Einstein’s Genius with Ron Howard

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Einstein’s Genius with Ron Howard Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson | Episode Release Date: January 17, 2025

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Overview

In this enlightening episode of StarTalk Radio, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson delves deep into the life and legacy of Albert Einstein, exploring his scientific genius, personal life, and political engagements. The episode features a captivating interview with acclaimed director Ron Howard, alongside insights from astrophysics professor Jana Levin and comedian-magician Harrison Greenbaum. Together, they unravel the multifaceted personality of Einstein and his enduring impact on both science and society.

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Interview with Ron Howard: Bringing Einstein to the Screen [05:35 – 44:55]

Neil deGrasse Tyson kicks off the episode by introducing Ron Howard, who directed the first season of National Geographic's Genius series, focusing on Einstein. Howard shares his journey in portraying Einstein, emphasizing the challenge of balancing scientific accuracy with storytelling.

Notable Quote:

Ron Howard (06:38): "Einstein's life was so eventful, and I have tackled some true stories... ensuring that the science is as clear and accurate as possible while highlighting the human twists and turns."

Howard discusses the collaborative nature of Einstein's work, mentioning key figures like Mileva Marić, Einstein's first wife, who was instrumental in his early research. He also touches upon Einstein’s personal interests—playing the violin, sailing, and his love for nature—painting a holistic picture of the man behind the theories.

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Understanding Einstein’s Scientific Contributions [09:30 – 14:07]

Astrophysicist Jana Levin breaks down Einstein’s groundbreaking contributions, particularly focusing on his 1905 "Annus Mirabilis" (Miracle Year). Levin explains the significance of the special theory of relativity, the photoelectric effect, and Brownian motion, culminating in the iconic equation E=mc².

Notable Quote:

Jana Levin (09:30): "Einstein was willing to discard our classical understanding of space and time to preserve the constancy of the speed of light, fundamentally altering our perception of the universe."

Levin eloquently illustrates how Einstein’s theories challenged and expanded the boundaries of classical physics, introducing concepts that redefined our understanding of energy, mass, and the fabric of spacetime.

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The Role of Collaboration in Scientific Genius [18:30 – 27:20]

The conversation shifts to the importance of collaboration in scientific endeavors. Jana Levin emphasizes that the trope of the lone genius is largely a myth, highlighting how Einstein himself thrived through collaborations and dialogues with other brilliant minds.

Notable Quote:

Jana Levin (18:43): "I absolutely believe that minds are unique... and one of the most wonderful aspects of theoretical physics is collaboration."

Harrison Greenbaum shares a personal connection to Einstein, revealing that his great grandmother's brother helped Einstein escape Nazi Germany, and his family holds a letter of gratitude from Einstein—underscoring the profound human connections intertwined with scientific achievements.

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Einstein’s Political Engagements and Ethical Dilemmas [38:07 – 42:14]

Ron Howard and Jana Levin delve into Einstein’s political life, discussing his pacifism, involvement in the development of the atomic bomb, and subsequent advocacy against nuclear weapons. They explore the ethical complexities faced by Einstein and his contemporaries in the wake of World War II.

Notable Quote:

Jana Levin (39:58): "The originators of quantum mechanics, to which Einstein contributed, had no intention of creating weapons, but the pressures of war forced them into developing the bomb."

The discussion reflects on how Einstein's scientific discoveries were co-opted for mass destruction, leading to his lifelong regret and efforts to promote peace and scientific responsibility.

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Reflections on Genius and Creativity [49:24 – 50:26]

In the concluding segments, the hosts and guests reflect on the nature of genius. Jana Levin asserts that while individual minds are unique, scientific progress is a collective endeavor, and Einstein was one of many who pushed the boundaries of human knowledge.

Notable Quote:

Jana Levin (49:50): "If it hadn't been Einstein, it would have been somebody else. The discovery of the universe is for us all."

Neil deGrasse Tyson adds a cosmic perspective, emphasizing that scientific discoveries are inevitable once the cumulative knowledge reaches a critical point, highlighting the interconnectedness of human intellect and the universe.

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Closing Thoughts

Neil deGrasse Tyson wraps up the episode by thanking Ron Howard and his guests for their profound insights into Einstein's genius. The discussion leaves listeners with a deeper appreciation of not only Einstein's scientific achievements but also his complex human side and the collaborative nature of scientific progress.

Final Quote:

Neil deGrasse Tyson (50:32): "Scientific genius is not about standing apart from everyone else; it's about arriving at groundbreaking ideas through collective effort and relentless inquiry."

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Conclusion

This episode of StarTalk Radio offers a rich, multifaceted exploration of Albert Einstein's life, blending scientific exposition with personal anecdotes and philosophical musings. Through engaging conversations with Ron Howard, Jana Levin, and Harrison Greenbaum, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of what made Einstein a true genius and how his legacy continues to influence both science and culture.

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Keep looking up and stay curious!

Transcript

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson here. The episode you're about to listen to has been selected from our archives and features my conversation with Opie as old timers remember him, but he's of course, director Ron Howard as well as Jana Levin. We talk all about Einstein and his genius. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Today's episode is all about Einstein, and we're featuring my interview with Ron Howard. What does Ron Howard have to do with Einstein? He actually directed the first season of National Geographic's Genius series. And if you're gonna start a series about the world's geniuses, who better to do it with than Einstein? And I bumped into Ron Howard at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and I nabbed some quality time in conversation with him about that project to talk about Einstein. I know the man. I didn't know his work, but I don't know him as well as my friend and colleague Jana Levin. Jana, welcome back to StarTalk.

[Jana Levin]

Thank you. It's good to be here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So, Jana, you are a professor of astrophysics at Barnard College in Columbia University. And you're a theorist.

[Jana Levin]

Yep.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you care about complicated cosmic stuff?

[Jana Levin]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like what the space time continuum is doing.

[Jana Levin]

I Always say everything I think about has something to do with space, time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Excellent. So do all of us, though, actually. Right.

[Jana Levin]

Where am I going for lunch? Example.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

When and when are we gonna have lunch? Let's get a cup of coffee. Where? You know. So yeah, we all think about space time, whether or not we know it. Yeah. So thanks for. You'll offer a commentary on some of what comes out in this interview. And we've got Harrison Greenbaum. Harrison, welcome back.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Thank you. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Excellent.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

My family has a connection to Einstein because my great grandmother's brother, Louis Lewinter, was part of the group that helped get him out of Germany to New York. So we have like, a letter in the family of gratitude from Einstein for helping save him and his wife's life.

[Jana Levin]

Wow. You should ensure that his letter about religion sold for something like $2 million recently. And a few months ago, a couple.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Of calls to make.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So welcome back.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And what's. You're wearing a shirt with. I recognize the quote that the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. And who said that?

[Jana Levin]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Neil Degrasse Langston. So you wear that on my show, I think.

[Jana Levin]

Aren't you wearing a quote by him?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, I'm not wearing a quote by him.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You usually have a joke on. No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Thanks for wearing the shirt. It's one of my more important quotes out there. I'm happy to spread the love of this.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It was his laundry day. It was the last time I had.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But that shirt is apropos to this topic because so much of Einstein's work doesn't make sense to anybody. It makes sense on paper, maybe to physicists who study it, but to the rest of everyone. What the hell was he saying? So hence, the universe is under no obligation to make sense. And just to be clear, so you're a comedian and a magician.

[Jana Levin]

Absolutely crazy.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That doesn't make sense to my parents.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I have to play the obnoxious way. So does that. So is that why you're not married?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Exactly.

[Jana Levin]

Okay, So I married a musician and we said, okay, maybe you should just tell my parents that you're a magician. And then when they find out you're a musician, they'll be so happy.

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When.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They find the truth, they'll be happy with the less, the greater of the lower truths.

[Jana Levin]

Right, Exactly.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's like the old Sandy Marshall joke or Jay Marshall joke where he I want to grow up and be a magician. And his parents were like, you can't do both.

[Jana Levin]

That's good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Very good. Very good. And you're Tweeting at Harrison Comedy.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And, Janet, you're tweeting at jan11.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good. Got your. You don't have to say. The real version of you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That is you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So why don't we go to our first clip? First clip of me in conversation with Ron Howard. We all know who Ron Howard was. He's Opie from. What's that show?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The Andy Griffith Show.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Andy Griffith Show. And no, he's A Life in Hollywood. And he was in the original musical, the Music man, as the kid with a lisp who sang about the.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Gary, Indiana. Gary, Indiana, Not Louisiana. Farris, France, New York. I may have played that part in middle school.

[Jana Levin]

Oh, he sings, too, Apparently.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So let's check out my interview with Ron Howard. Talking about Einstein, you're handed a project of arguably the most important human being in the 20th century. And now you. Now, how did you. Where did your audacity come from to say, I got this, Einstein. Opie's got this. All right, I'm listening.

[Ron Howard]

Come on. Well, I've read movie scripts about Einstein and periods of Einstein's life before, and I never felt that that was the right platform for it. It was the right outlet for it. It was always too limiting. And when this script came from a company called Odd Lot, a writer named Noah Pink did a first pilot hour, of course, Walter's book, and we began to think about breaking it into episodes. His life was so eventful. And I have tackled some true stories now at this point in my life. And what I was excited by were all of the human twists and turns. And so I do have enough confidence in our ability as storytellers, my ability to. To sort of get the big ideas across in an accessible way. Because we're not doing your job. We are telling the story of a life, and we're trying to make it as clear and be as accurate as we can in terms of the science. But this is not the deep understanding. This is more holistic, and it's more humanistic. And he has so many twists and turns in his life, it's impacted by his own behavior. It turns out he was kind of a bohemian dude, in a way, you know, and a thinker. He had a lot of relationships and working at a patent office because he was a bit of an outsider. You know, his Judaism and religion worked against him.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In Germany.

[Ron Howard]

Yes, in Germany at that time, in a serious way. You know, he wound up being on lists, you know, like, let's get it. Let's get him. And so he faced all kinds of Hurdles. And the surprising thing about Einstein is sort of where he kept showing up and having an impact throughout that first half or so of the 20th century and the lasting reverberation of what he learned and the discoveries he made. And I think as a dramatist, this is probably the most exciting thing. How close the world came on numerous occasions to sort of blocking this guy's ability to sort of offer us his insights.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So that's a good sort of profile of the series. It's Einstein as a person and you get to know who he is and what he does and why he mattered. And it was inspired by the book by Walter Isaacson, Einstein, his life in his universe. I think it was Einstein's Life in the Universe back in 2007 was a Best selling book. So, Jana, how did Einstein change our view of the world? Cause up until Einstein, when I think of classical physics, it's. Things fall, things are heavy. That's there. This is here. You know, we kind of. The universe was a manifestation of how it should be. It has experience, how our senses bring it to us. So what happened with Einstein?

[Jana Levin]

Well, one aspect of Einstein's revolution that I love the most is that he wanted to adhere to such simple principles that he was willing to throw away things that seem so experientially real, just what you're describing, in order to adhere to those principles.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

When you say throw away, you mean my life experience might prevent me from thinking the way I should. So let me discard that for the moment and open up my head.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah. To realize that just because this is the familiar experience we have, we are these limited creatures. You know, we know that we can't see across the entity. We have a very narrow band that we can see. And we discovered there's light out there well outside what the eyes can see. When you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait a minute. We can see visible light.

[Jana Levin]

Visible light, aptly named because the sun shines, peaks in the yellow. So do our eyes. I mean, clearly we're bound by this. We can't see X rays and gamma rays, but they're out there. And we can build other instruments, even just the idea that the world is much better, just to make it clear.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because not everyone knows this, that these words that we use in so many different contexts, ultraviolet, infrared, X rays, radio waves, gamma rays, that's all light.

[Jana Levin]

That's all light.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's just light we cannot see. And you need special detectors and machines to use them to generate them. And our eyes see this very narrow part of this entire electromagnetic spectrum. And we Just see the red, orange, yellow, green, blue. Roy G. Biv. So continue. Sorry.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

This is nice to forget. You can see when you get me very angry.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yes, Mr. Hulk, yes. Okay.

[Jana Levin]

So Einstein was faced with a very serious constraint, a very serious limit, which was the limit of the speed of light. And this was discovered before he was working on this, that light had a fundamental speed, that it seemed to be a fact of nature, which is very bizarre, super strange. I mean, the speed of a basketball is not a fact of nature, right? It can stop, it can go faster, it can go slower. Light can do none of those things. It can only go at just one precise speed. And most people are trying to say, well, that's clearly wrong, because that doesn't make any sense. Now, what is speed? Speed is distance. You travel over time. And so Einstein said, divided by time. I believe it. Right. Divided by time. And Einstein said, I do think that that's right. And there were reasons why he was driven by that limit to force him to say there must be something wrong with distance and time, something wrong with space and time and the way we conventionally think about it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So he put all his confidence in the speed and not in his life experience of space and time.

[Jana Levin]

That's right. He knew one had to go. And you could ask, why did he choose the speed of light over everything else? And that is because. Imagine this thought experiment. I'm floating in empty space, and I don't think. Now I think I'm alone. I don't see the earth, I don't see anything. I have no frame of reference. Suddenly, Bob, another astronaut, floats past me. And I say, bob, you're moving, you know, And I only know you're moving. Cause you're moving past me. But Bob's experience is exactly that. He's not moving. And he's floating in empty space and he's stationary. And I floated past him. And it was very important to Einstein.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, who's right that.

[Jana Levin]

Right that. Neither of us.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It was Bob.

[Jana Levin]

Right. And obviously the answer was Bob. So precisely, they knew each other.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I want to know the backstory of the grandson.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like, you know, car, auto shop, name tag, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jana Levin]

So he thinks about this. Neither of them can be preferred. And so he believes that the speed of light is a fact of nature. And so he says they both have to measure the speed of light even though they're moving relative to each other, which just seems impossible. And so he said, it's so important to me that neither of them be preferred. Cause how would you Possibly choose that. I would rather suggest that they have different perceptions of space and time from each other. And that is why, although they're measuring the same speed of light in an impossible circumstance, it's because they are not perceiving the same space and the same time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Janet, that is the most brilliant explanation.

[Jana Levin]

Thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of the birth of relativity that I have ever heard.

[Jana Levin]

I really greatly appreciate that. I've worked on it for years. I've thought about it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, it just spilled out of your mouth. I just had a cup of coffee and there it is. No, no, no. That is brilliant. So. So if I can add some punctuation to the end of that sentence, he wrapped everything else around the requirement that they both measure the same speed of light.

[Jana Levin]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And in doing so, it distorts time, it distorts space, and it interferes with our classical understanding of nature. And he did that to preserve the speed of light.

[Jana Levin]

Exactly. So space and time are relatively. But the speed of light is absolute, man. It could have been called the absolute theory.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If Einstein had a microphone back then, he'd drop them all going around the room. Nobody would have a microphone left after that. So tell me about his famous year 1905.

[Jana Levin]

So it's this incredible year where Einstein is actually unemployed.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Annus mirabulous, the miraculous year.

[Jana Levin]

Einstein's technically unemployed as a physicist, although he's gainfully employed as a patent clerk. And he has what he calls. Calls the physics department deadbeat, which is a weird job. No, literally, one of his professors called him a lazy dog. And Einstein said of himself, you know, when I was a student, I was no Einstein.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

What did they say before Einstein? Because now when you do something dumb, you're like, all right, Einstein. But like before Einstein was like, all right, Newton.

[Jana Levin]

All right, Maxwell, Rutherford.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So list what he did that year.

[Jana Levin]

So that year he discovered. He writes down the special theory of relativity which we just discussed. He discusses something called the photoelectric effect, which has to do with the quantum nature of light. And it verifies that light has a quantum particle nature as well as a wave nature, which was shocking.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And Brownian motion duality. The wave particle duality.

[Jana Levin]

Exactly. We think of light as a wave, and he showed that it actually behaves like a particle under certain circumstances. And Brownian motion was similarly about the quantum aspect of matter. So you imagine dust floating around in the sunbeam in the window. That's an example of Brownian motion, where the dust particle just sort of randomly moves around. And that's because there's all these quantum. These little atoms are. They're colliding. And then finally, after special relativity, which is actually technically a consequence of special relativity, he writes the paper of the most famous equation in modern history, which is E equals MC squared, where he realizes that energy is like the time component in some sense of momentum, and it has the energy of moving in space, has a kinetic energy. The energy in moving in time has an energy even if you're not moving in space. And that is E equals MC squared.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that's contained in the matter itself.

[Jana Levin]

That's right. It's like the kinetic energy of your motion in time.

[Ron Howard]

Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And thus spotting a ton of terrible tattoos. I'm sure there's a lot of people, eagle on C squared who does not know that that's what it means.

[Jana Levin]

You can see them on StarTalk social media.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Look at the good ones.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then he turned 26.

[Jana Levin]

And then he turned 26.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That was at 25.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So he all turned 32. And I've like been eliminated from two reality shows. Is that the best thing, all of.

[Jana Levin]

This was sitting in his drawer that he called the physics department in the patent office.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let's pick up my next clip with Ron Howard talking about the Genius series that aired on National Geographic Channel. Again, when we think of Einstein, we don't typically think of him in the context of other of the scientific community at the time because he's so singular. But looking at the treatments for several of your episodes, you reach in to places where other scientists were famous in their own right, actually play a role. Einstein method. Could you name a couple of them?

[Ron Howard]

Well, you'll have to help me. Radiation.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, there's Wilhelm Rundjin. He discovered X rays. He won the first Nobel Prize in physics. It was all timed out for when Alfred Nobel set up the foundation, but.

[Ron Howard]

And of course, then Leonard, who taught Mileva Maric. Mileva Maric was a very influential person in his life. Einstein's first wife, some say she might.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Have come up with relativity herself.

[Ron Howard]

Well, some say that she definitely was.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

After living with Einstein, the relativity thing, oh my gosh, time got stretched.

[Ron Howard]

I don't know. She was a great mathematician and helped him a lot with the math and was definitely there with him.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And.

[Ron Howard]

He needed collaborators, he needed people to work with and bounce ideas.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And Marie Curie is the character in this as well.

[Ron Howard]

Yes. We have Fritz Tabor later, another winner. Very important factor in his life. But Einstein was also very much a humanist, you know, unlike say, John Nash, who was sort of focused in his world and brilliant, but troubled in other ways.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A mathematician and a beautiful mind.

[Ron Howard]

Mathematician and a beautiful mind. You know, Einstein, he played the violin. He loved sailing, he loved nature, he loved women. He liked the world, and he was interested. And they're.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a combination right there. Violin, sailing, nature, women. The world.

[Ron Howard]

Yeah. Oh, and then there's. And then there's the physics.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Anything left after that?

[Ron Howard]

Then there is that physics thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The physics. Oh, the physics on the side. Yeah. Yeah. So, Janet, let me ask you. How important is collaboration if you're a lone genius? Does collaboration even matter?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Do you need my help?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Or a lone genius.

[Jana Levin]

Harrison's, you know, secretly, all these years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He'S got your back.

[Jana Levin]

Had my back.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is lone genius a trope that we want to be true, but never is?

[Jana Levin]

I mean, it's not true for me or in my experience of other physicists. I know some very brilliant physicists. I don't know any lone geniuses. And one of the most wonderful aspects of theoretical physics is collaboration. And it's one of the things I've tried to explain to other people. Physicists don't like to be alone. I mean, there are times you need to be alone, but there's nothing more adorable than seeing physicists sit around a table and you watch the rhythm of how they're talking. There's splurts, right? There's these energetic roar. And then they'll.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is that a word? Splurt.

[Jana Levin]

I think I just made it up.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Great word.

[Jana Levin]

What did I mean? Splurges. Splurges. What did I mean? Neil, let it be a word. Can you guys edit that post? Introduction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Loving the word flat and a splurge at the same time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm loving it. Go.

[Jana Levin]

Sit.

[Ron Howard]

Gush. Especially of saliva.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

A splurge.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Our engineer just looked up the definition a sudden.

[Jana Levin]

It's definitely not what I meant. Contains saliva. That's even worse. I used a real word incorrectly. It does not happen often. I'm pretty good with my vocabulary, so. But they'll have these very energetic conversations where they're talking intensely and then you see them just kind of go quiet. How many people? 4 or 5 people sit around together and will comfortably sit quietly for minutes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Usually you have to talk about sports or something, right?

[Jana Levin]

No, they sit quietly for minutes. And sometimes I just watch it from the other side of the room. And then somebody pops up again with the next idea that they had clearly all collectively gotten stuck on.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, that's what happened a thousand years ago in Baghdad, a city open to travelers and traders. Of all different cultures and backgrounds and beliefs. And across the table, ideas were shared, ideas were contested, and only the best ideas rose up out of that. And over that period, you had the golden age of Islam, where great advances in mathematics and medicine and engineering. So yeah, across the table is a major part of the progress of science. So thanks for bringing that.

[Jana Levin]

Absolutely. And at the blackboard, it's a pleasure.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Thank God it's not like a table of comedians because when we sit around, we just insult each other excessively and.

[Jana Levin]

No one gets a word in.

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

[Jana Levin]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Jana Levin]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Jana Levin]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon.

[Jana Levin]

This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So let's lead off with my next clip interviewing Ron Howard. And we're going to get inside Albert Einstein's mind.

[Ron Howard]

Let's check it out. If there's a lesson, as an ambitious, creative, brilliant person, what he did was he would. He would look at. He would apply this sense of logic to his life and also problems of science. And if there was a gap and he went, hmm, that. To that. That's an assumption. Let's dig into that assumption. And that was sort of his little superpower. He was willingness to go there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is the power of science literacy. Not as measured by how many things you know, but what is your. How is your brain wired for inquiry?

[Ron Howard]

Right, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

How do you ask the next question? That is something that's not taught in school and which is, someone exhibits it. It's like, whoa, look what that person's got. And I think it's teachable.

[Ron Howard]

It requires a kind of an endurance. But somebody has to support that kind of, you know, gotta keep at it. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cause the answer's always not just there. If it was just there, somebody else would've had the answer. So you gotta dig deeper.

[Ron Howard]

Now, fortunately, as you know, like Tesla, he was a visualist.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Tesla, the person.

[Ron Howard]

Right. Oh, yeah, sorry.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It was a person before it was a car. Are we clear on that?

[Ron Howard]

Well, Tesla could visualize problems being solved, plans materializing. And of course, Einstein was great at.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The thought problem, the great thought experiments.

[Ron Howard]

Thought experiments. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. In German. Gedanken.

[Ron Howard]

Our show's in English.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, sorry. So, Jana, the thought experiment. What word was I trying to come up with there at the time?

[Jana Levin]

Gedanken.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, gedanken experiment.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah, gedanken experiment.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, just a gedankin experiment. So that's thought experiment.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah. I mean, people in English say gedankin. Still experiment.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We still do it.

[Jana Levin]

Physicists will say that as an homage.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To Einstein because he was German. And so what is a thought experiment?

[Jana Levin]

So a thought experiment is literally made.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm guessing they're cheaper than real experiments.

[Jana Levin]

They are significantly cheaper. You need some, like, food and coffee, a little caffeine. A little caffeine. You know, it's a way of challenging what you think you know and understand by eliminating all of the extraneous stuff. So, for instance, we already talked about astronauts floating in empty space. Now, I cannot do that experiment in reality. I can have astronauts floating near the Earth, but they're gonna see the Earth. It's confusing. So the thought experiment is confused.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The Earth is their reference frame.

[Jana Levin]

Their reference frame. And so that confuses this argument I'm trying to make. So the thought experiment is, imagine that the astronaut is floating in empty space with no frame of reference. And then by eliminating all of the stuff that was confusing you, all of the extraneous interferences, you allow your thoughts to hone in on only the essentials. And then stuff becomes clear. If your Einstein, but he taught us, completely clear, he taught us this as a technique, and we absolutely use it all the time. So imagine I'm standing at the event horizon, and I do this. Imagine this is an eliminating event horizon of a black hole, right? Event horizon, black hole, whatever it is, we can invent all the time experiments that we only do in our minds.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so what that also means is you need to know enough physics to constrain the idea, but be open enough to new physics to have a new discovery emerge from that thought.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah. Here's a beautiful thought experiment that is due to Einstein that he called the happiest thought of his life. He was thinking about gravity. And so when we think we're heavy in our chairs, we think, that's gravity. Lying in bed, it feels heavy. Standing in an elevator, heavy on our feet. He imagined, well, I'm gonna do it in the elevator context. You feel heavy on your feet. There's something wrong with all those examples, is that there's something in the way, something extraneous. The elevator, the chair, the bed. Why do I need those things to talk about gravity? Why do I need an elevator chair and a bed? So instead, he cuts the cable of the elevator and he says, imagine what would happen if you were falling freely in this elevator. It has no windows, so you can't see anything outside.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So before you cut the elevator, you're standing in the floor of the elevator.

[Jana Levin]

And you have a weight, right? If you dropped your keys, it would fall to your feet. Okay? You dropped your water bottle, it would fall to your feet. You cut the cable. Suddenly you're floating in the elevator cab because you and the elevator are falling at the same rate. Your keys, you let go of them, are floating in front of you. Your water bottle is floating in front of you. You would feel as though you were an astronaut in the International Space Station. In fact, you wouldn't be able to do an experiment that told you you weren't an astronaut in the International Space Station. And until, of course, the unhappy end when you hit the ground, not on space station, where you realize you're on.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Twilight Zone, Tower of Terror, and you had a lot of fun.

[Jana Levin]

So he called this the happiest thought of his life. Cause he realized what you're doing in a gravitational field when it's just you and gravity is you're falling freely in the space time around.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So to him, gravity was no weight at all.

[Jana Levin]

Was no weight at all. It's weightless now. Not heaviness.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So Earth is weightless in orbit around the sun.

[Jana Levin]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So when we talk about how heavy is the Earth, it's just zero.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah. And so the astronauts in the International Space Station are doing that experiment, but just in a better way. They're falling, but they're also cruising at such a rapid rate, parallel to the Earth, that they always clear the horizon. They mercifully never crash into the surface of the Earth, but they are always in free fall. The International Space Station, if they fall.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A mile downward, they've traveled so far along the Earth that Earth's curved downward a mile.

[Jana Levin]

That's right. So they just fall.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they are falling, but they never hit the Earth.

[Jana Levin]

They fall on a circle. And there's Einstein's second important idea, which leads to general relativity. The first is you're just falling around the Earth. The second is if you can fall in a circle, space time is curved. What you're really doing is you're falling along the natural curves in spacetime. And it leads him to the idea of the general theory of relativity, that gravity is really curved spacetime.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The lesson here is Einstein was a badass. Yeah, I think we got this one.

[Jana Levin]

It's some beautiful stuff.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's some beautiful, beautiful she.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah. As long as you don't say the T. You don't have to bleep it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No bleeping it. Some beautiful she.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Also, something very important happened in relativity class when you took it.

[Jana Levin]

It.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yes. How did you know this?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I googled it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you googled it. I met my wife in relativity. Did you know that?

[Jana Levin]

I did not know that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

John Archibald Wheeler Relist.

[Jana Levin]

I of course, know your wife. Yeah, she's lovely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And she got her PhD in mathematical physics.

[Jana Levin]

Amazing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, that thinks Einstein also.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I just. I noticed her first in that class and then relativity. Yes, I met her in relativity class. Yeah. Yeah. So Einstein's not the only Genius in the world. A good one and important to us.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm right here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I don't know how many people remember or know that Ron Howard directed the movie A Beautiful Mind.

[Jana Levin]

Oh, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Which is about John Nash, the economist.

[Jana Levin]

After the book, tortured genius and mathematical economist.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mathematical. But he got his Nobel Prize in economics for his work. So I asked Ron Howard about that. Check it out.

[Ron Howard]

With Beautiful Mind, I wanted to understand what those eureka moments were like. I talked to. I went to university to university, talking to people who knew Nash. Do you know Simon Chappelle? Does that name ring you?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No. No.

[Ron Howard]

A mathematician at NYU knew Nash a little bit. And very colorful Hungarian professor. And he was able to explain it in very similar terms. He said, all right, look, here's the way I would describe John Nash and people of that sort of ilk. He said, if you say that scientists, elite scientists, are sort of on the boundary of what's known and unknown, and we have the light and the dark. So you sort of say they're those people who are pushing the boundaries. That's. You know, those are those elite scientists. He said, there are three types, and the people on the very front, all they want to do is push the light out a little further, take what they've got. That discovery that it exists, that there's more that exists kind of enough for them. They don't care about application. They toss it over to their shoulder to the next sort of level of genius that says, oh, wow, I know what to do with this. Turns it into something. And then he said, there's a third type. And I think this was John Nash. And if it's a war against darkness, they're paratroopers, and they go into the dark and they come back to the light and show you what they found.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they don't leave a safe foot in a circle.

[Ron Howard]

No. They just go all the way in. And he said, some of them don't make it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, well. Well, some of them don't come back.

[Ron Howard]

Don't come back. Yeah, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I agree entirely with that. And the risks of putting both feet out of the circle are real. But you're right. Every now and then you need one to do that, because they'll find something where there were no preconceived path.

[Ron Howard]

There's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The paratrooper is in the breeze. You don't even know where the breeze came from. And there's a crocodile pit here, and there's a pot of gold there. And half of them bring back the pot of gold. So, Jan, I don't Know if. You know, I was at Princeton while John Nash, when John Nash got the Nobel Prize, and I'd occasionally see him walking by. My office was adjacent to. In the astrophysics building there. Peyton hall, it's called. There's a long walkway where I had a very big sweep of traffic. I could see people going back and forth. And occasionally I'd see him and he was just always just deep in thought. And, you know, they're deep in thought because they're not looking where they're walking. You know, it's just kind of a. The head bobs and there is no.

[Jana Levin]

Not everyone knows how to read that. It's very important that you can read that. So you respect.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah.

[Jana Levin]

Give it the space that that person is working.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. They're at the office.

[Jana Levin]

Like the brain office. Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And other people can walk by and they don't even know they're there. So could you. Do you have any way to compare one genius mind to another? Maybe Einstein to John Nash?

[Jana Levin]

No, I absolutely believe that minds are unique, which is why it's frustrating that we do in science sometimes limit the pool of people we look at or we think about, or we look at a scientist or we think about a scientist.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And restricting access to the range of genius that is out there.

[Jana Levin]

That's right. And all minds are different. We do get trained, and sometimes the training's too severe. So as in that clip, the people who are more afraid to go out into the darkness, the training is so severe that you are trying to replicate one great mind with their progeny because they have a sense of work, so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They'Re trying to duplicate that.

[Jana Levin]

Right. But the ones that blow us away are the ones that just are different. You know, Kurt Godel or Georg Cantor's mathematical examples, you know, the Einstein, the John Nash. I mean, these are people who just thought differently. And it's a wonderful thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So why are some sort of normal and others. They're not socially. They might say they just went crazy. They went off the deep end mentally. Yeah, whatever the proper word is. I don't know. But the point is we see genius manifested in all the spectrum of mental stability. And I'm just curious, do you have any insight there?

[Jana Levin]

Well, I have thought about this quite a lot. Not necessarily for personal reasons.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Research for other people.

[Jana Levin]

My friends. Your friends. My friend was concerned. So I do think that it's not just the genius of the mind. It's the kind of person who has not invested primarily in their own comforts necessarily their own career ambitions. Probably don't even consider what they do.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

As a career or not even value social interaction the way so many other things.

[Jana Levin]

So that goes under escalating the ranks, you know, securing the most money. And so people kissing ass. Kissing ass who are already on that fringe and have that mind are in a kind of super precarious position and also super wonderful position. They're the ones with the opportunity to go into the complete darkness because they're going to. Because they have that. They don't have the attachments to what they'll lose if they do.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that is brilliant. On January 24, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command.

[Jana Levin]

Gather your people. We're gonna need every one of them in Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount. Plus, Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules. Starfleet is here to make sure no one commits murder. What a cute idea. This is chaos. Let's get messy. Don't miss the worldwide premiere of Star.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Trek section 31, streaming January 24th exclusively on Paramount plus searching for the perfect.

[Jana Levin]

Place to grow your company. Whatever you're looking for, you can expect.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It and so much more in Ohio. Partner with Jobs Ohio and we'll connect you to the best sites, earlier funding.

[Ron Howard]

And top industry talent.

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, so in this segment, we talk about other dimensions of Einstein. And my conversation with Ron Howard, who directed the first installment of National Geographic's Genius series, and that first series was about Einstein. Let's check out Einstein's politics in this segment. Do you get into his work on. You said he was a humanist. He had very strong statements about racism in America especially, and just how people are treated. He had very. So the politics of Einstein.

[Ron Howard]

Well, he gets dragged into it and during the course of his life, you know, he became so eminent, so important and with that controversy, especially given his religion. But he was dragged into that, you know, I mean, he was. They asked him to be the first prime minister of Israel when Israel was.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

First birthed onto the sea. Yeah.

[Ron Howard]

And he was sort of dragged kicking and screaming into it. And then at a certain point, again, I think applying that logic that he did to his personal life, that he did to his work in science, I think he felt that, you know, he was an absolute pacifist, but he believed that the bomb needed to be developed because he knew the people who were working on the problem in Germany.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And he wrote the equation that enabled it in the first place equals MC squared. That's where you get the energy out of the atom.

[Ron Howard]

Which he didn't work actively on the bomb, largely because Hoover didn't want him to. And he didn't really, I don't think, really wanted to, and later fought hard, along with, I don't know, a number of other eminent scientists, to try to convince the government not to ever drop it on people.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Janet, tell me about Einstein and the bomb. Is that simple or is it complex?

[Jana Levin]

I think it's quite complex. And I think it was for so many of the originators of the ideas of quantum mechanics that went into the creation of the bomb. There's a great line in the play Copenhagen where the character Niels Bohr, who is one of the inventors of quantum mechanics, says to his wife, I don't think they thought of a way to kill people using quantum mechanics.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh.

[Jana Levin]

And of course. Wow. Right. Because to them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I don't remember that line.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah. Because to them it was just ideas, the world of ideas. They had no intention of making a weapon. It was inconceivable. And here they are under the pressure of the war and they urgently feel they need to build the bomb because of the implications of their other colleagues, the community of physicists, because they're colleagues that they developed quantum mechanics with. Some of them are on the other side. And then they have this incredibly complicated relationship because almost all of them really pull back after the use of the bomb in the war and urge control and regulation and limitations, and don't want the H bomb, the hydrogen bomb, the next level up, which is much more powerful.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Weren't there some who pulled back after they saw that Germany was collapsing?

[Jana Levin]

Yes. Some people thought they should not have used the bombs in the war.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. Because Japan was not working on the bombs. Bomb.

[Jana Levin]

That's right. And Germany is out of the picture.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And Germany is out of the picture. So therefore the motivation, the triggering motivation to make the bomb in the first place had evaporated.

[Jana Levin]

That's right. That's right. And so, of course, There must be just tremendous. Just complicated experiences. I mean, Oppenheimer had the line, we are destroyer of worlds. Do you remember exactly what the line was when he first sees the test?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We are. Yeah, it's the.

[Jana Levin]

From the Joy of.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I am something. I am destroyer of worlds. Yes.

[Jana Levin]

I am death. I don't remember. Okay, well, the engineer will Google it. Of course. I see him. His fingers tapping away. So I think the feelings were complicated at every stage. And of course, here we are where we're still a species. The only species we know of on Earth that's capable of wiping itself out.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I don't know. I have. I feel like the dolphins could do it if they wanted to. They could figure out some way to get rid of themselves.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But they're better shepherds of their own survival.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And therefore it won't happen.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Jumping out of the water like, oh, my God, why are the dolphins doing this?

[Jana Levin]

It's fascinating. Dolphins don't try to manipulate their environment to the extent that we do. And that is just fascinating difference between human beings and other intelligent species.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Although beavers totally manipulate their environment, they're not the only ones in town.

[Jana Levin]

That's true. Does their technology escalate or is it the same as it was the atom bomber fever?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We're gonna damn them.

[Ron Howard]

Better dams.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I have this balloon filled with termites. Oh, no. Mass destruction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So on this next clip with Ron Howard, I had. He's a movie director in his later life, so I had to ask him and I had to sneak into this topic and ask him about science and movies. Check it out. So you combine all these factors. He's a brilliant scientist. He's got a social life. He's got a bohemian dimension to him. He's politically controversial. He shapes 20th century politics with his discoveries. And he moves in circles of the shakers and movers of the day. Why wasn't this done decades ago? Well, why do we have to wait till 2017 to hear all of this again?

[Ron Howard]

I honestly think it's what's happening in television. Television and a channel like National Geographic with everything that it stands for, saying that, you know, yes, we want you to do it. We want you to do it with authenticity. We're willing to support it and market it. And it fits, you know, it fits what our audience needs. And this is a really exciting time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I have a different answer.

[Ron Howard]

What's that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They figured out they can make money off of science.

[Ron Howard]

Hey, okay. Well, that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And we have good evidence of that. For example, though not this network of Course, the Big Bang Theory, though, they be caricatures, you are eavesdropping on the geeky lives of people who are completely scientifically literate. And it's the number one show on television. So anyone who's paying attention to that fact is saying, okay, I wanna get me some science, make money off of that.

[Ron Howard]

Well, I'll tell you, Apollo 13, when I had the opportunity to make that movie, that was the first story that I got involved with that was based on real events. And I was mortified by it because I thought, well, I'm not gonna be able to be as creative and inventive and cinematic and so forth. I'm, you know, sort of locked into these facts. And at the end of the day, I found it was very, very liberating. Because when people know it's based on real events, they really lean in. It's a different kind of mindset.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you were worried, as a creative director, that the facts would constrain your storytelling?

[Ron Howard]

Yes, and that it would. And that, you know, I might not be able to be as dramatic or as exciting as I wanted to be. And I realized that's not the point with this kind of story. In fact, the facts are part of the entertainment value. They're part of what? The mystery. That's part of the discovery.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So, Jenner, do you have a favorite movie about a scientist?

[Jana Levin]

Oh, that's an interesting question. I've actually been interested.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's a few. There have been a few.

[Jana Levin]

There's been a few. I have to say I got a little more interested in scientists and plays, which then were turned into movies. We talked about Copenhagen. No, I know theater.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Hilariously, my favorite scientists is Rick and Morty.

[Jana Levin]

I know, but hilariously, I kind of hate theater. And this is one of the family jokes. Like, I almost always walk out halfway through a play. Like, I am not a huge fan of theater. Like, it's really hard for me to get over the bump where I love it. So I'm sorry about that out there. I know that that's bad. I think I just muddied my. I think I just lost. I have to leave.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It depresses the part of me that is a performing artist and puts on shows. And the Jewish part where you paid for the ticket.

[Jana Levin]

So I. But I do love books, and I love reading and writing. And so plays just naturally came more easily to me on paper. So I was reading them. So I read Proof, which is a fantastic play about math.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I saw it on Broadway.

[Jana Levin]

Yeah, but it's a fictionalized story. Did you see it with Mary Louise Parker?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, I did.

[Jana Levin]

I heard it was fantastic. You didn't see it?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, I became latter day friends with her.

[Jana Levin]

Oh, lovely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Talked about that. Yes. It's about a woman who. Who is a math genius, but no one knows it. And is it her father or her brother?

[Jana Levin]

Her father.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Her father is also a math genius. But then everybody knows it. Gets addled later on, but no one knows it. But she keeps writing the theorems down and they think it's his and not hers. And no one believes it could ever be her. Cause the dad was the genius that everyone knew. And so it's really a terrific play. Yeah, yeah, it's brilliantly.

[Jana Levin]

And that did get turned into a movie. And then another one that comes to mind is Arcadia by Tom Stopped, where the characters talk about chaos and complexity and iteration and computation. And it's just. And it's a multi layered, beautiful, like really interesting. So those are. It's more about the characters, I think, than biopics sort of stuff.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I asked her what favorite movies and she gives me the books of plays. That's just. Okay.

[Jana Levin]

My nerd level is deep.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That the millions of people have read. Right.

[Jana Levin]

Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You're talking to someone who thought it was by.

[Jana Levin]

I didn't know it was biopic for years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I wondered if Ron Howard was holding anything back. Something he wasn't fully letting on about his life and his personality. Check it out. Do you have some secret geek underbelly that is only you're carefully letting us know about movie by movie, but in fact, you go home and you just. Geek, man.

[Ron Howard]

I do. I do look at the Science Times, but I skim it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This would be the. In Tuesday, the section of the New York Times that features science.

[Jana Levin]

Right, right.

[Ron Howard]

I enjoy that. But what I discovered, because, by the way, my 10th grade science teacher, Mr. Dowd, would be, if he's still alive, and I kind of hope he is, he would. Would be smirking to see me in a conversation with you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you mess up in his class?

[Ron Howard]

What did you do?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, did you blow up the chem lab? What happened?

[Ron Howard]

There were no explosions. But, you know, I wasn't too big on dissecting the frog.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Neither was the frog, I'm sure.

[Ron Howard]

And I couldn't quite remember the new, I don't know, Nucleus and other things at that time. And I was, you know, so I was a little lost. But he got me through it. He got me through it. But no, it's really that. It's the drama. I mean, through Apollo 13 and other stories. I realized that this kind of curiosity that I do have about how the world works. I'm always been fascinated by teams of people who are trying to problem solve under a kind of duress. And I began to realize the sort of pressure that. That scientists feel. I realized there's a great deal of drama and that there's also a tremendous amount of insecurity. And I began to understand that process and I could connect it to the creative process, because you're going into realms, you're coming to understand things that kind of can't be articulated or explained other than this notation that most people don't under, you know, can't grasp. And it's an act of creativity and discovery and. And takes a kind of bravery.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we gotta wrap this up. So, Harrison, do you have any sort of deep thoughts you want to share with us about genius or creativity?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Well, I did a little research into Einstein and realized his second wife was his cousin. So that blew my mind. So it turns out everybody has a little bit of a freak flag to fly, including Einstein, who married a woman who is his first and second cousin. So I feel a little bit better about where I stand.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I didn't know there's such a flag. A freak flag? Is that what that is? I don't. I've never seen those flying.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, I fly on many of them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'll look for Jana. Give us some parting thoughts.

[Jana Levin]

Well, this idea of genius, I think, is really appealing to us as human beings. But it's fascinating to me to realize that if it hadn't have been Einstein, it would have been somebody. And that's really important that we remember that. And as much, he gave us lots of special things besides just the discovery of relativity. He gave us a way of thinking about it, and that is unique to him. But I do think that there's this competition between the universe and us and Cage match. Yeah. And I think the universe has, like, really good odds against us.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm betting on the universe, on this one. Man versus the universe.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm taking the spread.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let me follow up on a point that you just made. Often we see the word art and the word science. Conjoined College of Arts and Sciences. So many universities have such a place. The history of art and science, they are two sides of the same coin. But there's actually a fundamental difference between the two of them. Let's take Van Gogh's Starry Night, the painting. If he didn't paint that, no one else ever would or ever will. If Beethoven didn't compose his ninth Symphony. No one else in a quadrillion years would compose the ninth symphony. But Einstein, with all of the genius that he has manifested if he were never born, someone or some combination of people would have come up with special theory of relativity not as early as he did. It would take a little time. The general theory of relativity, which is one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. Eventually someone would do that. So for me, scientific genius is not that you stand apart from everyone else. You just arrived at the bus stop sooner than others. And so really, the discovery of the universe is for us all. It's just a matter of when more than it is a matter of who. And that is a cosmic perspective you've been listening to, possibly even watching this episode of StarTalk featuring my interview with Ron Howard at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas a couple of years ago. And we were talking about Einstein. I want to thank the organizers of that conference and Ron Howard himself for giving us his time. And let me thank my co host Harrison. Thanks for joining me.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, my pleasure to be here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You got to come back. I love this.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I would love to do this again.

[Jana Levin]

Just keep going.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Fly your freak flag whenever you want on StarTalk. You want to keep going. You don't want to ignore the end times of the show.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, I was going to say, I know where your office is now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And Janna, you're just up the street, but you're too much of a stranger. You got to come back more often.

[Jana Levin]

I'll be here anytime. Anytime. You put that light out in the sky. Yeah, the bat light.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So thanks for coming back for this and we'll surely tap your expertise again. I've been your host, Neil Degrasse Tyson. This has been startalk.

[Jana Levin]

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