Transcripts For CSPAN3 Dan 20240704

Writing, producing and directing Award Winning document for National Geographic Discovery Science history, pbs, and the Howard Hughes medical institute. He has produced films on how galileo, newton, einstein and hawking made their greatest discoveries. The archaeology of custers last stand, a theory on dinosaur evolution and the scientific search for alien life. Dan his career as a peace corps volunteer in kenya, teaching high physics and biology. Gabrielle emanuel, who is our moderator for tonight join wb you are as a Senior Health and science reporter in 2021 she started her journalism career at npr, first as a kroc fellow, then as a reporting fellow for the education team. She also five years as a reporter at gbh. Gabriellas stories regularly appear on nprs morning edition and all things considered, and she has reported episodes for planet and code switch. Her has appeared in the New York Times and the atlantic. She has received numerous awards, including national and regional. Edward r morrow lords, a sigma delta cheer award and a clarion award. Gabriella received her bachelors degree from Dartmouth College and her doctorate from oxford as a rhodes scholar. First, well hear from dan in just a moment. Hes going to start us off with a reading. But first, to give us a little bit more background. Id like to welcome gabriela over and shes going to fill us in. Gabriela. Welcome. Thank. It is good to be here. As she just said, if you could all be thinking about questions during while we chat, we will be coming you shortly. And i also just wanted to say, when i started reading book, i was in chicago with my inlaws and i just kept reading passages from aloud to to the household because it was that good. And by the time i came back to boston, they were like making sure they had the title right so they could order it. So this is a fantastic book and afterwards at the book signing, it is worth getting one copy signed and also getting copies as gifts because that what i will be doing. Well, what this book does is its incredibly ambitious and successful, but it takes us on a journey, a 13 billion year journey from, the big bang up to me and you and follows the atoms how how they became us and at the exact same time it does Something Else. It also takes on a journey of discovery of how. Found all of this. And that is takes us up in the sky in air balloons and down into the grand. I mean, you go all over. So i wanted to see if we could start with a an excerpt or a passage that captures that sense of wonder and discovery. Can you hear me . Okay, so let talking into the mic or am i good . Okay, great. First of all, i wanted to thank Boston Public Library for having us here. Id big fan of libraries and this is fabulous one so thank you so much and and thank you gabrielle im so that youve that youve agreed to do this with me and i appreciate it. So the book traces many scientists journeys as they try to learn about the journey of our atoms. And one of the things that you see over and over again is people are looking for one thing. And they find something completely different that they werent even looking. And so id like to just give you a taste of the book and read one passage that i think illustrates that quite well. The the just to set the scene in, 1977, there was a oceanographic vessel that went close to the galapagos islands. In the pacific ocean. And had the alvin, which was this deep sea submersible which can go with the ocean bottom. It was filled with geology artists because they were there in 1977. They continental drift was still a questionable theory and they were actually looking to see if they could find evidence for something no one had ever seen, which was a hydrophone or vent which might support the hypothesis of continental drift. So thats the setup. Ill just read you a short passage. At dawn on february 17. Jack corliss, the geologist, van andel and the pilot donnelly climbed down narrow conning tower into the alvin. The alvin is the submersible that was going to go down. They crouched by the small portholes and prepared for descent of 1. 7 miles in the titanium submersible, built to withstand pressures of £9,000 per square inch through the thick glass, they saw the choppy water suddenly around them. The light dimmed as the color of the water faded from blue, green to dark blue to darker blue than pitch black for an hour and a half. They saw nothing, just the occasional fleeting of a ghostly bio luminescent creature at. Long last. They reached the bottom. In the first moments. Their searchlights only black flows of lava formed when cold met molten rock. But then, as they approached the clambake location, they saw no one else had ever seen. Though the water nearby 36 degrees fahrenheit, almost. Here they saw cloudy, cloudy, blue water Shimmering Minerals rising from the ocean floor. They would learn that the temperature in some places was a balmy 63 degrees. Comfortable enough to enjoy without a wet suit. If it werent for the crushing pressure they had for the first time. Found a hydrothermal vent looking through porthole, corliss saw a that forever impressed itself in his memory. Using his acoustic phone, he called his graduate student debbie sticks on the lulu above. Deborah isnt the deep ocean supposed to be like a desert . Snakes took a moment to consult her. Fellow geologists. Yes, she replied. With all these animals down here, he said, he was gazing at clams as wide as dinner plates. Giant mussels, albino lobsters and orange and white crabs. It made sense. He was over 8000 feet down. Cut off from sunlight and food from above. Frantically cordless and vine. Until scrambled to collect data and capture a few specimens. With alvins robotic arm. The next dives, more vents and creatures even more outlandish. Spaghetti like worms large pink fish and seven foot tubeworms with. Red plumes swaying languidly. Flowers back on the rv near the scientists examined their finds with. Wonder. Cathy crane, the exhibitions navigator, radio biologist at woods hole to ask for help in identifying the strange creatures they couldnt the startled geologists had little to preserve them with except a small jar of for aldehyde. A graduate student had brought and some russia vodka and vodka they purchased in panama. They would have to store the creatures in tupperware and plastic. Sometime later one of the expedition leaders, a message from woods hole returned to port instant. Early biologists coming. In all caps. Needless to, say corliss did no such. He had no intention of being scooped. So its a great example of this discovery these geologists made are completely overturned, are of how life, the first life on earth might have formed. So this book is all about an origin story of atom. But i wanted to see if we could start, by hearing about the origin story of the book. How did the book come into being and as a project . What did you say four or five years ago . Oh, maybe more. Thats right. Okay. So how did it come about . It started with the question when my daughter was becoming vegetarian, my teenage daughter, like any good parent, i was wondering what she would have to eat order to remain healthy and pretty soon i realized that i actually had no idea what my body was made of. Thinking about it a little bit, i realized that i had no idea where it was came from and with a little bit of googling and i discovered something that i had never really realized before, which was that every Single Particle in our bodies, your bodies and came from the big bang. 13. 8 billion years ago. And so once i that that journey from there here must have been incredible. One, i was really hooked the idea and that was the impetus for it. Vegetarianism. So tell me. The big bang. One of the themes that you will see throughout the book is that scientia is often trip up and dont realize groundbreaking new information. They they cant almost process it. And actually falls into that with the big banks. So i wanted to see if you could tell us that. That story. Yeah. So there was a catholic priest, all people by the name of Georges Lemaitre who showed einstein that he was wrong by convincing einstein that the universe actually had a beginning. And this was in the early 1920s. Its a great story because at the time lemaitre learned of some astronomical observations that, suggested that the galaxies that were furthest away from us were expected, were flying away from us faster than galaxies closer to us to lemaitre that suggested the universe was actually expanding. So he wrote a paper, no response tract down and einstein said, youve got to be kidding me. No way. Actually what he told him was he said, your physics is great, but your physical intuition is wrong. Rape is terrible. This atrocious atrocious for limit for einstein it was just too weird to be true. It just mesh with his intuition. Lemaitre went back and dug into einsteins theories. Einsteins theory of equations of general relativity further and discovered that to the equations the universe either could be part contracting or actually expanding, and he was able to show that that in fact was what was happening. Einstein didnt want to believe it because honestly, a priest telling that the universe a beginning. Right. I mean, it actually hit actually to a certain felt too much like there was a hint of religious religiosity to it. But ultimately, einstein had to he looked at evidence and he changed his mind. Lemaitre convinced him. And now thats the big bang theory. When we when we say the hub of the james Webb Telescope shows us images, the early earliest universe, 13. 8 billion years ago. We know that we now accept the theory that lemaitre brought forward. And its one of many stories in the book of of new theories we now consider groundbreaking that at the time were just very, very well respected scientists wouldnt consider because were just too weird. How could the universe be that . And do you a sense of of why we fall into these traps of not believing things that end up being true and groundbreaking . Well, you know, when i. When i got through the first draft of my book, i started to scratch my head that. And the reason was that the book traces many, many discoveries along the way from. The big bang to now. Right. It traces from the big bang through the creation of the elements in stars, through the creation of solar system and planet earth to the origin of life and to those elements found their way to us. And theres so many groundbreaking, fundamental theories we accept now that i trace in the. But what i discovered was almost every time these theories were initially proposed, they were treated with complete skepticism or scorn. And so i scratch my head about once i finished the first draft because i it just seemed way too. It seemed to be happening too often. Yeah. Yeah. So. So i ended up giving them nicknames. So theres the too weird to be true theory. Theres the if. It doesnt if if the evidence doesnt match. So you you look for and see the evidence that matches your theory. But theres the the worlds greatest expert might be correct. But and so i came up with actually six of them that in the particular story that i tell came up over and over again. And. You know what . I came to realize is that they are cognitive they and they are shortcuts that seem just like the rest of us use to navigate in the world. Right. Like you, if youre a science host and you dont think that that the worlds greatest scientists should be listened to often, you can if you try and reprove everything over and over again, you just be paralyzed. You couldnt do it just like the rest of us. You know, if we had to constantly question everything, you couldnt do it. So these shortcuts that we all have, but. You know, its something that scientists like the rest of us fall into. Yeah. Yeah. Its useful until its not. So tell me one of the other themes that came out across this book to me was how important. The tools we have at our disposal are the technology. I mean, at often this the story is periodically about actually coming up with the tools to figure out the discovery. What the role of scientific equipment in the almost the technology in the in these discoveries. Well that was another thing that i really struck by once finished the book was that. The discover that i traced over the last hundred and 50 years, largely are things that we now take granted now. And its just incredible how much we know that we didnt know. 150 years ago, the time of my great grandfather, perhaps, right. We didnt know that there were atoms. We didnt know why the why or the sun generated heat. We didnt that the universe had a beginning. We didnt know we no idea how. The molecules, our cells create life. We didnt have a clue which is why the theory of vitalism was actually very among many, many many respected scientists. 150 years ago. And of course brilliant scientists, great mathematics, brilliant thinking, created a lot of wonderful new theories. But what was just as important was the electron microscope better telescopes. Paper. Without high speed centrifuges. Paper. Chromatography. The electron microscope. We have no idea how molecules in our cells create. Now we know all about these things that happen, and we understand. But light microscope. Even in a 1920s, was added at its limits. You couldnt see any further. And so without those other advances we would just know so little of what we know today of course makes you wonder. Right. 150 years from now, i was going to say where where are we going . What will . Well, what is the next hundred 50 years going to bring . Do you have any. Exactly. Yeah, i know. Guess is probably better than mine, but but thats the really the question is you know how much more. Well, we learn because it is incredible how much how much weve learned in just a such a short period of time. Yeah, it is remarkable. So i wanted to ask you a little bit about the process of writing the book throughout book, you have these incredible characters that are three dimensional. You have vignettes about their childhood. I mean, what was the process of researching these often unsung people we knew . Ive never heard of, i can say, whove done remarkable things, but. But then you bring them to life. Its not just an individual whos accomplishment. You read about. You meet them as a full character. How how did you pull that off. A i spent a lot of time probably the most important thing is i spent a lot of time, a lot of time googling. A lot of time in the library. And looking for interviews. Just looking for as much as i could for first first person accounts. But but there were also many people that i got to talk to that were in the book. And that was that was tremendous, tremendous amount of fun as well. And thats why some the the portraits are so strong, like. One of my favorite people that i got to talk was a wonderful biochemist by the name gunter vester houser, who completely overturned how we think about how formed because he was one of the first to come up with a very theory of how life could have formed actually at the ocean bottom by hydrothermal vents that were discovered by the album and how its a very it was a very contentious theory at the time, because at the time believed just about everybody believed that life formed on the earth, on the earths surface, in a pool of water, on the surface of the ocean. So here it was coming along and saying, no, sorry life actually formed deep down. Right. And it can i read just because its fun. So that. This was one of the one of the more fun interviews i that i did and youll see why i read you just a couple of passages. So the theory that he was criticizing was called the prebiotic broth theory. That is that the surface of the earth, all these organic, which are the molecules that were made of, came together and somehow formed a life. Factor house. He didnt buy it. So he said, in one of his first papers, the prebiotic broth theory has received devastating criticism for being logically incompatible with thermodynamics chemically induced chemicals. Sorry, chemically and geo chemically implausible discontinuous with biology and chemistry and experimentally refuted. That was his opening salvo. Now the people that he was criticizing came back and. Jeffrey miller, who was stanley miller, rather, who was the person had originally found the first Experimental Work to the prebiotic broth theory came back and he said the hypothesis, he said to a journalist, a real loser. I dont even know we have to discuss it. So, so but the fun part is when i talk to dr. Houser, you know, and i said, well, how did you feel about being attacked like that . And this was the interesting part. He said to me, as far as im concerned sorry, he said to me, i was what you call a counterpart puncher. Science is the field of controversy, even a scientific topic. Theres no controversy. You have no science. So i wouldnt say that ive been treated. I know people have me. But he said, consider what im doing to them. So so it was it was great fun as well to. Talk to people who were really part of this story. Yeah, yeah. I. I still, while reading it, was marveling at how many different people. You were able to pull into three dimensions. What . And one of the things that does is it made the book incredibly accessible, not just accessible but fun to read. And i was curious if this is real science, but its available to everyone. Did you feel like you had to any of the details to simplify things to make it available to to everyone . You know, i didnt because it was actually the opposite, which is i knew almost nothing when i started the book, what was in it and what wanted to do was tell this story in a way that everybody could appreciate the way that i did, because i just learned so many mindblowing that i, you know, i mean, look, every particle in your body came from the big bang, right . So at one point, everything in your body was in a teeny tiny, infinitesimal point of time and space in all of us, all visible. It exploded. The Hydrogen Atoms and the protons that formed in stars. All the chemical elements that made of all of the 118 elements on the periodic table, made of 24 of them. Its those are the molecules of life. Those the ones that we trace. And actually 98 of our up your mass and mine comes from only six of them. Right. They they found their way to earth life was created. Were here. Were made of those particles and. Now were look we can actually look back, retrace that journey, which is i mean, its just incredible, right . I mean, and thats i wanted to recap capture whats so incredible about discoveries, because you learn about big bang in school. You learn about photosynth, you learn about a lot of other theories. And and we kind of accept them. But if you actually stop and sit back and really think about them, theyre mind blowing. And thats really one that, you know, i my mind was blown and thats what i wanted to convey. It comes across. Does it change you think about us and our lives. I mean, theres so points at which things could have gone and we wouldnt be here. At least thats i kept thinking of like, this is remarkable. Did it change how you think about you, me and people . Well, you know, i go back forth about whether we should be here or not, because on the one hand, you have all these particles springing out of big bang. And theres a way in which the conscience of the universe has such that its inevitable that stars would form that the elements would form once those elements were formed. Its its kind of in there were inevitable that the organic elements could in some create living things. On the other hand there are many lucky breaks. You know, theres so many ways in which the Nuclear Forces in subatomic particles have just the right levels of that carbon formed. We are over 60 carbon, right. If if carbon have been formed in stars from from hydrogen and helium we wouldnt be here right. And then when a huge molecular cloud condensed formed this the our the sun and when the planet the collisions of the particles around it formed the planets and gigantic violent collisions. When the earth was 90 formed, it was smashed into by a mars sized which which can pletely melt at the planet. By the way, it also sent a huge amount of stuff into earths orbit which created the moon. But the planet, our planet was literally red hot, right . Completely melted. Well, in a way, it was a lucky break because. The earth acquired more iron that impacting body. But it sank to the center. We have because the earth is large enough and formed in that way. We have a huge iron core that creates a Magnetic Field that protects us from cosmic rays and solar winds that would otherwise destroy our fragile organic molecules in our dna. And so theres so many things that are that just seem so lucky. So, you know, there are scientists many scientists who think that life probably exists all over the place and this kind of inevitable. And there are others who say this had to happen and this happened to happen and this and it happened and its hard to say whether there is life anywhere. And i kind of waffle on this because i know i can see both side. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me that you a sense of kind of wonder throughout book and or is that innate who you are or is that is something you just kind of came across as you were discovering all of this . I think its innate. Tell me, is there anything that didnt make it into the book thats really surprising or even did, but like a favorite piece of wonder or i . Yeah, well, one of my favorites is when i talked to a geologist about the origin of life and i asked him where do you think life began . And i expected him to say somewhere on the sea he was going to point some place on the surface of the earth. But instead he said, well, if i essentially im paraphrasing, but he said essentially, if i to put my money on it, its mars. And i was like, huh, youve got to be kidding me. Turns out he is a geologist who studies the impacts of huge asteroids. They hit earth and other planets, and he was among those who calculate that that if an asteroid hit mars is that not everything that would be impacted would melt but that there would be huge that could be thrown up into space and eventually find their way to earth. So there have been geologists actually found small meteorites that theyve just discovered are from mars and they went and they analyzed them to see how hot they got. And they found that they were heated more than 140 degrees fahrenheit, which is i mean, thats what thats arizona on a hot, sunny day, right . I mean thats not going to kill life, right. And bacteria can survive in space. They can survive. Theyve theyve been found to survive on the International Space system, on the outside for over 500 days. So theyre that was one thing that really surprised me was to discover that there are many very mainstream scientists who think that its very likely for quite a number of other reasons that that we are really descendants of martian microbes, that the first life began on mars its way here. And you and i are the result. Yeah. Crazy. Tell at the very beginning we were hearing about you spent much of your career making documentaries, science and history. Tell me about this jump to writing and kind of what was different and what you could what skills you could borrow from that previous life. So spent most of my career making science and history films and probably the connecting thing is that i would have a topic i would have to figure out how to find. I would have to bone up on it quickly. Copy. Try to find the characters and the drama it and really thing that connected most of the films. Science films that i did was that they were all scientific. They were scientific detective stories. So when i eventually came up with the idea for this book is, i mean, this is like the craziest and greatest story of all time in a sense. And i was really hooked it. I wanted to approach it in the same way. And so id never done long form writing before, but id written on a lot of documentary film scripts and. And so there was a way in which each of the chapters poses a different mystery. You know, theres a mystery. And how do we how did the scientists untangle the clues and come to what we know now . And so i still had a lot to learn about writing. I have to confess, because, of course, long form writing is a different of writing. But, you know, i had a lot of experience. I can calling up scientists and saying this what i know. Could you straight me up, please . Because and tell me whats really going on here. And i think that really that really carried me through. Yeah. Yeah. There is this constant drama and mystery elements throughout. Did you ever have things wanted to include that were boring or just like like what if it doesnt fit into paradigm . Was that an issue or not . Was there always mystery and. Well, if i to put it in the book and it was boring instead writing this much about it, i would write one line and i and the other amazing thing to me is the and ive kind of talked about this the characters that came about did you find those through calling people and stumble across them in the library or did you set out what characters you needed, how of this was pre thought structure versus discovery and then figuring out how it fit together . Well, you know, it started with the question of, how did we get from the big bang back to us . And i had to do a lot of reading and googling and try to figure out what the steps were. Mm hmm. So broke it down into steps and with questions. Right. So how did we learn how that that were made up were formed. So i started looking into that question as of the chapters and there were two what i was interested in who were the people who brought the either the great revelation to light or brought the tools that allowed to understand them. And so for instance, in that chapter, there were two that came up, which were both fabulous. The first one was a woman by the name of Cecilia Payne, who in the 1920s showed us what stars were made of people didnt know what stars were made of at the time. Actually in, the 1920s people thought that stars were made of the same thing as earth. So thought. And this was all this greatest stellar scientists thought that the sun had an eye, a large iron core just like earth. The composition was the same. She i mean, her story is is amazing because she studied at Cambridge University b she fell in love with research. She realized when she was about to graduate that in england she couldnt pursue it and she would have to essentially become school mistress, which you write in her wonderful autobiography, which she felt like was a fate worse than death. But she she managed to get a scholarship to to harvard and it was here that she did work analyzing harvards plates and she was able to show that the stars were actually 98 Hydrogen Helium which is completely different obviously from what the earth is made of. And so, in fact, her. Her thesis was highly praised by by a very, very astrophysicist as being brilliant, except because there were many things in her thesis, except at one point he said it must certainly be. And so she ended up writing in her thesis that this one particular finding must certainly not be the case. She was a graduate student. He was americas preeminent stellar astronomer. And then, interestingly enough enough, just a few years later, using Quantum Mechanics, other aspects of Quantum Mechanics, he actually came around to her opinion and published a article suggesting, in fact, stars are made of mostly hydrogen, helium and by the way, Cecilia Payne was right. So an story, right . I mean, id never heard of her, but i was surprised by how many wonderful stories just popped up by following the questions that i laid down in my book. And that thats a great example. When reading it, i kept thinking, this will inspire scientists. Is there a is there an audience you have in mind or a goal . Something you want people to come away feeling, thinking . You know, i dont write it so much to inspire future scientists so much as. I think for all of us to. I mean this is our this is our origin story. Right. And i think its its its not only a great story, but its its really the story of our Scientific Understanding of how not why were here, but how we got here and, you know one of the things that i learned because the last chapter, the last couple of chapters about what happens in our body and in our cell. One of the things that i learned is that even a single cell is incredibly worthy of respect because its so unbelievably complicated and our bodies, your body and my body. Were each made of 30 trillion cells. Each of those cells. Contains 100 trillion atoms in it. Each one, which is i mean, thats more stars than there are in the milky way. I just i its i think its beyond our comprehend action to really understand how complex our own bodies are. And so, in a way. You know, when i look around at people now, sometimes i think wow, you are really amazing. You are so superstar cated, you know. But ill tell i mean really was brought home me when i was finishing the book when my my mother passed away and. You know, we cremated her. I held in my hands a box with her ashes and those, atoms and particles all came from the big bang. And it just really made me, it just me feel a tremendous amount of just whole and gratitude to that, you know, the universe could somehow create someone is beautiful and loving as she is and other people that i love and, you know, i just think understanding this story i think its just it makes me just feel a little bit different about about our place in the universe. Yeah. And see that. Almost ready for questions. One last one. The origin story of this book came from your daughter. You can be a vegetarian. Is she still a vegetarian . Did you outlast on this effort . She is not. Not okay. Just wondering okay. Who is first . Raise your hand up so we can bring a microphone. And that gentleman over there. Good evening. Thank you. Appreciate your time in story. I havent read the book yet, but what ive hearing you speak in thinking about the scientific theories out there, the world Quantum Entanglement strikes me, as you know a giant mystery of the idea of how things in different locations can, you know, seemingly be a mirror of each other. I wonder, is that something that you explored as as part of your research . And that does it does it connect to the other discoveries that youve highlighted in ways that youd like to share . Unfortunately, it doesnt, in part because its a fascinating, fascinating theory. But we dont really know enough about that to understand how that led to us being here. And so it didnt fall into it. Yeah, go ahead. Hi. Can you hear. Yeah, i guess you can hear me. I know this is a scientific book, and you spent a lot of time with science. And im just curious. Ive thinking about maybe the past five or ten years bridging science with Spiritual Authority or like the dalai coming to mit and trying to kind of create more. Cohesion versus separate ways of thinking and. I was just wondering with this book, i havent read it yet, but i was curious if you did any interviews with none scientific like not the dalai lama, something along those lines lines. I didnt. But did i did it really interesting that there were quite a number of scientists in my book who were very religious. Starting with lemaitre who was the the priest who would wear a clerical collar all the time. Right. Because he was a very devout priest and he actually belonged to a catholic order for his entire life who, you know, believed in the big bang and believed in science but didnt find that incompatible with his deep spirituality . In fact . Le maitre like to say that that science and salvation were two paths to the truth and that the big bang provided a veil in his mind beyond which we could never see. And that is how one way in which. Religion could still could coexist. And that then and that and that science was to understand the Natural World and religion was to understand how we find salvation. But he was not the only one. I found that very interesting. Yeah. How are you doing . Pardon . If you answered this earlier, i arrived a little late. But what was . What sparked . The idea for your book title. Because when i was walking by, i was like, oh yeah, i signed up for that event. It was just so catchy, so im very curious how. We always have to find a catchy title. Right. And theres sense in which our bodies came from, the big bang and. We in a sense, are made of everything that came out of the big bang and the elements that were formed in in in huge fiery hot stars. And in the most powerful explosions in the universe. And so, in a way you know, the image i had for the book, which i didnt do on the on the on the book cover was like somebody sitting down at the dinner table and eating a galaxy because in a sense, its like, whats gotten into you, right . So theres something along those lines somehow evolved into the title. I wouldnt say i think ive some of your television and that they were excellent so im sure the book is going to be just as good. Im curious, did you delve into the issues of consciousness or is it just more biological . How we got from the big bang to here here . I dont go into consciousness in the book really at all yeah, except to say that its its still a great mystery and that there are there are a lot of disagreements about whether we even know enough of the fundamental laws of physics to, understand consciousness because. There are some physicists who still hope that through Quantum Entanglement or, or Something Else will come up, will, will some other aspect, Quantum Mechanics in particular, will find some other way of understanding consciousness. But its still its still big question mark. So next book, i think i saw another head. Yeah. Yeah, that would be. Great. Thanks. This is incredibly and brand new to me. Im wondering when it became obvious to you that you had was a book and not film because that was medium. Did those question ever live . Did you ever think im going to make another film about these question and why that ship and having made it into a book. Do you think about any kind of a visual adaptation in its a fun question. So actually came up with the idea for the book when i was when i was brainstorming about ideas, films. But i realized that because its so wide reaching, theres so many characters, it would not at the time have been an easy film me to pitch or you know, it could be made but it, it, it, it, its some work to do. It, but, but there were other of my work as a filmmaker that really did make that id the idea of the of the book so powerful to me. I mean first of all i realized its an incredible story but i also as a filmmaker, you know, i remember once interviewing a physicist when i was doing some research for a film, stephen hawking. And this physicist told me, oh yeah, empty space is not actually theyre particles that bubble out of empty space, annihilate each other. So theres no really empty space. And i was like, are you kidding . And if you think about the big bang which we all take for granted. Okay. So everything in the entire universe visible universe was contained. This teeny, tiny point in space and time. And then it expanded. It expanded into what, you know, nobody. Right. So. So there was a sense in which i had a strong suspicion that. A lot of the theories that scientists had about how we got here if you really sit back and look at them, are really you know, theyre mind blowing. They go ahead. So what was hardest part of sort of linking this all together since it spanned so many topics over such a wide of time. The part in putting it all together was putting all together. I came up with an outline and it was really following the progression of our atoms from big bang through, the creation of the solar system earth became habitable. How plants evolved and how photosynthesis this arose. And it because of photosynthesis that we got here. So i followed the logic of the story all the way through. And once i kind of set out that that outline and then it was just following it and just you know, spending the time i work into. But when i mentioned photosynthesis because thats one thing that we havent talked about so which is its just my wind blowing. This is one of the things that i just couldnt believe. Im still getting my head around that we wouldnt be here without photosynthesis. Thought photosynthesis. Who cares . I mean, in high school, i think i learned about and i didnt think about it for 2 seconds. Now, i think its the most amazing chemical process in the world why. So over 4 billion years ago when the earth formed, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Now theres 21 oxygen that all from photosynthesis, first from bacteria and then from plants that put in the atmosphere that oxygen went up high, up into the atmosphere and created the ozone that protects us from harmful cosmic rays and solar winds that would otherwise is, you know, allow us to exist. And it also that oxygen more complex. Cell organelles in our cells little factories in our cells to to use the oxygen to create energy more efficiently than bacteria could. So we know them now. Mitochondria, your cell your cells have. Typically about 2000 mitochondria in every cell. If you laid all the mitochondria in your body laid out flat, it would cover two basketball fields. Right. And so so then think about your body. 93 by mass a product of photosynthesis, because. 83 of you by mass is and oxygen, which was once Carbon Dioxide in the until photosynthesis grab it in plants and other organisms and made sugars from it. And so im just Getting Started like i could talk for hours about this. Right, but its just there were so many things that really, you know, when you step back and really look at them and think about them, theyre just incredible. Do we have. Yeah, go ahead and. Oh, if you mind just waiting one sec. Okay. Thank you. I thank you for your time. And you know it must be really fascinating journey for you in this discovery, you know, looking up evidence. Im learning about the latest scientific, scientific interpretation of ourselves, the universe and so on, while putting all of this information together in your book, did you ever come up with a a ha moment . We say, this is why big bang happened or this is why the universe continued to expand by just listening to your you talk just now, you my aha moment is that if we look at exo exo planet, one of the evidence to to find there might be life form on that is to check on their ozone layer. If they have an ozone layer that means that there must be life form. You know that type of aha moment. Did you have any and would you like to share with us, you know, even though we may not be, you know, have been, you know, scientifically proven, but we do be able, you know, would you want to share that . Yeah, well, you raise a great one, actually, because. One of the stories that i that i tell in the book is that in 1960s, science didnt believe that organic molecules and organic are the carbon oxygen, hydrogen chains. We are made up. You dont find them in the rocks. Thats what life is made of. They didnt believe that those longer delicate molecules exist in space until one particular scientist, a physicist named charles downs, decided, despite what everybody said he was going to look at and he immediately found them. Right. So this goes to the cognitive bias. Well take a little detour. Why didnt everybody else think that they could . They were right that cosmic rays and other particles in space would destroy organic molecules, but they hadnt ever considered that you could have a cloud of molecules so large, so huge that the molecules, the outside would protect the ones on the inside. So now we know that there are over 200 different types of organic molecules in space. And the interesting thing, one of the interesting things about them is they may have been precursors of possibly of the of the molecules that first created life on earth. But other thing that goes to your point is that it also gives. Hope or at least suspicion that there be life on other planets, because now we know the universe is permeated with clouds of organic molecules. And so if those molecules could very well have found their way to planets, the universe. And thats one of the reasons why many scientists think that its very likely one of the many reasons why they think its very likely that is life elsewhere, because organic molecules are are really everywhere. Major major. Lets see, we only have a few left. Uh, that. Either one. Yes. Sounds great. Well, first off, thank you so much for writing the book. Im not done. And dont want to be done because im really enjoying it very much. So thank you. I think was einstein who talked about the more that we know, the more that we realize we dont know, because sort of the of knowledge we have grows. And so interface to whats beyond it grows. Did you feel in writing this book that were putting things to bed in our understanding or opening more doors to future questions . Well, i think both because i think thats exactly right, that the more we the more we dont go. No, no, you. But if did make me realize theres that there are certain mysteries that are going to take a long time for us really grapple with. One of them is what happened before the bang, right . Thats of the myths. There are a lot of scientists, a lot of theories about that. Its going to be hard to find the Experimental Evidence to really. Choose one over the other. The origin of life is another one where there are actually a lot very good theories about it. But theyre all over the place, you know and bringing them together and none of them are conclusive enough. And then the other one, this thats another big theory. And, you know, i i found it really interesting that those three touch points are where we have probably the biggest questions many of the biggest questions in science. And of course, there are others like dark matter and other things, but those are among them. Mm hmm. Yeah, i had. Yeah. Thank you. Its im still reading the book. Its just absolutely gripping. I was curious as you were talking about this discoveries, did you have any insights about, the qualities inside, the qualities that make for a successful scientist . Because if youre facing all these doubts, you have to a lot of, you know, inner strength. But could you talk a little bit what it takes to be a good scientist in the based the the stories that youve told in the book. Yeah we could talk about that for a long long time you know a lot the scientists were really working. Some of were obsessive, you know, some of them were more social than others. But. You really have to you know, i talked about skepticism. You really have to stand your and be willing to follow the evidence and go where it leads you, even when everybody else around you says youre crazy, you know that happened. I saw that in stories that i tell happening again and again. And and in fact, i remember some years ago interviewing denis oakley of overby, who writes for the new york. And he said to me because he had been observing hawking and other physicists up close. And he said, well, for some people, scientists like its like a contact sport because youve got to get up there and got to put your ideas out there. And you and you have to defend them. And and, you know, theres a tremendous amount of skepticism. So youve got to be willing endure a certain amount of that. But the other thing that that i was really struck by was that one of the reasons that one of the prime motivations for so many scientists is not just curious city, but the feeling of learning something new. You know, i talked to a nasa scientist and he was the guy to conclusively show that a meteor right actually contained organic amino in it. And he said to me it was the most amazing time in my life because. I knew something that nobody else in the world knew. You know and i think that is a really strong motivation for many scientists. Okay. We are almost out of time. But i have one last question i wanted to know you deserve a good long vacation after this. Producing this book. But do you have a sense of whats next and also what what medium youll choose now that youve been on both sides . I love writing this book. I mean, i think you can tell that its just been it was a joy for me to write and there are just so many Great Stories that i havent tapped yet of scientific discovery. So im going to write another book, a its going to be about scientific discovery and thats about all i know. Thank you so much for for joining us. Thank you. Welcome to the conservative womens network. Im michelle en,