Book festival and im delighted to be joined here tonight by brian greene, author of until the end of time, and jana levin, the author of the black hole Survival Guide and were joined by issue wilcox who is a colleague of mine sitting on the wisconsin science festival board but also the dean of the college of letters and science at the university of wisconsin maddison and the former chair of the department of astronomy. Thank you all so much for joining us and taking part in the 2020 wisconsin book festival its delightful to host free cultural events and because madison as me to do so i want to thank them. Theyve been absolutely unwaiverring in their support of free book events throughout the palled and over the last eight years we have didnt doing this so major thanks to them and all of our sponsors for making events like this possible. I also went too just mention to viewers watching at home that the wisconsin book festival and wisconsin science festival are joining forces to provide precopies of both brian and jannas book to you. When im done speaking here ill put a link on the bottom of the screen, a little green box, and you will be able to just sign up and have a book sent to you by our bookselling partners mere madison so thank you to the science festival and the book store for helping us bring free books to readers. Ill let the authors some he moderator take it away and ill see you end of the event. Thank you so much, everyone. Good evening and thank you for the introduction and for welcoming us. Welcome to all the people who are participating. Its great to have you onboard. Were going to jump right into it. We have two great guests and its my honor to present brian greene, professor of physics and mathematics and the director of column use universitys center for theoretical physics. Renewed for his groundbreaking discoveries in super string theory. All her to of a number of books. I wont go down the long list. Theyre in the program. But i think from this event hes with tracy day, bryan greene cofound the world science festival, and coming to us from upstate new york. Brian, welcome. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Also with us, janna levin a professor of physics physics and astronomy at barnaard college so youre across the street from one another, right across broadway. Also the director of science and Pioneer Works a century for arts and sciences in brooklyn. She is also reachedly named the guggenheim fellow so congratulations on that and welcome youre coming from your office at barnaard college. We have very close offices but this im here under quarantine on my empty office by any desk. Welcome. Glad for both of you to join us. Somebody jump enough with a couple of questions. Janna, your book title, black hole Survival Guide. It sounds like winter camping Survival Guide. You just pack the right gear and its going to be fine. Its an optimistic title. So without spoiling anything, what do your readers expect to learn but block holes and the Survival Guide. The idea was to have a sort of explanation of black holes that was multily kind of field guide. I wanted to mam youre exploring black holes while youre learning properties of the black hole and the Survival Guide is written by the astronaut who goes on this insane pilgrimage to explore and send back misssives to warn people about how best to survive a black hole. What spoiler letter, doesnt all go very well. What are the key warnings folks should be aware of. Some are very simple and some are pretty intrick cat but the biggest one is fall into the biggest black hole as public. Youre stand ago an basketball youve notice it curves about if youre standing on a big sphere like the earthout hardly notice the curves. You could suffer from the illusion its flat. The black hole is the same way. The bigger the black hole the more gradual the curve tour, the less youll notice and you could live for a. While. So these little tricks like that. You get into the book some of the description of some of the things that might happen to the body and happen to the mind as one were to venture into even if its a large black hole which is a little bit daunting. But i want to turn to brian now for a moment. In your book, until the end of time, mind, matter and our search for meaning and evolving universe, so a couple of things i want to ask you. You have to you have a main character, entropy is a protagonist that comes in and i want to ask you about as youll reflect on everything youve put in the book and research you put into it is intelligent thoughtful life inevitable in the universe, the universal will generate thoughtful and bell gent life at some point along the way. I dont know. I could leave it at that but do. Youre a writer. Have to go a little further. Even when we look at the cosmos there are certain things that are inevitable via the laws of physics as they have played out and one is the increasing disorder over time, the increase in entropy, so there are qualities of the world that we have been able to deduce as inevitable consequences of the basic physical laws, but when we talk about complex arrange. S of matter, such as Living Systems, such as thoughtful Living Systems , i theres nothing as far as we can tell that is deeply written into the fundamental laws that requires those collections to emerge. Even on planet earth, right, long time the dinosaurs held sway it and hey bess thans event of a meteor impact on earth that changed the complexion of life on the planet from dinosaurs to other mammalian speed that give rice to us who can ask questions leak the one you just asked, but without that meteor, without that contingent event, there might not be intelligent life on planet earth. So its very hard to answer that question in general, but it is the case that at least theres one data point that suggests that intelligent life, depending how you judge human beings, as arisen on one explant therefore theres so men a planets out there that its easy to let the mind roam wild and imagine this other intelligence out there but obviously we dont in the answer to that and we dont know the answer to that from a theoretical physics calculational suspect. You mind if i talk . Please do. Ive spent time reading brians beautiful book, until the end of time, and one thing you express so elegantly is that life is a way of exploiting the energy from the potential of the universe and the difference between an inanimate object and a thinking person, even if we dont evoke some concept or deterministic and physical, that we do know the distinction between a thinking send senscient being and a rock and you have how the system permits enough of a complex expression that energy yet lick i energetically favorable, and you do until the end of time not every planet, obviously, but that given the right conditions, that this was a physical northwest ability in the inevitablity, in the say of an electron falling down. It one guess in that direction i would go further. Kind of to book end both perspectives, my view as janna you mow well and dont know if we have spoken about your view on this mitchell view is that the whole notion of free will is something that is illusory because of the way in which our part mels november in our move in our brain derryls or thoughts and we are governed did same laws and principles and everything with do and think and feel is dependent on conditions that were in place before we were even born, before our collection of particles even existed. So from that point of view, sure, intelligent live would be inevitable because everything is inevitable in the sense it follows from the conditions of the universe near the big bang and the laws of physics that follow that but the point is was making previously, i if you just gave me lets say im standing outside the universe so a contradiction in terms here but imagine im outside the universe and you come to me and say this particular universe im going to endow it with the laws of gravity from general relativity, the laws of quantum maybe can jims, electricity and mag any magnetism. Can you predetect from laws very generally that there will be intelligent thinking systems that emerge. I think we would be hard pressed to answer that question in the affirmative. Uhhuh. So, right. You can imagine starting the different data be difficult to predistrict and a multitude of possibilities. Exactly. So let go back to the beginning. How did the big bang get started . Brian . Sure. Well, ill give it a moment and then janna will explain why everything if said was wrong or take it in a different direction. People have been struggling with that question in one way or another for a very long time. Its no mistake or coincidence that some of the most revered theological texts begin with some statement about how things began. We like to anchor our understanding, an core our understanding of ourselves and the world, with some sense of origin. We are wedded to origin stories. And science does have its owner instory, which has d origin story which makes predictions about the world that we can measure if the story most scientist are folk kentuckyed on today and the last 30 years is inflationary cosmology which says in the very beginning things, space, time, matter, and energy all crushed together in a very small size, and the conditions were just right to yield something completely unfamiliar to any of us from everyday life, it yields repulsive gravity. The repulsive gravity that pushed everything apart. Normally gravity pulls everything together but a repulsive gravity broke everything apart causing space to swell, growing larger and larger, incredible growth in a tine good fraction of a second and that set off the big bang. Thats the bang in the big bang gut you can say, well, where did space and time come. Where died the stuff come from and we dont have the an ultimate answer of that sort. So, if youre really asking the question, why is there something at all, why there is something rather than nothing, that is a deep question for which we are still struggling and there is no consensus on that. Janna . Yeah. That widens the question, why is there something instead of nothing still haunts us. I cant dispute that what brian is espousing the most viable of our understandology the origin of the universal and is completely right thats not really getting us the total explanation of, like, what actually initiated, why did space then catch fire like this . And i used to sort of subscribe as a young student to general relativity meeting Quantum Mechanics, this kind of idea of the possibility of things appearing out of nothing. I used to subscribe to this is believing things, open to this concept that something percolated and caught fire and then more and more you kind of wonder, well, that thing that percolated, was literally Time Starting to tick, was lately the existence of space in which things lived. Wasnt like a huge space time. Something exploded into it. Thats not the impression that modern contemporary physicist are trying to promoat. Therethere promote. And the more of kind of learned from other people about this and listen to new ideas on black holes, surprising terrain on which you can actually experiment with these ideas, that it might be something really peculiar like space and time arent fundamental. Theres no meaning to them existing until theres matter and quan to, that quanta i think of it like embroidery where theres tons of stitches and from far away looks like a thing. When you look up close you realize thats just an illusion created by the fine stitching and the fine stitching is Quantum Mechanics. So the fact you thought was there a space time there quaisen illusion because it was actually embid erred the be finer stitching that is creating this illusion. So i think its not only the fundamental question dating way back to life and im sure every group of social creatures that were painting on caves, its still with us, that question. And its really pressing. And it is still and yet i think maybe in the first time in history maybe this is a presumption that we might actually be making headway on that. Might actual live be so you maybed black holes as a laboratory, they drive a lot of the work i do at galaxy evolution, driven by black holes. Give us a quick course, twominute course in black holes. Well, i mean, obviously brian could totally i suppose since my back has it in the title that was lobbed my way and i would actually catch the ball. So, again black holes are one thing where you think you know what they are. Thats a popular conception, black holes are incredibly dense objects so dense that not even light can escape, the escape velocity from the earth is more than it is from the moon, but from a black hole its the speed of light so you can never escape. Theres its not totally wrong but kind of wrong. Black holes arent objects and sometimes theyre almost like a place, not a thing, and even more black holes are empty space. Theres nothing there. So, when we describe the point at which you cannot escape unless you are traveling faster than the speed of light, this thing we call the Event Horizon, the region surrounding the kind of energy, theres no matter there whatsoever and great excitement among people in our field in large part he won half the prize for theoretical work, what he approved is once this region forms thises region where you have to escape faster than the speed of live loud be curvature of space time is so severe the matter cant sit there anymore either because it cant race at the speed of light. So suppose you have a star that collapsed, it creates this dense object, yes, that to escape you have to travel fast if than the speed of light but what he shied it cant sit there it has to keep collapsing. It can no more sit there than it can travel faster than the speed of light. And so what he proofs is not only does well, doesnt prove the singularity form but thats what he proves what is left behind is an empty Event Horizon. Theres nothing there. Theres no object. Theres no density. So, if i think of a black hole, i really want to think butes the formation of this region, this place, not a thing. This place called the Event Horizon, where a shadow is cast that exists in the universe and where you could no more escape from it than you could travel faster then the speed of light and what happens in the interior remains a mystery. In your book guess into a little of that. Yes, the different back the mystery. So, again, what sir roger shows is that the singularity from the outside, say your friend the astronaut guess in the black hole and youre on the space station and youre thinking the center is a singularity, the center of the sphere is a singularity and exists at a point in space. Your astronaut friend who just took a firly unhappy trip, a big black hole, cross the horizon, and what they find is a singularity isnt a point in space. They cant park. Thes and avoid it. Its actually in their future. What pen roast sews the singularity is a point in time in the future, and that you can no more avoid the singularity than you can avoid the next instance in time. That inevitably comes. And so i explore what that experience is like, which is wish documented in Science Fiction and but then theres also room to talk about maybe thats not the whole correct story on the interior of the black hole. Brian, whats your take on worm holes . Worm holes. Isnt a black hole arent they worm holes to some other manipulate in time and space. Im some other place in time and space. Im all for worm holes. Nothing against worm holes and they actually are a beautiful mathematical solution of the equations einstein wrote down in 1915. He gave the world this new theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity which is the sphere within which janna is describing properties of black hole and roger did this neal to show that certain kind of configurations necessarily yield things like black holes and worm holes are just one other mathematical solution. Heres the thing which einstein himself stressed. You got to be very careful when you look at the solutions to equations because some solutions are just mass, and some solutions actually describe things in the world. Now, einstein got it wrong sometimes in distinguishing between the two possibilities because he did not think that black holes they werent called block holes then but he didnt think the black hole slewing was that found in 1917 by carl, the first exact luigss to einsteins equation describing what we now call a black hole, einstein did not thing to the were real and protest papers to try to prove they could never exist in the reel world and he was wrong. Theres now incontro veritable evidence of the existence of black holes and we have in quotes a photograph of of black hole in a galaxy mere by. 55 million light years able then Event Horizons telescope. People have soon the image. Plaster on the front page of the new york times. So einstein got it wrong in trying to distinguish between solutions that were good for mass textbooks and solutions relevant to real. Were in that position when it comes to worm holes. So, no one denies that the mathematics allows the possibility of worm holes, but we have never seen one, dont have any evidence they exist, and therefore the only reasonable point of view is to say, okay, the jury is still out. Regarding whether or not these are tunnels through the fabric of space, tunnel is the way we get, say, from one side of a mountain to another side by going through a shortcut. Dont have to go up andover. Good right through a tunnel. Similarly worm holes are tunnels in the fabric of space, and so its a beautiful idea, its a beautiful mathematical solution, but nobody has any idea regarding whether theyre real. And totally agree. I think one of the things you might be alluding to, eric,er is when people look at the singularity that is predicted, meaning that if im falling the astronaut falling inside the black hole and i find my future and utterly inevitable and i get all my you just disperser, everything hit as see singularity and as far as at the prediction of that goes, just ceases to be. Like falls out of existence. Now that is anathema to physics, saying the world is unknowable, and so most physicists believe singularity is a false prophecy, that what it is doing is signaling the breakdown of general relativity, and that there is a theory beyond einstein that will repair that flaw in the mass. Were just following the mass to the end. And that it is a false prophecy and well find out if somebody else happens, and so even probably its going to have something to do with the kind of work that brian does which involves Quantum Mechanics and string theory and using laws of nature that arent solely looking at space time, but one of the early ideas that did solely look at space time suggested that you could kind of show the black hole interior on to a big bang. And its actually mathematically fine. Can you imagine sewing two surfaces together. The math says you can do it. They would be smooth. You could do it. So in other words you fall into the black hole and you destroyed and turn into a quantum bits and youre bits would be shared among this whole and that it is not a prediction, theres no law of nature thats assess when you fall into a black hole is i predicterred this is what would happen. Its simply saying could i sew these two things together mathematically properly, and you could, and a lot of people have a lot of very few reasons to object topping that as a model but but what is cool if glory a space station orbiting the outside of the whack hole and this black hole is a certain size on the outside and your friend the astronaut fell in and they went. Other new universe its as though the black hole is bigger on the inside than the outside. No matter how small that black hole. Can have a whole universe on the inside. Call i kind of a tardiff. A black hole tardiff. Let me go to a topic that is for us together brought the audience together and this event is a combination of the wisconsin book festival and the science festival, and both of you have spent your careers engaging a broader audience beyond other physicists and astrophysicists in your work. You have a authorized books brian you founded the world signs snow. Janna youre the chair and director of science at Pioneer Works which i would love to hear about. If you could both talk about why youre motivated to engage the broader public in the science that you do, and what hurdles there are to that engagement. Yes its a big question. The number of answers i imagine that janna and i share our perspective on this but its a question that i dont think we have directly discussed this, so never really directly discussed this. So, the sort of two the two motivations that i would give, one is, look, you look out into the world and you recognize that the opportunities that we have and the challenges that we face need to be addressed with a scientific mindset, right . We see what happens in the most devastating way when we ignore science in the face of issues that are deadly. Were facing this right now. And this is a vital issue at the moment but its simply one example of a whole spectrum of things we face going forward. So its absolutely vital that the general public feel sufficiently comfortable with the ideas of science to engage with them. Otherwise how too you have a democracy if the individuals that have scientific knowledge, the most Critical Knowledge for determining what our future will be like, if that is in the hands of the few. Has to be in the hands of the many. So i think thats one way of looking at it. The other perhaps from a more personal standpoint is, look, all of us on this discussion know what its like to have a great breakthrough in science. Its exciting. You write a paper. You send it out and 50 people or 100 people read it, and that can have a lot of impact going forward, Ripple Effect it about thats a best seller when it comes to a science paper, and theres something deeply gratifying about stepping outside the Academic Work for me, part of my time. In the old days when youd travel and go places, you know, and youd have a book signing somewhere, and somebody would come up to the table. And it used to be it was, like, a High School Kid or now, you know, unfortunately its a faculty member, and theyd say, hey, you know, i read your book when i was 12 or 13, and it really made a difference to the choices that i make. For me, its among the most gratifying moments, because you really feel like youre making a difference in a more broad way than with a technical, sign terrific pauper. What are the hurdles . Well, the hurdles are numerous, right . Especially in the fields that jana and i write about. The ideas, although deeply compelling space, time, black holes, big bang, you know, those are the ideas that, i think, have a very oozy time capturing easy time capturing the publics imagination. But if you want to explain those ideas in a way that is really accessible, that makes the person feel like theyre getting it, its hard. Its difficult because of the abstract nature of the ideas. You know . So id say that, that really is the biggest hurdle. Jana . Well, i think brian addressed that question. I want to Say Something adjacent which is if you read brians book, it is, its just beautifully written. Its as beautifully written as any Nonfiction Book out there, and thats a rare ability, right . Thank you. Yeah. I mean, i was actual looking at it again because you were going to have this conversation, and thats a rare ability. Just like, just like being compelled to do the mathematics of interdimensional is services is a rare ability. And the generosity of wanting to share that, i think, really the common thread. And its not like, oh, were so clever [laughter] were going to talk amongst ourselves in a tiny institute where only ten people are inviolated into the conversation all the time invited into the conversation all the time. Theres an about of the compulsioning to study physics is pretty strong and hard to describe if you have that compulsion. Its hard to justify, hard to explain, hard to describe. When people ask you whats the practical value, why should anyone care, very hard to address those questions. I understand the essence, but every time i have to dig deep for an answer that i believe other people will understand. But if you read a book, youre not really asking those questions. If somebody writes a book thats that compelling where the language is that that preice and thoughtful preice and thoughtful and original, then nobodys asking why did you write this book. Theyre saying thank you [laughter] for writing this book. And i hosted brian, actually, in conversation recently, and that was the experience we had. The experience wasnt why dud you write this book, i dont understand, why it important to humanity, you know, why do you do this. It was a completely different response. It was thank you for writing this book, you know, it made me question, like, meaning and humanity and storytelling and the impact of art and thought and the fragility, you know, the humility of recognizing [laughter] that were going to come and go, you know . And so i think that to do that crossover, you really have to feel as come billioned, as strongly are compelled. And i dont think that every scientist who is a brilliant scientist or an accomplished scientist should necessarily write a book. I dont think thats how it works. I think you have to have the same compulsion, the same dedication to artistry, the same selfcriticism to know when its not good and to tear it down and try again and try again and try again the way we do with science. We push and push and push ourselves. So thats an adjacent, thats an answer adjacent to your original question. Janna, you your first book calm out when you were just finishing graduate school. Dud i get that right . A little bit after that. I was told through no Uncertain Terms not to do that. Dont do that. [laughter] an interesting point here, and theres actually a question that i was asked recently. Im going to ask the two of you, because you were mentioning physics and pursuing physics and having to explain why and to justify that pursuit. What gave you the motivation to pursue physics . Gosh, i think thats a really complicated question in that were only, im only understanding, you know, its wonderful that we live in a society that values academic pursuit. Its wonderful that we have universities where the faculty arent just teaching and being on committees, but its demanded of them that they be creative and original. But the permission part, i actually think, eric, thats really complicated, right . And i think that if you grow up in a certain culture, subculture of american culture, you feel that permission. And i think if you grow up in different cultures, you do not, right . And thats one of the things that were all trying to think about and address. I know, you know, in my personal case i really feel that, yeah, i would say sometimes like the people around me gave me that permission. I dont know that i would have known it was an option or pursued it had other people not opened the door, right, and made it possible or supported that choice. Yeah. So i dont think thats a simple, simple situation. Brian, i dont yeah. Well, a highly related question is the one you a alluded to which is not just the permission to do physics, but the permission to do physics and also to be a writer, right . So you mentioned how early on people were suggesting you not to do that. Thankfully, you didnt listen to them and have written beautiful books. I, too, when i was writing my first book, the elegant universe, a book about string theory, i remember being at a string theory conference in amsterdam, and this was a physicist in the hotel room next door, and we were just chatting. I told him about it, and he was, like, horrified. He was, like, dont do it. [laughter] he said the field is too young, you know . Youve got to wait until we really understand everything, and, you know, its just not the right time to reveal these ideas to the public. [laughter] as if somehow it was going to, you know, create riots in the street. I dont know what he was exactly awe grade of. [laughter] afraid of. But there is the sense. And, you know, to my mind at the end of the day you do what you do because it feels right. You do what you do because at the end of each day if you can look at what you did e that day and it felt like it had worth and value whether it was solving equations, whether it was writing about the insights that the equations provide us whether its a combination of the two, in the end it really is what janna said. We have the luxe true of living luxury of living in a society here now that gives us that kind of freedom. And i value that freedom every day. I mean, i thank whatever it is, the powers that be up there in the heavens, for thuations or the state of the particles, the big bang, whatever it is that determined how things are now, im deeply grateful and do have a deep sense of gratitude for the freedom to be able to pursue things that feel as though they are valuable. A question from the audience. Janna, why were you advised against writing a book . Well, our field of theoretical physics is pretty insular and has, like a lot of subcultures, unspoken rules, right . Its a culture because there are common themes to how it plays out at every university in every place literally internationally, and among those roles is this kind of, you know, if youre not doing physics every waking minute of your life which, of course, nobodys actually doing then youre somehow stepping out of the monetary. You know . Youre not devout. And as a young scientist who was coming out of graduate school to, to expose that i was not devout was a death knell to my career as a scientist. And so my very wellmeaning, very loving, wonderful mentors who wanted only the best for me told me in no Uncertain Terms, do not do this at this stage in your career. But i think for me it was a little different because i never 100 felt the that i could fit into the monastery anyway. A part of me felt freer than some of my colleagues, fundamental free or. Felt freer. Why not take the chance kind of thing. And im not going to say it was a smooth path. It was pretty rocky. It was pretty rocky, or okay . But i wouldnt have have had it any other way, and i think that, brian, im sure you had this experience, there was a time in our lives where writing a book was considered a detriment to sort of your career evaluations. So before you have tenure and before youre an accomplished professor yeah. And as a young, like, just coming out of graduate school. I was even told in no Uncertain Terms none of these things would be considered towards my promotions or that they would simply be exe colluded. Which was actually excolluded which was really an act of generosity. Were not going to punish you, but were not going to consider it. And i was, like, thank you, ill take that deal. Got it. Thats a deal ill talk. [laughter] yeah. I waited. I waited to have tenure before. I wasnt as bold, janna. [laughter] you know . And the culture that she describes is right on target. I mean, the admonition that i got from some mentors, elders in the field, it wasnt related to tenure. I already had tenure. But there were folks who said please dont x. It was flattering. They said, look, we want you to continue to contribute to the science at the same level you always have, and if youre going to take out time to write these books, its not going to be the same. So in that way, it was kind of flattering. But at the same time, youve got to live your life. I think if you go around once and the question is what are the activities that are going to make your individual iconic, subjective experience something that you look back on as full filling. And for me, just doing the equations 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day which i was doing as a aggravated assault student a graduate student, absolutely nothing else, that life did not appeal to me as the only life that i would lead. Right. So i went to graduate school, i dont think i read a book in, like, four years. Yeah. When i came out, i did not feel clearheaded. Dont tell anybody, but my first postdoc i spent the first nine months reading novels. And people just saw me in my office, i was reading novels. Are you crazy . What are you doing . I was, like, i am feeding my soul. [laughter] im not going to capture this postdoc if i dont do this, and it was my reading peak. Ive never read so many books in a month in my life, like month after month. But its because its not linear. You cant do physics all the time and not sleep or eat, you know . [laughter] you cant not walk or move. You cant be hooked up to tubes and do physics. And so if your compulsion is to write and express your feelings about it, to express that connection to look for bringing other people to show the view of the summit with you or to deal with the climb, then that will make you do better work down the lewin, is the argument down the line. We should stop talking about it so linearly. Its not the number of hours you put in, right . Its the quality of the hours you put in. Great. Weve got a lot of questions. Im going to ask one more before we get to the audience questions. This is the tenth anniversary of the science festival, so one of the things we were thinking about as we were putting together these event when we thought it was going to be in person was to pose the question of what are we going to be talking about at the 20th science festival. So, like, think about your books. What is the research that youre doing or that youre watching that you think might drive the second edition of your book five or ten years from now . Where president ially are there potentially are the discoveries . Yeah. That youve written or, yes, i was right. Well, for janna, it is highly focused on a very active rein that of researchers arena of researchers, black holes. My book is a little bit different. It isnt as tightly tied to the forefront of research, so im going to take your question a slightly different direction and just say what well be talking about at the 20th festival as opposed to one relevant to my book, and i would say its really three things. Were going to be talking about the newfound capability and the ethical implications of rewriting the human genome. Thats going to be with us in a substantial and profound way going forward. Were going to be talking about advances in general Artificial Intelligence which are going to create thinking machines or machines that appear to be thinking in a way thats going to radically change our experience in the world. And i believe we also will be talking about something that janna alluded to which is a deeper understanding of what space and time are. I think theres a chance well get to a place where spas and time will be recognized space and time will be recognized to not be fundamental to, aer, emerge from more basic ingredients like the stitches of Quantum Mechanics that janna made reference to. I think were going to understand that far better, and because of that we may have a completely different paradigm for the fundamental laws. All fundamental laws now presuppose space and time, things within an arena that change flu time. Thats how the through time. Thats how the laws are set up. We may find a completely different paradigm which does not need space and time from the get go. Yeah. I mean, absolutely on all counts. So with the book on black holes, i do get into the hearts of our black holes fundamental as they merge from Quantum Mechanics. How did you get there from the beginning, like, how did you get there. But that is where the discussion is right now, and its not concrete enough yet. We dont have enough discoveries yet, but its, it feels so compelling. Theres something about it that is exciting enough to fizz suggestions to pursue it physicists to pursue it. It could turn out to be a dead end, but it doesnt feel like that right now. It feels extremely promising that one day well understand that black holes emerge from Quantum Mechanics. Causey, right . Crazy, right . But we know other phenomena like that. The temperature in this room is not a thing. Theres no such thing. Theres no particle in the universe that has a quantity temperature. Its the collective behavior of the actually individual atoms. And so it could be Something Like that. But i agree also, its fascinating, the nobel prize in chemistry went for crisper. When i learned that i just thought, well, if id been a young student on the cusp of physics, i would never have been drawn towards biology. I lo it as a passive observer, but as a researcher, i dont really have have i like one sentence from which i can derive [laughter] and crisper doesnt have that feeling. I feel that physicists are going to get into boil iand biologists are going to get into physics more than ever, and well stop thinking about these fields so rigidly as departments in different buildings. Its not unrelated, and to your previous question about being writers, why do we think its to to shocking that somebody who does math writes a book . Why is that so shocking to us . I think in the future there will be a porousness between scientific disciplines and intellectual disciplines that will allow us to progress more because were forced to utilize all of those different tools. And so i hope in ten years did you say ten or twenty years . I said five to ten. Lets take ten. Okay. That youre asking people how did you go from being a biologist to a physicist. And theyll explain this interesting trajectory that led them to be both. Fantastic. Let me get to a couple of the questions from the audience. What are the top three takeaways you want people to know of after reading your books . Ill do you, brian, do you want to do mine . [laughter] well, you know, im so looking forward to seeing your book. Nobody has sent it to me, and i couldnt get ahead of it. When is your book being published . November 10th. I could have sent it, if that was the case, and today, just right before this, i emailed you a set of galleys. Oh, thank you. Just before this. It was like, oh, my good, has brian not seen the book . The one thing the i can say, i know its going to be wonderful because youre a wonderful writer, so im looking forward to seeing it. But unfortunately, i cant, i cant go into any more detail than that. Three takeaways if i was to say of my own book, i dont know, im not much on the three takeaway paradigm, but i would want people to have a clearer sense of how they fit into the grandest possible story which is the story from the beginning of time to the end of time. Where do we fit in on that cosmic timeline . How do we come to be . Why do we have the kinds of obsessions and the kinds of anxieties and the kinds of focuses . Why do we have those qualities . Can we explain them from an evolutionary perspective . And as we turn and pivot towards the future, whats going to be in the long run . Will we stick around . Will matter stick around . The answer as far as we can tell is likely no which i think has a profound impact on your own thoughts about why youre here and where we are going. Janna . Is it three that im looking for . Im sure we could do one or two. Okay, im going to do im going to start with this one. When i was writing this book, i was working on some illustrations. I kind of sketched out how i wanted the illustrations to look. And then i decided to contact an artist named leah hall ran, and shes a wonderful artist who lives in los angeles. I called leah. These would look so much better if you painted [laughter] and so leah painted 23 original artworks oh, wow. Very large scale, theyre gorgeous. In the brian, when i sent you the galleys today, i literally said as a joke, just look at the pictures. No, im kidding, just look at the pictures. How large are they in the i havent, obviously, its covid, so i havent been to the studio, but, you know, theyre significant paintings. Its a very wet, loose, watery process and then we convert them in black and white for the book with. But even my author image was painted by leah. And so whats the takeaway from that, is that this artifice in between art and science isnt, its just an artificial design. I dont think im doing art when im writing about black holes. I dont like that trite, that trite sort of trying to combine the subjects. But does art belong in my book by an artist . Yeah. Im not claiming im the artist, and shes not claiming shes the physicist. But i feel that made the book much for more exciting for me. I wanted to write it were were i wanted to make it better, and its going to be this tiny little object. I think of the book now as a physical thing, right . And that was neat to me. And then i think your question was meant to be more intellectual, more conceptual, and i think what i want people to walk away thinking about is that we think we know stuff, but almost everything we know is really, like, a provocation to try to figure out the next thing. [laughter] and thats what i feel like black holes are for us now. We think we know them now. Weve taken pictures of them, as brian said. Weve heard weve had nobel prizes because of observations. But they remain provocation for things we dont yet understand. And you would love for that to be a takeaway. So a couple questions, actually, about younger people. So one is have either of you considered writing books for kids brian out of curiosity. And then the related question is whats your add views for young people advice for young people who are deeply fascinated about physics . I just want to say that brian absolutely has written a book for younger people. And my first with how the universe got its spots, like how the leopard got its spots, because originally the idea was to write a story for kids. It ended up not being that, but thats what the title is derived from. But, brian, youve written a book. Yeah. I wrote well, a book is perhaps too grandiose a term. It was a very short story that we turned into an illustrated book for younger audiences called icarus at the edge of time, which it was a futuristic reimagining of the classic greek myth of icarus where a boy, rather than donning wax wings and flying too near the sun against his fathers warning, the boy builds a pace ship against his fathers spaceship and goes out to the edge of a black hole. So we now have a nice interface with jannas book, and goes on a joyride there. And he survives it by not crossing over this Event Horizon that janna was making reference to. But theres a weirdness of time which einstein taught us which in this case means he spent an hour near the edge of the black hole, but when he he came back, it was 10,000 years into the future. Everything he knows is gone, and he enters a completely different life. Is so it was a kind of attempt not to teach about black holes per se but, rather, through a journey for the reader to just feel the wondrous power of black holes to impact reality. And i should say although it was published as a book, the main reason i wrote it was for live performance. So i wrote it as a for a live stage presentation. Phillip glass wrote the original orchestral score, and two wonderful film makers from the u. K. Created a wonderful film to accompany the live performance. And so thats something that weve had, like, 60 or 70 performances around the world in that. And were now in the midst of part two two of the story which unlike sort of the hollywood i is e quells that you just do for the sake of doing it, this one, it turns out, does take the story full circle in a metaphorical and literal way as it turns out. So that will be coming out as a book in its own right in the next couple years, i think. And the performance piece now will be parts one and part two. So, yes, that really is meant for Young Audiences or older audiences. And let me just reference the second part of the question which is what advice do i give to young folks who want to go into physics. Its very simple, which is this get excited about the forefront of ideas by reading jannas books, some of my books, the poplarrizations of science that are out there. But youve got to learn the basics inside out. You cant skimp on classical physics or basics of Quantum Mechanics or the basis of statistical mechanics. I cant tell you the number of students that have come to my office after reading my book or somebody elses book and said, okay, im ready to do physics research. You cant unless you can do what jannas showing you up there on the screen. Thats really the advice. And the its a pleasure to learn those things, right . If so i like this twostep idea that you read books that are way ahead of where youre going to be for many years. That gives you a glimpse from a high view of some that way you can imagine one day ill be able to make that climb myself. But the climb itself isnt totally horrible. Its actually, its a pleasure. [laughter] like newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism and fundamental Quantum Mechanics. You should appreciate that each one of those things in the curriculum are there because theyre so profound. They might not be as incredibly fun and glamorous, but they are so so profound. And the more you learn, the more youre going to go back to that and think about, oh, the prl of relativity existed with galileo. And youre going to go back and think about, oh, unification of happened with electromagnetism in the 1800s. So just to appreciate, just to appreciate those various steps. Theres a lot of beauty along the way. Speaking of the climb, weve got a question that asks what was your defining moment to learn perseverance or in a difficult subject . Ooh, thats a tough one. Yeah. If i gave it more thoughts, i practice would come out with something more appropriate, but what comes to mind because janna was mentioning just a moment ago how there is value in reading books in physics today that are beyond your current level, you know, when i was a sophomore in college, Stephen Hawking came and gave a lecture. I actually had never heard of Stephen Hawking before that lecture. I was somehow out of the loop. Went to his lecture, and it was a time when he could still speak a little bit, and he had a graduate student that put his ear next to stevens mouth and would stephens and would translate into a more discernible form for the audience which meant it went really slow so a student like me toweled follow a little could follow a little better. I remember being so inspired that i bought a book on the theory ofrelativity that was way beyond where i could understand. You would carry it with me, and id pull it out and be, like, look at these symbols, and id see my ideas. And i said to myself i want to one day really understand whats in this book. And i wasnt prepared at that moment, couldnt possibly do it, but, you know, i stayed with it and learned the necessary background material to get to that point. And, yeah, when i finally got to the einstein equation somewhere in that book, it was stephen the wine brgs book and the theory of early relativity, it was a thrilling moment having janna using the metaphor climb the mountain, slowly but surely climb the mountain, got to that point that for me early on was just a dream to get there. So that kind of experience is formative for, i think, all of us. All of us have have different versions of that. But to look at something that seemed completely opaque and to put in the effort, the perseverance to get to a point where not only is it not opaque, but you understand it. Not only do you understand it, but you can start to do things with it, yeah, thats kind of a thrilling progression. Janna, you want to add anything . Well, i was not that kid, like, with the chemistry set in my basement. I think now would be different, but i never selfidentified as a scientist prior to the moment that i totally identified [laughter] it was like a switch was thrown. I went from having no, like, never would have identified myself as a scientist to being, like, oh, man, im totally. This is it, this is what im going to do. And i was halfway through college before i discovered physics. And i would study the, you know i think like brian, i love to be a student of ideas and the world and other books and just other things. But i didnt have any background in math and science, and i was in a philosophy class, and ive told this story a couple of times. I hope im not repeating myself, but i was so frustrated. By i was a philosophy major. I was to frustrated that everybody was still arguing about what conte mean when he said i just was very disillusioned. And one day this young, a aspiring professor comes to give a talk and talks about Quantum Mechanics and free will and determinism and einstein. All of these people who had dominated the conversation up to that point in the semester became very quiet. And i thought, oh, theres something to this. [laughter] and i now will tell you that nobody in fuzzics who has learned in physics who has learned relativity is saying what did einstein mean . Were like, i get it, and i can teach it to you, and you can teach it to the next generation, and we can forget einstein. I hope we dont, but we could and it doesnt matter because we know exactly what he meant. That was a moment for me. It was very defining. And i have to tell brian because hell be kind of amused, and that young professor was david [inaudible] who is now a professor at columbia. Great. Well, i want to be respectful of the time. This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you both for joining us. Your books are, for brian greene, until the end of time. Ive actually got it right here. It is a great book and a fun journey and story through physics and reelision and how religion and how the brain works and the empire state building, which i will never look at [laughter] and jannas book coming out november 10th . Seven days into the fall of rome. What could go wrong . [inaudible] if you [inaudible] thats beautiful. Thank you very, very much for spending an evening with us. To the audience, thank you. Thank you for participating. Connor, thank you thank you, eric. What a lovely conversation. Thank you, janna, thank you, brian, for being here. I just want to say when i was in law school, which is what i did prior to this job, and i decided i could not just read this for three weeks, so id read when i walked, on the bus, in class, three minutes before. Everyone was, like, what are you doing here . You care about books. No, i do this job, im super happy, and its great. Theres a role for novels in just daily life. Yeah, and all of your books will come probably in a bundle, brians and jannas books together, so expect them in november. Thank you so much for being here. Eric, im so glad we got to have you featured tonight. Hello. My name is connor moran, im the direct or of the wisconsin book festival. Thank you so much for being here today for our event with laila lalami for conditional citizens, her million worry about coming to america, what it means to be american. We have a lot of great things that we can talk about with this