The Observable Unknown

Host: Dr. Juan Carlos Rey
Guest: Jack R. Bialik (author, historian)
Episode Title: Jack R. Bialik — Lost in Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge
Date: November 2, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores how civilizations forget, deliberately or otherwise, and how this selective amnesia shapes the evolution of cultures and knowledge itself. Dr. Juan Carlos Rey speaks with historian Jack R. Bialik about his book Lost in Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge, delving into the mechanisms and consequences of lost archives, technological obsolescence, and the interplay of memory, wisdom, myth, and collective consciousness. The conversation critically examines both the failures and the adaptive strategies inherent in what humanity chooses to preserve or let disappear.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Forgetting by Design: The Adaptivity of Loss

• Intentional and Unintentional Forgetting
  • Bialik asserts that much forgetting is by design. Storage technologies and even cultural curation are oriented toward the short-term, not with preserving information for centuries.
    • “Our time horizon that we look at when we build something is relatively short... Will this last a thousand years? That is not the design strategy.” — Jack R. Bialik [02:16]
  • Examples from engineering to digital storage: Planned obsolescence is a norm, not an exception.

2. Selective Memory in History

• Cultural Biases and National Narratives
  • What civilizations remember or teach can vary greatly—history is curated.
    • “We only remember what we like, what we want to remember.” — Bialik [05:07]
  • Bialik recounts learning about French expulsion from Nova Scotia and its impact on Louisiana’s culture.
    • “I never heard that story, where the people came from. So, they came from Canada. They didn’t come from France.” [06:05]

3. Deliberate Amnesia and Censorship

• Libraries, Book Burning, and Lost Artifacts
  • Examples of intentional destruction (ancient China, modern conflicts) and accidental losses (war collateral):
    • “Knowledge becomes kind of a tool of the leadership. They can try to control people by controlling what information they have—burning books and destroying libraries. Well, that’s done on purpose sometimes, sometimes by accident...” — Bialik [07:21]
  • Many attempts to curate or save knowledge (like time capsules) are themselves subject to loss.

4. Digital Storage: Solution or Complication?

• Shortening Lifespans of Media
  • Comparison of ancient stone records (lasting millennia) vs. magnetic tapes, DVDs, and SSDs (decades or less):
    • “We think if we put it on a DVD it’s good forever, but the pits in the DVD will oxidize and become unreadable again... we’re going the wrong way.” — Bialik [10:11]
  • Irony: The Internet Museum prints programs onto paper for preservation.
    • “To save the programs... they print the programs on paper. So, it’s kind of going backwards a little.” [13:20]

5. Oral vs. Manuscript Traditions

• Resilience and Vulnerability
  • Oral tradition and manuscript culture can offer robust, long-lasting transmission—Bible, Native American stories, etc.
    • “The issue with all this is... what is the answer? What is the right way to save our information? I don’t know that we have it totally figured out.” — Bialik [14:40]

6. Lost Centers of Learning and the Limits of Recovery

• Voynich Manuscript and the Permanence of Mystery
  • The enigmatic Voynich Manuscript, possibly a real but indecipherable language, stands as a symbol of lost knowledge.*
    • “If that culture goes away and you don’t have that knowledge base passed on, there is no way to capture that information again.” — Bialik [16:38]

7. Modern Libraries: A Digital Alexandria?

• Obsolescence and Redundancy
  • Contemporary libraries face a dual crisis: digital decay and ever-changing file formats.
    • “How do you read that in 100 years? Our libraries can burn down as well... the only advantage is many copies.” — Bialik [18:34]

8. Knowledge vs. Wisdom

• What Gets Preserved and Why

  “Wisdom is the proper application of knowledge. We have a lot of smart people, but if you don’t know how to apply it, it doesn’t have a good outcome.” — Bialik [21:44]
  • Practical wisdom, difficult to impart, is contrasted with mere retention of facts—what’s remembered isn’t always wise.

9. The Deluge of Data & Role of AI

• Can Artificial Intelligence Help?
  • AI might help shepherd or filter the explosion of data but may lack wisdom itself:
    • “AI may be able to help us... maybe which pieces should we save and shouldn’t save… but does it have wisdom either? I don’t think so. Maybe just the wisdom we impart onto it.” — Bialik [27:04]

10. Slowness, Contemplation, and Humility

• Restoring Wisdom
  • Calls for meditation, patience, humility, and open-mindedness—qualities that help transform information into wisdom:
    • “To be humble is really to think about things… that can really help one to impart wisdom on their actions.” — Bialik [29:48]

11. Collective and Genetic Memory

• Inherited Memories and Past Lives
  • Notions of collective memory and possible physiological inheritance of memory and even trauma or knowledge.
    • “We do carry, in our culture, memories along... genetically, you carry some, is it information? You carry something down from generation to generation.” — Bialik [31:26]

12. Readiness and the Timing of Discovery

• When the Past Meets the Present
  • Some truths remain lost until the world is ready to understand or use them:
    • “Things come to light when they're best absorbed or needed.” — Bialik [33:35]
  • Example: Lost technologies behind the Pyramids.

13. Storehouses and Future Discoveries

• Possibility of Knowledge Deposits
  • Speculation on hidden caches of past knowledge (South America, Egypt, etc.), even if encoded in ways we can’t decipher today.
    • “Could there be storehouses somewhere else stored in a way that we don’t understand today? I think it’s a good possibility.” — Bialik [36:56]

14. The Grim Statistics of Survival

• How Little Is Retained
  • Only about 1.7% of all human knowledge has survived—an indicator of the vastness of loss.
    • “Our collective self, our cultures don't save the information on purpose. We destroy it on purpose... we don't think about the consequences of that.” — Bialik [39:21]

15. Myth as a Storage Technology

• Myth, Folklore, and Religion
  • Myth operates as a substrate that preserves endangered wisdom, often more resilient than formal archives.
    • “Our storage devices are the answer to a business question... not the answer to saving our wisdom for the future. I think the ancients had a better take on that, using word of mouth, using stories to preserve their knowledge.” — Bialik [41:09]

16. Resurrecting Memory via Ritual and Art

• The Power of Sensory Memory
  • Memories (personal or cultural) may be resurrected by art, ritual, and visiting ancient sites.
    • Bialik describes a new project: visiting megalithic sites to uncover forgotten links [52:22].

17. Depth of Prehistory and Humility in Archaeology

• Gobekli Tepe and Extending the Timeline
  • New discoveries like Gobekli Tepe extend human history backward—reminder of how little we know, and of the need for humility.
    • “We keep uncovering information. Who knows what else is buried out there that we haven’t found.” — Bialik [55:20]

18. Academia, Disciplines, and the Politics of Knowledge

• Value and Limitations
  • Academia is invaluable for preserving knowledge, but closed-mindedness and politicization can stifle discovery.
    • “When we start thinking we know it all… we're not humble about our knowledge and not open to new pieces of possibility.” — Bialik [56:45]

19. Curiosity and Creativity as Evolutionary Forces

• The Endangered Wonder
  • Bialik argues curiosity and creativity are our evolutionary engines and must be safeguarded.
    • “Curiosity can't be put down... it's the catalyst for how we keep reinventing things.” [58:24]

20. The Next Frontier

• Bialik’s Upcoming Explorations
  • Future projects: Research at megalithic and monolithic sites, above and below ground, to see what forgotten wisdom might be recovered or intuited.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Across centuries, humanity has lost more knowledge than it has kept. Yet each erasure leaves a faint afterimage—a kind of cultural DNA, whispering through us still.” — Dr. Juan Carlos Rey [00:11]

• "I think until our culture gets smart enough to understand that, we need to preserve some of what we know for the future. And that'll be the change, that'll be the shift we need..." — Jack R. Bialik [41:09]

• “I was thinking about it today. If you lived in 1248, you probably thought you knew everything...” — Jack R. Bialik on the perennial risk of hubris [36:56]

• "Wisdom is the proper application of knowledge." — Jack R. Bialik [21:44]

• "Curiosity can't be put down... it's actually, interestingly enough, the catalyst for how we keep reinventing things." — Jack R. Bialik [58:24]

Timestamp Guide to Major Segments

• Civilizations Forget by Design & the Design of Obsolescence
  [02:02–05:02]

• Selective Memory and National Historical Narratives
  [05:07–07:07]

• Deliberate Amnesia, Book Burnings, and Time Capsules
  [07:21–09:59]

• Digital Decay—The Lifespan of Media
  [10:11–14:18]

• Oral Tradition, Manuscripts, & Preservation Challenges
  [14:40–16:26]

• Lost Centers of Learning & The Voynich Manuscript
  [16:38–18:18]

• Contemporary Libraries and File Format Obsolescence
  [18:34–21:31]

• Knowledge vs Wisdom in Modern Context
  [21:44–26:41]

• Data Deluge, AI, and the Limits of Artificial Wisdom
  [27:04–29:38]

• Humility, Slow Thinking, and Mindfulness
  [29:48–31:12]

• Collective, Genetic, and Cultural Memory
  [31:26–33:25]

• What Humanity Is Ready to Remember: Timing of Discovery
  [33:35–36:43]

• Storehouses of Lost Knowledge & Human Hubris
  [36:56–39:04]

• The 1.7%: How Much Has Survived?
  [39:19–40:57]

• Myth as Storage for Endangered Wisdom
  [41:09–43:28]

• Can Ritual and Art Reverse Forgetting?
  [52:02–54:18]

• Extending Human History: Gobekli Tepe, Stonehenge, and Humility
  [54:18–56:28]

• Academic Disciplines and the Politics of Knowledge
  [56:28–58:09]

• Curiosity & Creativity as Evolutionary Forces
  [58:24–60:10]

• Bialik’s Future Explorations of Megalithic Sites
  [60:10–65:05]

Tone & Language

The tone remains contemplative, open-ended, and philosophical, blending scientific rigor with a sense of wonder and humility about the vast unknown. Both speakers respect the mysteries surrounding lost knowledge, expressing curiosity, reverence, and a call for renewed stewardship of humanity’s collective memories.

Final Thought

The episode concludes with a reflection on memory, loss, and the role of curiosity as a bridge between the known and the forgotten:

*“Every civilization leaves its fossils, some in stone, others in story. Today’s conversation reminds us that knowledge is never permanent, but neither is loss. What we forget often finds its way back, disguised as intuition, art, or the sudden ache of recognition.” — Dr. Juan Carlos Rey [66:10]

For more information, questions, or reflections, listeners are encouraged to contact Dr. Rey at theobservableunknownmail.com or by texting 336-675-5836.

Stay curious, stay conscious, and never stop listening for what the world is trying to recall.