The Amazon’s Hidden Civilization (One Year Anniversary)

Opening

0:00And we're just like, let's just put some microphones and some cameras. And I was like, Lester, you handle that. >> [laughter] >> All right. And you handle the science. How many people lived in the Amazon before 1492? [music] And how would we even know if the evidence is >> [music] >> buried under the vast rainforest that so many of us see? >> That means that there's more than 20,000 additional earthworks. Just a few years ago, we used to think that there were 10,000 earthworks in the entire Amazon rainforest. And now we're talking about in this tiny area that we're going to get into. >> Hello, internet. This is your captain speaking, Lester Narai, joined as always

One year of From First Principles

0:40by my co-host and our resident PhD, Krishna Chaudhary. We are celebrating our one-year anniversary of From First Principles. It's incredible that we've made it this far, and so many of you, 50 million of you across the world, have joined us in our first year on the show. 13 million of you are now watching every month as we journey through discovery, curiosity, and science at the frontier. We're extremely, extremely grateful for all of you in FFP Nation who've been very vocal about what you like and what

1:20you don't like. And we've really taken that to heart as you've seen us evolve the show over our first year. Again, it is the two of us here. No production staff, no agency, no network, just two friends of almost, I think, 16 years now, >> Yep. >> trying to just figure out the world around us as much as we can and as a small token of our appreciation for so many of you following us, as well as an ability for us to better learn about who you all are and what you want from the show as we enter year two, we are going to have a merch giveaway for our year

2:01one merch at ffpod.com/survey. There are a couple of questions that will help us understand a little bit more about our listeners, who you all are, where you're working, what you care about, what you want us to do on the show as we go into our year two now that we've figured out all of the sound issues and the camera issues and other production problems, we really want to focus on community building and making sure that we are making the show collectively because at the end of the day this would not be a show without all of you out here in FFP [clears throat]

2:42Nation. We do have a story that we will cover about the history of the Amazon and as you notice just in front of us, we have some books that we will be adding to the inaugural From First Principles library, which is three floating shelves. Yes. >> [laughter] >> We're going to expand it though. We'll expand it. We'll expand it. We'll eventually get a building. And the first iteration, we've got some bangers. We Yes. And we did ask the audience for some suggestions and some of those suggestions did make it into the library. As always, we're going to talk about the science from the ground up today because this is From First

3:23Principles.

Who we are—and why we started the show

3:25>> [music]

3:39>> So today we're going to have a little bit of fun. We will give you the best science, but we've left out the banter for several months as we've tried to really focus on being as information dense as possible. But there's so many of you who are new to the show, and we thought it would be helpful to help you understand a little bit more about who we are. Note, I am not Lamorne Morris from New Girl, okay? Uh we barely look alike. Uh although we did I did get approached >> No, in person. >> That was crazy. Here in the valley by a very nice older gentleman whose daughter apparently loves New Girl. Uh so, Lamorne, I just want you to know,

4:21um as your apparent celebrity doppelganger, um you really are loved out here in the streets but uh for those of you who may be new to the pod, and just for us to have the chance to talk about why we are doing this again. Do you remember it was July It was June, July of last year >> Mhm. >> that we finally decided to maybe do something. >> Yeah. Yeah, and we we had we had flirted with doing something with other formats, and this is finally the format that we came up with with the which is just like the two of us bantering and talking about science like we've done for the past 10 >> [laughter] >> 16 plus years.

5:02>> Yeah, it's it's And what's so interesting about this, and I don't think people understand like we literally will just do this. >> Yeah. >> regardless. >> Yeah, yeah, we've been doing this since college, right? [laughter] Among other friends, like at Princeton undergrad, we would just like be hanging out and we would be talking about the newest paper that came out in whatever field, and whatever people are talking about, and there would be so many other people that were bantering with us. And now it's just the two of us. Um but, yeah, it's it's like it was so natural, and we're just like, let's just put some microphones and some cameras. And I was like, Lestor, you handle that. >> Right. [laughter] And you handle the science, and, you

5:43know, a part of how we connected initially or among other things is, you know uh we both have science families. And so that that was obviously a connection point. Indian Zimbabwean um And I think you got more of a physics lens, I got more of a biology lens. And it's immigrants to the US in different ways and you know, LA for you growing up. >> Jersey, shout out >> Jersey for me. A little bit of North Carolina, but you guys were kind of at the tail end, you know, that wasn't formative. >> Yeah. Yeah, for me it was like India and then

6:23LA was high school. So kind of at the tail end, but then it became formative because it was high school and it was, you know, when you when you come from a place like India to America, the first place you really put your roots down becomes a formative experience. Although, you know, I spent a year plus in Huntsville, Alabama. >> Yes, that's right. >> Where Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA, so my dad was a solar physicist there. And so, you know, Alabama, Huntsville, Alabama is still I remember Challenger Middle School. I don't know if there's anyone out there that >> [laughter] >> who went to Challenger Middle School.

Building an ESPN for science

6:59Um >> It's also where all the UAP labs are allegedly. >> Yes, yes. Yeah. And I mean it's it I think it's like expanding a lot because Redstone Arsenal is there. And it's one of the few military space places that is expanding rather than going down. >> Which is a story for another day. But ultimately what we're trying to do with the show is build what I've always called an ESPN for science, you know, so many different aspects of culture have channels that really celebrate them, whether it's award shows like the Grammys and the Oscars and the Emmys or things like SportsCenter or all the different podcasts that are for comedy

7:39and entertainment and music and sports. and there's obviously a huge ecosystem of quote science communication. Obviously, there's the journal and magazine culture. But, with everyone consuming content in vertical video now, sometimes in horizontal. And I really feel like not a lot of people talking about the frontier in this way. >> Yeah. >> Where you have both a combination of the expert view that can get into the weeds technically, which is obviously our resident PhD, Krishna, and the every person, which is me, trying to get a hold of what is going on because

8:21our view is that for a whole variety of reasons, progress in the sciences is accelerating. >> Yes. >> And it is really important for all of us in the general public to understand what is happening because it will be impacting our life directly in the way that the sciences always have, but at an increasingly fast and I think an increasingly more impactful way, whether you talk about uh biotechnology, medicine, um material science, obviously the the devil word of the day, AI, space exploration. It's It is an incredible time to be alive, and it's such a pleasure to be

9:02able to do this show for you all, and we're hopeful that we can continue to make science a part of the zeitgeist with the best science show on the planet. Data suggests >> [laughter] >> And we're all about data on the show. >> suggests that this is what the people want. Um but,

The Amazon was never empty

9:26now enough of all of that self-aggrandizing nonsense, we're going to get back to why you all tune into the show, which is our story, our only story of the day, a little brief rundown of this idea that the Amazon was never empty. And I'm going to open with this question. How many people lived in the Amazon before 1492? And how would we even know if the evidence is buried under the vast rainforest that so many of us see on our social feeds as planes fly over? >> Mhm. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a very strange question. For the longest time

10:08people thought there was no one in the Amazon before Christopher Columbus came to the New World. And um surprise surprise, of course that is not true. Okay? Um there's a new paper out in nature that was submitted um in April 2025, accepted in June. >> July. >> Sorry, yeah, July. Um and it's actually showing that there the Amazon is way more populated than we could have ever imagined. Surprise surprise. >> Yes. Shocked. I'm shocked. This is my shocked face. >> Yeah, it's it's and getting into sort of the historical tendency of why we think the Amazon was

10:50just desolate and now we're sort of correcting our views, it's a very interesting story. So, we'll start with Gaspar de Carvajal, okay? He's a Spanish explorer and he explored the Amazon

The explorer historians thought was lying

11:06in 1542. He went up the Amazon River and when he went back to the King of Spain he talked about crowded cities, advanced societies along the Amazon River. Later explorers came to corroborate what he was talking about and they found no one. Okay? This was in a span of about 100 years. So, within 100 years there was no one. Historians traditionally say, well, he's just BS-ing, okay? He was just trying to impress the king of Spain. He's talking about these wide roads, busy marketplaces, large armies of local warriors. But, hey, maybe he was just trying to

11:47like get in with the Spanish royalty to like get more money, to do more expeditions. >> There is a current story in geopolitics around the Spanish king right now. And so, this idea of people trying to curry favor or not curry favor is very topical. >> Yeah. Well, this guy was trying to do it, apparently. That's what we all think. Okay. We all think that he was just lying because he wanted some credibility, he wanted more funding to do more expeditions, right? Now, it turns out, if we if we really go back, we're starting to find evidence for more and more

Disease and the collapse of Amazonian societies

12:25civilizations in the Amazon with kind of the techniques that we're going to go over. And it turns out what probably happened was European diseases like smallpox wiped out 90 to 95% of the indigenous population. And that can happen very, very quickly. I mean, we saw that with the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, imagine smallpox, which is a much more deadly disease and a much more transmissible disease, exposed to a population that has never seen anything like it, right? Um European and Eurasian populations, there's there's this famous um book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, that talks about why European populations and Eurasian populations, because of their proximity

13:07to domesticated animals, developed kind of a herd immunity to pathogens like smallpox. But, when you introduce that to a completely naive population in the Americas that has never been exposed to cows, domesticated cows, and things like that, now, all of a sudden, something like 90 to 95% of the population can be decimated. And then once I mean that that kind of number is where societies collapse. >> Right. >> Right? >> Yeah. >> What what what are you going to do with only 10% of your population remaining? >> Not evenly distri- not evenly distributed across the the roles necessary to sustain that society. >> so I mean whatever society you had

13:50you're you're back to the Stone Ages type of thing, right? And so whatever society remained the survivors went back deep into the jungle. And then perhaps that's why when you see all of the newer explorers come in 100 years after the 1500s, they don't see anyone. >> Mhm. >> They [clears throat] also don't see any remnants because the jungle is a beast, right? >> Most of these dwellings are made out of earth and mud and wood. These are things that are biodegradable and these are things that trees can grow on. >> Mhm. >> Right? Now the jungle takes over. You don't see anyone. You call fraud and you call them a liar,

14:30right? >> A fair given the information at the

The first geometric earthworks

14:34time. >> I can think of my backyard and how quickly it's been taken over by nature. We have a cement wall in the back that was there and then within 6 to 12 months you cannot see it. >> Yeah. >> And you know, I mean life finds a way. >> Life [laughter] >> Right? >> Shout out Dr. Ian Malcolm. >> Exactly. So um more than about 20 years ago there was a geographer Alceu Ranzi. He's now at the University of Acre. And he was on the right side of an airplane going over the Amazon jungle and he saw a ring-like structure. And he's like that's not natural, okay? It's really never natural. If you see a

15:15perfect ring somewhere, that's almost always man-made, okay? Unless it's like a meteor impact. But if it's a meteor impact and you can still see it, that's very strange, right? And so, he's like, "There's got to be There's got to be something that made that. It's got to be humans." Decades of sub- subsequent research by Ronse and his colleagues have slowly revealed that the Amazon was populated by millions of people, even in the most remote areas of the Amazon, right? And so, now researchers suggest that ancient Amazonians were widespread in territories that previously we considered uninhabited.

15:56That's where this current story comes in. There's a new paper that we talked about that's out in nature. Science covered it. A lot of um press has covered it. It's showing that in even the most remote areas of the Amazon rainforest, away from rivers, away from the traditional places that we would have expected large-scale civilizations, we are finding structures that demand an economy that is worth millions of people, right? It's one of the most favorite things I think about in archaeology when we look at structures that were built by civilizations of yore. Um the structures are a proxy for how

16:37big the society was, right? We look at I mean, beautiful example is Egypt, 5,000 years ago. They built the pyramids, the three giant pyramids of Giza. The largest one, the pyramid of Khufu, is like one of the largest structures ever. It was the largest structure for something like 4,000 years before some random cathedral in Europe took over. Honestly, that's insane. That's That's actually insane that Egypt built a structure that was the largest structure the largest man-made structure on the planet for 4,000 years, right? If you think about it, like the the the people who built the Colosseum, like Julius

17:17Caesar and the Romans who built the Colosseum, they looked at the pyramids like we look at the Colosseum. >> Mhm. >> It's just insane to think about. And more importantly, when when I look at structures like that, I think about what was the size of their economy? >> Right. In order to be able to >> In order to be able to support the workers. I mean, sure, there was a lot of slavery involved, right? Still, with like getting the stone from like random places, along the Nile, putting it up in a pyramid environment. Guys, there weren't any aliens. It was just an incredibly advanced technology, right? And it and an incredibly advanced civilization

17:58that could like muster together the amount of humans to create something like that. >> The idea of taking the the work process and breaking it down into its fundamental steps in order to be able to scale it to be able to create infrastructure of that size. >> Yeah. >> When no one had ever done that before. >> Yeah. >> Right. So, you're you have a blank slate and you're how do we I I we have this imagination as humans, so I have a vision. I want this thing. I want it to look like this. And they just figured out how to do it without being able to reference how anyone else did it. >> Yes, exactly. >> in and was like, "Oh, we have this thing called >> Yeah. >> cement whatever, right?"

18:39>> Yeah. >> And that's I think truly what's so, you know, and this is what's so fascinating when we think about some of these older generations and cultures in humanity. And we always come back to kind of the same things. >> Yeah. >> Right? And it manifests a little bit differently with little different flavor each time. But everywhere we look across the planet, we have these highly sophisticated, you know, civilizations in time periods where we did not expect there to be this level of collective accomplishment.

19:20>> Yeah. >> Particularly around infrastructure and and all the So, I'm really interested because the Amazon is always talked about so much. >> It's talked about a lot in It's like Egypt and the Amazon. >> Yeah. >> In terms of, you know, uh armchair archaeologists. >> Yeah. >> Uh and the Amazon in particular for a lot of scientists has been the object of a lot of curiosity. >> Yeah. >> For some time. >> Especially from like uh a standpoint of deforestation, >> Yes. >> of climate change, >> Yes. >> a standpoint of like being a carbon sink. And now it's gaining credibility from a standpoint of archaeology, which I think is very, very cool. Um so, the

The new Nature paper

20:03the latest paper Ronny's is actually one of the um authors on this paper. >> Okay. >> It details nearly 200 previously undocumented earthworks in a very small patch of a corner of the rainforest. >> I just want to make a quick note. I think it's 400, not 200. It's It's double. It's double. It's >> Which is crazy. Yeah. >> Crazy. >> And then what's crazy is if you extrapolate the results, right? Um then that means that there's more than 20,000 additional earthworks cuz you can like do the math, right? You can be like, I sampled this region and then I found this many. I sampled the whole thing and this region was not any special compared

20:44to everything else, so I can make like a blanket kind of guess. 20,000 earthworks in that area. And just a few years ago, we used to think that there were 10,000 earthworks in the entire Amazon rainforest. And now we're talking about in this tiny area that we're going to get into.

How LiDAR sees through the rainforest

20:59>> It It This is This is like as an analogy, this would be like we found Brooklyn and there's 400 things in Brooklyn. And then like New York >> And then Jersey, Connecticut like >> yeah right. And so it's like oh like >> Everything around here is pretty much the same and there's 400 in Brooklyn. So obviously we also have it in Manhattan, the Bronx, etc. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's it's really really cool. So um let's talk about how they actually did it. We always want to focus on the procedure and the methods on this podcast. They use LiDAR. It's effectively using a laser, an infrared laser. What you do is you have a drone or an airplane that has an infrared laser that's sending out laser pulses

21:40hundreds of thousands of laser beams per second downward, okay? >> A laser beam. >> Yeah, it's going to go and scan everything. And then each laser pulse it's going to get split when it hits something. There's going to hit a leaf, part of it's going to go through the leaf, right? And then it's going to hit another leaf. Every time it hits something it bounces back. And [snorts] sometimes it's going to hit the ground and bounce back. >> Have you ever seen these like landscape scanning drones in person before? >> No, I have not. >> It's really creepy. Cuz if you don't know what's happening you kind of kind of just see this like light thing happening and it's just like and it it's clearly programmatic. Yeah, it it's actually quite it's it's interesting.

22:21But I think the point you bring up there is important is we're sending something down, when it hits something comes back. >> Yeah, it's I mean LiDAR sounds like radar because it's the same physics, right? Radar is radio, here we're doing it with light, not necessarily optical light, mostly infrared, right? And then what you do is the computers take all that data and then they remove the top layer of where the leaves are. You can like tell that this bounced back from a leaf, this went all the way down to the ground. You can you can find like a sort of floor of where the bounce happens. >> Because it takes longer. >> Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you and you just do the timing. >> So you just remove everything that's really short in time. >> Yeah. Yeah, and you look for the extremum in some given like time bin, right? And then once you do that now

23:01you've got a final ground level data, and then you can look for undulations. You can be like there's a earthwork. What that means is there's a mound, and then that mound is going to is going to have a geometric structure, and you can find this out through lidar, >> Right. There's a certain characteristics of like human-made structure >> Yeah. >> that you can basically map to. >> Yeah. >> It's not a hill. >> Mhm. >> Um >> It's got some shape >> Right. >> that's like very weird. >> Circle as an example of a >> Circle, square. >> square that you brought up earlier. >> Exactly. And so the area that they surveyed, um the researchers went

Surveying Acre and Amazonas

23:34through the Acre and the Amazonas, which are two states of Brazil effectively. The Acre is the one that is bordering Peru. >> Okay. >> Right next [clears throat] to Peru, and then Amazonas is the giant one that covers most of the Amazon rainforest. Right in that border is where they were looking. Notice, this is far away from the Amazon River. Okay, the Amazon River is is going up top. >> Yeah. Yes. Yes. >> These are minor rivers that are tributaries into the Amazon. More so, they're tributaries very, very far away from the Amazon rainforest. I mean, sorry, from the central sort of Amazon River. >> The I think the the point you're trying

24:15to bring up is uh ancient civilizations would have likely gathered or aggregated around major water sources. >> the assumption >> That's the assumption >> to make, especially given what that Spanish guy had seen, >> Right. Cuz he had >> just gone up the Amazon. The Amazon's like the easiest navigable river. It's It's like a mile wide the whole time, so you just like go up, right? He's not going up these tiny tributaries. >> And so the the point being this place that we're looking, which is sort of in the south west >> almost towards Peru. >> in Peru. There there is there are no natural infra There's no natural infrastructure that would suggest that human life would congregate

24:58in that area. >> Exactly. And that's why they the scientists were so surprised at the density of what they found, right? This is a civilization that the researchers have previously named the Aquiri. It's named after two of the rivers that are in that region. They're tributaries into the Amazon, right? Now, the team identified most of these earthworks in the new study. They're geoglyphs. They're ditches that are made in the ground that form geometric shapes. Um some are even more sophisticated with

The Aquiry civilization

25:26geometric shapes. They're like They're like a square inside of a circle or I think it's a circle inside of a square. Um if you look over here, clearly human-made, right? [laughter] They're in a line. It it reminds you of sort of um Teotihuacan near Mexico City where the Pyramid of the Sun and things like that. It reminds you of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Th- This is sophisticated society, right? >> Y- For example, if anyone goes to Italy and you know, you go through any of the Do you see the roads? Do you see the grid system in some format? Different >> Right, right. And there's permutations and slight differences, but there's

26:07clearly a network because you people are trying to go from point A to point B and you start to see these and and the density, like you were saying, proximity because I'm not trying to go 2 mi to get to the pizza parlor. >> Yeah, exactly. And so I mean, it's incredible that they're finding this with lidar, right? >> Now, based on the calculations of the workforce that was necessary to create and maintain these earthworks, and that's that's where we get into what is the size of the economy? What is the size of the population? The researchers estimate that it's up to something like 3 million people could have lived in that tiny region. >> There's no way. >> Yeah, and and the little green dots that those are the those are the images that we saw earlier, right?

26:48This is a massive swath of rainforest. All of that rainforest looks exactly the same as this swath. This is a random spot that they picked. Right? So, if we were to extrapolate you can imagine just the many millions of people that are living in this in this part of the rainforest before Columbus showed up, before any of the Europeans showed up. And this is around 100 to 300 AD. Right? So, this is right after right after um death of Christ, like the start of the common era, right? Um if we talk about like when oh the timeline of American civilizations right?

27:30Um this would be right around So, the

The civilizations of the ancient Americas

27:33Aztec and the Inca, those are very new. Those are around 1300 1400 AD. Um so, that's 1,000 years after this stuff. Right? It just tells you how rich the human history in South America and the Americas in general is. We've got the Olmecs, which is around might even be preceding this in Mexico. The Maya The Maya is like this giant civilization. It goes anywhere from like 3,000 BC to 900 AD. So, they've The Maya is like whenever archaeologists like see stuff that looks kind of >> Yeah. Like Maya. >> But it's like there's no way there's a same civilization that went on for 3,000 years, right? Maybe.

28:14>> Maybe. >> Maybe, but it it it could also just be our lack of granularity. >> Right. In in seeing the differences. >> right? >> Can I make a small side note? For all my Nickelodeon heads who are listeners, you mentioned Olmecs. Have you ever seen the game show in the '90s on Nickelodeon Legends of the Hidden Temple? >> No. >> It So, there there is the the the whole the kind of the stick was that the Olmecs had this hidden temple and these kids would come on the show similar to Global Guts and they would have to like traverse this like you know, mystery path like these little mazes in the hidden temple, and they had

28:55different they had like the silver snakes, and they had like the purple iguanas, and you'd be on a team, and you'd traverse this hidden temple of the Olmecs. >> That's pretty cool. >> And for the the connection there is like I actually never knew that it was a related to a real thing. >> Yeah. >> I thought it was they kind of just, you know, took something that was real and you know, did their movie magic to it. Um, but Olmec, real thing. >> A real Olmecs are a real thing. They're kind of like, you know, in Halo we have we've been talking about Halo a lot >> have a lot. >> on this podcast. Um, but you know in Halo there's like the race called the Forerunners that came before humans and the Covenant.

29:35>> Yes. >> Um, the Olmecs are kind of like that for Mesoamerica. They came before they might have been the same time as the Maya, but they definitely came before the Aztecs >> Mhm. >> and the people of Teotihuacan. >> Mhm. >> And the the people of Teotihuacan and the Aztecs regarded the Olmecs as kind of like the the forerunners of their civilization. And if you look at like the Olmecs, a lot of the what we have remaining from the Olmecs is a crude writing system because we don't have a lot that's survived, and we also have faces. Olmec faces where a lot of the Aztec art, you know, the characteristic like Aztec art with the 2D >> Yes. Sort of

30:16>> that's derivative of Olmec art because they were, you know, descendants of the Olmecs, or at least they tried to say they were. I mean, the Aztecs were kind of a messed up people, right? With all the human sacrifices and the uh subjugation of all the other tribes and but but like they thought of themselves as like descendants of the Olmecs. Kind of the same way it reminds me of Halo where it's like the humans and the Covenant they we both thought that we were descendants of the Forerunners, right? And it turns out we're just like fighting each other. >> I I just want to say, literally on the show they had Olmec was a face carved in stone. >> So those are the famous faces of the Olmecs yeah. >> that was the main like person giving you the hints on the show. Someone please in

30:57the comments let me know that you have seen this show so I don't feel like a crazy person. It was such a classic. I wanted to be on all the game shows on Nickelodeon. But it's the connection to real history here. >> Yeah. >> And understanding the the I think the Halo reference is actually a helpful to kind of contextualize how these different Mesoamerican >> Yeah. >> ancient civilizations relate to each other. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's really cool. Like in humanity we always we always seek continuity, right? We always seek a story that we're a part of in the past. And uh and and that's invariant of whether you're from Europe or Asia or even the ancient civilizations of the Americas. I I think it's I think it's really cool.

Amazon deforestation and global responsibility

31:37Um so in the past 40 years this is uh we're kind of going to transition from this is really cool archaeology to the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed. Okay? >> Yeah. >> And this is kind of a problem. We talk about the real things on this podcast. It's very cool that we're discovering new new earthworks and new civilizations in the Amazon and new evidence for it. But the reality of the situation is that the Amazon has lost more than 13% of its vegetation cover >> [clears throat] >> in the last 40 years. And some scientists say that the region might not be able to sustain itself any longer if

32:17the figure passes 20%. We're already at 13%. So they it it becomes kind of a conundrum about how agriculture is taking over the Amazon rainforest because um Brazil is an economy that is hungry, is a developing nation. It's one where they realize they've got this vast resource of fertile land, they want to exploit it for their agriculture, right? And for their society. Now, I want to be a bit nuanced here because I think a lot of takes about Amazon deforestation just blames Brazil and blames the farmers in Brazil in these developing countries.

32:58Let's take a look at Europe and let's take a look at America, okay? The American prairie, for example, was a vast ecosystem that rivaled the African Serengeti. >> Mhm. >> And what did we do to it when we came here? We turned it into farmland. Europe has no old-growth forests left. >> Which is so crazy to me still. >> Okay. There's like one pocket in the Black Forest and the in the in in Germany in the southwest corner of Germany near Freiburg, but that's about it. >> Yeah. >> All of the old-growth forest in Europe is done because the Industrial Revolution happened, the Agricultural Revolution happened, and they

33:38they went at it, right? And so now we're we're coming upon developing nations that are trying to get that back. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Right? It cannot be only on them to figure out a solution to make preservation of their forest sustainable, okay? You can't just be like, "Hey, stop stop cutting down trees." It it's I don't know what to do. I'm just saying it's not on them. >> I I think this is this is It's true about a variety of different of what we now call now call first-world countries >> Yeah. >> that were able to burn coal, tear down their natural environments in order to accrue a level of of wealth and um

34:22socioeconomic status for some, not all, >> Yeah. of their people, and it's not evenly distributed. And there's complexities about all of that. Yes. >> But, comparatively to >> [snorts] >> the majority of nations on the planet, there's this cohort of first world quote unquote first world countries >> Right. >> that were the first across the finish line. So, now you're having another batch. These happen in batches. Now you're having the third, fourth, or fifth >> cohort try to do the same thing. This is where you see things like BRICS, you know, Brazil, South Africa, China. China's already there, obviously. Now >> India. >> India in there. Like, who are now trying to effectively say, We're just doing what you did. >> Yeah.

35:03>> And so, but now there's this almost holier-than-thou >> Yeah, because they're the ones that have it left. >> Right. >> Right. >> Right, because we have nothing. And so, they're like, "Well, well." And and now we're glob- we're more of a globalized society with communications, with um supply chain. And so, the things happening over there impact what's happening over here much more than they did, you know, years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And so, I think your point is is is we need to have a broader discussion. >> Yeah, it's got to be a global solution. >> Right. Because we can't just, again, you know, uh ignore that what's driving so much of the

35:43climate problem and all these other things is because of the things that the first >> Yeah. >> groups that went through did. Not not the ones who are trying to go through now or >> Yeah. >> Oh, sorry. Uh I destroyed all the road behind me, but like no, you can't use natural resources to repave it. >> Yeah. It's like, [laughter] "No, I I want to I want a good economy. >> Yeah. >> I want air conditioning all the time. >> Right. >> Right? I want to use plastics all the time like you guys are. So, it it's it's it's a weird take. I'm probably going to get some hate, but that's what I think. >> I I I think like with everything, unfortunately um it Have you heard this like bean soup uh theory? Let me not go there. But, um [snorts]

36:24we just everything there's there we need to just There's a lot of We live in a complex adaptive system. >> Yeah. >> And there are a lot of variables that go into that. And there's a rush to say it's either this or it's that. >> Yeah. >> And 99.9% of the time it's like a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We we need to be able to have complex nuance nuanced conversations. And um it is in all of our benefit uh to prevent catastrophic ecosystem collapse. And it is not going to be solved by any one nation. >> Yeah. I agree. >> At the end of the day. Um

37:05but this is a sensitive issue. Obviously, people have very strong opinions about it. Uh this is a record-level El Niño year. >> Yeah. >> Uh if you're in Europe, y'all have been having fires going on right now that you do not have the infrastructure to deal with. Canada's been having fires that are taking over everywhere. I think it was a Seattle, Washington or >> Yes, I heard. >> Yeah. Burning And look, you know, when I was growing up that wasn't what it was like. >> Yeah. >> So >> It's it's progressing fast. >> We we cannot um ignore the reality that's in front of our face. And it's okay to just talk about it. We're not prescribing an answer. We're not saying

37:47you can't have plastic straws. But you know, maybe these large industrial companies need to be a little bit more responsible. >> Yeah. And perhaps we make them responsible. We we make them. We don't we don't be like Hey. Can you Can you save the Can you not like mess up our only home? Our only home in this vast emptiness? Can you maybe like try to try to try to not mess up the only home that we have? Yeah. This was a tangent, as you can see. >> Yeah. >> We try to keep it tight, but these are complex issues and sometimes we just need to get it off our chest. It's been

38:28a year, so I think we've earned the right to have a little social political commentary. >> wait, one more thing before you move on. I wanted to I wanted to do like a mental exercise because like, you know, we're talking about um we're talking about um modern civilization now, us with lidar and things like that coming in and seeing old old infrastructure and old civilizations, and we're trying to judge the capabilities of the civilizations based on what they've left behind. For example, with Egypt, we can guess that their economy was insane. Um with something like Rome building the Colosseum, we can guess that the economy was insane. >> Mhm.

What would remain of our civilization?

39:09>> So, suppose like something crazy happened, right? And like humans died. >> Yeah. >> And aliens came back in like a million years. >> Mhm. >> Right? In some insane amount of time. Like, what would they see and what would they judge from us? I was thinking about this. Like, for example, even if Earth looks very very different, there's quite a possibility that like the moon is not going to look that different. And so, if they ever if they saw like the remnants of Apollo 11 [laughter] and all of our Apollo missions, they'd be like, "This is crazy." >> Yeah, they got from there. >> They got off that planet with a pretty strong gravitational field. >> Yeah. >> And like, it seems they walked around.

39:50There's like footprints and stuff. Cuz the footprints aren't going to go away. Like, there's not enough meteor impacts for the footprints to go. They got a car with like wheels. I think they'll know what wheels are, right? And and they they might be like, "Damn." >> They were so close. >> They were pretty good. >> They They almost escaped the single point of failure. >> Yeah. Or like if they came if they came on Earth, right? And they went and they saw CERN, which is underground, so it might be >> Oh, maybe. yeah. Okay. Shielded from vegetation loss, right? And atmospheric loss. Like I can imagine like Manhattan, all the all of the buildings might like crumble and fall. Maybe the steel will still be there and like the the fact

40:31that we have pure steel like in in like these sort of uh columns, they might be like this is pretty cool. >> just a bunch of pointies >> Yeah. >> coming out of the ground. >> Yeah, but like but CERN for example, it's underground and it's a giant thing and there's massive magnets, right? There's going to be wires of pure copper and silicon and all of this other stuff. They're going to look at that and be like, this is nice. Yeah. Like that those are the things that I think would be our pyramids, right? If the aliens came down and searched for our pyramids or our Coliseum. >> Yeah. >> They would they would find CERN and LIGO and the moon landing, you know? I I

41:11think that's kind of cool to think about. >> I As a as a last note on that, it's it's [snorts] sort of like, you know, for civilizations that came before us, large-scale infrastructure was the thing that was signature of it. For our generation, it's almost like large-scale uh I I don't want to use scientific loosely, but like this instrumentation >> Yeah. >> um >> That's like pure and like you know you know what I mean? >> single focus, single function. It's not to honor some dead pharaoh. It's not to facilitate the transfer goods and services. It it's purely It kind of speaks to oh, we they became a curiosity-based

41:52civilization where they had some level of abundance or sustainability, not evenly distributed, that allowed them to spend money on things that didn't have a direct functional outcome to their own survival. >> Exactly, yeah. >> interesting. >> It is, right? Because like because they would look at CERN and they could see they would see See electromagnets. They would see the solenoids of the of the of the copper becoming electromagnets, and they could probably discern because they know the laws of electromagnetism that these were giant magnets that were curving the thing, you know? And like and and and there's these giant centers where the two the two beams sort of meet. So, you see the two beams meeting up, and then right where those two beams

42:32meet up, coincidentally, there's a giant detector, right? [laughter] That's the size of like a building underground. So, maybe that's a particle collider. Like, you know? >> That's really good. I know that's a good one. >> I I thought I thought I like I was just thinking whenever I think about like old stuff, >> Yeah. >> I think what would what would a civilization 10,000 years, a million years from now look at us and say, "Damn, that was sick." >> Yeah. >> Right? If the International Space Station is still >> around. >> floating around. Probably not because it's you know, it's going to but like if it was, actually James Webb Space Telescope. >> Yeah, that would be >> That thing is at Lagrange 2 or something, right? That's like way out of our Earth orbit. So, that thing's just going to be following us around the sun.

43:13Like, if they saw that, >> It's a techno signature, you know? >> Yeah, if they saw that, they'd be like, "This is insane." >> Yeah. Yeah, they were they were looking for us. >> Yeah. >> We were we just came a little late. We missed the train to the train. That's really interesting because when when you you know, a lot of times that you know, people in sports and entertainment and media or whatever, even in life, think about legacy. >> Yeah. >> But they I always talk about things that like three scales. You have your you have the individual or four scales. You have the individual unit, the family unit, your like community unit, which could be neighborhood, city, state, nation-state, and then you have the civil civilizational unit. And a lot of times the legacy conversation is talked about in the individual, family, or

43:55uh neighborhood like context. >> Yeah. >> What is our civilizational legacy to an

Support the show and the Year Two survey

44:01outside observer? >> Yes. >> If we were to just disappear >> here right now. Like, for our generation, not for the past. >> Yeah. >> That's a I'm we're going to I'm going to think about that more. Cuz I really do like that quite a bit. I really do like that quite a bit. And you might all know what's coming next because this kind of um just fascinating, incredible, deep, and fun conversation is brought to you by From First Principles. No. Uh >> [laughter] >> we we currently are just the two of us as we mentioned earlier. And so now we have to shill the pod a little bit. For those of you who are listening for the

44:41first time, welcome. The water's warm. FFP nation is growing. One of the best ways that you can support the show so that we can continue to have these fascinating conversations, like, share, comment, subscribe on any of the platforms you may listen to us on. We're available as a video podcast on Spotify. Coming soon in video to Apple Podcasts. So keep an eye out for that. You can also listen to us on your favorite podcast app. We're on all the podcast applications. Our website ffpod.com has the research papers we talked about, including the one we just talked about in this past Amazon story, which again was in Nature in July 2026. This was out

45:23of the Ibero-American Institute of Finland and the University of Helsinki about LiDAR scanning to penetrate through the canopy in the Amazon to learn that it was much more populated and dense than we did before. If you would like to support this show monetarily in this economy, you can go to ffpod.com/donate. One thing we've not talked about before, but it's going to be super helpful for us. If you're listening on Spotify and Apple, a five-star review will do wonders for us to get this to more people. Um and if you are in a journal club or have technical, curious, or science

46:04friends to talk to, uh this is a great show to send over to them. Uh for those of you watching our clips, send them in groups, send them to DMs. The clips is the best way to onboard people to being scientifically curious. And I want to just do a reminder before we get into wrapping up the episode with the books that we are going to add into the library that we are trying to build community around the show as we enter year two. Part of what we need to understand is who are our listeners. And so, we have our giveaway where we're going to have merch given out. Then we're going to choose We're going to start with 10 people.

46:4510 people, we might increase it to 20, is going to get some of our free merch, not just what we have on right now. You can go to our shop and see all the other stuff, t-shirts, sweaters, uh swag bags. Uh we have a great field notebook. There's a ton of stuff in there. Uh if you can complete our survey to help us better understand what you want us to do in our second year, that's over at ffpod.com/survey. To all of those who say, "What does Lester do on the show?" I show the website. >> [laughter]

Building the FFP library

47:18>> Um and and so, we are now going to transition into the christening of our brand new library, which just a bunch of shelves behind us so you can see some of the books that Krishna has put together for our inaugural christening of the FFP library. So, for those of you who are watching, as you can see, there's an empty set of three floating shelves behind us, and we're going to christen our new library with some of the books here, and we're going to do it one shelf at a time. So, Krishna, what are we going to put into the library with our first shelf here in the collection. We have two piles,

47:59different contexts. So, what is our first set of books? >> Yeah, so I I thought a lot about what we were trying to put in the shelves. The first shelf I want to christen with the textbooks that made me the, you know physicist

The mathematics shelf

48:15thinker, whatever you want to call it, that I am. I'm going to start with mathematics, and then we're going to go into physics and biology, okay? So, the first mathematics book, Baby Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis. This is called Baby Rudin because I cried like a baby while I was reading this thing. Um this was my first semester at Princeton University. Um there was a course called Math 215. Print Um it was it was called analysis in a single variable. That was the tagline. And then And then the description in the syllabus was analysis in a single variable. The I get I get to

48:57the first lecture, and it's Peter Sarnak, who is a legend in mathematics. He's got this thick uh South African accent, and he goes, "What is a number?" And I'm like, "What What are >> [laughter] >> What are we talking about?" And right? What What's going on? And And And this is the book. This is the textbook for it. Um it was it was it was an insane course. It was one of the most formative courses in my life. Um the first lecture we get into what what it means to be a number, what it means to be a real number, that stuff that I was talking to you about countability, and the fact that real numbers are uncountable, but rational numbers are countable. And And there's functions that are

49:39continuous everywhere, but you can't differentiate anywhere. It's like really, really strange things. Basically, it's it's the foundations of calculus. Because when Newton invented it, like every good physicist, he was very hand-wavy. He was like, "Uh limits approach, you know, and it's like obvious." And for most smooth functions that like we deal with on a day-to-day basis as physicists, it's totally fine, right? And as a physicist, I can totally understand why he would choose to present calculus that way. But pretty soon, like within about 50 years of him saying all that and 100 years of him saying all that, mathematicians start saying, "Well, what about this? And what about that?" And

50:20turns out there's like functions that are completely non-intuitive. Uh there's functions that are continuous everywhere, meaning I can take a pen and I can draw it out theoretically, but I could never find a slope anywhere on that function. That's a really weird thing to do. Baby Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis. Honestly, a great time. Once you Once you get over the trauma and everything, it's it's an amazing amazing book. >> Okay. I'll take I'll take it I'll take it here actually. >> Yes, yes. All right. Next one is actually um it's my favorite course that I ever took at Princeton

51:01University. My favorite course that I ever took at Princeton University was a mathematics course. It was not a physics course, even though I was a physics major. It was complex analysis. The author, Elias Stein, was actually my professor at the time. Um he's also the PhD advisor of Terence Tao. >> Ah, so we've got a lot of Terence Tao in the comments lately. >> Yeah. Um this book is absolutely amazing. It is not like Baby Rudin because this is gentle. This brings you in. >> [laughter] >> And it And it treats you fairly. And it treats you like you're a human being. Okay? And it it goes on to show some of the most beautiful things in

51:43mathematics. It starts with the invention of I, the imaginary number, and it goes on to talk about the Cauchy-Riemann equations, how to take integrals in in the complex plane. It talks about um the the Riemann zeta function. It talks about the prime number function, which is how many how many prime numbers there are as you get higher and higher. It turns out it's like related to the log of how high you get. Um And you know um have you ever heard that like weird math thing that's like all of the numbers added up, like 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, all of them added up to infinity is

52:24-1/12? >> No. >> Okay, that's something that we can get get get into. But it turns out the sum of all the natural numbers is -1/12, and this is the key to understanding that, complex analysis. It has to do with holomorphic functions and the fact that everything is okay in complex analysis. Stuff that stuff that is not allowed in real analysis becomes allowed in complex analysis. It's absolutely beautiful. It's my favorite thing. >> If you would like us to cover it, let us know in the comments. >> Finally, the next one, I lost the cover to this, but this is also Elias Stein. This is part of his analysis two series. This is Fourier

53:04analysis. This was instrumental for physics in general, right? Understanding Fourier analysis. There's a lot of really non-intuitive things about Fourier analysis, like the fact that like I can add up a bunch of sines and cosines, and I can get a convergent function, but then the derivative of that function can be divergent, which is really weird. Like the derivative will blow up, but the function itself will approach like a really nice steady value. Again, really weird things. Th- This was a This was a great course, but this was actually the last course in higher mathematics that I took at Princeton University. I also took at the same time algebra with Galois theory. The textbook is not here because I don't

53:46want to I don't want to talk about that experience. >> It is not getting added to the collection. >> getting added because I don't want to talk about that experience. That's a class that I PDF'd. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember when we could do a pass or fail? I passed. [laughter] >> I did not get a D or an F. >> D, no F. >> But I I don't want to think about what the letter would have been had I not done that. >> This is not a file that you can open in Adobe. Having a class that's PDF >> Yeah. >> is not maybe a Princeton specific thing, but >> Usually it's just pass fail, but Princeton's >> one of those like, "I'll give you a D." >> [laughter] >> So you got to you got to you got to work a little bit. >> selection process. >> yeah. >> [laughter]

The physics books that shaped Krishna

54:26>> All right, so that was the mathematics. Now let's get into the physics. Um the first physics textbook I'd like to talk about is again, the Bible. This is Landau Lifshitz Mechanics. A lot of the viewers and a lot of the grad students in the audience will know this book by a different cover. Okay? They're going to know the the newer version with like there's like circles and like yellow circles everywhere. This is the original um version that my dad actually gave me. Um and it's one that he wants back. Dad, you're not going to get this [clears throat] back. >> [laughter] >> Okay? This This was a formative experience because this was classical mechanics um my second year, first semester. Um this is a crazy textbook.

55:08This is by Lev Landau who's legendary Russian physicist. In the first two pages, he proves that mass cannot be negative. Okay? In the first two pages. And I remember reading this going, "This is insane." That like that like we just take for granted as an axiom the um axiom of least action. That like everything goes by least action. You have like a Lagrangian and stuff like that. And from that you can prove that mass is negative. And then a lot of the problems in here are just like insanely hard. And he has problems and solutions. There's a There's a colloquial saying about Landau Lifshitz, which is

55:50not a not a thought of Lifshitz, not a word from Landau. Because Landau was kind of narrating, and Lifshitz is the guy who typed. >> This sounds like the show. >> Yeah. >> [clears throat] [laughter] >> You're the guy narrating, and I'm the guy who types. >> But this this absolutely an amazing textbook formative for classical mechanics. And it's a textbook that that I definitely used. >> This also reminds me of all the Rugrats fans out there, Dr. Lipschitz. One of the doctor in Rugrats. Slightly different pronunciation, equally impactful. >> [laughter] >> Definitely. >> Next one on our list of textbooks. We've alluded to this before,

56:32Thermodynamics by Enrico Fermi. This is one of those where he treats you like a human being. He treats you like a human being. Enrico Fermi, Thermodynamics. This is a great textbook for intro thermodynamics. You don't want to get into like statistical mechanics and the theory of atoms and things like that. You just want to talk about heat, temperature, entropy. This is an amazing amazing read. Really short, you can tell. But just really informative. PV [clears throat] = nRT, equations of state of gases. Absolutely amazing. >> And also on our ranking in our Oppenheimer scientist ranking episode, which you've if you've have not watched,

57:14is a a fantastic deep dive in the concentration of brilliance and genius that was applied to unfortunately the nuclear program. >> Yeah, but and I think Enrico Fermi was top five. >> Yes. >> In that, right? >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Totally deserved. >> Totally deserved. >> Okay, next one. So I So I gave you the first textbook on classical mechanics, which was Landau Lifshitz. >> Yes. >> This next one is the bane of my existence. Goldstein, classical mechanics. Look at how thick this is. And then And then it's just It's just It's just the worst. It's just the absolute worst. It's so dense and it covers literally everything that has to do with classical mechanics, but the

57:54problems are insane. Like no reasonable person would um assign more than two in a homework problem. And guess how many we got? A lot more than two. Okay. So, Goldstein >> Um, you know, a lot of trauma with this textbook, but I get I I do know classical mechanics really well now because of this, right? Um, and this is a really good precursor to learning quantum mechanics because this goes over kind of the subtleties. Like it goes over Poisson brackets really well, which is something that becomes commutators in quantum mechanics. So, it's like it's like a kind of really nice bridge between

58:36classical and quantum mechanics. It's still a terrible textbook, I have to say. >> [laughter] >> It doesn't explain stuff, but the problems are pretty pretty insane. >> If you want some light summer reading as you get ready for year two of FFP, pick up the second edition >> Yeah. >> classical mechanics. >> All right, here's another bane of my existence. >> Okay. >> Jackson classical electrodynamics. I think every physicist would agree that this is the bane of their existence. Okay? Most physicists learn electrodynamics first using the Griffiths textbook. It's a great textbook. I don't have it here. Um, but that's that's the one that I first

59:17learned electromagnetism with. This is the second version of that, where it's like, "Okay, now Now, talk about the real stuff." This is where um like if you want to know how antennas work, this is it. If you want to know how light propagates through random medium, even if the medium is not homogeneous, it's like really weird medium, this is where it happens. Um what what's kind of cool about this is there are problems in this textbook that, you know, require a lot of lot of thought, but they're also things that now I encounter in my research and in my job. Like I work at a quantum computing company where we're doing spin qubits, right? And um part of

59:58a confining individual electrons to create spin qubits is to create a kind of egg carton-like landscape of potentials where it's like positive 5 volts, negative 5 volts, and so on and so forth. That geometry is a homework problem in Jackson. Why he would think that's a reasonable homework problem, I'm not sure. Okay? He he was a maniac. But Jackson is uh another one of these trauma-inducing physics textbooks that, you know, now given the years passed that I look back on, I'm like, "Okay, this is pretty legit." >> Uh two notes on this one. Uh if we go

1:00:39back to our episode where we covered the IceCube Neutrino Detector, we talked about how light moves through ice. >> Yeah, that's in there. >> Uh which was a very viral and popular clip that we had. >> Yeah, Cherenkov radiation. The fact that if a charged particle moves faster than light in a medium, it's going to create a shock wave. Yep, that's in there. Literally everything that you could ever want from an electrodynamics textbook about any electrical phenomenon is in here. >> And for all of my UAP fans, one of the things people talk about is that how these UAP allegedly move around is a part of extended electrodynamics. >> Yeah. >> And so you have to start here first.

1:01:20>> Yeah, you got you got to do the homework problems >> before you get there. >> Yep. This is one of my favorite textbooks, Thermal Physics. This was my introduction to my favorite subject in physics, which is statistical mechanics. Um I I took thermodynamics with Enrico Fermi, but that was um in my first year. It was part of the intro physics curriculum. Thermodynamics by Enrico Fermi is very gentle. This one is also actually very gentle, Kittel and Kroemer Thermal Physics. Um in the first chapter or maybe the second chapter, he proves the second law of thermodynamics using two-state systems, like a magnetic spin system. And [snorts] that's a proof that I still have

1:02:02internalized and memorized, and it was a very deep thing for me to realize that the second law of thermodynamics is like something you can just like realize from math and combinatorics. This goes into all the way from phase transitions, like the um Stefan-Boltzmann law that we talked about in the last episode, the T to the fourth dependence, >> Mhm. >> um ideal gas law, how you can get the ideal gas law from just talking about quantum particles. Um it's an amazing textbook as the first textbook for deep statistical mechanics. I would highly recommend. It's honestly one of my favorite physics textbooks of all time. Yep. And finally,

1:02:44we've dealt with classical mechanics, >> Yes. >> electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. The last of the four pillars of modern physics is quantum mechanics. >> Mhm. >> Here we have Sakurai and Napolitano. This is in line sort of similar to Landau-Lifshitz in that Sakurai is the brains behind the textbook. Napolitano is the editor. >> Mhm. >> Modern Quantum Mechanics, this is an amazing textbook for the first half because the first half was written by Sakurai during his lifetime. The second half um Napolitano and a bunch of his colleagues took over and you can see the

1:03:24you can see the decrease in quality. It's still very good, but JJ Sakurai's way of introducing quantum mechanics first using the Stern-Gerlach experiment where the first the first lesson in this book is just about why you need imaginary numbers to describe quantum mechanics. It's it's a very simple description of an experiment and he says the only way that you can describe this experiment is if the internal dynamics involve complex numbers, if they involve the imaginary unit I. It's it's absolutely amazing and then he goes into the Heisenberg picture, the Schrodinger picture, he builds angular momentum,

1:04:05the theory of everything that you know, we know and love in quantum mechanics. Absolutely phenomenal phenomenal textbook. This is what I used in my graduate studies. The in undergrad I used Griffiths, but in graduate studies you use Sakurai and every physics every physics nerd knows JJ Sakurai modern quantum mechanics. >> I'll just make a note for those who may be new. We've covered so many of the concepts that you just talked about on several of our previous podcasts in a variety of frontier research that we build from first principles the history

1:04:47of the understanding that enabled those frontier projects and it's one of the topics that I personally find super fascinating and clearly the audience does as well because so many people react in a positive way anytime we do those discussions. It looks like we have two final >> Yes. >> textbooks left for our first section of the library. >> This one is experiments in modern physics. There was a course at Princeton University, um again, a great course at Princeton University called experiments in modern physics. It was training you in how to do experiments, how to figure out what the noise level is, how to figure out what

1:05:28your error bars is, and um what they would have you do is basically spend 2 weeks doing specific experiments that are legendary. So, for example, you could do the Cavendish experiment that um measured big G. Um the way back in like I think the 1800s. I think maybe late 1700s. Um you can do the Millikan oil drop experiment where you measure the charge of a single electron. You can do the Lamb shift experiment, which is what we see on the cover over here. Um you the one of the ones that I did was measuring the 21-cm line, the 1420 Hz in the galaxy and charting the gas in

1:06:10the galaxy and showing that the galaxy is rotating, calculating how fast the galaxy is rotating by taking a little dish and pointing it at different spots in the galaxy and measuring the Doppler shift. So, a lot of these seminal experiments are described in great, great detail in this book. It's absolutely phenomenal for someone who is interested in experimental physics and especially interested in like the history of how way back when they were still able to get their error bars so small. Michelson-Morley, another one that is um described in this in this book. It's It's a great book. And I will yet again

1:06:51note that if you are a long-time listener of this podcast and you just heard that description of what you get in experiments in modern physics, you'll notice an overlap with the topics that we cover because every single thing that you just mentioned, Michael. So, morally, the Lamb shift, uh the 1420 hydrogen line. I think I I remember back to there was a story we talked about uh the formation of um it was a Oh, it's escaping me now. But, we talked about a a an astrophysics story where it was the accretion disk uh >> Oh, yeah, yeah. No, the um the galactic rotation. Yeah. And measuring that like, oh, the dark matter. It was dark matter

1:07:31halos. It was It was the fact that like the galactic rotation curve is flat after some time. That's something that Yeah. >> something that is is here. So, as you can see as we continue to build the narrative and the story and the history of who we are, you can see how that bleeds into the content we cover. Now, the last but not the least is the one and only biology book to start the collection. >> is the the one and only biology textbook that's going to be on the shelf. Um this was formative for my interest in biology. Um and you can tell from this podcast I'm very interested in biology from a physics perspective. Um this is

Molecular biology

1:08:08Fundamentals of Molecular Biology by Elizabeth Allison. Great, great textbook that really goes into depth about kind of the processes, like the Lego block. You know, I always talk about like Lego blocks in biology and how everything is just trying to be Lego blocks. This is kind of where I get that from. Um This was the part of this course was also doing a molecular biology lab where we grew bacteria with GFP, green fluorescent protein. And then um we like a we expressed recombinant DNA. So, we had a plasmid with a green fluorescent protein, and that also had a little antibiotic attached to it or a way to

1:08:49circumnavigate the antibiotic so that you could only select for bacteria that had the plasmid, and then you could isolate the plasmid, and you can isolate the GFP protein. Um that was one One favorite courses at Princeton. It was like just doing this lab and like manipulating life. >> Yep. >> Like live. You know, you'd come back the next week and the bacteria were grown and like you could like do things with it. Um absolutely cool. Um this this this book is also amazing. Also, cool thing, um one of the guest lecturers during that course was Shirley Tilman, who was the president at the time of Princeton University. >> I I think I've told you this story, but I'll briefly share it. So, as you mentioned, uh guest lecturer Shirley

1:09:30Tilman, my first day on campus, I was with a teammate of mine walking north on the campus. Um we were there for preseason, and so no one else was yet there. And we're walking and we, you know, we're just trying to figure out where our classes are going to be and stuff. And this nice person walked up to us and asked us where we're from and are we acclimatizing well? And we're like, yes, and we asked who it was who uh I think I I don't want to get the story wrong, so I'll just say they had asked um you know, who we were, and then we asked who they were, and then she said, Shirley Tilman. And we were like, oh, so what do you do?

1:10:11>> [laughter] >> She's like, oh, I'm the president of the university. So, that gives you an idea of where my uh lack of context was at the time as an 18-year-old who was just obsessed about being able to be there but also play soccer at the same time. Uh I will also note that one of the best bands at the university at the time was Shirley and the Tilmans. >> That was a good band. >> Great band. Great band name. >> Yeah. >> Uh and so for all of those if you if any of you who are band members are listening, we all remember. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you were not forgotten. >> You were not forgotten. Formative for all of us. And that completes our first shelf

1:10:51in the library. We're going to come back uh with the second, which will be a little bit smaller, but will expand.

Einstein, Schrödinger, Gibbs, and Newton

1:10:59>> Yes. >> So, now we are moving on to shelf number two after placing our first shelf of textbooks with an esoteric collection in this selection. >> Yep, we're going to start off our esoteric collection with relativity by the one and only Albert Einstein. This is a pretty short book. Um it's quite fancy if you look at the pages. Like it's like uh like ruffled pages, you know what I mean? >> Harry Potter book. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of cool. Um 2007 is is the is the date that I have here. Krishna Chandra, December 19th, 2007. I didn't understand anything about relativity. [laughter] 2007, I was in

1:11:39sophomore year of high school, okay? Um but the magic of relativity is you can like try and read it even in high school and kind of get it. Okay, it's not like quantum mechanics where I have I still have no idea what the what the hell they're talking about. Relativity is like one of these nice things about physics that just kind of makes sense the more and more you think about it. Um and Einstein, fair play to him, he's a really good explainer of relativity. Okay, it's not like Heisenberg where he wrote the 1925 Umdeutung paper and then and then people still read it today and it's like, "How did you come up with that?" Relativity, especially special relativity, kind of makes sense. And then when you graduate to general

1:12:20relativity, it still kind of makes sense. It's a beautiful textbook in his own words, the man himself, Albert Einstein. >> First in our esoteric collection. >> Next one. Arnold Sommerfeld. >> Yes. >> We've talked about Arnold Sommerfeld. Um he's the mentor to so many of the greats, including Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg. He was um Heisenberg's PhD advisor and kind of saved his PhD thesis because Heisenberg nearly [clears throat] failed and Arnold Sommerfeld had to go to bat for him and make sure that he passed and go on to greatness. Um Arnold Sommerfeld never won the Nobel

1:13:00Prize, but he mentored something like 10 Nobel Prize winners, including including Hans Bethe, um Wolfgang Pauli, uh just some of the greats of all time. He had the first collection of lectures on theoretical physics. Um nowadays a lot of times people use Landau- Lifshitz, which we covered um with the mechanics textbook that I had earlier. Landau-Lifshitz also has um a textbook on fluid mechanics, statistical physics, field theory, and all all all the works, right? And it's kind of become a gold standard for graduate textbooks, but before Landau-Lifshitz, there was Arnold Sommerfeld. Um

1:13:41this is volume six, partial differential equations in physics. You can imagine he had a mechanics, he has an optics, he has a statistical mechanics, one of the greats of all time. >> And one of our earliest episodes >> Yes. >> we covered uh that relationship in depth, which again, Mr. Shill here, >> Mhm. >> uh some of our library of previous episodes is just phenomenal around the history, >> Mhm. >> uh particularly in physics. And so if you're interested in the relationship between these people and how that relates to the growth of the field and our understanding, um some of that it's like our episode 2 3 4 5 >> Yeah. >> were very heavy uh in in that arena in

1:14:22some of these early developments of the >> Yeah, it's it's it's how we first got viral on Instagram. >> Yeah. >> Is with the Sommerfeld-Heisenberg episode. >> Yes. >> Where we covered the 1925 paper and the 100-year anniversary of it. >> Yes. >> Back in 2025, last year. >> Yes. >> A year later, >> A year later, look at look at us. Who do you Who would have thunk? Not me. >> Yeah, not [laughter] me. Um another one from our previous episode. >> Schrödinger's What is Life? >> Yes. >> We covered this in detail in our DNA episode where we covered James Watson and his work with DNA. What is Life? is a seminal textbook in biological physics. This is where a

1:15:02physicist tried to tackle the question what is life with biology. This is where he predicted that DNA would be a aperiodic crystal. Why? Because it has to store information, which means that it can't just be the same thing over and over again. It can't be something like starch or cellulose, which is just glucose glucose glucose glucose everywhere because there's no information. It's just all glucose. But if you have something like a aperiodic crystal, like something with bits, where it's a 01100110, then you can all of a sudden store all of the information that is needed for life. And he reasoned from first

1:15:44principles that if we wanted a molecular basis for information storage, we needed something like a crystal that had regular parts but different sequences to store all of the diversity. He predicted the structure of DNA before we even knew that it was DNA that we were looking for. It's absolutely incredible. Um Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? >> The Double Helix episode is a great way to dig into that concept that you just covered, which uh is fascinating to me. Um and also the history of the discovery of the double helix and kind of some of the non-scientific social drama uh

1:16:25of the real-world humanity that relates to these early discoveries is also quite interesting. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's it's absolutely amazing. Okay, this one, S. Chandrasekhar. >> Chandrasekhar >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Um Chandrasekhar's Radiative Transfer. This is a seminal textbook in astrophysics. It's talking about um how radiative phenomenon goes through ionized atmospheres, stellar atmospheres. This thing is like a end-all be-all for that subject. It's absolutely incredible. He uses principles of symmetry to talk about radiative transfer in astrophysics, which is very different from how normal

1:17:06astrophysicist used to do it at the time. Normal astrophysicists used to make a phenomenological model. They'd make some kind of model that would be like, "Oh, okay, so this is happening and then this is happening." Here, he went through um like symmetry principles to be like, "This needs to happen because of the symmetry of the stellar atmosphere, because of the symmetry of the geometry and things like that." It's a very physics-y approach. Now, I'm going to be honest. I've only read very small parts of this, but um I asked my father, who's an astrophysicist and a big fan of Chandrasekhar, and he has like five or six textbooks. Um and this is on loan, by the way, from the um Chandrasekhar family

1:17:47uh exhibition. So, I he wants it back maybe in like >> It's on It's on permanent loan. >> on permanent [laughter] loan. Um so I asked him, you know, of all of the Chandrasekhar textbooks, which would you say is his most seminal work? And he said, "Radiative transfer." And I'm like, "Okay." >> Thank you. >> [laughter] >> That's going in the FFP pod library. Um absolutely legendary astrophysicist and physicist in general. So, I'm glad I'm glad that we have this thing here. All right. Next one, Gibbs. >> Yeah. >> Elementary principles in statistical mechanics. This is the graduation of

1:18:29statistical mechanics into a formal field where we go from Boltzmann Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, Rayleigh-Jeans law, all the way up to now. Gibbs talking about chemical potential, talking about the Gibbs ensemble. This is the book that put American theoretical physics on the map, okay? Now, he is from Yale University but we'll forgive him for that. He still deserves to be in our library. And I had to do a lot of soul searching >> Yeah, I plead the fifth. >> to to to to to really convince myself. But, you know, Willard Gibbs what we covered him in the 250-year America anniversary. This guy

1:19:10was definitely a legend, and he put American science, American theoretical physics on the map. He completed the Gibbs ensemble to create like all of the statistical mechanics that we know and love today. Um this is why chemists love statistical mechanics, it's because of Willard Gibbs. Or maybe they hate him, I don't know. But, in any case, you can't deny that it's hella useful. >> [laughter] >> And it describes chemistry, right? So, >> We've remained number one in theoretical sense, and that may not continue to be the case unless we continue to invest in the hard and fundamental sciences. >> That's right. All right, the next

1:19:51esoteric addition, Albert Einstein, philosopher scientist. This is actually a collection of essays about Albert Einstein by the preeminent physicists and mathematicians of his time. There are several biographies of Albert Einstein. I didn't want to include the biographies of Albert Einstein because they're they're written today based on stuff that people said. This is what people actually said, okay? There's an essay from Niels Bohr talking about how much of a legend Albert Einstein is. There's an essay from Kurt Gödel talking about how ridiculous Albert Einstein is.

1:20:32Wolfgang Pauli, Arnold Sommerfeld, like all of the who's who of people who could who could say stuff about the goat and this and this is it, right? It's like imagine interviewing the star NBA players >> Yep. >> in Jordan's time >> Yeah. >> and they're all talking about how ridiculous Jordan is. And how like Jordan is here >> Yeah. >> and like we're we're we're a step below. >> Yeah. >> Right? That's this book. >> The the football reference would be uh if you had today all the star footballers talking about Messi. >> Yeah. >> You listen to Beckham, you listen to Neymar, you listen to >> Henry. >> Thierry Henry, Vinnie, all these, you

1:21:14know, legends who in their own right have earned the right to be at their plateau. >> Yeah. >> Um not not quite the same. Kind of the same. >> Kind of the same. >> But Einstein to me feels like Messi is an alien. >> Yeah. >> He's absolutely an alien. >> Yeah. >> Uh but he's still you can still he's still he's still like, you know, in the same region. >> Yeah, yeah. >> There's there's there's distance. >> Yeah, there's distance. >> But like Cristiano Ronaldo is like people say people argue. >> Yeah. >> I think with Einstein no one argues. >> Yeah, no one argues. >> He's the one. >> He's the one. In the 1900s he's the one. >> He's the one. >> Yeah. >> And so, you know, >> Yeah.

1:21:54>> Um it's so word for word, bar for bar, what people actually said. >> Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like hear it from Niels Bohr himself about how ridiculous Einstein was. >> No rose-colored glasses, no postmodern interpretation. >> Yeah, yeah. It's just the guy's like, "No, this is this is insane. >> [laughter] >> How is this a single human being?" All right, speaking of ridiculous single human beings, >> Yes. >> the greatest work in scientific literature is Newton's Principia. And our library would not be complete without a copy of Newton's Principia. This is the beginning of the scientific revolution as we see

1:22:35it today where we think of the universe as understandable. We think of the universe as something that mathematics can tackle and describe in a way that is unprecedented before him. Okay? He said that the same laws that apply on Earth are the ones that apply in the cosmos, right? He said the same way that the apple falls from the tree is the same way that the moon falls towards the Earth. It's not that he noticed the apple. He was like sitting under the apple tree and he's like, "Oh, I got hit by an apple. Apples fall." Everyone knows apples fall, right? Galileo described how all apples and

1:23:16like, you know, balls of lead will fall at the same rate. That wasn't the key thing. The key thing was the way that the apple falls is also the same way that the moon is falling. And if I were to include the three laws that he came up with, the fact that the moon is moving and it's it's just falling in the direction of the force. There's a force that is centripetal that is 1 over r squared. Um all of those things He also invented calculus, by the way, on the way to to describe everything about the world. Calculus was the side hustle. It's like, "I need something to explain it. Let me just invent >> Yeah. >> And And what what I really love about

1:23:56this is like when he was describing, for example, Kepler's laws and um describing how the moon falls and how a comet goes around the sun, he didn't actually use any calculus. He just used geometric constructions. Like the stuff like the compass and needle stuff from way back in the Greek days, that's what he used to describe all of the mathematics because he knew the calculus was going to be this new thing and he didn't want to over index on this new thing that he had invented unless people say oh oh you you just you just made up some stuff to like just but here it's like no there it's just geometry and the few rules that I made. It's absolutely beautiful and like the

1:24:37work that he did you know he described Kepler's laws which were established like 50 years earlier with just pure geometry. He's like there's a triangle and the triangle has this much and that's why it's going to fall this much and the areas are going to be equal to when it's closer and when it's farther away. Absolutely incredible. The genius of this guy and he's another one of these Einsteins where all of his peers were like what is going on? How is this a real person? >> Alien. >> Yeah. Um Joseph Bernoulli the guy behind Bernoulli's principle he was like what what is this guy? >> [laughter] >> Which is like again crazy to even say. >> there's a guy who has a thing named after him and he's talking about Newton like I don't I don't know dude.

1:25:18>> I don't know. I don't know. >> I just came up with one thing he came up with everything >> Absolutely amazing. Yeah. Newton's Principia the greatest the greatest work in scientific literature and I will stand by that. >> Some some of the most legendary additions to the esoteric collection in the library our second shelf of three. Again the library is a living document and so we have three remaining books that we will go through as we place our esoteric collection onto the shelf. And if you wanted an excuse to migrate from being an audio listener to watching the podcast on video coming

1:25:59soon to Apple podcast but already available on YouTube and Spotify. Uh we're having a great time today and missing how amazing uh these look and Christian holding the book up so he makes sure it gets in the clip on Instagram. >> Yeah yeah yeah no I only did that for with [laughter] you on one. >> For long-time listeners of the podcast,

Plato, the FFP logo, and the theory of forms

1:26:20you may have noticed the Platonic solids as our sort of emblem, as our logo. You're going to see it in the top right corner of our videos. The Platonic solids are something that we chose early on, at the very beginning, when we started this podcast. We were thinking about like, you know, what is what is the symbolism that encapsulates what we're trying to do. >> Yep. >> The Platonic solids are introduced in Plato's dialogues, which I have a copy of here. This next shelf, the third and final shelf, is going to consist of philosophy in a broad sense. And

1:27:01again, it's a living document, or it's a living library. So, if you guys have other books that you want to include there, please let us know. But, for now, we've got three. We're going to start with Plato's dialogues. This is a copy from way back that includes, um, both Timaeus and The Republic. Okay? So, um, in Plato's dialogue Timaeus, he introduces these Platonic solids, and he says that these are the shapes that are his answer for the question, "What is the universe made out of?" Now, I like that for the reason that he's even asking that question, right? It's

1:27:42kind of cool that someone's asking, "What is the material like what what's the stuff made out of?" And he says, "Everything is made out of Platonic solids. There's some hidden geometric building blocks that make up the world." And Timaeus is kind of like a first attempt at, you know, what we as physicists try to chase all the time, which is a unified field theory. >> Theory of everything. >> Right? A theory of everything. Well, Plato had his version of a theory of everything. I I mean, it's it's wrong. It's not made out of shapes, but I mean, if you ask string theorists, they'll say, "Yes, it's made out of shapes. It's just that the shape is in 11 dimensions." Okay. >> [laughter] >> But the the the

1:28:23the philosophy is there, right? Where like as physicists, we want to find unification. And I think Plato was one of these philosophers that really suggested that very early on. Um what I also love about Plato is the fact that, you know, in his Republic, there's the very famous allegory of the cave, which talks about how um human perceptual senses have a limitation. Okay? The fact that I mean, let's go over the allegory of the cave. The idea is that there's these philosopher kings or whatever that are creating

1:29:04real shapes, and the shapes are getting projected as shadows on a wall. And all we humans are doing are looking at the shadows and thinking that they're real. This is how the Matrix comes out to be, right? Where it's like all of our senses are actually fooling us into thinking that there's a hidden reality underneath. I mean, the deeper and deeper we go into physics, it turns out there's a lot of truth to that idea, right? The other reason why I love Platonic shapes is just the geometry of it is so cool. Um the fact that there are only five of them and no more, right? There are only five three-dimensional objects where every single face is exactly the same. You've got the tetrahedron, which is the

1:29:46triangle with a bunch of equal at four equilateral triangles. You've got the cube, obviously with square square square square. Um you've got the octahedron, the dodecahedron. And Plato in Timaeus, he constructed this like mathematical cosmology where um the physical world was consisting of these shapes, and each of the shapes had to do with an element that the universe is made out of. Like the tetrahedron was fire, the cube is Earth, the icosahedron is water, the dodecahedron is the cosmos itself, and then there's like an ether, which is crazy that he thought of an ether and then we borrowed it in the 1900s to describe how electromagnetism worked.

1:30:27Turns out that's not exactly true, but again, it's like it's very cool to see like, you know, from 2,000 years ago, 2,500 years ago, this trail of intellectual thought still coming down. Um the idea that the universe is understandable at a first principles level from building blocks. I think that's very cool. And so that's why Plato gets on our philosophy >> shelf. >> shelf. >> The inaugural selection, the inventor of the concept of Legos. >> Yes. >> And then one day the Fire Nation attacked. For those Avatar fans. The Last Airbender Avatar in the audience.

1:31:07>> Yes, that's exactly right. So, you know, we're going from Plato, which is this idea that realism um a true reality exists in the realm of forms. There's the this idea like the theory of forms. If you've seen that very famous um painting, I think it's by Raphael, it's in the Vatican, where um Plato it's it's all of the Greek philosophers in a single paint painting. Um my fav actually my favorite philosopher Diogenes, who's just a troll, is like in a corner there. Um The funni my my favorite even though Plato is awesome, >> Yeah. >> just from a personal perspective, my favorite philosopher is Diogenes, because he invented trolling.

1:31:49Um there's a famous story where Plato said, I I let I'm paraphrasing, but Plato said, um how do you define a human being? It's a featherless biped. And then and then Diogenes got a >> [laughter] >> And plucked all of his feathers. And then and then came into Plato's like lecture and he was like, "Behold, a human." [laughter] >> Diogenes the degenerate. >> Dude, he's so degenerate, right? >> And we love we love it. >> I mean, he trolled Alexander the Great, right? When Alexander the Great was like, "What can I do for you?" He's like, "Uh step out of the sun for me. You're you're you're in the way of the light." Like to Alexander the Great. Like this guy did not care.

1:32:29So, I love that about him. Um it's not someone that I let's say aspire to be, sure but uh it's he's still funny. >> Well, you sometimes you got to be the original contrarian. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was the original. Anyway, so Plato in the in this giant um painting by Raphael about it's um about all of the philosophers in the School of Athens, um there's Plato and Aristotle and Plato is pointing at the sky. Cuz he's saying that the true reality is in this world of forms, right? And we're just we're just peons looking at through our senses some random nonsense, okay? Um

1:33:11>> Some representation. >> So, yeah, some representation based on our senses. >> But not the true form itself. >> Yeah. Well, he was kind of late to the party. >> Okay. >> Because a thousand years ago the Hindus >> Of course. >> in the Upanishads wrote exactly this down, okay? The Upanishads are something that I grew up learning about. Um it's a school of Hindu philosophy called Advaita Vedanta, which is this non-dual representation of the world. The fact that consciousness and the material world are one in the same. They're not actually separate. This is very different from I think Western philosophy that talks about a creator having created creation, right?

1:33:51>> Um you know, God said, "Let there be light and there was light and then it was all good. Um in in in Hindu philosophy, especially in Advaita philosophy, Advaita means non-dual. Dvaita means two two, and then a is like a non. Um there it's one in the same. Like the the creation and the creator cannot be separated. Right. Right? I really like that, but that's that's from a more philosophical point of view. Um in the line of in the line of Plato and his idea of forms and the idea that the senses are limited. The Upanishads definitely talk about

1:34:31that a thousand years earlier. Um there's the Shvetashvatara Upanishad that talks about the origin of Maya. Maya is um this idea that when we talk about the world is an illusion, it's

The Upanishads, consciousness, and quantum reality

1:34:47Maya is the illusion. That's the Hindu sort of word for it, the Sanskrit word for it. Um it's defining this as like a cosmic mechanism that turns some singular reality, right? A singular reality into all of the manifestations that we see here today. And you know, a lot of times Now, this is where I'm I'm going off on a personal limb. A lot of times people think of Hinduism as a polytheistic religion because we've got millions of gods and all this other kind of stuff. But you know, if you if you go down to this level, it's this. >> Right. >> There's a singular reality that is getting manifested in all these sorts of forms, right? There's all these forms of

1:35:27the divine that you can worship and things like that. You don't have to worship. I don't know if I worship, but like this idea that like all of the manifestation and all of the richness that we see in the world is from a singular reality. I really like that concept. >> Not all of the gods have admin privileges. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> There there is only one super admin. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's like he's uh he he's distributing. >> Being too right. >> Right? But all of the other ones are really just >> the an extension >> them >> Yes. >> he he or she or them >> Yes. >> like being like like just like trolling >> Yes. >> [laughter] >> Yes. >> in the world >> Yes. >> right? There's another Upanishad that I really

1:36:08like which is the Kena Upanishad which maybe we'll talk about in some sense. Um that deals with the question of consciousness. The Kena Upanishad is really the who Upanishad. Like who am I? Who are you? And what is all this? Right? Um it's talking about who is the seer behind the I. The I is like this instrument that is >> Exactly. >> like taking in photons and then creating an image. >> Yeah. >> But like who is the the thingy >> And then interpreting it. And then like who defines how it's interpreted? >> Yeah, yeah, like what you interpret and what I interpret. >> Yeah. And what is the consciousness? Is it the same? >> Right. >> Right? Is it the same entity that is I mean it's it's I I don't I'm not going to say that I'm an expert in it. I'm still reading a lot and I'm still trying

1:36:49to understand the whole thing. But it's it's crazy cool that like as humans we've been thinking about this from different points of view, right? Plato's [clears throat] been thinking about the forms. The Upanishads have been thinking about the illusion. And now we get to modern quantum mechanics. >> What is real? >> with What is Real? This is an amazing book. This was actually in one of the comments when people talked about like What's the >> the book we should >> book that we should have? This is something that I already read and I'm a huge fan of this book. Adam Becker, PhD in astrophysics, I believe. Absolutely wonderful exposition of the state of reality and that question of what is real in quantum mechanics. Is

1:37:29it the wave function? >> Mhm. >> Is [clears throat] the wave function a real thing? If the wave function is a real thing, what the hell is a collapse of a wave function? >> exactly. >> Right? How come it collapses for me? And then does it also collapse for you? But then you're collapsing at a different time. So how does your collapse know that mine collapsed? Right? And it goes over um the Copenhagen interpretation. It then goes over Einstein's qualms with the Copenhagen interpretation in a way that is a lot more subtle than people give Einstein credit for. They say, "Oh, Einstein just didn't like quantum mechanics." Well, there's really good reasons why he didn't like quantum mechanics. And this goes into [clears throat] that. And then he goes into the bomb interpretation with the

1:38:11pilot waves. And he goes into the Bell Bell's inequality that we covered in the America 250 episode. And he goes into some of the real implications. Also, Everett's multi-worlds interpretation and the many worlds interpretation where there's just one giant wave function. The reason why I like Everett's many worlds interpretation is because night like, you know, it's kind of selfishly it aligns with my preexisting philosophical theories that I've learned from the Upanishads, which is there is one reality and we are all seeing manifestations of that one reality. Where Well, according to Everett, there is one universal wave function that we

1:38:51are all entangled with and I am entangled with the observation like when when I observe a photon here versus here, it's because I am entangled with the photon and so I observed it here because the part of my wave function is entangled with observing the photon here. There's another part of my wave function that is entangled with the photon being observed over there and that went over there. And I can never get access to it. >> And then that universe Spider-Man is Tobey Maguire and this universe Spider-Man is Tom Holland. >> Exactly. Yeah, this is where Marvel and everything comes in. But yeah, the reason why I'm an Everedian and a many worlds person is because, you know, I come from the Eastern philosophy of like

1:39:32a one wave function universe, a one reality universe. And that comes from my reading of the Upanishads since I was a child. So, these are the three that are going into the philosophy um shelf. And there's only three. So, if there's more, if there's some Buddhist stuff that aligns with that philosophy, I know there's some Mahayana Buddhism that goes into the world being an illusion. I'm not fully aware of Buddhist philosophy, but if you guys if you guys have um some ideas, please let us know. If there's any other philosophical books that you'd like us to to put on the shelf, please let us know. >> But now I think you guys guys kind of have an understanding of >> Exactly. You know, what we're going for.

1:40:13And it's not that um we're only going for this interpretation. >> Right. >> If there are other interpretations that are compelling, I would love to read it. Um I'm not sold cuz I don't know what's going on. >> know. That And that's being being okay saying I don't know. >> Yeah, I don't I don't know. >> I don't know. It's okay. >> a weird question. And it might be beyond science because the scientific method relies on observation. >> Right. And if what How do you rely on observation something that's unobservable? >> yeah. like I'm I'm I'm trying to question what the act of observation is. >> Exactly. >> So. >> Yes. Th- This is I The last note I'll make on this what is real um for those who are uh

1:40:54interested in a visual a visual example of this idea of the Everettian interpretation uh is the movie Cloverfield Paradox, which got really bad reviews. It's in the Cloverfield >> Yeah, no, I want to watch it because it got I I loved Cloverfield. >> it got really bad reviews, but it it dealt with this concept in a way that was intriguing. And it had, you know, it it it was sort of Marva Marvellian a little bit, but it it did it, you know, Earth was basically having a fuel crisis, an energy crisis. They built this giant

1:41:36energy producing apparatus in space and this universe and this universe bumped up against each other. >> Oh, interesting. Okay. >> then uh hijinks >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> ensues. Um and it's it's it really it was it really was an interesting way to visualize what would be the human experience of that because obviously we don't have it happen on a regular basis unless UAP >> Yeah. Interdimensional. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> They maybe into the dimensional. >> the one year anniversary episode. We're not going to not talk about it. >> it in here I think three or four times legitimately in this episode. Last thing I'll just note is when you talk about the uh the Maya

One year down—and what comes next

1:42:16as this this concept be it's it's I it's almost it's it's convenient >> The grand illusion. >> funny that we talked about the Mayans >> Yeah. >> earlier in the Amazon story and kind of that word root came back at the end here. We are again at two hour mark. For those who are still listening, which apparently is many of you because the stats are telling us >> Yeah. >> especially on on Apple podcast that many of you are listening all the way through which we are super grateful for. Thank you for making it through. We had a little bit more of a relaxed episode today. Just kind of meandering through >> Hey, we deserve it. It's been a year, okay? [laughter] >> We wanted to sort of just enjoy for a second and not be totally uh over

1:42:57analytical about the substance but it it really is a blessing um to be able to have so many of you all want to listen to these concepts, these ideas. Again, we really focus on frontier research and try to give the story arc, experimental design, and an understanding of what are we actually talking about when we say we have a high temperature memristor or that we've discovered a dark matter halo or we uh we uh model um um uh or uh MOFs uh uh organic frameworks >> um >> uh MOFs >> MOFs >> metal organic >> metal organic frameworks >> from the Nobel Prizes last year. We're going to cover the Nobel Prizes this year again. Uh we have a great episode that I'm excited about about the summer

1:43:39transfer window for American scientists. I mean, these are things that I think we find interesting and entertaining to know about and it's great to share them with you all all the time. Uh I will end with one last reminder. We're trying to build community this year. So, please go ahead and head over to ffpod.com/survey. Especially if you're still listening now, you are part of the core audience. We want to know about who you are, what you want to hear about. We don't know what to do for our community. Should we do an Instagram group? Should we do uh uh a Discord? A Discord? A TikTok group? A YouTube thing? Uh do we do something on our own? You know, where do you all live? Apparently, none of you are on X

1:44:21because we have no None of you engaged with us on X, which is fine. One less thing for us to manage. >> Yeah. >> Um but, you know, you guys always a- ask us questions and we've been really focused on just making sure the show's produced and I think now we're ready to try to figure out how do we make this a community of those of the curious and help kind of all of us connect and share in a way where we can build something powerful than its individual parts. Uh and with that, I think for the comment to leave in the comments if you made it this far is which book in the collection is your favorite. If you've already read it or you're most interested by it, uh let us know in the comments. I will leave the final word to our resident PhD before we wrap up this

1:45:03incredible 50 episode 52, our 1-year anniversary. How many weeks in a year? 52. >> Yeah. >> We did it. >> We did it. >> Um I just have to say thank you so much to all of our listeners, to all of the community that is FFP. Um I really, you know, when we started me and Lester a year ago, I don't think either of us had any idea of what this podcast would become for like us. It's really it's really like kind of become a big part of our lives. A welcome part of our lives and the whole reason is because we've got a community of you guys trying to consume

1:45:45our content, share our contact. Um we really appreciate it. There there's there's no words to say, you know, just how transformative this whole experience has been. And we hope to continue this for many years to come. So, please continue supporting us. Um giving us all of the shares, you know, talk talk about us in your labs, talk about us in your classes, in your workplace. I know there's a lot of you that just do random things. There's always room to talk about stuff that we cover in FFPPod. >> You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain, and we will be dying as heroes

1:46:26in the quest to continue to cover frontier in the history of science in a way that is accessible to everybody. I am Lester Nare, joined as always by my co-host and our resident PhD and my biffles Christian A. Choudhury. Uh we love you all. Thank you again so much. Oh, we didn't yet put these books on the third shelf. But you'll see them on the third shelf in the next episode, and we will see you all next week. >> [music]