and they are laid off concrete finishers in vermont and they are everywhere. this book is about them. it is for them. it happened to be in my backyard, the microcosm, the capsule that i tried to tell. and they don't have any champions. they are as close to forgotten as anybody i know. >> host: what did the mill closing due to their sense of self? they take so much pride in building and working with their hands what did the mill closing due to them? >> guest: one fellow went to make cat food. other guys had trouble finding work at all. a lot of the older folks retired. they did not build around going woe is me. they cut firewood. they found a way to make a living. they were very capable. there is a difference in getting by and making a living. they're getting by. a lot of them -- a lot of land in jobs that paid the bills just barely and give them insurance which is the key to everything. but if you ask them if they are still cotton mill workers that hard work millworkers they will tell you know. like my brother. if you ask him are you still a mill hand he will say no, of course not. but if you go in his closet and open it up, all these jackets that he was awarded for perfect attendance for working without missing a day, pushed out at you. if you open one of his force it is stacked with t-shirts from bass tournaments and company picnics. he didn't wear them anymore. i think there is incredible pride in these jobs like there was at being a steelworker and building houses, driving a tractor. there is incredible pride in these things. my brother sam said a beautiful thing. it is funny. i am supposed to be the one that deals with words and he is supposed to be the one that is capable. he told me once, he said pretty soon the only thing we are going to make in this country will be money. and he doesn't figure it takes a lot of people to do a job like that. i think he has a good point. >> deepak chopra and leonard mlodinow debate whether science or. and forms the best foundation for understanding the world. this is about 50 minutes. >> i am one of the founders of the synagogue and the welcome you to would be a very interesting evening. the building we are sitting in is 103 years old and in the space of spirituality, gives deepak chopra a little bit of an edge in this discussion. i am confident it will be very even-handed at the end of the day. the building has gone through a number of iterations. it was a regionally the first, second homer of the addison road congregation for 50 years and home of the turner memorial church for 40 years and has been the sixth and ninth synagogue on seven years. tonight's event is typical of the type of event we try to do. great people beleaguered interesting topics and things people are interested in. jackie leventhal who runs the cultural programming wants me to announce when i do upcoming events and generally i have done but are have to tell you this. i look at the author's coming tonight, six great things but we have bill bryson coming, jeffrey huge entities and jeff stevenbrier and john paul stevens and diane stevens. we really get some great stuff. i have to thank jackie for that. [applause] tonight we are honored to have leonard mlodinow and deepak chopra, author of more and 60 books including numerous new york times bestsellers and among his many distinctions he is a fellow of the american college of physicians. time magazine named him one of the 100 heroes and icons of our century. pretty impressive. dr. leonard mlodinow is not going to be a pushover. he will be teaching at caltech. he is a renowned physicist, author of several books including the drug and walk:how randomness rules our lives. and interesting subject on the new york times best-seller list. he is a writing collaborator with stephen hawking. the moderator tonight is timothy shriver. we are lucky to have him tonight. he is chairman and ceo of the special olympics and social leader and educator and activist legal film producer, entrepreneur additional one street over from me. we're very connected. we will have questions from the audience. they will be on index cards at 7:15. we will have someone pick them up. after tonight's talk we will have a dessert reception downstairs sponsored by david smith family foundation. we thank him for that. and it should be an interesting moment because we hear interesting things tonight from our guest and carry on this conversation downstairs. please join me in welcoming the three gentlemen, deepak chopra, leonard mlodinow and tim shriver. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you. good evening. thank you. the evening. unlike to add my welcome to everyone here and say right at the outset that i feel i have been in many, many distinguished environment in my life but i have never been as out of my league as i am tonight. have any of you read the book? be honest. good. so that means the fact that it took me three times reading it to understand it doesn't make me feel bad because none of you have anything over me. at least i have tried. it is actually an extraordinary book. i hope you will all get copies tonight or in the near future. it is titled war of the world views. michael lee gripe with the book is the word war. i would like -- i don't think -- -- i don't think tonight we will have a war. at least i hope not. extraordinary rich discussion with the two people who have arguably as good an insight into the science and spiritual world. whar my credentials? i prayed that i would be the shortstop for the boston red sox. it didn't come true. i prayed that i would win wimbledon. that didn't happen either. i have a lot of experience with frustration in religion. and i read the book going 600 the earth and you can't help but remember -- drinking a cup of coffee as most of you have done in an airplane. someone -- you can't help but be reminded that everywhere we go today of the extraordinary, unbelievable achievement of science. so we stand in a world hungry for the spirit and fascinated by science and conflicted about those two ideas lead us. without any further talking from me i will turn it over to the experts and i am going to start by asking a very broad question which is to say first, what is really good about science and what is really good -- what is really good about spirituality? >> why did you laugh? >> what is really good about science is precisely what tim was mentioning. life would be impossible today without science. we are here because of the jet plane to must talking about. we have eliminated a number of epidemics of disease. we have social networks that instantly are connecting us because of science and technology. we have the capacity today to rewire the global brain and create a planetary civilization for the first time. i could go on and on about what is good from science but what is really good for science is it enriches the possibilities and magnificence and awesome this of god. that is really good about science. why imagine creating a universe in an instant instead of taking seven million years? imagine creating a big bang that simultaneously appears everywhere. the big band wasn't in a particular location of space and time because before the big bang there was neither space nor time. it appears everywhere and we know that because background radiation in all sites. that is omnipresent. imagine taking a doctor, a period at the end of a sentence and stretching across billions of light years of space and time. that is omnipotence. imagine precise laws, so precise that if they were off by a fraction of a fraction we wouldn't have a universe. that is omniscience. i think we have done got great injustice by squeezing got into the volume of a body, the span of a lifetime. giving him a male identity and putting him somewhere in an ethnic background and saying this god is the creator of the universe. god is much more awesome thanks to science. [applause] >> you ask what is good about spirituality. their two levels after that question. one level of spirituality is general. and very important to people's lives to be spiritual. if you are a scientist, very important that people realize being a scientist doesn't mean you are not a spiritual person. the other level is spirituality, i admire that spirituality as it relates to the human condition. framing yourself from the baggage of your past, treating other people with respect and meditating. it is good for you. i recommend it and i also agree that spirituality, being able to appreciate the human condition at your place in the world makes science of a much more awesome. there's a great complementary there. nothing you can see, touch, feel proven to be true and therefore should not be accepted. >> i talk about science as a way of looking at understanding the world and when you try to understand the physical world you should exclude your subject to the and science is a way of understanding the world as it is without interference or the way we like it to be. thousands of years ago -- always the same questions they have today. why is the world away it is? what is behind them? why are there earthquakes and floods? what are those lights in the sky? thousands of years ago people would make up stories of a wolf coming across the sky chasing another wolf and blocking of the sun and after a while we developed philosophy which is a way of approaching the same questions but the last few hundred years we developed science. another method of understanding these issues and the things science has is when you have a theory in science you don't just give an opinion. we require the theory that they make predictions and the testable and falsifying. the progress in understanding the way the universe is that has come in the last few centuries based on that idea has been enormous. much more progress than we made in thousands of years before that. but science should not be asked to answer all the questions of life. science does not explain the meaning of life. science doesn't explain why you feel love. science doesn't explain why human beings are here. science should be required to do that. on the other hand spirituality answers other questions often not just spirituality but organized religion often gives answers to physical questions and those the answers often contradict what we observe in science. in the book i argue about that. why would you believe the creation story in the bible? religion can offer something to people but when they talk about the physical world face a things that are clearly not right. people tend -- i always wonder. someone who believes literally in the bible. the bible says homosexuals should be killed, children who disrespect their parents should be killed. we have no one left. people who talk about creation, taking the bible literally -- i don't know how they get around ignoring that. but then they take the other parts about the physical universe literally. i don't understand that. they should recognize in some pretty powerful case that science has unlocked secrets beyond anybody's imagination even a couple hundred years ago. how the brain functions, how the universe is exploiting an extraordinary pace, we know how it started and how it will end. you are suggesting that consciousness is a concept that you can't measure, can't see or touch or get a microscope around it but it is there. everyone knows it is there but nobody can measure it. it is fanciful. >> this is the dilemma really accurately. that is what is so difficult to talk about consciousness because consciousness is what is talking right now. if i wasn't a conscious being i couldn't articulate what i am saying and you wouldn't be able to listen to me or understand what i am saying. we are conscious. the mistakes science is making about consciousness and science admits it. towards the end book leonard says science does not explain consciousness. he also adds for now. >> but it will sunni enough. >> but here is the basic problem. okay? this is an accepted problem. it is called the hard problem in consciousness. here is the hard problem. imagine the sun sets on the ocean. can you all see it? can you see a picture? >> i can. >> the place of your mother. if i went inside your brain there is no picture. there is electrochemical activity. you are having a subjective experience. we see the correlation between the picture and electromagnetic activity science doesn't even have a model to explain how that electrochemical activity creates the subjective experience which is what life is about. you don't have so many units of particles being secreted, right? love is an experience. , is an experience. the taste of red wine is an experience. auld experience in our consciousness and science can't find it by looking at the brain. the reason is because consciousness is doing the looking. how do you find something that is always the observer in the object of observation. >> look in the mirror. >> that is it. so all scientific validation of consciousness, look in the mirror. the only experience of consciousness is self awareness. that is it. consciousness is itself. the self can no itself by looking at itself. so right now i want you to have a brief experience. as you are listening to me turn your attention to listening. are you listening to me? turn your attention to who is listening. that awareness that you experienced right now is consciousness. even though while you were experiencing that awareness you were saying what is that disturbance? that siren? i wish i had gone to the bathroom before the lecture started. that experience occurs in your consciousness. this is what all spiritual traditions have said. this is not -- the scientifically based philosophers says is a hard problem. and other people accept that. it is a hard problem. because we are looking for consciousness there when it is doing the looking. >> so when deepak chopra talks that way i was thinking -- you have to really work hard up here. i was struck and remembered the quote from the great scientist of the early part of the scientific revolution pascal who said the heart has reason that reason doesn't no. i thought to myself at some level it seems pascal is just saying -- a great scientist. one of the important scientists of his time -- saying there's more than one way of knowing. the way in which science knows might be complemented by a completely different way of knowing. is that possible? >> i believe that. i said earlier a way of knowing yourself and the physical world but you have to be careful because sometimes you're itself tends to overlap. deepak chopra believes the mind separate from the brain. that there is some other realm he can talk about that everything is connected. and i believe that the consciousness whatever it is, the human mind and scientists believe comes from the brain and there's a lot of evidence that the consciousness of the human brain comes from the brain. you get people to have fought and memories and experiences color. we are beginning to learn where the emotions come from and how the brain works. i am not saying by doing that we are learning the meaning of life, we're learning about ourselves. >> is there a meaning to life in science? >> science doesn't address the meaning of life. science addresses issues of the physical world. science is about telling you here is the universe, here is a situation. i am going to tell you what will happen a second or a minute later. i will tell you how this operates. doesn't address the question of meaning and i don't know why that should be required of science. to me -- [talking over each other] >> if i'm an athlete you can say i love athletics the cooking is very important. why doesn't athletics address cooking? it is a separate issue. a separate problem. when we get into problems you get into difficulties when you try to make science something it is not. i don't know for what -- >> he says explicitly in the book what he said right now that science cannot explain consciousness. >> i said signs could explain conscious of this. as of the mind and body -- [talking over each other] >> please don't interrupt me. no brain scientist can tell you right now. in the previous book he has denied with stephen hawking the existence of free will. we all think we have free will. no brain size can tell you the mechanics of creativity or imagination. as we have been explaining today, with a geneticist and a narrow scientist at harvard who is the joseph p. kennedy professor at mass general who explicitly says he is at the neuroscience conference with former scientists, where and how memory is stored and after -- they all said we don't know. >> is spirituality just finding what science doesn't know and saying -- >> spirituality is also say what is the meaning and purpose of my existence? do i have a soul? does god exist? what is the meaning of the desk? if god exists does he or she or it, care about me? >> are there any right or wrong answers? >> i think there is one thing i want to make clear. science does not explain everything yet and it may never. the ku mind might not be capable of understanding everything but this goes back thousands of years. people did not understand what causes an eclipse. people came along and said if we don't understand it must be wolves jumping across the sky. i am saying just because we don't understand consciousness or another aspect of human beings we shouldn't grab on to any explanation like wolves jump across the sky. science leaves blanks in explanation, you want to interrupt but you won't. science leaves blanks in understanding of the world but doesn't mean we are free to fill those blanks with any answers we want. >> bill ahead. of reality that will never be accessible to wes. >> i didn't hear him say that. >> where do the laws come from? science cannot answer that because if you answer that how would you answer where the loss came from you have some other law or principal and derive those laws and say where do those laws come from? physics by definition starts with some for principles and the rise the consequences that physics never asks the question where did those laws come from what created those laws. that is outside the realm of physics. >> why does physics not acknowledge there's a first cause? >> first cause of the universe? >> of the laws. of anything. >> stephen hawking and i explicitly said physics can't explain revel laws come from. if you want to call that job -- god we have no judgment of that. universe. physics. [talking over each other] >> thomas aquinas and aristotle, first, the leaders will first mover. >> what we are saying is the universe cannot move the weedy board. >> not quite the same as saying the universe -- physics can -- the creation of the universe. the universe and the laws of physics are two separate things. i don't think thomas aquinas was talking about the laws of physics. but what do we get -- what do we gain by saying that is fine? what do i get -- >> it gets us into humility and reverence. it gets us into -- >> you quote -- physicists have a lot of ideas. .. >> experimentation and observation. it's conceived in consciousness, where is experiment designed in consciousness? where is observation made in consciousness? we have no scientific explanation for consciousness. right there you're ignoring the white elephant in the room, you know? you are saying that we can have an explanation in the absence of consciousness when all explanation science needs conscious to explain anything, and consciousness doesn't need science to explain anything, all it needs is self-awareness. >> i would just like to correct a couple things. one is that deepak seems to be characterizing scientists as unable to have an awe in nature even as he was quoting einstein. you're a smart guy, you could go to law school, make a ton of money, instead you choose to sit in some dark office working on equations all day and all night with no promise of any particular success, and you do that because you do have awe and wonder in the -- >> [inaudible] >> so when i said spirituality's important to scientists, scientists don't believe that wolves jump across the sky -- >> [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible conversations] >> there's not one person in this room that believes -- >> well, to me, you do. >> i do? [laughter] when did you hear me say that? [laughter] >> i don't mean that literally. >> all right. but in any case -- wait, wait, the other thing is, deepak says scientists deny consciousness. i don't know where that comes from. there are scientists who are studying consciousness. you know, but the scientists admit that they don't, they can't just say where it comes from. scientists progress in small steps carefully, and scientists will start talking about what consciousness is when they have a good idea what it is. just because they can't explain it doesn't mean they deny it. [inaudible] become author of the words a very scientific attitude. i think his attitude is scientific even though he accuses me of wolves and -- [laughter] eclipses. >> plausible. >> one thing i can say about leonard is great intellectual integrity. you know, great -- we've spent a lot of time together, and i will say that, you know, he has intellectual integrity. but there are fundamentalists in science today who will make statements like the god delusion and actually have an agenda. science is not supposed to have an agenda. >> but in fairness, a lot of people would say maybe a first cause has some, you know, you could make a case that that is justifiable as the definition of god or something, but people get in a lot of -- people get uncomfortable with spirituality and religion because from the idea of the first cause or consciousness, religions tend to make up a lot of rules and ideas and plans and programs that drive people kind of -- >> well, spirituality needs -- [inaudible] >> well, but spirituality, to say there's a spirit is one thing. to then say this is how you ought to live is another. and the claims that spiritual people are not really very nile. -- verifiable. how do you know whether it's to be anxious or do this or that. religions tend to say this is the right way to go, and scientists come along and say how do you know? >> can we separate religious dogma from religious experience? because if you look at --? >> what i want people, what i want you to help us answer is how do you defend the inivity bl need that any -- inevitable need that any spiritual leader has to say things about the world based on your spirituality that will inevitably lead to conflict? >> well, i side with h.g. wells, jealous o si with a halo. [laughter] i think any imposed morality is immoral. but the religious experience which gives you an experience of transcendence, of unity consciousness spontaneously brings about the, what were called platonic qualities. a yearning for platonic qualities. truth, goodness, beauty, evolution, peace, social justice, harmony, um, love, compassion, equanimity. this is the religious experience that is a spontaneous expression of transcendence, of being connected to the first cause, whatever you want to call it. so i think if you understand the religious experience, you know, jesus had the religious experience, and then, of course, you have got the devil came and said let's institutionalize it, and we'll call it religion. [laughter] >> so you believe in the devil? >> i believe that everything has its opposite just like particles have antiparticles, the universe would be meaningless if it was not one of contrast. so when i'm saying devil, i think of it metaphorically as the -- [inaudible] >> but so in the -- [laughter] for those of us, and leonard refers to this in the book, for those of us who lived through the 20th century, one of the great challenges to people who say that god is good, awesome, beautiful, unifying, harmonious, etc., is the, obviously, the experience of the holocaust or the experience, the confrontation with evil or at least the sense which nothing good could allow -- >> good is the evolutionary impulse in creation. >> but why would god if there is such a first cause, if that being is good and true, why would -- >> if you're -- >> -- they have made it the way it is? >> if you're thinking of a being as being infinite, it contains everything. otherwise by definition it's not infinite. that's the difference between, you know, eastern wisdom traditions and some of the western traditions. they want god to conform to their idea of how things should be. in fact, when god being infinite is all things, you know? and there are these many faces of the mind, and it is our job to see where our free will allows us to align with the evolutionary impulse or the destructive impulse. but if that conscious is infinite, by definition it contains everything. now, having said that -- >> even, even the bad? >> of course. we see the bad, don't we? >> sure, yeah. >> it's a stage of development of congressness. -- consciousness. the it's a spiritual stage of development. we have stages of development in psychology, quite times we have stages of development in spirituality. >> well, i was thinking of stages of development of whatever we're calling god. >> well, you know -- >> i just don't know why she would have made us quite like this. >> if you look at the world right now, there's less violence today, less ethnocentrism, less racism, less bigotry, less of everything than a thousand years ago. we had slavery in this country a few, you know, hundred years ago. we, women couldn't vote in this century. so we are improving in our evolution, and that's part of the spiritual quest. but what i also have to say in the absence of that spiritual quest we have, and i have to phrase this very carefully before he pounces on me, leonard, because i know him well enough -- [laughter] i have to phrase it very carefully. science devoid of spirituality has given us modern capacities that risk our extinction, you know? it has given us mechanized death, nuclear weapons, global warming, climate chaos. i saw a program the other day where on television where there are people in civilian uniforms or civilian clothes, they have worked 9 to 5 jobs, they cake cigarette and cough -- they take cigarette and coffee breaks, and they go home at night and play with their children and go to sleep. but they've been moving a mouse on the computer to move drones in faraway places that have killed sometimes a few hundred people, and they don't have any emotional connection to that or spiritual connection to that. this is diabolical creativity that if i can say to you that the mass extinction of our civilization it will be because of modern capacities linked to primitive, spiritual development. >> so, leonard, doesn't science really, shouldn't scientists, great, advanced people like you and other people who are applying physics to technology, shouldn't you be asking for spiritual guidance almost daily? >> i think so, and i think all people should be looking for spiritual guidance daily. deepak uses the example a lot, and i'm not quite sure what he's getting at because the scientist, like everyone else, like you, like everyone in the audience, should be moral people. they shouldn't do evil things. but that's not really the question that's at issue here. the question at issue is how do we get knowledge, what is knowledge, and how do we attain it, or do we want to limit it? if you want to limit science, you could make an argument that we could just stop science because there will be evil people, anybody who just reads a book, you can make an atom bomb. once you read these things, once you get the knowledge, people can apply it. scientists are the ones seeking the new knowledge, not the ones who are making things from what with we know generally speaking. i mean, i don't want to get letters on this. [laughter] but, um, people -- so the question is, is it dangerous to have knowledge? that's what he's really talking about. once the knowledge is there, evil people can do evil things with it. >> but isn't it knowledge uncoupled from morals, from ethics, from -- >> i think knowledge is the goal. wisdom is the goal. we need wisdom, not knowledge. >> we do, but -- >> knowledge can be divine, it can be diabolical. >> wisdom is right. >> can physics bring wisdom? >> it should. physics, as you should, should seek the guidance of those who understand the human spirit and say let's make our science which we have the technology, we have the means today to resurrect some species that are disappearing. we have the technology today to correct global warming. we have the technology today to harness solar energy. why respect we paying anticipation -- why aren't we paying attention to these technologies more than we are paying attention to mechanized death? is. >> can i say i'm a scientist, but i agree with you, okay? this isn't a failure of science. [inaudible conversations] >> it's a failure of people in this town, okay? [laughter] >> bad move to blame -- [laughter] >> do you think scientists wake up in the morning and say i think i want to work on weapons today? you know, the government pays, you know, pays companies to do this kind of research, and if you don't like it, vote them out of office. but don't say science is a bad methodology for understanding the group verse because you don't like the way some people use it? >> who said that? >> you seem to be saying that. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] >> what you mean is people need to incorporate -- >> part of the human experience, you know, the human experience is more than documentation of data. the human experience is everything you do including the scientific pursuit is because of a subjective motivation. >> and yet if we're going to measure properties at at ten a bad mood. >> it does matter if you're in a bad mood. it will bias your observation. >> well, exactly. thank you. science is trying to avoid this human bias, and i like to see deepak agrees with me about that. [laughter] >> so a couple of questions from the audience. to leonard, can there be ultimate right and wrong? [laughter] >> this is a question -- i'm the scientist. i'm not a theologian, and i'm not a psychologist. >> but would you allow snit would you allow the idea? in other words, i was asking my wife what question do we really want to ask scientists, and sometimes it's just like why are you, why does science seem so irritated by religion these days, by spirituality, by the question of right and wrong? i know you're not, but -- >> the science is -- >> on behalf of a lot of people -- >> scientists get irritated by some of the uses of religion today when politicians say god told me to run or that evolution is wrong. or that, you know, global warming is just a theory, you know? when people look at the results and the hard work of scientists who, who really know a lot and test their theories and come up with results that are verifiable and other people who hardly think about it at all choose to use it for political means and irritates scientists. and deepak agrees with me on that. >> but that's not the book. the stride in books -- >> sorry? >> the books that have been written recently, the hitchens book and so on, these big bestsellers seem to have captured a level of anger. >> yeah. they capture the anger of the people who are angry at what i just described. the other people are tapping into the other thing, and they're all making a buck, and it's great. [laughter] they're either making a buck or getting a vote. >> i can answer that question. right or wrong. >> okay. >> i think everything has a context, you know? was it fair to go into germany and get rid of the man who was, who had, who was the cause of the holocaust? i would say, yes, it was. so you have to take things in context. even right and wrong. >> deepak, science and religion -- actually, i guess this is for both of you -- are often used to justify human superiority, human consciousness, the human mind, the human capacity is at the root of science. religions tend to place human beings at the center of meaning and value. aren't both guilty of making humans superior over all other creatures and all other beings? >> i don't -- i mean, you're talking about, i guess, when you talk about scientists making people superior, talking about specifically biologists who would talk about humans are different from other species? >> i'm not sure. the question's from the audience, but even in the book you point out that humans have reached a level of consciousness, a level of intellectual capacity and wonder, curiosity that allows them to reason in a way that other animals can't do. it suggests that human beings have a special -- >> well, i think if you compare a human with a sparrow, we'd all agree the human can reason a little better. >> right. >> but i don't think that scientists tend to feel any kind of superiority over people that are superior to animals or that they have greater work studying the brains of animals, the behavior and what different species are. >> my response to that is human being is a paradox call species. i mean, we're the only species that can create, that can yearn for the divine, that can have that longing for meaning and purpose, that have created art, science, civilization. so that's amazing part of us. but as i said, the human species is also the predator on our planet that has gotten rid of other species, is risking his own extiption. i was talking to a revolutionary biologist the other day. he said if insects disappeared from our planet, life would stop on this planet in five years. if human beings disappeared from the planet, life would flourish in five years. [laughter] because we are the cancer. if you look at it from a cosmic perspective, we're multiplying, we have caused an unsustainable planet, we're metastasizing, and we are risking our extinction. after 14 billion years of creation, we can do this in the next 100 years. so that's the price you pay for free will. and it's our responsibility to say do i want to harness our collective creativity for the first cause, or do we want to blow it? >> but is spirituality human only? do sparrows have a spirituality? >> oh, i think every, every living form is connected to the spirit. how can it not be if it's alive? in fact, animals are much more innocent than we are and, therefore, in a sense much more pure and unconditioned. >> so we're, unfortunately, these are all good questions. i think one that i really want to know the answer is for leonard. which episode of "star trek" did you work on? [laughter] >> now we get to the real important stuff. i worked on the second season. i was what's called a story editor, rewriting episodes that come in. but my part partner and i wrote one episode ourselves, it's called the -- [inaudible] excuse my french, and it was wesley crusher's first girlfriend. she was raised on one planet to be separated from the ruling class, and then she was being transported to her home planet, had never seen another -- this was a very spiritual episode, deepak. [laughter] had never seen another of her species, had never been in love, but fell in love with wesley. but she wasn't supposed to fall in love with someone of another species, certainly, and she happened to be guided by a nanny who was an evil shape shifter, so it got a little tense for a while. [laughter] and that was my scientific/spiritual episode of "star trek: the next generation." >> okay. a couple of questions that came from "the washington post" which we're obliged to share, and you both have to take a swing at these. the first one is, for those of us who put faith in science, what constructive responses can we make to statements by those without scientific training who attack scientific findings? for example, how should we respond to those that claim that hurricanes are the wrath of god? >> true education. >> just education. >> yeah. >> through education. >> i mean, religious people do this all the time. they attribute -- a coincidence happens, oh, god just made this coincidence happen. i just rap into my old friend, must have been god's work. >> there's no solution other than education. >> it's never true, that god didn't put us here together? >> no, i wouldn't say that. i think we have, we have choice to do what we want, and, you know, natural disasters have causes that we can explain like earthquakes. but some natural disasters like hurricanes we know that humans have a lot to do with it, with changing weather patterns and climate chaos. so you have to examine each case carefully. i would say a lot of the weather disturbances we are definitely responsible for it. but i wouldn't blame god for what we're doing. >> so, leonard, what would make a more effective political leader? a person of science or a person of faith? >> a person of faith meaning a person who believes in what? >> um -- >> can't a scientist be a person of faith? are those exclusionary, exclusive? is. >> well, a scientist or a spiritual -- >> i think if you can have attorneys that are politicians, you certainly should be able to have physicists. [laughter] [applause] i think that you need a spiritual person, a person who believes in the human spirit, who cares about people, who cares about community, cares about helping other people. and it would be good to have someone who understands science, too, once in a while. and i say, you know, we go for the gold and try and get both. >> okay. >> can i say something that politicians understand very well intuitively? they know that people pretend to be intellectual, but they actually are bristling we motions, and nobody ever makes a decision based on rationality. they make emotional decisions. so, and politicians understand that. and there's a biological reason for that. our emotional brain is about 100 million years in evolution, and our particle brain is only four million years. so the emotional brain in many ways is wiser and older, and people respond to that and spew tyly know. -- intuitively know. so it's not what the politician is saying, but what they feel the when the politician is saying what they're saying. >> so maybe we just start to get ready to close. i thought might be worth remembering steve jobs today. >> yes. >> his contributions are, obviously, enormous in many, many ways. his well-known stanford commencement speech among the things he said was this: death is very likely the single best invention of life. it is life's change agent. so i guess the question is, did life invent death? did the universe, did the first mover invent death? was it a good invention? >> death makes life possible. if we didn't, you know, every part of your body is dying right now, so you can recreate it. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> you know, you were a child once, that child is dead. you were a teenager. in biology we have a term which means programmed cellular death. when a cell forgets to die, it becomes cancerous. a cancerous cell is one that doesn't know how to die. the universe recreates itself through the mechanism of death. so, but stevelys on. every -- steve lives on. every time i use any handheld device on my computer, steve's consciousness is in my body right now, and that's how he survives, in each other's consciousness. and that's where we are right now, in each other's consciousness. >> do you think steve lives on, leonard? >> i think he heavies on -- he lives on in the minds of people who loved him, yes. i also agree with deepak. without death, there'd be no room -- >> and this would be -- [inaudible conversations] >> death is a necessary part of life at least if you're going to reproduce. and we all like to do that. [laughter] >> right. so we can agree on that. well, i think, um, i started by saying all the things i prayed for that i didn't i didn't get. >> can i add, the chicago cubs maybe not winning the world series, but getting in. [laughter] hasn't happened in my lifetime. >> you have to pray a little harder on that one, i think. [laughter] but i think we're enormously grateful that the two of you have taken and put so much effort into helping the average reader understand the world views of physics and the emerging world view of a new kind of spirituality that deepak has championed. it's a very different one than the kind of spirituality that we think of when we think of religious institutions, but we can also think of the call of israel, the lord, our god, is one. the way that prayer begins which, i'm sure, has been spoken very many times from this place. the unity that comes from the ancient traditions however crazy -- i think the only thing these two guys agree on is how much they don't like the catholic church, and i happen to be a catholic. the only institution that gets pilaried in this book is the catholic church. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> i know you like jesus. >> okay. >> many i know you like jesus. >> jesus was a scientist. [laughter] >> sign terrorist of the spirit, and you question that. >> i think we really want to thank you. >> no, no, no. >> thank you, and thank you for coming. tolerating us. [applause] >> and, um -- [applause] we're all invited to a reception downstairs, and i think both leonard and deepak are willing to stay and continue the conversation. so we invite you all cotom down -- come downstairs and enjoy refreshments. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> every weekend booktv offers 48 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2. >> on your screen is the tower in the center of the university of texas at austin campus. and booktv has been on location here at the university of texas conducting interviews with some of their professors who are also authors. every sunday during the month of november we'll be bringing you those interviews at 1 p.m. eastern time as part of our university series. >> up next, booktv interviews don keith while touring birmingham, alabama, as part of our cities tour. mr. keith recounts the military career of dudley morton who commanded the american submarine usswahoo in the pacific. >> mush morton was probably the most influential submarine skipper of world war ii. he was really the first true submarine ace, and i compare him quite a bit with the pilot aces that did so much in world war ii in the air war, especially in europe. mush is such an interesting character that i'm surprised and was surprised that nobody had done a biography on him yet. i had done several books on world war ii submarines and history. i always joke and say i don't write about submarines or world war ii history, i prefer to write about people and people in extraordinary situations and extraordinary people in extraordinary situations, and that exactly tribe toss a tee dudley mush morton, the fellow with the funny-sounding nick nature. he, i