Charting the Architecture of the Universe & Human Life | Dr. Brian Keating

1. 0:00 – 2:07

   Dr. Brian Keating

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (uptempo music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Brian Keating. Dr. Brian Keating is a professor of cosmology at the University of California San Diego. Today's discussion is perhaps the most zoomed out discussion that we've ever had on this podcast. What I mean by that is today we talk about the origins of the universe. We talk about the earth's relationship to the sun and to the other planets. We talk a lot about optics, so not just the neuroscience of vision and our ability to see things up close and far away, but to see things very, very far away or very, very close up using telescopes or microscopes respectively. So today's discussion is a far-reaching one, literally and figuratively, and one that I know everyone will appreciate because it really will teach you how the scientific process is carried out. It will also help you understand that science is indeed a human endeavor and that much of what we understand about ourselves and about the world around us, and indeed the entire universe, is filtered through that humanness. But I wanna be very clear that today's discussion is not abstract. You're going to learn a lot of concrete facts about the universe, about humanity, and about the process of discovery. In fact, much of what we talk about today is about the process of humans discovering things about themselves and about the world. Dr. Keating has an incredible perspective and approach to science, having built, for instance, giant telescopes down at the South Pole and having taken on many other truly ambitious builds in service to this thing we call discovery. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this podcast episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Brian

2. 2:07 – 5:41

   Cosmology, Origin of Universe

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:07

      Keating. Dr. Brian Keating, welcome.

   2. BKBrian Keating2:10

      Dr. Andrew Huberman, it's great to meet you in person finally. I thought you were a legend.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman2:15

      I exist in real life and, uh, and you do as well. And I'm delighted that we're going to talk today because I have a longstanding adoration, there's no other appropriate word, for eyes, vision, optics, the stars, the moon, the sun, I mean, animals, humans. What's more interesting than, than how we got here and how we see things and what we see and why?

   4. BKBrian Keating2:38

      That's right.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman2:39

      You're a physicist. You're a cosmologist, not a cosmetologist.

   6. BKBrian Keating2:43

      That's right. I do do hair and makeup if you're interested. (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman2:46

      (laughs) Please orient us in the galaxy.

   8. BKBrian Keating2:49

      Mm. So I get to study, you know, the entire universe basically, and it's not really such a, a stretch that cosmetology and cosmology share this prefix because the prefix cosmos is re- what relates those two words together that seem to be completely, you know, unrelated to each other, right? But it turns out the word cosmos, in Greek the etymology of it, is beautiful or appearance. So it's we have a beautiful appearance, you know, we, we, we, uh, look a certain way. We're attracted to certain things, but it kinda reflects the fact that the night sky is also beautiful, attractive, and evokes something viscerally in us. We humans are born with two refracting telescopes in our, in our skulls, embedded in our skulls. And as you point out, you know, the retina's outside the cranial vault, right? I'll, I'll never forget you saying that. That means we have astronomical detection tools built into us. We don't have tools to detect the Higgs boson built into us or to look at a microscopic virus or something like that. So astronomy is not only the oldest of all sciences, it's the most visceral one, so it connects us. And of the sciences, of that branch of science, of astronomical sciences, cosmology is really the most overarching. It really includes everything, all physical processes that were involved in the formation of matter, of energy, maybe of time itself, and it speaks to a universal urge, I think, to know what came before us. Like, I always ask people, I'll ask you, I, I know what the answer is probably, but what's your favorite day on the calendar?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman4:22

      Favorite day on the calendar?

   10. BKBrian Keating4:24

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman4:24

       I love New Year's Day.

   12. BKBrian Keating4:26

       New Year's Day, exactly. What is that? It's a beginning. It's a new... Some people say their birthday, their kid's birthday, their sp- if they're smart, their anniversary, right, you know? (laughs) You don't wanna get too outta, outta control with the missus. Um, what are those? Those are beginnings. What's the only event that no entity could even bear witness to? The origin of the universe. I think that speaks to something primal in human beings that are curious at least. We wanna un- uncover the secrets of what existed, what came before us. And we don't have any way of seeing that currently, so we have to use the fossils that have made their way throughout all of cosmic time to understand what that was like at the very beginning of time and perhaps maybe about the universe as it existed before time itself began. So to me it's, it's incredibly fascinating. It encompasses all of science in some sense. It even can include life on other planets, consciousness, the formation of the brain, and, you know, to me it, uh, I'm always interested in the biggest questions and the biggest topics that evoke curiosity in me is how did it all get here? And so that's what cosmology allows us to do, apply the strict exacting laws of physics to a specific, you know, domain, which is the origin of everything in the universe. That's what makes it so fascinating.

3. 5:41 – 8:33

   Sponsors: LMNT & BetterHelp

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:42

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons, or your nerve cells. Drinking LMNT dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of LMNT in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink LMNT dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot, and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great-tasting flavors of LMNT. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all. And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, LMNT has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up, so you put it in hot water, and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside when hydration is especially critical. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free LMNT sample pack with the purchase of any LMNT drink mix. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist, carried out entirely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice, it was a condition of being allowed to stay in school, but pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which, of course, I also do every week. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about all issues that you're concerned about. Second of all, it can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights. With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and can provide those benefits that come through effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows therapy to be done entirely online, it's very time-efficient, it's easy to fit into a busy schedule. There's no commuting to a therapist's office or sitting in a waiting room or anything like that. You simply go online and hold your appointment. If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman.

4. 8:33 – 14:53

   Stars, Planets, Early Humans, Time

   1. AHAndrew Huberman8:33

      Before we get to the origins of the universe-

   2. BKBrian Keating8:36

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman8:36

      ... and the organization of the planets relative to the sun, and their spins, et cetera, you said something that, at least to me, feels int- intuitively so true, and I think it's very likely to be true for everybody, which is that there's something about looking up into space, especially at night when we see the stars, and, uh, hopefully see the stars, we'll talk about light pollution a, a little bit later, when we see the stars, that, yes, we know these things are far away. Yes, we know that they occupy a certain position in space. They have a, a diameter, et cetera. We might not know what that is just by looking at them. You probably do. But, but they also change our perception of time. And, you know, if I were to say one thing about the human brain especially, is that, sure, it's got all these autonomic functions. It regulates heart rate, digestion, et cetera, sleep-wake cycles. It can remember, it can think, it can have states like rage, or anger, or happiness, or delight. But what's remarkable about the human brain is that it can think into the past, it can be, quote-unquote, "present," and it can project into the future. And I'm sure other animals can do that, but we do this exquisitely well, and we make plans on the basis of this ability to contract or expand our notion of time. As a non-biologist, but somebody who I think appreciates and understands biology, why do you think it is that when we look up into the sky, even though most people might not realize that those stars probably aren't there and occupying the position that we think they are, some of them, uh, probably are, some of them aren't. They existed a long time ago. But without knowing that, why do you think that looking up at the stars gives, gives us the sense of an expansion of time-

   4. BKBrian Keating10:26

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman10:26

      ... as opposed to just the expansion of space?

   6. BKBrian Keating10:29

      Hmm. Well, first of all, we have to take ourselves back, you know, to deep pre-history. We know that ancients were looking at, um, at the constellations because they were seemingly either in control of, or correlated with, or perhaps causative of the seasons. And that was of ser-, you know, divine important-, you know, supreme importance for them, right? Their whole existence in agra-, early agrarian societies, hunting societies, gathering societies, um, so they had to know about time. So time, the, the essence of time, and that, on large scale, for seasons, for holidays, for festivals, for propitiation of deities, and so forth, they had to keep track of it. And that's why in the caves in Lascaux that, you know, date back to the, you know, 40,000 BCE, um, they depict constellations. Orion the Hunter, Taurus the Bull, all these different constellations, they depict them there. Now, partially, that was because, you know, Netflix didn't exist back then, right? There was no TikTok, and, and so there wasn't much to do at night. And in fact, the more you were out at night, you probably increased your opportunity to be, you know, consumed by some predator, right? So you were, you were more, uh, focused on being stationary, observing. And as I said, we can do astronomy uniquely so amongst all the sciences with just the equipment we're born with. You know, of measurements with our eyes, with respect to landmarks to cal- calculate patterns, and humans are exceptionally good at recognizing patterns. Sometimes too good.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman11:48

      So for instance, knowing that a certain swath of stars is present at one time of year and not another, relative to, say, the, um, the contour of a, of a mountain ridge.

   8. BKBrian Keating11:57

      Yes, uh, and, and, and the, and the r- repetition of it over, and it passed down through generations. Before there was written language, there was pictography, there was these cave paintings and so forth. There was oral language, and that was it for, you know, written language is only, you know, 10,000 years old or something like that.So to store information, that meant it was a continuity between generations. My great, great, great, great grandfather's elders, whatever, taught me that when the moon is in this constellation or the sun is in this constellation, um, we, well, should plant or we should, you know, harvest in other cons- in oth- other times. And so it was a, an, uh, we still do use the, you know, the rotation of the earth, you know, hasn't changed that much since this 40,000-year period, right? I mean, the, the axis in which it rotates, that, that's a different story. But, uh, but the, the actual spin rate, the angular momentum of the earth has not appreciably changed that much. And so the positions of these objects were of such importance, uh, that the ancients would use them for all these purposes. But there were so few things that changed position that they actually had names for them. They're called planets. So planet in Greek, it's like the word plane, like airplane. It means something that moves or wanders. So when you name something, it means it's, it's pretty different from the other things in which are not associated with that characteristic. So the planets, there were only five that they could, you know, see at that time up to Saturn. Um, and they actually would associate those not only with astronomical events, but events down on earth. That's what connected the earth. So we, we have legacy of that in our calendar today. So Sunday, named after the sun. Monday, moon. Tuesday, and you go to the Latin languages, I think it's, uh, Mercur- Mercuri, which is Mercury day, uh, Ventri Di, Ven- Venus day, so if you go to romance languages. And then, uh, the only one that's not a Latin name is, of course, for Thor, the god Thor, Thursday. And then, uh, comes back Saturnday, Saturday. So they were all used as a clock. And you, people don't really grasp this. I mean, we have an Apple Watch, we have whatever. We didn't have a clock that was functional that would work on all different timezones and all different conditions, on the pitching deck of a ship, 'til the 1700s basically. It was a huge problem. And so measuring time became crucial for commerce, for, uh, you know, human culture and civilization to arise, for education, and obviously for planting, ha- harvesting and so forth. So there was an obvious connection between the two. They believed actually that they were causative, that actually the position of the planet Jupiter determined something on the day of your birth and the sun's relative position with respect to it determined something about your, your, your future and your, and your, you know, prospects in life and, and so forth. So when I'm not confused for a cosmetologist, you know, because of my lovely hair and makeup, uh, I'm usually asked, you know, "Oh, you're an astronomer. Um, I'm a Virgo, you know, so, uh, what's gonna happen to me?" I'm like, "Oh," I used to be, uh, "Oh, okay. Uh, that's an astrologer. I'm not an astrologer." But now I just, I kind of lean into it and I'm like, "Ooh, that, uh, you're gonna get a letter from the IRS next week and, uh, that lump on your ass, that's, that's-"

   9. AHAndrew Huberman14:52

      You mean you,

5. 14:53 – 19:58

   Astrology, Ophiuchus Constellation

   1. AHAndrew Huberman14:53

      you mean you, you're, you're playing games with them.

   2. BKBrian Keating14:54

      (laughs) Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman14:55

      So you, you don't believe in astrology?

   4. BKBrian Keating14:57

      Uh, there's no evidence for astrology. In fact, there's, there's, you know, many, many random controlled, you know, trials-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman15:02

      Sure.

   6. BKBrian Keating15:02

      ... double blind study that showed not only is it, uh, it's almost counter to the evidence, you know, like when they say that a monkey can throw a dart at a stock chart and get, you know, do better than most, uh, hedge fund managers or something like that. Actually, astrologers are even worse. Like, (laughs) I don't even know a, a, a Protozoa could throw a, a dart. You know, it's, it's almost anti-correlated, you know, with, with what reality is. So no, there's certainly no vali- uh, validity to that. And I, I had this, you know, provocative tweet, uh, you know, whatever post recently, um, and it was about, um, there's actually thir- you know, we believe there are 12 Zodiac const- you know, signs. And that dates back to the Persians and the Babylonians and how they divided up them. And it almost divides, you know, they were fascinated with the number 60. So that, that was the base of their number system. Our number system is 10 because we have 10 fig- For some reason they love base 60, I don't know why. Um, and so they loved things that divided evenly into it, 10 does, but anyway, uh, you know, #fail for the, for the Babylonians. But they divided it up into 12, 12, uh, Zodiac signs. So we still use those. The, there's a problem though. The Zodiac that you're... Do you know what this is? Do you know what determines your Zodiac sign?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman16:09

      No.

   8. BKBrian Keating16:10

      Oh, okay. So it, it's determined by the position of the sun, what constellation was the sun in on the day you were born, September 26th.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman16:18

      Mm-hmm.

   10. BKBrian Keating16:19

       So, uh, when the, that means that the sun was in the constellation Virgo. Oh no, you were a Libra?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman16:24

       Libra.

   12. BKBrian Keating16:24

       Libra. Okay. So you do know what you are, but you don't know why you are. Uh, (laughs) so Libra means, it's a constellation, there's 88 constellations that are accepted by astronomers. And the, uh, one of them is Libra. And the path that the sun and the moon and all the planets travel in is called the Zodiac. It's confined to a plane, because the same, uh, proto pla- pl- proto solar system disc from which we formed out of, all the planets came out of a c- nebular cloud, a cloud of gas, dust, rocks and so forth that came from a preexisting star that exploded, creating what's called a supernova. The supernova provided the materials to make not only the earth but the entire solar system, including the sun. That happened about five billion years ago. And four billion years ago, the earth formed out of that cloud. That, the spin of that disc, all things have a spin associated with them, like a figure skater, you know, as she's spinning around on her axis or whatever, she can have her arms out, brings them in, she spins faster. That's called conservation of angular momentum. Spin is a type of angular momentum. The whole disc is spinning in a plane. It's like this desk, this table that we're sitting at. If you're listening, imagine a flat table. It's spinning, a circular disc is spinning with a certain direction. All the objects are moving in that same direction due to conservation of this term called angular momentum. The sun moves in that, apparently moves in that position. Obviously we're rotating around the sun, but it looks like the sun's coming around us. The moon is, Jupiter. So on the day you were born, there's a constellation behind the sun from our perspective that was Libra on September 26th. And that was the day that you were born, that determines the fact that you're a Libra. But there's a problem. In December, where we are now, the sun is actually in a different constellation, the one that doesn't exist according to the Zodiac that was created-... something like six thou- 5,000 years ago. It's called Ophiuchus. So, there's a certain segment of people born in a 17-day stretch in December, late November to early December, that are actually Ophiuchans (laughs) or Ophiuchuses or whatever. So that should obliterate astrology as any semblance of a science, because they didn't even know this constellation existed, and yet something like 12% of all people share that constellation. So, it's just complete nonsense. There's no validity to it. Twins that are born on the same day have radically different, you know, histories, pasts, futures, and, um, there's no predictive power to it, and that's what science is about, right? We wanna make a hypothesis, test it, iterate on it, and have confirmation of it, and there's zero, uh, in fact for astrology. In fact, if you'll permit me a, a kind of silly story, uh, when I was dating my wife, who would become my wife, uh, in the beginning, um, we, she, you know, kind of thought, "It's fun. Maybe we'll go see a, you know, a- a, uh, you know, someone who, who c- can tell our, our, our fortunes if we belong together." So we went to an astrologer, and, uh, the astrologer asked me a bunch of questions, you know, "When were you born?" Obviously, and, um, oh, no. She asked me, "What's your sign?" So I, I said, "I'm a Gemini," and she said, "Okay, cool," and then she told me a bunch of things. And at the end, I said, "I just wanna double-check." I was playing, um, kind of a, you know, a little bit of a jerk sometimes. So I said, "Uh, I just wanna confirm. Um, Geminis born in September. I'm, I'm born September 9th." She said, "Oh, no, no. That's a Virgo. Uh, but the same things are gonna happen to you anyway." (laughs) Like, it didn't change her outcome, and so in the language of the science, uh, philosophy of science, Karl Popper, others, it's unfalsifiable, and you cannot be proven wri- it's so flexible. You know, you're gonna p- find challenges. The stock market is gonna fluctuate. Uh, political turmoil, rain during your... Uh, they're so flexible, it can accommodate any story, and that's a hallmark of non-science or sometimes anti-scientific thinking.

6. 19:58 – 29:19

   Pineal Gland, Time-Keeping & Stars, Seasons & Offspring

   1. BKBrian Keating19:58

   2. AHAndrew Huberman19:58

      One thing that really strikes me is the fact that, at least as the way you describe it, the first clock, the first timekeeping approach or mechanism was to evaluate the position of things in the sky relative to celestial landmarks.

   3. BKBrian Keating20:13

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman20:14

      So, irrespective of when people are born and astrology-

   5. BKBrian Keating20:18

      (laughs)

   6. AHAndrew Huberman20:18

      ... uh, I could imagine a, a, a tribe of people, a group of people, who have charts because they've, you know, painted them onto some surface, doesn't matter what the surface is, that, um, at some portion of the year, uh, the stars are above this ridge. There are three bright stars above the, the, the ridge just to the, to the left of the front of the village, so to speak. All right, this is not an unreasonable thing to imagine.

   7. BKBrian Keating20:44

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman20:44

      And that information is passed down in the form of when those three stars are about to disappear behind that ridge, um, days are getting shorter. Whereas, when those three stars are, um, re-emerging again elsewhere in the sky-

   9. BKBrian Keating21:02

      Yes.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman21:03

       ... days are getting longer. Um, forgive me. This'll be a little bit of a long question. Sometimes the listeners get upset with me, but I think it'll frame it within the biology in a way that, that will be meaningful for us and for everyone. Other animals besides humans have this thing, the pineal gland that secretes melatonin.

   11. BKBrian Keating21:20

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman21:20

       The duration of melatonin release is directly related to how much light there is. In other words, light suppresses melatonin, therefore in short days, AKA long nights, you get a lot more melatonin released. In long days and short nights, you get less melatonin. So this is the intrinsic clock-keeping mechanism of all mammalian species and reptiles.

   13. BKBrian Keating21:43

       Mm-hmm.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman21:43

       Most people don't realize this, but reptiles, um, often have either a thin skull, birds have a very thin skull so that light can actually pass through the skull to the pineal.

   15. BKBrian Keating21:53

       Mm. Hmm.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman21:54

       Some reptiles actually have pits in the top of their heads that light can pass directly into the pineal. These are animals that, mind you, also have eyes for perceiving things.

   17. BKBrian Keating22:04

       Mm-hmm.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman22:04

       But this is the primordial, biologically primordial timekeeping device.

   19. BKBrian Keating22:09

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman22:10

       Can you imagine why this would be really important? And then I'll get back to why I think that because humans have a pineal that's embedded deep in the brain, light cannot, despite what some people think out there, I'm not gonna name names, but light cannot get through the skull to the pineal, nor is putting a, a light in your ears gonna get there, or-

   21. BKBrian Keating22:29

       Red light, yeah.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman22:30

       ... even on the roof of your mouth, very unlikely. Maybe some distant stimulation of the neurons in your hypothalamus with long wavelength light. But in any case, the pineal of humans is embedded deep in the skull, and so that information about, uh, how much light is in the environment has to be passed through the eyes, through a circuitous circuit to the, through a circuitous path to the, to the pineal. But here's the thing. Here- here's the, the conundrum. An animal or human born into an eight-hour day when days are getting longer has a very different future as an infant as a infant or baby that's born into an eight-hour day when days are getting shorter, especially if you live closer to the poles, further from the equator. So think about this. You're a pregnant woman, or that you're the husband of that pregnant woman and you have a baby coming. And you need to know that days are getting longer or shorter and what that means for resources, because the probability of the survival of that child and it, and even the mother during and, and immediately after, uh, childbirth, was strongly dictated by what resources were available, the strength of the immune system, et cetera.

   23. BKBrian Keating23:38

       Yeah.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman23:38

       Animals solve this by light going directly into the pineal. I'm not one of those animals, so I don't know if they're conscious of this. Humans needed to solve this some other way. They needed to know whether or not days were getting longer or shorter. And so the question I have is, is the movement of the stars or planets detectable enough with these telescopes that we have on the front of our skull? Is it perceivable enough that one could know whether or not days were getting longer or shorter simply by looking up at the sky at night, or are the shifts imperceptible-... and therefore, you would need to create these charts. And now I think it's kind of obvious why I'm asking this question, because to me, this is the reason to chart time.

   25. BKBrian Keating24:21

       Mm-hmm.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman24:22

       And this is the reason it occurs to me why looking up at the sky at night is meaningful for tracking time.

   27. BKBrian Keating24:28

       Absolutely. And, and not only correlated with that, um, something even more perhaps basic is, you know, temperature, right, and the hemisphere that you're born in. Uh, you would expect that all, you know... I'm, I'm born, as I said, September 9th. It turns out that's the statistically, statistically most common birthdate of humans on Earth. And why is that? Because-

   28. AHAndrew Huberman24:45

       People are busy during the winter holiday.

   29. BKBrian Keating24:47

       Exactly, right?

   30. AHAndrew Huberman24:48

       (laughs)
7. 29:19 – 36:08

   Humans, Time Perception, Astronomy

   1. BKBrian Keating29:19

      we'd have to make a real big stretch to then include the, the effects of, uh, the planet Jupiter, which is the biggest planet and is most of the mass of, uh, uh, of our solar system outside of the sun. Then it would be clear, and you could do this test with identical twins and, and, and, uh, that are identical versus fraternal twins, twins that are raised with the same parent. You know, some are separated at birth, and they, they, they turn out very much more similarly when they're identical twins versus... So it shows that genetics play more of a role than we like to think They do. ... that goes in.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman29:45

      Genes, genes are powerful.

   3. BKBrian Keating29:46

      They are. It's-

   4. AHAndrew Huberman29:47

      I realize this is a, a bit, um, politically incorrect to say in certain venues, but genes are extremely powerful.

   5. BKBrian Keating29:54

      Yeah. Why wouldn't they be, right? (laughs) Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman29:55

      Yeah, absolutely.

   7. BKBrian Keating29:56

      Very true.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman29:56

      I mean, nurture matters as well.

   9. BKBrian Keating29:57

      Right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman29:58

       But genes are immensely powerful.

   11. BKBrian Keating29:59

       So, and I think that, that gives us hope. You know, people say, "Well, you know, we're, we're, we should not be so haughty. We should not be so arrogant. You know, we, we have, what, uh, 50% of the same, uh, uh, chromosomes as a fruit fly." You know, like, "Who are you to be..." And I, I say, "I'll do you one better." Like, I think some bonobos have 98% similarity, but that should give us more, you know, sort of, like...... treat ourselves and think of ourselves in a way that's more, uh, you know, uh, uh, you know, more elevated, I, I would say, 'cause we're not that. There's many species of chimpanzees and primates. And so, there's only one human, you know, homo sapien-

   12. AHAndrew Huberman30:32

       Mm-hmm.

   13. BKBrian Keating30:33

       ... which, you know, a lot of people don't know the, the word, you know, homo sapien, which is our species and our genus, um, sapien doesn't mean, uh, it doesn't mean knowledge like science. Ciencia means knowledge. Sapiens means wisdom. And I like to look at the etymology, uh, I'm fascinated by it, but it kind of highlights what we should be doing and what, what is it that we are aware of. Um, and I, I'm curious, have you ever encountered, like, why are we called, you know, humans that, like the wise hominid? It's because we're the only entity, organism that knows it's gonna die. Yes, there's some elephants that, you know, before the one dies, the one will take care. It's not the same as like, you knew you were gonna die when you were a kid, very young. And it's that awareness of death and the awareness of how special we are, I think that's what invests life with a lot more meaning. I don't wanna get too philosophical at this point.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman31:21

       Yes, time perception.

   15. BKBrian Keating31:21

       It's, that's exactly what I was gonna say.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman31:22

       Right, I mean, I, I'm an expert on happiness sitting here, and, and then Morgan Housel is an expert on the relationship between psychological happiness and money-

   17. BKBrian Keating31:29

       Yeah.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman31:30

       ... sitting here, and he described this, uh, cartoon, which inevitably makes me chuckle, of a guy and his dog sitting, uh, by a lake, and the, there's a bubble, uh, you know, sort of bubbles coming out of the guy's head, and, and he's thinking about whatever his, his stock portfolio and things back home, et cetera, and, and out of the dog's head is just a, a mirror image of him sitting with his owner.

   19. BKBrian Keating31:48

       Is that...

   20. AHAndrew Huberman31:48

       Uh, dogs are very present, but what that also means is that they are not able to perceive their own existence-

   21. BKBrian Keating31:54

       Right.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman31:55

       ... within, within time.

   23. BKBrian Keating31:55

       And modeling of time, as you said before.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman31:57

       Right.

   25. BKBrian Keating31:57

       We can forecast, we, that's how we, we don't have the strongest muscles, the sharpest claws, the biggest teeth, right? What do we have? We have this frontal, prefrontal cortex that allows us to, uh, to do what are called gedanken, or thought experiments, Einstein said. Um, to predict the future, to model the future, not really predict it, we can't do that, but we can model likely outcomes, and we can simulate in our minds what those would be like. And we're so dependent on that skill that we sometimes confuse, you know, correlation for causation. And as you know, uh, everyone who confuses correlation with causation ends up dying. So, it's very dangerous to, it's very dangerous to do that. Uh, but, but the point is, the notion of what's called confirmation bias is prevalent in every human being, scientist or not. And, and in fact, as scientists, you and I, we have to guard against that more than anybody, because nothing really feels better than, like, thinking of a hypothesis, modeling the future, and then feeling like you're right, and then you get celebrated and fetted. Maybe you win a golden medallion with Alfred Nobel's image on it or whatever. Those kinds of things are very powerful, and those kinds of things are also very dangerous, which is why it appeals to so many more people to think that the celestial orbs play a role in our lives. It's almost like we've reverted to a paganistic existence, where we wanna believe there's some, some force responsible for our fates when, when maybe it's random.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman33:15

       Uh, on, I totally agree with you. I'll play devil's advocate-

   27. BKBrian Keating33:18

       Mm-hmm.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman33:18

       ... for a moment, not for astrology per se, but-

   29. BKBrian Keating33:21

       Yeah.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman33:21

       ... uh, for instance, uh, there are many species that use magnetoreception.
8. 36:08 – 37:47

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. BKBrian Keating36:08

      as, you know, human, human civilization itself.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman36:11

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. AG1 is designed to cover all of your foundational nutritional needs, and it tastes great. (instrumental music plays) Now, I've been drinking AG1 since 2012. And I started doing that at a time when my budget for supplements was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money back then to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat most of my foods from Whole Foods and minimally processed foods, it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits, vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and adaptogens from food alone. And I need to do that in order to ensure that I have enough energy throughout the day, I sleep well at night, and keep my immune system strong. But when I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, and my performance, both cognitive and physical, are better. I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take AG1, and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1, which for me means a serving in the morning or mid-morning and again later in the afternoon or evening, that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, January 2025, AG1 is giving away 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim the 10 free travel packs and a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.

9. 37:47 – 46:36

   Brain & Prediction; Moonset, Syzygy; Telescope, Galileo

   1. AHAndrew Huberman37:47

      It speaks to what I think is one of the core functions of the human brain, which, uh, you know, umbrellas everything we're talking about, which is the human brain is a prediction-making machine. And it wants to make predictions on the basis of things that feel reliable. And the ability for us to, well, confirmation bias, the ability for us to link A and T as opposed to A, B, C and work through things linearly and try and, uh, disprove our own hypotheses is much stronger than any, um, desire to work through things systematically unless you're trained as a scientist.

   2. BKBrian Keating38:19

      Exactly, yep.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman38:19

      And so it's no surprise to me that people, um, want to understand themselves and understand others in, in a way that, uh, feels at least semi-reliable, and to do that in a way where they don't have to run a ton of experiments-

   4. BKBrian Keating38:31

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman38:32

      ... and, uh, hence, hence astrology.

   6. BKBrian Keating38:33

      (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman38:34

      I'd like to, um, stay within this vein of thought, but, uh, you said something earlier that's been kind of, you know, um, nagging in the back of my brain. You said we have two refracting telescopes in the front of our skull. Um, I will often remind people that your retinas that line the back of your eyes like a, like a pie crust are part of your brain, your central nervous system that was literally squeezed out of your skull during the first trimester through a whole genetic program that's very beautiful. And this might freak you out, but think about it. This is the only portion of your brain that resides outside the cranial vault.

   8. BKBrian Keating39:07

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman39:07

      Technically still in your skull, but outside the cranial vault. Gives humans an enormous capacity that they wouldn't have otherwise because what, you can make judgments about space and time-

   10. BKBrian Keating39:16

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman39:16

       ... space based on what's next to what, what's far from what, and time based on movement of things relative to stationary objects, et cetera, that we wouldn't otherwise be able to perform, right?

   12. BKBrian Keating39:27

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman39:27

       You could sense odors at a distance, smoke, et cetera. But it's a whole other business to have these two telescopes. Could you explain what you mean by two refracting telescopes? Because I think that will set the stage nicely for some of our other discussion about-

   14. BKBrian Keating39:41

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman39:41

       ... optics.

   16. BKBrian Keating39:41

       Yeah, so I've been in love with telescopes since the, you know, age of about 12 when I could first afford one, to buy one of my own. And, and that really came out of the fact that I recognized the limitations of the human eye. It turned out, I was 12 years old, woke up in the middle of the night one night. There was this incredibly bright light, you know, brighter than these lights here, shining into my room. And I was like, "Where? I don't know. There's a streetlight outside. You know, this is crazy. Let me look outside and see what it is." And it was the moon. And, uh, I had never seen it. It was near s- near, uh, moonset, which is near sunrise, full moon. (clears throat) And I looked at it, and I kept staring at it. And there was a star next to it that kind of looked like a piece of the moon had broken off. It was that bright and that clear. And it's unusual to see these kinds of things together. They're actually known as syzygys, which is a great, uh, Scrabble word. If you're ever, uh, uh, uh, you know, pressed for, for a win in Scrabble, use the word syzygy. I think it's like 80 points. Um, and that just means a conjunction, an alignment of astronomical objects. I was like, "What the hell is this?" This is 1984, Andrew. You know, you're younger than me, but, but Google did not exist for another 16 years, and I, I was kind of impatient. I wanted to know what this thing was. What is this thing? It's not moving. It's not flashing. It's not a drone, (laughs) you know, back then. It's not a, it's not Southwest Airlines, right? So I'm looking at it. It's not moving. And day after day, it was like that. And I was like, "What the... How am I gonna find this out?" Like, imagine existing... We're so blessed that we have the internet and we have these LMs that... It's so easy now to be a scientist or do research. And anybody can do research. Science is for everybody, right? You always highlight that fact. So I realized the only way to find out about it was to wait for The New York Times to get delivered on Sunday 'cause they did have a section back then that they don't have now called Cosmos. And in it, it depicted what the night sky looked like that night, which was a Sunday. And that was like three or four days after what, you know, I had this observation, which, you know, I was incredibly ob- uh, you know, observant. Uh, and I looked at it, and it was the moon. It showed the moon, and it showed Jupiter. I was like, "What? You can see a planet with your naked eye?" This was around the time Voyager, you know, was going by the planets on the grand tour of the solar system. Had never been done before. I was like, "I thought you needed a spaceship, you know?" (laughs) And, and I realized that was my first bit of astronomical research. You know, I looked up. I had a hypothesis. What is it? I was wrong. I thought it was a star. It was a planet. I was like, "This is insane." You know, imagine what I could see if I had a telescope. But I couldn't afford a telescope. We were pretty modest means back then. I had a job working at a delicatessen down the street, and I'd do that once a week. And then, you know, I got a grant from a three-letter agency, you know, which is the beginning of many, many scientists' careers. I got a grant from the MOM Agency, my mother. She supplemented my $2 an hour salary at the Venice Delicatessen in Dobbs Ferry. And I ended up getting (laughs) uh, a telescope for $75.... and I, you know, cherish this thing. And, (clears throat) and then I was like, "Oh, let me look at these things in the sky." And it's pretty amazing. Uh, uh, I don't know if you know the history of telescopes, but the first ones were invented because of, uh, the, the glass that was present to make eyeglasses. So telescopes came from eyeglasses. Where was the best glasses? Where were the best glasses made? In the Netherlands. So actually, the telescope and the microscope were both invented in Holland. And the guy who invented the telescope was, is very interesting 'cause it would be like he, he made the telescope, but he never thought to look at the, at the night sky with it. He only used it as a spyglass to look at objects, you know, on the horizon or in a city or whatever. He never went like this, looked up, uh, you know, at 45... That required Galileo. So, m- he was my absolute hero of all of science. We'll talk about him later maybe. Um, Galileo was the first person to ever look up with this telescope and spot objects in the solar system, in the universe, that had never been seen before with a scientific tool. So everybody had used their eyes, uh, back to Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Copernicus, they had to use their eyes, which are telescopes. I'll get back to that, don't worry. Um, I, I know you afford me the podcaster's, you know, uh, predilection of, of going off on long tangents-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman43:34

       Please, please, please.

   18. BKBrian Keating43:34

       ... but, but I think this is good.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman43:35

       Yeah.

   20. BKBrian Keating43:36

       Um, Galileo then said, "Well, I'm gonna take this telescope and look at these objects that are otherwise look like stars," and in fact, were called, you know, basically wanderers because they're the only things that moved. He first looked at the moon. Now, take yourself back to 1609 when he was first looking at these objects. In 1609, there were no clocks, there were no scientific tools of any, any real virtue. Uh, he, in fact, would invent many of these things. There were simple things like a magnetic compass, a slide rule, which nobody, you know, none in your main demographic will know what a s- slide rule is, but that's okay. Um, very simple tools, um, you know, they would use tubes and whatnot. But Galileo looked at the moon, and the hypothesis was everything in the universe is orbiting around the earth. The earth is the most perfect place in the universe because God puts the things that are most important close to Him in the center of the universe, God is the center of the universe, the Catholic Church held this, and everything would go around the earth. And in fact, I, I, I'm not gonna challenge you because I, I, I, I think you'll defeat me in this, in this, but in your audience, there are probably very many educated, I call them .edu people. Uh, there's many, many educated people. I find that even with my brilliant students at UCSD, they can't prove that the earth is not the center of the solar system. In other words, I'll say on my Astronomy 101 quiz, I'll say, "Prove that the earth is, is the, uh, is not the center of the solar system," which was the whole universe back then, right? And I would say it's about 75, 80% will not get it right. In fact, I can say to most people, "Prove the earth is not flat." I claim the earth is flat. Prove me wrong. Most people can't prove it. They don't know how the proof is constructed. I don't expect them to go and replicate what Aristarchus did, you know, 2,000 years ago. But this is knowledge we've had for 2- as I said, 2,000 years. The knowledge that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around is only about 400 years old. But I would say 99%, uh, I know for a fact... I went to Italy, actually, uh, 10 years ago. It was the 100th anniversary of Einstein's theory of general relativity, and they, we had a ceremony to honor the first person who ever came up with a theory of relativity, which was also Galileo (laughs) . Galileo had the first notion that relative motion is indistinguishable, that if you and I are on a bike, uh, and I'm stationary, you can't tell if you're moving, I can't tell if I'm stationary. That's called relativity of motion. Uh, it's not, motion is not absolute. Einstein would later enhance that, you know, put it on steroids, and then come up with all sorts of cool stuff that we can get into. But, um, but this notion that you could do observations, that you could use a scientific tool, couple with a hypothesis, and then iterate on those hypotheses to make both the instrument better and your hypothesis better, and then expose that to scientific peer review, which was not what we have today, that was done by Galileo, 'cause he was the first person to use the scientific method. What did he use it with? A telescope. So a telescope that he used was a refracting telescope. Lenses like eyeglasses, two of them, one put at the far end called the objective, it's closer to the object, the other one, the eyepiece, close to your eye. And he was able to magnify things about three to 10 times pretty easily.

10. 46:36 – 51:36

    Light Refraction; Telescope, Eyeglasses

    1. BKBrian Keating46:36

    2. AHAndrew Huberman46:36

       Can you explain refraction for people that, that-

    3. BKBrian Keating46:38

       Yeah.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman46:38

       ... are not familiar with it?

    5. BKBrian Keating46:38

       So when light, light is a, (clears throat) light travels at the fastest speed, um, of any entity. You know, photons travel at, uh, roughly 300,000 kilometers per second, uh, except when they go into a medium. That's what they travel at in, in the vacuum of space or in a vacuum in my laboratory or whatever. But, uh, when they go into a medium that's, uh, transparent or translucent, uh, they slow down. The, you can, you can think of it as the light waves themselves. Imagine, uh, light waves as rows of soldiers marching together, and then, uh, imagine that they're walking at an angle to, to the beach here in, in, uh, in Los Angeles. If they're marching at an angle, the ones that encounter the water first, they start to slow down, the other ones keep moving at a fast speed, and then the whole beam of light, the whole beam of soldiers gets bent. That process is called refraction. We can do it... Well, this yerba mate is so delicious we can't do it 'cause it's, it's got a little bit of, uh, stud to it, but...

    6. AHAndrew Huberman47:27

       Similar to, for instance, if you go and, uh, look at a fountain-

    7. BKBrian Keating47:30

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman47:31

       ... and you see a coin.

    9. BKBrian Keating47:32

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman47:32

        And you decide, you know, you're gonna be that mischievous kid and you're gonna grab that coin so you can throw it back in like in any, um-

    11. BKBrian Keating47:37

        Yeah. (laughs)

    12. AHAndrew Huberman47:38

        You can, you can recycle the wish. Um, and you reach down to grab it, and you miss because where you see it is not where it actually is.

    13. BKBrian Keating47:45

        Yes, yeah. Put a pencil in a clear glass of water, same phenomenon will happen. That's refraction. It's the bending of light by what's called a dielectric or just a medium that's transparent or translucent. And, uh, you can do that in a way that you shape the wave of light coming in, that it'll be magnified. And that's, in fact, what a telescope does. Tele means distance, scope means viewer. So a telescope really means distance viewer. A microscope means small thing viewer. And so this was kind of revolutionary to use it for scientific purposes. Galileo did other things. We just take these for granted. We got all these cool cameras here. These are all refracting telescopes. You can see the lens in one. You can see that it's on a tripod. Galileo invented the tripod. We take these things for granted, but people didn't realize that.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman48:26

        What a stud.

    15. BKBrian Keating48:26

        Yeah, he-

    16. AHAndrew Huberman48:27

        I, I wanna get a list of-

    17. BKBrian Keating48:28

        We gotta-

    18. AHAndrew Huberman48:28

        ... all the things that, that Galileo did. I, I'm gonna pause you-

    19. BKBrian Keating48:30

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman48:30

        ... for one second, and, uh, please, um-

    21. BKBrian Keating48:32

        Sure.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman48:33

        ... earmark where you're at-

    23. BKBrian Keating48:34

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman48:34

        ... because, um, I have a number of questions that I-

    25. BKBrian Keating48:36

        Yeah.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman48:36

        ... just can't resist asking.

    27. BKBrian Keating48:37

        Yeah, that's fine.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman48:37

        ... first of all, if it's too lengthy an answer, feel free to say, you know, "Pass." But, uh, why was the best glass in, um, in Holland? What, what is it about the Dutch and, and good glass?

    29. BKBrian Keating48:48

        I think that they were e- extremely, as they are now, I have great colleagues that are, that are from the Netherlands, um, they were obsessed with, with, um, high quality, as, as Germans are. You know, they were very similar to Germans. Uh, very, uh, into very precise instrumentation and high-quality, uh... It's interesting to note that the, uh, that glasses were only really invented, in some sense, um, because of the fact that there was an existing standard for human visual acuity. Okay, so we in- we all know we go to the eye doctor-

    30. AHAndrew Huberman49:17

        You mean eyeglasses?
11. 51:36 – 53:43

    Earth Rotation & Sun

    1. AHAndrew Huberman51:36

       was Copernicus, if I'm not mistaken, that was the first to say that the earth revolves around the sun while rotating on its axis.

    2. BKBrian Keating51:43

       That's right, yep.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman51:44

       And tilts, which gives us the equinox.

    4. BKBrian Keating51:46

       Correct, yes.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman51:47

       Okay. So Galileo corrected Copernicus about the math, but it was Copernicus that, um, that gave us the first, like, trusted statement that the earth and the other planets rotate around the sun?

    6. BKBrian Keating51:59

       Yeah, he-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman52:00

       Okay.

    8. BKBrian Keating52:00

       ... I would say he gave the hypothesis. He, he wasn't, he wasn't wrong. Galileo didn't correct him. It's just, Galileo brought evidence to the table. He brought hard scientific observation.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman52:07

       So who is this Copernicus guy? Was he just sort of, uh, like a, a iconoclast? He's like, "Hey, how about we're not the center of the universe, it's the sun that's the center of the universe?"

    10. BKBrian Keating52:14

        Well, so what was the milieu of the time was that, um, the earth was the center of the, of the universe, which was, our solar system effectively was the whole universe. They didn't know about stars and galaxies, certainly. We can get into that later. Uh, but there was what's known as the Ptolemaic, um, concept of the organization of the cosmos. So the earliest cosmological models were that the sun is the center, uh, the earth is the center of the universe, and everything goes around it. However, these were not dopes. They knew that there were problems with that model. There are certain aspects of, of the p- of the orbits of planets, for example, I mentioned Mercury's retrograde, and what does retrograde mean? We don't have to get into it, but there are anomalies that the planets will undergo at different times of the year, uh, due to the fact that the earth is, that we know now, ro- uh, rotating, revolving around the sun and rotating on its axis, but the main effect is, is, is revolution around the sun, and the other planets are too, in the same plane, zodiac plane, the, what's called the ecliptic, due to the angular momentum of the proto-solar system. And sometimes the earth goes faster than, say, Jupiter. So originally it'll be out in front, if you will, of the planet, you know, forward center of motion as you like to say, and then it'll be behind it later on. And so it looks like the pl- Jupiter is making like this weird S-curve. And they couldn't explain that if the earth is the center of the solar system, except that they added on what are called epicycles. They added on extra little orbits of the planets in order to account for that motion that sometimes it appears, yes, we're moving bulk motion, but then sometimes it goes in opposite direction when we're going in the same direction.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman53:41

        So smart.

    12. BKBrian Keating53:41

        Yeah, they were, they were very smart.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman53:42

        So smart. And they must've

12. 53:43 – 1:02:53

    Glass, Microscope, Telescopes & Discovery

    1. AHAndrew Huberman53:43

       known by modeling this stuff on earth, between objects on earth.

    2. BKBrian Keating53:47

       100%.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman53:47

       And that raises, for me anyway, uh, an important psychological question. So you've- you've got, um, these Dutch folks with great glass.

    4. BKBrian Keating53:56

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman53:57

       They're using that great glass to correct vision.

    6. BKBrian Keating54:00

       I should say, uh, sorry Andrew. The reason that they had good glass is they were the, some of the foremost, um, uh, uh, explorers, right? A lot of the early-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman54:08

       Mm-hmm.

    8. BKBrian Keating54:08

       ... uh, trade, and they were, uh, what did exploration give them? Access to trade. So they could get the finest silicon and glass and they could make it themselves. That's their economics. Again, capitalism always wins, right? This is a lesson that we shouldn't forget. Their commerce, their economies allowed them to do trade and get, acquire the best highest quality materials. Then that was used to make the best scientific equipment. And just curious, it'd be like, you know, if we, they built these scientific tools, but they didn't use them for science. So imagine like building the Large Hadron Collider or, or SLAC, or, or something like that, and, and then ch- not using it, you know, just like (laughs) using it to like measure-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman54:44

       Well, I think SLAC is sitting empty, right?

    10. BKBrian Keating54:46

        (laughs) Basically it is.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman54:47

        You know, I-

    12. BKBrian Keating54:47

        But it wasn't originally, that's the point.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman54:48

        Right, right, it was used for something.

    14. BKBrian Keating54:50

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman54:50

        So I, so I, what I'm curious about is why do you think it is that...... some humans get some technology, in this case, glass.

    16. BKBrian Keating54:59

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman54:59

        And they want to look at things that are very close up.

    18. BKBrian Keating55:01

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman55:02

        You know, the, I'm, I like microscopes a lot.

    20. BKBrian Keating55:04

        Yeah, no, me too.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman55:05

        I, I, right now, you know, I don't have my wet lab, we're still, still involved in some clinical trials, but-

    22. BKBrian Keating55:09

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman55:09

        ... you know what, I love microscopes.

    24. BKBrian Keating55:10

        That's awesome then.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman55:11

        I love customizing my microscopes.

    26. BKBrian Keating55:13

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman55:13

        I didn't like them, you know, I, I don't like a-

    28. BKBrian Keating55:15

        Stock, yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman55:15

        ... plug and play. I, I, I like them sort of the same way that people like hot rods.

    30. BKBrian Keating55:18

        Yeah.
13. 1:02:53 – 1:10:48

    Science as Safe Space; Jupiter, Galileo, Discovery, Time

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:53

       it sounds to me like you were... Thank you for sharing that, by the way. It sounds like you were able to connect to places distant in space, obviously-

    2. BKBrian Keating1:03:02

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:03

       ... and time-

    4. BKBrian Keating1:03:03

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:03

       Galileo.

    6. BKBrian Keating1:03:04

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:06

       That's beautiful. I don't think the same experience occurs when one looks down the microscope, and it's true that the, the greatest neurobiologist of all time by a long shot, um, was Ramon y Cajal, right? Kind of supernatural levels of ability to understand what turned out to be the correct function of the nervous system just from anatomical specimens. But when I look down the microscope and I see a, even a Cajal Ret cell, there's a cell named after, uh, after him-

    8. BKBrian Keating1:03:34

       (laughs) .

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:34

       Um, you don't really feel a connection to him in the same way, although the, the neurons are beautiful, but you don't... It's not the same the way-

    10. BKBrian Keating1:03:41

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:41

        ... you describe.

    12. BKBrian Keating1:03:42

        What's great about science in general is that the best science is apolitical. But I always say, "Look, there's no such thing as, like, 'Oh, well, that constellation is a Democratic constellation.' 'Oh, you see that asteroid? That's a Repu-'" No. It's a, it is a safe space, so I think we do need safe spaces. And at best, science is a safe space, not meaning it never interacts with politics 'cause of course it does. But, but for those moments, we, we as humans, and you know this better than I do, we need to, we need recovery. You can't just work out... You don't work out seven days a week.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:13

        No.

    14. BKBrian Keating1:04:13

        You work out six days a week or whatever, but it's still more than... Six more than I work out. But, but the point is, we need to recover. As much as we need to pay attention to, to, to the activity, we need to recover and pay attention to that too. Um, and so the question is, where can we recover from social media, from politics, from economic stress, and all? I think science is an ideal vehicle for it. It should be apolitical. We shouldn't be, you know, always concerned with, you know, politics or what's happening on social media. And I'm guilty of this too. I'm, I'm, you know, certainly spending way too much time on screens. But, but the point being, science can be that. And astronomy, in particular, like I said, is apolitical. It is safe to let your mind run to what you used to do when you were on a dorm with your bros, at, you know, 3:00 AM, just BSing, right? We don't get a chance to do that when you're thinking about mortgage payments and, like, who's taking the kids tomorrow and, and all these different, you know, quotidian things I say. We need to get back to that more, more than ever, I feel.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:09

        Pondering the origins of life and connecting-

    16. BKBrian Keating1:05:12

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:12

        ... to people, um, who existed thousands of years before us.

    18. BKBrian Keating1:05:15

        That's right.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:15

        Do you think that Galileo, Copernicus-

    20. BKBrian Keating1:05:18

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:18

        ... um, and others were doing the exact same thing?

    22. BKBrian Keating1:05:22

        Mm-hmm.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:22

        That there were, there was a bit of an escapism to it, healthy escapism, as opposed to trying to solve the, the position of the planets and, and understand ourselves, um, for some other reason?

    24. BKBrian Keating1:05:35

        Definitely, yeah. I mean, Galileo, in particular, is sort of this tragic figure in some ways, you know. He, he had the first notions and application of scientific method, as I said, using an apparatus to confirm a hypothesis, iterating on that. So I said when he saw the moon, he saw these craters and valleys and rifts and lava fields that you'll see tonight. Again, people, you can buy a telescope on Amazon, $50, and you'll see the same things that he saw. And you can connect it to your iPhone and post it on Instagram if you want, and I hope you'll do that. That's your only homework assignment, uh, the only one I'm gonna assign to you-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:05

        I like a good homework assignment.

    26. BKBrian Keating1:06:05

        ... as a professor. So I want you to take a picture of, uh, the craters on the moon. But the point is you'll see the exact same things. From New York City, you can see them. From the middle of London. It doesn't matter where you are. If you have a clear sky and the moon is out, you'll see the same thing. But when you look at Jupiter, you'll see these four dots. And here's where Galileo just had this otherworldly intellect that, you know, when I saw those, I was like, "Oh, cool, it's actually some stars," until I realized, but I had to do more research, that those are actually the moons of Jupiter. So in one night, tonight, you can, you know, quadruple the number of moons you've ever seen in your life. And some of those moons are almost the size of our moon. Our moon is unusually large. Um, and, and those moons, sometimes they'll cast shadows on the planet, so there'll be an eclipse. You'll witness an eclipse on Jupiter, on another planet, with this $50 instrument or whatever, okay? Um, when he was observing these things, he would, would do things that were not only psychological, and they were therapeutic for him in his later years, I'll explain that in a minute. He ended up going blind and, and so losing the sight, you know, and kind of the recollections that he had. And he lost his daughter, who was a nun, because he was, she was illegitimate, as most, uh, I think all of his kids, except maybe one, his oldest one. He had mistresses. He was never... He was married, divorced basically, and that was kind of like... He was Catholic in Italy, pro- you know, primordial Italy basically. It didn't exist as a country, but he was in Tuscany. And, uh, he had a lot of challenges. He was almost always broke. Even when he invented the, his version of the telescope, again, he didn't invent the telescope, but he made it so much better, 10Xed it, 20Xed it, you know, zero to one, and it was incredible what he did with it.He realized, "I can- this is great and all for me to discover these cool things and learn about the universe," he was deeply religious too, uh, "but I gotta make money. I gotta pay for my house." He had, like, bor- imagine, like, your students at Stanford a- are living with you, because that's the only way you can afford to pay rent in your hou- I mean, and you're cooking meals for them. And they're like slobs, right? I mean, uh, like, uh, (laughs) I was a slob in, in college, right? So, the, the point is, he had bills to pay, and he was a businessman. He realized, "Well, look, if I s- if I start making these telescopes, everybody will see the things that I'm seeing. I won't have any monopolistic advantage over, you know, Kepler," who is his friend but also his competitor. Um, they were, they were, you know, really va- vying for, for who was the best astronomer of all time. Uh, Kepler in Germany, and, and obviously Galileo in Italy, well, to become Italy. And, um, and he realized Kepler was purely theoretical. He had g- great math chops. He came up with functions for the orbits of planets before Isaac Newton proved that they came from calculus and universal gravitation. Inc- incredible scientist. But if he gave that, I- it was like giving a, you know, a free particle accelerator to your arch competitors, right? He didn't do that. He said, "No, I'm not gonna make these telescopes, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna sell them only to the government, and they're gonna pay me because these are great military devices." And you don't, we don't think of them now. But with it, he went... He's so brilliant. He was so charming and charismatic. He said, "I'm not, uh, I'm not only gonna, like, sell you these things." First he went to the Senate in, in Venice, the Venetian Senate, the Doge, the original Doge. We think Doge is a coin or some department that Elon's gonna head. No, no, it was the Doge was like the, the, the, the chief of the government back in the Venetian, which was one of the most wealthy countries in all of, all of Europe. It was separate from Tuscany and separate from Rome. And he went there, and he said, uh, "You are a maritime pr-" Like, you've, uh, have you ever been to Venice?

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:25

        Mm-hmm.

    28. BKBrian Keating1:09:25

        Yeah, it's beautiful, right? So he said, "Look, come with me. I'm gonna take you up onto the, uh, Piazza San Marco, go up to the tower, and we're gonna look out, and we're gonna see there's a ship out there. But you can't see it with your naked eye. But if I give you the telescope, you can see it three days earlier, before it comes into your harbor." That's like you have an F-35, you know, stealth fighter, and you, you sell the rights to turn off the stealth portion (laughs) of it to your adversary, and it's incredibly valuable.

Episode duration: 3:07:37