I am tim mchenry. This is where, if you havent been here before we take inspiration from the traditions and bring them to you here in the foothills. And with traditions, that is what we are exploring. This whole season and the whole nature of what wisdom actually is. Is it knowledge . Insight . Is it understanding . This is what we are exploring. And so, we have people from different areas together to have conversations and find out what is wisdom from them and a few of them, awill be on monday to talk about intuition and a psychologist, ellen and actress joining isabel to talk about animal wisdom. She studies in the congo and look at their relationships and how they mirror some of ours. And probably not those that might be affected on Television Later tonight. But nonetheless we will move on from that. Common understanding and knowledge and what better example to choose then einstein. David bodanis has come out with a new book, a biography entitled einsteins greatest mistake a biography. If you cant imagine what that was you will find out tonight. Interesting what he writes about the nature of genius. I am going to read you a short paragraph. Geniuses come up with their first ideas, far past what everyone have to be confident that they are right. That involves they need to be subtle, making sure their breakthroughs incorporate factual information and responsive to what others are finding out. The trick is to walk the line between the supple and stubborn without straying too far to either side. Does einstein do it . We are here to find out. David bodanis is no stranger to bestsellers. His book the secret house from 1986 is a New York Times bestseller, that equation was the title of a book of his which got translated in 28 languages and also became a ballet. He will be joined on stage on another day david auburn, this particular conversation brought out mind blowing proof which won the pulitzer and tony at its time and questioned the nature of genius. The lady to bring these together, to hear and address questions a little later on, and find a book afterwords. Please welcome david auburn and David Bodanis. [applause] it is exciting, david and i have never met. I read the book over the last couple days, it is a wonderful book. You cast a wide net. It is about einstein but also many other is. You do everything with wonderful lightness of touch. I thought we could talk about the title to begin with. Dont know if you want to give it away spoiler style as to what einsteins greatest steak was. When i started reading the book i thought i knew what it was. I thought it was about his use of the cosmological constant which he famously said was his greatest mistake. It was a constant he added to one of his equations to account for what he thought was a static universe. Years later he regretted doing that but that is not einsteins greatest mistake. If you want to talk about what is. Guest where to begin . Einstein believed the universe was like a book. If it is like a book, it might be a deity or in personal forces that have always been there. The universe was like a magazine, you couldnt find a complete order. There would be Something Like this, Something Like that, it wouldnt hang together. In 1915 einstein found a beautiful, simple equation, not e mc2, something even more beautiful, something that comes once a century or once a millennium. A simple equation that predicted the universe was expanding. In 1915 all scientists told einstein the experiment was ambiguous. They thought the universe was a bunch of stars, the milky way galaxy, floating in space and beyond it there was nothing. It was like Donald Trumps brain, just empty space. Einstein had to modify and lacerate the simple equations and never liked doing it. The lamborghini, and people say that is not the right style, you have to put anchors and make this stuff ugly. He had to do it because the universe is not expanding. We 10 years later astronomers said boy they didnt say boy. We were wrong with astronomical evidence, the universe is expanding. I knew it, should have stuck to what i believed this beautiful vision i felt i was able to see, cutting through the veil of the complexity around him, simple clarity whether it was clean and pristine and exact. He got rid of all those modifications and went to his beautiful equation. Many people think those modifications were his greatest mistake but the sort of mistake many make of their life and doesnt destroy you. There is something that did destroy einstein. The psychological conclusion he drew from that. He decided he listened to Experimental Evidence even when in his heart, his intuition insisted there was a clarity, you could see behind everything. If he had held his nerve none of that would have happened. He would have been shown to be right. Around this time in the midtolate 1920s Quantum Mechanics were coming in. The study of things on the ultrasmall level, electrons, it suggests on the tiniest level everything is not smooth like an ocean wave but inexact, probabilities and uncertainty, heisenbergs uncertainty principle. You cant see an exact precise curve. Einstein said that doesnt make sense. It doesnt fit my belief the universe is beautiful like a book. I want to follow it. The experiment all evidence backs it up. He said this i know. For ten years i left something beautiful to go along with experiment all evidence and that experiment i wont do it again. That destroyed his life. For the next 30 years his mind was at a superb level but he was isolated. Physicists said stay away from einstein, ignore him, he is dangerous, he is wrong. It was a horrible thing. He was famous in public, movie stars like to be filmed with him, Charlie Chaplin and other people, he was interviewed all the time but the connections he had with other working physicists came to an end and he was terribly sad. Host you talk about how niels bohr, one of the godfathers of Quantum Mechanics, enjoyed physicists coming to study with him. The same was not true of einstein, he was a relatively isolated figure, very gregarious and warm person. That is what hurt. There are two types of person in the world, imagine friends around you which category you might want, one sword are tennis players. If you have a problem you come to work monday and you pick that is a problem, got to work it out and find other people, huddled together and work this out. Others are totally different. They come to work and meet their family and say i got a problem, give me some space, go for a walk, i need to work out of my office. Einstein was a tennis player all through his life and loved it like niels bohr when he was older. He would bounce ideas and need some quiet time and do the final putting together but he couldnt do it. He had grown up in a warm cuddly family. After this happened with Quantum Mechanics, when he felt he was holding on, he felt he was holding up like atlas, the universe he was forced to be a gopher. He was forced in princeton, new jersey, perfectly nice house, he never likes princeton, he was the city of puny demagogues on stilts. It is much better that way. It hurt his feelings. It wasnt just a matter of age. Einsteins mind was terrific. In his 50s he came up with the notion that highly separated particles can synchronize in a way the idea behind the new quantum computers. And lasers. He came up with the early concept for what became lasers as well. Guest he did his main work in astronomy, came to an end in 1915 in wartorn berlin and the next year he was resting one weekend came up with the idea that Human Technology wasnt up to it for another 40 or 50 years. Host lets talk about him as a genius, the university of chicago, trying to define genius, someone who is really smart or talented. Did you have a working definition of that when working on this book . Guest two things that separate genius, and intelligent person does something you do and they do it better. I would highly recommend you do not vote on David Bodanis to win but if i was stronger, i could understand that. Genius is different. Neil simon at his peak and a great director, mozart can be dealt, it is moving along and it is almost like a joke. It is brilliant and unexpected but makes sense. We do things you cant imagine. Michael jordan at his peak was able to do that. The other thing, think about the first part alone. A genius is also correct. What they find is right. Guest i was struck that you emphasized einstein wasnt necessarily a mathematical genius, he had talent but math was not his strongest suit. He wasnt the best calculator, he wasnt as proficient as anyone he relied on to do his work but he had almost that allowed him to see things no one else could see but worked from visual images backwards to to justify these images he had in his head. Guest he had a vision, here is a quick question. How could david and i walk parallel . Making sure they walk parallel and swerve together and hit. You think it is impossible but einstein could visualize it, walking parallel, a few yards away from each other and yet we swerve together and hit and always stay parallel. Seems impossible. How could that happen . Einstein felt it like this. Suppose david and i are on the equator. We start walking parallel, walking due north. But on the Curved Surface of the earth we end up hitting and we feel a force pulling us together even though you must be getting it wrong, i am walking due north, you are wrong, i am walking due north, einstein could see that right away. Another thing about correct genius rather than a cranky person, there is a truth to it. Einstein said he felt like a little boy inside a huge library. On the wall of a library are various books, the wall is filled with books and they have all the wisdom of the universe. It preexisted and is waiting. Normally we couldnt see it. It is dark and dim but occasionally the greatest members of our species could take one book off the shelf, pull it down, open it and they could see the waiting truth. One line might say e mc2. Another says the golden rule or sermon on the mount and we are forced on the shelf to withdraw. And when he was putting with the laser, he knew it was waiting. It pulls him. Host i loved the intellectual tennis games he played especially when he is announcing his strongest challenge to Quantum Mechanics, his conference in brussels, in 1928. When you describe every morning einstein and einstein prevents a new challenge. And at the end of the day, he thinks the thought experiment doesnt succeed in disproving Quantum Mechanics. I love the idea of these guys batting back and forth, almost playing a game with one another, the mathematics, the details come later. What they are working from is images are so precise, nonmathematicians guest totally. One of the things i tried to incorporate is all sorts of equations and Popular Science books, a university textbook, they summarize and clarify it. I tried to do Something Different. Suppose you didnt know what the content was in brussels, but what was going on, two men were friends, niels bohr met einstein, they loved and admired each other. Einstein is his famous danish cheese from copenhagen, a special thing to do. Niels bohr loved smelly things and einstein had to enjoy it so they really got on well because they were men who share that vision and in einsteins view seemed to believe the universe was a waiting book and einstein had found a man he respected as a human being, a fine, noble man. A good human being and they were sharing the same goal. The french poet said love isnt working together in each others eyes but in the same direction it niels bohr and einstein for a a while were doing that. When Quantum Mechanics started coming in, one by one people left einstein and said you talk about things being a book, god does not play dice with the universe, time after time showing so on a beautiful ocean swell, probability of uncertain the, i am sorry, we have to leave you. I was living in paris, he was of the but is one of the last people who stayed close to einstein, a brilliant and, he described what it was like, coming back from a conference, going to berlin and einstein said he will stay with me. He didnt want to let down this man who was a mentor but he thought Experimental Evidence was unambiguous, one by one everyone was leaving and he was the leader of the Quantum Mechanics side. It was a great conference, came to an end and niels bohr respected einstein, he knew if einstein could find one case where Quantum Mechanics didnt apply, einstein would be right. We wont go into the details of it but very roughly, heisenbergs uncertainty principle can be thought of like this. Trying to measure the air pressure inside a tire, i get a little gauge and the air comes out and insert the pressure but suppose as i do it david comes by and i stick to engage in in the air starts coming out, what are you doing . Measuring the air in the tire. You should look at it . I suppose i should. By the time i look at it it might say 12 pounds per square inch. When i first put it in the air has come out so it measures the wrong thing. To do it accurately i have to work really quickly but if you think about it, the second i put it in in the air starts coming out i get a figure that is slightly wrong. You open your refrigerator and see the temperature a little bit of cold air comes out and the temperature is slightly different than it was before. Heisenbergs uncertainty principle says if you are really careful however careful you are something is going to be a little bit lost as you interact with the event and the event underneath, whatever you are looking at is not going to be precise. You cant even say what the true air pressure in the tire was. To einstein that was nonsense. We are not skilled enough. He developed as you said, and apparatus of a hollow box with lights flashing inside it and when he clock ticks a little paul opens and some of the light went out. Light, you can measure how much that changes the box so if something goes out the box would go up in weight. At the exact moment the box would go a certain amount, you could see how much came out. This wasnt like the air pressure gauge. It happens to anybody touching it. Niels bohr couldnt work out what was wrong with it. If this was correct, something happening on the microlevel, that you could exactly measure. There is a photograph that night when einstein thought of that. Is dead was a contractor. Einstein worked in a Patent Office and liked building things was when his sons were little he got a matchbox and string. He was in switzerland. He made little cable cars just for the kids. He imagined this wonderful box and there is a photograph of einstein and niels were walking down the street in brussels and niels bohr is worried but einstein is smiling as can be. The last photograph i have ever seen if einstein where he was really happy because the next morning niels bohr, who was very smart, not a genius but very smart, said einstein, when that box has a little bit of light go out, the clock which we are not touching, the box if you way it goes up a little bit, ways a little less, a little bit less. Niels bohr said when it goes up, it goes up in the gravitational field of the earth and what happens then . Einstein realized the problem. By relativity einsteins relativity, time is not the same as their pressure, think of air pressure, when you are on the surface of the earth, air is quite dense but as you go higher up the air is thinner. It turns out for various reasons time works at a certain speed on the surface of the earth. As you go higher it changes its rate of advancement and it goes higher it changes it even more. As the box moves up there is a certain uncertainty in time, the time measurement isnt exact because you are different point in the gravitational field. Einsteins theory of relativity made his idea not work. He had the good grace to say okay, in this case you are right. That was the last time einstein ever tried to fight back. In his heart he knew he was right. That is biased. In his heart he was convinced he was right. If you ever argue about something strongly, with a skilled lawyer they might be more adept, do verbal twists and turns, that was einstein. It had to be. Host he had a sense of humor about himself. He understood the irony that he overthrew he was in the same position, stodgy recalcitrant objector to the new wave of budget coming along. I was struck in your book, how open he was about the humor, not as though he was blind to the situation he was in. Why did he find it so difficult to give in or join, to ally himself with people who were not overturning things he created but pushing beyond what he created. Guest the way einstein viewed it was he hadnt changed. Wasnt that he was adventurous when he was young, from his perspective Something Different happens. He had been lucky enough to see one of these waiting truths. And exact order and clarity in the universe, a long tradition of that. He to presume to say what it was, just said what it was there. His religious views tie in with this. Imagine a spectrum, Richard Dawkins over here, over here somebody in the new testament, the old testament, the manifestations they developed historically. Einstein was against atheism. He thought it was unscientific to have that view. How can you be so sure . Over here he didnt follow the details. He thought moses was a very wise man but didnt the Ten Commandments were given by god. There is a big ground in between and einsteins views were like his favorite philosopher, spinoza. You can think of it as pantheism. Patterns in the universe are significant. We dont understand what they are. We are like a little child looking at a complex thing but the complex thing is there and it is waiting. Einstein felt he was in tradition, plato, spinoza, he had been able to apply his decent mind in mathematics. He was not an a plus student. I might not be smarter than the that i have the persistence of a mule. He would work on his stuff and he felt that is what he had done and it turns out scientists had taken a wrong turn. They were going off about probability and Quantum Mechanics and eventually would return to the correct thing and the reason the climate he had, the reaso