Professor Brian Cox: Life After Death & Finding Your Purpose in The Universe!

What if understanding the universe could change the way you live? In this episode of Begin Again, Professor Brian Cox joins Davina for a conversation about existence, consciousness, mortality and the extraordinary improbability of being alive at all. Brian explains why the atoms that make us have travelled across billions of years of cosmic history, why the universe gave rise to conscious life, and how understanding our place within it can completely transform the way we see ourselves. Together, they explore what happens when we die, whether science leaves room for spirituality, why curiosity matters more than certainty, and why accepting that life is temporary can make it infinitely more precious. But this conversation is about much more than science. Brian reflects on the book that changed his life, the teachers who shaped his thinking, his unexpected journey from rock musician to world-renowned physicist, and why saying "I don't know" may be one of the most important things we can learn. Davina and Brian also discuss grief, fear, hope, the search for meaning, and why seeing the bigger picture of the universe can make us feel more connected to one another, not less. This is a conversation about awe, curiosity, purpose and the remarkable privilege of being alive. If you've ever looked up at the night sky and wondered why we're here, questioned what gives life meaning, or wanted to see the world with fresh eyes, this episode is for you. 🌟 Like, comment and subscribe for more honest conversations about purpose, resilience, love, loss and beginning again. Tap the bell so you never miss a new episode. Follow us here: 📸 www.instagram.com/beginagain 🎥 https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod ✨ Find out more about Brian Cox's live shows and work: https://briancox.org/ ✨ Sign up for the Begin Again newsletter for behind-the-scenes access, recommendations and much more: https://linkly.link/2g2xm (00:00) Intro (01:25) Introduction to Brian and his new show Emergence (11:04) The Book That Changed Brian's Life (16:14) Monzo Ad (17:44) Spiritual beliefs & The Universe (21:10) How The Universe was Formed (23:13) The recent discovery of where Gold comes from (25:34) How Carl Sagan's TV show 'Cosmos' inspired young Brian (32:07) Getting into music and playing in Dare (38:58) Monzo Ad (39:58) The importance of hard work and luck in forging your path ( 41:49) What happens when we die? (47:31) The importance of space travel and scientific research (59:24) The Hadron Collider (01:04:10) Why Brian Became A Teacher (01:07:53) Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computers (01:13:08) How Astronomy can give people a better perspective on life (01:16:44) A letter from a student (01:23:12) A letter from Dare bandmate Darren Wharton (01:27:51) What Brian wants for the Future Sponsored by: Monzo - Download Monzo. Monzo Current Accounts are for 16+ and UK residents. Ts&Cs Apply. We'd love you to share your Get Busy Living stories with us at https://getbusyliving.beginagainshow.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:49Speaker 04

  Brian Cox is coming. Guys, come on!

• 2:03Speaker 04

  Today, I am interviewing the inimitable... Hang on, let me just do that again. Today, I'm interviewing the inimitable Brian Cox. Not only is he just an absolute boss on astronomy, but he is also just a lovely guy. I can't believe it's you in true life! And he has a gift and that is explaining things that are actually very complex in a way that even I can understand. Now, Brian, I don't want you to be too shocked, but I'm just gonna show you this.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  You and I went to the moon.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Brian, I'm so unbelievably honored and excited to have you here. I'm such a huge fan. Me and Michael, my husband, are like massive, massive fans.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 3:05Speaker 04

  So it means a lot to, to be graced by your presence today.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  Thank you. It's a grand introduction.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't want to embarrass you or anything. But first off, I want to talk about your show before, before we delve into your life and everything because emergence is... Have you just come back from Australia? Did you do it? Was that the, were those the first shows?

• 3:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, and a bit of Europe before that. And actually, a load of little warm-up shows, little, little theatres.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  Lovely.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  So I've done, I've probably done about a hundred of them.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Wow!

• 3:36Speaker 05

  Already, but about 50 or 60 with the little theatres. And then we went to some, some in Europe and then Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and then here in October.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  The thing that really excites me about this show is your screen. Can we just talk about that for a moment? Because it, it looks a little bit like being at the Sphere in Vegas or something. I mean, it is an enormous screen that you've got.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  You know, it's LED, LED screen. And it was when we first started doing really big shows, like arenas. And, and you know, the question then arises, how do you do cosmology and astronomy in an arena? It's, it's not like being a comedian. You're not telling jokes, you're talking about things. So what do you do? So we, the LED is, is the best technology for that, especially because astronomy, because the, you know, with a projector, the blacks on the screen aren't really black. And obviously astronomy, the night skies, you need the blackness of it. We'll talk about that later. The terrifying darkness of the universe. And LED works for that. So we just, it's always a battle, actually. My promoter, see her listening, and I'm always saying, "I want as much as you can

• 4:45Speaker 05

  fit into this thing."

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Yes!

• 4:47Speaker 05

  And my promoter will say, she'll say, "Yeah, but that's, that's 10 trucks." Like, "I don't care. I want 10 trucks." This is actually living out my rock and roll sort of dream for when I was 18. It's, for me, it's the more trucks, the better. And obviously for the person who's doing the accounts, it's like, "No, no, no, the less trucks." Can you not do, do you think it's do with the microphone? No. So, so, so it's, and actually, the images we're getting back now from things like the James Webb Space Telescope or the surface of Mars, they're these incredible high resolution images. And I've had friends who've worked on those telescopes and those spacecraft who come and see the images for the first time, big, because they used to just look in on a computer screen.

• 5:27Speaker 05

  You never see them. But they are these ultra-high resolution things. So you get this, as you said, this kind of immersive sense of the scale of the universe, which is part of the show. So, yeah, but mainly it's because I like the trucks. It's mainly I just want all those flight cases. You know, when you're in, you're around music in the 80s, 90s, it's like, flight cases.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  And I mean, talking about the music, and obviously we're, we're gonna touch on this as well, but you, is it true you've just worked with PJ Harvey on the opening of the show?

• 6:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was wonderful. She came to, you know, I was obviously a huge fan, but I'd never met her. And she came to one of my shows. It was a little show in Richmond, actually Richmond Theatre. And she said, you know, "I'd like to meet and say hello." I was like, "Wow, it's PJ Harvey."

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Hi, guys.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  And then, so about a year ago, I had this idea because part of the show, a little bit of the show is about the Voyager spacecraft. So these spacecraft that were launched in 1977.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  So that 49 years in space, they're both in interstellar space now, 70s technology, and we're still talking to them. They're still working.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Wow!

• 6:40Speaker 05

  And they're transmitting back, by the way, to Earth with a power of 18 watts, which is like, you know, a tiny light bulb. And, but, and it takes light a day to come from Voyager 1, and we're still talking to it. So it's still working in interstellar space. So these little, little things, I, I remember them because 1977, I remember the launch.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, you were a ten, right?

• 7:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I was really excited about it. And they went, so Voyager 2 went to Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the only spacecraft to get out that far. And we're still talking to it. So it's this romantic, these voyages out into the stars. And so I said to her, you know, about a year ago, I thought I'll just email her and say, "Do you fancy doing something?" I thought she'd say, "No, she's busy." But she said, "Yeah." So she, we had this idea together about the, a song about the Voyager spacecraft talking back to Earth after 50 years in space, telling us about what it learnt and how it's, you know, what its reflections are on the value of our planet as from interstellar space

• 7:43Speaker 05

  looking back. And she wrote this beautiful song with these wonderful lyrics. And then we ended, and then, so it's like, what do you do? Where do you record it? And so I asked a friend who works at Miraval Studios, which is in France, a very famous recording studio. Brad Pitt owns it now, but it was where Pink Floyd recorded The Wall and the history of the place. You know, when you go in, there's all, there's like George Michael at Wham! had recorded there and The Cure. And it's just this history of music. And they said today, you know, they said, "Yeah, we support this. It's a great thing. It's about physics. You can come and do it." And they gave the orchestras, we had an orchestra

• 8:25Speaker 05

  there. And it was just for me, you know, it was like, I'm at this ledge, this is where Pink Floyd recorded The Wall and, and there's an orchestra there and there's PJ Harvey's there and we recorded the song. And it is just beautiful. So it opens act two.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  It's a beautiful piece of music.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  It's just like really powerful and particularly musically. But, oh, and then, I should say, there's a composer called Dario Marinelli, who's got an Oscar for, I think he won it for Pride and Prejudice or Atonement. So he's a really famous movie composer. And I said to him, you know, "Do you fancy doing something?" And he said, "Yeah." He's actually, it was, I, I'd worked with him on a concerto about Voyager, about, I think it was about 15 years ago, 10 years ago in Australia. And he'd written this concerto and I did a little talk and we played it. So I'd thought of him and then, and I thought, I don't know, I should ask him. And then I was in Iceland with the family on holiday, Northern Iceland.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  And it, and I had this voice, "Brian," and it was Dario. I bumped into him.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  No, no, in Iceland.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  In the north as well, not in Reykjavik, but in the north. And so I said...

• 9:34Speaker 04

  That's so random.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Completely random. So I said to him, "Are you kind of busy?" He said, "Yeah, I'm working on four movies." And I said, "Well, can you, do you want to do something?" And he said, "Yeah." So he did all the, he also wrote some music for the show, but he did the string arrangements and conducted the orchestra for, for the PJ Harvey track. The music's so important in the shows. Because I always say, you know, the ideas that we're talking about are unimaginable. I mean, there's one piece you said about these big screens, there's a visualization, this fly through of galaxies. And it's this data from a new thing called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, right? It's, but it measures the position and distance of galaxies. And it's like a snowstorm of galaxies. It's just thousands and thousands of galaxies.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  It's impossible to persuade, when you say snowstorm and you think how minute a, a snowflake is, and there are literally billions of...

• 10:31Speaker 05

  It looks like that. Trillions of them. And it looks like this snowstorm. Like you said, each one of them, like the Milky Way is 400 billion stars. It takes light 100,000 years to cross each one of these things, these snowflakes. And so the question arises, what are we to make of this? And I joke to the audience, you know, because it is impossible to get your head around the scale. But music is, helps. Not only helps, it might be the only way to think about this. And so the music becomes an important part of it. That's, so that's Marla, and a bit of Marla through that. And I say to them, you know, it's the, it's the appropriate soundtrack for existential terror.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  And everyone laughs, but I don't know if they're laughing by laughing or being uncomfortable.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  I think it's a bit of uncomfortableness. We were talking about this earlier, that actually it is a terrifying concept, really, when you think about the magnitude. It is overwhelming.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  It's impossible to imagine, which is actually part of the value of cosmology and astronomy. I mean, we, you know, I'm always being asked, you know, what's the point of, not just what's the point of doing astronomy and what's the point of it all, you know, they're linked. But I think part of the value is that it's, if you want to ask deep questions about our place and what was it mean to exist and what was this all about, you need to know something about the arena that we live in.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  That we live in, yes.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  You need to know.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 12:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Sorry, I really, really like that language, that it's, it's an arena we are surrounded by and we, we can't live a meaningful life without understanding what's out there.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Part of it.

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, part of the show, the show starts, you've got the book there, actually, The Six-Cornered Snowflake.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  I am, I know that this was important to you, so we wanted to, we wanted to have the two, I know, well, we'll talk about these later, but this was a very important book for you. Could you, could you tell us why? The Six-Cornered Snowflake by Johannes Kepler.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  Well, the show starts with a story about that book. So it's the way that Kepler writes the story. It was New Year's Eve, sixteen oh nine, in Prague, in a New Year's snowstorm on the Charles Bridge, which is this famous bridge in Prague, walking across the bridge to his, to a party at his benefactor's house. And the way that Kepler writes, halfway across the bridge, basically, he thought, I haven't got a present for my benefactor, a New Year's gift. And so he gets to the party and he says, I brought you a gift, right? But it's the gift of almost nothing, which is the snowflake. And then the gift, the New Year's gift, is a question about the snowflake. And it's just, why does the snowflake have six

• 13:20Speaker 05

  corners? And, and it's a beautiful, deep question. And we, I start the show with that because it's about ideas of symmetry, which are very important in twenty first century physics, actually. So these ideas of, I describe it as change without change. So it's if you can, what does it mean? So you can send a snowflake through sixty degrees, it's got six corners.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  And it looks the same. Why? And the, the importance of Kepler's question is this is the beginning of modern science, when people start seeing patterns in nature. I should say, if you don't know Kepler, he's most famous for the laws of planetary motion. So he figured out that planets go in these orbits around the sun and they, and he figured out some mathematical properties of the orbits. Actually, back to the previous point, the, the cosmology, which is our picture of the universe at the time, was that of the ancient Greeks. So it was Aristotle. It's like the earth sits motionless at the centre of this tiny universe with these crystal spheres around it or something. So our world, our

• 14:26Speaker 05

  universe was small and we were at the centre of it. That's, that's, you know, sixteen hundred.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  Most people thought like that. Four hundred years later, now, we have this tremendous picture of this universe of trillions of galaxies and the big bang and the origin of the universe and all those things. But they came from people like Kepler, just, just really saying, there's something pretty here or beautiful or interesting about nature. And I'm going to ask the question, why? That, that was the key leap, actually.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  And I, I loved what you said as well about, you loved the fact that he said, I don't know.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  At the end of the book, he says, I don't know, it's a wonderful, he's very funny, Kepler. And he says, you know, I'll leave it to future generations. But that, the thing about, the other thing about that book, which of course you can still get, there it is, is when you read it, you see this modern mind, you hear this voice. And it's not, you know, I think we tend to think of these people in sixteen hundred, these scientists, Kepler and Galileo, and there's really serious people, really thinking, you know, like almost like austere kind of.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, and a great mind, great brain.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  He's just funny.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  And inquisitive and interested and.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  But he has a, he, there's something about him that you like, like a little kind of personality.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  He's interested in everything. You know, he obviously did his work on the planets, which led to Newton's, you wouldn't, I don't think you would have had Newton and his law of gravity and all those things without Kepler.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 05

  So it's really important. But he's also playing around. He's asking questions about beehives and pomegranate seeds, there's all sorts of things in that book. And he, and he says things like, he says, to his benefactor, I've brought you the gift of almost nothing because I know how fond you are of nothing. So he does these little jokes all the time. You know, I usually bring you the gift of nothing, but now I'm bringing you almost nothing. And it's, it's much better, right? So he's, it's great. It's a wonderful book. But you see this, this, the beginnings of the modern way of thinking. And actually, there's a great book by historian David Wooton, it's called The Invention of Science. And

• 16:33Speaker 05

  he says that, if you, because if you think about the progress that was made after Kepler and Galileo, maybe if you'd, so they're thinking like the ancient Greeks. And he said, so if you'd brought someone from ancient Greece, like, you know, two thousand years before that, put them in Europe in fifteen fifty, they wouldn't have noticed much difference, right? There's a few things.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Nothing had changed.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  Nothing really, no, no real inventions, not much had changed. You take someone from sixteen hundred and put them in eighteen hundred, they're in the Industrial Revolution.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  They would have no idea, you know, about a couple of hundred years, they could get on a train. And they got, so there's something happens at that time that changes the way we think about the world. And it is this, it's in that book. It's just saying, I think there's a reason for this pattern. That's actually the point. That's, that's the big change. It's not that it was the gods or whatever it is, it's like, there must be some reason for this.

• 17:28Speaker 04

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• 17:53Speaker 06

  Going into my forties, I'd never been on a roller coaster. Myself and my children went to Alton Towers. We ran a ride, probably one of the fastest rides. And I realised there's no getting out. I can't get out of this. I have to do it, I have to do it. There was nothing stopping me. And it was the most amazing feeling. It was sheer excitement, enjoyment, and I wanted to do more.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  I just want to say, Julia, that that gave me such joy. Doing something that you are absolutely terrified of is so good for your self-esteem. It's an amazing gift for you, Julia, because you were brave, you had plenty of options to not do it, but you still did it. Well done, Julia. I'm really happy for you. Monzo can't hold your hand on a roller coaster, that's all on you. But they do put your money to work in the background, sorted, saved, sent where it needs to go. So you have got more time and headspace for the things you actually want to do. What have you always wanted to try? Or have you already gone and done it? Head to the link in the description and tell me your story.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Monzo current accounts are for sixteen plus and UK residents. Ts and Cs apply. It's interesting how the gods, religion, spirituality and nature are so intertwined because sometimes we can look at nature and we can think there is no way on earth that this was, you know, why was this created? How was it created? And I, I really wanted to ask you, this, this interview's going to go all over the place because he keeps saying things and I'm like, ooh, I'm going to ask you about this now. And I was thinking, I'll ask him about that at the end. But anyway, I, I would like to think that I am scientifically

• 19:36Speaker 04

  minded, but I, I'm not religious, but I have, I feel spiritual in some way, that there are things, synchronicity, ideas like that. I, that things happen and I think they happen for a reason. And I always think that nature was created in a certain way for a reason. And what are your thoughts on spirituality, spiritual paths, like beliefs?

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Well, the first thing is that I think there's a sense of wonder, first of all, in what you said. Right, which is the most important thing of all that you notice. I had a friend, actually, as an aside, who's dear, he used to be the dean of Guildford Cathedral. Yeah, I met him, Victor Stock, he's called, I met him. Because I think I was the like, the token atheist on some panel, in inverted commas, right, on this panel. And we're talking about these things, but I got on very, very well with him. And afterwards, he said to me, he said, I don't really care what anyone believes. To really, what's the point of a cathedral? Is to make people think of something else.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Anything, right, initially.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  I really agree with that, a place to go and think.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, because there's just a scale and the grandeur and it connects you with deep questions.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  And the beauty, there's something about being surrounded by beauty.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  That makes you think.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, this architecture and the, it's a bridge to, to something, to questions, right? That, and so I, I think that's really important that he, he was saying really that I just want people to notice there's something worth thinking about.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  Something, which is what you said, which is just this, right, existence. And then you go on from there. So that's the first point. So I think you've, you've got to notice. But then in terms of, I talk about this in the show, there are very deep questions about why the universe is the way that it is. And if you think, what I mean by that is that, so we know that 13.8 billion years ago, very close to the big bang. All the universe was, was just the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium. So it's the stuff in party balloons, right, and hydrogen, which is the stuff that goes into water. And that's it, right? There's nothing else. It's just this soup of those things. And just some simple forces of nature, and that's it.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  13.8 billion years later, those atoms have ended up in patterns like us that can have a conversation. So the universe can observe itself and think about itself through us here on earth, right? It's a remarkable property of the universe. So you say, why? That why is it that the laws of nature and the building blocks are such that they can get just this gas, right? Can end up in patterns like human beings?

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Could you talk me through what happened to the hydrogen and helium and how it evolved? Because it's such an interesting way that they came together to create something else, which created something else and.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  It's the grandest of stories.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  It's amazing.

• 22:45Speaker 05

  So you have this, and this is part of the heart of the show, really, you have this hydrogen, helium, just these gases, right? And that, but there's slight differences in, they're almost just featureless. The universe is almost nothing, but it's got these little bits where there's a bit more gas here and a bit less here. And a bit more there and a bit, like I say, tiny little variations. Then gravity, as the universe goes, expands and cools, gravity can allow them to collapse into galaxies and stars. And, and that, that, by the way, is a huge story about how does that work and that.

• 23:24Speaker 05

  But essentially, just where, where it's a bit denser, gravity takes over and they collapse and they make stars. And stars shine by sticking lighter elements into heavier elements. So the sun at the moment is making hydrogen into helium. And that's why it's doing it, it's just making heavier elements. But then at the end of its life, when it runs out of hydrogen to make into helium. It starts making carbon and oxygen and those things. So those things out of which we are made, come from generations of stars that assembled them and then died. Threw that stuff out into the universe and then gravity takes over and it recollapses that into new stars.

• 24:07Speaker 05

  And then ultimately planets, and that's the story of the universe. So it's, the story is 13.8 billion years, of which the earth has been around four and a half billion, by the way. So to get a scale of it, you, you end up from this simplest of elements, the heavy elements get made in stars. Gravity collapses it all back together again, and ultimately you get places like this. And some of it, by the way, so you've got like gold, you've got like a gold ring or some wedding ring or something like that. If you're listening now or watching, you look at that, it was one of the great mysteries, actually, where is that made? Because we didn't quite understand it until very recently.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Gold?

• 24:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Thought it's made, maybe it's made in supernova explosions when they explode. But then a few years ago, we had these experiments and they're called gravitational wave experiments. And they, they're in their own right are amazing. So we can see things like black holes colliding. And sending ripples out in the fabric of the universe, space and time.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  What happens when a black hole?

• 25:10Speaker 05

  So they emerge into two black holes.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Do they become massive?

• 25:13Speaker 05

  A bigger black hole.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 25:14Speaker 05

  But it's really violent and they, so they make space and time ripple. And these things are called gravitational waves and they go out. A friend of mine, Kip Thorne, actually, got the Nobel Prize for this work, called it a storm in time.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Ooh, how nice.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  So this time storm goes.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Storm in time.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  And we can measure it.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 25:32Speaker 05

  So we saw one of these time storms in our detector. And, and it was a collision between these things called neutron stars, which are stars that are the mass of the sun. But they've collapsed to the size of a city. They're about 10 kilometres across.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Wait, wait, say that again.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  So star, actually more massive than the sun.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Bigger than the sun, collapses.

• 25:52Speaker 05

  It's till it's about the size of London.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  And are you talking about that's when it runs out of, so it dies and collapses into London?

• 26:00Speaker 05

  It. So you get these remarkable, they're like a single atomic nucleus, these things, really violent. The last step towards a black hole, right? If they get any bigger, they just go. But so these things are around and we saw two of them collide with these ripples. And we got our telescopes and sent them and looked in the sky and watched. And we saw gold being made. So, so we think that a lot of the gold, and this is this gold that you're wearing now. That came, a lot of it, perhaps most of it, from the collision between neutron stars. Isn't that amazing?

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Ended up in earth.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then, so it got made in these collisions and then gravity collapses it and we dig it up and make it into jewellery. It's, it's the most, it's part of that remarkable story. But so.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  Brian?

• 26:49Speaker 05

  So we're connected to everything.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Like too much. So wait, wait, wait, let's go back to little Brian. Did you read this when you were, what, like 13?

• 26:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, after the TV show. So the TV show was on, I think it was 1980 or 19, on BBC One. And so then, you know, as if anyone remembers as far back as that, there aren't many TV channels, there's not a lot to see, right? There's no internet or anything like that.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  And so that, you know, if you're interested in astronomy, as I was, you know, you could watch the sky at night, which was great. And that was about it, right? And then this comes on, 13 hours of it. And, you know, it's kind of of its time in some ways. I mean, you think back then, we didn't know anywhere near as much as we do now.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 05

  But Sagan, it made a massive impact on me because he doesn't only talk about astronomy in that book and in the TV series. He talks about why we do it and how important science is and how important civilization is. And what learning about the universe can teach us about the way that we behave on earth. The last episode famously is really about nuclear war and the idiocy of this. You know, what we just talked about, after 13 and a half billion years of evolution. Where at least on this planet and probably very few places like this. These atoms have come together into patterns that can think and have conversations and explore the universe.

• 28:14Speaker 05

  And we might be using that legacy, right, using that history to construct things that we may use to wipe ourselves out. And this was very vivid. I mean, you'll remember at the time, I remember it, 90, late seventies, early eighties. This was what kids like us thought about, that we were thinking, that we were being told about.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Constantly terrified.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  The nuclear, and we were watching these things on television, like threads and those things. And so we were, we were immersed in this, like Prince 1999, all that the music was about this Frank Goes Hollywood, Two Tribes. It was all, it was in the culture, right, the threat of nuclear war. And then Sagan puts it in context and says, this is what we came from. This was the history, the billion year history, 13 billion years history of how we came to be here. And this is what we are threatening to do to ourselves. So this is not astronomy as a documentary anymore. It's just this powerful polemic.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Well, it's activism, isn't it, really?

• 29:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's quite mind blowing. Even when you watch it now, in the context of all the documentaries that we've seen. You have this, this Carl Sagan confidently saying, I'm going to use my platform to talk about this. And it's, it's quite, it made a huge impression on me.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  Can I say something? I, I feel like you are now doing the same thing. You are using your platform to do something similar. I feel like you are trying to put love out there into the world. It's like explaining to us to love where we live because the alternative is.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  Destruction and this, this, this might be all we have in the entire universe.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, to, to that point, um, it, so we don't know of anywhere else beyond Earth where even life exists. And we're looking, and again, I talk about this in this show, that, that we've some, you know, not evidence as such, but increasingly optimistic, we may find life existed on Mars. For example, we've seen more and more interesting results. We've got loads of spacecraft on Mars and in orbit and it's getting interesting. So it might, it may well be that there was or still is life on Mars. We're looking for life on the moons of Jupiter, there's oceans below the surface of those moons. So, you know, we've, we're kind of optimistic, but we haven't found any yet. And we certainly haven't seen any evidence of other civilizations, which is a tremendous mystery.

• 30:42Speaker 05

  And it goes by loads of names, one was the Fermi paradox. It's paradoxical that we don't see evidence of civilizations far beyond us. And so, but to your point that therefore we might as well act as though this is the only place where complex life and intelligent exists currently in, in our galaxy, let's say, in the Milky Way galaxy. We should act like that. And, um, to back to Sagan's point, science has taught us that, that it's likely, I'd say it's likely that civilizations are rare, right? That, so we, we could say that we don't know, but likely. Imagine we are the only civilization currently present in the Milky Way galaxy.

• 31:22Speaker 05

  Uh, one island of meaning, as I sometimes put it, in an ocean, in, in an ocean of 400 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy. And then we just go, actually, no, it doesn't matter.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 05

  You know, we'll just, we'll mess it up. Yeah, it, it, when you have a bit of context, just a bit from what we've learned about astronomy, then it seems inconceivable that we would even consider that. And I know that's naive in some sense, because of course, politics is complicated and so on. Uh, and, and global politics is complicated, so it is naive. But then is it that I, I, I think that knowing a bit about the, the perspective, like Sagan, you say this, the perspective that astronomy and cosmology gives you, knowing something about that might help you not to do it. So maybe it's not naive, right? Maybe it's, because it's, it might well be true.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  It is not.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  It might be correct.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  And also I think that what you are doing, because you have a voice and you have a platform and you have the ability, um, I think I read somewhere that your last show, I don't know what, like half, half a million tickets or something like that. I mean, like unbelievable numbers of people are coming to listen to you speak. That, that's incredibly powerful because those people in turn will want to tell other people, you know? I would imagine when, when we came to see your show, we just banged on at every dinner party we went to, about what we'd seen and what we'd heard. This is how you get a message out there.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, and, and, and, and part of, you, you talked about my history growing up that, and you said that I sound a bit like Carl Sagan. I, I do, because he's one of my biggest influences. I was 11 years old.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:11Speaker 05

  And I see this, which is, you know, it's so powerful that you can't, I couldn't help, but, um, you know, you, that, that, it's, it's like being influenced by music that you hear when you're 10 or 11 or 12 years old. It's the same thing. I got influenced by these ideas.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  When you were, when you were 11.

• 33:29Speaker 05

  So, so the first, I know, because that was when I first started buying seven inch, uh, singles, right?

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, me too.

• 33:35Speaker 05

  And so, and the first singles I bought, I know what, they were right. I bought, um, uh, Gary Newman Cars. I bought Hazel O'Connor, Eighth Day. I know this because I've got a load of them.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  I went to see Hazel O'Connor when I was 12.

• 33:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  It was amazing.

• 33:47Speaker 05

  At the time, right? It was, it was 80, was it?

• 33:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  Um, what other singles was I buying? The albums I was buying, I, um, Kraftwerk, The Man Theme was one of the first albums.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  So good.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  I love it. I saw them do it actually at the, uh, Tape Modern. No, they, a few years ago, when they did the album at the.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  At the Tape Modern?

• 34:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was brilliant. Cause they, and they just played recently, actually. I was away, I missed it. And then O M D, I, I remember their first album I had, which was the one with electricity on it and messages. So it was like electronic music. Then I got into Duran Duran in a very big way, because I'd.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  You must know those guys, right?

• 34:23Speaker 05

  I do, yeah, yeah. Which is, which is.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Can, can I just say, 11 year old you, right? Reading this and now here you are, like me saying you're a bit like Carl Sagan. Like, I mean, it's mega.

• 34:38Speaker 05

  It is a bit.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  This is your life.

• 34:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know, it is a, because obviously you, you don't, am I, it's not planned at all. But I mean, that's the key thing. It's, it's a mixture, it's certainly luck, which I know a lot, a lot of people say, but it really is.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  You make your own luck.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  Well, you, you seize, I think you seize the opportunities and, and even that requires luck to even seize it and it works, right? Because I, as you said, I grew up in Oldham and, um, I was lucky because I, I, it was actually even really wanting to be in a band was that my younger sister wanted to go see Duran Duran. I remember this vivid, and it was the Seventh Ragged Tiger Tour. And I tell the guy, because as you said, I got to know them. And then, so I, I went and I was like, okay, I'll go. But I was into like O M D and Ultravox and things like that. And I saw this gig, it was in Leeds and I loved it. I was blown away. It was because obviously at the time they were at the peak of their fame. And this was real, right?

• 35:35Speaker 05

  The pop music done brilliantly and, and the insane atmosphere. And I just thought, right, I want to do that. So, so just because I went to this gig really with my sister, that's what I want to do. So I started learning to play, I didn't, uh, have music lessons, I couldn't play. So I started just trying to do something, it's about the age of 15 or so. And then, uh, this is the luck. So in Oldham, right, living in Oldham and a, a guy called Darren Wharton, who's the keyboard player from Thin Lizzy, moved into, to Oldham and went to the pub, my local pub where my dad used to go. And so my dad, uh, said, just gave him a demo tape that we'd done. When we were 16 or 17.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  God bless your dad.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  That is good dad, that is good dad work.

• 36:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, it just, and it was, you know, I don't know if you've even listened to it Darren, but, but when he formed a band, because Thin Lizzy split up and he remembered there was this guy up the road who sort of had something to do with keyboards and just asked me to go and, and meet him and say, and, and really I, I wasn't very good at playing, but I was good at programming stuff.

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  So, so because I, that's, you know, because I was, I was into Ultravox and O M D and all these bands. And so, so he, I joined the band when I was, just before I finished my A levels. And then I thought, I'll take a year out. So that's the luck, the pure luck, right?

• 37:01Speaker 04

  And that was there?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  That's there. And then, so I took a year out from university and in that year we got a record deal.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 37:09Speaker 05

  And so then I didn't go to university. I, so, well, I think when I was supposed to be in university, I was in LA recording an album at Joni Mitchell's house, by the way. So he's got sillier, he's like, with, with a great producer called Larry Klein, who was married to Joni Mitchell at the time. And he's a great, he's still a, a great player. He still plays, he's a great bass player and producer. And so I ended up, you know, when I was supposed to be at university, I was, I was in LA.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  But also with someone from Thin Lizzy, like.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that, you know, for the musically, it wasn't actually the music I was into, right? I was into, yeah, I, I was sort of, yeah, gone from electronic music to Duran Duran and been in the romantic. And then I go into Bar House and Sisters of Mercy and The Cure and then, and also The Smiths and New Order. Yeah. Joy Division, all that stuff. And then I joined this rock band and started listening to rock music. Yeah, I enjoy.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Can I quickly ask you about going back to uni after you'd taken time out? Because it must have been quite a big thing going to uni and everybody else is 18. What was that like and how did you handle that?

• 38:13Speaker 05

  It was, uh, I think I was 23 when I went back.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  And.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  You've done a lot.

• 38:21Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I'd been in this band and, and I was actually, you know, simultaneously I'd just joined D Ream. So it was even weirder for these, my friends at university, because I was on top of the pops when I was an undergraduate. So they'd be watching telly at night, you know, they go, what's he doing? You know, you know, so it was.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  Bloody cool though, Brian, well done, that's so good.

• 38:43Speaker 05

  It was kind of, we, there was one, it was one, we'd do, you do lab at university, we do physics. And I never really liked it, actually. I didn't like doing this lab stuff. But there, there's one, I so vividly remember, because I'd been in lab and it was like, you know, it was like five o'clock or something. I was like, I'm, I'm gonna have to go and it went, quite finished this and they go, why? And he goes, because I'm on stage at G Max. We, we take that, we were supporting Take That. So literally it was like, just get changed and go and, and go on stage. So I had this very strange experience of being at university. Um, trying, and fortunately for me, by the way, I. Um, the, I took a decision. So most of it's love. I did make a decision because D Ream got,

• 39:27Speaker 05

  they weren't a big band when I joined the band. It was in the gap between leaving there, when I left there and then went to university. And then D Ream got big. And so I had to make a choice then. It was my second year, I think, at university. And it was like, do I go to, it was, it was an Australian tour. I'd never been to Australia.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  It's like, do I do that again? Or do I carry on doing this? And so that was a, a good decision that I'd said, no, I'm actually gonna,

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, well done.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  I'm gonna do this.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  We're very grateful.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Well, I'm, I'm, I, I'd done enough physics that I knew that I really liked it.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  At university. But it was a difficult choice, you know, because you know, when you're a student, you know, it's like, well, shall I get on a plane and go into Australia and be a rock star again?

• 40:14Speaker 04

  Yes. As you know, I have been trying out Monzo, who are sponsoring Begin Again. And I think one of the cleverest things about it is something called Salary Sorter. Now, I'm going to show you on a prop phone, by the way, because you're not seeing my actual bank balance, nosey. But what's amazing about it is your pay lands and it splits itself out. Bills, savings, spending, sorted. Set it once and every payday it just happens. I know what money feels like. That running list in your head. Can I cover everything? Have I put enough by? What have I actually got left? I carried that for years and what I love is how quietly Monzo takes that weight off you. You see it all, you sort it all, and the worry goes with it. I wish I'd had this at nineteen.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  It makes money feel clearer, calmer, far less scary, and that is brilliant. We should all be doing less counting and more living. So go and download Monzo. Monzo current accounts are for sixteen plus and UK residents. Ts and Cs apply. And one of the things that I loved reading you talk about is the graft. You know, that, that you've said before that you don't, you're not sure that anyone is born brilliant at anything. It's about the graft.

• 41:28Speaker 05

  I, I, I think so. Certainly for the overwhelming majority of people. I mean, I might be the odd person who's some kind of genius at something, but most people who are successful in music or physics or whatever are not, right? They, they, it's, it's that combination. It's, it's part luck that gives you, paths open up. And that's luck, I think. And then, as you said, then, then it's finding something that you like and really, um, thinking hard. I, I often, because I still teach students at the University of Manchester, right? And then one of the things I say to them is that you, you have to, you know when you understand something. So that, that's actually the only skill. If, if you get that skill, where you're not trying to,

• 42:14Speaker 05

  you just know enough to pass an exam or whatever it is. I'm not trying to, even, you know, these days, you know, trying to cheat a bit, maybe with AI or something, whatever it is. The, the idea is that you know when you understand it and it's a great delight. It's the most remarkable feeling when you go, no, I get that. But you've got to work as hard as you have to work, right? There's no shortcut.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  That sometimes you'll get it quickly, sometimes you'll get it slowly, but you've just got to do it. And, and you'll know when you've done it. You don't need to do an exam. You don't need me to tell you you understand it. You know. And that's, so that I think for some reason I figured that out.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  I like the fact that you keep talking about luck.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  It's, it's worth thinking about it, isn't it? To, to look back at, look back at your history.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  The whole life.

• 43:00Speaker 05

  And, and think, where were those turning points? And I'm pretty sure most of them will have just been luck.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  I, I like to for my own kind of heart and happiness. I mean, I, I know that you've talked a lot before about death and what happens to us after death. And it's like, nothing.

• 43:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't talk much about it because it's, I've only got one word, one word answer. It's like nothing.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  And but what I really liked was I, I listened to something, um, talking about atoms. And atoms never die. They just go somewhere else.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  And that I've chosen to believe that I live on through that. Can you just explain the concept of an atom?

• 43:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, um, so these are the, the building blocks of us. And they're very tiny, by the way. So, um,

• 43:52Speaker 04

  What, like how tiny?

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Well, so in, and I do this in the show, actually. So we show a snowflake on the screen from Kepler. And they're about, what, a centimeter across? So in, so then it's made of water molecules, these little things. And you can line up.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Fine. I love it when you talk about like things and you go.

• 44:12Speaker 05

  They're tiny things. And that's my illustration of a water molecule. I know.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 44:17Speaker 05

  It's like, what is that?

• 44:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  Tiny little thing. And you can line up about, um, what, um, something like a hundred million of them across a snowflake. So that's how small they are. And which is why it took us until about in the twentieth century to discover these things. So, um, so they're, they're about a hundred million times smaller than a, than a snowflake, right? And, and so, so those are the building blocks. And those, as you say, they, um, they're eternal essentially, for all intents and purposes. They're, they're eternal. So they, so when we die, the, the building blocks of us are still there. They're not destroyed. And they will ultimately, as you said, that they'll go back into the earth and then,

• 45:03Speaker 05

  and then the earth will die. Well, the earth may get incinerated by the sun at some point in the future. We're not quite sure actually whether it'll get swallowed or not when the sun expands at the end of its life. So. But anyway, some of them will go out into space and some of them may re-collapse into new star systems and new planets. And so they're just recycled, basically. And they live for pretty much eternity.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  If we're made up of atoms, we will carry on in something else, in some different form.

• 45:34Speaker 05

  The building blocks.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 05

  But that leads to very deep questions about what we are. Because actually we're, the, the atoms out of which we're made are changing all the time. Right? So, so, so we're not the same atoms that we were yesterday and we won't be the same atoms that we were completely the same atoms that we were tomorrow. They're, they're being recycled all the time. So you're, you're really a pattern. Right? So it's, you're a pattern of sort of information in a sense.

• 46:01Speaker 05

  And so it's that really, it's the information processing that's you. So I, the analogy I often use is a computer, right? So you've got a computer program. It's running in the computer. It's not really anything to do with the computer, the program. When you turn it off, it's not running anymore. So.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  So we're like that?

• 46:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, which sounds less romantic than the other things we've been talking about. But that, that's, you know, as far as we understand it, that's what we are. It's no less remarkable though, that, because that's often, I think, the, the, one of the problems that people can have with science. Is if you put it like that, then it sounds dry, right? It just sounds like un, unromantic and not beautiful, right? It just, you're just this processing and it's just a pattern and it's processing and then you die and it's gone. Which is true, but the other way of thinking about it is that how remarkable is it? That from over thirteen point eight billion years, from just some hydrogen helium,

• 47:02Speaker 05

  you end up with those patterns. You end up with these processes that, that, that allow us to experience the world. Right? So it's, it's, it is, Carl Sagan said it first. It's allowing the universe to understand itself. That, that's beautiful. So in a way, it's just the language that you use. So it can sound horrible and dry and emotionless. Or the same story can sound profoundly magical and beautiful. And that's really the challenge. That's, I think it's magical and beautiful. I don't, you know, I, I don't need anymore. Because some people say, well, it's terrible then, isn't it? You're, you're gone. You're just this temporary thing.

• 47:48Speaker 05

  My perspective is it's so astonishing that these temporary patterns exist at all. And I do talk about this in the show, the more we think about it, because we're trying to understand why. So why do the laws of nature allow temporary patterns like us to exist? Which can bring meaning, genuinely bring meaning to the universe. Yeah. So that, that to me is, is the most, uh, wonderful question of all in many ways. So why is the universe such that collections of atoms can have conversations? As, it's, it's, so to me, that's beautiful and powerful. And, and the, and the temporary nature of it makes it even more beautiful and valuable in a sense.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  Do you ever think about death?

• 48:33Speaker 05

  Um.

• 48:34Speaker 04

  Does it worry you?

• 48:35Speaker 05

  I, to be, to be absolutely honest, not, not yet. Maybe give me another five years, right? But, um, I, I don't really, I, I don't focus on that at all.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Okay. I'm gonna actually go back. I'm gonna tell you something that is gonna horrify you, but please don't hate me because I have changed. But maybe fifteen, twenty years ago, put it from fifteen years ago, I put, and I'm so ashamed to tell you this, Brian, but I put space travel in room one oh one.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  Did you?

• 49:10Speaker 05

  It's not a, it's.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Please don't hate me.

• 49:15Speaker 05

  It's not a bad idea in some way.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  I I just thought it's so expensive. And and we could spend that on somebody. But then I got together with Michael, my husband. So excited about that. I've got together with Michael and he was like, he he turned me on to you and changed my whole life.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  It's, I mean, it's, if you think, I I just said there, it's not a, it's not necessarily a bad thing to do, right? So it it depends that it depends what you, what, so how do we value space travel?

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Well, that was it, because I felt like it was territorial pissing.

• 49:54Speaker 05

  Well, and and it and it may well have been, right, at at some level, right? I mean, I'd say probably was, you know, it was obviously the Cold War, it's the space race. Um, but now, and and this is often the case, what what's come out of that? Is this economy in space that we use, we all use every day. There's, I'll give you one figure, which is was astonishing to me. So there was a House of Lords report here in the UK last year. And it was about space, the economy of space. And there's a number, a figure in there which says that eighteen percent of our GDP is reliant on space-based infrastructure.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  Eighteen, so it's like a fit of the economy of the UK.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 50:41Speaker 05

  And and it's because it's things we don't, we take for granted. It's not only satellite navigation, obviously.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 50:47Speaker 05

  But um, but all the timing stuff for our financial transactions comes from that. So when you do things with and with your bank, it's all the timing of all the computers is coming from that. There's a, someone told me the other week that that, so how important is space now? So there's a, it's it's telling us about deforestation, for example. So it's allowing us to map how the environment's changing, what we're doing to the environment. That someone told me there was a, in Peru, they were having problems with fishing, which would deplete in their fishing stocks. And so they enacted a law that the boats in their waters have to have little satellite trackers. And it re- it reduced the hit, it was something like eighty or ninety percent of illegal fishing.

• 51:30Speaker 05

  They got, so so they were able to control their fishing and all those things. So it's it's integrated into almost everything we do on a day-to-day basis. So so now, so that's kind of the practical idea. But the other point is that we are also doing these things that are curiosity-led exploration of the planets in order to ask questions, as we mentioned before, like, are we alone in the universe? Right, these are questions we're trying to answer, they're profound questions. I mean, I would say for those people listening, I'm sure we're not alone in the universe. But it's how far do you have to go to find something else that's alive? That's a really good question.

• 52:12Speaker 05

  Might be outside our solar system, might be, you know, who knows, thousands of light years. So there there's those questions as well. And the curiosity-led exploration of nature, go back to Kepler. Right, as I mentioned, this is, these are the foundations of the modern world. Right, so we hadn't really made much progress for thousands of years. For almost arguably from ancient Egypt, but for five thousand years, basically, of civilization. We'd really not done much. Um, and then then when people start asking these questions, the the beginning of science in just a few hundred years.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  We have not only this knowledge, but we have medical technology, as you mentioned, we have. Can you imagine if if if you'd been ill a hundred years ago?

• 53:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 05

  You know, there there were no antibiotics even.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  You know, if you go back. Um, and and so I I think that the this, the most valuable thing about science and to space exploration and asking questions about the motion of the planets, which is where it all started, is that it led to this way of thinking about the world, which has led to everything we take for granted. Without exception, right, this is one of the foundations of everything that we enjoy today. Our quality of life, longevity of life, eh eh, by any measure. We we use science every day and it benefits us, but it comes from this. So so I would say it does, it's not really about the GDP numbers and all these things like that.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  It's just about this is one of the, uh, the man is, the right way, the manifestation of our curiosity.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 53:59Speaker 05

  That's, that's.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  I mean, honestly, like Michael opening my eyes and him having been such a fan of yours for so long, it's like, it's changed everything, but I think me valuing this planet, um, in a way, I've always valued it and I've loved living and I've loved nature, but it, there's an urgency now, I feel, where I think politically recently, there's been so much hatred and anger and destruction, that it feels a bit like we're going back to the seventies again, where children are growing up full of fear.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  You know, like you're, so your son's seventeen and he, you know, he's growing up in a, in an unstable world and I feel like us actually in our late teens and summer of love, eighty-eight, ninety, you know, it was a great time of peace, really, for quite a long time, we haven't had that for ages.

• 54:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, um, and so we were in the world, as you said, that maybe Carl Sagan's world. And he wrote a book, actually, another book called The Demon Haunted World. Science is a Candle in the Dark. He wrote it after Cosmos. And it's a wonderful book. And he almost, he sees this, he sees this world coming.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Does he?

• 55:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, he he's talking about the rise of, the the return to superstition and darkness. And that's what he means, the demon haunted world, science is a candle that drives away the demons.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 55:26Speaker 05

  It's ju- it's just this, this way of thinking about, which is just, as I said, back to Kepler, it's just asking questions about the shape of snowflakes and the motion of the planets. But you're grounded in reality there. This is the way that you drive out superstition and all the problems that arise from, from, you know, the the the fear of the, the fear of the unknown. It's part of the, part of my, the show, actually, there there's a, there's always a philosophical arc, right, in the shows somewhere, an element of polemic, probably coming from Sagan. And um, and this one, at the end of the show, I say, that is that, you said it, Kepler, I don't know.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  I say at the end, I I'm worried that the world today is full of too many people who think they know everything.

• 56:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 56:13Speaker 05

  And the the thing is, if you think about it for one moment, if you think you know everything, you can't make any progress. Because there's no progress, because progress requires

• 56:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 56:24Speaker 05

  the unknown, obviously. And when you put it like that, so anybody who is certain is not going to develop as a person, but they're not going to develop any new knowledge, they're not going to contribute anything, actually. I would say certainty prevents you from contributing anything new, because you think you know it. And so I think that it's the the rise of certainty. And really, the the beginning of science only four hundred years ago was the, was the discovery of the joy of uncertainty. That's what it actually is. So that's why Kepler and Galileo are so important, because they go, hang on, I mean, I'm not sure.

• 57:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 05

  I'm not sure the earth is motionless at the centre of a finite universe.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  And they would have been ridiculed for thinking that or questioning something, you know, well, it's been like this for forever. Of course it's like this, it doesn't move.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, the authority, it was the authority of the ancient Greeks, really.

• 57:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Um, but, you know, and Galileo famously had his, you know, tangled with the church and so on, and that's a complicated story. And part of it was his character as well, so it's not really, it's not really simple. It's, you know, a lot of it was, I think he was friends with the Pope, I think, and it was all a bit, you know, it's all human, it was all very human, right? But ultimately, they were. Um, if you think about it, just it's it's also allowing yourself to go somewhere that isn't obvious. Because what these people are arguing about partly was, is the earth moving?

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Well, itself evidently it doesn't feel as if it's moving.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 58:00Speaker 05

  Right, so that is not, it's it's not obvious that the earth is tearing around this star. And it's not obvious, as you said, that this star is is the sun and its nuclear fusion and you have a million earths inside it. None of that is obvious. It's it's remarkable that we discovered it at all.

• 58:19Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 58:20Speaker 05

  You know, we we we discovered how to weigh the earth and weigh the sun and figure out how big things are and how far away. Well, one of the things I I, the story I tell in the show is about how do we know, which is related to this thing about being certain. How do we know the distance to a galaxy? It's all like me saying, the Andromeda Galaxy, you can see it in the with with your naked eye almost. Here from the UK, or with binoculars, you see this thing.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 05

  That it took the light over two million years to reach us from that thing. Which means it began its journey. You're looking at it live through your binoculars. It began its journey before we had evolved.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  And it's coming along.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  How do you know?

• 59:01Speaker 04

  It's so mind blowing. How do you know?

• 59:03Speaker 05

  And and the story is wonderful and it involves a an astronomer called Henrietta Levitt. Who was working at the turn of the twentieth century. And she was looking at patterns in data, so like Kepler, patterns in the snowflakes. And she had to notice a pattern in the way these particular stars behave, called seaford variable stars, but she noticed a pattern. And that allowed her to figure out by just seeing how they vary in brightness, how bright they actually are. And this is the key idea. It's called a standard candle. Because if you imagine, if you've got this light and you know how bright it actually is. And you and then you can see how dim it is and say, well, I know how far away it is then. The further away it is, the dimmer it is, right?

• 59:45Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  That's it. That that that's it. But so it took it took this twentieth century discovery. By this genius Henrietta Levitt, who was just working. And and and her job was just to catalogue things, because that's what women did at the time, right? They were just the.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  But they would be the ones that would see everything.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  But she saw the pattern.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  And and and so she became an extremely famous astronomer and that's one of the basic ways. But it just shows you that someone's got to do that.

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  Someone's got to figure out a way of measuring the distance to the stars and the distance to the galaxies. And it and it's really twentieth century discoveries, actually. So we didn't know, until the nineteen twenties, we didn't know whether these little patches of light in the sky were other galaxies. Or structures in our own galaxy. So we didn't know that. It's almost living memory. It's nineteen twenties that we discover that.

• 1:00:41Speaker 04

  I mean, obviously, one of, you know, the big questions or possibly the biggest question is how did it all begin? You know, like, how did it start? And obviously, CERN is a is a huge part of that. You worked there.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  Can you just tell tell us a bit about when that was and what was that like? What were you doing?

• 1:01:00Speaker 05

  CERN is, um, it's it's called a particle accelerator. It's a Large Hadron Collider. It's twenty seven kilometers in circumference, this thing. So if you ever go to Geneva.

• 1:01:10Speaker 04

  Underground?

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So if you land at Geneva Airport ever, then then it's close to that. It's underground. It goes into France mainly, but it goes into Switzerland as well. And it goes right past the runway of the airport. So when you land there, you you're almost sitting on top of this thing.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  Oh, my god, that's so funny.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  Geneva.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  So that's where it is. And and and its job is just to send particles around very fast and collide them together. And that's what it does. And they go very, very fast, twenty seven kilometers, just like beams of particles. It can make millions of these collisions every second, just collides particles. But the reason it's doing that is because in those collisions. A way to think about it is you recreate the conditions that were present less than a billionth of a second after the big bang. So so one way to think about what's happening there is you can take pictures of what was happening, what the universe was like, very close to the big bang. So that's one of the reasons we know about what was happening back then. Because we can recreate those conditions in a tiny bit of space for a tiny amount of time.

• 1:02:13Speaker 05

  And we can take pictures of it. And these giant cameras, where the one I worked on was called Atlas. It's forty meters in size, right? These huge digital camera, right? Underneath the ground in a cavern the size of St Paul's Cathedral, taking pictures of these little collisions. So it's one of the reasons we know a lot.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  And what were you doing there then? Like, what was your job?

• 1:02:34Speaker 05

  So there, I was, um, running a little upgrade project thing to, which is a kind of an international little group. To to put these little detectors close to these beams of particles. These beams, by the way, they're they're they're smaller than the diameter of a hair, of human hair, these little beams like that. But they carry the energy of an aircraft carrier traveling at thirty miles an hour.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  So they're really, it's really quite cool.

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Powerful.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  And I was putting these little things about a millimeter away from it. So we were trying to put these little detectors in really close. So I was just running this upgrade project. And then that and the BBC were, it was before the machine was turned on. And they started sending people that, you know, because it was kind of interesting and.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  The people were interested in this experiment. And so I just got interviewed by Radio Four or someone like that. And they liked the way that I talked. And and by the way, I I'd, this is the luck again, right? So I'd avoided, um, even teaching, right? All I wanted to do is research. So I'd I got these things called research fellowships and I was just doing research into particle physics and nothing else. I wasn't interested in anything. I wasn't interested in talking about it. I wasn't interested in teaching about it, nothing. But then I just started talking about this machine because I was interested in it and involved in it. And that's the, and then I think that someone said, oh, maybe we'll make a BBC, it was called BBC Knowledge, BBC Four, whatever.

• 1:04:03Speaker 05

  A little program. Do you want to make a little program? So I made a little program. And then they said, oh, maybe we'll make a Horizon then, you know, which was this wonderful documentary series. And so I did that. And then and and ultimately got offered this thing, Wonders of the Solar System, which was the big series that I made, which I first became well known. It's complete luck. I wasn't interested. I wouldn't have pushed that.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Can I say something? No, it's not luck. It's because you are brilliant. Like, that's not luck. The BBC were lucky.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  You learn though, don't you? I mean, it's not, as you you'll know, you know, it's not that. If you want to be on telly, it's it's a skill, like anything else, or make radio programs. It's it's something that you learn through practice. And so.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  Also passion. I mean, your passion is so tangible. To to to listen to you talk about something you love is electric. It's it's absolutely. No, honestly, Brian, it is such a joy to to listen to you talk about it because. Like we, me and me and Michael, but I was, I sat in an, oh, I could feel a bit emotional, I don't know why. I sat in an audience and I listened to you speak. You blew all of our minds, but it's your enthusiasm. And your knowledge and everything else. But the idea that you almost didn't didn't want to share that with us.

• 1:05:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  It's like, it would be criminal, um.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  It's, we all have different aspects to our characters, don't we? And and I said before, one of the things I like doing is finding things out and and figuring out how to understand things. And obviously, you know, research, you mean, you have PhD in those things. That's all, it's all about that. It's all about this, I want to understand this thing. And ultimately find something out that nobody knew. That's actually a remarkable thing. And and and everyone who's done a PhD has done that in some way.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  Can I ask you about?

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  You've been tiny again, haven't you?

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, you did a PhD in particle physics.

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  What's that? What is particle? What what is particle physics?

• 1:06:06Speaker 05

  So that is this, the understanding of the building blocks of nature. What are the smallest?

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  The smallest, smallest.

• 1:06:13Speaker 05

  And how do they talk to each other? How do they stick together? So the things we've been talking about, about these little building blocks.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  And that's what got you to CERN?

• 1:06:21Speaker 05

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  You're interested in that.

• 1:06:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I was, I went to university to do astrophysics, which, because I was into astronomy. And then I sort of converted at university. I I didn't know there was such a thing called particle physics, really, you know. I didn't know anything about it, but I got interested in it when I was at university. And so then did the research. I I did my PhD in Germany, actually.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  How did you?

• 1:06:44Speaker 05

  Um, which was a particle collider.

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:06:47Speaker 05

  And then I went to Fermilab in Chicago, which is another one, and then CERN.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  So I want to talk to you about, um, teaching and you were saying that, like, you very nearly didn't teach.

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  And you're doing a CERN, right? How how are you enjoying that? What's that like?

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  I I love it. So I teach the first year, um, in September, so, um, in October. Because it's the first year, first term. And and it's true, I suppose, that some people go to Manchester because they've seen me on telly. And so I I wanted them, I I I feel I have a responsibility if they do that to meet those students, right? Because some of them are doing physics because they've seen my stuff and many of them aren't, by the way, but some of them are.

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  I'd say probably most of them are, let's be honest.

• 1:07:34Speaker 05

  There's lots of reasons you go to Manchester, it's right. And, you know, we've got Nobel Prize winners there and all sorts of things. It's a big department, Jodrell Bank, the telescope, you know, famously, which you pass with your other train to Manchester and London. So all those things, but, um, so and so I teach first year, first term. And I teach relativity and quantum mechanics, the introduction. And because those are the things that every, so everyone who's eighteen who goes to do physics wants to do that. They want to do Einstein. And quantum mechanics is the theory of the particles and the, you know, the the building blocks of nature. So so I I really enjoy it. And one of the reasons I like doing it, but also.

• 1:08:17Speaker 05

  Uh, every year I, someone asks a question or I'm saying something. When I realise I don't properly understand it, even though it's the first year introductory course. There's always something, yeah, there's always something you go, actually. I, I, I think I'm just saying that. It's what we said earlier about you, you kid, you, the, the skill you have to develop is really making sure you understand something. And there's always something where I go, actually, the, why is that? The, uh, you, there must be a better way of saying that, or usually I, I don't understand that actually. So I'm saying something which is right, you know, I'll just say something.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  And what do you, what do you tell your students?

• 1:09:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, sometimes, uh, uh, when someone asks a question, sometimes you go, that's a good question. So you can give them the answer, which would be in a textbook, you go, that's, that's the answer. But you go, why is that? Right? Quantum mechanics is really weird as a theory.

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  It is. Can I tell you something quite funny? I met this guy called Hartmut who, um, built the Google quantum computer.

• 1:09:21Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  And Hartmut was doing a talk and I went to his talk and I didn't really get it. So I went and bought quantum computing for dummies.

• 1:09:31Speaker 05

  It's really hard.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Don't get it. Like, I just can't, no, and I'm gonna keep going.

• 1:09:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  But it's, it is really mind-blowingly complex.

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  The picture of the world it gives you is, as you know, is just so alien.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  So different to the world that we experience. Um, and it's still, you know, like you said, quantum computing is really forcing us to think about what it actually means. Because it actually does use that weird behaviour.

• 1:10:01Speaker 04

  Yes, and it works.

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  It works. Yeah, so, I mean, it's, we still do it again.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  What is con- quantum going to, how is it going to change our world?

• 1:10:13Speaker 05

  I mean, just one very simple answer is it has, because you don't know how a transistor works if you don't understand quantum mechanics. So, you know, everything, your, your phone is full of these things and they're quantum devices, really. So you need it to understand that. But quantum computing is different. Because it's using the real behaviour of these particles to do things that you couldn't otherwise do. Um, and so, but the kind of unfortunate thing, and it's just luck actually. The unfortunate thing is that the first thing we've learned how to do with quantum computers is break the encryption that keeps all our data safe.

• 1:10:55Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  So that's a real, it's not the most positive thing in the world, right? And, and it's just, I think, it's just that it happened, that, uh, one of the easiest things to do with these quantum computers.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Is code.

• 1:11:08Speaker 05

  Is, is actually to say, if you've got a really big number, what are the numbers that you multiply together to make the big number?

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  That's what, now that's a, that's a really hard thing. So all our banking apps and everything are based on having a very, very big number. And, and, and it's about knowing what the little things I have to mul- I'm doing that again, the numbers you have to multiply together.

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  Brian, don't change.

• 1:11:29Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:11:29Speaker 04

  Don't, please don't change. I love it when you do that. I didn't mean to make you feel selfish, okay?

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  But it's, it's what are the numbers you have to multiply together to make the big number? And it was thought with a normal computer, any conceivable normal computer, it takes longer than the age of the universe, right? To, to, to figure out what these numbers are.

• 1:11:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:11:46Speaker 05

  So you can't do it.

• 1:11:47Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:11:48Speaker 05

  So it's great for code, it's making a code. It's brilliant. And that's how the encryption basically works. That everything that we take for granted, keeping our data safe.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:11:57Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, the first algorithm, the first thing anyone figured out how to do with a quantum computer is to do that. And the power of quantum computers is they, in principle, not yet actually in practice, but in principle can do it really quickly. So they just destroy the whole fabric of encryption, right? We, and, and not the, by, it's not just, because you can fix that, so that's what people are doing, so we, we fix it, so we do something different. And everybody's transitioning over to the different thing.

• 1:12:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  But one thing is that all the data that's ever been stored up till now is, is all on computers somewhere.

• 1:12:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:12:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, everyone's got it all, and it's all encrypted with this code. The moment anyone actually builds a quantum computer that can do this, you can read everything. So it is actually a problem, because any, any data that's stored anywhere in the world now that can't be read will be able to be read when these things work.

• 1:12:56Speaker 04

  If the world was full of love and people just wanting to look after the planet and look after each other and care for each other, this would be the most amazing discovery. But because of power and greed and hatred, it's not. And we need to get rid of these things over here. And I do feel like we can create a more loving and accepting society in the name of continuing our species.

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  We must be able to do that.

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh, just before I answer that, I just wanted it to say about quantum computers, they can also potentially do amazing things.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  So that they're, it looks like, well, because nature is, is this, nature works like this. Really, what, what these things are doing is harnessing the, the, the, the power of nature to do things that are useful to us. So the other things that we think they're going to be really good at are things like understanding biology, making advances in medicine.

• 1:13:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:13:57Speaker 05

  Understanding how life works, uh, material science for building new materials and new aircraft and things. So all that, there, there's all that wonderful stuff as well. Well, it feeds into that, right? So then you, new materials for building engines and things. So there's a whole tremendous sort of area as well. It's just that the easiest thing to do is mess our encryption up. So, but they're, they're really potentially wonderful things. But to your point, um, I agree, it goes back to, I think, this, the perspective. Uh, Sagan said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.

• 1:14:37Speaker 05

  And I sometimes say in the live show, I, I realised what that meant a few years ago, because humbling is easy. The size of the earth is just nothing compared to the size of the universe. The character-building bit is this understanding of our place and our history in the universe. So the idea that this might be one of the few islands of meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion suns. In, in, and itself being one galaxy amongst two trillion galaxies in this observable universe. So, so there, there's, there's something about the potential value and rarity of places like earth. Um, but also the history, as we spoke about earlier, it's all perspective.

• 1:15:21Speaker 05

  So the character-building bit, I think, is Sagan saying, we need to take responsibility. Because, and it goes back to your question about the unlikeliness of existence, the, the tremendous, the, this, the value of existing. Once you know how unlikely it is that you exist, the more you seize your life and value your life. It's that, it's that perspective, but made global.

• 1:15:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:15:44Speaker 05

  So it's like the whole civilisation is this temporary thing, which is like a single human life. And it, so you should re- treat the planet and the civilisation as you treat your own life.

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  It is a thing, it's, it's a thing, an ecosystem that has a finite, fragile existence.

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:16:07Speaker 05

  And so I think that, that perspective, that's what Sagan meant. But you wouldn't know that if you didn't, it wouldn't occur to you if you didn't know about the context, which is the arena, as we started with, plus the history of life on earth, plus the history of the universe. The more you know about it, the more fragile, unlikely and beautiful and precious this world becomes. That's what I, I'm sure he meant. I, I always said, um, that I thought every world leader should go into space.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  I, I totally agree.

• 1:16:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, and most of them should come back.

• 1:16:41Speaker 04

  I think, yes. But, but what about when that?

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  Perspective.

• 1:16:45Speaker 04

  Yes, because the, the, the chap, um, recently, who just had his moment to just say how he was feeling. Um, did you, did you, did you see that? And he was just talking about how he felt seeing earth from space. And it was the most beautiful thing. It was very Carl Sagan.

• 1:17:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, everyone seems to. I, I've been lucky to meet astronauts.

• 1:17:08Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:17:09Speaker 05

  And even the older ones, the test pilots from the sixties, you know, these real sort of air force test pilots. All of them still speak powerfully about the experience of seeing the earth from space.

• 1:17:22Speaker 04

  I think we should do that. I think world leaders, before they, you know, come into, um, office, they should go up into.

• 1:17:29Speaker 05

  I think you should have to.

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  I think that should be the law.

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  And it's quite, you know, the little suborbital flight, you still see, it's quite, it's not expensive actually. You know, the, you know, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic and people, you just say, it's, you know, it's, well, not expensive, it's a few hundred thousand pounds, so it's expensive.

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  But for a country.

• 1:17:46Speaker 05

  For the, for the perspective, I think you should be, you should have to do it.

• 1:17:50Speaker 04

  For the world.

• 1:17:50Speaker 05

  Go and have a look at the thing you're responsible for. And then come back and, uh, you know, behave yourself, is what I would say to them.

• 1:18:01Speaker 04

  So Brian, I've got little presents for you. The first one is from one of your students. Let me put my glasses on, I'm of an age. Dear Brian, fifteen years ago, I watched you on my TV screen as you explained entropy using a sandcastle in the Namib Desert and a glacier in Patagonia. The accessibility and enthusiasm, yes, Brian, of your explanations inspired my career in science, although you may have slightly oversold the glamour of travel. I'm not unique in this.

• 1:18:39Speaker 04

  Across the world, you have ignited curiosity in people of every age, gender and background, ensuring our eyes occasionally look up instead of down. The importance of the diversity of your audience should not be understated. After all, we all look up at the same stars and gaze with the same wonder. I've now worked with you for five years and yes, he really is that smart and yes, he really does love physics that much. Having known you beyond the camera, I've been privileged to see the curiosity that you've inspired in me all those years ago is the same curiosity that still drives you today.

• 1:19:21Speaker 04

  You're always asking questions, always reading, always learning. Everyone knows what an outstanding ambassador for science you are to the public, but I would like to personally thank you for being an advocate for me. You've challenged me with interesting physics questions, given me advice on a career in research and engagement, and created opportunities for me to travel and grow as a communicator. Thanks to you, I'm beginning to fold public engagement into my own career. You've shown me that being a great scientist isn't just about asking good questions, it's about giving others the confidence to ask their own.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  My PhD and postdoctoral projects only exist because of you. Professor Jeff Forshaw went above and beyond to make them happen as well, and it's no exaggeration to say that I would not have a career in research without you. Thank you, and I hope you didn't literally blow Davina's mind, Dr Ross Jenkins.

• 1:20:26Speaker 05

  Yes, Ross.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  Ross, he did. He completely has blown my mind. It's brilliant, isn't it? I'm so grateful. And I've got another one. Wait, wait, go on, tell me about, tell me about Ross.

• 1:20:42Speaker 05

  He's a brilliant physicist and he's a, he's a great example of someone who's working in, so he's working on the black holes, right, which is the most, the strangest, most esoteric things you could imagine, right? And how they work and he goes all the way back to questions Stephen Hawking was asking in the 1970s. So that's, he's been working on that. But also, it turns out the things, the skills that you acquire in learning about black holes are very useful, necessary for quantum computing. Which is all these things that we talked about, all these, the promise of quantum computers. And he's worked in both areas.

• 1:21:23Speaker 05

  So he's, he's able to make that, to do this really esoteric stuff, which is about this really just blue skies, wonder, you know, curiosity, knowledge for its own sake. And also, he has this skill to be able to talk to people in industry and, you know, and the wider world. So that, they're quite unique skills, actually. So, yeah, he's quite a unique, well, a unique individual because he's got those two, those two abilities.

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  So would it be fair to say that he noticed a connection or something that was helpful between black holes and quantum, like he?

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, and has seized that and really has worked.

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  And has made it a skill.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  It's really important because we're always in this debate in our society and it's right to say, well, what should we be spending our money on? We, you know, we haven't got a lot of money at the moment, we're all under pressure.

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:22:18Speaker 05

  What should society do, right? But it's a beautiful example, the work that Ross does, where it's always the case that finding more out about nature at the deepest level, it turns out to be useful. It's not surprising when you put it like that because we're talking about reality and understanding what reality is. And that knowledge always comes in useful and can sometimes completely transform the world. And the history of science tells you that. And so, but what Ross is able to do, fortunately, there are people, you know, younger people coming through who can make that case and say, because he experiences it. It's like, this is weird little physics, this is really useful and connect the two.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  Is it nice as now, and I hope you don't take this as an insult, but an elder statesperson, you know, I, I love seeing people coming up through the ranks and I think, oh, you're good, you're good. Is it nice for you to teach somebody or be part of someone's career and then go, oh, I see, I see you going somewhere?

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  Absolutely, because that's the, you know, that, that generation, that's the generation that will change the world. It's not, it's less and less, as you say, it's our generation, my generation, that people did that for me. So the people who allowed me to go in the direction I wanted to go in, if you go back 20 years or so, there were people that did not close the door, particularly actually at the University of Manchester, because they could have easily said, you're not doing this stuff, this television stuff, you've got a job here, you've got to do this, you've got to do your research and your teaching and those things, and you're not going to do it.

• 1:24:06Speaker 05

  But, but, so someone, and it was, it was people at the university, said, no, you know, this is the path you're going on, we value that, you can do it. So it's obviously, we are, must be obliged, as you said, elder statespeople to, to, to open those doors and keep them open and allow the next generation to go through.

• 1:24:29Speaker 04

  This letter is from Darren, I'm going to read this for you from Dare. Okay, Dear Brian, when Davina asked if I'd write a few words, I couldn't say no. I remember your dad, David, knocking on my door back in 1989.

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  You, God, how brilliant is your dad?

• 1:24:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Speaker 04

  Well done, David. You were sat in your dad's car while he asked if he could bring you in to meet me. I love your dad, what a ledge. I'd only just left Thin Lizzy and was looking for musicians to form Dare. At the time, A and M Records wanted me to front the band without playing keyboards. So when I met you, I thought, here's a young, good-looking lad who'd be perfect as our keyboard player. Can I tell you something quite funny? A and M Records used to be on Fulham Road.

• 1:25:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Speaker 04

  And I was a waitress in a restaurant on Fulham Road and all the, the A and R people from A and M Records used to have lunch in my restaurant, I used to serve them lunch.

• 1:25:28Speaker 05

  Did they?

• 1:25:28Speaker 04

  When I was a waitress.

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember that, I used to go in there and just basically, they had CDs lying around and all their artists, you know, it's people like Bryan Adams and who else was around, I can't remember. So I used to just go in and just take CDs.

• 1:25:41Speaker 04

  It was great writing in those days, wasn't it? You could go pilfer the stops.

• 1:25:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, pilfer the stops.

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. God, you could have, I could have served you lunch, Brian.

• 1:25:49Speaker 05

  You might well have done because I would have been there at that time.

• 1:25:52Speaker 04

  What struck me straight away wasn't just your talent, but your curiosity. On the tour bus, while most of the band were talking about music, you and I would be deep in conversation about whether there was alien life out there, whether there was water on the moon, you know, usual tour bus chat. Looking back now, I suppose the signs were already there that you were destined for something rather special. I also remember you ringing me after you joined the BBC to tell me that Terry Wogan was a big fan. Shut up, was he?

• 1:26:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, Dare, yeah, he used to play Dare.

• 1:26:24Speaker 04

  Oh my God, that's so good.

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:27Speaker 04

  Terry's gone up in my estimation. Before long, Terry was playing Dare on his show.

• 1:26:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  Mega. And I never forgot that. You always championed the band and I really appreciated it. I'm incredibly proud, not just of everything you've achieved as one of the world's best-known professors and science communicators, but of the person you've always remained. Thank you for your friendship over all these years. It's been a privilege to watch your journey. With love and best wishes.

• 1:26:56Speaker 05

  That's lovely from Darren. You talk about, you know, meeting famous people, we talked about the star, I mean, he was, you know, this guy, can you imagine?

• 1:27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Speaker 05

  If you're in Oldham at the time, and just in the, in the seventies, well, the eighties.

• 1:27:13Speaker 04

  Like a mega, mega rock star.

• 1:27:15Speaker 05

  You know, he was just like the unachievable thing that he'd done. And, and that's to Darren's. Great credit, you know, if you think about what he did when he left Lizzie is he formed a local band.

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:30Speaker 05

  Everyone was from within about a three mile radius of Chaderton in Oldham. And so his great guitarist Vinnie and they play Shelley and Jim the drummer. You know, and that was, so he forms a band of young, local musicians and, and, and ends up, you know, taking us, those kids who would have never got anywhere in the music business, really, you know, taking us to, I said, A and M Records in Los Angeles and we toured with Jimmy Page.

• 1:28:01Speaker 04

  I mean, Jimmy Page, for the love of God.

• 1:28:04Speaker 05

  Europe, we toured with Europe.

• 1:28:06Speaker 04

  Europe.

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  Well, Europe was a massive tour.

• 1:28:09Speaker 04

  Oh my God.

• 1:28:10Speaker 05

  I hadn't been out, I'd only been out of the country once, I think, so, you know, so I'd been on a school trip to, I think it was Austria, I'd been to Austria on a school trip when I was seventeen. That's the first time I ever went out of the country when I was seventeen. Then I joined Dare and, and then we, we did some shows in Hong Kong and then in LA and then we did tour Europe with Europe and so, so by the age of about twenty-two, I'd been to all these places, but it's because Darren didn't, you know, you would have thought when he'd left Lizzie, he's a brilliant musician, brilliant keyboard player, could have done anything. You would have thought he'd go to, come down to London or whatever and do the, and, or join a big band or something, but he didn't. He just got a load of local musicians together. We used to play in a place called the Maple Squash Club in Oldham.

• 1:28:55Speaker 05

  So we're doing gigs, Darren's gone from being in Thin Lizzy to playing gigs in a squash club. And, and yeah, it's just with about an audience of a hundred.

• 1:29:04Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 1:29:05Speaker 05

  And, and he did that and built that band.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  And helped you.

• 1:29:08Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 1:29:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I look at you, Brian, and I see a man who's achieved a lot. You're very happily married, you've got a lovely son.

• 1:29:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's a musician, actually.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  Is he?

• 1:29:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's gone into music.

• 1:29:23Speaker 04

  Has he really?

• 1:29:24Speaker 05

  He played on the PJ Harvey track.

• 1:29:25Speaker 04

  Oh, what's he play?

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  Well, he played bass on it, but he's a guitarist, but he played some bass.

• 1:29:30Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:29:31Speaker 05

  Which is kind of, you know, that's, yeah, so that's his first credit.

• 1:29:35Speaker 04

  What was that like for you?

• 1:29:36Speaker 05

  It was great because he, he didn't, you know, he was just playing around in the studio and Polly said, that's, I like that, maybe we'll have that. So it wasn't like, you know, I was saying, he's got to be on this thing, he did something that she liked and so that's cool.

• 1:29:53Speaker 04

  He entered.

• 1:29:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:29:56Speaker 05

  So he's gone into music.

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  You're happy at home.

• 1:29:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Speaker 04

  You've been a rock star. You're still so involved in music, which is one of your passions.

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  I love it, yeah.

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  You are doing the thing you love, telling the world about the world.

• 1:30:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Speaker 04

  Um, and the galaxy and the universe. Um, what, what is there left? Is there anything, is there any burning urge that you have left in your life?

• 1:30:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, always. Um, because you said, you know, some of them are big things that I'm so lucky to be able to go, wouldn't it be great if we did this? One of the things I love doing is we, we do versions of the shows with orchestras. I, I did one at the Sydney Opera House, you know, we should do with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Did it a few years ago.

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  And this, oh my God.

• 1:30:48Speaker 05

  It was brilliant and, and so I want to do another one of those and, and so there's those things. But, um, I also like understanding things. And so with, you mentioned Jeff Forshaw, actually, Ross mentioned him, so he's, I've worked with Jeff, he's my age, but he, he's a, he taught me actually, because he, because when I took this break to do music and went back to do physics later. So we're very good friends and we work on a lot of physics and do some research with Ross and, and I love doing that. So, so I equally like just going, trying to think about some esoteric little problem in physics. I could easily go back to that.

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Speaker 05

  And I'd be delighted with that as well.

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  But what's lovely is you've got lots of different fingers and lots of different pies and you're equally at home everywhere. It's absolutely brilliant that. I'm going to wrap it up there and I just want to say you have blown my mind and I, and please keep doing it. I, I love what you do. I love the energy that you bring to everything. I love your heart and your mind. Um, and I really have just such a profound amount of respect for you and everything that you do. Thank you for everything. I'm going to give you these, you can, you can have these as keepsies.

• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  And read them again.

• 1:32:07Speaker 05

  Those are these.

• 1:32:08Speaker 04

  Please may I hug you for an uncomfortably long time again? I'm coming in, I'm coming in. Thank you, Brian.

• 1:32:13Speaker 05

  Thank you very much.

• 1:32:15Speaker 04

  So just in case you missed this episode here, um, if you loved this episode, I know you're going to love that.

• 1:32:29Speaker 03

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• 1:33:11Speaker 01

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