Down the Wormhole

Episode 123
This conversation was recorded at the Sinai and Synapses alumni gathering in November 2023. In it, we talk with Dr. Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad about the ethics of AI in Islam, the future of human-computer interaction, and the ethics of bringing a form of consciousness back to life. 
Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is a Research Scientist at University of Washington’s Harborview Medical Center and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Washington Bothell. His research focuses on algorithmic nudging at scale, simulation modeling for machine learning, Responsible AI, and personality emulation. He has had academic appointments at University of Washington, Center for Cognitive Science at University of Minnesota, Minnesota Population Center, and the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. Muhammad also has worked in applied AI in industry for several startups and advisor to various governmental bodies. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
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Episode 122
Today we are joined by author, speaker, and podcaster Rob Bell to talk about his new novel "Where'd You Park Your Spaceship". We talk about delighting in our work, a faith that could survive the end of the world, and how a book about spaceships and distant planets has more to do with what it means to be human than anything he's written before. 
 
Rob Bell is the New York Times Bestselling author of fourteen books and plays which have been translated into 25 languages. His visual art can be seen on Instagram @realrobbell, his band is HUMANS ON THE FLOOR, and his podcast is called The RobCast. Rob lives with his family in Ojai, California.
https://robbell.com/
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript (AI Generated)
Zack Jackson (00:22.558)Our guest today is the bestselling author of 14 books and plays, international speaker and host of the Robcast.
orb (00:30.161)Okay.
Zack Jackson (00:46.582)He lives in Ojai, California, where he hosts two-day small group gatherings, that which you can and should sign up for right now. Link in the description. It is my pleasure and honor to welcome Rob Bell to this podcast. Hey, Rob.
Ian Binns (01:02.341)Hey Rob.
orb (01:02.45)Hello, fellas. Thanks for having me on.
Zack Jackson (01:05.322)Oh, thanks for spending your morning with us. So I have in my hand this very, um, strange and wonderful novel called where'd you park your spaceship? Which even I know the title still to this day brings a smile to your face. Um, the book starts with the line.
Ian Binns (01:08.122)Yeah.
orb (01:27.205)just to hear you say it, just to hear you say it.
Ian Binns (01:30.62)I loved it.
Zack Jackson (01:32.21)So the first line in the book is, the earth didn't make it, it got brown balled. Which in total caps, brown balled. Then we meet characters named Heen Grubears, Moogie Fallers and Sir Pong. There's a family game like two pages in where you intentionally slam your head into a fork. And then without any explanation, we have a sentence that says,
We took her to the Thrival in our circle that night. So from like the very beginning of this book, I got the feeling that this wasn't going to be a book about a carefully crafted universe or a book about like a message being hammered on over and over again. This was not a carefully crafted universe. This was a novel just stuffed to the brim with delight.
Like your absolute delight in your characters, in their alien world, it just comes through so clearly. Can you maybe just tell us a little bit about your relationship to the story and to the people who live in here?
orb (02:45.69)What a wonderful setup slash question. Yeah, and honestly.
Zack Jackson (02:48.226)Ha ha ha.
orb (02:54.101)All I had was delight. I don't have training as a writer. I don't have a background. I haven't really read science fiction. I guess Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I don't, other than that, I like, all there was, and my work for roughly 30 years has been explaining. That's what like a spiritual teacher does, which is a very particular engagement of the mind.
And I had some sense that something was ending, something I'd been doing. It was like an achy, angsty, like a death feeling, like a cellular death. Like you've been doing a thing and it's coming to an end. Don't numb the pain, just let it die. And this story came roaring in. And the only way it worked was what happens next. Like a very innocent, tender, who appears? What are they wearing? What's their name?
and that explaining energy. Well, obviously, if you watch a movie and it's clear what the point of the movie is, you're like, ugh, we say heavy-handed, on the nose. You know what I mean? We're out. So it was like taking all of these muscles that I've built up over the years. Like a number of my earlier books, like Love Wins is a thesis. It's an argument. It's a like point A, point B, point C. This relates to this.
Zack Jackson (04:07.138)Oh yeah.
Zack Jackson (04:17.613)Mm.
orb (04:21.905)Here's what I just told you. Here's another example of what I just told you. And this, the delight that you're describing, this was like, all of that was like a kill switch. If any of that earlier musculature was engaged, then immediately it's like crimping a garden hose. No water could come through. It only worked with like, or like the scene where Nune gives her bread is magic speech in the ravine. I was.
Zack Jackson (04:33.493)Mm.
Zack Jackson (04:44.413)interesting.
Zack Jackson (04:49.78)Mm-hmm.
orb (04:50.633)in the ravine for like three or four days. Kind of knowing she was going to do something spectacular and he was going to be like, oh my god, what did I just witness? But also not knowing how. So it was like this surreal, almost like a fugue or a trance. Like I, I am creating this and I don't know what's going to happen next.
Zack Jackson (05:18.526)Yeah, it's like in that scene, you do something that you do a lot in this book, which is like, you present a situation like, Oh, so-and-so has to pick so-and-so to do this demonstration, who are they going to pick? And then they pick the person and you're just like, of course they picked them because this, that, and the other, but you don't explain the, the intricate backstory behind why everything happens. You're just like, well, of course it happened that way.
orb (05:31.824)Yes!
orb (05:35.557)Nixie flugers! Ugh.
Ian Binns (05:38.492)Thanks for watching!
Zack Jackson (05:44.67)And after that happened, like three times I was on board and I was like, well, yeah, of course that happened that way. I don't need a big explanation. There's something happening right now. Let's, let's see this thing that's happening right now. Acknowledge the complexity around it and just look at it.
orb (05:57.133)And like, oh, and that scene when, when Nuneye then has the guy that she picks, picks somebody and he picks, who does he pick? He picks Kixie Flugers. Oh my God, picks you, and it's like scandal. The whole school erupts. And then Heen is like, this is obviously a big deal. And then Lines says to Heen's, oh my God, Kixie Flugers used to be with him, but then she was dating so-and-so. And he gives like classic universal high school drama. And
you're on another planet that you've just made up sometime in the future and yet god dune picks kixi flugers and kixi flugers looks like a kixi flugers would look like it's just it's just the absurdity of it oh god it's just so enjoyable
Zack Jackson (06:35.566)Clearly, right?
Zack Jackson (06:44.957)That definitely came across.
Ian Binns (06:47.524)Um, one thing I want to just say, Zach will tell you, I'm the, you know, I'm definitely the, the cohost on the show that just goes off on tangents, but you always say there are no tangents. And I, I actually, uh, have that as like a banner on my computer. Cause I love that phrase, but, um, so I. Then working on this huge grant proposal, do all these different things. And so I had a hard time sitting down to read it. And then it was.
orb (06:58.377)There are no, yeah, right.
orb (07:03.485)Hahaha
Ian Binns (07:13.912)And we knew this was coming up and then Zach said, well, good news for you. And then I got your email that the audio version just got released and I, I paid for the Kindle version of the book. And so I, you know, got the audio, um, the audio version of it. And I love the fact that you read it, um, and synced it all up. And so I was telling Zach right before he came on that, you know, I was maybe a hundred pages then when I started listening and, and then I thought, you know, I really want to hear Rob say Brown bald.
So I went all the way back to the beginning and restarted the whole book, just so I could experience that. And I think that really connects because you had an episode, you released an episode recently for your own podcast, keep the tears in, or do I keep the tears or something? I can't leave the tears in. And I had not gotten to that part of the book yet. I was right before it, didn't really give anything away. So I was good with that.
Zack Jackson (07:44.931)Yes.
orb (08:01.774)Oh yeah, leave the tears in? Yeah.
Ian Binns (08:13.228)Um, but what I loved about that episode, and it's funny cause I, you know, highlighted all throughout the book, made all these little annotations and notes. Many of the notes that I made was I love that you're laughing while reading this. I love that your emotions are coming out. It's, I mean, it connected me more to the book and the characters than I think listen to it regularly. And then you release that episode and talked about your experiences in the past and then experience with this one.
orb (08:31.159)Mmm. Mm-hmm.
orb (08:37.346)Mm-hmm.
Ian Binns (08:40.984)I know you talked about maybe a little bit in the episode, but how did it feel just letting you be you while reading your work?
orb (08:50.745)like a rebirth, like the other work that I've gotten to do over the years was like a warm-up. When I first had written this and knew no publisher is gonna want this, no one may ever read it, but I shared it with a couple friends and like one friend was like, this is what it's actually like to be your friend. I was like, are you kidding? I was so...
Ian Binns (08:52.632)Yeah? Can you explain more?
Ian Binns (09:00.794)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (09:06.478)the
Ian Binns (09:13.177)Yeah.
orb (09:21.069)it disruptive in the very best way, because I had some sense like, why does, how am I, however old I was at the time, 51, and what is age? But how do I feel like I'm, this feels, yeah, it had some like coming home feeling. And even publishing, like classic New York publishing, there are,
Zack Jackson (09:40.279)Hmm.
Ian Binns (09:40.388)Yeah. Well, go ahead.
orb (09:49.845)which was very good to me. And yet some sense like right away with the book, I was like, if I take this into a publisher, they're gonna be like, yeah, this isn't a Rob Bell book. I remember thinking, but I'm Rob Bell. So I distinctly remember thinking, oh my God, if you'll have to just do this on your own and it'll probably cost. And so it became like a rearranging my life. Like.
Zack Jackson (10:00.517)Hahaha!
orb (10:17.765)Hence, I'm like in the corner of a garage, like starting over. And then, oh yeah, I'll have to just make the audio book myself, but each step of like, this could really not work, no one may care, became oddly like a blinking green light. Like, are you okay following what feels like an even deeper level of self?
Ian Binns (10:36.837)Yeah.
orb (10:46.713)even if it means you like are some guy who lost the plot and he's in a garage in Ojai talking about spaceships. But then I would share it with friends. Literally there are friends who are like, I just read the draft of this thing you sent me. It gave me a couple of days to recover because it affected me so deeply. It's the most personal thing you've ever done. And I'd be like, what is, what? So it just like the Tao Te Ching, unknowing, knowing and unknowing. It had a very Zen like.
Ian Binns (10:53.613)Yeah.
Ian Binns (11:12.475)Yeah.
orb (11:16.357)Rob Bell, you know nothing about how everything works. And especially the work for years was like right down the middle. This is what I'm saying, this is what I just said. This is an example of it. And this is every single interaction about this story is like people like, yeah, my mom died three years ago. I'm trying to like the most personal, it was like instantly I was talking, we were connecting on some,
Ian Binns (11:27.696)Mm-hmm.
orb (11:45.633)other level, you know what I mean? Which was like, I obviously people know about this with fiction and literature for thousands of years, but for me, you're right. Some discovery of some self, like some more, I don't know how you even say it, because we're all just sort of step by step by step.
Ian Binns (11:47.076)Yeah, yeah.
Zack Jackson (11:47.543)Yeah.
Ian Binns (12:02.532)Well, and I loved the fact, you know, as I said, you know, I was already connecting with the story and the characters, but then hearing you read it. So the, one of the reasons why I love listening to your podcast is because I feel, I feel like you always start off with hello friends. And then when you name the title, you usually laugh and you always talk about the importance of laughing. And, and so I feel like we're, it's a connection, right? That you're developed because you're being who I assume is you. Um, you're being very personable. Um,
orb (12:26.733)Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ian Binns (12:32.22)You know, I've sat in on several of your classes throughout the pandemic. These are online. It, I got the same feeling. And then when reading this, it just, it was like a very long or multiple podcast episodes, and you just sounded like you were really enjoying yourself.
orb (12:39.387)Mm-hmm.
orb (12:44.424)Yeah.
really enjoying myself. And even when I started thinking, because I would come in at the end of the day when I was writing and say to Kristen, like, this is what Dill Tud did today. She'd be like, and she would just say, my God, you just love to talk about your characters. And honestly, other books was like, the book goes out, you do some interviews, quote unquote promotion, and then onto the next thing. It was like a window of time where you're out, whatever touring, and this was like.
Oh, wait, if I actually released this, I would talk about this for the rest of my life. It was like, so yeah, very personal. Like, oh no, I would be doing this. This is like the most enjoyable thing I could think of. Talking to you guys is like, oh my God, we're gonna have another discussion about where'd you park your spaceship? I'm so excited. So it jumbled, like even if you think about like, free market economics, if you make something that you gotta go out and hustle.
Ian Binns (13:22.426)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (13:36.659)Yeah. If I.
orb (13:44.473)it like just obliterated even that stuff. Or recording the audio book like didn't be, you know, another platform, another, it became like, oh my God, that would be so fun to like read it and like turn the pages like I'm just reading it to you. Cause when I am writing a book in this book, I would call friends and read them scenes without them having any context for the story. I'd give them like 10 seconds of context and then just read them.
Zack Jackson (13:44.632)Hmm.
Ian Binns (14:08.464)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (14:08.567)Hmm
orb (14:11.717)the first time that Dill Todd walks up and talks to Heen. Cause I knew if this scene, but like I remember multiple scenes where I would have them, I would read it to somebody, I'd call a friend and just be like, Hey, can I read you this scene? And almost like if the scene works with absolutely no context, and I was like, Oh, we're onto something. It's good, but very personal. So if you feel that in the audio book,
Ian Binns (14:16.048)which I thought was great by the way.
Ian Binns (14:36.696)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (14:36.814)Hmm.
orb (14:41.469)That delights me because that's actually what it's felt like.
Ian Binns (14:46.436)Well, and if I can, I know Zach, you wanted to say something, but I told Zach this too. Well, you know, over the last couple of weeks. So, um, I had to, uh, I was doing a lot of pickup. My, my son goes to a school that's a Mandarin language immersion program. And so he, we have taken him to a hub stop and pick him up from there. And so I was constantly listening to it in the car and he's, he's 13, I have 13 year old boy, girl twins. And so he would get in, you know, I'd take him to the bus in the morning.
Zack Jackson (14:47.02)Yeah.
Ian Binns (15:13.912)And he would listen to it with me and then I would listen to it some throughout the day. Uh, and then when I'd pick him up, he would come in and then all of a sudden, yeah, he's like, okay, so wait, dad, what's going on now? Um, but I had to keep moving forward to get it done. And so finally I just said, it's like, okay, buddy, I need to give you the book. You need to listen to it and read it, you know, and hopefully he will, but he, he was really getting into it. And every time you would laugh or someone that I'm like, did you hear him laugh? That's great. Isn't it? So.
orb (15:20.401)He's missed some of that. He's missed it.
Zack Jackson (15:25.879)Ha ha ha.
orb (15:42.137)And you're like, your son's like, can you, can you just rewind to when I got out of the car for school? And you're like, no, no. I mean, I love you. Right. I love you, but not that much. Like I gotta know what happens next. I'm not going to, I already know that part.
Ian Binns (15:45.388)Yeah. No, I I'm preparing to talk to him. Yeah. Yeah, so is neat. I mean he and he I love that it he connected with it as well. I thought it was really neat.
Zack Jackson (15:58.316)Right.
Zack Jackson (16:03.842)Well, I mean, every single part of this, the plot of this book is laid out on the back of the book, but you just have no idea what any of those words mean until you read the book.
orb (16:12.201)Good, good, good. I love the idea of laying out the whole thing right before you, the whole where it's headed, in such a way that it's even more mystery. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (16:26.506)Right? Like I read the back and then Nunez shows up and he learns that she's assigned seven sent to Ferdus to do a graining. And I'm like, well, I don't know what that means, but three quarters of the way through the book. I was like, oh yeah, that was on the back of the book. I get it now.
orb (16:32.357)Yeah, good, good. Just word salad. I was like just.
orb (16:42.277)Yes, so like there's a words, there's a, there's a word salad thing you can do that is, oh, you want a description on the back of the book? It's almost like a spoof of a description on the back of the book. Okay, I'll give you a detailed description of what happens in this book. You know, almost like, like a wink to the publishing world. It's like, you gotta give them a full, you know, like the Instagram video, you gotta hook them in the first three seconds. It's like a, all these conventional wisdom rules. They're like, okay.
Zack Jackson (16:55.79)Hmm.
Zack Jackson (17:01.486)Thanks for watching!
Zack Jackson (17:08.178)Mm-hmm.
orb (17:12.865)Okay, I could do the rule, but I'm going to do it so over the top, but it's like laughing at it. It's memeing itself.
Zack Jackson (17:20.382)Oh, it's so, it's so, I mean, you say you've read Douglas Adams and that comes through so much. It's like, I'm reading this book and I'm thinking like, this is the sort of flippant irreverent hilarity of, of like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But with like that sort of laser focused, this is what it means to be human of C.S. Lewis. You know, when you're reading one of his allegorical stories.
orb (17:26.054)I'm sorry.
orb (17:44.041)Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Zack Jackson (17:47.178)And you're like, Oh yeah, I am a demon. You're right. Not really, but you know, I, I also say those things. I definitely that definitely came through.
orb (17:47.342)Mmm.
Ian Binns (17:50.524)Hehehe
orb (17:53.401)Yeah, wow. Wow. That's fascinating.
Ian Binns (17:58.968)And see, I didn't... Go ahead.
Zack Jackson (17:59.234)So can I make an observation? Okay. And then you can tell me if I'm totally off because you said a little bit before that people would tell you this is the most Rob Bell we've ever read. This is just coming through so naturally. This feels like a new thing. But when I look at the books you've put out at least, there seems to be a kind of trajectory to it where your pastoral works are these short books that
wrestle with a topic creatively and with fun images that are easy to preach, but they very much feel like sermon series. And then that goes on until you wrote, what is the Bible, which feels like you're letting us in on the like the mechanics of how you read the Bible and all of the things that grounded your previous works. Now you've given us the tools to do that too. And then you wrote everything is spiritual, which is that but for the soul.
orb (18:47.567)Mmm.
Zack Jackson (18:58.826)Here is the kind of the magnum opus of what it means to be all the work I've done. So I feel like if you read what is the Bible and everything is spiritual, it's almost like an accidental discipleship where now you can now read the world the way Rob Bell reads the world. You don't need me to write these little pastoral books anymore. Now I'm free to go on and explore this other more.
orb (19:00.165)Wow!
orb (19:24.882)Mmm.
Zack Jackson (19:25.538)fictional world. I don't want to call it allegorical because I know it's not, this isn't Pilgrim's Progress or anything. But it almost felt like you were freeing yourself by giving us the tools to do the things that Rob Bell did in the world for so long.
orb (19:30.953)Oh yeah, that's a really...
orb (19:40.989)Well, it's so interesting that you say that because like I came, I was, I was born and raised in this particular Christian tradition that was called itself evangelical, which meant Protestant, which Protestant is like, how do we change the world? A guy nailed a bunch of theses to a door in Germany. Like how do you deal with the pain of the world? Think and.
Zack Jackson (20:03.174)No.
orb (20:08.729)stuff. And at some level, it's like a disembodied propositions, get them right in your head, get the furniture arranged right in your head, and then you're good. And at some level, I can see a long, slow learning to be in my body. I mean, I remember in my early 20s, discovering that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, being like, wait a second.
Zack Jackson (20:09.954)Yeah, thinking stuff.
orb (20:37.937)Like he's actually talking about economics. Everything is economics and politics and social fabric and safety net and how you relate to the currency of the empire. So that's really interesting what you just outlined is it started with like almost like standing there telling people stuff and then it just keeps sinking more and more incarnation, more and more body until we're like, well, here's how you can read that and then it becomes
Ian Binns (20:38.917)Yeah
orb (21:07.569)Here's the events in this body that shaped me. And then at some point you toss out, we don't even have to do concepts anymore. We can just go right to worlds. I just picture it just like just sinking more and more and more and more into body until there's no propositions left because it's just written, like written on the heart essentially.
Zack Jackson (21:20.718)Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (21:32.35)Yeah. Oh, that's what's so great about science fiction. And this is like science fiction ish. Just in that it takes place on another planet, but
orb (21:38.037)Yeah. One interviewer on a science fiction podcast was like, other than planets and space ship, other planets and space ship, what makes a science fiction? And I was like, I didn't say that. Don't ask me.
Zack Jackson (21:55.086)That's what Kurt Vonnegut said that. He said, I'm, I'm a science fiction writer because somebody told me I was.
orb (22:01.093)Right, I'm like, I'm not making claims here.
Zack Jackson (22:05.702)But that's the beauty, that's the like the best of science fiction is we take what it means to be human and we play it out on a stage that's so outrageous that it's not going to too closely allegorize, but we can work out in them what's happening here with us.
Ian Binns (22:10.501)Mm-hmm.
orb (22:21.501)Oh, and it just comes in like Game of Thrones. I don't know where Westeros is. But I know greed. I can I know that feeling.
Ian Binns (22:27.468)Oh yeah. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (22:30.973)Uh-huh.
orb (22:35.089)That's really well said. That's funny.
Zack Jackson (22:39.318)So in this universe of yours, the earth gets brownballed in the first sentence, which means we basically destroyed the topsoil and nothing can grow. Our atmosphere is polluted. There's nothing living left on it. Everything is brown now. And we had to leave. The humanity had to go out into the stars and colonize other planets with hopefully a bit more intentionality. So imagining that universe.
What do you think those people who left Earth, those people who were religious, how do you think that sort of thing would affect their view of God, the divine? How do we bring God with us to the stars?
orb (23:24.069)Right, right, because the...
orb (23:29.678)you're going to have to have some understanding that can handle that. Which in some ways has been all along. Apocalypse is often looming. I mean, you think about how many texts apocalypse is looming. I mean, think about how many saviors. The only way I can make you think I'm a savior is if I can show you politically, religiously otherwise, I have to be able to show you an apocalypse to show you your need for someone to save you from it.
Zack Jackson (23:33.848)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (23:57.339)Mm.
orb (23:58.473)and even the crashing of the stock market, I'll protect you because it's coming. You know, that's like a thing. Why 2K? Think of how many of these. I have the answer to help you escape becoming wrath. So perhaps sometimes those arise in order to destroy whatever conception is so limited that it's actually dependent on avoiding that thing. Whatever it is, if it's ultimate reality, all of it has to exist within, it has to be able to handle even that.
Zack Jackson (24:21.134)Mmm.
Ian Binns (24:21.177)Right.
orb (24:30.053)You know, like if a story, if you're animating myth, AKA your religion, that which holds you together can't absorb the earth not making it, then you need to get a new one.
Zack Jackson (24:30.285)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (24:47.334)I imagine people in that universe did. They would have had to.
orb (24:49.293)Well, imagine, yeah, imagine, well, I mean, we have very straightforward examples of this, like Galileo's like, we're not actually the center. There's something called the sun, which is the center. And you have a whole hierarchical worldview, which keeps lots of different people above other people. And you have that system going, no, no. And he's like, well, actually, we just have this thing called a telescope. We figured out how to make glass out of sand. We put two of them in a metal tube. You can see.
Ian Binns (25:17.634)Mm-hmm.
orb (25:18.621)Um, we have very real examples of this in not so recent history when new information or new events shatter. Whatever the story is, it's holding people together and it either doubles down. Oh, here's one America's the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Hmm. You just lost in Afghanistan to a group of locals using weapons that they got from Russia in the eighties.
Ian Binns (25:36.632)Yeah.
orb (25:47.805)You know what I mean? Like the greatest military superpower lost. Like Taliban won, America zero. So like you either readjust your narrative or you double down and now the absurdity really gets amped up. So you're right, they have to, they have to at some way, yeah, like whatever wasn't big enough has to get big fast.
Ian Binns (25:59.853)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (26:17.738)Yeah. Most of the apocalyptic literature in the Bible, at least, is like, here's the end of your world. Here's the end of everything you know. Your whole system stops working. The enemies are winning. And then there is hope because God stops it before the ultimate end. So I imagine in this world that's dying, there's all these people with this like religious faith that's built on that sort of thing. That's like God would never let the earth die.
Ian Binns (26:18.021)Yeah.
orb (26:27.493)Right, right, right.
orb (26:36.474)Right.
Zack Jackson (26:47.19)That's the end. That's the stop of the suffering. The earth is it. And then as the earth continues to die, they have to reevaluate, oh goodness, what is the end then? What is the next thing? What is the next thing that's more expansive, that's higher that.
orb (26:59.462)Right.
And that's what I, and when I learned that the earth brown balled, and I like that sentence, when I learned that the earth brown balled, because I had to explain how to get a guy on Ferdus asking a guy, we had to like, what was so interesting to me is, oh, take the worst fear in the air right now and just have it happen. Just have that be the starting point. It's like in a marriage. Think about a marriage, a couple has an argument that just keeps coming up.
Zack Jackson (27:11.769)Hahaha!
Zack Jackson (27:21.387)Mm.
orb (27:30.593)Try the three of us to imagine that. There's some issue that keeps, sort of keeps coming up. And all of a sudden, one day in the midst of an argument, one of the partners says to the other, well, if we're gonna stay together, we're gonna need to get to the root of this. But they've never ever remotely discussed or considered not staying together. But the one of them said it. And there's like a holy terror of like, wait, did you just say that?
But you the observer, if you were observing the argument, it'd be like, that's like one of the best things they could have said, because they're gonna probably get, so it's like speak the unspeakable, and notice how the nervous system weirdly relaxes. There's an openness, even like a democracy is an experiment. Well, some experiments fail. Like just take all the terror of January 6th, take all the terror of election.
Ian Binns (28:03.501)Right.
Zack Jackson (28:14.627)Hmm.
orb (28:26.929)Medley just take it all and go. Yeah, it did it was an experiment some experiments fail and Weirdly enough and affection arises maybe even imagination Which I think I knew even I mean the thing that really is interesting to me and what you were just saying Zach is Jesus isn't like oh, let's do everything we can to keep the temple together. He's like, oh, yeah this whole thing's This whole idea that the divine dwells in a building Yeah, fine for like
Ian Binns (28:32.773)Yeah.
orb (28:56.781)not one stone will remain on top of another. It's almost like he's like, in order for you all to understand that the whole earth is a temple, that all of it's holy and sacred, yeah, it might need to come down. He doesn't seem to be shy away from, if that's what it'll take, fine.
Zack Jackson (29:13.undefined)Yeah.
Ian Binns (29:19.353)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (29:20.644)And they did. The Jews and the Christians both built new systems that were more expensive, that didn't need to live in the temple.
orb (29:25.457)Right.
I've been asking people this, try this by the way. This is really fun. Say to somebody, cause I've been trying this out and I love what it does to people, me included. I'll say to them, hey, next year, check this out. Biden versus Trump. Here we go.
Zack Jackson (29:46.41)You talk about feeling something in your body.
orb (29:46.581)And notice, and people, you can just see people throw up in their mouth. And as like, are you kidding me? Those are the options next fall. And yet what's also interesting is you, if you zoom out just to touch, perhaps that as the options is the kind of pain the system needs to be in. But for like, maybe the system hasn't bottomed out yet. Like these are the options here in America where we, where we've
Ian Binns (29:48.348)Mmm.
orb (30:15.009)have a tradition of coming up with kind of awesome stuff. This is what perhaps a system hasn't, and obviously we know from addiction and lots of different things, you have to hit the wall at some level. And all of it, like think of how many, for the three of us, how many moments in your life you were in enough pain to actually start asking a whole new set of questions. But like try that Biden versus Trump, say it like it's the coolest thing ever and just watch people like, are you,
Ian Binns (30:18.425)Yeah.
Ian Binns (30:38.146)Yeah.
orb (30:44.605)But like that disgust, that disgust is how we actually do new things. Like seriously?
Ian Binns (30:53.072)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (30:55.242)Yeah, sometimes you need to be searching for an enigmatic man with your assassin and have entrails dropped on top of your head. You know, sometimes that's just what happens.
orb (31:11.165)Please clarify for your listeners that that's a reference to the book.
Ian Binns (31:14.821)That scene was so amazing.
Zack Jackson (31:15.434)Oh, that's one of those things that you can say about the book that makes no sense until you get to the part where it's in.
orb (31:20.613)I just love the second time she appears in his bedroom and he's like, wait, you can't find Diltud? And then he says it again without the question, wait, you can't find Diltud? Like he's so delighted. Wait, has this happened before? Is this like a thing? And he's like the admiration for Diltud. She's like, yeah, he's just like, he doesn't even really exist. Wait, this is like the greatest news ever.
Ian Binns (31:32.848)Hehehehe
Ian Binns (31:36.527)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (31:46.83)Aren't you supposed to be the best?
orb (31:48.229)Yeah, wait, isn't this what you do? Ha ha ha!
Zack Jackson (31:51.882)I also love that instead of saying like, well, you know, I'm an official assassin. You would never say that in a bureaucratic system, right? You would use a word like graining, which is so innocuous. It's just, it's so bureaucratic and he just keeps drilling that this is a graining. That's just, you're a murderer. It's what you are. No, no, I'm graining. It's different. It's well, are you.
orb (32:02.207)Mmm.
orb (32:06.944)This is a grainy.
Ian Binns (32:11.001)Yeah.
orb (32:14.085)Right. Do you have a gun? Do you have a gun on you right now? Do you have a gun? He's just like, you act like this is so civil, but like how... Ha ha ha.
Ian Binns (32:18.552)Yes.
Zack Jackson (32:19.598)I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.
Zack Jackson (32:25.43)That was a theme that kept coming up as the book progressed. It was like, because earth was destroyed, we had to reform it. Some very smart people decided to create the most effective system possible for the most good for the most people. And from the surface, it looks great. Right. And everyone respects the chairs and the arrangements and all of that. And you can get a job just putting down stakes in the ground.
orb (32:43.845)Alright, right.
Zack Jackson (32:54.398)And imagining what a neighborhood might look like. That's a whole job. And if you don't like it, go be a baker. That's a job too. And it's just this freedom and wonderful. And you're like, why can't the world work like this? And then the more we look into it, those kinds of bureaucratic words that are used are actually laced with poison. And you realize how much is like. Respectable is not actually good.
Ian Binns (32:59.068)Uh huh.
Zack Jackson (33:21.974)Right. And I kept seeing, I kept hearing like, Oh, well, you know, we're, we're re we're restructuring the division right now where we're having to make some, uh, some strategic cuts to streamline our team is like, well, you're firing me, you know, and how many things that we can hide by, by making them sound respectable.
orb (33:48.85)I was just reading about a hedge fund owner who owns an NFL team and is just making a mess of the NFL team. And the hedge fund owner made billions off of betting on the major banks to survive, but the banks survived because of a government bailout. You're like, that's insidious. Did I? Oh, Carolina in the house.
Ian Binns (34:07.189)All right.
I'm wondering who you're talking about.
Ian Binns (34:16.016)Hmm
orb (34:18.161)But like, if you just ponder that loop, if you just ponder that loop for a moment, and the insertion, giant systems that insert themselves in the exchange of goods and services and extract value out of it, adding nothing, exploiting it based on nanosecond computer insertions and trades, generating nothing, contributing nothing.
Ian Binns (34:19.092)Maybe like 15 miles that way.
orb (34:48.081)just sucking little pennies here and there, but doing it hundreds of billions of times. Like so insidious.
Ian Binns (34:56.198)Yes.
orb (34:58.369)insidious.
Zack Jackson (35:00.086)Yeah, and we put them on magazine covers. They're brilliant.
orb (35:03.813)And then, right, right. Contributing nothing.
Ian Binns (35:09.36)I wanted to shift to something a little lighthearted. A theme that I loved in your book that I felt like just constantly kept coming up is curiosity amongst the characters. How, you know, when Heen was growing up, he was very, very curious. Would ask questions, you know, just really into it. When he then got into the role of being a series five after the tragedy struck for him.
orb (35:22.172)Yeah.
Ian Binns (35:39.708)Um, it, it's almost like his curiosity was kind of set aside some because he knew he had this job and you could, I love the fact that I guess in part three, you really get into this, that you can start figuring out. Uh, and I, I was kind of picking up on this pretty quickly that he felt fake until he, he got, yeah, like it.
orb (36:02.41)Oh, yeah.
Ian Binns (36:05.068)And then you can see the times, especially when he would get irritated with Dill Todd. Um, I love that. And I would put notes in here saying, you know, Oh, you know, you're it's great that he's irritated with Dill Todd simply because Dill Todd is being very curious. Um, and he's being pushed to kind of get back to that part of his childhood, almost of that role of curiosity. Um, which is, yeah, I'm always told by Zach and the others on the show and, and all of my friends and family. How
orb (36:21.645)Yes!
orb (36:27.609)Mm-hmm.
Ian Binns (36:34.752)how curious of a person I am. Cause I just love to learn and love to ask questions and yeah, I love being curious. And so I just, I appreciate you did that throughout this book and showed his struggles with it as well. I thought that was really fascinating.
orb (36:37.213)Yeah, scientists, absolutely, yeah.
orb (36:48.689)Oh, thank you. That's so well said. Yeah, because you as science, the core of science, the engine of science is curiosity. Oh yeah, and I loved how he starts, like they're discussing things in the bakery and he'll like ask a question and be like, what the fuck, I don't participate in these conversations. I'm the guy just, he keeps, or like when there's a moment when,
Zack Jackson (37:11.545)Hahaha.
orb (37:18.361)Ziga May has Philippe died and he is like, yeah, no, I just saw him the other day, he's fine. And he's like, wait. As he's like beginning, and then Nune shows up and he's like, you're so fake. You just like connect with everybody but they don't know you're assassin. She's like, wait a second. I'm pretending. You think that you and I don't get a paycheck from the same man. Like she comes to just show him his own shadow like.
Ian Binns (37:25.85)Yeah.
Ian Binns (37:36.23)Yes.
Ian Binns (37:46.106)Yeah.
orb (37:46.149)What are you and these Firdes people now buddies or something? No, the two of us have a thing we're doing here. And he's like gradually he can't do the job and he can't pretend. And it's like.
Ian Binns (37:59.076)I love when she starts telling him you're in so deep. You don't even see it.
orb (38:02.817)You don't even see it. You can, you, oh my God, you're gonna like, and it's like a somehow like his curiosity is like, he's feeling and also when he first met Diltad, I was like, oh my God, how fascinating is this? He's beginning to realize that he's been numb for decades, most of his adult life. But then when he actually begins to feel the first feelings coming out, he's thawing, but the first feelings aren't,
Ian Binns (38:05.925)Yeah.
orb (38:31.961)a warm embrace of the unit of nature of all reality. It's just supernatural irritation. Like this guy who pretends like we somehow have some long standing relationship and he has these staccato bursts of conversation and he's wearing these multi one-colored outfit. Like, if you decide not to numb yourself and all these numbing devices we have at our disposal and actually.
Zack Jackson (38:40.59)without right.
Ian Binns (38:40.703)Hehehehe
orb (39:00.605)pay attention and be present to what's coming up from within you. It's probably a number of unpleasant things are like ungreaved grief even. And yeah, you really want to feel okay. You want to feel alive. Okay. Here's a couple of things that are a part of feeling alive. Doubt anger rage. It's all part of it. And I just.
Ian Binns (39:09.626)Yeah.
Ian Binns (39:15.834)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (39:18.307)Yeah.
Ian Binns (39:18.416)When I, and again, you know, with Dill Tud, he played such an important role of reminding Heen who he is. That's kind of how I took it. Like reminding Heen of his own humanity, of who he used to be before he did this.
Zack Jackson (39:27.47)Mm-hmm.
orb (39:27.642)Yeah, right.
orb (39:34.645)Right, right, right. And yet, he at first is like, is this guy onto me? Does he know? He just creates this horrible paranoia.
Ian Binns (39:41.373)Especially when he goes, where'd you park your spaceship? And just, next thing you know, he's passed out. I thought that was great.
orb (39:48.805)And then at the end when he's like, and then at the, because the whole thing is building up in some ways to that. And then at the end when he's like, yeah, I ask everybody that. I just, he's like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah, I like to do that. I just see how people respond. It's always fun. There's gotta be somebody who's got one. There has to be somebody.
Ian Binns (39:58.8)Hahahaha
Zack Jackson (40:00.104)hahahaha
Ian Binns (40:09.924)That was good.
Zack Jackson (40:10.182)Yeah, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that his job for a good part of this is basically as, um, uh, a spy to the people in charge, eyes on the ground to notice the things that are happening so that they can be corrected along the way, which seems pretty innocuous, but you can't get, you can't get committed, you gotta connect spy leave. And that's his problem because he's, he's seeing, he's so good at seeing, but
orb (40:21.445)Right, right.
orb (40:26.461)Very straightforward. Yeah, yeah.
Zack Jackson (40:39.082)He starts to know and that's when he gets into trouble, right? When it goes from his head down to his gut. There's a brilliant scene on a page three 35 for those who are following along at home, um, in which he has just baked a loaf of, was it rosemary olive oil bread? Um, so yeah, which was a special bread for his mother back on another planet that they've never had there. And he bakes it in the bakery. And this guy.
orb (40:44.994)Absolutely.
orb (40:57.649)Sourdough with rosemary.
Ian Binns (40:57.924)which sounded very tasty.
Zack Jackson (41:08.918)bursts in. Oh my gosh. Cause he rushes in and says, I have to have another. And then the narrator, which is he says, he's got a small white dog under his arm. The dog is wearing a sweater on the front of the sweater and big letters. It reads who's taking who for a walk. That's troubling enough, but there's a series of zippers on this man's shirt that run in diagonal lines across his chest and appear to have no purpose. Do you have any more? He sounds desperate.
orb (41:09.718)Oh, I love it that you love this scene.
Ian Binns (41:11.938)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (41:38.514)I just stand there staring at the top of his head. He's losing his hair on top, but it's like, and it just keeps going back and forth in this way where there's this very clear thing happening in front of him. Where this bread that his mother made has touched this man deeply and the man wants more and all he can do is see that he's got too many zippers and his dog is wearing a t-shirt.
orb (41:44.489)Yeah.
orb (41:47.869)Yes.
orb (41:59.877)And he's got hair combing out that's combed over. Yes.
Zack Jackson (42:04.754)Like how many times have I been that like here I am looking at the facts of the situation Completely missing what's actually happening
orb (42:13.846)And he's telling, or the mustaches, there's like the running theme of like must, I can't get over the mustache. So I just, he gets like hooked on something and yeah.
Zack Jackson (42:17.418)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (42:22.738)Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, I loved that.
Ian Binns (42:28.028)I think one of my favorite scenes until we get to the very end where they find Dill Todd and really get, I mean, I loved how this book ended, but the scene in the school where Nune was really just hamming it up with the flower and the water. Oh my, I was laughing hysterically hearing you read that part of the book. I mean, it's just.
orb (42:46.23)Oh
Ian Binns (42:52.48)And especially someone who's been in a lot of schools since I prepare future teachers, just, I mean, I could totally imagine that whole scene and watching her hamm it up and do all these great things. I mean, it was so well done. I just, yeah, I fully admired that part of the book.
orb (43:09.626)Oh, that makes me so happy because...
And the fact that she's so opaque, obviously there's like, that's the giant Easter egg with her is you get nothing about her other than this astonishing. So she's the anti-heen. I'm realizing now as you said that, in some ways she's the anti-heen. You get no interior from her. So it's almost like it's very, very hard to feel anything about her other than just surface admiration for these.
wide range like Liam Neeson I have a wide range of I have a particular set of skills but in the ravine you could see Heen is watching her like how the how do you know how to talk to like high school students in which she's like keep it completely dangerous the perfect line of danger without crossing she somehow is able to do all these things and leave them in the palm of her hand and shock without
Ian Binns (43:45.048)Yes, love that movie, especially that scene.
Zack Jackson (43:45.262)Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Ian Binns (44:08.492)Mm-hmm.
orb (44:10.669)And you could just heen, it's just like, what is? Just, he's just one other, it's like a different kind of Diltud irritation. How does she do, what am I even watching? What is, it's like just his curriculum of disorientation. This is like the master's level. It's like Diltud cracks the door and she comes in and just like, yeah, you're not gonna understand any of this.
Zack Jackson (44:19.218)Mmm.
Zack Jackson (44:33.89)But at the same time, she's like, she's totally just, that's all surface level. That's all playing. She's not being sincere. She's just, she's performing. Yeah. No matter what that looks like. If I have to be a performer, great. If I got to be this improv artist, great. I'm still going to kill you, but you'll know nothing of my heart and soul. And the moment you start to get too close, I'm going to shut you down, you know.
Ian Binns (44:41.645)Mm-hmm.
orb (44:42.193)Job to do. I always get the job done. Mm-hmm.
orb (44:51.249)Yeah.
orb (45:01.231)You know, of course, I think later today we're opening up a Where'd You Park Your Store in which there will be a t-shirt that just says in big letters, You messed with the wrong series 5.
Ian Binns (45:12.744)Oh, I love that.
Zack Jackson (45:13.499)Hahaha!
orb (45:15.293)And there's also a t-shirt that says, Heen Who Grows Bears. And there's also, we're about to release, I think either sometime in a couple of days, we're about to release a coffee mug that just says, Piddle, Piddle on it. And there's, yeah. And then there's, oh, and then you'll be able to buy the Brown Ball poster for your wall.
Ian Binns (45:20.876)Oh yes, that was great too. I just... Ha ha ha.
Zack Jackson (45:24.078)I love that.
Ian Binns (45:30.732)Oh my God. Yeah, when he stood up at the school and said that, that was amazing.
orb (45:43.437)And then we designed, my friend designed one. And then there's also in that like, you've seen it with New York, but a t-shirt that just has a big heart. It just says, I love Diltud.
Zack Jackson (45:44.183)Oh, I need that.
orb (45:56.645)And then there's also a t-shirt that just says, you just got Bobby freelanced. Like the multiple deep cut level on that one.
Zack Jackson (46:06.914)So I need, I need you to explain this to me.
orb (46:09.861)You know, he's going to write a self-help book. You know that, right? Called, you just got to Bobby freelance. But he doesn't come from a family of writer. He doesn't come, he comes from the outer pangs. So right reading wasn't a thing. They weren't very civilized people. So he doesn't really know, but people could tell him he needs to write a book. So he dictates the book to Lan Xing, his girlfriend, but he keeps getting, cause he loves her so much. And it's like his manifesto, his like 12 rules for living kind of thing. But.
Zack Jackson (46:12.562)Oh my gosh, how do we have?
Ian Binns (46:14.021)Really?
orb (46:38.621)He's telling it to her, but he keeps losing, like that he's dictating a book and talking to her. What do you think about that? So the book is the text of his book, but it's also him talking to her about, do you think I should say this next part?
Zack Jackson (46:45.646)Hmm.
Ian Binns (46:54.492)That's gonna be great. So don't be surprised if you see my name pop up in order requests with your new store coming out because yeah, that's, I could see myself getting some of those things. So.
Zack Jackson (46:54.928)hahahaha
orb (47:05.936)Uh, good. Oh, and then, you know, there's a Rolling Stones. There's the Rolling Stone, like Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Charlie, these, like, like the four names and, um, Keene, Borns, Nuneye, Diltud, like, you know, this,
Zack Jackson (47:06.409)I just love.
Ian Binns (47:12.988)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (47:13.356)Yeah.
Ian Binns (47:18.748)Gosh
Ian Binns (47:22.872)My wife will be like, what are all these shirts that are arriving? I'll just it's okay, honey. It's okay. It's it's my friend Rob's place. Yeah.
orb (47:28.689)It's a pedal hoodie. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (47:31.374)Of course, clearly, why doesn't everyone have that? Of course. Right? I just love that Bobby Freelance. I was reading all these names that are just totally nonsensical names that came out of your brain, and then suddenly Bobby Freelance. He's not a freelancer, just Bobby Freelance, just his name.
orb (47:33.87)What kid doesn't have that? Yeah.
Ian Binns (47:35.64)Yeah, yeah. That's so great.
orb (47:43.117)Right. Yeah, good.
orb (47:50.937)Yeah, and that's the beauty of creating a world is you, I realized the, oh, I guess part way through I was like, oh my God, we're gonna make up all these names, Ra-Bel, aren't we? Yes, every name will be made up. And then all of a sudden he gets on a glide and the guy's name is Wade. And then it goes back to all the names are made up. And then Bobby was like, oh, so there's the pattern and then the breaking of the pattern. But then when you do break the pattern, go full Applebee's.
Zack Jackson (48:15.656)Hmm.
orb (48:20.497)Go full America. So like when they're at the bowl and it's this incredibly exotic rest, but then, okay. Who are the two people who are arguing at the table next to them? No, don't make up. It's not Forbo and Rasheva. What's, oh yeah, Gretchen and Carl. Like, you know what I mean? Like what's the most, I went to high school with them. So when you go, if you're not gonna make it up, then go full irony free.
Zack Jackson (48:41.123)Yeah.
orb (48:50.309)America, you know what I mean?
Ian Binns (48:52.057)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (48:52.066)So it's like, what is that line from, oh, what's his name? My favorite poet, the angry farmer man. Wendell Berry, that quote from Wendell Berry, from the, that the moment that the politicos can start to read your mind, lose it, make more tracks than necessary, like the fox in the snow, like the moment that we think we know what's gonna happen next.
orb (49:03.174)Wendell Berry.
orb (49:13.681)Oh.
orb (49:21.563)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (49:21.686)Just you kick out the legs. Keep it, keep it unexpected.
Ian Binns (49:22.906)Yeah.
orb (49:24.237)Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's what's interesting about, like I don't have any, like somebody mentioned me at the end of Act Two, and I was like, there's an Act Two? I don't know any of that. The protagonist, like I guess I know what a protagonist is, but I don't have any of that stuff in my head. So it's just, or like when he brings lines back and falls and breaks his jaw and bites off his tongue, I remember thinking, wait.
Ian Binns (49:48.777)Mm.
orb (49:53.245)I mean, it's like a Wednesday afternoon or something. Wait, my main character can't speak? Like, the narrator can't speak. How long is this gonna, like, not even, didn't see that, literally didn't see it coming. And then, so now I guess there's gonna be a period here where we're waiting for his tongue to get healed, where we'll just, oh, okay. Yeah, kick the legs out, see what we discover.
Ian Binns (49:58.688)Yeah.
Ian Binns (50:14.298)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (50:22.794)Yeah. I mean, isn't that, isn't, I know very little about story writing, uh, other than you make a character you love and then you kick the crap out of them.
orb (50:31.549)and then you fall. Yes, yes.
Zack Jackson (50:35.294)Yeah. You see how they respond to everything falling apart.
orb (50:42.877)So fun.
Zack Jackson (50:42.91)I also need to say thank you for including, I yelled, I yelped in joy when I read this part that you included my favorite joke in the entire world in this book. And you made the point of the joke that it's a stupid joke, but that it is his favorite joke in the world because it's my favorite joke in the world. And it's the only joke I know.
Ian Binns (50:43.14)It's just, you know, go ahead.
orb (51:04.491)Pirate.
Zack Jackson (51:06.066)Yeah. So a pirate walks into a bar and the bartender says, Hey, you know, you've got a steering wheel on your belt buckle. And he says, Arrr, it's been driving me nuts all day. The best joke in the world. I said that in church once. Yeah.
Ian Binns (51:15.224)Yeah.
orb (51:22.621)You can't, it's perfection. You can't, you can't, there's nothing to say. Nothing, what can be said of it? It's the ultimate joke.
Zack Jackson (51:33.731)It's the best joke in the world.
Ian Binns (51:35.688)So full disclosure, the first time I ever heard that joke was reading it in your book. I had actually never heard that joke. No, yeah.
orb (51:40.809)Oh, beautiful. You're welcome.
Zack Jackson (51:41.026)Have I never said that joke to you, Ian? That's the only joke I know. I legitimately is the only joke I know.
orb (51:46.493)Hmm. The book is bringing the two of you together in new ways. How is it we've been friends this long and I haven't heard your one joke?
Ian Binns (51:50.776)in ways we never knew.
Zack Jackson (51:52.637)Oh
Right? We're always talking about serious stuff. That's the problem. Or Star Wars, sure. Right. Very serious. Yeah. Pretty much.
Ian Binns (51:59.undefined)Or Star Wars.
orb (52:01.982)Yeah, serious stuff. Yeah. Same category.
Ian Binns (52:03.544)Yeah, yeah, very important. Exactly. I just got my Star Wars Advent Calendar opened it up today for the first time. Very excited. My Lego Advent Calendar. It's a major joy this time of year. So.
orb (52:11.667)Oh, that is so great.
orb (52:18.124)Thank you.
Zack Jackson (52:22.45)Yeah.
Ian Binns (52:23.58)So what's next for you, Rob, with this series and stuff? You talk, I think you said before, you hope it's gonna be multiple books and you've left it that way.
Where do you want to go with the next one?
orb (52:34.829)Yeah, well, God, I just, I'm always like, don't say anything, Rob Bell. Just, but obviously it says book one. Like I have a long standing, well, like on the Robcast, I just early on was like, don't be that guy who's talking about what you're making. First off, cause it might be rubbish, whatever you're making, but just tell people, yeah, it's out.
Ian Binns (52:58.148)Right.
orb (53:04.909)So just be somebody who actually makes things. Early on, that was a thing where it was like, otherwise, you're just that, you know, hey guys, working on chapter seven, and everybody's, but, and then I go and put book one on the cover, which is basically like, there's more. So yeah, there, it's very, very exciting and fun. So yes, there's, I, there's different places we're going to go. And, and like the Bobby, when I realized.
Like, What's a Knuckum, one of my plays, is the play that Nord writes early on in this book. And I was like, God, it's so on the nose and ridiculous. But when I realized there was ancillary books, Bobby Freelance is gonna need to write. And then there's some other things that you're gonna need, you're gonna need, that aren't like the book one, book two, book three, but there's these other pieces. So, yes. And yeah, quite, yeah. So, uh.
That'll all be coming. And I get very, very excited about where it's headed. Even the idea that it would go forward in time, it may surprise you where different ones. Yeah. Yeah, and I.
Ian Binns (54:14.212)Yeah, I mean, I'm excited about where it could go.
Zack Jackson (54:14.27)Yeah, but this isn't your first.
This isn't your first work of fiction though. I mean, you've written the two plays and this isn't even your first novel. You have.
orb (54:24.177)Yeah, there was a one novel years ago and it felt, that first novel in the plays felt, I see at the time how it felt indulgent. Like I had to learn to trust the goodness of life, even as I was going around the world, inviting people to trust the goodness of life and making fun of terms like guilty pleasure and giving people permissions, you know, just give yourself permission slip, follow your heart, all that stuff.
This is like Rob Bell'd me.
You know what I mean? It's like all these things that I spouted off about standing on stages, holding microphones all over the place, came like boomeranged back and punched me in the face with love. And was like, this thing that you've been like almost doing like on the side, almost like kind of a, because you know responsibly you have this thing that you do. Just.
Zack Jackson (54:59.451)Yeah, you're the permission giver who gives you permission.
orb (55:25.949)Just let yourself throw yourself into it and see what happens. So it's been a very, see where it goes and just trust it. And then, yeah, just, yeah. Yeah. And all the stuff everybody like, God, how do you pay the bills? How do you arrange your life around that? How do you, all the questions all of us have just, are all the questions that came up all over again. So yeah, that's got like a.
Ian Binns (55:30.33)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (55:53.822)Yeah, yeah, sometimes.
orb (55:55.773)We're literally in the corner of the garage figuring out a new life.
Ian Binns (56:01.744)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (56:02.326)which I gotta say is very, it's very reassuring for the rest of us that you're doing the same thing, that you are.
orb (56:12.954)stuff doesn't go away.
Zack Jackson (56:14.686)Yeah, letting a lot of things go, living more simply so that you can follow where, where you're being pulled.
orb (56:21.401)Yeah, yeah, that's all the like, all those wobbles. But how are we gonna... And even the... Well, you all, you all know the science. Heisenberg's on... Like, we don't know what the particles are gonna do next. Like the causality of the modern age, like A plus B equals C, we don't get... Maybe.
Ian Binns (56:39.374)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (56:43.387)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (56:48.886)be the uncertainty you want to see in the world.
orb (56:49.789)There's also, right, obedience. There's also, yeah, you throw yourself into it and follow it and then we'll see where it goes. But yes, Ian, in answer to your question, and this has been talking about this has been really interesting energetically because I knew don't give this book coming out and talking to people about this book, let the conversations, just let all that shape the heart because of the...
next books two and three and four and maybe five, which have lots of shape. But let, but even, even the, no, don't hold off for just a half second and just talk to people about this and, and see how that shapes even where they go. Brian, Brian Eno has this great line about, he doesn't read fan mail.
Ian Binns (57:37.925)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (57:41.9)Yeah.
orb (57:47.965)because he says people who admire your work are always voices for conservatism because they're like that thing, I love that thing you did. So he's like, I don't wanna hear people tell me how much they like the thing I did because it inherently will put in my head, keep doing that thing you did. But what's so fascinating to me about talking about this book is how many people are like, I can't wait for book two because I have absolutely no idea. And that makes me very happy.
Ian Binns (58:14.608)That's right. I have all these conflicting thoughts in my head on where this thing's gonna go and how the characters are gonna interact. But I'm in, it's so exciting. I think that part, you've captured my curiosity. And so I...
orb (58:20.515)Right, so.
orb (58:25.681)Alright. Yeah.
orb (58:30.757)And there's like a giant, giant Easter egg about what happens next. And it's so obvious at the end of the book, but not one person has mentioned it. And not one person has asked for it or thinks that would be interesting. But I have like a, oh no. So I already have like the sophomore album, maybe jazz. And it's people will be like, what? And then, oh.
Ian Binns (59:00.141)Yeah.
orb (59:00.733)So I already feel the giant, all I have to get, you have to get all that off your head about even what's, then just start over again, because nobody.
Ian Binns (59:09.08)See, I wouldn't even want to try to guess what it is because I want that experience you just simulated it up. Like, oh, okay. Like, I didn't see that coming or something like that. Like, I just, I'm, cause you did that a lot throughout this book, so.
orb (59:18.853)Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
orb (59:24.773)Yeah, and nobody was asking for this book. Nobody was like, God, when are you going to get around to that thing? So all of it is just enacting everything I've been spouting out about for years. It's like, OK, let's just do this. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (59:27.534)Hmm. Ha ha.
Zack Jackson (59:40.406)Yeah, I'm anticipating being completely surprised by whatever's next. And then for the format to drastically shift after that. And for book three to just be written in semaphore or something. It's a series of flag movements since book three and who knows?
Ian Binns (59:44.823)Mm-hmm.
orb (59:54.373)Yeah, Sanskrit.
orb (01:00:03.037)So great.
Zack Jackson (01:00:05.446)Yeah, well, thank you for sharing your delight with us. You are always a source of inspiration for so many people, the official permission giver. Thank you for accepting that permission for yourself and producing that which makes you come alive.
Ian Binns (01:00:07.836)Absolutely.
orb (01:00:15.187)Mmm.
orb (01:00:19.561)Thank you.
Mmm.
orb (01:00:29.417)Thank you. That means the world. And thanks for having me on your podcast.
Zack Jackson (01:00:32.074)Yeah, everyone should get the book. You should sign up for the two days at Ojai. There's all that and more available at rodbell.com, where there's also links to all of your social media connections, which just like everything else you do, is subversive and delightful and not at all what the professionals would tell you to do.
orb (01:01:00.285)There are professionals? Question mark?
Zack Jackson (01:01:03.104)I mean, there are people that get paid.
Ian Binns (01:01:05.146)Yeah.
orb (01:01:05.529)Okay, there we go. Whoa, that's a great distinction. Well said, well done.
Zack Jackson (01:01:10.254)Yeah. All right.
Ian Binns (01:01:12.188)Okay, well thank you for joining us, Rob. Yeah.
orb (01:01:12.281)Love it. Wonderful talking to you all. Thank you. Very inspiring. 

Episode 121
Today we are joined by Dr. Chris Impey to talk about exoplanets, the search for life in space, and the search for meaning on Earth.
 
Dr Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, won its Education Prize, has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World, and eight popular science books: The Living Cosmos, How It Ends, Talking About Life, How It Began, Dreams of Other Worlds, Humble Before the Void, Beyond: The Future of Space Travel, and Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
9bi2pvCS8hJHF73c6ylI
Transcript (AI Generated)
ian (01:16.703)Our guest today is a university distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He's won 11 teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He's a past vice president of the American Astronomical Society,
has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council's Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology, and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World and eight popular science books. I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Chris Impey to the podcast today.
chris_impey (02:07.898)Yeah, delighted to be with you.
zack_jackson (02:09.75)Welcome. That's quite an introduction. Ha ha ha. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (02:12.983)Yeah. Obviously, I shortened down what you sent us, and it was tough for me to do that, Chris, because you've done a lot. You know, obviously, I was at fellow academic. I understand the need to do peer-reviewed research and those types of things in our field, but I was really impressed with how much writing you've done for the general public, both articles and also your books. You've written a novel. You've been on several podcasts.
Can you kind of tell us a little bit about your background, what is you do, and then how you also got into that part of your profession of making sure you communicate with the general public as well?
chris_impey (02:53.298)Sure, you won't hear it in my voice, my accent, but I was born into Edinburgh, I'm a Scott. I had a little transatlantic childhood that sort of wiped out the Scottish borough, but if you feed me single malt whiskey it would come back. And of course, I'm sure you noticed if you've gone to Britain that you look up and there are not many stars visible there. So once I decided to do astronomy I knew I was going to leave, so I did my undergrad work in London.
zack_jackson (03:04.15)Thank you. Bye.
Ha ha ha!
chris_impey (03:22.938)and never look back and I'm a dual citizen now. So astronomy is big in Arizona. I've not looked elsewhere. The grass is never greener anywhere else. We're building the biggest telescopes in the world and we have five observatories within an hour's drive. So this is the perfect place to do observational astronomy. So I'm very happy. But then as people's careers evolve, you know, the writing research papers is important. It's the sort of stocking trade of the academic.
But it's also, you know, the texture of the average research article is that of a three-day old bologna sandwich. It's almost designed to be indigestible writing. The constraints of an academic discourse make that happen. So I was always interested in more popular writing, so I segued into textbooks. And then I realized the problem with them is that you've written a textbook and that's a nice challenge. But then the publisher just wants you to update it every year or so.
It's like, okay, that's not so exciting. I think I'm not going to do this anymore. And then I think more broadly, apart from just liking education and being very committed to teaching and mentoring students, you know, I've just seen the, well, even before the sort of large waves of misinformation and the assault on facts in our culture, it's, I viewed it as an obligation of a professional scientist to communicate to a larger audience because, well, to be blunt, we're paid by the taxpayer.
zack_jackson (04:26.05)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (04:44.15)Hmm.
chris_impey (04:54.118)And also, there's a lot of misinformation out there, and science is often misperceived or characterized in wrong and inappropriate ways. And so I think all scientists should not just stay in their little lane doing research, but they should, if they can, some better than others. And not everyone can be Neil deGrasse Tyson. That's fine. But I think there's an obligation to communicate to larger audiences. And once I got into it and got practiced and better at it, then I now understand that
I mean, it's like I couldn't imagine not doing it.
chris_impey (05:32.018)And the books just, okay. And so books just flow out of that because writing popular articles is just a sort of lighter version of writing a technical article. And then, you know, you want a meaty subject. You do a book-length version. So I've been writing about cosmology and astrobiology. And I've started about 10 years ago I say, I think this is my ninth book, Exoplanets. So books are fun. They're more challenging.
ian (05:32.543)I almost had to sneeze. Sorry, go ahead. Ha ha ha.
chris_impey (06:01.958)to take on a big subject and distill it down and make it, you gotta make it, have a resonance for a person with no, maybe with no background in astronomy or maybe just a little background and you're taking them through what could be a very esoteric subject. So that, I like the challenge of that. Although the books are exhausting. Once I've done a book, I don't wanna, I almost don't wanna look at a book or read a book or write a book for a while.
zack_jackson (06:28.65)do people ask you like when's the next one coming out? Like right after you finish. It's like having a baby. I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
chris_impey (06:31.898)Of course. Yeah, they are. Yeah, it's like I'm not going to go there about the having a baby because my wife would my wife would give me a hard time. There's nothing like having a baby. You can't even imagine, you know, and and and she and yeah, and she's right. But like having a baby, you know, women may feel that and then they do it again, you know, so I write the book, have have a slight, you know, trauma afterwards or just let down. It's a little bit of a let down sometimes.
zack_jackson (06:43.89)That is a good man. Good job.
ian (06:45.766)Yes.
chris_impey (07:01.918)you finished any big-ish thing. But I do like writing, so I'm committed to it.
zack_jackson (07:02.094)Hmm.
ian (07:09.303)Yeah.
zack_jackson (07:10.05)So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot
chris_impey (07:15.718)Yeah, it's a super hot field with the number has up to 5,300 last time I checked on NASA's website. And remember, you know, 1995, the number was zero. So this is all, this is all the last few decades and it's just growing gangbusters. And now it's a slightly unfortunate because I have, we have students here who are working on exoplanets or astrobiology. And, you know, there was a time when if you discovered one cool Earth-like planet or water world,
ian (07:27.244)I remember that.
chris_impey (07:45.818)about it. Well now you know you'd have to find a hundred interesting things to write a paper. So the bar has been raised just by the success of the field. But the interesting thing is that it's moving to a new phase. So the most of what's known about those 5300 exoplanets is not much at all. They're basically is either a mass or a size or maybe both and you get a density and know it's a gas planet or a rocky planet. And that's it. We can't characterize
zack_jackson (07:46.792)Hmm.
zack_jackson (07:54.15)Yeah.
zack_jackson (08:04.316)Hmm.
chris_impey (08:15.698)thousands of exoplanets. So the next stage of the game, everyone's taking a deep breath in the research field is to try and characterize the atmospheres and the geology and of course find life. And that's just a very hard experiment. It's just much harder than detecting an exoplanet in the first place. So there's sort of excitement in the air because if I were betting, I would say that within five to seven years, we will have done the experiment of looking for life
or Earth planets that are nearest to us and will either know the answer. Either there will be microbes on those planets that have altered their atmospheres or there won't be and that will be an amazing experiment to have done. So it's really on the horizon. But it's daunting because it's a very difficult experiment. Earth-like planets are a billion times fainter than the stars they orbit. So you have to, and they're far away so they appear very close to their star. So you have to isolate the planet from the star, blot out the billion times brighter
and then smear the feeble reflected light from the exoplanet into a spectrum and look for molecules that indicate life like oxygen, ozone, methane, water vapor and so on.
ian (09:26.503)But the molecules you're looking for are always in the atmosphere itself, right? Like you wouldn't, and I understand that, and I think we all do, but, you know, some people listening may not realize that that's, that's what you're looking at. When you're talking about with the spectrum is that makeup of the atmosphere, nothing about like if there's, if it's a rocky planet, what's on the ground, I guess.
zack_jackson (09:26.614)Now.
chris_impey (09:30.458)there.
chris_impey (09:45.358)Right, right. And it's important for people to realize that the characterizing the exoplanets is done in that indirect way. For instance, of those 5,300, only 150 have ever had an image made of them. You know, seeing is believing. It's nice to have images of exoplanets. That's a hard thing. And those images are, you know, they're pathetic, a few pixels. They're just pale blue dots in a far away. So there's no, and if you ask this,
ian (10:02.488)Right.
zack_jackson (10:03.35)Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (10:15.678)The question of when will we be able to make an image of an exoplanet to be able to see continents and oceans? The answer is maybe never. The answer is decades or a very long time because it's just too hard to make images that sharp of things that far away, even with space telescopes. So astronomers have to be a little more indirect and the clever method that's on the table now and will be done, James Webb is doing some of this but was never built to do this experiment, it will actually be better done with the huge...
set of ground-based telescopes under construction. So the experiment is you use the star to backlight the exoplanet when it crosses in front of it, and the backlit, the light from the star filters through the atmosphere of the exoplanet and imprints absorption from these relevant molecules called biosignatures. So that's the experiment you're doing. And it's still hard. And it's also not clear you'll get an unambiguous answer. You know, obviously,
and its cousin ozone are the prime biomarkers because on Earth, the oxygen we breathe, one part and five of our air, was put there by microbes billions of years ago. So the reverse logic is if you see oxygen on an exoplanet or in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it must have been put there by life because oxygen is so reactive, so volatile that it disappears. If there's not life to sustain it, say the biosphere of the Earth shut down overnight, the entire biosphere just shut down.
ian (11:41.803)Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (11:45.458)just imagine the thought experiment. Within five to seven billion, a million years, so very short time in geological terms, the oxygen, that one part in five we breathe, would be gone. It would rust things, it would dissolve in seawater, it would oxidize with rocks, and it would be gone. So if it were not put there originally by life and then sustained by photosynthesis and other life processes, it would disappear. So the logic, therefore, is if you see it elsewhere, bang, it's got to be microbes putting it there and causing it
to be there.
ian (12:16.845)Yeah.
zack_jackson (12:16.95)Hmm, unless there's some hitherto unknown non-living process by which these things happen.
chris_impey (12:24.058)Right. So that's a good point. And there is a debate there because the data that's going to come in, well, first of all, it'll be noisy. It won't be beautiful, perfect spectra. So they'll be ambiguous to interpret. And then when you see it, what is the, where's, does the bar set for being enough? And the geologists have weighed in on this. And so whereas the sort of simplistic view as well, if you see any significant level of oxygen, certainly 18% like on the earth, what's got to be biology.
zack_jackson (12:41.694)Yeah.
chris_impey (12:54.218)That's pretty much true, but geologists have figured out ways where without biology, just with geochemical reactions, if you conjure up a geochemistry, you can get 6%, 5%, 7% oxygen. That's quite a lot, more than most people would have expected. So the geologists are saying, well, hold on. Yes, a lot of oxygen is probably a biomarker, but you would have to know more about the planet to be sure that it didn't have some weird chemistry and geology going on.
for any of the other biomarkers. Methane is a biomarker too because it's produced on earth, you know, mostly by life, a good fraction of that, cow farts I think. But so it's the same argument. So these wonderful and difficult to obtain spectra are going to be, everyone's going to jump all over them and hope they give an unambiguous answer, but they might not. Science is not always as cut and dried as that at the frontier, which is where we are. But it's the
zack_jackson (13:34.511)Hmm. Sure.
chris_impey (13:53.958)exciting experiment and it will be done fairly soon.
ian (13:58.804)Okay.
chris_impey (14:01.358)And then a sort of related issue is that it's not just microbes. I mean, that's just looking for life as we know it on the earth. You could also look with the same technique, and this is an interesting possibility, for what are called techno signatures. So biosignatures is just evidence of life, typically microbes, because we think most life in the universe is going to be microbial, even if it's not exactly like our form of biology. But you could also look for things
technology like chlorofluorocarbons, which you know, were responsible for almost killing the ozone layer for a few decades until we sort of ruled them out of refrigeration units. And there are other chemicals that are produced by industrial activity in a civilization, which would normally be very trace ingredients in an atmosphere, barely, you know, not present at all really. And if you could detect them in an atmosphere, it would be indirect evidence of a technological or industrial civilization.
Realization on that planet and that will be very exciting. So that's the same method being used to ask a very different question But it's a more challenging experiment because these are trace ingredients. I'll give you an example I mean, we're all aware of climate change global warming and we've seen the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere Increased by 30% roughly in the last few decades. That's quite a lot. It's obviously concerning and we know the implications But if you step back and look at the earth from afar
and say, well, shouldn't that just be obvious? Shouldn't some other alien civilization look at the Earth and say, oh, those people are really screwing up. They're killing their atmosphere with climate change and fossil fuel burning? The answer is probably not because carbon dioxide is a trace ingredient of our atmosphere, and 30% increase on a trace ingredient would actually be very hard to detect from a distance. So even that dramatic thing that we are all anxious about on our planet
industrial activity and fossil fuels is not dramatically obvious from a distance. So these are quite difficult experiments. The techno-signature experiment is much harder than the biosignature experiment.
zack_jackson (16:13.592)Hmm.
ian (16:14.165)Interesting.
rachael (16:17.101)One of the things that you had said when looking at these exoplanets was, you know, we look at them and we want to see them and what's going on with them. And then you added the line, and of course, detect life. And that's where our conversation has gone for the last couple of minutes. But I'm wondering, you added that phrase that seems to think that finding life is part,
entire reason for studying exoplanets. And I'm wondering, A, why you think that? And B, what that says about, you know, making it very narcissistic and Earth-centered, what that says about us.
chris_impey (16:54.799)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (17:02.778)Right. Okay. So good question. I can unpack that in parts. I mean, yes, if I were a geologist or a planetary scientist, I'd be just pleased as punch and happy as a pig in a poke to just study exoplanets. That's all that I'm happy. I've got 5300 new, new geological worlds to study. Whereas the solar system only has a handful. Oh, yeah. So depending on your discipline, you might be totally
zack_jackson (17:16.049)Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
rachael (17:19.507)Right!
chris_impey (17:32.718)properties. But astrobiology, I mean astrobiology writ large is the study of life in the universe, and the context for that search for life in the universe is the fact that we only know of one example of life, and that's on this planet. And everything in astronomy and the history of astronomy, and the Copernicus onwards, has told us we're not special, has told us there's nothing singular
zack_jackson (17:59.891)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (18:02.718)about our solar system, about our galaxy, or our position in the galaxy, and so on. In space and time, we are not special. And so, you know, for biology to be unique to this planet, when the ingredients are widespread, we've detected carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, the biogenic elements out to distances of 12, 13 billion light years, almost to the birth of the universe. Water is one of the, you might think it's special. Earth is a water world. Well, actually, some of the exoplanets have 10 to 30 times more water.
water than the Earth. So it's not, the Earth isn't really a water world even, pale blue dot, it's not that special. And water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe too. So all the ingredients, the table is set for life in the universe. And as the universe is evolved and is quite old, more and more of those biogenic elements are made by stars and spat out into space to become part of new star systems and planets. And so in an old mature universe with a lot of heavy elements, and with many habitable locations now, we
the best guess is 20 billion Earth-like habitable worlds just in our galaxy, then it just, whether or not it's central to astrobiology, it absolutely begs the question, is biology unique to this planet? Because it really shouldn't be statistically. However, logically, you know, to be correct and scientific, it's possible that there were a unique set of accidents and flukes that led to life on Earth, and it is unique. It would still
chris_impey (19:33.038)It's historical science to wonder how life on earth developed and nobody's ever built a cell from scratch in the lab people have done various parts of that experiment and They can't connect all the dots, but they've done some very interesting experiments that certainly suggest It's not a fluke that the whole thing happened. You need time. You need the possibilities of Chemicals bumping into each other and getting more complex, but that tends to happen It happens if you do it in a computer
it in a lab as well as you can. And so the context of the ingredients for life being so widespread and there not seeming to be any sort of bizarre, flukish occurrence in the development of at least replicating molecules that could store information, if not a full cell, would certainly lead you to anticipate life elsewhere.
And then game on, because the big question then is, so there are two almost binary questions you're trying to answer, which is why the field is so exciting. Is there life beyond Earth, yes or no? And then if yes, is it like our life? Is it biology? Because everything on Earth, from a fungal spore to a butterfly to a blue whale, is the same biological experiment. They seem like very diverse things, but that's one genetic code.
experiment that led to that diversity after a long time, after four billion years of evolution. And there's no reason to expect, even if the ingredients for life and the basis for biology exist far beyond Earth and in many locations, there's no real reason to expect that it would play out the same way elsewhere. And so that second question, is it like Earth life, is a very big question.
rachael (21:27.201)Just as a curiosity, when did, if you know, when did microbes appear on Earth?
chris_impey (21:39.158)So the earliest, the indications of life on Earth, the history of that is really tricky, because as you know, the Earth is a restless planet, and we weren't there, it's historical science, and it's possible you may never answer the question, but the big problem is the restless Earth. It's very hard, there's only a handful of places on Earth, Western Australia, Greenland, somewhere in South Africa, where you can find four billion year old rocks. They just don't exist. I mean, everything's been churned by geology and eroded
rachael (21:46.661)We weren't there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
rachael (21:56.104)Right.
chris_impey (22:09.338)Weathered and so on so just even and that's about when we think life started So you're dealing with you know a crime scene where the evidence has been trampled many times and the crowds have just Obliterated the evidence so that's a hard thing and then the second hard thing is that the incipient Traces of life as you get to cells are very indirect They're sort of just you they're biochemical tracers or sorry there. They're chemical imbalances isotopic imbalances of
versus normal carbon and so on. Because you're not looking for fully fossilized cells. So if you're just looking at what would be called chemical tracers of life, they're pretty good, but argumentative, this field is not resolved, traces that go back about 3.8 billion years. If you're asking when do you have the first fossil life forms, fossilized microbes, single cells,
rachael (23:00.421)Okay.
chris_impey (23:09.238)to 3.4, 3.5 billion years, and that's people then stop arguing about it. I think they believe that evidence. And then there's this enormous long time between that and multi-celled organisms. That step in the evolution of life seems to have taken a long time. You could infer that that means it's difficult or doesn't happen very often, but that's a dangerous inference from data of one. All the inferences, hazardous. So astrobiologists have to keep pinching themselves and saying, it's a sample of one. It's a sample of one.
rachael (23:30.921)Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (23:32.75)Thank you. Bye.
rachael (23:39.721)One does not make a line. One day to... That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.
chris_impey (23:41.139)Don't draw too many conclusions. So, yeah, the cell formation, the evolution of the first cells and microbes seem to have taken 300 or 400 million years from the first chemical traces of life. But those chemical traces, we don't know. There's that Zircon that was found in Western Australia, 4.404 billion years accurately measured by radioactive dating.
chris_impey (24:09.378)environment and so there's evidence really soon after the earth formed when it was just a hellhole of a place you know impacts and craters and geological activity that the earth surface was almost tacky like magma and yet there were there were any ingredients for life there so nobody would rule out life going back very close to the formation of the earth but then but tracing all these evolutionary paths is really hard I mean we have stromatolites which are
modern descendants of the first microbial colonies. You can go to Western Australia, Shark's Bay, I've been there and it's great, they're stromatolites. These were just the same as they were now three billion years ago, it's really cool. One of the things you can't see behind me is my stromatolite collection.
rachael (24:53.985)Yeah.
rachael (24:59.962)One of the reasons, yeah, that's fascinating. It makes a collector about that. It makes a collector. Um. Yeah.
zack_jackson (25:00.071)kind of a few collections
chris_impey (25:01.578)Yeah. Oh, well, three. Does that make a collection?
ian (25:05.749)It's good enough.
chris_impey (25:07.958)Well, yes. It's like primitive counting systems, one, two, many. So I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many.
rachael (25:13.941)That's right.
zack_jackson (25:15.016)Ha!
rachael (25:19.021)One of the reasons I was asking that question about Earth, because you were talking about these very far away planets and looking for microbial, likely microbial life, then showing up in the atmosphere by its various products. And so my question was stemming from how far back are these planets that we're looking at?
a really long time to create its microbes, then perhaps, since we're looking so far back in time, that maybe those microbes exist now, but when we're looking at them, they didn't exist. Right, that lovely time, space question.
chris_impey (25:51.579)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (26:02.098)Right. So in that context, it's important to say that the exoplanets we're finding are in our backyard. So Kepler, NASA's Kepler mission is really responsible for almost half the exoplanets, even though it stopped operating a few years ago. And so the most exoplanets we know of are within 100 to 1,000 light years. And that's our backyard. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across.
rachael (26:12.785)Okay.
rachael (26:28.064)Oh, close. Yeah.
chris_impey (26:32.398)And of course, logically, therefore, we're only seeing them as they were a century or millennium ago, which is no time geologically. So we can't see that far back. So we're not really looking at ancient history. However, the more important point, having mentioned that carbon nitrogen, oxygen, and water have been around in the universe for a long time, is that we now can very confidently say, even if we can't locate such objects, that an earth clone,
rachael (26:32.606)Okay.
rachael (26:38.901)Yeah, it's no time at all. Yeah.
chris_impey (27:02.098)something as close to Earth as you could imagine, could have been created within a billion years of the Big Bang. And that's seven billion years before the Earth formed. So there are potential biological experiments out there that have a seven billion year head start on us and then add the four billion four and a half billion years of evolution. And that's boggling because you know, we can't imagine what evolution and biology might come up with given 10 or 12 billion years to evolve rather
zack_jackson (27:11.75)Hmm.
chris_impey (27:31.958)Maybe it makes no difference at all. Maybe these things are slow and they're hard and the Earth was actually one of the fastest kids on the block rather than one of the slowest kids on the block. We don't know. Sample of one again. We'll just put that as a big asterisk over almost everything I say so I don't have to keep saying sample of one. Okay.
zack_jackson (27:32.014)Hmm.
rachael (27:41.861)Simple of one.
zack_jackson (27:42.808)Yeah.
zack_jackson (27:48.834)No.
rachael (27:49.221)That'll just be today's episode title, right? Today's sample of one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
chris_impey (27:51.14)Yeah, right.
zack_jackson (27:52.65)That's Apple F1.
chris_impey (27:55.038)Yeah, induction is a bitch when you can't do it.
zack_jackson (27:55.492)So.
zack_jackson (28:02.51)So we've talked a lot about the how it's possible, how we might detect it, but what do you think it might do to our sense of self and our sense of spirituality, our sense of humanity, our sense of earth? Should we start discovering life outside of, or at least biological markers in other places?
chris_impey (28:28.898)Right. I mean, I think it sort of bifurcates if we find microbial life elsewhere and improve it, you know, it's beyond a reasonable doubt. And even if we don't know if it's our biology or not, it's just a biomarker that's irrefutable or set of biomarkers. That will be a transformative, epochal event in the history of science. It'll be dramatic. But it will make front page headlines and then fade, I would say, fairly rapidly, because it's microbes.
zack_jackson (28:44.618)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (28:58.858)Like, that's Ponskum or stuff on your shower curtain, like, okay, who cares? So, I mean being facetious, but not too facetious, because I think the public will just be interested and science interested people will be very interested, and books will be written, and documentaries will be made, and so on. But in the public consciousness, I don't think it will permeate very far or persist very long. Of course, the counterpoint of if we decide we found intelligent life in the universe through those techno markers.
zack_jackson (29:03.391)Ha ha ha.
chris_impey (29:28.978)you know, the search for artificial radio or optical signals from some civilization. So they're obviously artificial and they couldn't have been produced by nature. That will be more profound, of course, because that's companionship in the universe. And that will raise all sorts of questions. So I think it really divides that way. And since the universe logically, if life exists in the universe elsewhere, there'll be many more microbes than intelligent civilizations. You know.
ian (29:29.523)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (29:58.858)seed in that first mode. Although SETI is a side bet. I mean SETI for 65 years has been placing this little side bet. Okay, yeah, we can look for microbes and those are hard experiments and now we can almost do it. But let's always place this side bet of jumping over the evolutionary path from microbes to men or humans and look for those intelligent technological civilizations directly. And so it's worth doing. I'm not science
scientists are divided on SETI, even astronomers are divided on it, whether it's a worthwhile pursuit or not, whether it's even scientific or not. That's the strongest critique of SETI is that unlike, you know, if I wanted to go to the National Science Foundation and get a million dollar grant to study some issue of, you know, solid state physics or high energy physics, I'd have to propose an experiment and define my parameters and how I was going to control variables and say how I would interpret the data.
could refute or confirm. SETI doesn't have that kind of situation. They don't know how to define success or failure even. Well, they can define success more or less, but they can't define failure and they can't say what the probability of success is. So it's not a normal scientific pursuit. So that's the critique of SETI from scientists, but I still think it's worth doing.
ian (31:04.946)Right.
ian (31:23.628)Yeah.
rachael (31:24.842)You talked about, and I think you're probably right in terms of how much people will care in the long run or in their day-to-day life or, right? Okay, so we found some microbes from, you know, a thousand light years away. I don't, that didn't reduce my student loan at all. But like, didn't, thank you. It's nice, saw the headlines. It's now three years later.
chris_impey (31:45.018)Right.
rachael (31:54.441)But I've noticed that you did a lot of work with the Vatican and with monks, and I think that that's a different population that might respond to and other religious figures, but specifically those I'm asking you because those are the groups that you've worked with. They might respond a little bit differently to this existence. Could you speak a little bit
ian (32:01.35)Yeah
chris_impey (32:16.803)Right.
rachael (32:23.726)in this idea of how it would change.
chris_impey (32:25.658)Sure. And maybe preface it with just the cultural comment, with independent religion, that the other issue that will arise with, I mean, if microbial life is found elsewhere and astrobiology is a real field with the subject matter, finally, yeah, it's foundational for science. And of course, it terraforms biology because, you know, if you want to poke, if physicists want to poke at biologists who say, well, you just spent your whole life studying one form of biology,
What about all the other forms? You don't have a general theory of biology like we have a standard model of particle physics because you've just been studying one thing like staring at your navel. Well, what about all that stuff out there? Okay, so so it'll be a big deal for biology for all of science but on the intelligent life or advanced life, the problem with what happens outside the scientific community is it's not a tabula rasa. It's not a blank slate. The popular culture, especially in the US
ian (32:59.524)Hmm.
ian (33:08.503)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (33:25.718)but almost everywhere now, is so primed for the fact that, A, it's already there and sure, and B, it's visited, and three, it's abducted some of our people, and four, it can make a list of all the conspiracy theories and wild ideas about alien life. And they're just so embedded in the popular culture that it's like that the fact of the existence of intelligent aliens has been amortized. It's sort of been, it's just already been built in.
zack_jackson (33:39.8)Thank you.
chris_impey (33:55.698)in to the culture. And so, you know, that would lead to a collective shrug. Well, sure, we knew that, you know, the government's been hiding this stuff from us for 70 years, since Roswell. So, you know, and now your astronomers are coming along and telling us, oh, it exists and you're all excited, really? Oh, come on, you know. So I think that's the larger cultural issue or problem or whatever, it's not a problem, it's just amusing to me. But as far as a religious reaction to this, and I'll say,
zack_jackson (34:02.271)Hmm.
rachael (34:04.421)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (34:05.05)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (34:12.722)Ha!
chris_impey (34:25.698)the gate that I'm an agnostic, which my wife's a pretty hardcore atheist. And so she gives me a hard time about being agnostic. She thinks that's a kind of, it's a kind of wussy position to take. But I, and I argue with her, we argue vigorously about that one. I argue with her and I use the phrase that was attributed to Feynman. And I think he did say this in the biography of Richard Feynman, famous physicist. His biographer said,
zack_jackson (34:43.45)Fantastic.
chris_impey (34:55.738)Feynman believed in the primacy of doubt and that he held as a high scientific mark and doubt skepticism and doubt is a is a very high mark of a scientist. So I'm proud to wear that mantle of skepticism doubt of not being sure and being okay with not being sure. So I'm an agnostic but I do keep bad company and some of that bad company is Jesuits. Don't you know, don't don't go drinking with Jesuits. You'll you'll you'll end up in a
rachael (34:59.461)Thank you. Bye.
ian (35:13.024)Right.
zack_jackson (35:14.092)Yeah.
chris_impey (35:25.798)and a Rome gutter somewhere and they'll be they'll have got back home safely. With the Buddhists, the other group I hang out with, you don't have to worry about being drunk in a gutter because they really don't drink. They do bend the rules a bit, you know, I've seen them eat a lot of meat for people who are supposed to be vegans and vegetarians. But anyway, those are the two tribes that I've sort of affiliated myself with. And their reactions or perspectives on life in the universe is are quite different. They're interesting.
Each the Buddhists that I've been with and I've read behind this of course and read some of their More you know the scholarly articles written about this It is completely unexceptional in their tradition to contemplate a universe filled with life That could be more advanced It could be human like or it could be more advanced or different from humans in also a vast universe with cycles of time and birth and
and death of the universe and rebirth of other universes. So the Byzantine possibilities of life in the universe are pretty standard stuff for them and would not surprise them at all. They do get into more tricky issues when they come to define life itself, which biologists of course have trouble with, or sentience, which is also a tricky issue. But on the larger issue of the existence of life in the universe far beyond Earth, that's just non-controversial.
zack_jackson (36:48.35)Hmm.
chris_impey (36:55.898)to them and when I say that's what we anticipate and that's what scientists expect it's like okay sure and the Jesuits are in a different slightly different space they're of course in an unusual space as we know within the Catholic Church because they're you know they're the scholarly branch you know they're they're devoted to scholarship they from Gregory and the calendar reform they were liberated to measure
ian (37:17.944)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (37:25.678)the heavens and then eventually that just segwayed smoothly into doing astronomy research. The Jesuits have been doing pretty straight up astronomical research since certainly the early 19th century, so quite a long time. And they have that sort of intellectual independence of being able to pursue those ideas. All the Jesuit astronomers I know, there are I think 11 or 12 in the Vatican Observatory and they all live the double life. They're all PhD astronomers.
rachael (37:37.221)Thank you.
chris_impey (37:55.798)with parishes. So it's not a problem. Whoever else, whoever elsewhere might think there's a conflict between science and religion, they don't see it. They don't feel it. And if you ask... Yeah. Yeah.
ian (38:05.145)Mm-hmm.
zack_jackson (38:06.03)No. And if anyone out there wants to hear more about that, they can listen to episode episode 113 with brother guy, the, uh, the director. Yeah.
ian (38:10.246)We have an episode.
chris_impey (38:13.821)Right.
ian (38:15.343)Director of the Vatican Observatory.
chris_impey (38:16.418)Sure, sure. So I've known guys since, well, since he was a grad student actually, and a long time. And yes, and so they, they're pursuing it from a scholarly direction. And for them, it's also uncontroversial that there would be life elsewhere. Now, what is the, you know, what does that do to God's creation when you imagine that Earth and humans are no longer the centerpiece of it? That's a more interesting question.
zack_jackson (38:22.034)Wow.
chris_impey (38:46.298)I've had debates about that. And I heard Jose Funes, who was the previous director of the Vatican Observatory and Argentinian astronomer, in a press conference actually in the Vatican City State when we had a conference on astrobiology. In response to a question about astrobiology, because that was what the conference was about, he gave a very interesting answer. He said he gave a parable of Christ in the flock of sheep and how there was the sheep that was lost.
you know, you had to gather back to the rest of the flock. And he didn't complete the story, he just left it hanging there. And so you were left wondering, are we the lost sheep, you know, and the other, and all the intelligent aliens out there are the rest of the flock? And what's the message, you know? So he sort of almost muddied the waters with his little parable. But in the manner of how they view the universe,
zack_jackson (39:27.914)Hmm.
rachael (39:28.621)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (39:33.792)Hmm.
chris_impey (39:46.398)the rules of physics. I used to teach a team graduate cosmology with Bill Staker, who is one of their tribe. Sadly, he died a few years ago. We teach cosmology and he's a relativist. He works on general relativity and the Big Bang and all that. And if I was just wanting to pull his leg at breakfast, we had breakfast before we taught us to organize ourselves. I could do one of two things. I could say, oh, Bill, physics, we got you with physics.
is squeezed back to the first 10 to the minus 43 seconds. Got to the gaps, there it is, that's a little gap. And then physics owns the rest, you know. And then if I was really feeling frisky, I'd sort of, since he was a Catholic, I'd tease him about the three impossible things he has to believe every morning before breakfast. Virgin birth, resurrection, et cetera, you know. So I don't know how all those circles are squared truly because we've had, you know, I've had conversations.
zack_jackson (40:22.572)Hmm.
zack_jackson (40:26.32)Hehehehehe
zack_jackson (40:35.05)Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (40:46.798)But I know that it's not a conflict or a tension or even a problem to imagine life in the universe and even intelligent life. So for neither of those two very different religious tribes, does it seem to be an issue?
ian (41:06.443)So can you talk more about, especially how you got involved? Cause I think that science for the monks and nuns program was really interesting. And, you know, one, how you got involved, but you know, reading your book Humble Before the Void was just very interesting to kind of see about your experience from there. And you told us before we started recording that you wrote that after your first time going and that you've been there eight or nine times now. What has all of this been like for you? How has it had an impact on your work and also your personal life?
if yes and what ways.
chris_impey (41:38.798)Yeah, it was a sort of profound, it's been a profound experience since 2008, I guess, so it's almost 15 years and eight trips. So the first time was one of those great things of you come across the transom professionally. Sometimes I got a call from a colleague that I didn't know that well, who he knew I had an education, a good reputation as an educator. And he just called me, he's a postdoc at Berkeley actually, an environmental science postdoc.
He said, how'd you like to go and teach the Dalai Lama's monks cosmology? And it's not a question you ruminate over or look at your skit, look at, oh, I'll check my calendar. Let me get back to you. No, you just say yes, and then you make it happen. So I said yes, and then it happened. And I was savvy enough in hindsight to take my 17-year-old Paul with me on that trip. And he'd never been anywhere out, he'd been to Europe a couple of times, but he'd never been to Asia or anywhere exotic.
zack_jackson (42:14.65)Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
rachael (42:17.821)Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
zack_jackson (42:23.05)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (42:38.738)if you like. And so that was a profound trip in that sense. It was a bonding with your 17-year-old and you know, we were a little more adventurous together than either of us might have been on our own. And so the context was that invitation. And then I learned that his holiness the Dalai Lama, who famously has said in his autobiography that if he hadn't been selected at age four to be the
of compassion would have been an engineer. Fine, that's an interesting statement to make. But, and it meant that when he was a child in Eastern Tibet, in a pretty primitive village, you know, he would just infuriate his parents by taking apart their clocks and mechanical devices and never quite putting them together again. So he had this analytic and mechanical and engineering and scientific mindset even as a child. And then of course his future was cast into the role he had
zack_jackson (43:11.134)Hmm.
zack_jackson (43:25.992)Hmm.
chris_impey (43:38.798)he took. But he's always had that strong interest in science. So he looked around 20 or so years ago and realized that the monastic tradition, his, the Gelug tradition, of course, or other traditions in Buddhism, was sort of outdated. You know, the monastic training was extremely rigorous. They take years and years of rhetoric and philosophy and theology and comparative religion and all sorts of things. But there's very little science, very little math. And in the schools, there's
zack_jackson (43:39.972)Bye.
chris_impey (44:08.718)very little science and very little math. And he just thought that was unacceptable. He said, my monks and nuns, the nun part actually did come later. And that was a good part of his work to make the level of playing field for monastic training to include nuns. But he just said, these my monastics cannot be prepared for life in the 21st century if they don't have science and math. And so in the manner that he does these things, he just looked around and waved his arm and said, make this happen, you know, and I've now
zack_jackson (44:19.05)Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (44:30.035)Yeah.
zack_jackson (44:37.45)Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
chris_impey (44:38.798)heard from proximity to people in his orbit that his holiness, the Dalai Lama says a lot of things. He has great ideas. He's very activist. He's very visionary. And he says all sorts of things. And people scurry around and sometimes they just ignore him. Sometimes nothing happens. But this one, they decided to make it happen. And what happened was they looked around Dharamsala
chris_impey (45:08.658)the blue, who was an educator and a scientist, a young scientist. And they just glommed on to him and they said, Hey, can you help us with this? Can you set something up? And so he set up the science for monks program, then science for monks and nuns. When the nuns came on board and I was one of the early people he called. And so the model was to bring three to four Western teachers in different subjects. The Dalai Lama's core interest.
it doesn't mirror a bit his interests, which are evolutionary biology, neuroscience, physics, math, and then environmental sciences come on board too. So it's not every field of science. So these, we would come out as Western teachers and there'd be cohorts of monks and then monks and nuns, about 24 in a group. And we do three week intensive workshops and they're very intense, you know, we're in the classroom six, seven hours a day and then our evening sessions or observing
zack_jackson (45:50.671)Hmm.
chris_impey (46:08.658)telescopes. So it's kind of grueling actually, but it's inspiring as well. And eventually, the idea is that enough of the monks and nuns will be trained to be educators themselves, and you won't need to depend on Westerners to come out and do this. And they're not really there yet, but they could get there. I don't want them to get there, because then I won't get invited out. So it was a singular experience. And the book I wrote, of course, was fresh,
zack_jackson (46:24.494)Hmm.
chris_impey (46:38.738)I was really, I wrote it not long after the first trip. And to your question of did it affect me or change me? Well, yes, in many ways, some of which I probably haven't fully appreciated. I mean, first of all, it was a deep embedding in a culture, in a way that I'd never done. I was pretty experienced world traveler, but in that sort of slightly superficial way of someone who goes to Asia and tries to hang out and go to a bar in a local restaurant and see the sights, but you don't really get to know the people
ian (47:05.228)Mm-hmm
chris_impey (47:08.838)you're moving around. So being three weeks, sometimes four weeks, and then traveling with them afterwards or during, you know, really you get to learn the culture. You also see in these northern Indian towns, most of the workshops are in northern India, there's now in southern India, Bidtabhatta, Nepal for this too. They're mixing very well. India has a, you know, kind of black mark on it right now with its current government of sort of sectarian strife and
Most recently with the Sikhs, but also obviously with Muslims But in those little northern Indian villages where there are sometimes 50 percent Buddhist 50 percent Hindus They really get on pretty well. I mean that they're just they're sort of under the radar the geopolitics or the What the Modi government is doing at the time so? It works pretty well, and it's nice to see that So I learned that I saw the culture up close. I would be part of their rituals and go, you know and
ian (47:50.666)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (48:08.758)see everything they saw and listen to their prayers and talk to their scholars. And so it was a pretty deep embedding. And then as far as my own life, when I come back, rather than just view it as, you know, amazing experience, I got some beautiful photos. I had these great memories. Um, it did sort of make me reflect a little, uh, because of their, the ethos they had. And their ethos is, is of course very, um, very different from
most of a Western ethos. It's a Buddhist are all about compassion and suffering, suffering and compassion. They do go together. They're almost bedfellows. So I got the message, I think very early on, when I was walking towards the lecture hall and it was at one of these Tibetan children villages and they're very poignant places. They're about 11 or maybe now 14 Tibetan children villages in the northern part of India. And that's where the refugees go.
ian (48:46.008)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (49:09.158)that escaped. So almost all the monks in my early workshops left Tibet when they were teenagers even younger, brought across the ice fields by family members at great risk. Some didn't make it, others lost toes and fingers from frostbite. They had to go in the winter because the Chinese troops would intercept them and even even then did in the winter. So they were orphans,
And they grow up and go to these Tibetan children villages, sort of orphanages, really. And so I was walking towards the lecture hall, which is situated in one of these villages. And there was a hard, scrabble, packed dirt soccer pitch. You know, it looked really uncomfortable for falling. I am enough of a Brit to have experienced playing football soccer on really nice grass, because England does have good grass, you know. And I was thinking, the first thing I thought, damn, I don't want to play football.
rachael (50:04.321)Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ian (50:04.525)Right.
zack_jackson (50:05.412)Hmm
chris_impey (50:08.918)on that field. That would be brutal. So there was this football field and there was a 10-foot wall behind it running the length of the football field, painted white, and on top of it in 10-foot high letters was a slogan of the school, others before self. And I was just thinking, I wonder how many American high schools would have that as their slogan. How would that go down with the, you know, social media, me generation, whatever.
rachael (50:10.621)Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ian (50:31.167)Right.
rachael (50:31.321)Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
zack_jackson (50:32.25)Hmm
ian (50:34.845)Yeah.
chris_impey (50:38.918)So that was one thing. And then a series of those little messages sort of sink in about how they do operate differently from us or me. And so one thing it made me reflect on when I went back home was I immediately embedded back in my academic life and hustling the next grant and writing the next paper and talking to my collaborators. And I just realized how really how intensely pressured.
rachael (50:40.763)Wow.
chris_impey (51:08.658)Darwinian that science, Western science system is, it's kind of, you know, it kind of grinds you down. I mean, I've been hustling for grants from funding agencies for 40 years and I kind of burned out on it, you know, it's hard. It doesn't get any easier because there's younger whippersnappers that are very smart and, you know, they're going to get your grant. So it definitely made me reflect on the sort of hyper competitive nature of some parts of
zack_jackson (51:21.042)Hmm.
ian (51:21.047)Mm-hmm.
rachael (51:28.721)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (51:39.719)and just reflect on what is important. Is it important to know something, or to teach something, or to give something, or to what is important? And how does that work when you're a scientist and educator? And that's it. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (51:56.043)Yeah. Well, it's just interesting reading the book and I told you before we're recording. I've not been on to finish it yet, but I look forward to finish it just because, you know, one, you know, as I've already said, you're a fantastic writer for the lay audience, the general public, which is not something, you know, I've, I've worked with many scientists as a science educator and many of the ones I've worked with have said they struggle with that. Right. So I always applaud that. Um, but then just the, the personal experiences you shared and.
chris_impey (51:59.833)I'm
ian (52:26.163)humble before the void was just very interesting to me, especially someone who I have embraced meditation and mindfulness over the past three or four years and gotten really into it. And so, you know, first when I, when you shared that book with us and saw that the Dalai Lama wrote, you know, the preface for it and everything, I just was immediately fascinated because I find him to be absolutely fascinating in his perspective on things. So
chris_impey (52:47.298)Yeah, I mean, I was, I mean, I've been privileged to meet him a couple of times. And, uh, and it's always, uh, a singular experience. Uh, the first time was that first trip out actually. And, and it was in that same Tibetan children village. And that was, this was in the winter. I was a January is a very, um, very difficult time to be there. It's in the foothills of the Himalayas. Quite high up. Dharamsala has trivial factoid that a Brit will appreciate like me. Um,
It has the world's highest cricket stadium. And so drum solo, there you go. Now you know, when you get asked that, now you know. So we were in this auditorium, this cold auditorium, very cold, and they'd given the Westerners blankets, put over their legs, and even a few little heaters around. But it was brutal. And he was going to give an opening address. And everyone was full of excitement and anticipation. It was probably 2,000 people. But it was a cold, it was an unadorned Spartan auditorium
ian (53:20.331)Oh.
zack_jackson (53:20.594)Hmm.
Ha ha ha.
ian (53:25.403)Exactly.
zack_jackson (53:34.892)Hmm.
chris_impey (53:47.498)on a below freezing day in the Himalayas. And along that football field outside, which is the way his little, he has the equivalent of a pokemobile, he has the DL mobile or whatever that he comes into a place with, that he was gonna come along the edge of the field. And I'd seen walking in that the school children were starting to assemble in a long row along the side of the football field along the place his vehicle would come. And we were waiting
zack_jackson (54:01.775)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (54:17.258)He was late and it was so cold and it was quiet. People were murmuring, nothing was happening. And then suddenly we heard this sound, this wave of singing. So they were singing him in as his vehicle arrived. And I was like, wow, that was so cool. Just the sound of that. And then he came and he just radiates when he's in a room. And he's a little frail. He had trouble getting up the three steps onto the stage. But his grin is just... Oh, it's just...
anyone who remelt the hardest heart. He's just so... and his comments are always, you know, they're always kind of offhand and insightful and, you know, he has a very interesting and sensibility. So that's been a remarkable thing. But the monks all had their own insights and I learned a lot from them. I mean, I was teaching them but I was learning a lot from them. And they gave me, you know, when you teach, well, the other thing I didn't say about the
ian (55:12.667)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (55:17.418)experience there, which was also restorative for me, is, you know, I depend on my high tech gadgets and my PowerPoints and my whatever. And I was pretty much warned. I said, you're going to be pretty much off the grid. And it was almost like that. And there were a couple of workshops where, you know, if the cold water, if the water was hot, you were lucky. If the power stayed on all day in the classroom, you were lucky. There was hardly any equipment. We make these, these runs
rachael (55:25.325)Hmm.
chris_impey (55:47.278)These equipment runs down to the local bazaar, and we buy matchsticks and cloth and cardboard and foil and just super primitive ingredients to make experiments back in the classroom, rather than bring stuff out from the West. So you had to improvise, and it was good to do that. It was good to have to lecture and talk and use simple analogies and simple equipment. And so they informed me about that, too, because I wondered how they understood
zack_jackson (56:02.75)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (56:17.278)these very abstract things of physics and cosmology. And I think the first striking little insight I had, because I was always reaching for a good analogy. And then, so I sort of turned the tables on one of the monks. I said, well, you have this idea of deep time, which is very interesting. You have a kalpa, which is a day in the life of Brahma. And it's been annotated in some text to be 4.32 billion years, quite a specific number. Happens to be within 10% of the age of the earth.
ian (56:45.207)Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (56:47.258)go figure. And then there's a great Calpa, which is the lifetime of Brahma. And that's about a trillion years, which to a cosmologist is a very interesting number because that's the stellariferous age of the universe. That's the time into the future for which stars will shine after that the universe goes dark forever. And so it's a very interesting coincidence that two coincidences that the age of the earth is a Calpa and a great Calpa is the
rachael (56:48.682)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (57:07.05)Hmm.
ian (57:09.566)huh
chris_impey (57:17.258)universe before it truly goes dark forever. So that was interesting. But then I was asking, following up that knowledge, which was interesting, because most religious traditions do not encompass crisp, precise numbers of that scale. I said, well, what does it mean to you? How do you understand a kalpa? Just a kalpa, the 4.3 billion years. And the monk I was talking to said, well, we imagine, we, so this is a collective analogy that people use, not just him.
zack_jackson (57:31.992)Yeah.
chris_impey (57:47.678)We imagine a mountain made of granite that's a kilometer high and a kilometer at the base and We imagine a dove that flies by this mountain and brushes it with its wing once a day And it's granite so it only dislodges a few particles and a Calpa is how long it takes the dove to erode the mountain to nothing and I thought wow I get it I got it I got it in my gut and for a scientist analogies are meaningful and metaphors to
zack_jackson (58:16.737)Mm-mm.
chris_impey (58:17.618)when they get you somewhere other than your head, when they get you in a deeper place, a more visceral place. And so that was just one example, but in the end I heard a number of ways that they conceptualized or analogized or explained really quite difficult concepts in their tradition, or there were scientific concepts very differently than a Western scientist would, but how interesting was that? So I always was captivated by that.
zack_jackson (58:45.492)Hmm.
ian (58:46.003)Yeah, that is interesting. Well, we are getting close to the end of our time together. And I feel like I could just keep talking to you about all these different experiences, because it just sounds so fascinating, all the different things you've done. Um, is there anything else that we should have asked you about that we just didn't yet? I mean, does you want to share?
rachael (58:50.621)That is a beautiful.
zack_jackson (58:57.062)Yeah.
chris_impey (59:07.558)No, I mean, I could talk a little bit more about the Jesuits because I, you know, I haven't talked about them so much and I know them very well. And I also know the history. I've had the luck to be there and, you know, teach at their summer schools and so on. So they, they do, they do this very nice thing. They started by George Coyne, the long-term director of the Vatican conservatory almost 30 years, who I've known since I was a postdoc. And he's, he facilitated these summer schools where.
ian (59:22.665)Oh wow.
chris_impey (59:37.518)They get 24 students, first year grads or last year undergrads from around the world, mostly they're majority women, majority developing countries. And they have this, you know, summer school for a month. I've taught at three of them. It's a really great experience. It's on a par with teaching in the Buddhist monks and nuns. Because these people, these kids have often not left their own country. And so suddenly they're in Rome or Castigandolfo outside Rome.
you know, in the heart of Europe, they get field trips to Florence, they go and they see all the sites in that month. I mean, it's just a fire hose of cultural experience while they're getting this boot camp on astronomy and some topic in astrophysics. So it's just an amazing experience. And those students now numbering over 400 because they've been going for 30 years are now really senior in astronomy and some of them are directing observatories and it's really cool to watch them
zack_jackson (01:00:12.95)Thank you. Thank you.
ian (01:00:30.203)Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (01:00:37.658)And that's an amazing thing that the Vatican Observatory has done. And I think what it's done also, of course, has been an emblem of rebuttal for the people who say that science and religion cannot coexist. Because like I said, all all those Jesuits, I know, live the double life and they don't seem to be schizophrenic in any way about that. And also, you know, there's, you know, the Vatican and the Catholic Church did have some, you know,
rachael (01:00:52.165)Hahaha
ian (01:00:52.467)Right.
chris_impey (01:01:07.518)do because, you know, they gave Gallio a very hard time. I mean, I've been to the place where he was on house arrest, his villa with the Villa Gioia, it's a jewel villa outside Florence. It's a pretty, it's got its own vineyard, it's on a hillside, outside Florence. It's a pretty nice place if you're going to be holed up under house arrest, I could think of worse places, but he was blind and it was miserable and he had, he, so, so that was his fate to avoid the torture and the full wrath of the Inquisition.
zack_jackson (01:01:09.15)Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
ian (01:01:12.003)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (01:01:21.15)Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
rachael (01:01:25.521)Thank you. Bye.
ian (01:01:30.888)Right.
chris_impey (01:01:37.938)So they had a lot to do to scramble from that it took two century, you know The the church moves slowly so it was good two centuries before they took his book from the band book list and then JP to John Paul II in 1992 got around to sort of exonerating him You know, I would not call it a fulsome apology at that point But it was you know, it was a certain level of me a culpa that they treated him badly The Bruno thing is off to the side because
zack_jackson (01:01:56.494)Hmm.
chris_impey (01:02:07.458)because there's a lot of misinterpretation of that. Bruno was burned at the stake as, I think the quote is, an impenitent and pertinacious heretic. So it was heresy that got him in trouble, not his astronomy belief. So he's making him a martyr to science that think is very inappropriate. That's not historically correct. An impenitent and pertinacious heretic.
rachael (01:02:21.921)Mm-hmm.
ian (01:02:25.103)Mm-hmm.
zack_jackson (01:02:30.75)Can you say that phrase again?
zack_jackson (01:02:35.971)Oh my goodness.
chris_impey (01:02:37.598)the rap sheet. I mean, if you ever get arrested, just hope that isn't... Yeah. So that's the context, of course. But then we know that going back to calendar reform and so on, this church has also incubated this pretty interesting scientific activity that doesn't hedge the science at all. They just do the science. There are scholars and they are
zack_jackson (01:02:41.15)I need that on my business card. That's fantastic.
ian (01:02:43.125)Eheheh
chris_impey (01:03:07.498)to follow our ideas. So, you know, I've always appreciated that. And it's not always been a guarantee. So the Vatican politics of that I've also seen up close. And under Benedict, they almost were put out of existence. So Benedict was not, John Paul II was a good supporter. So he was very friendly to science. He was very conservative socially, of course, but on science issues, he was supportive. And he started the
ian (01:03:12.567)Hmm.
chris_impey (01:03:37.478)Academy sponsoring conferences right there in the heart of the church. They'd have scientific conferences and John Paul supported that and would give the opening speech. It occasionally got twitchy, like when Stephen Hawking went to one of them and he relegated God to a boundary condition of the universe. So there are a few awkward moments, but generally it worked. So they had these conferences and I think it was a very good sign of the
rachael (01:03:58.321)Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (01:04:07.518)of liberal thinking about science in that regard. Benedict was not so sympathetic and Benedict was beholden to Opus Dei and Opus Dei have always wanted to put astronomers out of business, shut them down. Like why are we doing this? Why are they here? Let's get rid of it. And so the Vatican Observatory, this is not public knowledge, so maybe I shouldn't even be saying this, but they had a near-death experience under Benedict. And then Francis came along and, oh, sidebar, I'm just boasting a little bit here. I'm up to three popes,
rachael (01:04:37.464)Who?
chris_impey (01:04:37.839)I met, I met, I met those three.
ian (01:04:39.172)that is actually pretty cool.
zack_jackson (01:04:41.13)I'm up to three pups, especially for an agnostic. That's good.
chris_impey (01:04:43.938)Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm I'm an I'm an agnostic but but the first John Paul So that was going back in ways and I had my kids there and one of my kids was very little and My ex-wife was a catholic a lapsed catholic, but her family were very catholic And so they got all excited when they heard we were going to have an audience with the pope And so I was there and I was holding my younger kid in my arms and their photos of this
rachael (01:04:44.122)You're collecting them.
ian (01:04:45.623)It is pretty good. Three posts in the Dalai Lama, you know? That's... That's...
chris_impey (01:05:14.158)you know tries to kuchiku him or whatever and and and my kid and you know Who is this? Who is the who is this scary dude in this white thing? You know, I don't want to so I have this picture of him grimacing and recoiling and and then my ex-mother-in-law who is very Catholic She was chagrin because in one of the photos. It's clear that he's touseling my kids hair and my ex-mother-in-law gave us a
zack_jackson (01:05:19.57)Ha ha ha ha!
rachael (01:05:23.121)Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (01:05:23.75)Ha ha ha ha ha.
chris_impey (01:05:44.038)time because we didn't preserve that lock. We didn't make it a relic. It should have been a relic. Anyway, so Benedict was anti and the knives were out and Opus Dei was ascending. And then Francis comes in and it's all wonderful and copacetic now because of course Francis is the first Jesuit Pope and he supports science and he's definitely liberal on that issue and it's
ian (01:05:47.414)Oh.
zack_jackson (01:05:48.231)Oh, as a relic. Ugh!
Yeah.
ian (01:05:53.403)interesting.
zack_jackson (01:06:03.772)Hehehehehe
chris_impey (01:06:13.878)doing the astronomy. And I even have a nice little story about that, because Jose Funes, who I mentioned earlier was a previous Vatican observatory director before Guy Consomagno. Funes is an Argentinian, as Francis is. And back in the day, Jose Funes, the Vatican, to be Vatican observatory director for 10 years, was a seminary student in Buenos Aires in the seminary school.
Hope was then the bishop of that diocese. And Jose told this great story. He was a seminary student and his mom would come and bring him a little carrot, a basket of goodies and baked things and whatever every Sunday. And so she had arrived and she was walking in one of the portals of the seminary school and she looked off to the side and it was the laundry room. And she noticed and recognized the bishop, now Pope Francis,
washing the seminarians clothes underwear whatever and She was very shy and modest woman But she was so shocked by this that she rushed over and said no no you know no you shouldn't do this This is inappropriate and he just laughed and waved her off So the humility is real. I mean that was just a great a great little story about Francis before he became a pope
ian (01:07:32.945)Yeah.
ian (01:07:37.783)Wow. Yeah. Oh yeah. All right. Well, I think, yeah. One final question. We have gone a little over time, but there's something that Zach started doing when we started interviewing the Sinai Snapsys fellows, which is where we all met. It's a great question to end with. And so I always like using it is, what do you wish that everyone knew? Like if you were able to beam information into
zack_jackson (01:07:38.755)fan.
ian (01:08:07.925)around the world. What would it be?
chris_impey (01:08:10.458)Hmm. I mean, as in a science factoid or just about whatever. Well, I guess, okay, I guess, uh, since I'm so into exoplanets, there's going to have to be something about that that most people don't know. So what I would want everyone to know is that in the universe, there are more planets than stars, which means there are 10,000 billion billion planets in the universe. I want people to know.
ian (01:08:14.084)It's whatever you want.
ian (01:08:38.703)Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (01:08:39.77)That's wild.
ian (01:08:42.043)Yeah, I think I got to the part of your book where you mentioned something about you're more stars than grains of salt, right? Or no, more planets and grains of sand. Right. And it was just, yeah, it's just amazing. Okay. Well, thank you, Chris. Yeah, for joining us today. This was an outstanding conversation.
chris_impey (01:08:49.759)Right, right, yeah.
zack_jackson (01:08:52.271)Hmm.
Well, thank you so much.
chris_impey (01:08:57.498)Yeah, no, it's fine. I enjoyed it too. Good, great questions.

Episode 120
Today we are joined by Dr Emily Smith to talk about epidemiology, the dangers of truth telling, and how the story of the Good Samaritan changed everything for her. 
She is an assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine/surgery at Duke University and at the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI). During the COVID-19 pandemic, she became known as the Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist through her social media outlets which reached over 10 million people in 2020-2021. She continues posting on the social account and her Substack blog with a monthly reach of 2-4 million. Her work has been featured in TIME Magazine, NPR, the Washington Post, Christianity Today, and Baptist News Global.
Before joining the faculty at Duke University, she spent four years at Baylor University in the department of public health and was a research scholar at DGHI for two years. She received her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill and a MSPH from the University of South Carolina. 
She has been married to her pastor-husband for 20 years and they have two fantastic children, one spoiled golden retriever and a new very-friendly golden doodle puppy. Her debut book, The Science of the Good Samaritan: Thinking Bigger About Loving Our Neighbors, released on Oct. 24, 2023 from Zondervan. I’m very excited to welcome Dr. Emily Smith to the show today. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
AI Generated Transcript
Ian (00:04.911)Okay. So our guest today is an assistant professor in the department of emergency medicines surgery at Duke university and at the Duke global health Institute. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she became known as the friendly neighbor epidemiologist through her social media outlets, which reached over 10 million people in 2020 and 2021. She continues posting on the social account and her sub stack blog with a monthly reach of two to 4 million people.
Her work has been featured in Time Magazine, NPR, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, and Baptist News Global. Before joining the faculty at Duke University, she spent four years at Baylor University in the Department of Public Health and was a research scholar at DGHI for two years. She received her PhD in epidemiology from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill and MSPH from the University of South Carolina. She's been married to her pastor husband for 20 years and they have two fantastic children.
one spoiled golden retriever and a newly and a new very friendly golden doodle puppy. Her debut book, the science of the good Samaritan thinking bigger, bigger about loving our neighbors released on October 24th, 2023. I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Emily Smith to the show today.
Emily Smith (01:15.144)I'm very excited to welcome you all. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here for sure.
Ian (01:21.518)Yeah. Um, as I was saying before we started recording, you know, I've found you because of your Facebook account and was just always amazed, obviously with your expertise in the science and, um, everything you were sharing, but also your lens as an evangelical Christian. Um, I thought that was really fascinating and trying to work with those two communities, right? Trying to kind of be a boundary, uh, spanning individual for that. But I think before we really get into that.
Emily Smith (01:43.734)Yeah.
Ian (01:50.162)I would love for you to just kind of talk to us a little bit about what drew you to epidemiology.
Emily Smith (01:56.476)Yes, and prior to the pandemic, I don't think a lot of people knew what that word meant. By the way, it's seven syllables, and so throw that into a Thanksgiving meal or something if you need a big word to kind of wow family with. But, you know, people would get us confused with skin doctors, like epidermis instead of epidemics, or entomology, which I think is bugs, right? Yeah, it's just another really big E word. I don't know. So now...
Zack Jackson (02:00.95)Ha ha ha.
Ian (02:19.548)It is. Yes.
Zack Jackson (02:19.756)Yeah.
Emily Smith (02:26.068)People know kind of what we are and who we're about just because we've all come out of the pandemic. So if you need the nerdy, jeopardy definition of what that is, before I get into how I got into the field, is the distribution and determinants of disease. And so what makes a disease spread and who is at risk? I tend to say, you know, clinicians and nurses and dentists, they...
focus on one-on-one patients at a time, and we focus on one community or population level at a time, so the aggregate of a lot of individuals. I grew up in a tiny town in Eastern New Mexico, 10 miles from the Texas border, so it is West Texas culture, flat land, great sunsets and oil fields, and really good people. But it was a really small town and a lovely town.
And I just was always loved science. My eighth grade science teacher started talking about DNA and y'all would have thought he was talking about Beyonce or something. I was just like, what is this? And it's magic. And so he gave me a college textbook. This is as nerdy as it gets. Now it's kind of cool to be a nerd back then in the 90s. I guarantee it was not near as cool to wear glasses. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (03:44.687)Ugh. Right?
Emily Smith (03:48.5)So he, and I read it, I read it on a band trip, which is like double nerd points. But I just loved science and math. I don't know what it was, but he hooked me up with the first female scientist that I had ever met at Texas Tech University. And I started doing a science fair project with her in high school, because there really wasn't the capacity to do anything like that, you know, at my traditional high school, because it was too small.
Ian (03:48.514)Mm-hmm.
Emily Smith (04:16.668)And so I still thought I'm going to do something in science, but I had also grown up in the church and our family hosted a lot of missionaries that came into our church. And so I heard their stories. They were very gracious to listen to an eight-year-old, nine-year-old little questions about the world and their adventures. So early on, I knew I wanted to do, I thought I wanted to be a missionary and I still just love the science. And so I went to church.
The natural way to do that is go pre-med. I kind of thought the only way to do that is through medical school, so let's just do that. So I did, I chose medical school as a goal and took the MCAT, I got into med school, got married straight out of college to my pastor husband, and his first job in the church was all the way across the country in South Carolina. So I had a gap year.
Ian (04:50.218)Mm.
Zack Jackson (04:50.222)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (05:13.506)Hmm.
Emily Smith (05:15.872)And I, I mean, I'm just a nerd, so I decided let's just get another degree because it's what we do when we have a gap year, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, a lot of people might as well. Yeah. And it was in public health because I thought it'd look good for medical school. Day one of epidemiology, my professor, who was really just inspirational anyways, he did the jeopardy definition of epi. But then he said, this is a...
Ian (05:22.764)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (05:23.932)Right.
Ian (05:25.748)Not as well.
Emily Smith (05:44.192)This is an equity science because most of the time we're gonna be working at people who are on the margins in these communities that are marginalized for health or poverty. And growing up in the church, it just clicked in my mind that that's the science of the Good Samaritan. It's quantifying the people who are most at need and then choosing not to walk by. So I didn't go to medical school, went to PhD in Epi instead and history from there. But I...
I also remember going to my first mission trip on the Mercy Ship to Honduras. And when the doctors were focusing one-on-one on these people who had traveled a very long way to get to care, I was naturally asking the bigger picture questions about poverty or why this community has such high rates of...
you know, diabetes or surgical needs when others didn't. And those are inherently epi questions. I just didn't know it at the time.
Ian (06:45.983)That's interesting.
Zack Jackson (06:48.766)Yeah. So you mentioned this is the science of the Good Samaritan, which is, uh, the title of your newly released book. Congratulations. Has that been a story that has that clicked with you then, or is this more of a recent connecting of the dots? Has this story been in, in your heart and mind this whole time?
Ian (06:48.776)Yeah.
Emily Smith (06:52.662)Yeah.
Emily Smith (06:58.037)Thank you.
Emily Smith (07:10.172)Oh, the whole time, for sure. I love that story of the Good Samaritan. And a lot of people are familiar with it, even if you're not of the Christian faith. You know, it's that story of where there's a man on the side of the road who is very sick. I mean, sick enough, hurt enough, where he can't help himself. And two people walk by. Jesus is telling this story, by the way. And those people are noted as religious leaders. And so they're kind of the people who...
Ian (07:11.913)Okay.
Emily Smith (07:38.504)represent power and privilege of the day, but there's one person who actually stopped who's the Samaritan. And in that time, that would have been not who you expected to be highlighted in a story. They typically do not have the places of power or privilege in the religious time of the day, but he stopped and he helped the man. And not only that, he helped him, he bandaged him up, he took him to a place to recover, and then he paid for all of it. And it's just a holistic
view of what helping, you know, true solidarity and helping means. So I think that story just growing up in the church has always very much resonated with me wanting to do missions. But then when I got into EPPE, it resonated on a scientific level.
Ian (08:26.198)Interesting. I love how at the very beginning of the book, you know, you have all those little quotes before you get into the reading itself and, you know, talking, you know, from Mark, uh, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And then you kind of go into, you know, well, this is what health is the greatest of gifts from Buddhism, perform all work carefully guided by compassion from Hinduism. Then you go on with Islam, Judaism, and then you end, which I thought was really sweet with your kid.
Emily Smith (08:32.139)Yeah.
Emily Smith (08:52.885)Yeah.
Ian (08:54.418)love your neighbor, that's just being a good human. That really resonated with me because I'm actually teaching a science and religion class at UNC Charlotte. And I wanted it to be not a science and Christianity class. I wanted it to focus on multiple religions. And so I'm doing it for the first time. And what, I mean, yes, this is coming more from a Christian lens, but what made you even include all of that in there? Because I thought that was really interesting.
Emily Smith (08:57.041)Yeah.
Emily Smith (09:04.756)Yeah.
Emily Smith (09:24.344)Yes, one of my biggest fears about releasing this book is it being misconstrued as a Christian faith book and making that the center of all faiths. I work with all faiths. I work in predominantly Muslim countries. I've definitely worked with all faiths during the pandemic, but then that quote with my kid at the end.
You know, you don't have to be of any faith to just want to be a good human. He said that during the pandemic when he didn't understand why so many people were angry at me. Cause he lived through it. They heard and saw different things too. And so he just couldn't understand why being a good human wasn't just the top of the list for everybody. So I didn't want this book to come out even unconsciously.
Zack Jackson (10:06.053)Ugh.
Emily Smith (10:22.472)making people feel like you have to be of the Christian faith. That's the center of the world or the center of all faiths. Cause it's just not, there are gorgeous expressions of faith or non-faith or just being a good human around. And I wanted to be very careful in that. Also, when you read the book, you'll see that Christianity has been poorly centered for the sake of conquest or colonialism or
We see it even nowadays right here in America of we need to put the 10 commandments back in a courthouse or say a prayer before football games, but that's just a Christian prayer that's not inclusive of all. And I did not wanna be one of those people that even unconsciously said you have to be a Christian because I just, I don't think you do. You're beautiful people in the world. So thank you for talking about that. It was important to start the book for me with that.
Zack Jackson (10:54.766)Hmm.
Ian (11:15.5)Yeah.
Emily Smith (11:19.176)kind of foundation.
Zack Jackson (11:21.474)Hmm.
Ian (11:22.014)Yeah, I thought that, like I said, it just really resonated with me and it probably because I'm coming from the lens of the class I'm teaching. Um, you know, I am a Christian Episcopalian, but I have always been very curious and fascinated by other religious traditions and I just love learning about them. Um, and so I love that you had that in there. And I just remember right away, just running to my wife, being like, Oh, look at this. And, um, so.
Emily Smith (11:28.681)Yeah.
Emily Smith (11:39.232)Yeah.
Emily Smith (11:45.628)Yeah, well and I also didn't want to proselytize even some unconsciously. It's just I'm not a sneak attack Christian and I don't want to view people as projects. You know, I think the evangelical church has done a really bad job at that. And it's just not in my wheelhouse. I wanted to make that very clear.
Zack Jackson (11:52.523)Mm.
Ian (12:02.825)Mm-hmm.
Ian (12:08.787)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (12:09.006)Sneak attack Christians. That's such a good phrase. That...
Ian (12:11.955)It is.
Emily Smith (12:13.508)People are people, not projects.
Ian (12:15.56)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (12:15.734)Yeah. Oh man, I got to get that on cross stitch somewhere in my house.
Emily Smith (12:19.828)There you go! I like that.
Ian (12:22.422)So you in here, you know, not everyone who's listening has read the book yet, but what made you decide when the pandemic started? What made you decide to create your friendly neighbor epidemiologist?
Emily Smith (12:38.716)Yeah, and you know, I was at two conferences right when Wuhan was starting to ramp up in March, 2020. And we, this is our training, this is our lane. You know, this is our day to really step in and go for it. So once we saw, and when I say we, I say public health and epidemiologists, we saw how this new virus was acting and what was happening. A lot of us paid attention pretty,
significantly to what was happening. Cause what was, it was different than Ebola. You know, Ebola is awful. And hopefully we'll talk about where I talk about that chapter in the book. But when someone is sick and contagious, you kind of know it. Cause it's really horrific in visual. With this, it looked like it was COVID or well, well we weren't even calling it COVID at the time. Whatever was happening.
maybe people were spreading it before they even knew they were infectious and contagious. And so it could catch a lot of people off guard. My day job here at Duke is also working with health equity communities around the world in very poor countries where they're affected daily by bad access to healthcare, poverty. And so if this really was going to be the pandemic that people have been predicting for years.
the margins were gonna be affected the most. So everything in me was just kind of like rising of uh-oh. So I get home and a lot of people were asking questions of what does flatten the curve mean? Do we need to buy a billion rolls of toilet paper? And the answer was always no. Oh, bye. I know, and don't hoard, that's just classic America, isn't it? But also there was a lot.
Ian (14:23.158)People did it anyway though, yeah.
Ian (14:29.416)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (14:30.951)Yeah.
Emily Smith (14:32.412)And I, I re we all remember, I mean, this is a real fear. I do want to honor that of people who are high risk, the elderly, you know, do I need to be scared basically. And I wanted to calm fears, but not squash them because it was scary. So I decided why not, why don't I just start a Facebook page for the handful of real life neighbors that I had and like my family.
Really, I mean, it was just very, very genetic, generic, not genetic. So I named it Friendly because I tend to be too friendly. Like if I sit by you on an airplane, I'm very sorry. Um, cause I, I'm, I really am anyways, it's just who I am. And I'm trying to accept that, but neighbor because of the good Samaritan story, I knew that COVID in particular was going to imply that we needed to neighbor one another well.
We were going to have to take care of the margins. There's going to be a lot of solidarity of staying home for those that couldn't. Get the vaccines for those where it would not work. There just was a lot of neighboring that was going to take place. So I named it because of that. I'm also a pastor's wife. So I thought this is going to be prime time for the church, the Big C Church to be the church.
And I say that, I know listeners can't hear it, but I say that with a smile, not as sarcasm, but I was so idealistic at, I really thought this was gonna be our time to shine and take care, you know, live, love thy neighbor really out in full blown faith. So I named it Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist. And the only people that followed at the beginning were real life people that I knew. And then when the pandemic,
Ian (16:13.408)Yeah.
Emily Smith (16:23.676)started shifting. We all saw this when it became weirdly political. When national leaders started talking about it as the China virus or these othering type, I was going, what is happening? That is not the faith that I ascribe to. And then when it became, you know, faith that were fear, we started hearing that and people started saying that instead of wearing a mask. I was like, you have not read Galatians five in the Bible.
Ian (16:37.314)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (16:47.15)Hmm.
Emily Smith (16:53.192)You might say faith over fear, but that's not true faith. So I started posting about that too, from this perspective of pure science and then weaving in the faith part to try to help people anchor in a different way than perhaps they were able to anchor at their own churches. And that seemed to resonate with a lot of people for good and bad ways. So then it started going viral. George Floyd was murdered. And I talked...
Zack Jackson (17:18.55)Hmm.
Emily Smith (17:22.724)into that conversation at, especially in the white church, there's a difference between all lives matter and black lives matter and why that distinction is important. People couldn't understand. So it'd go viral for that. And I wasn't doing this to go viral. I don't actually think I was noticing what was happening because I was just busy writing and daily posting. And then the Capitol riot happened and I wrote about that one and that one really kind of exploded.
Zack Jackson (17:29.91)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (17:47.906)Hmm.
Emily Smith (17:53.748)So that's how I got into it. I'm sure we can talk about the nuances, but that's how it initially started.
Ian (17:59.362)And you alluded to, you know, your children seeing the things being said about you and everything. What surprised you most as it started going viral with the reactions? Like, because you, you share some things in here and that were really challenging to read and you in there though, even said that, um, I will not share everything. And so I just, I can't imagine.
Emily Smith (18:13.341)Yeah.
Emily Smith (18:19.457)Really?
Ian (18:30.134)the pain you went through and, but you, I love that you embraced your vulnerability with that because I also, I'll be honest. Yes, I, I am a Christian, but there are many times, especially over the last several years, and Zach knows this very well that I have a really hard time saying I'm a Christian because of the extreme baggage that comes with it. But I feel like if I say it, I have to qualify it really. And yeah, we had Brian McLaren on, um,
Emily Smith (18:47.032)Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yes.
Zack Jackson (18:47.054)Mm-hmm.
Emily Smith (18:53.98)Oh, absolutely.
Ian (18:58.342)last, what, May of 22. And we talked a lot about it then as well, because it just the extreme hate that I felt like we were seeing that, I guess, has always been there. But now is more acceptable to be said. And so I'm just curious, you are I've never been a member of an evangelical Christian community in that way. And so I'm just curious what surprised you the most or if you don't mind sharing some of that.
Emily Smith (19:00.52)Nice.
Emily Smith (19:26.896)Yeah, yes and that you know this portion of the book the book is separated into three different sections centering cost and courage um had to be three c's like a good Baptist I guess but that middle section is the thank you for that or evangelical I grew up charismatic and married a Baptist pastor and now we go to a liturgical church so I'm not sure what I am at this point. Did you?
Zack Jackson (19:39.138)Yes.
Zack Jackson (19:46.531)same.
Ian (19:51.925)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (19:52.466)I grew up charismatic and went to a Baptist seminary and married my wife there. And then now I'm a part of a mainline denomination. So look, I'm there with you.
Emily Smith (20:01.976)Maybe that's just a natural. There's a lot of us out there. Maybe that's a progression. Yeah. Are you? Yeah, I have to figure out where to, like the call and response, do I say the bold or not? Because I would get it wrong or stand and sit. I just get it wrong a lot, but whatever. The church is fine about it. So the middle cost section is the shortest part of the book.
Zack Jackson (20:05.174)Yeah. I'm seeing it more and more. Yeah.
Ian (20:06.559)Yeah.
Emily Smith (20:27.492)It was by far the hardest to write and the hardest to read on the audio. I read the audio book and when I was recording it, I realized the, these chapters still feel so messy. Um, and it's because I just couldn't do more. I couldn't get it. I couldn't package it in a way that some of the other chapters felt pretty and tidy and bowed up. And anyways, it feels like there's a lot of ums and ohs in that chapter because it is incredibly painful.
Zack Jackson (20:39.075)Hmm.
Emily Smith (20:57.472)We were in Texas at the time. We were in the belly of the beast, that kind of feels like, of Waco, Texas. Great, great people there. But also the buckle of the Bible belt, probably the latch of the buckle. So what surprised me is when I started talking more and more about faith over fear, we started getting little trickles. I say we.
I started getting little trickles of pushback from that online. And, you know, it's horrific stuff. It's not, I mean, you get called names and people, you know, you can put that aside. But when I started getting pictures of people sending pictures of guns and Holocaust imagery to me and saying awful things about my children, you know, threats against them, it became very real.
Zack Jackson (21:45.762)Hmm.
Emily Smith (21:53.5)And then one day in the middle of it, my husband came in and brought in a letter that was in our mailbox that was written in black and red marker. And it was an awful threat. And it was laced with, you know, you're part of the mark of the beast and a lot of these religious overtones, which I had heard and received for months at that point, but not in my mailbox. I mean, that is when it became too crazy.
Zack Jackson (22:11.894)Oof.
Ian (22:17.771)Mm-hmm.
Emily Smith (22:22.732)close. You know, there's a cost that was to me, but then this was going to be a cost to the whole family and to the church, to our church. We ended up leaving the faith community. That not all faith, but that one. Some of the worst threats and harassment I got were people from within my own neighborhood or people that I worshiped with. Those are the ones that I won't share because I just can't talk about it yet.
Zack Jackson (22:45.451)Mm.
Emily Smith (22:51.676)The book is not a COVID book because I can't talk about it for 200 pages, nor do I think people want to read about it. The cost was awful because we couldn't let our kids go walk in around the neighborhood without one of us. They had safe homes that they could go in if they ever felt scared. They don't know why we were saying that. We just said, if there's a rainstorm, run to these five homes or
Ian (22:58.166)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (23:00.579)Hmm.
Ian (23:11.19)Hmm.
Ian (23:19.49)Mm-hmm.
Emily Smith (23:20.488)and they still don't know that. And that's very tender for me as a mom to have to hold. And two, at that time, it was also feeling like I was losing a foundation of faith because I grew up with Sandy Patty, Michael W. Smith, Bethel worship, I mean, come on now, really good, yeah. All of that evangelical stuff. And I remember watching the prayer rally that happened in November, 2020, and I'm sure,
Zack Jackson (23:39.222)Yes.
Emily Smith (23:49.32)you guys watched it as well, you know, on the Capitol steps, Michael W. Smith is there, Franklin Graham, I mean, these, it was a massive thousands of people rally. And this was also at the height of that first surge before vaccines. So my soul could not reconcile how that was standing on faith when I put the number in the book of how many died that day, but it was at the peak of the deaths in the US, like morgue trucks.
you know, scenarios. I couldn't, I just couldn't reconcile like, so I felt like we were losing our faith community, losing jobs, you know, or leaving jobs, losing real life friends. And then these foundations that I had just anchored in were, I was just losing that as well. So it's just difficult. I do wish
Ian (24:19.915)Mm-hmm.
Emily Smith (24:45.556)that I could have shielded my family from some of that and just taken more of the brunt of it. But it's just part of the, you know, it's part of the cost of us as a family. And I wanted to put some of that vulnerability in because I think a lot of people, especially from the faith communities, have lost a lot. Or Thanksgiving's and Christmases have been very hard and are still hard. I just get that.
Ian (24:55.126)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (24:55.138)Hmm.
Zack Jackson (25:09.826)Hmm.
Emily Smith (25:12.552)At the same time, it's the tip of the iceberg of what I did put in there. So I wanted to be careful to not put too much just cause I couldn't talk about it.
Ian (25:20.235)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (25:22.156)Yeah.
Ian (25:22.61)When I appreciate, like I said, I appreciate, I I'm someone who embraces vulnerability. Um, and you know, I really love Brene Brown's work around that too. But I very much appreciated you sharing that with all of us and the readers because I just, it was tough. It was tough to read and, um, but I admire that you continued to work a lot. You know, I really appreciate that too, because
Emily Smith (25:31.197)Yeah, for sure.
Emily Smith (25:48.926)Yeah.
Ian (25:52.438)You are still continuing to do what you can to save lives.
Emily Smith (25:57.94)Well, and that was a choice. I mean, there was a point in there where a couple of the threats, I mean, we were working with high up authorities at certain parts of it. And I just asked my husband, do we need to just stop? Do I need to, well, do I need to stop basically? Cause I would, I would have just pulled all of it. It was not worth having a child, having one of my kids hurt or worse.
And so we took a little bit of a break there in the middle of it to kind of discern and use wisdom and then I just decided to keep going with certain parameters in place of Some cameras and Authorities and some backup plans also Some boundaries around what I would or wouldn't stay who I would or wouldn't listen to I got asked to come on Far right like Breitbart type
podcast and just I automatically just saying no to that. I mean, that's just a boundary. So it was a it was a choice to keep going. But it was also at a cost. I mean, that was before I got sick in 2021. My body just said no more. And I just had a I don't know if it's a thunderclap or just a massive migraine never had it before. And it just put me in bed for 15 months. So it
Ian (27:23.838)Yeah, that reading that was tough too. I, yeah. And I just, because it just, I felt like your pain that you were experiencing, at least some of it was coming across, which again, I, I appreciated that a lot. Um, and I have a very dear friend of mine that was in my PhD program with that deals with migraines. I don't think she deals with them as much anymore. This was, you know, back between 2004 to 2008, but I knew right before she started the PhD program,
Zack Jackson (27:24.148)Ugh.
Emily Smith (27:26.952)Was it? Yeah.
Emily Smith (27:38.125)Yeah.
Ian (27:52.266)she would have them where she would be bedridden for like a month or something like that. And just, I couldn't imagine what that was like, but even, you know, I know I asked you how things are going now with you and your family and you told us prior to recording that things are getting better. And, and, but again, you made the choice to continue trying to save lives. Like I think that's very admirable. And so I, that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to get you here.
Emily Smith (27:54.74)Yeah. Oh, for sure.
Ian (28:20.934)And to read your book because that truly is admirable because you know, I have faced hateful things just because of stuff I do with science and religion for a long time now, nothing compared to what you've done. But there have been plenty of times where I've thought, I can't, I'm not doing this anymore. Like, it's just not worth it. Um, and it was nowhere near to the scale of what you have experienced. And so I just, I think it gives a lot of people hope. And I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
Emily Smith (28:37.333)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (28:37.559)Yeah.
Emily Smith (28:45.052)Yeah, well thank you. There was also a scrappy piece of me that did not want to let them win. And because there were there were months of being bedridden in an incredibly dark room, I mean laughing would send me to weeks of a migraine that no amount of medicine, including hospital type medicine, would touch.
Ian (28:55.039)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (28:55.313)Hmm
Emily Smith (29:11.484)And so I, there was a little bit of a fight in me too. I just, I was so terrified that was gonna be the rest of my life. And I was doing everything possible to get out of it. And so now that I've come out of it a little bit more, the tenacity, the scrappiness to keep going means not only did like the bad people, they did not win, but also living into probably who,
I am more of myself now than I have ever been because of it, because I'm a whole lot braver and courageous than I thought was actually in me. So thank you for saying that, because I think we hear stories of overcoming something and it looks like it was an overnight thing and you just believed your way out of it. And this is not the prosperity gospel. It is really difficult stuff.
Zack Jackson (29:43.149)Mm.
Zack Jackson (30:00.311)Hahaha!
Zack Jackson (30:04.023)now.
Emily Smith (30:08.7)you know, just day by day, I'm just doing, I'm just so grateful to be doing my job again.
Ian (30:14.475)Yeah.
Ian (30:18.07)Zach, did you have anything to add? Just, yeah. It's just, it's very inspirational, so thank you.
Emily Smith (30:23.693)Thank you.
Zack Jackson (30:25.222)Oh, you remind me of Julian of Norwich, my favorite dead Christian. Um, are you familiar with her story at all? Yeah. How she, uh, asked, asked Jesus for, uh, an encounter as close to death as possible so she could get to the heart of things and then to come back and be able to share that and the amount of revelation she encountered on those dark nights in that bed, um, changed her.
Emily Smith (30:28.618)Yeah.
Emily Smith (30:32.574)Yes.
Emily Smith (30:35.892)Oh, for sure. Yes, I am.
Zack Jackson (30:54.31)and really clarify the rest of her life. And I'm hearing that a lot from you as well. That's beautiful.
Emily Smith (31:03.592)Yeah, she was probably a little bit more full of faith in the bed. I was just like, what is happening and I want out.
Zack Jackson (31:14.283)Yes, but when she says, yeah, when she says all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things shall be well, she's saying it from that bed. And so it actually means something instead of the sort of, you know, pithy platitudes that you would see on a bumper sticker or a greeting card. And so when you talk about it and you talk about hope and change and good things, I feel, I believe it more.
Emily Smith (31:14.842)This is not okay.
Emily Smith (31:33.113)For sure.
Yeah.
Zack Jackson (31:42.262)you know, because you've been through the flames. One of the things that I found
Emily Smith (31:42.724)Yeah, that passage in particular that she said is, oh go ahead, there was a little, I was saying one of the things about that passage that you just quoted, that's what my husband would tell me just nearly daily during those really dark times, all shall be well and all, yeah all of that. So that's very special.
Zack Jackson (31:53.025)Nope, go ahead.
Zack Jackson (32:09.542)Yeah, that's my mantra. I repeat to myself almost a daily basis.
Emily Smith (32:14.963)Yes.
Zack Jackson (32:17.75)Yeah. One of the things that surprised me in reading some of your work, when I hear about epidemiology, I think of, well, that's spread of disease, clearly. But that's such a small part of your book and a small part of your writing. And I'm reading about gun violence and systemic racism and injustices and economics and...
all kinds of things that have nothing to do with disease? Am I reading epidemiology wrong as a study or is it that this is all just a part of how your heart works?
Emily Smith (33:03.692)probably a both and of that. But epidemiology is not just the pandemic, epidemic, you know, disease detective type stuff that they make movies of. It's that, but it's also anything that affects a certain group of people differently than another group of people. And so that could be, you know, in my work, that's poverty and children's health. It could be who is affected the most by congenital
Zack Jackson (33:05.687)Hmm
Emily Smith (33:33.356)chronic type condition. So it's a really broad field than just disease detectives.
Zack Jackson (33:41.376)Okay.
Ian (33:41.378)All right. Well, so, and I remember your chapter, Trickle Up Economics. And so I'll be honest, Emily, there are so many, like I've now been putting like little markers in here, but I've folded down so many pages that I can't get, oh sorry, I can't get to everything I wanna say. So you made something and I can't find everything again because I just, I have comments on almost every single page.
Emily Smith (34:03.124)Oh
Zack Jackson (34:09.218)We'll leave a link in the description.
Emily Smith (34:09.484)Oh yay! I'm gonna hang your reference business. Thank you.
Ian (34:10.414)And your references in the end and stuff. And especially, so, you know, I'm also a fellow academic. And so I just was pulling your references. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing, honey. And just, and also too, I started down like the anti-racism journey. And I think 2016. And so some of the things I was aware of, but it was nice to also reread it and stuff, but that the chapter on trickle up economics, when you talk about, um, the question you ask us is, do you want to know the main factor per
Emily Smith (34:15.613)Yes.
Emily Smith (34:26.858)Oh yeah.
Ian (34:40.302)Uh, predicted. Do you want to know what main factor predicted descending into poverty and not being able to climb back out, even when you account for everything else and it was having a child who needed surgery, which I was not at all surprised. Obviously it was health related, but that part and the part I'm trying to remember too, is that just for the communities in Somaliland or was that just also applicable worldwide?
Emily Smith (34:50.57)Yeah.
Emily Smith (35:06.176)it's applicable worldwide that look like, I mean the margins countries, you know, the poorest countries for sure. Yeah, yeah, and that, um, that was not something that we expected either. You know, in my day job, I work in communities like in Somaliland, which is the fourth poorest country of the world, on children who need surgical care. And so we know there's a group of kiddos who can get to, you know, a hospital when they need it.
Ian (35:08.17)Okay.
Right, yeah.
Okay.
Emily Smith (35:34.752)there's a whole slew of them that can't for reasons that are not their fault, nor their family's fault. That's the structure system, systemic racism, structural violence type stuff that happens. So we had been working with our community partners within the country for starting in 2016, trying to map out in the country, where are the kids who need the greatest care?
How far do they have to travel? I mean, it is hours and hours and hours on wheelbarrows and stuff that is just not equity. It's just not what we would want for our children by a landslide. And then we started teasing the data. This is part of epidemiology that I love is you start with the margins and then you go further in to get the truth of the story. Cause that's what laws and legislations are built on, policies. And we found that
There were a group of families in Somaliland that went into poverty because of something and never came out. There were some that were able to climb out of poverty. We see this in the US, right? Someone goes to the ER. If you have an insurance or a nest egg or family members that could chip in, it's going to be a huge expense. Some go into poverty and can come out and others can't.
So in Somaliland, that's what happened. And we started looking at those families at what was different about them than the rest of them. I thought it was gonna be the income level of the family or the number of kiddos that they had to feed, but it was having a kid with surgical care. And so we took that to the United Nations as a policy effort in 2019. There was a big summit there for universal health coverage.
And it's asking the question of what basically is going to be covered under a universal health coverage package. We know it's going to be vaccines and taking care of the sniffles, you know, primary care stuff. But what about surgery? Because that is what is impoverishing people. So we went to make that statement. And the chapter is about starting with the stories of the margin and then trickle your way back up.
Emily Smith (37:48.976)instead of the whole trickle-down capitalism type where you put, you know, a hundred dollars in Jeff Bezos mailbox and you hope it reaches the poorest of the poor in inner Detroit. So it was a very, it was really interesting finding for me, but it also linked the story, their story, hopefully to policy change at the highest levels.
Zack Jackson (38:00.546)Hmm.
Ian (38:10.634)Yeah. Well, I've always said that I, I think it's, um, shameful that our country, which is the richest country, I believe in the history of the world, that anyone in this country could ever go into poverty because of healthcare or that people are in poverty, but still there's so many things there, right? But that healthcare can make people go bankrupt. I,
Emily Smith (38:29.96)and we're the number one. Yeah.
Ian (38:39.958)will never understand that with the amount of money and wealth in this one country that that's possible. It just is absolutely mind boggling to me. And then of course it elsewhere, right? I mean, you talk about in this chapter of like the wealth of like the 10 richest people or whatever the number was and what that could do for those countries in the margins, right? But even the margins in our own country. Um, and I just, I found that
Emily Smith (38:49.696)Yeah.
Emily Smith (38:59.509)Yeah.
Emily Smith (39:04.64)Right.
Ian (39:08.35)Uh, really interesting. I was really grateful that you went that route with that chapter because I thought it was just so important to see.
Emily Smith (39:14.696)Right, and I think that that's where our centering is wrong because this story of medical impoverishment, healthcare impoverishment is in the Bible too. You know, the story of the bleeding woman who had spent her last resort was to go to find Jesus because she had spent all of her money for years trying to get care. And then she touches the hem of his garment to try to be incognito and he stops the crowd for her. Like his center.
His majority, his view was not the crowd. It was the medically impoverished woman. So there's a chapter about that too, about his majority, how we can make that, how we can visualize the world. I think perhaps like what he looks like. But I get all the time, we just need more resources or Emily, we just need more money type. And I think that's short-sighted. I don't think that's true. I think we have...
in the world enough resources and enough money that we need, we just don't have enough equity. And that's money, that's healthcare. We saw that in the pandemic with the lack of oxygen. There's a whole chapter in there on innovation. Yeah, and in India, yeah, when they were running out of oxygen, it's not because the world lacks oxygen. It's because the US and
Zack Jackson (40:18.158)Hmm.
Ian (40:25.054)Oh yeah, that was very heartbreaking. Oh yeah, that part, yeah, yeah.
Emily Smith (40:40.584)stockpiles of it. And so the question innovation is making sure that oxygen is where it needs to be but also asking the harder systemic questions of why wasn't it there in the first place. That the other chapter in that section on courage is on valuing a life you know how do we value it which I think that one was the hardest one to write outside of the cost chapters. Do you remember those about Ebola?
Ian (41:09.574)Yeah. Can we go into that a little bit? That, that was very challenging chapter to read too. You're right. Well, it just, and I'm in a butcher, their names, cause I'm getting to it, but I mean, do you mind telling us the story with that? The doctor who died, but then the other one who didn't. And yeah.
Emily Smith (41:10.34)Yeah.
Emily Smith (41:15.56)Yeah, go ahead.
Emily Smith (41:23.488)Yeah.
Emily Smith (41:27.524)Mm-hmm. Yes. So the it starts out introducing you to Dr. Khan. And for those of us in public health and global health, we know who Dr. Khan is. He is the Anthony Fauci of Africa. He had also been prior to the 2016 Ebola outbreak that hit his country and you know, West Africa. We all probably remember that epidemic.
He had been working with congressmen here in the US, people, legends like Dr. Paul Farmer, who the book is in part dedicated to, to advocate for pandemic or epidemic preparedness for his hospital or resources for something that, could really cripple their system with not a whole lot of fanfare, not much was done with that type of legislation. So I'm trying to set the stage that he is a,
very well known and respected doctor. When Ebola hit in his country, he was also frontline, because he's an MD. So he ended up getting Ebola. And this was in his health system that wasn't given the necessary resources to be ready for this epidemic, even though he was advocating for it. So with Ebola without the support of care, you deteriorate very quickly. Ebola is not highly
It's highly fatal without the support, but not here in the US, which is why a lot of people or the people that have gotten it and have received care here have not passed away. So he gets it, he gets very sick, he gets transferred to a MSF unit that was specifically made for Ebola, and he keeps deteriorating. So they were having to make a decision on, do we give him what's called ZMAP?
Zack Jackson (42:53.355)Hmm.
Emily Smith (43:18.428)And at that point, it was an experimental drug for Ebola. It was the only option available for treatment outside of supportive care like IVs and rehydration. I go into a little bit of detail in the book, but I would definitely encourage people to go read that full story by the New York Times article, and that's in the references. But they made a decision not to give him ZMAP. Now,
There were only a few vials of that in the world, one of which was actually at that MSF facility or very close by. He was also asked to be medevaced and that was given, a plane did come, but he was so sick, they refused to take him, cause it was not equipped like we see those, you know, the big ones here. So.
He ends up dying just a few days later. Without his family, they finally let a friend go in at the end to be with him. If you reverse time a couple of days, there were two other doctors in West Africa, well, one doctor then a nurse that got Ebola too. Same thing, got very sick, deteriorated, had to make a decision of what to do. They were also asked to be medevaced and there was a conversation about
ZMAP to be given to them. Both of them received ZMAP. And not only that, they were medevaced in the state of the art, you know, it looks like a sci-fi book airplane, just equipped with every legit thing possible to keep that contained and landed in here in the US. I remember that. I don't know if y'all remember that on the news where full hazmat suits.
Ian (45:01.95)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (45:03.778)Yeah.
Emily Smith (45:06.844)there's a team of 15, 20 doctors, and they walked out of that hospital a couple days later recovering. I was very intentional in that chapter who I named by name and who I didn't, because the point I was trying to make was if that was my family, I would move heaven and earth to get them medevaced. So I didn't want to dishonor that.
Ian (45:14.207)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (45:14.608)Hmm.
Emily Smith (45:34.46)The question is more at a 30,000 foot level of who is worthy to get ZMAP? Who is worthy to get oxygen? Who is worthy to get medical resources or free healthcare or free education? How do we value a life and how are people's lives valued? Then when you take that to a country level, who gets what from a country? So as a person of faith,
I wanted to write a chapter that honored Dr. Khan, but then the bigger questions too of how should we value people if we are believers of, you know, of the Bible or of what Jesus says. So it was a hard chapter to write. I also wanted to, that mission organization of the two people that got medevacked out were part of Samaritan's Purse, and I had been a vocal.
I spoke against Franklin Graham's aspect, how he was treating the pandemic very vocally. So everybody knows what I think about that. I also have really good friends that work at Samaritan's Purse. So it's not about the missions agency. It's about some people having friends in very high places with a whole lot of money to help people in need while others don't and asking the question of why.
Ian (46:41.255)Mm-hmm.
Ian (46:56.823)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (46:59.906)Hmm.
Ian (47:00.07)And I love how you bring it back to equity. Cause that, as you said, that's what this is all about. And which again is very tragic, right? But, um, I wanted to shift if I can, there was another thing I just wanted to, there was a quote that I loved is at the end of the chapter on, um, let's see, which one was this broadening our definition of health. When you're talking about the good Samaritan, I just wanted to read it out. Cause I, I just loved it. I read it to my wife.
Emily Smith (47:08.468)Right.
Emily Smith (47:23.849)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (47:24.184)Hmm.
Ian (47:30.522)And I just was really happy with this one. But you say blast paragraph, by the way, did the Samaritan tell the man the gospel or preach to him or hand out a tract? The parable doesn't tell us anything like that. I have a hunch Jesus would have mentioned it if it were important to the point he was making at the time, but he didn't. What he modeled for us with, with this story as being a neighbor and word indeed. And I actually was on a zoom meeting with, uh, my priest. It was last Wednesday. So, you know,
nine days ago and other lay leaders in our church. And I just was telling them that we were interviewing you and then read that to them because I really part of my struggle is when people the certainty aspect of things that they this is the way we're supposed to behave. Or, you know, it's my way or the highway when it comes to being a person of faith. And I just love that you pointed that out of just there. That's not in there. And you were right. Right. When I read it, I just was like, oh, my gosh, that's yeah.
Emily Smith (48:16.905)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (48:22.902)Hmm.
Ian (48:28.554)Like that's a great lens to take to it. To show that was not the purpose. And I loved that. And I just, oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Emily Smith (48:28.821)Yeah.
Emily Smith (48:34.272)Right. Well, don't you think he would have put it in there? I mean, Jesus is super duper smart. Yeah, I mean, he's he was very sneaky and intentional with the parables and how he told the stories. So I think he would have let us know that we needed to put a track in there before we gave people health care. But gosh, I mean, unconditional love is not conditional on viewing people as projects or
Ian (48:47.68)Yeah.
Emily Smith (49:01.196)proselytizing. So I just wanted, especially in the evangelical church, to, you know, we do things with, or we should do things just out of a goodness of heart. Because we're, I mean, it says in the Bible too, when we do these, you do it unto me. When you take care of the poor and feed and clothe, then you take, you do it for him. And so I keep in, I think keeping that perspective, I think we should do more of it in the evangelical church for sure.
Zack Jackson (49:31.903)You mentioned the evangelical church. You have a chapter in here called Topics Too Many Evangelicals Don't Want to Talk About. I would expand that to topics that Christians in general don't talk enough about. What sorts of things should we be talking about in our faith communities?
Emily Smith (49:38.932)Sure.
Emily Smith (49:43.315)Yes.
Emily Smith (49:50.2)Yes, I wrote that because when I got back from that UN meeting that I was, I told you about earlier, you know, I'm a pastor's wife and so we get in there for Sunday school and somebody called me a socialist and I did not know, I didn't know how to respond because it caught me so much off guard that wait a minute, I just told you we were talking about like poverty, you know, we can all agree that that's a problem and let's help. So I, it
Ian (50:03.441)Mm-hmm.
Zack Jackson (50:04.074)Hahaha
Emily Smith (50:17.564)it made me realize we need a conversation about what some of these topics are. It also came out of the pandemic, you know, when I would talk about structural violence or systemic racism or Black Lives Matter, climate change, there was such this hubbub of we don't want to talk about it or overtones of we just don't go there. But I think when we hold those to the sky, they reflect heaven
So I wanted to make, the whole first part of the book is on that, how to talk about that in non-threatening but challenging ways still. Then that last chapter on making the connections between climate change and poverty and the margins to try to at least let pastors know, talk about it from the pulpit. And here are some ways that you can talk about it where you don't have to scream.
You know, you don't have to come across as a crazy liberal if you're in a predominantly Republican Texas type church. But they are holy words because they are equity words. So that's what that chapter is about. Thank you for bringing that up. I chuckled at the title.
Ian (51:33.75)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (51:34.598)It made me chuckle too as an evangelical who's been, well, former evangelical who's been accused of all kinds of things that, you know, is Jesus taught me, you know. I have a shirt that says, um, cast down the mighty, lift up the oppressed, uh, feed the hungry, send the rich away empty handed. And I often get accused of like Marxism for that. And I say,
Emily Smith (51:44.86)Yeah. Right.
Ian (51:45.438)Yeah. So then how good.
Emily Smith (52:01.236)Oh sure, yeah.
Zack Jackson (52:02.294)That's the Magnificat. Mary says that. Hahaha.
Emily Smith (52:06.953)Right. Or Jesus' first sermon, you know, when he rolls out the scroll from Isaiah, that is full of captives free and the oppressed and yeah. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (52:11.465)Mmm.
Zack Jackson (52:16.35)Yeah, good news to the poor. Yeah.
Ian (52:18.43)Yeah. So kind of adding to that chapter in particular, you know, the pandemic, you know, there was already lots of divisions in our society, obviously pandemic, I believe made it much worse and more in our face. And so I'm curious, you know, especially as someone who does work with, uh, trying to figure out ways to combat misinformation, science misinformation in particular. Um,
Emily Smith (52:33.546)Yeah.
Ian (52:46.878)with either from my education lens or just research or work I do. You know, I started when you started seeing the, uh, the increased hesitancy around the vaccine, um, that really started raising a lot of flags for me of like, this is not ending that we're going to see this. This is going to, you know, spread to hesitancies and laws against other vaccines that have made it so that diseases that have been eradicated from our country.
solely because of those vaccines, those will come back. Um, and so I'm just curious, you know, the white evangelical community has a lot of power. And so how can one start to have conversations with those communities? You know, I've never been a member, so I know it'd be hard for me, but you were a member and you went through a lot because of what you were trying to do. How, how do we get back in to be able to figure out ways to work with those communities to build that trust again?
Emily Smith (53:45.577)Yeah.
Ian (53:45.598)Right. And to help them realize that the science is not there to get them. It's not evil. It's trying to save lives. I mean, that's the point. And so how would you recommend we do that?
Emily Smith (53:55.209)Yeah.
Emily Smith (53:59.884)I wonder if I would recommend something different if I answered this question in five years because I still feel like it's too close. But I think one of the biggest things is knowing who is actually going to have a conversation with you and who is not and having the wisdom to just leave the room or leave a church. Like it's okay. We don't leave a church because we don't like the color of the carpet. You know, I'm not that type of Christian. But
Zack Jackson (54:16.215)Hmm.
Emily Smith (54:29.668)If there are real equity things and faith issues, I think it is okay to leave a church. So if, I don't know, leave friends, lose friends. I know that's hard when there are kids and youth and some people have to stick with it. If you do stay and you're trying to have these conversations, I would be really careful to guard your heart on what you let in and...
what you hear because it can pummel you, which is why I wanted to write some of that cost section so vulnerably. I wish I would have known a little bit more, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I would have had some of the wisdom to not go to every fight that I was invited to. So, and there's a chapter on that, on the wisdom of Nehemiah having that type. Yeah, thank you. I would also...
Ian (55:18.172)Mm-hmm.
Ian (55:21.566)Yeah, I liked that chapter a lot. That's very good.
Emily Smith (55:27.56)tell people to be very cognizant, to pay attention to people who are not learning or listening anymore. Because the evangelical church has an incredible amount of power, always have. You know, like faith and prayer at football games where I grew up was still going on in the 90s and 2000s. It's probably still going on.
Ten Commandments. And so we think that should be the norm or the centered of everything else when it actually shouldn't. And if somebody can understand why I just said that and why it matters, that's a person who listens. If others just dig in their heels more and we want the good old days, but don't realize those good old days were awful for a wide group of like Black Americans, any immigrants, then we've missed the point.
So I think I'm, I don't think I'm answering your question. I think I'm telling people to be careful. Yeah, and also just to, there's this whole notion in the evangelical space that we just need to come together and get along. And that phrase really bothers me because that inherently denotes that there are two sides that need to come together, that both are weighted equally. And in that case, sure, let's come together because that's the center, but.
Ian (56:23.878)No, you are. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (56:26.402)Yeah.
Emily Smith (56:48.84)When you have two sides and one is their voices have had the microphone longer than another side, it's time to equal out that balance where both sides can be heard. And that is still just certainly not going on, especially with science.
Zack Jackson (57:00.034)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (57:04.766)Right. So it's less about finding the middle point between two things and more thinking about it like a binary star system where the one that is the center of gravity has to do with the relative mass of each one. And so a big star and a small star, the center of gravity is going to be closer to the big star because that's where the mass is. And when we're talking about
Emily Smith (57:27.37)Yeah.
Zack Jackson (57:31.866)On this side, we have a climatologist, and on this side, we have your uncle on Facebook. Then, the center of gravity is not going to be in the middle of those two things, right?
Emily Smith (57:38.636)Sure.
Ian (57:41.931)Right.
Emily Smith (57:42.948)Yes, or even in, I'm working with some indigenous communities in Brazil and listening a lot longer as a researcher of what their health needs are, including how to overcome them. So talking with traditional healers and valuing and honoring where people's stories are and their needs more than maybe a preconceived idea of what I think it should be.
Zack Jackson (58:00.75)Hmm.
Ian (58:13.098)Well, we are. Yeah. Well, so I just had a couple of smaller questions if that's all right. Um, and I just appreciate your time really do. But, so I'm curious, especially for you with your expertise, you know, as we reflect back on COVID-19 and this pandemic, um, it's natural for us to think about what we could have done differently. And I'm curious what your thoughts on that, but also too, what can we learn from this to better prepare?
Zack Jackson (58:13.266)We're nearing the end. So if you want to.
Emily Smith (58:19.584)Good.
Ian (58:43.542)for future outbreaks of infectious diseases. Cause I might say another pandemic's gonna happen right away, but there will be outbreaks of infectious diseases. We know that. And so I'm just curious, what are the things that we can learn from this to try to do more preventative measures in the future? Like what would you recommend?
Emily Smith (59:03.083)Yeah.
recommend starting a conversation on trust in people's expertise instead of feeling like you're the expert on everything, which is a classic American thought. You know, we're very individualistic and so I think that could start, that's very 30,000 foot, but trust the experts. But then finding the community champions within the communities that are speaking
from a place of their own. You know, I think that's why part of why I went viral is because I was speaking into my own community. I knew the language. I loved the church. I understood what pastors and their families were going through. So if you can find those and that means, you know, if we have distrust in some sort of science or the vaccines, then find the communities where that distrust is and then find the people there that are the champions.
I just think it's a trust, it's a value issue. I know people don't like to hear about the political stuff, but who we vote for matters in very real ways on the ground, and we saw that. So I think having conversations about that too, you know, we are not voters of just one issue. If you are, that is going to trickle to a billion other types of issues.
Letting people, especially like my children, I've got a teenager telling her about the importance of who you vote for and why that matters.
Ian (01:00:43.958)So is there anything that you want to share? Anything else we should have asked but didn't?
Emily Smith (01:00:51.684)No, I mean, I hope if anything for the book, I hope that it makes people laugh. Because there's a lot of stories in there that hopefully are funny. There's really silly pictures from my science fair board. Please go look at that. It's fantastic and a little over the top. But I also hope it... Yes.
Zack Jackson (01:01:03.844)I'm going to go.
Ian (01:01:06.464)Yes.
Ian (01:01:12.402)I think the picture, if I can say the picture that you're staring at, I forgot who you're staring at, but you talk about that you have it. Uh, oh yeah. That picture of the board is great, but then the picture of you staring at somebody and you put, you have that framed on your desk. I, who was that again? I, I couldn't find that again in the book right now.
Emily Smith (01:01:21.33)Yes. It's.
Emily Smith (01:01:27.222)It's, yes, it's Dr. Tedros. He's the WHO president and I ran into him at the UN and that is my picture of me, like total fan girl moment with him. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (01:01:38.382)Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Ian (01:01:39.851)It was hilarious. And I just, I mean, I'm sure we've all done it. I do that with people all the time, but yours was captured on camera. And I love that you framed it and have put it on your own desk because I just find that hilarious. Like that's just such a wonderful story.
Emily Smith (01:01:51.228)Yeah, I have-
Emily Smith (01:01:55.372)Well, I have one that's a real one. I mean, they took one where we're both looking at the camera, legit, but I just keep it, because it was how I felt at the time. And... Oh, I'd like to show the card. Oh, thank you.
Ian (01:02:05.662)When I love that you shared it with us, like I just, you know, I could totally envision it. And then all of a sudden I see the picture. I'm like, yeah, that's, that's what I was thinking. Like it just, that was really cool. Yeah.
Zack Jackson (01:02:07.53)Yeah.
Emily Smith (01:02:13.549)Yeah, this is a fangirl. Yeah. So.
Zack Jackson (01:02:15.55)Yeah. And a completely honest review for those who are listeners and who hopefully trust the things that we say and do is that this book is really heartfelt. It is fact filled and it is driven by story and your own personal experience instead of just, you know, here's a list of objective facts. And for me, that not only conveys truth.
in a way that is easier to digest, but also shows how authentic you are and how important this book is, how much of your own soul is encapsulated in this and how much of your own experience and growth from a young and idealistic nerd who's going to save the world, who gets jaded and cynical, but then finds hope and emerges on the other side stronger and
I think all of our listeners should find a copy at your local bookstore or if you have to on Amazon. Or listen to the audiobook which is recorded by you and that must have been a fun experience.
Emily Smith (01:03:25.176)Yes, it was fun. It's very hard to do too to just read it harder than expected, but it was fun to do.
Ian (01:03:29.703)I'm back.
Well, and if I can just add to that, I think that's a great, um, thumbs up there, Zach and recommendation for this book. I can't recommend it enough for people. I think it's an outstanding book. Um, I agree with everything Zach said, but I loved, I just absolutely loved that you couched it in the good Samaritan story. And also in Jesus, the second commandment to us about love, I neighbor as yourself. Um, right. And I just,
Reading the whole book. It just the theme was so clear throughout and it was such so beautifully woven throughout the entire book About the importance of loving our neighbors, which is something that I really push for In my class. I have my motto is be curious not judgmental because I'm a huge Ted Lasso fan and really talk about that of how much more we can accomplish by just being curious and I'm
Emily Smith (01:04:06.668)Good.
Zack Jackson (01:04:21.87)the
Emily Smith (01:04:22.093)Sure.
Ian (01:04:29.886)Zach will tell you, I'm an insatiably curious person. I'm curious about everything. Um, but I just, I really loved how you really continue to provide more argument on the importance of love in our neighbors and what, and I think this could, this book can change things. I'm, and you can, and I'm really happy that you joined us today.
Emily Smith (01:04:42.804)Thank you.
Emily Smith (01:04:50.272)Thank you. What a pleasure. We've been circling each other for a while. Um, on trying to-
Ian (01:04:56.126)Yeah, because you and I are only a couple of hours apart. I mean, you're in Durham, right? And I'm in Charlotte, so yeah.
Emily Smith (01:05:00.204)I know, I know, just pop on down there to UNC is where I got my PhD so I can do both blues.
Ian (01:05:07.178)Yeah, my wife went to Chapel Hill. So yeah, yeah. So anyway.
Emily Smith (01:05:09.116)Okay, there you go. Lovely. Well, this has been a pleasure. Thank you for the honesty and it being just a kind of a safe space to talk about a book. My first book, yeah. Thank you.
Zack Jackson (01:05:22.967)Hmm.
Ian (01:05:23.122)Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. I've loved it.

Episode 119
Today, we are joined by paleontologist, Dr. Mary Schweitzer. She is professor in the department of biological sciences at North Carolina State University. She is also a research curator for paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Her research interests include molecular paleontology, specifically the preservation and detection of original molecular fragments in well preserved fossil specimens. In 2005 she and her team shook the paleontology community when they reported finding soft tissue preserved in a 68-million-year-old T-Rex femur. Since that initial find, her team has unearthed mounting evidence that soft tissues, such as blood vessels, collagen and other proteins, can survive more than 66 million years of degradation. Fun fact, on one of her fossil hunts she spent three days in the field walking around on a broken leg because she didn’t want to miss out on anything.
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 

Episode 118
In part 20 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with the Rev Dr Vikki Gaskin-Butler. 
 
She is a licensed psychologist (clinical and health psychology) and ordained clergy person. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Spelman College and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Florida. She also received a Master of Divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
She guest has served as a psychologist in university counseling centers, clinic director in an interfaith-based counseling center, and as director of a university psychology clinic. She has supervised numerous students in pursuit of psychology, mental health counseling, and social work degrees. She has led clergy consultation groups and served as a consultant with church/church-affiliated and secular organizations. In addition, she has served as a minister of education and an associate pastor in local churches.
She draws on her knowledge of human potential from her experience as a psychologist and ordained clergy person to support the psychological, spiritual, and physical well-being of all people. Through her first-hand knowledge of life as a wife, mother, musician, professor, clinician, and minister, she has the insight to support the needs of adults, including performing artists, clergy, and health professionals.
In her words:  "My passion is to constantly move toward my own divine potential. Throughout this journey, I have experienced struggle, doubt, grief, joy, peace, and all of the emotions that make us human. These emotions and the experiences connected with them have made me more whole as I followed the thread of healing to freedom. These emotional experiences have also created within me a deep well of compassion for others as they journey on their paths to health and wholeness."
 
You can listen to her last Down the Wormhole episode here...
https://www.downthewormhole.com/e/womanist-psychology-of-religion-with-rev-dr-vikki-gaskin-butler/
 
Also be sure to check out her podcast and all her other work here...
https://www.drvikki.org/
 
 
Sinai and Synapses - https://sinaiandsynapses.org/
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 

Episode 117
Today, we are joined by the one and only Rev. Dr. Pamela Conrad. is the rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Glen Burnie, Maryland. She’s also an astrobiologist and planetary scientist specializing in understanding how planets do or do not evolve into habitable environments, and she is presently involved in the exploration of Mars with the Perseverance Rover and its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter. She has explored extreme environments all over the Earth including in the high arctic, Antarctica, Death Valley, and the deep sea hydrothermal vents of the Pacific sea floor, to name a few. 
 
We talk about life on other planets, cherishing life on this planet, the future of the church, the lessons we can learn from entropy, and so much more. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 

Episode 116
In part 19 of our Sinai and Synapses interview series, we are talking with Emily Gerdin. She was raised in two faiths growing up (Judaism & Protestantism), and her interfaith upbringing inspired her to study how minds are shaped by religious worldviews. She is a PhD candidate in developmental psychology at Yale University, studying how children conceive of religious groups as sometimes similar to other social categories in the world (e.g., race, gender, nationality) and sometimes very, very different. 
 
Sinai and Synapses - https://sinaiandsynapses.org/
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis