#445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face

Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face | Brought to you by Allform http://allform.com/tim and LinkedIn Jobs http://linkedin.com/tim. “I used to resent obstacles along the path, thinking, ‘If only that hadn’t happened life would be so good.’ Then I suddenly realized, life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path.” — Janna Levin Janna Levin (@jannalevin https://twitter.com/JannaLevin) is the Tow Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. She has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. Janna is also director of sciences at Pioneer Works https://pioneerworks.org/, a cultural center dedicated to experimentation, education, and production across disciplines, as well as Pioneer Works’ virtual home The Broadcast https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/about/. Janna’s books include How the Universe Got Its Spots https://www.amazon.com/How-Universe-Got-Its-Spots/dp/1400032725/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&keywords=1400032725&qid=1594174384&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=2141fa06f02b1246690c049c9c9ec162&language=en_US and the novel A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines https://www.amazon.com/Madman-Dreams-Turing-Machines/dp/1400032407/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&keywords=1400032407&qid=1594174468&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=75d0948bf1ace67b927e38647fe3cfc3&language=en_US, which won the PEN/Bingham Prize. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant awarded to those “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship.” Her last book, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space https://www.amazon.com/Black-Blues-Other-Songs-Outer/dp/030794848X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&keywords=030794848X&qid=1594174524&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=52a0d2ce6caa60785ec81c2c2fc9cd68&language=en_US, is the inside story on the discovery of the century: the sound of spacetime ringing from the collision of two black holes over a billion years ago. Her new book, Black Hole Survival Guide https://www.amazon.com/Black-Survival-Guide-Janna-Levin/dp/052565822X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=B085VLJD4B&qid=1594174556&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=b4185b7bb93708c8f469d063aee5d4ef&language=en_US, is scheduled for publication near the end of 2020. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Allform http://allform.com/tim! If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep mattresses, which I’ve been using since 2017. They just launched a new company called Allform http://allform.com/tim, and they’re making premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door—at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. You can pick your fabric (and they’re all spill, stain, and scratch resistant), the sofa color, the color of the legs, and the sofa size and shape to make sure it’s perfect for you and your home. Allform http://allform.com/tim arrives in just 3–7 days, and you can assemble it yourself in a few minutes—no tools needed. To find your perfect sofa, check out Allform.com/TIM http://allform.com/TIM. Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at Allform.com/TIM http://allform.com/TIM. This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer. Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 690 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get the first $50 off. Just visit LinkedIn.com/TIM https://linkedin.com/Tim. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. And now Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They just launched a new company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. So I'm sitting in my living room right now, and it's entirely Allform furniture. I've got two chairs, I've got an ottoman, and I have an L-sectional couch. And I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill, stain, and scratch resistant.

• 1:05Tim Ferriss?

  The sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size, the shape to make sure it's perfect for you in your home. Also, Allform arrives in just three to seven days, and you can assemble it all yourself in a few minutes, no tools needed. I was quite astonished by how modular and easy these things fit together, kind of like Lego pieces. They've got armchairs, love seats, all the way up to an eight-seat sectional, so there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it. If you wanted to get a smaller couch and then build out on it, which is actually, in a way, what I did, because I can turn my L-sectional couch into a normal straight couch and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I use the natural leg finish, which is their lightest color, and I dig it.

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day, so. I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in-store sounds risky, you don't need to worry. Allform sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping, and you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty. That's literally forever. So check it out. Take a look. They've got all sorts of cool stuff to choose from. I was skeptical and it actually worked. It worked much better than I could have imagined, and I'm very, very happy. So to find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com/tim. That's A-L-L-F-O-R-M.com/tim.

• 2:33Tim Ferriss?

  Allform is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners, at allform.com/tim. Make sure to use the code TIM at checkout. That's allform.com/tim and use code TIM at checkout.

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Small businesses have unique needs. A lot of you know this. I know this. And even with the uncertainty these days, one thing stands unchanged, and that is the importance of having the right people on your team. But hiring can be hard. It can be really expensive if you make mistakes, very painful if you get it wrong. I've certainly had that experience and I'm not eager to repeat it. So I try to do as much upfront screening as possible. When your business is ready to make the next hire, LinkedIn Jobs can help you screen candidates with the hard and soft skills that you're looking for. They'll match your position with qualified members so that you can find the right person quickly. Using LinkedIn's active community of more than 690 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster.

• 3:32Tim Ferriss?

  So when your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get the first $50 off. Just visit LinkedIn.com/tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/tim to get $50 off your first job post. Terms and conditions apply.

• 3:51Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 4:31Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm thrilled to have today's guest joining us, Jana Levin, on Twitter and Instagram, at Jana Levin, that's J A N N A L E V I N, is the Tao Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University, and has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, the gravitational

• 5:15Tim Ferriss?

  waves in the shape of spacetime. There's an end in there. And gravitational waves in the space. Oh, and the space of shape time. You know, third time's the charm. And gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. You know, that's not a sentence I say very often. She is also Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works, a cultural center dedicated to experimentation, education, and production across disciplines, and Pioneer Works virtual home, the broadcast, obviously, I'll link to all of this in the show notes. Her books include How the Universe Got Its Spots, and a novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, which won the Pen Bingham Prize. She was recently named a Guggenheim Fellow, a grant awarded to those, quote, "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship," end quote. Her last book, Black Hole Blue

• 6:00Tim Ferriss?

  And other songs from outer space is the inside story on the discovery of the century. The sound of spacetime ringing from the collision of two black holes over a billion years ago. And your timing of publication was just incredible. We might touch on that.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:15Tim Ferriss?

  Her newest book, Black Hole Survival Guide, is scheduled for publication at the end of 2020. Jenna, thank you so much for making time to be on the show today.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks so much for having me. And I have to say, hearing that bio makes it sound like it was smooth sailing, which is what we do when we edit our bios. I would love to have a bio that included all our failures.

• 6:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the good news is that with a long form podcast, we can fill in some of the gaps. And talk about those. And I thought we would start way back in time. If we step into the time machine and not necessarily with failures, but I was doing all sorts of homework for this. And I particularly enjoy doing homework for interviews when they involve my friends, because I find all sorts of things that I didn't know. Would you say that you were reckless as a kid? And do you remember any particular notable instances of getting in trouble?

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, hilarious. I was so reckless. I was so reckless. My parents used to say, stop diving off the high board without checking if there's water in the pool.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  And yeah, I had no health problems as a child, but yet I was in the hospital. I can't even mention how many times from completely insane reckless accidents, breaking my nose, dislocating my finger, doing something crazy. The worst was skateboarding around, I guess, 11 and hanging on to the back of a passing car and hitting a brake on the road and landing on my head and experiencing amnesia, which is a pretty peculiar experience and going into a coma. So that was the big one. But by far, but it wasn't the first or the last. I remember my father being, he was so devastated. And, and just, can you please stop?

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Like you can't do this to us.

• 8:20Tim Ferriss?

  And you've had some self inflicted wounds.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:24Tim Ferriss?

  And then you've had others that you could certainly share more details about, but it.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Like a car accident?

• 8:33Tim Ferriss?

  Like the car accident. Could you describe this car accident, which I also didn't know about?

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I really am not known for being risk averse. And so I guess it was my, I was 16 to my 17th birthday night and I didn't have a driver's license, but driving, a friend driving a car and we were really reckless and it was a storm and we, we wiped out in the, in the water, the puddles hit some grass, ended up hitting kind of a footbridge, but flipping and landing upside down in basically a canal and underwater. And, you know, we all made it out alive, which is pretty amazing.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Scarred up, you know, I have a scar on my face. I have a scar on my hand. It's not necessarily that noticeable, but it's definitely a mark. And after that, my parents said, you need to go to college. I was a junior in high school and they said, we can't take it anymore. We just, we can't take it anymore. You need to go to college. And I, it was a smart sort of instinct on their part that I should do something more constructive and I'll be less wild. And, um, and I have old sisters older than me who they've been through it before and they were like, we're not doing this again. And so it was by the summer of that year when I was, I didn't finish my junior year because of

• 10:02Speaker 03

  the accident. And by the summer of that year, I was applying pleading with two colleges to let me in. And one of them had just accepted women for, in their curriculum, it was an all male school, Columbia, and its sister school, Barnard, accepted me. And so two months later, a little banged up, I started college. It ended up saving my life. I'm sure of it.

• 10:29Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did it save your life? It probably saved your parents' sanity by getting you out of the house.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Saved our relationship.

• 10:38Tim Ferriss?

  How did it save you in the sense that for many kids who go away to college, that is when they become reckless?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:45Tim Ferriss?

  Was it offering a larger challenge? Was it offering the type of coursework that you were interested in?

• 10:53Speaker 03

  It was all of it. I was still very interested in New York life and New York was real rough around the edges. And it was exciting and things I had never seen before and subversive things. And all of that fascinated me. But yeah, the actual scholarship was incredible. And that it wasn't a two-switch situation. I was either a maniac or I was a scholar. Like here at this particular place, I could be a little bit of both in a better balance.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  And the scholarship here was absolutely one of the most, I mean, for sure, this incredible experience. Also, being that age, your mind is voracious and undisciplined, but spongy. And I loved the intense intellectualism of this place and paired with an absence of a requirement to conform, you know, which is a New York City thing or a feminist college thing or, you know, a Columbia University thing. And that combination, just I was extremely grateful. Also, I think because unlike maybe other students who had gone through college and the SATs

• 12:16Speaker 03

  and written all of their essays and had the horrible experience of being rejected and accepted, like, I didn't have that. I didn't have that experience. I was just pure gratitude that they took me in. Two months after my accident, I was in college. And I just, I really carried that feeling with me for the years that just, thank God, thank God. It could have gone so bad.

• 12:37Tim Ferriss?

  What did you think at that point when you're you're walking into this incredible academic institution, off you go to college? In your mind, what did you think you might be when you grew up, so to speak?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Oh, so it never crossed my mind, science, being a scientist, never crossed my mind when I started here. I was really interested in philosophy and I think in retrospect, what I was actually interested was the big questions, not, you know, not the stylistic study of philosophy, but the questions. But I didn't know that at the time and loved literature. I often say my mother taught me to read and I don't mean like sounding out phonetics as a child. I mean, when I was 14, 15, which is the first time I actually started reading.

• 13:32Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 13:33Speaker 03

  For pleasure. I mean, I read for school, but my mom kind of taught me how to read a book. And, and I remember a very strong memory, Toni Morrison's Beloved was the first one, where she prepared me to slow down and not to show off as a reader, but to be, you know, a receiver of this and to slow down and to appreciate the depth of the language. And I absolutely, my mother taught me that. And I remember that so strongly discovering literature.

• 14:10Tim Ferriss?

  What did the teaching look like? Was it suggesting books to read and then discussing it with her?

• 14:16Speaker 03

  It didn't feel like teaching at all. It felt like sharing something precious to her. So I, my mother's a voracious reader. I remember when I realized we would have bookshelves and I would pull the first book back and realize they went three deep.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  And just an absolutely voracious reader and, and an excellent reader, like an intimate, deep perception of layers of stuff that, and what I learned also about that was that you can write a book that not everyone has to read at every level, and it can be wonderful.

• 14:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's so true.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and maybe, you know, not everybody wants it at that level, or they want others at that level and not this one, all that's fine. You have to reach many levels to have a truly great sculptural construct. And, and that's what she showed me. And it was totally, it wasn't at all like, sit you down, I'm schooling you at all. It was very much just sharing, like, I just read Beloved. You have got to read this. You will not believe what this, what Toni Morrison does in this book. And it was lots of things in a big range. It was Philip Roth, it was Hemingway, it was whatever. And so, and when I, when I finally became a voracious reader, I had no quality control. I just loved books. I would read crappy things.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  I would read wonderful, like, I would read classics, like, there was no snobbery in it. It was like, oh, this one's just fun. It was.

• 15:46Tim Ferriss?

  You were an omnivore.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I became an omnivore. And so, I carried that with me and I, I never thought, I was very intimidated by everything. I was very, very intimidated by all of it. I didn't think I would have what it takes to bring to be the creative original in any of those subjects. I came in to be a student, very much so.

• 16:09Tim Ferriss?

  And philosophy, within that discipline, if we want to call it discipline.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  And it's got a real structure and a system and rules, for sure.

• 16:21Tim Ferriss?

  Rules and, and you're, you're asking big questions. What are the differences between the answers that you get in philosophy and the answers that you later sought to get or studied historically in science? And then we'll, we'll certainly, I want to hear how on earth, science came on your radar.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that is spot on, the question. Spot on the question, because I enjoyed studying philosophy.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  But I was really frustrated with the fact that, and this is the example I often use because it was really a specific example in my experience, what Kant meant when he said, "It drove me bananas." I was so, at the end of it, infuriated. I was like, if Kant, who barely left his home village, sealed in his mind the secrets of life, I don't buy that narrative. That's

• 17:32Speaker 03

  not possible. It must not have been universally true, or he chose the wrong methodology for conveying it. And, you know, when, which we'll get to, I think, in this conversation, when Einstein exposed special relativity, what he discovered, nobody, I swear to you, nobody who studies it is going back and saying, "What did Einstein mean?" And that's an enormous difference. We don't become obsessed with the cult of personality with, we are obsessed with the cult of personality with Einstein, but not to extract the meaning

• 18:13Speaker 03

  of what he said. Every, I can have erased from my mind that Einstein existed, as long as nobody erases special relativity from my mind, and I can share it with anybody in the universe. That's a whole other level of discovery and, and transcendence. And I don't like things that, whose truths are rooted in a single man's mind, or a single cultural meme. I want it to be true in Bangladesh, I want it to be true for me in New York, I want it to be true in another galaxy. And that was the shift for me, is when I realized that.

• 18:54Tim Ferriss?

  I love that we're spending some time on this, because I studied some philosophies in undergrad, had to, and enjoyed it, because it's full of brainteasers and

• 19:05Speaker 03

  It's pleasurable.

• 19:06Tim Ferriss?

  the trolley problem, and all sorts of things that are exciting and interesting and difficult to explore. And you have this subjectivity of interpretation that is really problematic. And you mentioned Transcendent, right? And for something to transcend sort of geographical boundaries in a way, can't be bound to a translation of a word from German to English, let's just say, right? Because you're arguing over what Kant meant, but you're reading it in English, which is already an abstraction from what we would have read, say, whether that's, I mean, that's true with a lot of philosophers. So how does science enter the picture?

• 19:44Speaker 03

  So, I mean, personally, you mean for me, like, how did it happen?

• 19:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for you.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  It was through philosophy. So when it happened, and just to prep this, we had very rigorous science requirements, which I decided to get over with because I didn't think I had any interest in science. And so my first year in college, like, I went through chemistry and organic chemistry, and I did all the super hardcore subjects. And I remember my chemistry professor pulling me aside and was like, have you ever considered physics? And I was like, I, also because I didn't finish high school, I had never had physics or calculus. Like, I wasn't that kid who had AP physics and calc, I didn't

• 20:29Speaker 03

  finish high school. And so I was offended. I was literally recoiled. And I was like, physicists memorize equations, and they build bombs, and there's no creativity. And like, I was absolutely insulted. And, and I was, and I, and I was also had to do calculus as my math requirement. And there was a similar, they were like, hey, have you ever considered doing some math? And I was like, oh, gasp. And then it really, really funny that that's not how it came, because what happened is, in a philosophy class, where we were arguing

• 21:11Speaker 03

  about Heidegger, who is a philosopher who's very contentious, but who I really enjoyed, really enjoyed Heidegger, but more as a word-played poetry, you know, mind teaser than like admiration for the individual, which, and there's a lot of that in philosophy, you know, the hero worship. So anyways, we were in, I'm in this class, and this young guy comes in to do his job interview to become a professor at Columbia. And he has a PhD in physics. His name is David Albert. He's now a very famous philosopher of science. And he comes in and he's not, in my mind, he's doing philosophy at a totally different

• 21:56Speaker 03

  way and style. And he starts talking about Einstein and free will and quantum mechanics and determinism. And everyone, even the most obnoxious showoffs in those classes, and I'm sure you know what I mean.

• 22:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I do.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Everyone got quiet. And I thought, wow, I'm not hearing all the bluster I usually hear in this room. And I just was mesmerized. And David Albert is now a friend of mine and a colleague. He got the job. And is a Columbia professor.

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell his last name?

• 22:34Speaker 03

  A-L-B-E-R-T, like the first name.

• 22:37Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, Albert, got it.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Albert. And he had no idea I was sitting in the back of the room all those years ago. And I swear to you, it's what made me have that switch of, I don't want to talk about what Kant meant. Nobody's talking about what Einstein meant. We simply have to carry it on. From where he gave us the baton, we can, we have to keep moving. That's the job. The job isn't to obsess about his personal life and his personal psychology and the phrasing of every word, because math is universal. And I had this chilling experience that I cannot even describe. And after that, I basically switched, I was probably a sophomore going into my junior year.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  And so by a junior in college, I switched my major to astronomy and physics and I took math going crazy, which I always liked math. I always liked math. I just didn't, I just didn't know I had any purpose for it. And so I scrambled. I really scrambled to try to catch up to my peers who were those, you know, kids who had the chemistry set in their basement and always knew and knew things I didn't know and like had intuitions I didn't have. And so I really scrambled. And I think one of the reasons why I became pretty mathematically leaning was as a compensation for not feeling like I had the intuition.

• 24:07Tim Ferriss?

  That makes perfect sense. What did the chemistry and math teachers see in you that led them to suggest physics? What did they intuit or sense or see or hear?

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Well, I think, you know, the math classes were very anonymous. They were big classes with calculus. It was very anonymous. I just did really well in calculus. I really did. I liked math. I was good at it. I didn't, I didn't think twice about it. It's like being good at jump rope. I really didn't think twice about it. Yeah, I, I could crush the calculus and I, I don't know why. I didn't really have any background. It's not like something that necessarily runs in my family, but I enjoy it actually. And I would find weird solutions. Like they would throw one problem on a calculus test that they hadn't taught you how to solve. And I would like that problem and I would spend my time on that problem and I would fix it.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  And I'm not saying I didn't do badly sometimes, but you know, so calculus was just sort of a skill thing. It was, it was, it really like jumping rope. And then with chemistry, I always loved naturalism, always. And I just didn't see it. You know, we talked differently about it when I was a kid. Nobody was like,

• 25:23Tim Ferriss?

  What do you mean by naturalism?

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Nobody was like, oh, you're a scientist. I loved books about evolution and I loved Carl Sagan. And I loved lying on the beach with my dad on a dark island in South Carolina where there were no streetlights. Like I'm a city kid. I'd never seen the sky and marveling over the view of the Milky Way. I just didn't see it as science. I saw it as an experientially wonderful thing. And I loved, my dad's a M D. So where my mom taught me how to read, my dad taught me how to ask questions. You know, my dad's just a super curious guy. He would always talk about, why is it like this?

• 26:08Speaker 03

  And why is it like that? And just, you know, in a different 10 years later, people would have said, your daughter's a scientist, but at that time, nobody said that. Never crossed anyone's mind. And in retrospect, I always had that leaning. I just felt it in a more kind of organic, poetic appreciation kind of a way.

• 26:31Tim Ferriss?

  So we're going to go deep. We're going to go into all sorts of science. Before we do, I want to ask you, for those who have not delved into philosophy, but are interested in perhaps dipping their toe in, are there any particular favorite philosophers you have for someone who doesn't want to get stuck in the quicksand of some of the philosophers I shan't name, but the just the sort of semantic juggling that gets so tiresome? You have any favorite philosophers to read that you would recommend to folks?

• 27:05Speaker 03

  It's tough. I think that, you know, somebody like Bertrand Russell, who's also a mathematician.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  Bertrand Russell is amazing.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  I know this is unpopular, but I really enjoyed Heidegger. There was something to his madness. Wittgenstein for sure, but you're never going to figure him out.

• 27:26Tim Ferriss?

  The story of Wittgenstein's entire family is fascinating.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  Fascinating. And I have very off opinions about Wittgenstein, but that I still believe.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  I think he was a scientist, a mathematician, a mystic. I think he was a poet. So, I mean, those for me are the biggest standouts. I love the rationalists. If you wanted to study Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Descartes, you know, all that's great. But if you ask like at a pleasure center level, I would kind of stick to Bertrand Russell, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. And not to miss the modern philosophers who are basically very close to the boundary of science and philosophy, who are pushing forward interpretations of quantum mechanics. Understandings of the nature of time and there's little communities, there's little

• 28:25Speaker 03

  centers like at Oxford, at Columbia, at Rutgers, I think there's one at UCSC, if I'm not mistaken, where they're really pushing physicists to not be plumbers and to like, you know, to like not be like, I got a, I got a wrench. I know how to use it. Like to be like, but you don't understand that wrench. Let's talk about it. Those people are really, really important and provocative. And nothing against plumbers. Lenny Suskin, who is one of the most brilliant physicists I've ever known, was a plumber and grew up in the Bronx, a plumber's son. And Lenny is one of, an absolute creative genius in, in theoretical physics.

• 29:06Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing. And you mentioned the modern philosophers. I don't know many modern philosophers, but is it the case that with advancing technology and discovery, there is this reconnection or convergence of philosophy and science in very practical respects? And one example that comes to mind, we don't have to explore the specific example, but I'm wondering within physics and philosophy, or in the combination, if this is true, you take something like the trolley problem, right? So you're on a trolley, it's headed towards five workmen hypothetically, and you can switch the track and kill one person. So you're choosing between one of five, but then there are all these other considerations. And with autonomous driving, you effectively have

• 29:50Tim Ferriss?

  to code in those types of decisions. Right? So this thought experiment in Philosophy 101 undergrad is all of a sudden very relevant. Is that the case in physics as well?

• 30:01Speaker 03

  I would say that the philosophers are doing, the ones, from my perspective, are doing the really provocative, important work, are demanding that physicists acknowledge that they don't understand their most widely accurately tested paradigm in the history of science, namely quantum mechanics. And so it's pretty wild that we build these machines like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and that we discover the Higgs particle, the goddamn particle, which was appropriated as the god particle, but the original title was the goddamn particle.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  And you know, is incredibly stunningly accurate. You can build stuff like for me, that's like the base level proof that something's true and that we actually do not understand it. And I think that they're right to press us, that it's not good enough just to build stuff, that if you technically, philosophically, intellectually do not understand something, use it as a guide to tell you what's beyond, what more we could know. And I really think that the philosophers on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the measurement problem, which is to say, in quantum mechanics, things don't always assume a concrete state, yet

• 31:34Speaker 03

  when we measure them, we find them only in a concrete state, like this kind of what is reality stuff? What is the role of complex systems? I think they're right to press us on this. And I think that they're making way more progress than the physicists are. And you've spoken to Sean Carroll, and Sean, in no small part, has made me, you know, look at that. And as a friend, and as a colleague, and as a scientist, he, you know, he has made me look at that. And I think he's right about that. And Sean and I actually have a long running joke, because he was in graduate school at Harvard when I was at MIT, we were very good friends. And I became more and more, just calculate, man.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  It's objective reality. Just do it. Let's discover stuff. And he went more and more into philosophy, and we totally tease each other about it all the time.

• 32:28Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to hear that, like, two glasses of wine each in, that would be a good dinner.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  And people know to do that, too.

• 32:36Tim Ferriss?

  Pass the salad. How many, how many, how many milligrams or grams would you like, Jenna?

• 32:44Tim Ferriss?

  Let's dig into this, maybe not directly, the what is reality? That's a, that's a big one to bite off.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  That's a big one and, and also not my favorite in a sense. I do like the basic pleasure of experience of something that we've discovered, of something, you know, that we found on paper in math and then it's out there. I love that connect.

• 33:05Tim Ferriss?

  So I think we can take that and use it to stretch people who are listening a little bit. And that includes me. So I'm going to ask you a question that you've no doubt been asked many, many times. And I apologize, I want to ask it anyway. How is it possible that the universe could be finite? It is the universe after all, right? So it's hard to just visualize how that could make sense.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  You should not apologize for that question because it can, it's ongoing for me too. So, um, so Einstein had this funny quote, which I've said many times, which is only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And then he says, and I'm not so sure about the universe. And as soon as Einstein started talking about spacetime and geometry. So basically seeing the universe as a curved geometry, his theory cannot specify the global connectedness.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  It's not necessarily a shortcoming of Einstein's theory of general relativity. It's just that we suspect that the quantum theory of gravity beyond Einstein will tell us something about the global structure. So for example, if I'm looking, right now I have a teacup and I'm looking at it super, super closely, I see the curves on it. That's what Einstein taught us about. But if I put it further away, I see a handle and a connectedness of the handle. And we call that topology, the fact that there's a hole. And that even if this was made of clay,

• 35:00Speaker 03

  there's nothing I could do to my teacup to get rid of that hole unless I broke it or did something like that. So we call that topology. It has a feature. It has a feature called a hole. It's not equivalent to just a solid object. And that aspect of geometry, once Einstein said spacetime is curved and it's geometry, people started to ask, well, what about topology, the connectedness? So for instance, let's look at the Earth. You and I are in different parts of the Earth. Maybe you're near a hill and you're noticing the curves on the surface of the Earth. You go up the hill, you go down the hill. I live on Morningside Heights by Columbia. I go down a hill to Harlem. I go up a hill to Columbia.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  And that's local. But if I pan way, way far back, I see that the Earth is actually a sphere. And I don't see that up close. And that is something ridiculously enough, we still have flat-earthers. But that is something that the Greeks and ancient astronomers discovered. It was not a known thing. And so that aspect of spacetime, that compactness, the fact that the Earth isn't infinite. The Earth isn't an infinite plane. It is actually curves around, wraps back on itself,

• 36:27Speaker 03

  and is a compact, finite surface. That was a discovery recently, in some sense. Spanish explorers were afraid that Columbus was going to sail off the edge of the Earth, that it was not compact. And so this kind of thinking should be, we should be asking that about the universe. Is it possible? So if I leave New York City and I travel in a straight line as best I can, I might need to paddle, I might need to walk, I might need to do whatever, I will come back to New York City. That was not known until fairly recently. And it might be like that with the universe, that if I left...

• 37:11Speaker 03

  The solar system in a spacecraft and I left the galaxy and I traveled in a straight line. After a while, I would very surprisingly find myself coming back to the Milky Way Galaxy and the solar system.

• 37:24Tim Ferriss?

  And does that infer, this is gonna be a third grade question, I guess they probably wouldn't use infer, but in my mind, I'm imagining the universe as this bubble that is spherical or oblong or something like that, if the universe is expanding or contracting.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  It can be an expanding finite surface.

• 37:46Tim Ferriss?

  And then the sort of like, wait a second, teacher question that I want to ask is, and you see this coming, right, but if it is finite, what's on the outside of it? If that's even visually, like sort of visually, spatially, the right way to think about it?

• 38:03Speaker 03

  I am not gonna deny that this is hard for everybody, even, even very accredited, you know, experienced mathematicians, this is not an easy concept, but I will tell you, there is no requirement for anything on the outside. There's this sort of pat answer that people give, which is, there's nothing north of the North Pole, go more north of the North Pole and you go south. I don't love that answer, because I understand that intuitively, people are saying, yeah, but I could go up. And, and, and so it's, it's not satisfying, but here's what's really hard to conceive

• 38:46Speaker 03

  of, but I believe I could convince you that it's possible, is that I do not need to embed the three dimensional universe, if it's finite, into a higher dimensional space. So, let's talk about the Earth. The Earth as a surface, forget about the inside, forget about it, that it's a solid object, let's just look at the surface of the Earth. That is two dimensional. All I need to know on the surface of the Earth is east, west, north, south, 2D. That's it.

• 39:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 39:18Speaker 03

  It lives in 3D, though, which is how, as three dimensional beings, we're able to visualize it. So, we're like, yeah, the Earth is finite and it's 2D, but there's all this three dimensional stuff that it's, lives in. And we want to do the same thing with the universe. I want to tell you, there's a three dimensional equivalent to the earth that is a sphere. It's a three dimensional sphere. You cannot visualize it, and it need not be nested in a higher dimension. And that's where you start to go like, okay. And the kind of impact of that is that anything that's spacetime is

• 39:59Speaker 03

  part of the universe. So if I said, yeah, we live in a higher dimensional version of the earth, a three dimensional sphere nested in a higher dimension, then any relativist, anybody who who follows, who uses Einstein's theory as a guide would say, yeah, but that's spacetime, and therefore that's part of the universe. So there's no such thing as, as space or time, locations or events that aren't part of the universe. All that would mean was that we unnecessarily lived in four dimensions. So here's another example that I think is going to make this a little bit more manageable. If you look at, let's look

• 40:44Speaker 03

  at a video game. Let's look at Pac-Man, which just turned 40 or something.

• 40:48Tim Ferriss?

  All right, now we're, now we're speaking my language. All right, here we go.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Pac-Man just showed up on my video feed. You know how Pac-Man goes off the right side of the frame and comes in the left side of the frame?

• 40:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  And you know how you can go at the top of the frame and come in the bottom of the frame?

• 41:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yes.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Pac-Man lives on a two dimensional donut that is not embedded in a higher dimensional space. That's it. There is no higher dimensional space. He lives in a flat, two dimensional world.

• 41:19Tim Ferriss?

  So it is independent?

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 41:23Tim Ferriss?

  Is that what you mean by not?

• 41:25Speaker 03

  I mean, there's no requirement, like, in the video game rules, he exits the right side, he enters the left side. He goes out the top, he enters the bottom. I don't actually know if he can go at the top or on the left and right side, but we'll extrapolate. That means that what topologists would call that is a donut, that it has the shape of a donut. He's continuously going around in one direction, and he can continuously go around in the other direction.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  But that donut does not live in a higher dimensional space. It lives happily in 2D. On your 2D flat screen, that's the whole story mathematically. He goes out one side, he comes in the other. He goes out the top, he comes in the bottom. And, and if you see that, you start to think like, okay, wow, that's a weird computer rule, but computer rules are only reflecting mathematical rules. And the universe could obey the same rules. I go out to the right side of the universe, I come in the left side. I go out the top of the universe, I come in the bottom. There is no need for that to live in another space. That's it.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  I could do that in three dimensions, I could go forward and come in the back. And that's it. It's a three dimensional space. It does not live in a higher dimension. It is just connected in a mathematical way that looks like a crazy donut if you embedded it in a higher dimensional space, but it does not need to live in the higher dimensional space any more than your game Pac-Man looks like a donut to you.

• 43:05Tim Ferriss?

  So I

• 43:06Speaker 03

  We can have a moment of silence if you want.

• 43:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, I'm letting my neurons recover for a second. But I, I think you could sell, this is, this is where my head goes just to, just to show you how, just so you can lose any shred of respect you might have for me. I was thinking you could sell a lot of T-shirts that would say, that donut does not, does not exist in a higher dimensional space.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Pac-Man is a donut that doesn't live in a higher dimensional space. I mean,

• 43:40Tim Ferriss?

  There you go.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  We are limited by our experience. We're three dimensional beings. We understand that the earth is a compact, two dimensional surface that lives in a higher three dimensional space. What we have trouble with is the idea that there could be a compact, two dimensional surface that does not live in a higher dimensional space.

• 43:59Tim Ferriss?

  So the way that I've probably very stupidly thought about this, this is speaking as a non-scientist, non-physicist. I never did take calculus because I had a really, I was actually pretty good at math and I had a very sort of abusive math teacher in sophomore year of high school and I just said, fuck it, I'm out.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  It's sounding crazy how impactful that is.

• 44:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, my brother had a great teacher and now he has a PhD in statistics. So it's

• 44:22Speaker 03

  But you clearly have a very logical mind. Like, that's a lot of what you access.

• 44:27Tim Ferriss?

  When I'm not upset, yeah, when I'm not upset, my logic falls to pieces when I'm upset. But, but I try. I listen to, just by way of analogy, maybe incorrectly, I was listening to an episode of Radiolab recently, talking about colors and the perception of colors and what a rainbow would look like to a dog, say.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 44:48Tim Ferriss?

  What a rainbow would look like to a human, what it would look like to a butterfly, which has more, I want to say.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Wild range of colors.

• 44:55Tim Ferriss?

  It's either rods or cones. I always mix the two up. But for color perception, and then you have something like a mantis shrimp, which has like 19 times the number of these receptors compared to a human, right? And you can try to describe what it might look like to see a rainbow with ultraviolet added, but it's a real stretch of the imagination to do so as a human who has limited perceptual abilities. But then, so it seems like to me, physics is sort of showing the underlying code of the universe slash simulation that we live in. And it's allowing you to see the shape and form, perhaps, of things that you cannot

• 45:38Tim Ferriss?

  perceive as a human. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  It's totally accurate. I would say that I discover stuff through math that is so counterintuitive that I really wrestle with it.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Which is why I love math, because it's telling me stuff that I can't see.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  So even these things that I'm, you know, blathering at you, like, I struggled with them. I struggled with these ideas because we're really reliant on intuition that we can see and perceive a curved surface in a higher dimensional space, or, you know, we can, we always have to go down in dimension. The math I follow and trust, but believe me, I cannot visualize a three dimensional sphere nested in a higher dimension. It's not available to my mind or anybody else's. And, and we can't do it and we can't, we don't have an intuition for it.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  And so that's where the math is this like insane guide that we inherited that. My friend Brian Greene, whom I don't know if you've interviewed, says things to me like, yeah, maybe one day we won't do math, but right now it's all we got.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  And that's what it feels like, like the math shows you something and you're like, whoa. So as a, here's an example of what math showed me that I can't, you know, I can't visualize. So if, suppose you had two interconnected rings in three dimensions.

• 47:22Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  There's nothing you could do to separate them. Two steel welded interconnected rings loosely connected. There's nothing you can do to break them apart unless you cut the steel, right?

• 47:35Speaker 03

  If you lived in four dimensions spatially, you could actually lift them apart, no problem.

• 47:42Tim Ferriss?

  Can I say that one more time?

• 47:46Speaker 03

  If you lived in four dimensions, you could take these steel welded rings that are totally locked and interconnected, that could not be separated without a chainsaw. In four dimensions, you can separate them without breaking them.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  And here's the, here's the analogy that helps with it, but it's still just you'll never be able to see it. I can't see it. No mathematician can see it either. But in two dimensions, we can see it. Suppose I had a big steel ring surrounding a small steel ring in two dimensions and they could never come off the plane. They could never come off the table. There is nothing I could do to get the small one outside of the big one, but cut the big one.

• 48:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Yep. You agree with that? That's a simple

• 48:38Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  But if I live in three dimensions, I can simply lift the inner ring out.

• 48:43Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  And

• 48:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 48:47Speaker 03

  And that's what four dimensions allow you to do with the interconnected links. And it's really hard to see.

• 48:54Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  It's wild. It's a formal mathematical proof.

• 49:01Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and then we're right back to the show. First up, LinkedIn jobs. When your business is ready to make the next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn jobs. Using LinkedIn's active community of more than 690 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn jobs can help you find the right person faster. You can pay what you want and get the first $50 off. Just visit LinkedIn.com slash Tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com slash Tim to get $50 off of your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. Second and last, Allform from the creators of Helix Sleep. Allform makes premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. To find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com slash Tim. Allform

• 49:41Tim Ferriss?

  is offering 20% off all orders to you, my dear listeners at allform.com slash Tim. That's allform, A L L F O R M dot com slash Tim.

• 49:54Tim Ferriss?

  I want to continue on this journey down the rabbit hole. You gave a great talk via The Moth called "Life on a Mobius Strip." Why did you use the phrase "Mobius Strip"?

• 50:07Speaker 03

  So, that talk, it describes a journey through life, but one in which you come back different. So, really technically, mathematically different. So, if I take a left-handed glove, or let's start with a right-handed glove, because most of us are right-handed, and I go around, I travel around a strip, just literally imagine a cylinder. It comes back right-handed. If you take that same glove on a trip around a Mobius strip, which has a twist in it, your right-handed glove comes back left-handed. And it is fundamentally different.

• 50:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's so weird.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  And there's something in the story that is related to that right-handedness, which is very predominant in nature, and left-handedness, which is also very predominant in different ways. And the idea that we take these things so for granted, we don't even question them anymore. Why is your heart on the left side of your body? Why is mine on the left side of my body? What is the asymmetry that is for almost every single person on the planet? There's an asymmetry that we all have.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  And it was kind of this story of strange journey between me and my, at the time boyfriend, now husband, coming back with a flipped chirality. So, left-handedness and right-handedness is known as chirality. Going on a very peculiar journey and coming back.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  With a different chirality, like fundamentally different. And I don't know if you want me to do the spoiler of the end of the story.

• 52:03Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I think I really want you to. I suggest people, I suggest people listen to the talk and we'll link to it in the show notes. But it's, you gotta, I feel like you gotta do it.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  It is extraordinary. So my son, um, his heart is on the right side of his body. And all of his organs are mirror reversed. And I, the fact that it happened to me of all people was pretty strange. Um, and, and, you know, just so people aren't alarmed, the placement of his organs are totally healthy. There's nothing wrong with having, he's literally a mirror image of most of us. And there's nothing unhealthy about the organ placement. It's just extravagantly rare. And it was sort of, I felt like it was this, it's also

• 53:00Speaker 03

  an incredibly rare genetic condition. You know, my husband is an Anglo Irish musician from an incredibly tough, brutal part of working class Manchester. And, you know, I'm a sort of like kid from Chicago who had everything. And it was like the odds of us both having the resonance of that, it's, it's extremely rare, um, genetic condition and going on this very peculiar journey together and, uh, creating this exceptional

• 53:37Speaker 03

  child, um, who is a mirror image, as though he was taken on a trip around a Mobius strip. And so that was the Moss story.

• 53:51Tim Ferriss?

  And we'll link to that, everybody, tim.blog/podcast and you'll be able to find Jenna, obviously, and see all the links. I want to touch on one more-

• 54:00Speaker 03

  Sorry to interrupt you too, but this is what we started with. That was something I was gonna tell nobody or everybody. And I told nobody. I mean, I had some of my dearest lifelong friends. I didn't say a word about it. And I think the anxiety was that people would find it so peculiar that they would treat him as sickly and his organ placement is healthy. It's just exceptionally strange. And so we hid it for years. We just, and, and I think when I told that Mois story, 2011, 2012, maybe, he was-

• 54:34Tim Ferriss?

  2011, yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  He was 11. And by then, we felt so confident in his health and that he would not perceive himself as sickly and that other people wouldn't project on him. Like, if you tell that about a child, about a baby, people become overly precious. And it's something I really don't like. I really don't like when kids are treated like glass. And so it was this kind of dark secret that Warren and I went to great lengths to keep him healthy, to see doctors, to go to zillions of experts, to travel across the country, to have him participate in studies, but told none of our friends. And that was the tell nobody or everybody. When the Moth

• 55:19Speaker 03

  asked me to do it, I felt ready at about that point in time to make it a work, like a piece, and work on constructing it and work on the levels of it as I would a book. And even though it was only a 15 minute story. And my son only heard it a couple of years ago.

• 55:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 55:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:47Tim Ferriss?

  Wild.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  And-

• 55:49Tim Ferriss?

  Wild is these, that's my, that's my exclamation of the conversation, it seems.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  And we, because we didn't want him to be overwrought about, like, we didn't want him to feel sickly because we believed he wouldn't be. But it's such a rare condition and not everyone does well with that condition. It's so rare. We got off really lucky, but it was really important to us that he feel strong and healthy and not have a consciousness of a sick kid.

• 56:20Tim Ferriss?

  So tell no one or everybody. And you, you followed that when we were talking before recording and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's either silence or art, right? Something along those lines.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 56:31Tim Ferriss?

  And two questions. How did you feel after giving the talk? And then number two, have you taken other types of internal pressure or angst or emotion and turned that into art as a way of release or for other reasons?

• 56:49Speaker 03

  I mean, those are both, I think, really valuable questions. I do a lot of public speaking about science and I have a, I have a pretty personal tone. You know, my first book is pretty autobiographical and personal and intimate. So it's not like I'm afraid of that. But I was terrified of giving the moth talk. It's so funny. I'm on stage all the time. I don't get nervous. Like you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I'd be like, yeah, black holes and blah, blah, blah. But for this part of it was that I was telling this story for the first time that I had, that I had kept to myself for

• 57:31Speaker 03

  over a decade. And part of it was that I was at exceptional company. It was the World Science Festival and Eric Lander spoke about the Human Genome Project and using DNA evidence to release prisoners who were wrongly incarcerated. Huge. Eric Lander's huge. A guy who was doing hand transplant surgeries for Marines and people in Iraq. Like I was, and then, and it culminated with a Nobel Prize winning Holocaust surviving chemist.

• 58:09Tim Ferriss?

  No pressure.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  And me.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  And, and they were like, Jana, talk about your boyfriend.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  So it was really, it was really not an easy assignment, right?

• 58:27Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely going off piece there.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  I was absolutely like, oh my God, a Holocaust surviving Nobel Prize winning chemist. And I'm going to talk about my boyfriend.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  I really worked on that piece. It was only, I only had a couple of weeks to do it, but it's one of the only times I can remember having to walk around the city block a couple of times to cool off. I begged them to let me go first because my anxiety level was so high.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  And, but once I got on stage, I was like, I'm in it. I got this.

• 59:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you were cool as a cucumber.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  I was cool as a cucumber. So funny. It just was, it was like a switch was thrown and I was like, I'm in this. And to your second question.

• 59:16Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wait, well, well, before we get to my second question afterwards. So you've finally shared this secret with the entire whole of men and womankind. How did you feel? Were you just, was it, were you just blank? Were you elated? Were you relieved? What, what, what were you feeling at that?

• 59:35Speaker 03

  I think I was.

• 59:36Tim Ferriss?

  Hours post.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  I think I was elated because it didn't come out as, oh, I'm revealing the pain in my heart. It, it came out to me and I don't know if anyone else felt this way, but it came out to me as a sculpture that I worked on and I felt really good about. And that I controlled my nerves and I got on stage. And when I get on stage and it's good, I feel like this, it's because of this like sort of love vibe from the audience. And The Moth is such a wonderful venue, like they're so fantastic. And their audience just is on your side. And I so felt that both from Catherine Burns, the director,

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  who helped me frame the story and the audience, that that's why I locked into this really other zone of feeling like I am telling a personal story to people I care about, even though I'm also telling it to everybody. And it just afterwards, I was elated. Yeah.

• 1:00:44Tim Ferriss?

  And you use the word sculpture, being proud of the sculpture you'd made. I mean, you architected it, right? You had the bookending of the chirality. It's well done. I mean, you put a lot of time into it and effort. It's very clear.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  I appreciate that. And I do that in writing. Like for me, writing is sculpture. I have this weird relationship with writing that it's sculpture. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but it's structural.

• 1:01:05Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me more. Let's try it out.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  Well, I feel like there were generations of writers who really appreciated structure. And there are fads in writing. Then it becomes, there's a lot of self-analysis, which is not structural. And there's a lot of different styles of writing. And I always really resonated with things that had layers. And I work really hard on structure. I lay out drawings on a board. And I work, think really hard about modules and elements. And I hope it doesn't show, right? I don't want you to read it that way, but I want it to be there. And one of the conversations I had with a friend recently was like,

• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  he's like, Jana, nobody's going to notice that, you know, one of our writers had a grammatical error. And I was like, but they will. They might not, they might not quote the rule that he misused the subjective tense, but they'll feel it.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  They'll notice it in a really subtle way. And that's why great writers are respected by tons of people who are not great writers. Like, I respect writers who far exceed my abilities because I recognize something that they're doing, not intellectually, but emotionally.

• 1:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's a felt sense.

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  It's a felt sense. And, and so I feel that about structure. If you really, really work on structure, you challenge yourself, you break some bad habits, you don't allow yourself to be self-indulgent. And so, yeah, I really do think of them like architecturally.

• 1:02:44Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular writers who stand out to you for structure?

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I'm such a fiction fan. I mean, there's this book, I teach a class at the college where I haven't taught it in a while, which is called Science and Literature. And it is basically a collection of books that have all just seared me. One of them, for instance, is Katsu Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. And he won the Nobel Prize a few years ago, and that is one of his least popular books, and it's spectacular. It's about cloning. And it's a very personal, intimate book.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  How he took this utterly abstract concept and made it completely small and intimate. And it's stunning. It's an incredible book. And he writes it in a female first person flawlessly. It's just, just, I mean, it's just a, it's partly just a display of unbelievable talent, but it's just an incredible book. Virtuosity, thank you. And, but there's a lot of books like that that I really love. There's a, a book that's been around for quite a long time, Don DeLillo's White Noise, which is also not one of his most famous books, and is hilarious and brilliant and incredible.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  And it's kind of about this small college town professor, and maybe a chemical spill, and you're not quite sure what it is. And it is absolutely hilarious and incredibly clever. I have so many of these, I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'm gonna list one more, which is Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  Which I don't think anybody would look at as a science book. It's a totally apocalyptic book. And I think people would just see it as an apocalyptic dystopia. But there is, to me, it's a science, a conceptual book. You know, it has, it has that core. And it's unlike any book he's ever written in a lot of ways, because he can be a very kind of Faulknerian, florid writer, and this is lean as hell, brutal. And there's no where, what, who, when, or how. No character has a name. You don't know where they are. Whatever the apocalyptic event is, it's not named. I mean, it's just unbelievable.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  I read that book literally in cabs by streetlight. I read it in less than 24 hours. I was possessed by it. And my own book, The Turing Machines book was in press at the same time that I was reading that book. It was at the press. And we have the same editor from Knopf, Dan Frank, who's just an extraordinary editor. And I called Dan and he literally had to talk me off like the windowsill.

• 1:05:47Tim Ferriss?

  You were just like, stop the presses, stop the present.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  I was like, pulpit, pulpit.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  And Dan was so great. He literally talked me in from the windowsill.

• 1:06:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, I know that feeling.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  And he didn't bullshit me. He didn't be like, your book says Gordon's McCarthy. He was like, look at him. He's 77. Look at what he went through. Like, he really gave me respect to not treat me like a child. And, and that's the only reason why I came in back into the living room.

• 1:06:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you knew, you knew you weren't being pandered to.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  I was not being, right, manhandled or kidhandled, or whatever the expression is.

• 1:06:36Tim Ferriss?

  Have you read any of Ted Chiang's short stories? C-H-I-A-N-G?

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  I do know Ted Chiang's short stories. I believe, and this is, maybe I should be embarrassed to admit this. I believe I have a collection of short stories in my audio book that I haven't gotten to.

• 1:06:58Tim Ferriss?

  I highly recommend for people listening, if you want, I think, really structurally interesting and also scientifically mind bending short stories, Ted Chiang, C-H-I-N-G. His most recent collection is Exhalation, which I thought could not possibly equal his previous collection, and it maybe surpassed it. They're just so incredible. And for those people who saw Arrival, which is, I think, an incredibly good movie.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Tim Ferriss?

  Exploring the impact of language and orthography, meaning writing systems, on thought and how you perceive reality in the context of alien contact, right? Extraterrestrial contact. That was based on one of his short stories. And it's, he's really got an incredible range.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  I mean, he kind of has a Borhazian like vision, you know?

• 1:07:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, totally.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  Like Borhas.

• 1:07:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  But I think what you're pointing to, so a lot of people ask me about sci fi. And I'm not a rabid sci fi fan. I enjoy it, but that's not, I think the reason why I select the authors I select is because they don't usually write about science. And when they turn to it, they turn to it with the care, like Chiang, the care and emotion and intimacy that they would to absolutely any other subject.

• 1:08:27Tim Ferriss?

  Totally agree. And I have to ask if you have read any of, well, I'll just say that I, I recommend to people listening, if they haven't, if they're interested in this type of nerdy writing structure exploration, which I think is, more broadly speaking, an exploration of thought and structured thought, that draft number four by John McPhee is definitely worth

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Taking a look at.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  I've not read it.

• 1:08:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's, it's worth the read. It's very nerdy. It's based on a seminar that I don't believe he teaches anymore at Princeton called The Literature of Fact.

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  And I'm a little obsessed with John McPhee.

• 1:09:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  Um, I've always had this terrifying fantasy slash nightmare that he would-

• 1:09:25Tim Ferriss?

  This is about to get good.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  He would like read one of my pieces and critique it.

• 1:09:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, he is, uh, he's one of those writers where you're like, I just don't, I can't do this.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  His skill, his technical finesse and prowess and skill is something that I really do admire. And it's what we were talking about. You don't have to have that skill to recognize the skill.

• 1:09:57Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  And to experience the pleasure of the gift of somebody giving that to you. And, uh, you know, he's known as a terror when he edits people.

• 1:10:07Tim Ferriss?

  So I do have just an anecdote related to editing. So I took his seminar when I was an undergrad. I did, yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  That is like what I wish had happened to me back then. So I didn't have to go through such a grueling process of unlearning bad writing.

• 1:10:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I've been, look, I'm not, I'm no McPhee, but I remember the first assignments we were handed back with feedback. And in effect, he said, before I hand this out, I want you all to realize that you're good writers. And I'm paraphrasing, of course, and you were able to get into this seminar and we'll discuss everything in your one-on-one. So we had one group class, I think it was 12 students per week and then one-on-one time with him. And he's an incredibly good teacher.

• 1:10:58Tim Ferriss?

  And the pieces were generally of, of, of short length. Let's just say the assignments were three pages. I'm just going to make that up, three pages long. I still have my three-ring binder with all my notes from that class. And that was a, that was a long time ago, 20 plus years ago. And there was more red ink on my essay than black ink, meaning I typed out three pages and double spaced and his comments seemed to be more than my cumulative ink on the page. And I was just like, holy shit, I'm in trouble.

• 1:11:36Tim Ferriss?

  And-

• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  But what a gift.

• 1:11:38Tim Ferriss?

  What a gift. And one thing that, and this, this will really underscore- The reason I recommend people read good books and even consider studying writing is that you get better at thinking. So he pulled out so much fat and just useless drivel.

• 1:11:57Speaker 03

  True.

• 1:11:58Tim Ferriss?

  And redundancy from my writing that my grades in all of my other classes had a sharp uptick.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:12:05Tim Ferriss?

  And his class took up a lot of energy. So it wasn't that I had extra slack in the system. I think it was because my thinking became tighter.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who really want a wonderful book to read that is pretty short, I don't know how long it is, maybe it's 200 pages. John McPhee wrote a book called Levels of the Game. And if you want an idea of how structure, what it means to structure a book in a really elegant, interesting way. This is a book that is structured around his description of the semifinal match at the 1968 US Open Championship.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:12:44Tim Ferriss?

  Played between Clark Grabner, I think it is, and Arthur Ashe. So this is, this is an entire book based on ostensibly one tennis match. But that's the, that's the framework. And then the way that he then manipulates that and architects it is just incredible. And I'm not a tennis player. So it tells you a lot that I was just gripped. So this is one of those books, like you and The Road, that I just carried around with me and I read it every, every open moment to finish. That's a recommendation.

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  And so, so the other person who broke my heart when he died was David Foster Wallace. Who can write about things I have exactly zero interest in and grip me?

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  Um, the Illinois State Fair, Consider the Lobster.

• 1:13:38Tim Ferriss?

  Consider the Lobster. Everyone should read that.

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  Like, what do I care about lobsters in Maine? Not my world. The Oxford English Dictionary. And every one of those essays is loaded with unbelievable insights. And, you know, I, I don't know if he ever studied with John McPhee. I don't think he did, but, but I sort of think of him as sort of the wild maverick version of John McPhee.

• 1:14:06Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, definitely the wilder and.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Totally maverick, egotistical, like completely different person. But my other story about John McPhee is I did a talk at Princeton a couple of years ago, like a panel talk about writing with some colleagues. And I'm not going to name the person who said this to me, but he's a very accomplished writer and he studied with John McPhee, as you did. And he said that as a grown man, accomplished, you know, writer in everywhere, major, made his career, went back to John, shared one of his pieces with him and John like edited it. And he said he was in tears. In tears. It was covered with red.

• 1:14:55Speaker 03

  And he, and he was, you know, and yet everything was on the nose.

• 1:15:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're like, ah, nailed it.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Nailed it.

• 1:15:04Tim Ferriss?

  If people don't want to read an entire book, like draft number four.

• 1:15:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Tim Ferriss?

  About writing, there is a series of interviews that John McPhee, for those people wondering how it's spelled, M C P H E E, did with The Parish Review in a series they do called The Art of Nonfiction. So if you search The Art of Nonfiction, John McPhee, I may have actually put it on my blog. I think I got permission to republish it because it was so good.

• 1:15:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Tim Ferriss?

  So people can look for that on.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  But I think you're right. He's the virtuoso of nonfiction.

• 1:15:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're really remarkable. This is gonna be a total left turn, but

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  Let's do a left turn!

• 1:15:38Tim Ferriss?

  But I'm gonna go left.

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back to thoughts of chirality.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Tim Ferriss?

  This isn't directly related to chirality necessarily, but I texted you not too long ago, and I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't actually made much headway because I became enamored of a separate novel called Little Big that I, we can talk about another time. I could talk for hours about it, but I texted you about Carlo Rovelli.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:07Tim Ferriss?

  And specifically because I was looking at a book he wrote about time and our misconceptions of time or conception.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  Seven Brief Lessons? It was a different one?

• 1:16:18Tim Ferriss?

  It was a different one. Yeah, Seven Brief Lessons. There's another, I think it's called The Order of Time, something like that.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Tim Ferriss?

  And I have it. I'm planning on reading it. So this isn't a question about Carlo specifically. It's, it's about time. And I'm wondering if there are any, because humans experience time as this linear progression, right? Or sands falling to the bottom of the hourglass in this finite life that we have. But yeah, how do you think about time? Or what are certain realizations or conclusions about time that might seem very strange or counterintuitive?

• 1:16:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. So let's start in the concrete, the things that we know are true. There are forms of time travel that we absolutely know are possible. I can travel to the forward of your time. I can't travel to the forward of mine, but I can travel to the forward of yours. So for instance, if I decide to travel near the speed of light to go to Andromeda, a nearby galaxy, and come back traveling very near the speed of light, I might have experienced, as close as I get to the speed of light, I will experience as little passage of time as imaginable. But let's just say it's a few months for me. For you, gosh,

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away. It would have, 2.5 million years would have passed. So

• 1:17:46Tim Ferriss?

  It's a long time.

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  Shame to say, despite all of your fantastic protein powders.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  I would be pretty confident that I would come back to the grief of not finding you here.

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  And not America, and maybe not any human beings, maybe human beings would be extinct. And so I can travel to the forward of your time, but I haven't yet figured out how to travel to the forward of mine. To me, I would have had a few months. My clock would have ticked slowly. My milk would have lasted as long as I expected. My thoughts would process on the time scale I'm comfortable with. I would not notice anything but ordinary time.

• 1:18:34Speaker 03

  And, um, and that's a fact that that is true. We experimentally measure that. We experimentally detect that. We know that that's a fact. After that fact, which is pretty big to take on its own, if you want to, like, for instance, we could travel 26,000 light years to the black hole at the center of our galaxy. As long as we went very, very close to the speed of light, we would survive the trip. But 26,000 years would have passed on Earth. And so what's so great about that?

• 1:19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, this is the interstellar dilemma.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  It's the interstellar dilemma. Interstellar actually got that really right. And I actually want to mention interstellar because Kip Thorne. I have a lot of connections with this because Kip Thorne, who is one of the most creative physicists I've ever known, wrote the treatment for interstellar. It was his idea to write that. It was his treatment. He also won the Nobel Prize for the Lyago experiment, which detected the collision of black holes. And he was also one of the two main characters in the book that I wrote about the discovery. So Kip and I have tons of connections and also I consider him a wonderful friend.

• 1:19:51Speaker 03

  And he was one of the only people when I was completely unknown and kind of waffling and nobody liked my work. I was working on stuff that nobody respected or thought was good. He was the. Only person who pulled me into his office and said, I'm really curious about what you're doing. This is odd and interesting. And I was a nobody. And so Kip looms large in my life in a lot of ways, and therefore Interstellar. Also, the moth story that we talked about, I sold the film rights to that with Linda Opst and Nick Wexler attached, who are the, Linda is the same person who produced, who helped Kip make

• 1:20:35Speaker 03

  Interstellar. So there's, we're all in a big suit. We're all in a big suit.

• 1:20:43Tim Ferriss?

  Nobel prizes and black holes to Hollywood. Amazing.

• 1:20:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, Kip said to me at 80, he said, you know, I'm going to start this new career in making movies. And he's the coolest, coolest, most wonderful guy. I mean, I cannot sing Kip's praises enough.

• 1:21:01Tim Ferriss?

  Might have to get Kip on the podcast someday.

• 1:21:03Speaker 03

  Oh, you must. And he's so clever and kind and thoughtful. I mean, he's really an exceptional, one of those walks the earth every 50 years, maybe.

• 1:21:16Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sold. And I don't want to take us off. You said fact, number one, that's big enough to sort of wrap your head around.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Tim Ferriss?

  We're talking about time.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Tim Ferriss?

  What else, what else do we?

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  So the tough stuff, the stuff that we don't know as fact, that we're grappling with, that we don't have the full picture over is what is time? Why does it insist on having a different role than space? I mean, Einstein taught us that there's spacetime. And, you know, I'm adamant not to put a hyphen in that. It's spacetime. It's a one phenomenon. We live in four dimensions. To talk to you, Tim, I have to specify three in person, three spatial coordinates, where we are, north, south, east, west, what floor we're on, up and down, and what time we're at.

• 1:22:07Speaker 03

  And it is absolutely clear that that space and time are kind of this unified thing, yet time is viciously different. It refuses to conform. I can turn left and right, but I can't turn forward and backward in time. Why not? And the laws of physics, even more so, are completely invariant under the direction of time. Meaning, if I showed you a movie of a billiard balls knocking, the reverse movie would make equal sense. But if I go up complexity levels and I show you a flower blooming or a flower rotting, you immediately know which one's forward and backward. But the laws of physics don't

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  have that in them. How, why is that? So, we really, if I showed you a movie forward and backward that was complex enough, you could tell the difference. But if it was basic enough, you couldn't. And there's something about the laws of physics that they're basically totally reversible. You shouldn't be able to tell the difference between forward and backward. And yet relentlessly, we go forward. And so this is the crux of some deep mystery that we haven't solved. And they're very smart ideas about. We can

• 1:23:30Speaker 03

  get partway in the conversation about entropy and all that crap. But something about time is resistant to interpretation and, and understanding.

• 1:23:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm on it. Consider me on the job.

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  And also, our friend Sean Carroll has written a wonderful book called From Eternity to Here, which lays these issues out. And I think is really, a really nice read.

• 1:23:58Tim Ferriss?

  Check it out. I'll link to that as well. It makes me think of what a friend of mine said to me at one point. During COVID, when there's still, I mean, there's so much uncertainty, but at the time, there was all uncertainty. And he said, I think it's time to take some peyote and talk to the pangolin. Maybe there's something to be said for discerning, discerning the subtleties of time.

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  It's not that different from like Roger Penrose, Sir Roger Penrose, who's an absolute, I don't know, national treasure for, for England. He describes that moment of having a realization on one side of a street that he's crossing, forgetting it while he's going through the complex process of not getting hit by a car and getting to the other side of the street and feeling elated, but not remembering the thought. And how long it took him to recover the thought. And I think that that's something, in a sense, that we're skirting around when we're talking about film and storytelling and the structure of

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  books and art, is that sometimes we need those other fertile grounds, even if it confuses us for a second, even if we remember the direct A to B logic of the thought, that becomes a kind of a fertile ground for when we recover that thought, for it to actually be able to implant in a bigger way or something. I don't want to over push metaphors, but I do.

• 1:25:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, you're in, you're in good company for that.

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. I do think there's a sense that sometimes when you lose your train of thought, when you come back to it, you've found a better way to boost it and expand.

• 1:25:51Tim Ferriss?

  I have a question for you that I don't think she would mind, which was, was solicited from by yours truly, our mutual friend, Maria Popova of Brainpickings.org. Everyone should check that out if you don't know what I'm talking about. One of the most prolific thinkers and writers and consumers of information. You want to talk about wanting to hang up your spurs?

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Tim Ferriss?

  English is not even her native language. I mean, come on. It's just, I don't get it. I mean, oh my God. It's really like, sometimes I'm just like.

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  But she's phenomenal.

• 1:26:26Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I give up. Yeah, I give up.

• 1:26:28Speaker 03

  Well, she's phenomenal. And she's part of what, I mean, it's true. She's Bulgarian. English is not her first language. She has the lightest, lightest accent, but her command of English is beyond basically anyone else's.

• 1:26:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's outrageous. It's really, it's really something else. And so this was, I was texting with her, asking about any topics or questions that she thought could be fertile to explore. And, and this is one of the things that she sent me. You might want to ask her about the tension, I think mostly a creative tension, but sometimes a troubling human tension between living with a mind that deals with such vast and remote skills of space and time. She jokes that she isn't interested in anything that took place less than 500 billion years ago.

• 1:27:15Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:27:15Tim Ferriss?

  With, with, with so much abstract mathematics, which is what theoretical physics is, yet living in a body more to the here and now, to the human political and biological realities that we're living with. Number one, I just want to point out, this is a casual text.

• 1:27:29Speaker 03

  That's Maria. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

• 1:27:34Tim Ferriss?

  For fuck's sake, I mean, I just want to give up, retire. But, but, but this is, this is a question I'd love to explore because one of the, the things that you alluded to in your moth talk was that thinking of these vast scales and periods of time in some way make your day to day grievances and problems seem very trivial, right? Or put them in perspective. So could you speak to that, to the tension between this vast macro longitudinal picture and then the, the day to day?

• 1:28:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can, but it's not such an easy package. I mean, I am absolutely as vulnerable to anybody else, um, to the stress of quarantine, not grooming oneself.

• 1:28:34Speaker 03

  My hair is wild, not socializing and missing your friend. Like, that doesn't, it doesn't, it's not a panacea. It doesn't, it doesn't make me not miss those things or not struggle with those things. But in the bigger scale, I think feeling a freedom from the requirement to conform and, you know, some of the pressures of social media, it has helped me in those ways. There's no question that having more universal perspective, putting those things into their

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  tiny packages where they belong, has been, you know, easier for me. And Maria is absolutely right. I used to call it local politics. Anything that happened more recently than about a million years ago is local politics. And I take very little interest in it. I don't get worked up about stuff that's happening on the earth and, but then again, I do. I got totally swept up in the recent events and rightfully, because I think if you have even a modest platform, you have to speak out. Like, these aren't things I want to do. I have no interest in politics.

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  I have no interest in identity. I don't see having more melanin or having this genitalia or having this psychology. Like, it's zero interest to me, frankly. But I see it as hurting people close to me and so I'll speak out and do those things. But yeah, I find solace in a very far horizon view. Understanding, even though I'm kind of a brutal atheist, understanding, having a sense of meaning and connectedness to the universe, because I realize we are a progeny of this universe.

• 1:30:43Speaker 03

  We are direct descendants of the Big Bang. We are direct descendants of the generation of stars that made carbon and oxygen. We are direct descendants of neutron stars colliding and providing us with gold, which is actually this insane monetary thing that we exchange with no understanding that the absolute only place that came from was the collision of two dead stars somewhere else in the universe that threw it our way.

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  That gives me such a good, warm, fuzzy sense of meaning that I don't need to turn to fairies and fantasies.

• 1:31:34Tim Ferriss?

  You can leave that to me. I'll take that part.

• 1:31:36Speaker 03

  But, you know, that's why I love it. That's why I love it. It doesn't, there, there used to be this, and I think it's fading, but this kind of 1950s attitude murdering to dissect. I mean, most scientists are looking for meaning. And Brian Greene's recent book is all about search for meaning. And he's a brutal naturalist and as I am, and, and it's about meaning. And so I think that that shift is starting to happen in the cultural consciousness that scientists aren't about destroying emotion.

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  They're about finding a different way of feeling connected to the world.

• 1:32:22Tim Ferriss?

  I like that. That rings true to me. And let's use this as a segue to an answer that you provided very graciously in my last book, Tribe of Mentors. I asked a question, "In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?" So I'm just going to read this and then we'll, we'll dive into it. So these are your words. "I used to resent obstacles along the path, thinking, 'If only that hadn't happened, life would be so good.' Then I suddenly realized, life..." Is the obstacles. There is no underlying path. Our role here is to get better at navigating those obstacles. I strive to find calm, measured responses to see hindrances as a chance to problem solve. Often I fall back into old frustrations, but if I remind myself,

• 1:33:07Tim Ferriss?

  this is a chance to step up, I can reframe conflicts as a chance to experiment with solutions. What led to this realization?

• 1:33:15Speaker 03

  Oh, man, it is one of my, one of my best. You know how we might, we might all have these certain boulders we nail into the wall to cling to. This is one of them for me, very much so. I think we struggle with the idea of who's privileged and who's not privileged. What opportunities have you been given? What have you earned? And we all have a different balance of that. I definitely had feminist parents, you know, I had intellectual parents. I had a lot of ups and advantages. And when I came to blocks in the road, I really didn't

• 1:33:59Speaker 03

  like that I had people to stand up on me and demand, what do you have to say about being a woman in science? Like, it really bugged me. And I thought, but you're not talking about all these leg ups I had from all these other people and how I look around and I don't see any, you know, a lot of diversity. Why should I only talk about the hardship in my road? Like, it bugged me instinctively. And I think that what I realized was I had been sold because of my kind of comfy childhood, an idea that life is great and just don't

• 1:34:43Speaker 03

  screw it up. And that's false. Life is not great for most people. And they have to do a hell of a lot more than not screw it up. They have to build bridges and pave ways and do things no one's ever thought of and fight poverty and find solutions. And I just thought, my, the people that have taught me the most have done those things.

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  And that we have to stop fantasizing that we're, you know, my dad always said, you know, my dad was from a, you know, tougher upbringing and he always said, "Life isn't fair." He told me that all the time. Oh, my God, it's so hilarious. I can totally hear him saying it. Life's not fair. It's not about fairness. Nobody told you you were owed fairness. No such thing. And it really, it really taught me to think that, oh, life is a series of

• 1:35:47Speaker 03

  obstacles. It's not a paved path. And the obstacles are what make you. And, you know, when I've really screwed up with something like that, I felt really deep shame. Nobody had to tell me to be ashamed. I felt really deep shame. And when I've succeeded in that, I felt really good and nobody needed to tell me I should feel good about it. It's just obvious. And so I started to see life as a series of obstacles that were tests,

• 1:36:23Speaker 03

  trials, you know, teaching modules of how to be a better person and to pave the way behind you, not in front of you. And it's really been a pretty important principle for me, I guess, that when I see something happen, I don't think, "This is so unfair. Why are they doing this to me?" That I think instead, "Okay, am I able to rise to figure out a solution to this?" And I'm not always able to do that, you know? But when I do, I feel like it's genuine progress.

• 1:37:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's an, it's an enabling lens of agency, right?

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Tim Ferriss?

  We, we talked about it a little bit before recording, but I mean, there's certainly, you are, whoever you are, and some people certainly much more than others, you're going to run into boots in the face.

• 1:37:23Speaker 03

  Boots in the face, yeah.

• 1:37:26Tim Ferriss?

  And then the question is, what do you do when you run into a boot in the face? And

• 1:37:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think it's very interesting. Certain people with privilege are enraged by a boot in their face because they were told that they had the road paved ahead of them. And it's an advantage to not think that. So that when the boot is in your face, your immediate reaction isn't like, how dare you? I deserve this. I'm owed this opportunity. That your reaction is instead, oh, that's who you are. You're the guy with the boot. And what can I do to go around you? What can I do to go over your head? And to be okay with that. I think a lot of us cling

• 1:38:15Speaker 03

  to the degrees and the accolades. And trust me, it's, you know, helped me in my life to have those things. So I'm not dismissing them and I'm really grateful for them. But if you're not going to get that accolade, big deal. Learn how to pivot, move away from the boot. The boot actually has no power unless you insist on continually pushing against it. Unless you consider it your only avenue forward. And you're just going to keep pushing until the boot and convince the boot and, you know, that, forget it. Move to the left and figure out something else and go over their heads. And that's

• 1:38:57Speaker 03

  really, really liberating. That took me much longer to realize and it's super liberating. Suddenly, you know, they got no power over you if you're not interested in the avenue that they offer.

• 1:39:08Tim Ferriss?

  I loved your answer in the book and I love your explanation. You know, life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path. It's actually very relieving.

• 1:39:19Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. It is.

• 1:39:20Tim Ferriss?

  In a way.

• 1:39:21Speaker 03

  And it makes you less resentful. Like, why did this happen to me? And this is so unfair. No, it's not. It's an opportunity to develop your...

• 1:39:30Speaker 03

  Yourself, you know, it's exciting.

• 1:39:33Tim Ferriss?

  And your recklessness of your back in your childhood, I think, has remained with you in not being, at least as far as I can tell, terribly risk averse. You try a lot of new things.

• 1:39:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Tim Ferriss?

  You seem to have started, in a sense, your mother teaching you how to deeply absorb and read books, to look at the lines, but look between the lines and really pay attention. So you were a woman of words, or a girl of words, then you became a woman of numbers. And some years ago, you started doing poetry readings. And some of them have been incredibly popular. So you found your way back to words, not that you ever completely left. Obviously, you've done a lot of writing. And I'd love to just explore this through the example of one. And that is a brave and startling truth. This is from the 2018 Universe In Verse.

• 1:40:33Tim Ferriss?

  This is a poetry reading that has gone effectively viral. As far as such things go viral. As far as such things go viral. Why poetry reading and why this particular poem?

• 1:40:46Speaker 03

  Well, I want to be totally clear about this. I am a prose writer. I have zero foray into poetry. I like poetic prose, but I like prose. It was absolutely my friendship with Maria. And Maria and I both were kids who said things like, I don't like poetry, or I'm not interested in poetry. And Maria has-

• 1:41:11Tim Ferriss?

  Maria said that?

• 1:41:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. And she has this wonderful story that she tells about her friend Emily Levine, who's a petite, older woman who slapped her hands on the coffee table in the coffee shop they were in, stood herself up and began reciting poetry as an act of outrage that Maria said she wasn't interested in poetry.

• 1:41:40Tim Ferriss?

  I feel like that's the right approach with Maria. That sounds like a good tactic.

• 1:41:43Speaker 03

  And obviously now Maria is the ambassador. She runs the single most popular poetry series in the country, the world, really. And it came out of our collaboration. It's about the universe, but it's absolutely 100% Maria. And so she similarly forced me, in a less public way than Emily Levine did to her, but forced me to start to look deeper into poetry. And, and so as a brilliant curator, which is really what Maria is, she's a brilliant

• 1:42:23Speaker 03

  essayist and curator, and she's a brilliant reader. She found poems for me and curated them for me. And A Brave and Startling Truth was like, the thing about that one was like, I kept crying every time I read it at home. And, and I was like, I will not go up on stage and cry during this poem. I'm not going to do it. And there are like opera singers who describe these with certain arias, that they can't do them because they break down sobbing. So I had to practice it enough that I could control my impulse, like to break

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  out into tears. It is such a stunning piece of work. It's not only Maya Angelou at her best, but she had this fantasy about thinking about space and the poem actually flew to space. It was, it went on to one of the NASA missions and went to space. And it's like what we're talking about structurally and all these levels, it has all these levels. The relationship with Maria, the friendship with Emily Levine, the like Maya Angelou that flew to space on NASA. And I finally rehearsed it so that I only choked up a little bit.

• 1:43:44Tim Ferriss?

  What was it that choked you up? And I mean, it's a beautiful poem. I encourage everybody to listen to it or read it certainly, and I'll link to everything. But what was it? Was there one thing about it or any particular aspect?

• 1:44:00Speaker 03

  No, exactly. Good question, because it's not one thing. It's the buildup. It's the buildup. It's the layers. We are not devils or divines. It's not maudlin or saccharine.

• 1:44:15Speaker 03

  She describes our ugliness as human beings and then says, I mean, basically, the essence of the concept of the brave and startling truth is that we realize that it's us. And she doesn't do it in a saccharine or sentimental way. She describes us as devils and the ugliness of the human spirit to build up to that kind of epiphany that when we go out into space, it's like Earthrise, you know, the picture of the earth rising above the lunar

• 1:44:54Speaker 03

  surface taken by one of the Apollo missions. We are out there in space and then we turn around and we look at ourselves. And it's just Angelus' salt of the earth, despite all odds, belief in the human spirit.

• 1:45:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. It's a wonderful piece.

• 1:45:18Speaker 03

  It really is.

• 1:45:19Tim Ferriss?

  It's a wonderful piece. And you are so fun to talk to.

• 1:45:23Speaker 03

  Oh, man, Tim. And we also have fun in person, which not everybody knows. I so

• 1:45:28Tim Ferriss?

  That's true.

• 1:45:29Speaker 03

  We overlap here and there, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident, but it's always such a pleasure.

• 1:45:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm so thrilled that you were able to make the time to have have a chat. It gave me an excuse to grill a friend and do all this homework, which I really, really enjoy. It just it provides so many extra layers, as we've been saying about many things. And is there anything else you'd like to to share or mention that I haven't?

• 1:45:58Speaker 03

  Well, Justin, I've been trying to get you. You've been out to Pioneer Works, but I would love to have you out on our stage. And whenever, you know, the modern plague allows, we really want to have you come join our sort of community of oddballs and artists and musicians and and be on the broadcast. And, you know, so I'll be pursuing you, man.

• 1:46:32Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to do it. I'm in. I would love to do it. Pandemic.

• 1:46:37Speaker 03

  Pandemic willing, exactly. I mean, we were scheduled to do something with you in June, tentatively. And, you know, I think we'll make it happen.

• 1:46:49Tim Ferriss?

  Then the Book of Revelations started.

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure locusts are next. They're happening in Africa, literally. There's a locust plague. It's bananas. Maybe we'll have, as my friend says, the alien invasion or hurricane.

• 1:47:05Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, I have to I have to bring this up because you mentioned aliens. Are you aware that the government during the pandemic effectively said, yep, there are aliens or there are UFOs, and here's a bunch of footage from the military? And it went without effectively without any commentary. It's like, oh, yeah, no, we've known about UFOs. They're a real thing. Here's some footage. And it just went by like nothing happened.

• 1:47:27Speaker 03

  Hilarious. I am aware, but I admit I haven't done the study to like, you know, suss out the legitimacy.

• 1:47:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I haven't done any forensic analysis of this.

• 1:47:40Speaker 03

  No forensic analysis.

• 1:47:41Tim Ferriss?

  But if you people can do their own searching, if you if you search military footage, UFOs, and that does not mean aliens, right? We read that. So I misspoke. But unidentified flying objects.

• 1:47:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:55Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe we're in a video game. That's all I'm saying.

• 1:47:57Speaker 03

  We'll have, we'll have this conversation later because you know, I'm a big believer that life in the universe is, it's impossible that we're the only ones. But I have very cynical ideas that they have the same technology that they live right now, that, you know, we've been around for a bleep. They're not here at the same time, like right next door. Like, I have a lot of cynicism about that kind of stuff, but I'm very, very open to the idea that there's life in the universe.

• 1:48:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think, I think that deserves a bottle or two of wine.

• 1:48:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, man. Can't wait to see you.

• 1:48:29Tim Ferriss?

  Pandemic allowing.

• 1:48:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31Tim Ferriss?

  And Jenna, you're so much fun. People should definitely check you out wherever they can, at Jan11 on Twitter and Instagram, jan11.com. Your books are incredible. You're an excellent writer and you have a new book coming out in the not too distant future. Black Hole Survival Guide, scheduled for publication at the end of 2020. We shall see. So TBD.

• 1:48:54Speaker 03

  It's gonna be a tiny little thing, like a thing you should put in your back pocket. It's gonna be like an object more than like a thick book.

• 1:49:03Tim Ferriss?

  I like that idea.

• 1:49:04Speaker 03

  And it's Leah Halloran, the artist Leah Halloran, did these like gorgeous paintings for it. So it's gonna be really like an object.

• 1:49:11Tim Ferriss?

  Can't wait to see it. I can't wait. And we are recording this on a Friday and I want to let you get to your weekend. Mentioning wine has got me thinking about some wine.

• 1:49:25Speaker 03

  I know, I'm about to go get some wine.

• 1:49:28Tim Ferriss?

  And once again, thanks for making the time. This has been so much fun.

• 1:49:33Speaker 03

  Thanks, Tim. Such a pleasure. Miss you.

• 1:49:36Tim Ferriss?

  I miss you too. And to everybody listening, thank you for tuning in and we will link to everything, all of the things that we brought up. We'll have links to them in the show notes as usual. Just go to tim.blog/podcast or you can just go to tim.blog really and search Jenna, J A N N A, and it'll all pop right up. And until next time, thanks for tuning in.

• 1:50:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:50:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:51:01Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Small businesses have unique needs. A lot of you know this, I know this, and even with the uncertainty these days, one thing stands unchanged, and that is the importance of having the right people on your team. But hiring can be hard. It can be really expensive if you make mistakes, very painful if you get it wrong. I've certainly had that experience and I'm not eager to repeat it. So I try to do as much upfront screening as possible. When your business is ready to make the next hire, LinkedIn Jobs can help you screen candidates with the hard and soft skills that you're looking for. They'll match your position with qualified members so that you can find the right person quickly. Using LinkedIn's active community of more than 690 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster.

• 1:51:44Tim Ferriss?

  So when your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want and get the first $50 off. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim. Again, that's LinkedIn.com/Tim to get $50 off your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Allform. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep and their mattresses, which I've been using since 2017. I have two of them upstairs from where I'm sitting at this moment. And now Helix has gone beyond the bedroom and started making sofas. They just launched a new company called Allform, A-L-L-F-O-R-M, and they're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores.

• 1:52:29Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm sitting in my living room right now and it's entirely Allform furniture. I've got two chairs, I've got an ottoman, and I have an L-sectional couch. And I'll come back to that. You can pick your fabric. They're all spill, stain, and scratch resistant. The sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size, the shape to make sure it's perfect for you and your home. Also, Allform arrives in just three to seven days, and you can assemble it all yourself in a few minutes. No tools needed. I was quite astonished by how modular and easy these things fit together, kind of like Lego pieces. They've got armchairs, love seats, all the way up to an eight-seat sectional, so there's something for everyone. You can also start small and kind of build on top of it. If you wanted to get a smaller couch and then build out on it, which is actually, in a way, what I did,

• 1:53:11Tim Ferriss?

  because I can turn my L-sectional couch into a normal straight couch and then with a separate ottoman in a matter of about 60 seconds. It's pretty rad. So I mentioned I have all of these different things in this room. I use the natural leg finish, which is their lightest color, and I dig it. And I've been using these things hours and hours and hours every single day. So I am using what I am sharing with you guys. And if getting a sofa without trying it in-store sounds risky, you don't need to worry. Allform sofas are delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping, and you get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it. That's more than three months. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund. Your sofa frame also has a forever warranty. That's literally forever. So check it out. Take a look.

• 1:53:55Tim Ferriss?

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