Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
manolis kellis his fourth time on the
podcast he's a professor at mit and head
of the mit computational biology group
since this is episode number
and 42 as we all know is the answer to
the ultimate question of life the
universe and everything according to the
hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
we decided to talk about this
unanswerable question of the meaning of
life in whatever way we two descendants
of apes could muster from biology to
psychology to metaphysics and to music
quick mention of each sponsor followed
by some thoughts related to the episode
thanks to
grammarly which is a service for
checking spelling grammar sentence
structure and readability
athletic greens the all-in-one drink
that i start every day with to cover all
my nutritional bases and cash app the
app i use to send money to friends
please check out these sponsors in the
description to get a discount and to
support this podcast
as a side note let me say that the
opening 40 minutes of the conversation
are all about the many songs that formed
the soundtrack to the journey of
monolith's life it was a happy accident
for me to discover yet another dimension
of depth to the fascinating mind of
manolas i include links to youtube
versions of many of the songs we
mentioned
in the description and overlay lyrics on
occasion but if you're just listening to
this without listening to the songs or
watching the video i hope you still
might enjoy as i did the passion that
manolis has for music his singing of the
little excerpts from the songs and in
general the meaning we discuss that we
pull from the different songs
if music is not your thing i do give
timestamps to the
less musical and more philosophical
parts of the conversation
i hope you enjoy this little
experimenting conversation about music
and life
if you do please subscribe on youtube
review it with five stars on apple
podcast follow on spotify support on
patreon or connect with me on twitter at
lex friedman and now here's my
conversation with manolas kellis
you mentioned leonard cohen and the song
hallelujah as a beautiful song
so
what are the three
songs you draw the most meaning from
about life
don't
get me started so there's really
countless songs that have marked me that
have sort of shaped me in periods of joy
and imperials of sadness
my son likes to joke that i have a song
for every sentence he will say because
very often i will break into a song with
a sentence he'll say
my wife calls me the radio
because i i can sort of recite hundreds
of songs uh that have really shaped me
so it's very it's gonna be very hard to
just pick a few so i'm just gonna tell
you a little bit about my
song transition
as i've grown up in greece it was very
much about as i told you before the
misery the poverty but also a very
calming adversity so some of the songs
that i that have really shaped me are uh
harry salixiu for example is one of my
favorite singers uh in greece
and then there's also really just old
traditional songs that my parents used
to listen to like one of them is
[Music]
which is basically oh if i was
rich
and the song is painting this beautiful
picture about all the noises that you
hear in the neighborhood in his poor
neighborhood the train going by the
priest walking to the church and the
kids crying next door and all of that
and he says with all of that i'm having
trouble falling asleep and dreaming
if i was rich and then it was like you
know um
break into that so it's this
juxtaposition between the spirit and the
sublime and then the physical and the
harsh reality it's just not having
troubles not not not being miserable so
basically rich to him just means out of
my misery basically
and then also being able to travel being
able to sort of be the captain of a ship
and you know see the world and stuff
like that so it's just such a beautiful
image so many of the greek songs just
like the poetry we talked about they
acknowledge
the the cruelty the difficulty of life
but are longing for a better life that's
exactly right and another one is the
holy yeah and this is one of those songs
that has like a fast and joyful half and
a slow and sad half and it goes back and
forth between them and it's like
[Music]
so poor you know basically
uh it's the state of being poor i don't
i don't even know if there's a word for
that
in english and then fast parties
and then it's like oh you know um
basically
like the state of being poor and misery
uh you know for you i write all my songs
etc and then the fast part is in your
arms grew up and
suffered and you know stood up and
you know rose
men with clear vision
this whole concept of
taking on the world
with nothing to lose because you've seen
the worst of it
this imagery of
silaki pariso pula jarastakori so it's
describing the young men as cypress
trees
and that's probably one of my earliest
exposure to a metaphor to sort of you
know this very rich imagery and i love
about the fact that i was reading a
story to my kids the other day and it
was dark
and my daughter who's six is like oh can
i please see the pictures and jonathan
was
eight so some of my daughter cleo uh is
like oh let's look at the pictures and
my son jonathan he's like but but cleo
if you look at the pictures it's just an
image
if you just close your eyes and listen
it's a video
that's brilliant it's beautiful
and he's basically showing just how much
more the human imagination has
besides just a few images that you know
the book will give you and then another
one oh gosh this one is really like
miserable
it's it's called perigali
uh and it's basically describing how
uh
vigorously we took on our life and we
pushed hard towards the direction that
we then realized was the wrong one
[Music]
and it again these songs give you so
much perspective there's no songs like
that in english that will basically you
know sort of just smack you in the face
about sort of the passion and the force
and the drive and then it turns out ah
we just
followed the wrong life yeah and it's
like wow
okay so that was you all right so that
that's like before 12. so so you know
growing up in sort of this
horrendously miserable you know sort of
view of romanticism of you know
suffering
so then my pre-teen years is like you
know learning english through songs so
basically you know listening to all the
american pop songs and then memorizing
them vocally before i even knew what
they meant
so you know madonna and michael jackson
and all of these sort of really popular
songs and you know george michael
just songs that i would just listen to
the radio and repeat vocally and
eventually as i started learning english
i was like oh wow this thing i've been
repeating i know i now understand what
it means without re-listening to it but
just with re-repeating it was like oh
again michael jackson's man in the
mirror is uh teaching you that it's your
responsibility to just improve yourself
you know if you want to make the world a
better place take a look at yourself and
make the change this whole concept of
again i mean all of these songs you can
listen to them shallowly or you can just
listen to them and say
oh there's deeper meaning here and i
think there's a certain philosophy of of
song as a way of touching the psyche so
if you look at regions of the brain
people have lost their language ability
because they have an accident in that
region of the brain can actually
sing
because it's exactly the symmetric
region of the brain
and that again teaches you so much about
language evolution
and sort of the the duality of
musicality and you know rhythmic
patterns and
eventually language do you have a sense
of why songs developed so you're kind of
suggesting that it's possible that
there is something important about our
connection with song and with music on
the level of
the importance of language is it
possible
it's not just possible in my view
language comes after music language
comes after song no seriously like
basically my view of human cognitive
evolution
is
rituals
if you look at many early cultures
there's rituals around every stage of
life
there's organized dance performances
around mating
and if you look at mate selection i mean
that's an evolutionary drive right there
so basically if you're not able to
string together a complex dance as a
bird you don't get a mate and that
actually forms
this development for many song learning
birds not every bird knows how to sing
and not every bird knows how to learn a
complicated song so basically there's
birds that simply have the same few
tunes that they know how to play and a
lot of that is inherent and genetically
encoded and others are birds that learn
how to sing
and the you know
if you look at a lot of these exotic
birds of paradise and stuff like that
like the mating rituals they have are
enormously amazing and i think human
mating rituals of you know ancient
tribes are not very far off from that
and in my view the sequential formation
of these movements
is a prelude to the cognitive
capabilities that ultimately enable
language
and it's fascinating to think that
that's uh not just an accidental
precursor to intelligence yeah it's uh
sexually selected it's well sexually
selected and it's a prerequisite yeah
it's like it's required for intelligence
and and even as language has now
developed
i think the artistic expression
is needed like badly needed by our brain
so it's not just that oh our brain can
kind of you know take a break and go do
that stuff no i mean you know i don't
know if you remember that scene from oh
gosh we're certain technical movie in
new hampshire
uh
all all working no play make jackal dull
boy boy uh the shining the shining
so there's this amazing scene where he's
constantly trying to to concentrate and
what what's coming out of the
typewriters is gibberish
and i have that image as well when i'm
when i'm working and i'm like no
basically all of this crazy you know
huge number of hobbies that i have
they're not just
tolerated by my work they're required by
my work this ability of sort of
stretching your brain in all these
different directions
is
connecting your emotional self and your
cognitive self
and that's a prerequisite to being able
to be cognitively capable at least in my
view yeah i wonder if the world without
art and music
you're just making me realize that
perhaps that world would be not just
devoid of
fun things to look at or listen to but
devoid of all the other stuff all the
bridges and rockets and science exactly
exactly creativity is not disconnected
from art
and you know my kids i mean you know i
could be
doing the full math treatment to them no
they play the piano and they play the
violin and they play sports i mean this
whole you know sort of movement
and
going through mazes and playing tennis
and you know playing soccer and avoiding
obstacles and all of that
that forms your three-dimensional view
of the world
being able to actually move and run and
play in three dimensions
is extremely important for math for you
know stringing together complicated
concepts
it's the same underlying cognitive
machinery
that is used for navigating mazes and
for
navigating theorems
and sort of solving equations so i can't
you know i can't have a conversation
with my students without you know sort
of either using my hands or
opening the white board in
zoom and just constantly drawing or you
know back when we had in-person meetings
just the whiteboard in my lifeboard yeah
that that's fascinating to think about
uh so that's michael jackson man amir
careless whisper george michael which is
the song i like
whisper i mean i didn't say that i like
that one that's me i had two parties i
had recorded no no that it's an amazing
song for me i had recorded a small part
of it as it played at the tail end of
the radio and i had a tape where i only
had part of that song
over and over and over again just so
beautiful it's so heartbreaking
that song is almost greek it's so
heartbreaking i know
george michael he's greek is he great
he's greek he's known george michael
he's right i mean he's greedy yeah
you know
so sorry to offend you so deeply not
knowing this
so okay so anyway so we're moving to
france when i'm 12 years old and now i'm
getting into the songs of gansburg
so gansburg is this incredible french
composer he is always seen on stage like
not even pretending to try to please
just like with his cigarette just like
mumbling his songs but the lyrics are
unbelievable like basically entire
sentences will rhyme he will say the
same thing twice and you're like
whoa
[Laughter]
and in fact another speaking of greek a
french greek george mustachy
this song is just magnificent avec
magulo demetec de chief eran de
patragrec so with my
face of
metec is actually a greek word it's uh
you know it's a french word for a greek
word but met mean comes from meta and
then ek from ikea from ecology which
means home so medtech is someone who has
changed homes for a migrant so with my
face of a migrant and and you'll love
this one the juice
the patrick
of a meandering jew
of greek pastor
[Laughter]
so again you know the russian greek you
know jew orthodox connection so
emesis
with my hair in the four wings avec
mesut de la vega
with my eyes that are all washed out who
gives me the pretense of dreaming but
who don't dream that much anymore with
my hands of thief of musician
and who have
stolen so many gardens with my mouth
that has drunk that has
kissed and that has bitten without ever
pleasing its hunger
with my
skin that has been rubbed
in the sun of all the summers
and anything that was wearing a skirt
with my heart
and then you have to listen to this
first it's so beautiful
fair with my heart that
knew how to make suffer as much as it
suffered
but
was able to that knew how to make in
french is actually
fair
that knew how to make yes
verses that span the whole thing it's
just beautiful you know
yeah on a small tangent do you know jack
jacques
bro
of course of course
that song gets me every time so there's
a cover of that song by one of my
favorite female artists not nina simone
no no no no
modern carol emerald
she's um from amsterdam
and uh she
she has a version of new mexico where
she's actually added some english lyrics
[Music]
and it's it's really beautiful but again
the mekita pai is just so i mean it's
you know the promises yeah the volcanoes
that you know will restart yeah it's
just so beautiful
and uh i love so there's not many songs
that so
sh shows such depth of desperation for
another human being that that's so
powerful
[Music]
and then high school now i'm starting to
learn english so i moved to new york so
stings englishman in new york
yeah magnificent song and again there's
if manners magus man has someone said
then he's the hero of the day
it takes a man to suffer ignorance and
smile
be yourself
no matter what they say
and then
takes more than combat gear to make a
man
takes more than a license for a gun
confront your enemies avoid them when
you can
a gentleman will walk but never run
it's it again
you're talking about songs that teach
you how to live i mean this is one of
them basically says it's not the combat
gear that makes a man where's the part
where he says uh there you go
gentle uh gentleness sobriety a rare in
this society at night a candle is
brighter than the sun
so beautiful he basically says well you
just might be the only one
modesty propriety can lead to notoriety
you could end up as the only one it's um
it basically tells you you don't have to
be like the others be yourself show
kindness
show generosity don't you know don't let
that anger get to you
you know the song fragile how fragile we
are how fragile we are so again as in
greece i didn't even know what that
meant how fragile we are but the song
was so beautiful and then eventually i
learned english and i actually
understand the lyrics and the song is
actually written
after the contras murdered ben linder in
1987 and the us eventually turned
against supporting
these guerrillas
and it was just a political song but so
such a realization that you can't win
with violence basically
and that song starts with the most
beautiful poetry so if blood will flow
when flesh and steel are won
drying in the color of the evening sun
tomorrow's rain
will wash the stains away
but something in our minds will always
stay
perhaps this final act was meant to
clinch a lifetime's argument that
nothing comes from violence and nothing
ever could
for all those born beneath an angry star
lest we forget how fragile we are
damn right
i mean that's poetry
it was beautiful
and he's using the english language in
just such a
refined way
with deep meanings but also words that
rhyme just so beautifully
and
evocations of when flesh and steel are
won
i mean it's just mind-boggling yeah and
then of course the refrain that
everybody remembers is on and on the
rain will fall
etc but like this beginning
yeah
and again tears from a star how fragile
we are i mean just these rhymes are just
flowing so naturally this something it's
it seems that more meaning comes when
there's a rhythm that uh i don't know
what what that is that probably connects
to exactly what you're saying if you pay
close attention you will notice that the
more obvious words sometimes are the
second verse
and the less obvious are often the first
verse
because it makes the second verse flow
much more naturally
because otherwise it feels contrived oh
you went and found this like unusual
word yes
in dark moments uh the whole album of
pink floyd and the movie just marked me
enormously yeah as a as a teenager just
the wall
um and there's one song that never
actually made it into the album that's
only there in the movie about when the
tigers broke free and the tigers are the
tanks of the germans
and
it just describes again this vivid
imagery it was just before dawn one
miserable morning in black 44
when the forward commander was told to
sit tight when he asked that his men be
withdrawn
and the generals gave thanks as the
other ranks held back
the enemy tanks
for a while and the ancient
bridgehead was held for the price of a
few hundred ordinary lives
so that's a theme that keeps coming back
in pink floyd with us versus them
us and them god only knows that's not
what we would choose
to do
forward he cried from the rear
and the front rows
died from another song it's like this
whole concept of us versus them and
there's that theme of us versus them
again where the child
is discovering how his father died when
he finds an old and founded one day in a
draw the whole photographs hidden away
and my eyes still grow damp to remember
his majesty signed with his own rubber
stamp
so
it's so ironic because it seems the way
that he's writing it that he's not
crying because his father was lost he's
crying because kind old king george
took the time to actually write mother a
note about the fact that his father died
it's so ironic because he basically says
we are just ordinary men and of course
we're disposable
so i don't know if you know the root of
the word pioneers
but
you had a chess board here earlier a
pawn
in france is a pyong
they are the ones that you send to the
front to get murdered slaughter this
whole concept of pioneers having taken
these whole disposable ordinary men
to actually be the ones that you know
we're now treating as heroes
so anyway there's this just supposition
of that and then the part that always
just strikes me is the music and the
tonality totally changes and now he
describes the attack
it was dark all around there was frost
in the ground
when the tigers broke free
and no one survived from the royal
fusiliers company z
they were all left behind most of them
dead
the rest of them dying
and that's how the high command
took my daddy from me
and that song even though it's not in
the album
explains the whole movie
because it's this movie of misery it's
this movie of
someone being stuck in their head and
not being able to get out of it there's
no other movie that i think has captured
so well
this
prison that is someone's own mind
and this wall that you're stuck inside
in this you know
feeling of loneliness
and so if is there anybody out there
uh and you know sort of hello hello is
there anybody in there
just not if you can hear me
is there anyone who
[Music]
anyway so yeah the prison of your mind
so those are the darker moments exactly
these are the darker moments
yeah it's in the darker moments the mind
does feel
like you're you're trapped in alone in a
room with it yeah and there's this this
scene in the movie which like where he
just breaks out with his guitar and
there's this prostitute in the room he
starts throwing stuff and then he like
you know breaks the window he throws the
chair outside and then you see him
laying in the pool with his own blood
like you know everywhere and then
there's these endless hours spent fixing
every little thing and lining it up
and it's this whole sort of mania versus
you know
you can spend hours building up
something and just destroy it in a few
seconds
one of my turns is that song and it's
like
i feel
cold as eternity
dry as a funeral
drum and then the music people are
saying run to the bedroom there's a
suitcase on the left you'll find my
favorite axe
don't look so frightened this is just a
passing phase one of my bad days it's
just so beautiful i need to rewatch it
that's so yeah but imagine you're
watching this as a teenager
it like ruins your mind
like so many
such harsh imagery and then um you know
anyway so so there's the dark moment and
then again going back to sting
now it's the political songs russians
and i think that song
should be a
a new national anthem for the u.s not
for russians but for red versus blue
mr khrushchev says we will bury you i
don't subscribe to this point of view
it'd be such an ignorant thing to do
if the russians love their children too
what is it doing it's basically saying
the russians are just as humans as we
are
there's no way that they're going to let
their children die
and then it's just so beautiful how can
i save my innocent boy from
oppenheimer's
deadly toy and now that's the new
national anthem are you reading
there isn't no monopoly of common sense
on either side of the political fence
we share the same biology
regardless of ideology
believe me when i say to you
i hope the russians love their children
too
[Music]
there's no such thing as a winnable war
it's a lie we don't believe anymore
i mean it's beautiful right and for
god's sake america wake up
these are your fellow americans they're
your your fellow biology you know there
is no monopoly of common sense on either
side of the political fans it's just so
beautiful there's no crisper
simpler way to say russians love their
children too the the common humanity
yeah and remember the what i was telling
you i think in one of her first podcasts
about the
the daughter who's crying for her
husband from for her brother to come
back for more and then the virgin mary
appears and says who should i take
instead this turk here's his family
here's his children
this other one he just got married etc
and that basically says no i mean if you
look at the lord of the rings
the enemies are these monsters they're
not human and that's what we always do
we always say they you know they're not
like us they're different they're not
humans etc so there's this
dehumanization that has to happen for
people to go to war
you know if you realize just how close
we are genetically one with the other
this whole 99.9 identical
you can't bear weapons against someone
who's like that
and the things that are the most
meaningful to us in our life lies at
every level is the same
on all sides on both sides exactly so
not just that we're genetically the same
yeah we're ideologically the same we
love our children we love our country we
will you know we will fight for
our family
yeah so
and the last one i mentioned last time
we spoke which is johnny mitchell's both
sides now
so
she she has three rounds one on clouds
one on love and one on life
and on cloud she says
rose and flows of angel hair and ice
cream castles in the air and feather
canyons everywhere have looked at clouds
that way
but now they only block the sun
they rain and snow on everyone
so many things i would have done
but clouds got in my way
and then i've looked at clouds from both
sides now from up and down and still
somehow it's
clouds illusions i recall
i really don't know clouds
at all
and then she goes on about love how it's
super super happy or it's about misery
and loss and about life how it's about
winning and losing and so so forth but
now old friends are acting strange they
shake their heads they say i've changed
well some things lost since something's
gained and living every day
so again that's growing up and realizing
that well
the view that you had as a kid is not
necessarily that you have as an adult i
remember my poem from when i was 16
years old of this whole
you know children dance now all in row
and then in the end even though the snow
seems bright without you have lost their
light sound that sang and moon that
smiled so this whole concept of if you
have love and if you have passion you
see the exact same thing from a
different way you can go out running in
the rain or you could just stay in and
say ah
sucks i won't be able to go outside now
both sides anyway and the last one is
last last one from leonard cohen this is
amazing by the way you're
i'm so glad we stumbled on how much how
much joy you have in so many
avenues of life and music is just one of
them that's amazing but yes leno cohen
going back to the undercover and since
that's where you started so uh leonard
cohen's danced me to the end of love
that's what that was our opening song in
our wedding with my wife oh no that's
what came out to greet the guest he was
dancing to the end of love
and then another one which is just so
passionate always and we always keep
referring back to it is uh i'm your man
and it goes on and on about sort of i
can be every type of lover for you and
what's really beautiful in marriage is
that we live that with my with my wife
every day
you can have the passion you can have
the anger you can have the love you can
have the tenderness there's just so many
gems in that song if you want a partner
take my hand or if you want to strike me
down in anger
here i stand
i'm your man
then if you want a boxer i will step
into the ring for you
if you want a driver climb inside
or if you want to take me for a ride
you know you can so this whole concept
of you want to drive
i'll follow you want me to drive i'll
drive
um and the difference i would say
between like that and namaki to paw is
this song he's got an attitude he's like
uh he's proud of this his ability to
basically be any kind of man for the
money as opposed to the
jacques brown like
desperation of
what do i have to be for you to love me
that kind of desperation
but but but notice there's a parallel
here there's a verse that is perhaps not
paid attention to as much which says
ah but a man never got a woman back
not by begging on his knees
so it seems that the amber man is
actually an apology song
in the same way that number kitty pie is
an apology song
i'm sorry baby and in the same way that
the careless whisper is now screwed up
yes that's right i'm never gonna dance
again
guilty feet have got no rhythm
um so so this is an apology song not by
begging on his knees or i'd crawl to you
baby and i'd fall at your feet and not
howl at your beauty like a dog
heat and i'd close at your heart not
tear at your sheet i'd say please
and then
the the last one is so beautiful
if you want a father
for your child
or only one to walk with me a while
across the sand
i'm your man
that's the the last verses which
basically says you want me for a day
i'll be there do you want me to walk
i'll be there you want me for life if
you want a father for your child i'll be
there too it's just so beautiful oh
sorry remember i told you i was going to
finish with a lighthearted song yes ah
last one you ready
so yeah
alison krause and union station country
song believe it or not the lucky one
so
i i've never identified as much with the
uh lyrics of a song
as this one and it's hilarious my friend
serving patoglo
is the guy who got me to genomics in the
first place i owe enormously to him and
he's another greek we actually met
dancing believe or not so we used to
perform greek dances uh i was the
president of the international students
association so we put on these big
performances for 500 people at mit
and uh there's a picture on the mit tech
where seraphim who's like you know
bodybuilder was holding on his shoulder
and i was like like doing maneuvers in
the air basically um so anyway this guy
seraphim um we were driving back from um
a conference and there's this russian
girl who was describing how every member
of her family had been either killed by
the communists or killed by the germans
were killed
like she had just like you know misery
like death and you know sickness and
everything everyone was decimated in her
family she was the last standing member
and we stopped at a the serpent was
driving and we stopped at a at a rest
area and he he takes me aside and he's
like manolis we're gonna crash
[Laughter]
get her out of my car
and then he basically says but but but
i'm only reassured because you're here
with me and i'm like what do you mean
he's like he you know he's like from
your smile
i know you're the luckiest man on the
planet
so there's this really funny thing where
i just feel freaking lucky all the time
and it's an it's a question of attitude
of course i'm not any luckier than any
other person but if it's science
something horrible happens to me i'm
like and in fact even in that song the
the song about sort of you know walking
on the beach and this you know sort of
taking our life the wrong way and then
you know having to turn around at some
point he's like you know in the fresh
sand we wrote her name
aurea buffy so bad so shows how nicely
that the wind blew
and the writing was erased
so again it's this whole sort of
not just
saying ah bummer but oh great i just
lost this this must mean something
right
horrible thing happened it must open uh
that's the door turns and you do a
beautiful chapter so so alison krause is
talking about the lucky one so i was
like oh my god she wrote a song for me
and she goes you're the lucky one i know
that now as free as the wind blowing
down the road loved by many hated by
none i'd say you were lucky cause you
know what you've done not the care in
the world not the worrying side
everything's gonna be all right cause
you're the lucky one
and then she goes uh you're the lucky
one always having fun a jack of all
trades a master of none you look at the
world with the smiling eyes and laugh at
the devil as his train rolls by i'll
give you a song and a one-night stand
you'll be looking at the happy man
because you're the lucky one it
basically says
if you just don't worry too much
if you don't try to be
you know
a one
hor a one-trick pony if you just embrace
the fact that you might suck at a bunch
of things but you're just gonna try a
lot of things and then there's another
verse that says
well you're blessed i guess but never
knowing which road you're choosing to
you the next best thing to playing and
winning is playing and losing
it's just so beautiful
because it basically says
if you try
your best
but it's still playing if you lose it's
okay you had an awesome game
and um again superficially it sounds
like a super happy song but then there's
a the last verse basically says no
matter where you are that's where you'll
be you can bet your luck won't follow me
just give you a song and then one night
stand you'll be looking at a happy man
and in the video of the song she just
walks away or he just walks away or
something like that
and it basically tells you that freedom
comes at a price freedom comes at the
price of non-commitment this whole sort
of vertical love of births will cry
you can't really love
unless you cry you can't just be the
lucky one the happy boy
and yet have a long-term relationship
so it's you know on one hand i identify
with the shallowness of this song of you
know you're the lucky one jack of all
trades or master none
but at the same time i identify with a
lesson of well you can't just be the
happy mary go lucky all the time
sometimes you have to embrace loss and
sometimes you have to embrace suffering
and sometimes you have to embrace that
if you have a safety net you're not
really committing enough
you're not you know basically you're
allowing yourself to slip
but if you just go all in
and you just you know let go of your
reservations that's when you truly will
get somewhere
so anyway that's like the the i managed
to narrow it down to what 15 songs
thank you for that wonderful journey
that you just took us on the the the the
darkest possible places of
greek
song to uh to ending in this a country
song i haven't heard it before but uh
that's exactly right i feel the same way
depending depending on the day is this
the luckiest human on earth
and there's some there's something to
that but you're right
it it needs to be
we need to now return to the muck of
life in order to be able to
to uh
to truly enjoy it so that's what you
mean muck what's muck
uh the messiness of life the
things the word things don't
turn out the way you expect it to yeah
the way so like to feel lucky is like
focusing on the on the beautiful
consequences yeah but then that feeling
of things being different than you
expected that uh
you stumble in all the kinds of ways
that that seems to be needs to be paired
with the feeling there's basically one
way the only way not to make mistakes is
to never do anything
right basically you have to embrace the
fact that you'll be wrong so many times
in so many research meetings
i just go off on a tangent and say
let's think about this for a second and
it's just crazy for me who's a computer
scientist to just tell my biologist
friends what if biology kind of worked
this way
and they humor me they just let me talk
and
rarely has it not gone somewhere good
it's not that i'm always right but it's
always something worth exploring further
that
if you're an outsider with humility
and knowing that i'll be wrong a bunch
of times but i'll challenge your
assumptions
you know and often take us to a better
place
is part of this whole sort of messiness
of life like if you don't try and lose
and get hurt and suffer and cry and just
break your heart and all these feelings
of guilt and you know wow i did the
wrong thing
of course that's part of life and that's
just something that you know
if you are the a doer
you'll make mistakes
if you're a criticizer yeah sure you can
still sit back and criticize everybody
else for the mistakes they make
or instead you can just be out there
making those mistakes and frankly i'd
rather be the criticized one than the
criticizer
brilliantly put every time somebody
steals my bicycle i say well i know my
son is like why do they steal our
bicycle that and i'm like
aren't aren't you happy that you have
bicycles that people can steal
i'd rather be the person stolen from
than the steeler yeah
not the critic that counts yeah so
that's we've just
talked amazingly about life from the
music perspective
let's uh
talk about life from human life from
perhaps other perspective and it's
meaning so this is episode
142.
uh
there is perhaps uh
an absurdly uh
deep
meaning to the number 42 that uh
the our culture has has elevated so this
is a perfect time to talk about the
meaning of life we've talked about it
already but do you think this question
that's so simple
and so seemingly absurd
has value of what is the meaning of life
is it something
that
raising the question and trying to
answer it
is that a ridiculous pursuit or is this
some value is it answerable at all
so first of all i i feel that we owe it
to your listeners to say why 42 sure
so of course the hitchhiker's guide to
the galaxy came up with 42 as basically
a random number just you know
the author just pulled it out of a hat
and he's admitted so he said mile 42
just seemed like
just random numbers any
but in fact there's many numbers that
are linked to 42. so
42 again just just to summarize is the
answer that these super mega computer
that had computed for a million years
with the most powerful computer in the
world had come up with at some point the
computer says um
i have an answer
and they're like
what
it's like you're not going to like it
like what is it it's 42.
and then the irony is that they had
forgotten of course what the question
was yes
so now they have to build a bigger
computer to figure out what the question
was the question to which the answer is
42. so as i was turning 42 i basically
sort of researched uh why 42 is such a
cool number and it turns out that and i
put together this little passage that
was explaining to all those guests to my
42nd birthday party why we were talking
about the meaning of life
and
basically talked about how 42 is the
angle
at which light reflects off of water to
create a rainbow
and it's so beautiful because the
rainbow is basically the combination of
sort of it's been raining but there's
hope because the sun just came out it's
a very beautiful number there so 42 is
also the sum of all rows and columns of
a magic cube that contains all
consecutive integers starting at one
so basically if you if you take all
integers between one and however many
vertices there are the sums is always
42.
42 is the only number
left under 100 for which the equation of
x to the cube plus y to the q plus z to
the cube is n
and was not known to not have a solution
and now
it's the you know it's the only one that
actually has a solution
42 is also 1 0 1 0 1 0 in binary again
the yin and the yang the good and the
evil one and zero the balance of the
force
42 is the number of chromosomes for the
giant panda
and the giant panda
i know it's totally random
or a suspicious symbol of great strength
coupled with peace friendship gentle
temperament harmony balance and
friendship whose black and white colors
again symbolize yin and yang the reason
why it's the symbol for china
is exactly the strength but yet peace
and so forth so 42 chromosomes
it takes light
10 to the minus 42 seconds to cross the
diameter of a proton
connecting the two fundamental
dimensions of space and time
42 is the number of times a piece of
paper should be folded to reach beyond
the moon
so
um
which is what i assume my students mean
when they ask
that their paper reaches for the stars i
just tell them just fold it a bunch of
times
42 is
the number of messier object 42 which is
orion and that's you know
one of the most famous
galaxies it's i think also the place
where we can actually see the center of
our galaxy
uh 42 is the numeric representation of
the star symbol in ascii
which is very useful when searching for
the stars yeah and also a regex for life
the universe and everything so star
[Laughter]
in egyptian mythology the goddess ma'at
which was personifying truth and justice
would ask 42 questions to every dying
person and those answering successfully
would become stars continue to give life
and fuel universal growth
in judaic tradition goddess scribe is
ascribed a 42-lettered name entrusted
only to the middle age pius meek free
from bad temper
sober and not insistent on his rights
and in christian tradition there's 42
generations from abraham
isaac that we talked about the story of
isaac jacob eventually joseph mary and
jesus
in kabbalistic tradition eloka which is
42 is the number with which god creates
the universe
starting with 25 letter b and ending
with 17
good
so 25 plus you know
17.
there's this 42 chapter sutra which is
the first indian religious scripture
which was translated to chinese thus
introducing buddhism to china
from india
the 42 line bible was the first printed
book making the mark marking the age of
printing in the 1450s and the
dissemination of knowledge eventually
leading to the enlightenment
a yeast cell which is uh called a single
cell eukaryote and the subject of my phd
research has exactly 42 million proteins
anyway so so there's seriously you're on
fire with this these are really good so
i guess what you're saying is just a
random number
yeah basically
so all of these are acronyms so you know
after you have the number you figure out
why that don't work so anyway so uh now
that we've spoken about why 42 uh why do
we search for meaning
and uh you're asking you know will that
search ultimately lead to our
destruction and my my thinking is
exactly the opposite so basically that
asking
about meaning is something that's so
inherent to human nature it's something
that makes life beautiful that makes it
worth living and that searching for
meaning is actually the point it's not
defining it i think when you found it
you're dead
yeah don't don't ever be satisfied that
you know i've got it so i like to say
that life is lived forward
but it only makes sense backward
and i don't remember whose quote that is
but
the the the whole search itself
is the meaning
and what i love about it is that
there's a double search going on there's
a search in every one of us through our
own lives to find meaning
and then there's a search which is
happening for humanity itself
to find our meaning
and
we as humans like to look at animals and
say of course they have a meaning
like a dog has its meaning it's just a
bunch of instincts you know running
around loving everything
um you know remember a joke with a cat
in the dark
no no
so so
um and i i'm noticing the yin yang
symbol right here with this whole panda
black and white and the zero one zero
one five with that 42. some of those are
gold ascii value for uh the star symbol
damn anyway so so basically in my view
the the search for meaning and the act
of
uh searching for something more
meaningful
is
life's meaning by itself but the fact
that we kind of always hope that yes
maybe for animals that's not the case
but maybe humans have something that we
should be doing and something else and
it's not just about procreation it's not
just about
dominance it's not just about strength
and feeding et cetera like we're the one
species that spends such a tiny little
minority of its time feeding
that we have this enormous you know huge
cognitive capability
that we can just use for all kinds of
other stuff
and that's where art comes in that's
where you know the healthy mind comes in
with you know exploring all of these
different aspects that are just not
directly tied
to um
to a purpose that's not directly tied to
a function it's really just the the
playing of life the you know
not not for particular reason
do you think this thing we got this this
mind
is unique in the universe
in terms of how difficult it is to build
so
is it possible that we're the
the most beautiful thing that the
universe has constructed
both the most beautiful the most ugly
but certainly the most complex so look
at evolutionary time uh the dinosaurs
ruled the earth for 135 million years
we've been around for a million years
so
one versus 135. so dinosaurs were
extinct you know about 60 million years
ago and mammals that had been happily
evolving as tiny little creatures for 30
million years then took over the planet
and then you know dramatically radiated
about 60 million years ago
out of these mammals came the neocortex
formation so basically the the neocortex
which is sort of the outer layer of our
brain
compared to our quote-unquote reptilian
brain which we share the structure of
with all of the dinosaurs they didn't
have that and yet they ruled the planet
so how many other planets have still you
know mindless dinosaurs where strength
was the only dimension
uh ruling the planet
so
there was something weird that
annihilated the dinosaurs and again you
could look at biblical things of sort of
god coming and wiping out his creatures
and yes to make room for the next ones
so
the mammals basically sort of took off
the planet and then grew
this cognitive capability of this
general-purpose machine
and primates
push that to extreme and humans among
primates have just exploded that
hardware but that hardware
is selected for
survival
it's selected for procreation
it's initially selected with this very
simple darwinian view of the world
of random mutation ruthless selection
and then selection for making more of
yourself
if you look at
human cognition
it's gone down a weird evolutionary path
in the sense that
we are expending an enormous amount of
energy on this apparatus between our
ears
that is wasting what 15 of our bodily
energy 20 like some enormous percentage
of our
calories go to function our brain
no other species makes that big of a
commitment that has basically taken
energetic changes
for efficiency on the metabolic side for
humanity
to basically power that thing
and our brain is both enormously more
efficient than other brains
but also despite this efficiency
enormously more energy consuming
so and if you look at just the sheer
folds that the human brain has
again our skull could only grow so much
before it could no longer go through the
pelvic opening
and
kill the mother at every birth so
but yet the fault continued effectively
creating just so much more capacity
the evolutionary
uh context in which this was made
is enormously fascinating and it has to
do with
other humans that we have now killed off
or that have gone extinct
and that has now created this weird
place of humans on the planet as the
only species that has this enormous
hardware
so that can basically make us think that
there's something very weird and unique
that happened in human evolution that
perhaps has not been recreated elsewhere
maybe the asteroid didn't hit you know
sister earth
and the dinosaurs are still ruling and
you know any any kind of proto-human is
squished and eaten for breakfast
basically
however we're not as unique as we like
to think because there was this enormous
diversity of other human-like forms
and once you make it to that stage where
you have a neocortex-like explosion of
wow we're now competing on intelligence
and we're now competing on social
structures and we're now competing on
larger and larger
groups and being able to
coordinate
and being able to have empathy
the concept of
empathy the concept of an ego the
concept of a self of self-awareness
comes probably
from
being able to project
another person's intentions
to understand what they mean when you
have these large cognitive groups
large social groups so
me being able to sort of create a mental
model of how you think
may have come before i was able to
create a
personal mental model of how do i think
so this introspection probably came
after
this sort of
projection and this empathy which
basically means you know passion pathos
suffering
but basically sensing so basically
empathy means feeling what you're
feeling
trying to project your emotional state
onto my cognitive apparatus
and i think that
is
what eventually led to
this enormous cognitive explosion that
happened in humanity so
you know
life itself in my view is
inevitable on every planet inevitable
inevitable
but the evolution of life to
self-awareness and cognition and all the
incredible things that humans have done
you know that might not be as inevitable
that's your intuition so uh if you were
to sort of uh estimate and bet some
money on it if we
re-ran earth
a million times
would what we got now be the most
special thing and how often would it be
so
scientifically speaking how repeatable
is this experiment
so this whole cognitive revolution yes
maybe not
maybe not basically
i feel that the longevity of
you know dinosaurs
suggests that it was not quite
inevitable that we uh
that we humans eventually
uh made it
what you're also implying one thing here
you're saying you're implying that
humans also don't have this longevity
this is the interesting question so with
the fermi paradox the idea that the
basic question is like
if if the universe has a lot of uh alien
life forms in it why haven't we seen
them yeah and one thought is that there
is a great filter or multiple great
filters that basically would destroy
intelligent civilizations like we this
thing that we you know this
multi-folding brain that can keeps
growing may not be such a big feature it
might be useful for survival
but it like takes us
down a uh side road that is a very short
one with a quick dead end what do you
think about that so
i think the universe is enormous
not just in space but also in time
and
the
the pretense that you know the last
blink of an instant that we've been able
to send radio waves is when somebody
should have been paying attention to our
planet
he's a little ridiculous
so my you know what i love about star
wars yes is a long long time ago in a
galaxy far far away it's not like some
distant future it's a long long time ago
what i love about it is that basically
says
you know evolution and civilization
are just so recent
in
you know on earth like there's countless
other planets that have probably all
kinds of life forms
multicellular perhaps and so forth
but
the fact that humanity has only been
listening and emitting for just this
tiny little blink
means that any of these
you know alien civilizations would need
to be paying attention to every single
insignificant planet out there
and you know again i mean the movie
contact and the book is just so
beautiful this whole concept of we don't
need to travel
physically we can travel as light we can
send instructions for people to create
machines that will allow us to beam down
light and recreate ourselves
and in the book you know the aliens
actually take over
they're not as friendly
but
you know this concept that we have to
eventually go and conquer every planet i
mean i think that yes we will become a
galactic species so you you have um hope
well you said thank