famous letter that Einstein writes to the wife of his best friend. His friend has died. and he says in the letter is the the the name of the friend and again forgive me because i'm american i don't speak with your beautiful accent but i think it's michelle or michelle besos is the name of the uh friend and in the letter uh mr einstein says that this uh this figment of our imagination more or less this fiction uh your husband has left us but this is just a temporary illusion as a result of the way we perceive time now i'm not quoting the letter exactly but you're getting the gist of what i'm saying and so what was that all about that's a lovely question because it touches on something which i think makes einstein very human which is this relationship he has with michelle beso um his best friend almost all through his life and they are very very close beso has a huge impact on not his science as well as his personality um and i think there are two things going on with that letter it's well three possibly if i'm allowed of that one is that einstein is very close to death at that point as well they die within a few months of each other so going just first um and i think in the letter, Einstein starts by saying, yet again, he has anticipated me.

25:18So Einstein is aware that he is not well, and he is dwelling and thinking about death. And another is that he has just lost his best friend, who he has known for over 50 years. And there is a genuine outpouring of emotion in that letter, which is slightly unusual for Einstein. He is reasonably guarded with his sort of really deep inner emotions you get a lot of his opinions and joys and laughter in reading about him um and you know some of his sort of worries but it's very rare to get a glimpse into the really very deep sadnesses or or loves um and in that letter i think you get that and then the the third thing is that um he is drawing on the science that he knows which in physics there are almost no equations which draw any distinction between which way time flows.

26:12And so he's saying that basically he is able to still be with his friend. There's a stubbornly persistent illusion known as time, he says in this letter. And so do your best. You're not Richard Feynman, but do your best to explain that to somebody. What is this stubborn, persistent illusion that we know as time? I am not fine, but I will give it a go. Einstein is slightly referring to his own work in relativity, which showed that there is no great plot in the universe. There is no one single time. We all carry our own times with us. We all have our own reference frames on the universe, and depending on how you're moving, time moves differently with you as you move.

27:07If you go very, very fast, close to the speed of light, your clock will slow down compared to someone who's not doing that. Time is relative. It depends on you. And it doesn't exist as an absolute thing. So there's that. And then there's also the fact, as I slightly alluded to, there are incredibly few equations in physics. Most of physics, most of the maths of physics doesn't have time and built into it at all. The equations, if you put them into a scenario where there is time involved, work exactly the same as if time were going one way as if it were going the other. It doesn't seem to have any effect on the mathematics.

27:48There is an exception, which Einstein is very conveniently ignoring. But most of the time, physics tells you that time is a stubbornly persistent illusion. It's something that we have made up. Yeah. And I think he proves it through the math. And so this is perplexing to the average person because we get up in the morning, there's a clock, we think the time is running in one direction. And obviously, because of the way we age biologically, we tie our aging process to the way the time works as well. And so we've got this whole thing going on. But I think Einstein is trying to tell us he's figured out mathematically that there's something else happening in the universe around us.

28:28Perhaps there's these five senses which we could observe the universe from or just not enough. Maybe there's other things that are happening beyond the three dimensions that we can observe. And this is what makes him, to me, one of the more fascinating figures. He's up there in my mind with Isaac Newton, obviously, because of the way he was able to take on this challenge. Okay, so we're at the point in the podcast, Sam, where I have five words. I put these out to people. We got into one of these words earlier in the podcast, but I'll use it again. I'll give you the word. You give me a response to the word.

29:05It'd be a sentence, a word, something that makes you think. We'll start with the word Einsteinium. When I say Einsteinium. I say element 99. That's its atomic number. There you go. Entirely useless. It has no use. Yeah, entirely useless, but, you know, a new substance in the universe as a result of these explosions. Science. The pursuit of a proof about the universe that can be experimentally verified. I think that would be something that Einstein would accept as a definition. How about genius? A pursuit. I think that that's the argument of my book. It's not something that is sort of God-given.

29:53It's not something that is extraterrestrially other that you or I have absolutely no access to. I think Einstein had a lot more know-how than we do about physics, but then worked very, very hard to get where he did. So genius is a pursuit as well as a gift. Okay, the word Albert. Albert. Well, I quite like him. I think he's my friend in a very strange way. I know him better and in a far more comprehensive way than I know anybody else. I've read all of his teenage love letters and I've read all of his slides. And I think ultimately. Yeah, that's where I was really going with. That's where I was really going because when you hear the word Albert, you think of the person.