Brian Keating: I’m Spending $200 Million To Explore Why We Exist! How God Fits Into Science Finally Explained, Is God Real?

36:41And I'm not by the way I'm not proselytizing. It's actually forbidden in my religion I'm not prosely but but the but that concept of God is that Richard Dawkins doesn't believe in I also don't believe in that Like he's omniscient. He's gonna prevent, you know, babies from dying from cancer He's gonna do this and that like that's where they make fun of it Or they they they relegated to the friend in the sky you call it right? I don't believe there's a friend in the sky I don't think that even makes sense But I believe that we are seeing something so heavily refracted again if it exists It's like a showing a microwave telescope, you know showing bicep or the Simon's observatory To you know God who lived in a cave 200 ,000 years ago like there's no way to get from there to here But that doesn't mean like there isn't an ultimate there an ultimate here For me, I let me just say the final thing I want to say because I don't want to make too much about this But um there's a value in practicing even if you don't believe Just like I say sometimes like even if you got divorced like you should still get married Because it changes you and it opens you up to the full panoply of human experience that A lot of people don't get to experience and when people have the capacity the capability to do it They should in my opinion uh by the way I'm not advocating to get divorced either but but the point being You obviously wrestle with it and and um interestingly enough the word israel Which is the central you know country of of judic faith means fight with God It means wrestle with God.

38:06El is God. It means fight So how do you wrestle with it? Do you wrestle with it? Do you think about it or you say You know I'm not gonna read these books that I read before I was 18 because it seems so childish to me now and so I do I certainly wrestle with it So when I say wrestle with it not in a way that is causing me any pain or agony or deep frustration but it's It's calling yeah, it's a recurring thought and I actually think from doing this podcast and just um I could maybe growing up and Uh the journey I've been on I have More questions now then I ever have since I became agonistic at 18.

38:47There's more questions now I've been on this bit of an arc where I was certain when I was younger that God was real yep, and then I was really um certain that The god I believed in probably wasn't real and now I've kind of found myself going back to position where I'm like Almost like I'm starting the research project again. Yeah to figure out what actually is What actually is real? I sometimes wonder if I'm looking for the wrong thing because I think because we've been so sort of Inductinated into the side that it is a man in the sky All these white the white beard and stuff So like looking for evidence of that, but maybe I should be searching for evidence of something else Maybe is it like a feeling I'm searching for is it interesting that you said that is reminiscent reminds me of Einstein Einstein said Um, he never asked his father What would happen daddy if I was traveling at the speed of light and I looked at myself in a mirror And he said it was good.

39:35I didn't ask those questions when I was five because my dad would have given me the standard answer of the 1800s, which was you know, you see your flower whatever and then Einstein said I would have just accepted that And then I would never have gone on to create the theory of relativity What you said echoes what he said because if you if you would ask these questions and just accepted the belief that you had when you're 12 You would not be approaching them with the maturity of a Stephen Bartlett at age 32 right and now you have this perspective You have a wisdom that you've accrued from your life experiences from the the millions of people that you've helped around the world To expose them to different things and you're on a journey yourself.

40:10So anyway I just I don't so I don't have tolerance for scientists that dismiss it and say stupid and I like but I also I find that religious people are too comfortable saying everything is described by God Everything happens because of God and I see this a lot with religious children Sometimes I go into kid school and teach them You know that science as I'll bring these you know props and stuff But when I talk to them sometimes I'll say like oh look there's a rainbow over there. Oh, that's great Where did it come from? They'll say God made it. I think that's I joke. That's a form of child abuse You know if you just say that God made it you're a Completely ignorant about the science, but B you're also diminishing God's power right if you say no actually that's an effect of water droplets Which are formed hydrogen oxygen and here's their chemistry and here's how they form Different state of matter when they're in collective and here's how that causes light to diffract a different wavelengths And here's waveling electromagnetic radiation.

41:06Where does that come on and you keep asking the question? Why why why why why Only when you get to the question the answer the final answer I don't know that's the only time I would say okay God could come in there But that takes you back and you know that whole chain of refraction of light of dielectric material of of of wavelengths of of color All that said that takes you back till almost to the big bang which then intersects with what I do You said I'm that you think of God as almost like a force Do you think it's a conscious force? I if you if I sit down and pray to this God will they hear me?

41:41I honestly could say I don't know, but I know you'll change. I know that you'll hear yourself Okay, so you can go down to the oceans do if you can go down to the Pacific Ocean and just be isolated And just pour yourself out for an hour. I guarantee it will change your life You will be in tears, but no one will see you and that's the thing That's why you have to be alone you cannot do with any other person You must do it on your own because there's no Sam Harris meditation waking up out It's not going to do the same for you as it's just you Alone and not knowing as part of the point I think but what's like what to do with God?

42:13What's me going down to the beach and pouring my heart out which would get me into my make the lera or get me thinking about You know make me emotional I can imagine you know Even listening to certain music can make you feel that what what role is God playing in in that moment Because if God exists I do believe that he's inside of you and that you can connect with him Again, you can't detect him with an MRI machine Well, you can't detect him with a laser But you know can if he again, it's a big if I'm not guarantee I you know, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'm not that kind of doctor You know, I can't give you a prescription now make you believe but to have access to it You have to be open to a communication right imagine you got you know You know an email and you just never respond to it like people remember the movie interstellar You see them.

42:57We so there you know the people on earth are communicating with the people on you know Matthew McConaughey's daughter and she have it. She doesn't know he's listening and he doesn't and he knows that she's but in that sense He's kind of like this guy like he has knowledge that she doesn't have but if she doesn't try Maybe she wouldn't maybe just the aspect of trying the attribute of trying is what opened her up to that return signal the communication that she eventually So interesting because What I asked the question about can God hear me and if he can hear me I guess the second question is can he do anything about what he's hearing Mm -hmm There's so much evidence in the world so that he can't he and he's not going to do anything about it But again, you say that but like what if uh, you know, who knows if if you're if you're parents, you know like they were a lot of the stories in early in Our testament are about sterile barren women that couldn't conceive you know from Sarah that Rebecca to to Rachel all these women they couldn't conceive they cried out they they prayed and again women are closer to God in many ways because they contain life within them um Again in what sense are you not already the recipient of the beneficence of something that we just don't understand like potentially Yeah, but but but one asks this question about like could I if I pray is it going to influence my outcomes in any way?

44:15You know, there's a I don't believe it does for the reason I said before like people were praying here for the Dodgers I'm sure they were equally virtuous people praying for the eggs That's what I mean if you think about the scientific methods That's why I said I don't we could apply that and say does prayer work right and you could get I don't know Look through history at the Holocaust or look at some other world some natural disaster and think it has praying sway the The probabilities of bad things happening to people So I don't believe that at all, but I do believe that fundamentally A person who believes that their That their actions have some impact will feel at least the sense of gratitude.

44:53Let me let me give you an example You're familiar in Christianity, you know people say a blessing before the meal like grace before a meal So in Judaism you do that before the meal after the meal sometimes But the point is the more you express gratitude You cannot be a happy person and be an in great Yeah, the more you're grateful for like the sound of you know of You know a song that is just so meaningful to you the sight of a painting or a sunset The more that you're and Judaism we say blessings for those things like we say if we see a meteor shower We say a blessing. It's hard for me as an astronomer.

45:28You gotta say bless a rainbow another thing Those are like kind of things we become the sensitized to in life and we just take for granted when you taste a fine wine or you taste, you know some delicious food again It could just be chlorophyll here Stephen have here's your plate of agar gum like okay great I could live here's a way powder. That's all you ever get to eat and let you be like sucks I know what I'm I had and if I could only go back to it after I get out, you know of the situation I'm gonna be so grateful to me that grateful gratitude connects to the ultimate source Of that provided that we can't understand is true.

46:02I cannot give you and I told you I have problems with prayer Because I don't like to be told what to do. I don't like to be told I have to say this in this order stand up sit down fast on this day do this thing not eat that delicious Pink guy with the curly tail like but when you do that you know this The more you're disciplined the happier life is, you know who's who's more happy the guy who eats everything He wants or jaco, you know like the the the person who just gives into all their temptations of alcohol The person who abstains and elevates what they do And I think we want to elevate ourselves above the level of an animal of the animals But I can have all those behaviors of like a gratitude practice I can have a meditation practice.

46:41I get out to the beach I can do all of those things And I still I can still do all of those things without the need of a god Oh sure And I'll get all the benefits of those things I'd get when I express gratitude before I eat or sometimes when I'm Get on a plane and I I touch the plane to remind myself and I can almost make myself emotional Just thinking about how remarkable it is that I get to do some other things I've been able to do in my life to the point of like physical emotion. Yeah um But without the presence of needing to equate that to a god in any way So I'm trying to find I guess I'm searching for where god fits in all of this What why is god why is a god required?

47:20Is it just because I have so many blessings? So I should be thankful to someone for these things which I do can tell them if I go okay And let me think about how my life has changed in the last 10 years of you know from going from some of those shoplifting pizzas to Sitting here and getting to do these is it's remarkable you start to think you're a little bit in the treatment show If you're not if you think about it too deeply But um and you do feel you think who do I thank for this who think do I thank my parents like right do I thank myself for you So you do I think of god um But I but is that the reason it just to just just to be thankful but then I go there's a bias there because there's kids in the town and box One of that I was born in That are still in the town and box one of that I was born in and they're not doing so good So they have did god not like them did and then if you go no god likes both of you then I go Well then god isn't responsible for this it was something that I did all my parents did that are responsible for this So I should thank them so where does god fit again and I just go around in these loops and I go I don't know what are we trying to Create a god to make sense of the things we feel in the experiences we have in the baby that grabs off Finger in the gratitude in the the the solar eclipse in the the sunset are we trying to Trying to give that to someone because it's just so the or is just so much or did god give that to us Well, I mean it's the perspective that you're bringing as obviously you've thought about this a lot And obviously your attitude is healthy and I think it's you have you know unbalanced I think yeah, obviously living as a good life even if I'd never say that an atheist can't be a good person or can't be happy or New things the question is what where does it augment and affect your life like for example I don't know if I would give 10 % of my income to charity before tax income to charity If I if it wasn't a commandment In my religion, but I don't feel shame for that.

49:08I don't feel like oh you need a religion to tell you this because again I'm still searching just as much as I think that you are I don't feel like As untroubled by the answers of it, right? I don't feel like That not knowing for sure that god exists, which I don't believe is possible anyway That that should be an impediment to me practicing giving charity being in a community Raising my kids with appreciation of their history and their culture And and just the contributions of their religion of your religion or whatever To to the world So if you found out from this new project that you've you've launched this two million two hundred million dollar project We've launched to figure out the existence of I guess where the what what that the existence but the origin of the universe The origin of life if you found out unequivocally that god isn't real Convinces you to the point that you now believe that god is not The creator of the universe and that I don't know you figure out some other way we can create universes in little labs It may be a thousand years from now.

50:10We can create our own little universes from nothing somehow. Or we find our simulation out Yeah, whatever you're seeing exactly. How does that change you? Because I'm a behaviorist I don't I really don't feel like my life would be better to act as if god doesn't exist In other words if I know god doesn't exist, then I'm gonna act like he doesn't exist right that's a logical assumption Yeah, right? So I'm gonna stop giving charity like is that gonna make me happier in life? Is that gonna benefit society or my or you know Zeus or whatever doesn't exist like I already know that's not true Right so I've kind of done this experiment like all these other gods.

50:48I know I don't believe in rock You know fucking nothing so you wouldn't do anything differently benefits to my life are so substantive that I would not change my behavior But you're being guided then by your bear your behavior and the rewards from behavior which is pretty much my life Yeah, well, okay, so right breath word in the meditation I've been guided by like if gratitude feels good. I do it going down to the beach feels good I do if you're having a baby feels good. I'll do it So like it'd be dangerous to devolve so you add god to my life we take it away My behaviors are gonna be the same because I'm I'm being guided by The things that are making me feel good But I don't think so you're not like there's a hiddenistic Instagram influence.

51:28Yeah, cuz that one would be feel good like I don't have run the experiment I mean the donut makes you feel okay for the time it's touching my tongue right But then bad for 12 hours when my gut starts reacting badly so I don't do that anymore Well, I mean I see this question so if they found out that working out is Eventually it's it's actually in a short in your life or it's gonna do the opposite of what you're intending to do necessarily Would you keep working out? How much is it gonna short my life by? Every every You know ab crunch you do every bench press takes an hour off your life or something or a couple minutes off your life Oh, it's an interesting one um I would probably live 10 years less to live Like 10 years better like to have a better health span so I probably if you told me it's gonna lift to a hundred Hundred with without working out or I could lift a 90 but I'm gonna be strong and fit for those 90s I'll take the 90 years so in my analogy that's exactly right.

52:30So I feel like that level of of perfecting or enjoyment and the ancillary benefits of gratitude uh and and happiness that I've received tangibly you cannot convince me As I can't convince you that working out feels I couldn't convince you working out as bad. It feels bad for you It does something to you physically mentally emotionally. Um, I don't want to say spiritually But for me to see the benefits to see the things that I've seen like Look Steven. I've Barried my father Okay, and in in Judaism one of the core tenants is that It's the highest sort of the highest mitzvah. It's the highest commandment to take care of someone who's died Why because they can't reciprocate?

53:13Most of what we do in life we have some kind of contract, you know We play by the rules we did things nicely. We have contractors. We invest in dragons den. Whatever We're gonna get some kind there's nothing good. There's nothing that will come out of it that will benefit you I've seen things. I've seen people that are saints that I can't aspire to even be in their presence of But it's made my life better I wouldn't change the things that I've done or seen and you couldn't convince me it wasn't good for me And as I said before maybe you think I'm weak, but I wouldn't have done it if I Didn't feel it was commanded to me You mentioned the word simulation.

53:51Yeah a second ago This is something that I've been thinking a lot about What is just for people that don't know what is the simulation theory and are we living in a simulation? Great question. So the simulation theory was really conjectured by a British philosopher or he's actually Swedish or I believe Nick Bostrom He conjectured the following he said compute is getting so phenomenally powerful and just our recent time horizon So the notion that Nick and others have proposed is that if this is extrapolated indefinitely into the future Whether or not that can happen is a question about planetary resources You know part of the reason Elon wants to go to Mars and I do want to talk to you about Mars in a bit um and that uh that extrapolation Leads and excerpt lead to the to the conclusion that compute will be effectively free And it'll be infinite.

54:45It'll be completely Democrosion democratized. It will be completely demonetized. It'll be almost you know as I said too cheap to to measure The expense of computing and it'll be everywhere In just a short amount of time. I mean remember the the phone that we have The iPad that you're using these are like these things would literally be a mythological witchcraft You know 80 years ago and now they're they're commonplace And so the the notion that Nick proposed boston proposes that that trend continues into the future that basically the capability of those computers would be to be able to Model entire planets entire ecosystems even cultures communities maybe even people themselves.

55:27So we let's take a parallel um Detour for just a bit. You're not Seeing me necessarily you're seeing photons are coming into your retinas, right? photons are a packets of energy form of light they travel out the speed of light They have different wavelengths the wavelengths we call color they're going into your Cornia getting bent a little bit then they're going to your lens getting bent more then they're going to your retina They're getting detected on this basically a detector just like a sensor in a camera Which has pixels except it has trillions of pixels instead of millions of megapixel or you know a few megapixels And those are being transduced the color gets transduced on on cells that are called cone cells The intensity is the rod cells And those are getting transduced into electrical impulses that go from the Optic nerve right into your brain and remember Andrew Hubert and told you on the show The retina is the only part of the human brain that's outside of the cranium.

56:21It's outside of the skull And so it's a part of your brain that's outside so transduces it makes electrical impulses those electrical impulses Then get conducted like wires conducting electricity And then those go into your brain and synapses in your brain and the neural pathways in your brain Can reproduce those now you have an apple vision pro. I think I saw you with once So that can you know kind of simulate it could make very accurate representation of me A holographic perhaps and you would want to reach out and touch me now imagine instead of just Instead of just the just the raw chem the physical electronics of a headset apple vision pro you just inject the electrical signals into the brain So that's plausible.

57:04It's just purely physical material processes photons converted to electrons get converted to neuron signals get processed in the brain And so all you have to do is get that input sensory inputs and you can have a digital retina fake retina and you just stimulate it goes into your brain. They're working on that Same with sound sound is even easier to put a little speaker in your ear and you'd hear but So the notion is that we could physically just be disconnected brains in a vat right we could just be In this vast system just bunches of brains don't ask how they got there But we're all just receiving stimuli and we're just being fed.

57:40I'm being fed an image of you over there You're being fed an image of me over here. I don't know why nobody knows why this would occur But the computing power is there if you think that the apple vision pro if if you were alive in 1971 You could not have necessarily predicted the apple vision pro it was too far advanced from from what we have From what we had at that point in time, but imagine it just keeps increasing At any rate you like eventually, there'll be a point where every bit Of information every atom in the universe every photon in the universe could theoretically be simulated Again, I don't know why this is But it would be indistinguishable from our reality according to people like Nick Bostrom and others That suggests this is so so that our existence is we are essentially in a simulation So the notion is that we're all these characters in this literal simulation run on some computing device some hardware device that we don't necessarily understand at this point and we're calling that God That is going to get to So eventually you get to a point where if you could simulate everything Then you would have to ask there must be some simulator Right, there must be some master simulator So let's say I'm a simulation while who simulated me And then who simulated them and then who simulated them so that's the recursion that's infinite You can't actually get to a base level of You know a final simulator and if you did it would kind of be like god like you're talking about this brain in the jar That's created out of silicon and oxygen and whatever we're made of but it's physically created by human beings What if you can't pay the power bill that week and you know, you have to choose between unplugging your refrigerator I'm plugging the brain like is that killing something you know like it starts to Enter into the realm of ethics and maybe even these concepts of a deity What I've heard and I find quite plausible is Remember I said the the implication of having infinite computing is that you can simulate everything in the universe But can it simulate itself?

59:42So I want to digress into what's called complexity theory There are two different types of of difficult things. There's like a complex thing like building an arabus 320 It's very complicated right you can do it if I give you all the parts all the instructions give you the right order And I keep you energized if I like anybody can follow those instructions and make it The earth's weather pattern state right now is complex There's no way that you can actually Create that like you would need another planet -sized thing to create that. That's called irreducibly complex You cannot make it simpler and then build it up from simpler and simpler things unlike an arabus You can build it up from smaller parts and as long as you follow the recipe You know if you follow the recipe for the Simon's observatory you'll get the Simon's observatory But if you try to simulate and it may be the simulate the weather you do need another planet like we need us another planet Just like the earth and then we'd introduce carbon dioxide at a certain rate and we see is it really going to cause it?

1:00:39But like that's totally impractical right? So the question of these things is um Is it really a simulation if it's not a hundred percent like you could make a very very good weather simulation We do have that But but famously they're only accurate for a few days right? So so how do you build up you know an accurate simulator? It have to be the same so in other words Do we need like another is there another universe where the simulators are that's equally complex to the simulation creation that they made and then did they stop Like did they get are they made of silicon are they artificial are they So there are proposals that you could detect the presence.

1:01:15It's kind of like you mentioned the term and show Where how all computers work right now is is on this binary code zeroes and ones five volts zero volts But um and that means that the world is fundamentally discretized It's broken into little chunks like the screen on your computer on your iPad. It's pixelated in space It would be called voxels volume elements And so you can You can have in a large number of them But it's a big difference between a large number and infinity To really have a continuous like like temperatures continuous like go from zero degrees to 100 degrees and there's every step in between But in the simulated world because you couldn't have you need an infinite number of computer power to simulate just from zero degrees to one degree Not let alone from zero to 100 or every possible combination So at some level you'd be you'd see if you zoomed in really close in the on the thermometer you'd see there's a little job So you could detect the presence of the simulator.

1:02:15It's more complicated Actually, it's done using astrophysical sources called gamma ray bursts and other things that are That have properties that are seemingly incompatible with their being a simulation at the most distant and they're for earliest moments in the universe So right now there's zero evidence for it Nick Bostrom will tell you and you should have them on That that you know that that's basically a cop out and and their ways around that that that failsafe mechanism aliens do aliens exist Yes aliens do exist There's an old joke they're called Hungarians Hungarians are so many countries So I yes, there's all joke there are aliens their klingons and they're around Uranus But I wanted to give this to you Steven as one of the gifts that brought for you today This is some soap for you.

1:03:03This is soap Uranus soap. So you want to keep Uranus clean Thank you so much. And all seriousness There's no evidence for aliens There's only a there's what's I call possibility Does not equal probability they existence of so many stars in the universe means there's so many planets Which is true we found almost every single star has maybe 10 planets around it And we have a hundred billion in our galaxy alone There's a hundred billion galaxies in our universe. We're talking up One with 24 zeros after it. That's how many planets there are in the observable universe Tannits planets People say that means that's we it's got to be life in the universe.

1:03:43No, it doesn't mean anything There could be so many hurdles for life to get started let alone to create complex technology producing life like us That we're essentially we're it and I'm not saying we are it But I'm saying there's been zero 0 .0000 percent evidence that life exists beyond the earth. I know you've had Luel Zondo on The claims that he's making are controversial. They're not scientific They're government. I'm not dismissing his experiences of people he talks about. They're not persuasive They're not addressing fundamental characteristics The universe is faster than you or I can comprehend You know if this was our solar system the nearest star would be like near in San Diego There's almost no way for us to comprehend how enormous our solar are universes Let alone how vast the cosmos is How much of it can we see?

1:04:35We can see technically we can see a lot of the universe But most of that is way before even molecules formed in other words There's no possibility of life Let's restrict ourselves to the Milky Way galaxy Which is the only galaxy will ever be able to explore etc At least unless we invent wormhole travel like interstellar But but for now we have sent probes the farthest probe we've ever sent was launched in 1977 It's one Light day away from the earth. Okay, so that means traveling at the speed of light the fastest speed possible Which is how much miles an hour? 186 ,000 miles per second 300 ,000 kilometers per second It's only quote it's only gotten one light day away the nearest star Is 1200 times farther away than that.

1:05:21It's four light years away So it'll never get to that other star. I mean it took and it took 50 years to get one light day So it need 1200 times 50 years called a hundred So you're talking like vast numbers of millennia to get to the nearest star And that star we don't even know if it has life on it or not. It's not actually going to that star But the point is the universe the galaxy itself is so large And the types of environments in which life can take hold are so so precarious It's actually we tell ourselves a story like you said with molecules and then they start to evolve and then they get It's really not known how life Got created it.

1:05:57It's not known how life came from non -living material from hydrogen helium oxygen How that turned into a cell? It's a it's a vast challenge in what's called organic synthetic organic chemistry and the formation origin of life And then to say that those entities Then evolved into some kind of technologically pretty no if we found a dinosaur on Mars I hope you the discovery of the of the unit of the history of the planet of all time, right? A dot or whatever even a bacterium on Mars. They'll be an incredible discovery So some people try to defeat this notion and say well Life didn't have to necessarily get started in all these planets.

1:06:38It could have started once And then get brought to those other planets through meteorites. Yeah, this is actually created this theory is created by the same friend Hoyle came up with the big bang theory They called it pan sperma. It sounds dirty, but it's not so these meteorites could carry genetic material And they could land on another planet. They could have landed on earth That's one theory that life on earth originated from another planet that had life on it And in fact, this is one of your lovely part and gives This is what Elon will kill for you. I'm gonna give you something that Elon doesn't have This is a piece of Mars This is a real piece of Mars It's 1 .524 grams Of another planet.

1:07:26I want you to touch it You can see it's a little bit reddish like the planet Mars This is much better than that So you gave me A piece of Uranus and a piece of Mars Here's some information about it. I give out as I said these meteorites on my website ranking .com It's a lucky winners each month and I'll give out the information. This was found in Africa And How did it get here? Well a meteorite Hit the planet Mars Shattered off debris That debris orbited around Mars for millions of years perhaps eventually had plowed into the earth and landed in Africa They found it They said this they knew it came from space They analyzed it has the same chemical composition molecular structure as the landers that are on Mars right now measure for Mars So we know 100 percent that's for Mars It's incredible.

1:08:22So Elon is desperately trying to get there That's your little piece. Please. Thank you. Keep it keep it safe And that's one way that life could have gotten to Mars From the earth right? It's the same thing happens on the earth. It's happened to Mars So yeah, it could have hit Earth blast it off some amoebas some orcas some kangaroo whatever and Whatever was on the earth at the time and then eventually landed on Mars with the DNA of it But it didn't take hold right So planets exchange DNA is possible But we don't see life on Mars if we think about this table yeah Um give to put in context how big the universe is if the universe was the size of this table How big would earth be on this table?

1:09:06It's incomprehensible small don't not even a grain of sand Not far far smart even a great Even our galaxy wouldn't be a grain of sand Even if this were our galaxy wouldn't be a grain of sand No, no, our solar our whole solar system would be perhaps yes one grain of sand if this were a Milky Way galaxy Which is a hundred thousand light years across It would be like one tiny little grain of sand what would be of this solar system Out to the planet Neptune So it was that ten planets wasn't it? Well, we have uh there's eight planets in our solar system including the earth It used to be nine, but Pluto is not only a planet So and we're about one third of the way from the edge of the disk of the Milky Way So Traveling all across there.

1:09:46Yes, we would be perhaps the entire solar system actually smaller than maybe half a grain of sand And can we travel to the end of the solar system? Well, we sent this object. It's gone well beyond it So the edge of the solar system is about four light hours So we in 50 years Stephen with only on quote unquote, and I'm not denigrating the historic accomplishment We actually put on these on these spacecraft um digitized pictures of human life of voices of songs from every continent Of culture of recipes of laughter of children crying of babies. They put this called the golden disk A Carl Sagan was responsible for this and they mounted it to it and it's now Well as I said 24 light hours away and the farthest edge of our solar system the planet Neptune is is four light hours Sorry 24 light hours is the Voyager spacecraft So we've only got one six of that we've gone only six times the diameter of our solar system So our entire solar system would be a grain of sand on this table unless even yeah about half a grain Half a grain of sand on this this table is about two and a half meters roughly big and how many tables are there That's a very good question.

1:10:51We think at least a hundred billion tables Each one with a hundred billion grains of sand There are more at there are more grains of sorry. There are more stars In the entire universe that we can observe then every grain of sand On every beach on every continent on our planet That's really wobbled to my head. So there's Our entire solar system is half of grain of sand on this sort of two three meter table and there are a hundred billion tables So you know when you hear that you go, okay, we really don't matter like we're really it's so bizarre that we've fallen into the trap of believing that we're like important in any way And then for me that you from through is another question market towards religion, but the other thing it makes me go is surely There's got to be some other life on one of these grains of sand on the hundred billion tables Again, well, let me just address the first thing so um you're About ten maybe two 15 trillion times bigger than a virus or bacteria Um can that bacteria affect you or a virus hurt you Of course you can So size doesn't really make that big a difference in this context right Jupiter is a hundred times You know bigger and diameter than the earth does it make it more important?

1:12:16I think the earth is much more in product A lot better the sun is a hundred times bigger than Jupiter like would you like to live there? So the point in trying to make is size isn't really that important numbers not really that important and remember don't ever forget Where they only conscious, you know Entity that we know about in the universe right there's there's literally like 70 different types of primates Right like monkeys you talked about before a bonoboze or angatae None of them have what we have none of them can have this probabilistically Let me give you an example I've been to an article twice for a bicep experiments When I go there and article is the seventh continent to be discovered on earth It's approximately 12 % of the landmass of the earth That's a huge enormous continent with extreme mountains weather Extreme cold, but the one thing it doesn't have as much life But if you did that same thing I said look Steven.

1:13:10There's this continent you could hardly walk across it and you know It's five or six years even if you're a great athlete, you know people do it, but you it would be very challenging to do it It's enormous. It's got all the support for life. It's got Hydrocarbons. It's got heat. It's got Or rocks you can build shelter. You can have water which is most important thing How much life do you think is there? Let me just tell you Steven. There's it makes up 13 % of the earth's surface There's 8 billion people on earth. How many people do you think live there? I mean as a scientist you don't have to be a scientist You say I think there's probably you know, maybe 800 million people there.

1:13:43There's zero people there basically So just the probability I'm not saying it's impossible Probability is not determined by possibility Because the thing with the South Pole is okay, so there's no one there And if you put me there instead is their life and I got to tell us go out and I looked around I'd go there's no life here I can't see anything. I think I'd say I'm the only the only person here And then I'd a positive meaning to myself. I'd say I must be really important I might think that I'm a god if I find the only life there. I'd look around again for miles And I'd walk for days and days and days and send out pigeons and whatever and I go there's no way But then little do I know that although this little space is inhabitable if you go Get on a plane and go a little bit further.

1:14:24You get to the land of the free. Right But what if we can't do that? What if there's no plane? What if there's nothing? What if this is all we have I think that a lot of the sightings and stuff. I've interviewed the top fighter pilots You know in the world that claimed to have witnessed these encounters I've you know Interviewed the top you know people that claim these things exist. I've interviewed Avi Loeb It's a good friend at Harvard who runs a project. He claims he's discovered material from Interstellar, you know technology perhaps like a garbage barge. I was floating throughout friend He's a very eminent scientist At no point do I ever understand the fundamental answer to the question?

1:15:05Have they get here? What properties what physics properties do they use? You know they always say oh well they defy the laws of physical. I'm a physicist You know, I can understand some of the most deep physics you want And by the way for many times in history where if I showed you something That was made by the US government you would say that is witchcraft magic Like the iPad thing you said iPad is just one thing You know that in the movie 2001 a space Odyssey You know the by the way, I have to tell you this if you don't know the word podcast Do you know that comes from the movie 2001 a space Odyssey?

1:15:38Oh, yeah, I've read the article for you. Yeah, it was an engineer at At who called it an iPod and the iPod came from the pod in 2001 So we owe podcasts to 2001 so in that movie there are iPads their guys communicating with iPad But they thought it was like technology of like 20 centuries from now. No, I'm talking about The technology it would take to make traversable distances out of this incomprehensible Cosmos that I talked about when you apply that thinking to God It changes though because earlier you said we just can't fathom We can't fathom this creator and the the factors that would go into this creator.

1:16:18So we almost have to You know some people just used to believe right yeah, and the same can be applied to the this thinking of how they got here It's like listen, maybe we don't know their technology because it's just unfathomable like the iPod or the iPad was 100 years ago you're absolutely right So if they just a hundred years ahead of us technologically we would think that they were doing witchcraft We would we wouldn't understand the the basis of the technology that they used to travel here Sure, but people like Lou will talk about things that are exactly Scientific claims one of the things in his book Which I read he hasn't come on my podcast.

1:16:49I'd like to talk to him But um he talks about these these craft and and the properties of them and how when you're inside of them They're bigger than they are when you're outside of them And how they affect and they they interact with human biology and cause burns and and so forth and the technology he's talking about It's not like some fifth force that I don't know about it's using the properties of General relativity of space time We do know enough about these things whereas god you're right. I'm not I'm not being So so critical maybe when it comes to this notion of god But remember I said I don't I don't have to say I believe in gravity or in string theory or whatever We can have evidence for it So when they make claims that have to do with physics they should be tested by the laws of physics When you talk about god.

1:17:36I'm saying I'm stipulating you can't test those with law with laws and therefore I can't prove god Exist despite how much I would like to or not like to so what do you think the probability is that We are alone. Do you think we're alone in the universe? Mm. I think it's very high You think it's high. I think it's very high that we're alone Let me make an analogy um for us to be here We earth had to have the following circumstances happen We had to have can you pass me the moon? Let me yeah And actually can you pass the there's a globe behind you love to have that perfect Okay, so I put here a globe And I put here the moon and these are almost an exact ratio of size this is about how big the moon is compared to the earth Now originally before the moon didn't exist when the earth was was first formed the the earth condensed out of a giant The version of trillions and trillions and trillions of tons of these mediatic materials They sank to the bottom at the core of the earth the earth earth's cores made of iron Have your lighter elements that carbon nitrogen oxygen.

1:18:41They kind of accredit onto it And eventually the super planet formed and that planet Or the early earth was called thea and it's called that because eventually there was a planet the size of that Can you name that beach ball please steam? A planet about this size maybe a little bit smaller Just for people that are yeah watching. Yeah, so there's a beach ball It's a little bit smaller than the globe that we're looking at it impacted this early earth thea blasted out material Into the solar system And over millions and millions of years some of that material condensed and formed the moon The moon and then the earth formed as we know it today Now the moon is 250 ,000 miles away from the earth It's exactly at the right place and size that we have tides on the earth We have ocean tides four times a day So right now I'm showing where high tide would be say where this part of the moon's Gravity is pulling on the ocean here so it rises it up That means that some of the tides on the other side are also high tide and then right angles low tide Oh, so that's how the tides work basically wherever the moon is it's pulling the ocean up Yeah, it's actually pulling the earth and the earth is surrounded by this this the sphere of water And so it's slosh that moves the earth within that water and the water gets turned into like a lashing shape So the high tides will be twice a day and the low tides will be twice a day right angles So that happens and we believe that that process is what was necessary to make the materials from the oceans where life started And eventually get that on the land and fertilize and make people eventually So remember I'm trying to explain how we got here So there had to be this enormous collision from an pre -existing object in our solar system to create the moon and the earth as we know them now But that wasn't enough Then there had to be these giant icebergs called comets comets bombard the earth over periods of millions of years the comets brought the ocean bearing material that brought water to the earth Surface and minerals and so forth to the earth's surface Eventually the earth cooled down and those oceans covered about 70 % of the earth's surface is covered by ocean as shown here So that comet had to occur that bombardment and the and the The fertilization of water or providing of water hydration of the earth came courtesy of comets Then lastly for us to be here these guys these are dinosaurs here.

1:20:56I brought a Actual representation of dinosaurs dinosaurs were roaming the earth. We know that right 65 million years ago and asteroid about this size Which is about an inch across Hit the earth traveling 250 ,000 miles per hour something like that hit it near Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula right here created this enormous devastation this crater that obliterated The atmosphere filled the atmosphere of pollution and and basically made like nuclear winter like you and Annie talked about and that cut off light To plants and eventually the dinosaurs most of the dinosaurs almost all the dinosaurs died Now that allowed mammals this first mammals were little tiny rodents rats right and I believe all evolution is true right?

1:21:45So those little rats then eventually evolved and made whales and people and bats and all sorts of cool stuff And eventually we came from that so I've described to you three very important bombardments of the earth one Earth's moon form from a huge collision two comets bombard the earth flooding it with water just to write a mount not too much not too little Which is perfect and three a meteor kills off The dinosaurs if any of those came in a different order we would likely not be here So not only do they occur Three incredibly improbable things that she would never predict would occur in that order happen to occur and they happen to occur in the right order That's just too created life though right say again.

1:22:27It was the first two of those three that created life Potent are allowed for life to exist. Yes, you're right But remember I'm trying to explain how DOAC occurs right for us to be here if there are dinosaurs here If the dinosaurs had a space program, you know, where they could zap away with the laser and they could deflect the asteroid They would have done it and we wouldn't be here likely okay, so you're right But let's say those events occurred in a different and a different pattern the small asteroid hit the earth first Nothing happens. There's no dinosaurs to kill Then the comets come in flood the earth with ocean, but then this huge You know the thea hits the earth the earth forms into its moon That would have boiled off all the ocean as well So we wouldn't have any water there for life to exist on and then the dinosaurs wouldn't even need to exist So those are just three things Stephen by the way, we have also the planet Jupiter I talked about before Dalai discovered its moons Jupiter is like a bodyguard It protects the earth from almost every major deadly impact The moon is also like a bodyguard see all the craters on this moon that my son 3d printed.

1:23:26He's proud to show it to you Yeah, these are death strikes that could have taken out the earth look up big some of them are there is big as the earth as the dinosaur killing meteorite in some cases So We have all these conditions now. I've only named five or six. Imagine each one Of the five or six only occurs with the probability of one in 10 ,000 one part in 10 to the fourth Well, guess what happens you take 10 one in 10 ,000 multiply by one in 10 ,000 one in 10 ,000 six times To say that you get a number that's smaller than the number of planets in the universe In other words the probability of all just those six things I think there's trillions of things how life formed the self -formed the chemistry of biology and then the culture whatever All those things are formed to make us technological.

1:24:09I think the probability is is extremely small Which is why I said I think the probability is low that we are that there are other life forms are another way to say it I think it's very high that we are alone That might be for a reason you know, there might be some reason Maybe we're meant to really take care of earth Maybe we're meant to really appreciate the blessings of what we have on earth If you're an entrepreneur you're probably going to want to listen to this It's a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast, which is linked in If you've listened to him on this podcast for a while now you'll know That I've been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur and one of those evolution That has become clear and clear as I've matured is that the single most important thing In building a business in building a company is Hiring the definition of the word company is actually group of people and that is the first Responsibility in job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on but Surprisingly most don't about 80 % of my team have been hired from LinkedIn And I think there's very few platforms if any in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate With that much information and data on their profiles It usually costs money, but for the entrepreneurs that are listening to me I've got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn Just go to LinkedIn .com slash D O A C to post your free job ad today That's LinkedIn .com slash D O A C Hams and conditions apply Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes In hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead And over the course of my career I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places One which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite They're also a sponsor of this podcast Net suite is the number one cloud financial system Through their streamlined platform You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place Their technology has been a real game changer Especially for my team at Flight Studio As over the last year we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode We no longer have to juggle multiple systems And having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with net suite So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business Head to netsweep .com slash Bartlett And free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning That's netsweep .com slash Bartlett Star signs and horoscopes Is there any possibility in your view from everything you've done in your research Your studies of the universe Is there any possibility That anything up there in the stars is determining our outcomes and our personality And whether he's going to dump me or I'm going to do well on Bitcoin.

1:26:48Is there anything No, there's there's no evidence for it in the sense that You can do randomized control trials or double blind surveys You can do exact simulations So they said the theory that the position of Jupiter at the moment that you are born Can literally be replicated There's something like a million people born every day And then at the exact same time there's probably 14 ,000 or whatnot. You know, you could do the math and figure it out For them all to have for no person to ever have You know sort of duplication of luck or circumstance The the effect on terms of physical forces the gravity of Jupiter The the pull of the Sun the position of the Earth and the day you were born now There are correlation effects right?

1:27:34So you have to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation So someone I'm actually born on the most frequently frequent birthday On all the calendars september 9th Now what is september 9th is about nine months after the holiday season right? So in a western culture, you know women in a party maybe my mom and my dad had a nice, you know, New Year's Eve or Christmas party Whatever and that's led to me being here right? So there are correlation and then that so that means that there's a lot of people that are Virgo's born on september 9th none of which are like me or in the southern hemisphere of the northern hemisphere A woman who's has gestation during the summer might feel differently than if she's gestating during the winter Even though the babies are born at the same day right?

1:28:14They're just born on opposite sides of the earth So they will have very different personalities whereas astrology says they should be the same It's interesting because people will especially people that are precious about horoscopes and astrology and those kinds of things will say I have just as much evidence for my thing as you do for your thing like they because they they will misconsider it to be a religious belief With people that I know literally some people have designed their entire lives And the meaning of their life around Meaning that they're finding out and by looking up at the stars How is it different from religion astrology?

1:28:49Um, there are elements of religion. Yeah, certainly it came came out of religion I don't think people now worship you know constellations or I don't think there's many major religions that are based on astrological You know contemplation maybe without the worship part but they they're seeking guidance In their lives they're getting answers from the stars they're making decisions based on it much of their moral compasses being determined like much of their Yeah, much of their morals and ethics and decisions and behaviors are being determined by By in the same way that it's being determined by someone that believes in a god.

1:29:23Yeah, it's hard to you know It's I'm a wrong person because some ways why do people need this people need answers to to to contemplate the universe First of all It's a scary universe, right? We were confronted by things that none none of us can understand entirety of Uh, not brightest noble prize winners the the greatest scientists the greatest thinkers Can't really contemplate it so we go through life. We try to make the best of it But we also have this sense of self and this theory of self of the theory of mind that you know We can relate to other people and we want answers so we want and I think that is in common.

1:29:59I think you're right Religion is very I almost wish I said did you ever wish that you were more religious? I mean, I don't yeah I wish I was too and I'm not and I hopefully my kids won't hear no I heard from a psychologist once he said you should Endeavor in your life that you pass on only half of your neuroses to your kids neuroses Crazy anxieties fears weird pathologies, you know psychological deficiencies Because if every parent did that, you know, the species is going to get better and better But if you keep making everyone as anxious as nervous and there's no progress in history a lot of the zodiac Religions that you talked about are astrological religions.

1:30:36They view time as a cycle In other words a flat circle a spiral goes into the future That's western civilization this progress in science. That's forward moving to the stars to wherever we're going to go And more and more human knowledge and flourishing But if you just say I'm committed to I'm going to be repeating every year on the birth I'm going to be repeating what all that my ancestors did that's very depressing And it doesn't lead to innovation to find cures for diseases to find explanations for fields and forces and technology that we have So what is the what is the meaning of life? Ah, glad you asked To me The meaning of life is to do as many things That if taken away from you would be devastating to you That which you do should be so consequential that did not have done it or not have it Would literally Destroy you to your core for me.

1:31:35It's my kids Those connections the the bonds the the the hopefulness for the future. I never said this Stephen, but I don't get too much of it I think about that's a lot more you know, especially in my case since October 7th last year a lot of my friends and family were impacted by that in Israel and It's I've never cried so many times and I have in the past year But thinking about all those you know kind of tears and emotions and saying do I wish I never felt that Do I wish I didn't have the pain if I met that didn't have the joy of having Those people in my life and I'm not ready to die. I'm hopefully, you know, maybe milley I don't know I don't know if I look to 104, but hopefully, you know, maybe I will But I've done a lot in my life.

1:32:27I've done things that you know, I didn't think I could do when I was a kid I've married the love of my life. I brought incredible souls into the world If I did die I'm not scared. I don't want to I'm working on my body. I'm working on my diet. I'm trying to do what's right for me and so I can be here as long as possible But the meaning of life is making connections It's making these bonds such that you know You hope that people will be Sad devastated and even when you're gone. So too the connections that I've made I can't see my life without them. I don't want to I don't think about it That's morbid To me, it's make those connections while you can not I mean when I listen to that episode that you do with Annie Jacobs It's terrifying right?

1:33:18You are like visibly scared in that episode. She's amazing We don't know. I mean god forbid. I don't think it's super. It was likely maybe is she thought my maybe she did is maybe it isn't Maybe on night But the points we don't know the points were here now The point is we might be alone But that should fill us with meaning to do what we can do uniquely so Before you had kids What was the meaning of your life? I was very easy. I wanted to win a Nobel Prize And that's changed now It has it has partially because my father was a great scientist I want to show him up. He never won a Nobel Prize. He won a lot of awards.

1:33:59I want to show him up Now he's dead. You know, there's no one to prove stuff to You know, you should live life to impress yourself And I feel like yeah if they gave me the Nobel Prize if someday I would merit it with my team of these brilliant scientists Just that's pretty unlikely, but let's say it happened It doesn't it doesn't mean what it once meant to me when I was your age when it on I when I was your age It wasn't idle to me. It was a god like you win it Yours close to scientific royalty and godlike status as possible to imagine much more than Oscar Gold medal in the Olympics. It is there's only 200 or so.

1:34:36I've ever won it It's like a small book and actually I've talked to people that I wanted Actually the forward to the my second book into the impossible is written by Barry Barrish. He won the 2017 Nobel Prize He told me Brian Because I always asked my final question. I know we're getting to the end here. I like your final question I learned from you and then I have my own final question. It's um if you could go back in the past and meet your 20 year old self What would you say to him to give him the courage to do as you've done to go into the impossible And he said to me Brian I would say to stop having the imposter syndrome And I said well, you know, yeah, you just tell me one the Nobel Prize and he won't no no I have the imposter syndrome now It's a barrier kidding me You won the Nobel Prize.

1:35:22How could you possibly have imposter syndrome He said Brian let me tell you something when you win a Nobel Prize you go to Stockholm you meet the king of Sweden They give you this buffet dinner. You're dressed in white tie not black -to -white tie You get this huge gold medal solid gold You get a million dollars possibly And they want to make sure you're not going to come back and say hey, uh, you know, Gustav there Where's my money? Where's my pro? So they make you sign a ledger not unlike the ledger in front of you And it has your signature. I Barry Barrish received the Nobel Prize and Barry said I took that book the first thing I did is I turned the page Who won it last year who won it the year before who wanted to I saw Richard Feynman.

1:36:03I saw Marie Curie I saw Albert Einstein He said I don't deserve to be in the same Universes Albert Einstein let alone in the same book How could they give the same prize to me they gave to him And I realized this was like an idol to him too. I said Barry. I've got good news for you Albert Einstein had the imposter syndrome It's like you're kidding me. I said no, no, not very he had the imposter syndrome and his hero was Isaac Newton Einstein said Isaac Newton did more for science and Western civilization than any human being before our sense That's a pretty tall order. How could Einstein live up to that?

1:36:45But I said Barry We'll go on step deeper. Isaac Newton had the imposter syndrome What the How could he use the greatest my invented calculus discover the laws of universal gravitation the principles of optics invented this telescope No, no, he felt wholly entirely unworthy of his hero Jesus Christ So much so Stephen that he attempted to do the same thing that Jesus Christ did He knew he couldn't work miracles. He knew he couldn't walk on water and turn lobes into fishes But he could do it was in some sense a greater struggle which was to die of virgin as Jesus did And so he did So the lesson is Imposter syndrome is normal Don't pet they don't idolize something literally.

1:37:35You get a grave and golden image of a man who cares. He's a man I don't care. I take time home with my family over that on the ship bot Is that invite you down to come to me in San Diego anytime you want I didn't realize that all of these great individuals felt like imposter's themselves Which is um, I think we'll liberate a lot of people from the way that they feel I mean, we I feel this every day like people introduce me on stage as like an interview or a podcast I'm like what the fuck just was never conceivable to me and I know jack's talked about the same thing like It's never conceivable to me that I'd be doing a podcast and it'd be big and that people would think you're good at it in some way There's no you're not just good Stephen come on you're in the elite level.

1:38:15You're in the upper right. What is that though? I mean, and how did that happen? I didn't go to school for that I just sat here and started asking people questions in my kitchen and then What people tuned in and they said you're good at it. I'm like what what does good mean? I don't do it the same as rogan and rogan's good at it and hubam is good at it I've been with them all look you have a unique angle that that is Not replicable, but I want to leave you with a mission that kind of this guided me and again I've learned a lot from you for you know It's no secret. I have the high energy opening to the into the infot Can you imagine how hard it is to take like someone who studied like some chemical pathway and some thermodynamic system to make it like the hype show that you guys I learned that from you But Carl Sagan said what an amazing thing a book is In it you have the words of a long dead author and you're reading it to yourself And he or she is communicating with you across the ages Nowadays people millions of people have you in their ears and you're communicating potentially across the generations And you're again, I don't want to keep you know be like a Jewish mother, but Your kids your your grandkids.

1:39:19They're going to have access to this. It's not going to be some some even a book which is wonderful It's going to be visceral audible and it's going to have an impact you can't even imagine right now Creep me out The meaner's in too is the other is crazy to think about the impact and the lasting impact that this medium Might have because of the internet, but just even I mean even books now their books are turned into audio books and to Digital books and such This was like the podcast election right not going on a podcast going on a podcast And there are many people that attempt to imitate what you do and and you know It's it's I don't do it for money.

1:40:02I don't do it. So my career idea for fun because I want to give back to To young people the way that I learned from Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov I read their books. It inspired to me to be a scientist when covid hit in 2020 They couldn't do book tours and so I invited all my scientists friends to come on I had some Nobel Prize winners come on and just keeps amplifying, but I view it as you know for me It's a passion project, but it's a way of giving back returning to the community from whom I've taken so much I've learned so much with that in mind with this knowledge that what we're creating what all of us are creating Whether you have a podcast or not or you're just writing on the internet whatever it might be with the knowledge that it's going to sustain and it's going to be here potentially in many generations to come.

1:40:44How does that? How is that supposed to change how someone creates? Because I'm thinking you just said that to me. I was like Jesus Christ. That's quite profound, but then seconds later I was like Almost like the simulation they're out of sort of like it crack on You know what I mean? Just carry on with what you're doing Because if you can you can get too deep into it that you can either distract yourself or ruin yourself from The essence of what makes the thing special So oh and I meant to change in any way with that knowledge. I think you I think you are I think you're doing it already. I mean you've spoken again.

1:41:12I've you know tried to study The glimpses of morsels that I can comprehend the experimentation process is a process of fundamentally being dissatisfied with the current product Even though it's wonderful. It's great. It's top top, you know leading in its category But still just not being satisfied. You always want to make it a little bit better. See what works. See what doesn't work That's pleasurable because you even when you get a failed There's no such thing as a failed experiment. I tell my students always learn something And that brings you closer to truth and that's what is so meaningful what I was wondering what I thought you were going to say is like When you're out in public and people see you and I asked this of Lex and Joe I want to ask you to put on my podcast or how to turn the microphone to you um There's just there's a scene in the book animal farm Where there's this donkey named Benjamin and he's talking to the pig And the pig says to the donkey You know, I love your tail.

1:42:01It's so big. I got this short little curly tail. It's good for nothing You got this beautiful tail. It could sweep away the flies And the donkey says yeah, but you know what? I wish I didn't have the flies So I wouldn't need the tail I don't ask you do you ever worry about the attention would you ever trade the attention the fame the lack of privacy the intrusions the You know everything for For the alternative. I don't know what you it's funny because when I go to answer that question and I remove The all the downsides from my life They're like glued to the upside So I'm like So it's always a question of like is the tradeoff worth it?

1:42:40It's the question that I ask myself all the time every week every month and I remind myself sometimes I said this to Trevor now, but he told me that it gets to a point where you can't just reverse the decision Right I try to remind myself that there's I could delete this podcast. I could Quit drag and stand. I could delete all my social media channels And I could right now go to Bali And I was playing this out the other day in my head. I was thinking you know if if I say to myself that I'm Optimizing for peace in this season of my life then why the hell am I doing all this time because this is not peace necessarily Um, and then I play out the scenario.

1:43:10I go, okay, so I'll move to Bali. I'll I'll chill out there I've got the the financial means to just live there for the rest of my life. I'll chill and then I'll start Yeah, and then and then you know Might start making videos about what I'm writing about because that's what I'm kind of Yeah, I don't stop painting and you start creating again and then if the creations are good And then you go share someone and then they're gonna buy whatever and then you back here again Look, I think I think I think you know people have a mission in life You know, I don't have a body, you know to be an Olympic athlete You know, I have a minor curiosity.

1:43:47This is what you're good at. This is what you should lean in I always feel like do I teach my students to like overcome their deficiencies or do I teach them to lean into their successes? I always feel like progress feels good no matter what I'm trying to lose weight I lose a pound it feels so much better to lose a pound than gaining you know, it feels awful the gain Announce, you know, so the the fact is are you useful? Are you doing you know Freud said there's only two things in life work and love It's all you got to do you were doing your work doing your love take your vacation and Enjoy Bali for a while at last and then come right back Brian we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're gonna be leaving it for And the question that's been left for you is If you found out that the world was ending in 10 minutes Who would you want to speak to and what would you tell them?

1:44:39Ah, that's easy. I mean it's horrifying, but it's that it's you know first of all I'd you know call my friends at NASA and tell them to direct the giant space like no It would be my wife my wife, you know, it's funny to think about How improbable life is But when I got fired I told from Stanford she was actually an undergraduate there And luckily we missed because I'm eight and a half years older than her and I'd be some lacherous 28 year old when she was 20 I got fired I felt it was horrible Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me got me a job that job led to this experiment called bicep That experiment called bicep took me to the south pole Took me to the brink of a Nobel Prize, but it also brought me to San Diego, which is her hometown We would not have met.

1:45:26There's no we didn't meet at Stanford. We were literally a hundred feet away from each other at one point We would and we wouldn't have met She's meant to be if I hadn't gotten fired if I hadn't been dreaming and fantasizing about experiments that I wanted to do Not to be someone else's employee, but to be my own CEO my own world my own Laboratory my own brand. I wouldn't have met her. I wouldn't have my precious precious kids There's no doubt it would be to call her what would you what would you tell her I would just reminisce about how we met And what we brought into the world and You know kind of uh show we laugh and cry right thank you Really appreciate it.

1:46:09It's been a such a wonderful conversation And I highly implore everybody that's listening to go and check out your show to go and read your books all of which I'll link below Super fascinating and also to get your website if they want to be in with a chance of winning some of this Space material, which is I'm so what was so amazing that I have this I'm such a big fan of space So and SpaceX and everything that's going on out there in the universe So thank you so much for this present you can keep the Uranus so But I'll keep them up piece of Mars. Yeah, the work you're doing is so important because it's helping to demystify and Helping us to understand the nature of some of these really profound questions not ever because You know, we're seeking to figure it all out so that we can change how we live But just because there's so much beauty and joy and um Meaning that is derived irrespective of what the answer is and I and I it's people like you that blow our minds open in a way that helps me even though I'm never going to build a telescope and I'm never going to go to the south pole and I'm never going to point it at the sky and I'm never going to seek to answer these questions in my life But your work expands my mind it expands my like thoughts of like possibilities And as an entrepreneur as a creator, I think that's a net positive for everyone that receives the work that you do Um, it's so one that it's so bizarre that we're so we're so curious about About the stars, but it's such a beautiful thing And long may you continue there's very few people like you and I was thinking the minute we got going today I was thinking there's very few people in the world that are both smart which is I think pretty common, but but then able to communicate And that is really I've met you in Neil de grasse Tyson who have this remarkable ability to communicate Science in a way that inspires galvanizers and sort of cultivates curiosity.

1:47:54It's a really wonderful thing That's an exception. It's exceptionally rare that combination of forces like you said about the probability of the comet hitting the universe and that bouncing off and creating a moon The probability of those two things happening in the same place is so exceptionally rare But it's wonderful that we have people like you in this world of podcasting because you know Maybe once upon a time the it would have been harder to hear your voice But now everybody can go and listen to you And I highly recommend they do your YouTube channels exceptional. So thank you so much Brian.

1:48:22Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

1:48:29Thank you The habit teachers you Definitely will the most unhelpful advice I have ever seen was don't sweat the small stuff You have to sweat the small stuff. I sweat the small stuff I always have my always proudly will because small things that are easy to do are also easy not to do It is easy to save a dollar. So it's also easy not to it is easy to brush your teeth So it's also easy not to it is easy to make a 1 % improvement Sets also easy not to Understanding the power of compounding 1 % so you can absolutely change your outcomes in your life It isn't about drastic transformations or quick wins It's about the small Consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes.

1:49:14So two years ago We started the process of creating this beautiful diary and it's truly beautiful inside There's lots of pictures lots of inspiration and motivation as well Some interact developments and the purpose of this diary is to help you identify Stay focused on develop consistency with the 1 % that will ultimately change your life We're only going to do a limited run of these diary So if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team Then head to the diary .com right now. I'll link it below You Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead And over the course of my career I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places One which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite They're also a sponsor of this podcast Net suite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place Their technology has been a real game changer Especially for my team at flight studio as over the last year We've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with net suite So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business head to net suite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning that's net suite .com slash Bartlett