The new president election campaign was dominated by the issue of same sex marriage after the into American Court of Human Rights ordered Costa Rica to legalize it will grant reports the election in Costa Rica has come down to a choice between 2 men who share a surname but whose radically different views on a single issue same sex marriage could decide the presidential race Fabricio are viral a former evangelical pastor who represents the right wing National restoration party and Carlos Alvarado a former Labor minister from the ruling center left party a neck and neck in most polls there are of course other questions that voters care about 2 in particular the economy and crime Indian space scientists say they've lost communication with a satellite 3 days after it was launched into orbit with great fanfare the Indian Space Research Organization says it's trying to reestablish contact with the G.'s sat 6 a satellite. The North Korean leader Kim Jong un has attended a groundbreaking pop concert in Pyongyang the cheering South Korean stars the official news agency in so he on harp says Mr Kim is the 1st North Korean leader ever to attend a performance by an artistic group from the south it included one of the biggest K. Pop groups red velvet event is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures that mark a thaw in relations between the 2 sides the leaders of the 2 Koreas are due to hold a summit on the border later this month B.B.C. News. Maria and Natalie Batali and asked a physicist with an eye to cultural evolution towards good a literary thinker who takes what she calls a telescopic view of time what unfolds between these 2 is joyous and expansive rich with cosmic imagining civic pondering and even some fresh definitions of the soul. I do not believe in a solid self as I don't believe in a soul that out lives the rest of the constellation of being the physical being that is us but at the same time it is where we spring from the US most of us is rooted in this very complex interplay of values believes ideas friends places we've been smells we've remembered and you know and it's impossible to be a person without that it took 13700000000 years for the atoms to come together to create the portal to the universe which is my physical self so in that statement is this side of the fluidity of time and space and I kind of see it all at once I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. I sat with Maria Popova and Natalie Batali at the 1st ever on being gathering amidst the redwoods of the 1440 Multiversity and Scott's Valley California. Not only Batali as Twitter profile is eukaryote you carry out you carry out yeah. On planet Earth you carry it on planet Earth using self-awareness and empathy to experience love and seek knowledge astronomer involved in search for life on exoplanets. She leads the science investigation effort for the Kepler Space Telescope which is Nasa's 1st mission to find Earth sized planets beyond our solar system which are potentially habitable. And Maria of hope is you know I don't know how to it's hard to describe either one of these women. She describes herself as a reader writer interesting Miss Hunter Gatherer and curious mind at large and Maria also singlehandedly reminds us that the Internet and social media can be places where we trade wisdom and sustenance and substance and deep learning and deep thinking and that even that kind of exchange and experience online can have millions of followers. So we have here an astrophysicist who writes about love and empathy and a literary thinker who takes what she calls a telescopic view of time. I'm so excited to have the 2 of them together. And I want to start. By hearing from each of you and I know Maria let's start with you something in however you would define the spiritual background of your life that is especially present to you now in the sense of nourishing or troubling or animating or all 3. Well I am an atheist who finds a lot of meaning in nourishment and spiritual sustenance in nature particularly in. I would say the cosmic nature of reality the cosmic aspect but also very much the earthly the being out in these beautiful redwoods today I mean I don't think it's an accident it's called the Cathedral of the there I don't know how many of you and I really recommend it I suppose more of the Whitman bend of when all else is exhausted in society and business and politics what remains nature remains and of course we are part of nature and the connection between the rest of the natural world and ourselves I find the most elemental nourishing force that there is. Well Natalie Wood I had a feeling you were going to yeah well. First of all as a scientist is there are there any scientists in the audience oh I feel less alone thank you that's fantastic I do consider myself to be a spiritual person but I have some grappled a lot with what the definition of spirituality is not sure that we have a common definition I guess my spirituality can best be characterized as a deep reverence for mystery. And then you know I ask myself will do I have any kind of faith that's another word that I kind of grapple with and I think at the crux of it even the scientist does have a face of sorts like for example I live my life. With the idea that the universe can be described by a set of physical laws that are quantifiable unknowable and that they apply anywhere in the universe and that's an assumption right I mean the scientist doesn't really have a notion of an absolute truth but that is a core assumption and in fact I would take it a step further and say that I live my life as if every mystery can be revealed and that there is no limit to our knowledge and that's a controversial statement but I just love living that way because to me it opens up possibility and it drives me and I find it very compelling and exciting. You know Maria when you and I spoke a couple of years ago you said something so interesting you talked about a way you think about the work you do with brain pickings. Which you know brain pickings as a way of sharing what you're reading and thinking and connections between these things. He said you feel like sometimes you're engaged in a kind of spiritual generational reparenting in the sense that and this is what you said caring for these bygone thinkers while at the same time doing the present generation with their hand me down wisdom and their most enduring ideas and recently I think this is a good example actually this year you were writing about math on optimism and despair a contemporary writer said James Baldwin knew when in considering why Shakespeare ensures he observed it is said that his time was easier than ours but I doubt it no time can be easy if one is living through it. And in that piece on Shakespeare Baldwin also said the greatest poet in the English language found poetry were poetry is found in the law of the people. Something that's interested me also recently I feel that you are. You've been writing and speaking a little bit more about Bulgaria about where you came from and how even though your you are young not yet an elder like me. I'm curious you you you still lived through the world utterly changing like the world of your childhood and what you but you've made an interesting connection between you know living through a communist dictatorship having that having seen poems compose and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances but also recall being not just for yourself but for us for the rest of us of this point of pride is that there was a Bulgarian folk song above the Voyager spacecraft. And in this context you've been thinking about and I've really been taking sustenance from this and quoting it everywhere how important it is and it's so relates to what you do you know taking a telescopic view of time as a way to inhabit this moment with some calm. Well I mean there are so many layers I think the Voyager is one of the greatest allegories for so much that we're grappling with today and as a scientific feat Natalie can speak to but it is the 1st human made object to exit the solar system and to go into interstellar space but as a poetic feat aborted was the golden record which you know the scientific purpose was to communicate to other civilization in who we are in this packet of music recordings of languages and photographs and a kiss and a volcano or of any come back whale and. Brain of a woman in love who was the creative director of the Voyager spacecraft the gold record and the dream who fell in love with Carl Sagan in the course of the. So there just like you know it was their to their kids right that kiss you know the kiss is not there because it wasn't any kissing her Paul because they figured out that an actual kiss doesn't make an expressive enough sound so this was the one stage. And then you back sure that they manufactured right but there are so many things about the Voyager the really ground you back into this longer view of time one of which is for example I mean this was happening in the middle of the Cold War To me the more significant purpose of the golden record I mean the the probability that another civilization would find it I mean it's a very small but it mirrored back to humanity who we are in this moment when we were so conflicted and pull arise it had forgotten that we shared this tender planet and the Bulgarian folk song which was one of the pieces of music is this centuries old shepherdesses acapella song and Bill here is a very old country 14 centuries old 5 of which were spent during Ottoman Ottoman occupation during which there was tremendous violence that was regular That was normalized and you massacres and rapes and murders and kids kidnapped from their homes trained to be soldiers in the autumn an army and send back to murder their own families I mean really awful things that people survived for 500 years and that song and codes that truth beyond language beyond I'm right you don't have to speak Bulgarian and nor you know European history to hear those sounds and received in your body in your bones both the sorrow and the persistence and the resilience that carried people through that. One of the things you've noted you know when you were writing about that you wrote it's worth keeping the Voyager in mind as we find our capacity for perspective constricted by the stranglehold of our cultural moment and including the fact that. You know there was actually recently this report you would have at the proportion of the news and how much else is happening that is not that we're not talking about and in fact unscientific frontiers these have been an astonishing beautiful couple of years you know you said what imperceptible fraction was devoted to the to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for the landmark detection of gravitational waves and then Natalie on Facebook you posted the 1st image of a dark matter web that connects galaxies and you said. Your Friendly reminder that dark matter comprises 25 percent of the mass energy budget of the cosmos well dark energy comprises 70 percent and the normal matter that you and I are made of is just a wee 5 percent and it's all connected by a cosmic a web of filament Terry bridges that stretch across millions of light years carry on. Krista Tippett at the 2000 on being gathering astrophysicist Natalie Batali brain picking over I'm glad Facebook is good for something. Yeah it gives you perspective doesn't it yeah. You use this word call him with regards to science and somebody else use that word with me yesterday saying that they find in this moment in time they find science to be calming to give us perspective and certainly I'm a Ford that every day because everything we do and we're learning forces you to think big picture you know so you're really taking you're stepping outside yourself and you're going back in time and you're thinking about the furthest reaches of the galaxy and just looking at where where we've been have from out from the you carry it's on you know or even before. However I find myself fixed. Really conflicted because I myself don't want to feel comfortable right now I want to feel uncomfortable and I want to get out of that comfort zone and I'm starting to feel more and more like science is almost an indulgence at this moment in time and I'm feeling more and more pulled towards the civic realm and this individual yesterday who used the word calming and said how you know it's like brings her back down you know and said OK this is just a blip this is just a blip in time this isn't significant and frankly who to better understand than somebody who works at NASA that now says much more than any one president right we carry on we do our things we've got our decadal review scientists who come up with up a strategic plan that stretches decades into the future and we're going to keep our eye on that prize and presidents come and go and you know so so I feel that but at the same time. There's a certain urgency especially with regards to the sustainability of life here on our own planet and where do I draw the line. I agree and disagree because they think in a way it's not separate right it's not you the moment we separate science from life including the civic aspect we diminish both the in the last year spent a lot of time with the papers of Rachel Carson the great marine biologist and writer who her 162 book Silent Spring we can basically think for the modern environmental movement and it's really interesting because she used science to insights 1st of all a public conscience that was just not there before that and she she's somebody who started out as a poet and a doing biology but never relinquished poetry so she ended up becoming an incredibly poetic writer of science that in addition to changing culture and policy I mean the creation of the E.P.A. Is a direct consequence of Rachel Carson's work the 1st Earth Day But in addition to that she also created a cultural a static of thinking and writing about science in poetic terms that I think enlarged. And I do think there is a responsibility in that especially for you not only because you think so beautifully in poetic way I think you do both in your work and by your work I mean not just your NASA work but what you write on Facebook what you see here it's I think it is both. I was thinking because I'm aware of that tension in you and it made me think and I actually went back and looked at the transcript when I interviewed brother Guy Consolmagno who said the Vatican Observatory. You do exoplanets and he does asteroids. And he tells this story about how you know he's a Jesuit right so he's. Here. He has a religious calling and he always wanted to be an astronomer but then at some point when he was in his twenty's I think he went into the Peace Corps because he felt like this isn't the real work right this isn't the human work of my really making lives better and how they sent him to Kenya and I had him teaching and then on the weekends he would go out to visit other Peace Corps volunteers just you know not in the city and he always had a little telescope with him because that's where he was and he had slides with them that could be powered by car batteries and so he thought now he was helping people in the Peace Corps and all everybody wanted to look through the telescope and actually pulled this out what he said to me said. Everybody in many they would ask him to get talks and he said and they would show exactly the same as looking at the creators of the mourner the rings of Saturn exactly the same as when I set this up back in Michigan and it suddenly dawned on me well of course it's only human beings that have this curiosity to understand what's that up in the sky how do we fit into the back who are we where do we come from and this is a hunger that is as deep and as important as the hunger for food because if you starve a person in that sense you're depriving them of their humanity. And he said that's why we do this and I just feel that that radiates from you too I agree with Maria I certainly feel that. Besides our innate need to push from tears and learn and the joy you know Carl Sagan understanding is a form of ecstasy and I think understanding knowledge learning about the reality of our universe is a spiritual experience in and of itself I like to think that knowledge brings empathy I mean science has the opportunity to do good and to do about of course and we've seen examples of that but. I would contend that when we learn that the atoms that make up our cells were manufactured in the course of stars empathy grows because you realize the connectedness not just of all humans but of all humans and all living creatures everything in our biosphere and our shared biosphere here we are looking for life you know is there life out there that's also going to change our sense of otherness and how we see us as sentient beings with awareness you know the way you do universe itself becoming aware and I value that I really do but there's a certain irony about looking for life out in the galaxy while at the same time you know that you're potentially destroying the potential for life here on planet Earth there's an irony in that and I'm I really am struggling with it and why I'm not going to lie yeah yeah but I see that also as a function like you've said your civic thought is shaped to a large degree by your work studying the universe and thinking about the origins of life I mean that again that is a perspective and even a critique of a concern that flows from the science you do. Yeah. I mean one practical thing that we can do is we study planetary habitability actually we have to think about the the limits of life. What are the boundaries how far can you push a planet before it becomes on inhabitable and so we look at planets like Mars and Venus and ask ourselves what happened in those cases and so every time you go out and you study the universe you learn something about yourself and in this case we're learning about our own planet and its propensity for life and that's related to the sustainability or the climate change so when I go out and speak to the public I do have an opportunity to engage them in that kind of a conversation to circle the conversation back to who we are you know. You are both to people who are not religious in a traditional sense 21st century people you embrace that you're atheist and in Adelaide that spirituality is something that you it's complex and you know honestly you said we don't have a definition I think I think there is many definitions as there are lives in a room and that it's never static so it's always evolving and yet both of you ponder and use the language of the soul. And I find that fascinating and I just want to I want to talk about what that is what are we talking about where you actually spoke you did a commencement address was it last year in 2 years. And her school at Penn and. And it was the soul was the heart of it. What do you you know here's here's some language from that use I mean the soul simply a shorthand for the seismic core of personhood from which our beliefs our values and our actions radiate. And you've also said that the people most whole and most alive are always those unafraid and unashamed of the soul so what is that. I mean you know there are certain words that have been vacated of meaning by over use and misuse and we have the choice of either relinquishing them altogether or trying to reclaim them in some way and soul is one of those words I choose to go with trying to imbue it with the meaning that I live with and relation to it. It is of course related to the notion of the self no I do not believe in a solid self as I don't believe in a soul that lives the rest of the constellation of being the physical being that is us but at the same time it is where we spring from the US most of us is rooted in this very complex interplay of values beliefs ideas friends places we've been smells we've remembered and you know and it's impossible to be a person without that and because of that it's impossible to be a decent person without tending to it the way you would tend to a garden that you want to bloom beautifully. Not only I don't know if you meant this is a definition of the soul but it strikes me as a way in. We are that complexity we are the universe becoming self-aware. Yeah it took 13700000000 years for the atoms to come together to create the portal to the universe which is my physical self so in that statement is this I D A or the fluidity of time in space and I kind of see it all at once and I don't know what me is I just feel part of everything and I feel such a deep gratitude for being able to take this conscious look at the universe at myself as being part of the universe so that perspective and this idea of the universe evolving from energy into simple matter into gradual complexity into microbes on planet Earth and then 2000000000 years later the symbiotic merger of bacteria and R K A to create a you carry out which exploded complexity creating us and you know the complexity and intelligent life that we have today that vision and just how improbable is my birth and this opportunity just fills me with deep gratitude and sustains me through the darkest moments. I don't know what that means in terms of a soul I don't prescribe to anything more I don't need anything more frankly I'm I'm completely at home with the idea that I've had this ephemeral time here to do this and I'm just so grateful and that's enough. Thank you. Really here's something else you said in that speech just extending the ease of cynicism is a hardening a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments a limber reach for something greater. I do think that cynicism is. You know it's easy to judge it harshly but really it's a defense mechanism an ill adaptive maladaptive defense mechanism when we feel bereft of hope and to live with hope and times that reward cynicism and in many ways call for cynicism I think is a tremendous act of courage and resistance. You can listen again and share this conversation with Maria pope and Natalie Batal Yeah there are website on being org I'm Krista Tippett on Being continues in a moment support for on being with Krista Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world learn more at Fetzer dot org America is littered with abandoned movie theaters I actually photographed my. Clothes. From. My grandmother's publisher to Coco my grandpa was a new generation rediscovers the pleasure palaces of the past sometimes you just have to be there next time on to the best of our knowledge from the US. This morning it man. Tune in for velocity talk a program that questions everything except your intelligence coming up the ethics of whistle blowing with Edward Snowden if you find out that the government is engaged in illegal activity isn't it your duty to tell not how many get locked up for the rest of my life it's not you have to choose protect the public or state secrets Our guest is former N.S.A. Contractor Edward Snowden the ethics of whistle blowing on philosophy Sunday morning at 11 on 91.7. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today taking a telescopic view of this moment we inhabit and imagining cultural evolution towards good I'm with astrophysicist Natalie Batali and brain pickings Maria Povera at the 1st ever on being gathering amidst the redwoods of the $1440.00 Multiversity and Scott's Valley California I find it just overall fascinating you know one of the projects we have or Regis we have something called called public the Algerian magine which is really just a party of work within our body of work but I think it's also an idea and it's how in the 21st century we are you know people like you. Are picking up questions and language and ideas that. In previous centuries of human history or the domain of you know pretty strictly of theologians and philosophers you know what is this all on. And I remember now you're talking about how you thought about love like dark matter like dark knowing about dark matter have to think about the nature of war or hope. You also have been writing openly about your 4 children right and your young is that you're going to shatter his 151616 who has M.S. . And I see here reflecting on that also just reflecting on how she is living with that and becoming a human being with a law and through that. And you being at a gathering where people were scientists I think were discussing ethical issues relevant to modern day society now I'm talking about this post you wrote I'm sorry ethical issues with 3 Corella vent to modern day society and somebody was talking about the future of human reproduction and raising you know genetic testing to select offspring. And you know you were reflecting on. How our weaknesses are also our strengths and our weaknesses open up potential for new knowledge and empathy and cultural evolution toward goodness and it's you as a mother and it's also you as an astrophysicist it is absolutely. Can I just warn everybody I'm a total crier. So I can't see much anymore because we're getting like Hell yeah and if you don't want to talk to us that's OK too you know I don't mind it's just I am a crier you know here I am writing or I mean you're bringing this stuff out. Gosh it's funny how these bigger questions the science that I do and what I'm living at home and the civic realm are so interconnected also shaped by. Just thoughts about Western culture and our definition of success and our aversion to failure and all of those things are connected and that piece that you're drawing from tried to bring those ideas together. So yes I have a daughter who's living with a mass and it's been very difficult and she has a lot of questions about it and the story that Crist is referring to is I was at a dinner with some very interesting people it was kind of a think tank and. We started talking about genetics and the idea that we're getting to the point in genetics where we could test our genetic material of our eggs our embryos and we could actually pick the child that we want to give birth to and I started to wonder Will would my daughter choose to not give birth to a child that had a propensity for and asked We don't even know what causes a mess and so it begs the question you know when is a bug considered feature there was. Actually an engineer mathematician there who said Oh well yeah what is her role in society you know her existence inspires us to go out and push the boundaries of what we know we're studying the brain in part because she exists and we will learn things that will benefit everybody so her she has a role and so when does a bug like that become a feature and it just really inspired a lot of questions and also I think our definition of. People of different abilities have always been instrumental to create a culture and a look at the history of why we're here through the great breakthroughs in art and science and philosophy so many people had mental illness physical disability where do you draw the line I mean according to the D.S.M. Half a century ago I would have been an aberration homosexuality was considered a mental disorder and you know Alan Turing was basically killed for it as was Oscar Wilde and directly you know that kind of thing that where do you draw the line and you know Temple Grandin she's been doing really beautiful work and basically she says you know people would autism are on the spectrum are responsible for Silicon Valley without you know there would be no technology as we know it. It's a really I think. More ality always kind of lags behind the technologies that become possible and so now is are looking into genetic engineering and I in these questions. The moral panic that follows is only building up and we're nowhere close to answering the moral questions that are pragmatically possible with the technology but are they permissible. And just tying this back to the Civic realm you know we're living in a moment right now where the underprivileged are demonize. Right and I I'm finding that so alarming there's no space for failure or even this word failure you know it's not the right word but there's no space for that and I'm just I just have a real problem with that and it does relate to to my daughter in this fundamental way and then you brought up this idea of evolution towards goodness I guess that sprays cultural evolution towards good cultural evolution towards goodness. Yeah I mean I think. That's your phrase I DID IT Yeah right yeah right I remember now. Well let's go back to this idea of the solution of complexity the Arise of complexity and here we are to the universe become aware and you know let's take that a step further and think about emergent behaviors and and what we can become what can we become what potentials are yet to be realized what you do we know about the empathic brain how are we evolving and what what about the decisions that we make now in the civic realm that decide who lives and dies and how does that affect our evolution right because it will because these are life and death situations so what we do in the civic realm does affect cultural evolution but cultural evolution leads to biological evolution right and it can go many ways right not Nessus I don't think that there's a lot to the universe that says there is an evolution towards goodness that we decide. That we decide. I'm Krista Tippett at the 2018 on being gathering with astrophysicist Natalie Batali and brain picking. The whole notion of mystery and uncertainty. For us you know the 3 of us and I think everybody in this room we have enough ground beneath our feet. For mystery and uncertainty to to be even sometimes thrilling and not always thrilling No that's a ridiculous statement because I don't like uncertainty I like mystery I don't like uncertainty. Unless I'm just a really rest. But you know that I think a feature of this moment in fact that maybe Rillette us to this moment we're now or we're creating real crisis is because we have this period because we just live in this moment this century that opened was just these that open questions we can kind of see what failing we can see that schools don't make sense and politics doesn't make sense and the economy doesn't make sense and medicine doesn't make sense and so and right now we're in that in-between time of like it's very clear what's broken it's not so clear what will follow and science is all about like delighting and right that just OK So you say you answered this question and then you're just so excited about what questions this new thing raises and I'm aware that this is also a divide in our culture because I think this thing you're talking about there's so many people who are really vulnerable really on the edge like they're uncertain about whether they're going to be able to eat or you know the ground has been pulled out in a very short period of time from. You know the what they thought they might be able to expect for their children. Just in terms of having a livelihood I'm just throwing that out there I think about this a lot and I don't want to use the word privilege in a way that this should shame us but like just those of us who are safe enough to to love uncertainty and. And mystery but that this is part of our divide like at some deep psychological and biological level. I've been thinking about this all week yeah yeah. I feel I do feel privileged to be here sorry and I and I do feel guilty about it not guilty let me rephrase that I'm keenly aware that having space in time for contemplation is a luxury I'm deeply aware of communities that don't have that space and time that every day is just survival I lived in Brazil for 5 years was undergoing a very harsh political reality at that time. So I'm I'm just tied into that and I keep thinking about those people as words he hear over this weekend talking about contemplating poetry in the meaning of love and all of these great grandiose questions I kept thinking. How do we push that out and I'm thinking about increasing diversity in science we've got such a problem with with a lack of diversity in science and how can I use my small influence to maybe help that you know what could be my role and do I even have the right to do that and what's my language and what's my empathic connection to these communities and knowing in the background that they don't have the space and time to think about these things is just I don't have any answers No but it's very much on my mind. Yeah that's a question for a living. Yes there's not an answer we can live right now 3rd let's not not collect like one by one we can live that mean these are the hard questions right I think our being here I mean you know one Friday night during the opening. The gentleman from 1440 Multiversity said I don't know why we're here but it's not an accident and I thought oh yes it is we have to come to terms with the fact that it is chance I mean I spent 18 years in a developing 3rd world country and if I begin to think that I'm somehow special or by have merited my way here as opposed to all the people who didn't there's so much chance that played into it there's too much chance in what you were saying in the evolution of life I mean we are a cosmic accident and so those of us who have been lucky meaning have benefitted from the flip side of chance that people who are of less advantaged have benefited from the other side of chance we have the responsibility to to expand beyond our own chance. Privilege and keep thinking of how we can expand that and grow that because I mean the commencement address you cited was actually I started thinking about it on the bike path when I was overtaken by a man who I just had all this like rage of how dare he and how he was an electric bicycle and I felt. Honestly pedaling and suddenly there's a guy has this existential advantage you know. Just as I'm getting really indignant I see on the back of his jacket there's a restaurant delivery sign and I think he's just doing this to survive his doesn't have taken some upper hand on me and you know I'm I'm an immigrant from a poor country I could have been the delivery person on the bicycle how how did I end up here I have no idea I mean so much chance of course chance and choice conspire in our lives and I think about that all the time but OK so we have had a certain you know hand that's been dealt to us of chance and what we make of that whether. Choice including the choice to be here that is how we expand chance for everyone else that's all we can do that's the most we can do. Thank you. And I love this place we've come to right now and it exists in a creative tension also with you know the beauty and the grandeur of the science you do and the beauty and the grandeur of the ideas in people and teachers you bring to us and you know you've been working on this. Universe and verse bringing together poetry and science and I wanted to talk about that and and here we are kind of drawing to the end of our time and it doesn't. In any kind of organic way follow from what's just been put into the room but how does it how does it how it's connected in you it absolutely does I mean the universe in verse was an event that I hosted last year which was very much in response to what was basically the morning after the election and I thought it was this weird as a terrible idea that would get 15 you know geeky people show up and class each other and the line was thrice around the block 900 people was all we could fit with thousands on the live stream it was profound and for me personally it was the best spend 2 months of my life planning it and and just the most uplifting experience we had Elizabeth Alexander you had on the show and. Just beautiful you had so many we had such lovely people you know writing about it from afar it was amazing and I feel like it's so important what she's done here if there's one message I can communicate in during this conversation it's that at the nexus of spirituality and science is wonder and I just want to make sure that people understand that that's a common experience to both. I've been very impressed this week. With your words just words in general the poetry the lyricism the way the words roll out of here off of your tongues. My point is I come from. A different language the language of numbers or language of explaining the physical phenomenon in our universe and if we can get. Common language if we can understand each other I think that's so tremendously important I had the opportunity to speak to some of the poets who are here and who have who have shared their poetry and one in particular mentioned a certain anxiety about talking about science but yet feels all of that wonder and that puzzles me and I'm wondering if it's just a language barrier there are some examples in our times of people that have married the 2 so spectacularly and the one to bring Would you read some of. Carl Sagan who happened to be. At the same time Diane from the perspective of a naturalist and and she was in the humanities I think ultimately Carl Sagan from the science side and they both met you know at this nexus of wonder and brought their different languages and combined them in such a special fantastic way and he was her doctoral advisor his it's just one of very few working poets who has a science background she is a Ph D. And now a lot of her vast body of work is infused with this poetic love of nature and I mean we call nature something outside of ourselves and I have such a problem with this notion of the environment as if it's the thing that's been separated us around that there's a tall I'm as I'm in this you know I just recently learned this is because I read this beautiful biography of Alexander from home bolt which I know you read as well what's the name Andrea lilting in the nature and the invention of nature and he's the one who coined the term cosmos the way we. Did you know that but it didn't mean the universe out there and you know who that is poet Milton the 1st huge he did it was very nice yeah I wish language was that oh yes Line 652 of book one of Paradise Lost. I give them or am the I am there it is her and I for. The Cosmos was us it was the most of humanity and the natural world and everything out there but there was no division there was no environment as you say because there is no separation we have to finish this is so sad but we don't we're not we're going to we're going to drop out. I. I would actually love for each of you to read a poem and we have a select collection of here you know and I have a bunch of them printed I mean Natalie you had written about this poem of Diane Ackerman school prayer which is a possibility there's another. Piece here that I think I'm going to actually prefer And the reason I'm doing this is because it relates to the search for life and that's what I do that's the long term goal and so again this is a passage one snippet from the larger poem called Pluto. The bread mold and I have much in common we're both alive the wardrobe of our cells is identical we speak the same genetic code the death of a star gave each of us life but imagine a brand spanking new biology just as when a window abruptly flies open the room grows airy and floods with light so awakening to alien life form will transfigure how we think of ourselves and our lives. In my bony wrist alone the D.N.A. Could spin a yarn filling thousands and thousands of library volumes but one day we'll browse in the stacks of other galaxies. Given the sweet generosity of time that permits the blue green algae and the polar bear the cosmic flannel must be Packard with life. Now I'm going to read a poem by Denise lover to who is one of my favorite poets but also she said the purpose of poetry is to awaken sleepers by means other than a shock. And it is so precise and so perfect and this is a poem that I'm including this year in the earth and verse and it's called so journeys in a parallel world. We live our lives of human passions cruelties dreams concepts crimes and the eggs are size of virtue in an beside a world devoid of our preoccupations free from apprehension affected certainly by our actions a world parallel to our own the overlapping we call it nature only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be nature to. Whenever we lose track of your own obsessions or self concerns because we drift for a minute an hour or even of pure almost pure response to that and social life cloud bird Fox the flow of light the dancing pilgrimage of water vast stillness of spellbound ephemera on the lit window pane animal voices mineral when conversing would rain ocean would rock the fire to coal then something tethered us hobbled like a donkey on its patch of grass and thistles breaks free no one discovers just where we've been when we're caught up again into our own sphere where we must return indeed to evolve our destiny but we have changed a little. And she's. Special thanks this week to the wonderful. Especially Susan Freddy Susan calls Jana. Smith MICHELLE MACNAMARA Steve every Lauren Joshua Green and David Dunning also our colleague Zach rose for his support of audio production skills and his support of companionship. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoe Keating in the last. Final credits his hip hop artist. Was created at American Public Media a funding partners include the Fetzer Institute helping to build the spiritual foundation for World. Org. Foundation working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home humanity. Advancing human dignity at home and around the world find out more at humanity. Part of the group the Henry Luce foundation in support of public theology reimagined the foundation a catalyst for empowered healthy and fulfilled lives. Endowment Indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders interest in religion community development and education. It's to be the. Public Radio Exchange and is a Christian public production. This is audiogram the Bay Area sonic signature Each week we'll play you a sound recorded somewhere in the Bay Area. Your goal of a more on my guitar yeah I'm going to use your guitar this place is like it's like than in the Netherlands like it just people can do whatever there's free marijuana and we provide free tape to clients that's what how I'm crazy I am about recording a tape of them. Where oh and. Do you know what that was called 415-264-7106 tell us that's 41526471 has sex We'll tell you the story behind the sound this Thursday on cross currents to name. Just. This is 91.7 San Francisco Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam is next then at 9 am It's to the best of our knowledge see the station's full program schedule at calles are you dot org Or you can also listen to his log wherever you go good to have you with. I'm Shankar Vedantam and From N.P.R. This is a hidden brain. More than a decade ago N.P.R.'s social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam gun looking into the unseen influences that shape our lives psychologists even have a term for this behavior as racial biases might also be playing licensing days and what I found astonished me not a lot of people know that this is I fell off my chair when I saw this was one of those things that the world was never supposed to see or hear bringing these hidden influences into the light that's what the show is all about cover clues to our deeper cells the archaeology of our daily lives imagine staying awake for 11 days straight this week on the show we meet a man who did just that you don't need sleep that was the thinking back in the sixty's and that's the thinking that I had later we explore what happens if you don't get 8 hours of sleep tonight 1st the snooze. Hello I'm Julie Candler with the B.B.C. News Islam is militants have attacked an African union base in Somalia the group detonated 2 car bombs outside the base in the town of Pullen Mara southwest of the capital Mogadishu Will Ross reports people living near the African Union base say they 1st heard 2 large explosions we now know those were suicide car bombs detonated just outside the facility then they heard heavy exchanges of gunfire lasting 3 hours the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab said it carried out the attack a spokesman said 14 of its fighters and 59 peacekeepers were killed it's not been possible to independently verify what he said but this was clearly a significant attack and shows that even though the jihadist no longer control urban areas there's still a major threat to Somalia stability the North Korean leader Kim Jong un has attended a groundbreaking pop concert in Pyongyang featuring South Korean stars the official news agency in soley on Hop says Mr Kim is the 1st North Korean leader ever to attend a performance by a group of artists from the south Duncan Kennedy reports more than 190 South Korean artists are believed to have traveled to the North Korean capital Pyongyang for 2 concerts South Korean media say they include famous K. Pop acts like red velvet and Cho young pill photograph showed the North Korean leader Kim Jong un in the audience with his wife for the 1st concert his sister was also reported to have been there the 2nd event to show jewel for Tuesday the leaders of the 2 Koreas are due to hold a summit on the border later this month at the same time as preparations are believed to be underway for a meeting between Kim Jong un and President Trump. Prosecutors in the Italian city of children have opened an investigation after armed French customs officers forcibly tested a migrant for drugs at an Italian refugee center sparking a diplomatic row they're accused of abusing their office is our Europe editor Mike Sanders It's an incident that had one Italian politician complaining that France was treating Italy as a toilet for refugees 5 French customs officers checking passengers on a Paris to Milan train on Friday hold off a Nigerian migrant they suspected of smuggling drugs in his body they took him to a refugee center at the station in bottleneck here an Italian ski resort just across the border and got him to give a urine sample it proved negative rainbow for Africa the group running the sender says they violated his rights and intimidated their staff Pope Francis has the world leaders to bring about a swift end to the carnage in Syria in his traditional Easter message to Rome and the world he said the Syrian people had been worn down by an apparently endless war the paper said he hoped forthcoming dialogue on the Korean peninsula would lead to peace he also asked God to heal the wounds in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo Well news from the B.B.C. The new president of Botswana mark with C M S Easy has been sworn in at a ceremony in the capital Gaborone the former vice president took over from incomer who stepped down on Saturday after serving 10 years as president elections are not do until next year in the southern African country which is the world's 2nd largest producer of diamonds president my C.Z. Said that tackling youth unemployment was his number one priority. Civil rights activists in the northern Bangladeshi city of wrong poor have held a demonstration demanding action to find a prominent local lawyer has gone missing that is Chandra Bhaumik who championed the rights of minorities has not been seen since he left his home on Friday Sanjay Gupta brutish children who makes disappearance comes just a fortnight after his successfully prosecuted a group of hard line Islamists for murdering the caretaker of a Sufi shrines he had also argued the case against 5 militants who were found guilty in 2015 of killing a Japanese national Mr Bush makes wife of the pub who has been courted by newspapers in Bangladesh is saying her husband left on Friday morning with the man a red motorcycle his relatives are alarmed with good reason dozens of secular bloggers members of religious minorities and foreigners have been killed by hard line Islamists in Bangladesh in recent years voting is taking place in a presidential runoff in Costa Rica after a campaign dominated by the issue of same sex marriage poll suggests that voters are equally split between an ultra conservative angelical preacher prettier Alvarado who opposes gay rights and his challenger Carlos Alvarado a former minister from the center left ruling party. Indian space scientists say they've lost communication with the satellite 3 days after it was launched into orbit with great fanfare the Indian Space Research Organization says it's trying to reestablish contact with the G.'s out 6 a satellite had been designed for the Indian military B.B.C. News. This Hidden Brain I'm Shankar Vedantam. In the ideology of the morning when the air was heavy as a ticking clock ran slow Brandy God now would step out into his yard he would stand beside the cactus as he planted and listen to the cars that whizzed by on Highway 50 floor which runs behind his home in San Diego. Standing in the moonlit shadows he would call out in agony I would go out in the back yard at 3 in the morning and scream like a while that. Many people are familiar with the suffering Randy experienced insomnia there's a lonely communion that binds those who plead with the gods at 3 o'clock in the morning no one can help you no one can make you feel better knowing anything. It's like you're going insane. But Randy also knew he was different from everyone else many years ago as a teenager he.