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Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast

Neri Oxman: Biology, Art, and Science of Design & Engineering with Nature | Lex Fridman Podcast #394

Neri Oxman is a designer, engineer, scientist, and artist working on computational design, synthetic biology and digital fabrication, previously at MIT, and now at OXMAN. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Babbel: https://babbel.com/lexpod and use code Lexpod to get 55% off - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - House of Macadamias: https://houseofmacadamias.com/lex and use code LEX to get 20% off first order - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free TRANSCRIPT: https://lexfridman.com/neri-oxman-transcript EPISODE LINKS: Neri's Twitter: https://twitter.com/nerioxman OXMAN Website: https://oxman.com/ OXMAN Instagram: https://instagram.com/oxmanofficial PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 1:49 - Biomass vs anthropomass 16:10 - Computational templates 36:25 - Biological hero organisms 47:25 - Engineering with bacteria 55:42 - Plant communication 1:09:05 - Albert Einstein letter 1:12:27 - Beauty 1:17:23 - Faith 1:27:09 - Flaws 1:46:58 - Extinction 1:58:05 - Alien life 2:01:55 - Music 2:03:22 - Movies 2:07:54 - Advice for young people SOCIAL: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

Neri OxmanguestLex Fridmanhost
Sep 1, 20232h 18mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:49

    Introduction

    1. NO

      Whenever we start a new project, it has to have these ingredients of simultaneous complexity. It has to be novel in terms of the synthetic biology, material science, robotics, engineering. All of these elements that are discipline-based or rooted must be novel. If you can combine novelty in synthetic biology with a novelty in robotics, with a novelty in material science, with a novelty in computational design, you are bound to create something novel.

    2. LF

      The following is a conversation with Neri Oxman, an engineer, scientist, designer, architect, artist, and one of the kindest, most thoughtful and brilliant human beings I've ever gotten to know. For a long time, she led the Mediated Matter group at MIT that did research and built incredible stuff at the intersection of computational design, digital fabrication, material science and synthetic biology, doing so at all scales, from the microscale to the building scale. Now, she's continuing this work at a very new company, for now called Oxman, looking to revolutionize how humans design and build products working with nature, not against it. On a personal note, let me say that Neri has, for a long time, been a friend, and someone who, in my darker moments, has always been there with a note of kindness and support. I am forever grateful to her. She's a brilliant and a beautiful human being. Oh, and she also brought me a present, War and Peace by Tolstoy and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It doesn't get better than that. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Neri Oxman.

  2. 1:49 – 16:10

    Biomass vs anthropomass

    1. LF

      Let's start with the universe. Do you ever think of the universe as a kind of machine that designs beautiful things at multiple scales?

    2. NO

      I- I do. Um... And I think of nature in that way, in general. In the context of design specifically, I think of nature as everything that isn't anthropomass, everything that is not produced by humankind. The birds and the rocks and everything in between. Fungi, elephants, whales.

    3. LF

      Do you think there's an intricate ways in which there's a connection between humans and nature?

    4. NO

      Yes. And we're looking for it. I think that from... Let's say, from the beginning of mankind, uh, going back 200,000 years, the products that we have designed have separated us from nature. And it's ironic that the things that we designed and produced as humankind, those are exactly the things that separated us. Before that, we were- we were to- totally and complete- completely connected. And I want to return to that world.

    5. LF

      But bring the tools of engineering and computation to it.

    6. NO

      Yes. Yes. I absolutely believe that there is so much to nature that, that we still have not leveraged, and we still have not understood, and we still haven't... And so much of our work is design, but a lot of it is science, is unveiling and, um, and, and finding new truths about the natural world that we were not aware be- before. Everybody talks about intelligence these days, but I like to think that nature has a kind of wisdom that exists beyond intelligence or above intelligence, um, and it's that wisdom that we're trying to tap into through technology. If you think about humans versus nature, at least in the realm, at least in the context of definition of nature is everything but, um, anthropomass. And I'm using Ron Milo, who is an incredible professor from the Weizmann Institute, who came up with this definition of anthropomass in 2020, uh, when he identified that 2020 was the crossover year when anthropomass exceeded biomass on the planet. So all of the, uh, designed goods that we have created and brought into the world now outweigh all of the biomass, including, of course, all plastics and wearables, building cities, but also asphalt and concrete all outweigh the scale of the biomass. And actually, that was a moment. You know how in life there are moments that...

    7. LF

      (laughs)

    8. NO

      (laughs) Be a handful of moments that get you to course correct? And, and my... It was a Zoom conversation with Ron, and that was a moment for me, um, when I realized that that imbalance, ugh, now we've superseded the biomass on the planet. Where do we go from here? And you've heard the expression more... More phones than bones and the anthropomass and the Anthropocene, um, and, and the technosphere sort of outweighing the biosphere. Um, but now we are really trying to look at is, is there a way in which all things technosphere are designed as if, as if they are part of the biosphere? Meaning if you could today grow instead of build everything and anything, if you could grow an iPhone, if you could grow a car, uh, what would that world look like? Um, where the Turing test for sort of this, this kind of... I call this material ecology approach, but this, this notion that everything material, everything that you design in the physical universe can be read, uh, and written to as, or thought of or perceived of as nature grown. That's sort of the Turing test for, for the company, or at least that's how I started. I thought, "Well, grow everything." That's sort of the slogan. "Let's grow everything." And if we grow everything, is there a world in which driving a car is better for nature than a world, uh, in which there are no cars? Is there... I- is it possible that a world in which...... um, you build buildings and cities, um, that those buildings and cities actually augment and heal nature, as opposed to their absence. Is there a world in which we now go back to that kind of synergy between nature and humans, um, where you cannot separate between grown and made and it doesn't even matter?

    9. LF

      Is there a good term for the intersection between biomass and anthropomass, like things that are grown?

    10. NO

      Yeah. So in 2005, I, I called this material ecology. I thought-

    11. LF

      Yes.

    12. NO

      ... what if all mater- all things materials would be considered part of the ecology and would have an impact, a positive impact on the ecology, um, where we work together to help each other, all things nature, all things human? And again, you can say that that wisdom in nature exists in fungi. Many mushroom lovers always contest my thesis here, saying, "Well, we have the mushroom, um, network, and we have the mother trees, and they're all connected."

    13. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. NO

      "And, and why don't we just simply hack into, in- into mushrooms?" Well, first of all, yes, they're connected. But that network stops when there is a physical gap. That network does not necessarily enable the, the whales in the, in the Dominican to connect with an olive tree in Israel to connect with a weeping willow in Montana. And that's sort of a world that, that I'm dreaming about. What, what does it mean for nature to have access to the cloud at the kind of bandwidth that we're talking about? Sort of think Neuralink for nature. You know, since the, um, first computer, uh, the, um... And you know this by heart probably better than I do, but (laughs) we're both MIT lifers. Um, we today have computational power that is, um, one trillion times the power that we had in, in, in those times. We have 26.5 trillion times the bandwidth and 11.5 quintillion, uh, times the, um, memory, which is incredible.

    15. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    16. NO

      So humankind, since the, since the first computer, has approached and accessed such incredible bandwidth. And we're asking, "Well, what if nature had that bandwidth?" So beyond genes and evolution, if there was a way to augment nature and allow it access to the world of bits, what does nature look like now? And can nature make decisions for herself, uh, as opposed to being guided and guarded and abused by, by humankind?

    17. LF

      So nature has this inherent wisdom that you spoke to. But y- you're also referring to augmenting that inherent wisdom with, uh, something like a large language model.

    18. NO

      Exactly.

    19. LF

      (laughs) So com- compress human knowledge, but also maintain whatever is that intricate wisdom that allows plants, bacteria, fungi to grow incredible things at arbitrary scales-

    20. NO

      Yeah.

    21. LF

      ... adapting to whatever environment, and just surviving and thriving no matter where, no matter how.

    22. NO

      Exactly. So I think of it as large molecule models.

    23. LF

      (laughs)

    24. NO

      And those large molecule models-

    25. LF

      Oh, really?

    26. NO

      ... of course, um, large language models are based on the, mm, on, on Google, and search engines, and, and so on and so forth. And we don't have this data currently. And part of our mission is, is to do just that-

    27. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    28. NO

      ... trying to, uh, quantify and understand, um, the language that exists across all kingdoms of life, across all five kingdoms of life. And if we can understand that language, is there a way for us to, first, make sense of it, find logic in it, and then generate certain computational tools that empower nature, uh, to, to build better crops, to, to in- increase the level of bi- biodiversity? In, in, in the company, we're constantly asking, "What does nature want?" Like, "What w- w- what does nature want from a compute view?"

    29. LF

      If it knew it, what, what could aid it in whatever the heck it's wanting to do?

    30. NO

      Yeah. So we keep coming back to this, this answer of nature wants to increase information, um, but decrease entropy, right?

  3. 16:10 – 36:25

    Computational templates

    1. LF

      Okay, uh, le- just, just before we get to number three, it'd be, uh, amazing to just talk about what it takes with robotic arms, or in general, the whole process of how to build a life form, stuff you've done in the past, maybe stuff you're doing now, how to use bacteria, this kind of synthetic biology-

    2. NO

      Yeah.

    3. LF

      ... how to grow stuff-

    4. NO

      Yeah.

    5. LF

      ... by leveraging bacteria. Is there examples from the past and explain?

    6. NO

      Yes, and just take a step back over the 10 years of the Mediated Matter group, which was my group at MIT, um, has sort of dedicated itself to bio-based design would be a suitcase word, but th- sort of thinking about that synergy between nature and culture, biology and technology. And we attempted to build a suite of embodiments, let's say, that they ended up in amazing museums and amazing shows, and, and we wrote patents and papers on them, but they were still n-of-ones.

    7. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    8. NO

      Again, the challenge, as you say, was to grow them, and we classified them into fibers, cellular solids, biopolymers, pigments. And in each of the examples, although the material was different, sometimes we used fibers, sometimes we used silk with silkworms, and honey with bees, and, or comb as the structural material. With vespers, we used synthetically engineered bacteria to produce pigments. Although the materials were different and the hero organisms were different, the philosophy was always the same.

    9. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    10. NO

      The approach was really an approach of computational templating. That templating allowed us to create templates for the natural environment, where nature and technology could duet, could dance, uh, together to create these products. So just as a, a few examples, with, uh, silk pavilion, we've had a couple of pavilions, uh, made of silk, and the second one, uh, which was the bigger one, which ended up at the Museum of Modern Art with my friend and incredible mentor, Paolo Antonelli, that pavilion was six meter tall-

    11. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    12. NO

      ... and it was produced by silkworms. And, and there, we had, um, different types of templates. There were physical templates that were basically just these water-soluble meshes upon which the silkworms were-

    13. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    14. NO

      ... spinning, and then there were environmental templates, which was a robot basically applying a variation of environmental conditions, such as heat and light, to guide the movement of the silkworm.

    15. LF

      You're saying so many amazing things, and I'm trying not to interrupt you.

    16. NO

      (laughs)

    17. LF

      But, like, one of the things you've learned by observing, by doing science on, on these is that the environment defines the shape that they create, or contributes, or intricately plays with the shape they create. And so, like, and you get to... That's one of the ways you can get to guide their work.... is by, uh, defining the environment. By the way, you said hero organism, which is an epic term.

    18. NO

      (laughs)

    19. LF

      So that, that means, like, it's whatever is the biological living system that's, uh, doing the creation.

    20. NO

      And that's what's happening in pharma and, and, and biomaterials and, by the way, precision ag and, and, and, and food, new food design technologies, is people are betting on a hero organism, is the... sort of how I think of it.

    21. LF

      Good term. (laughs)

    22. NO

      (laughs) And, and, and, and the hero organism is, sometimes it's the palm oil or, or it's, uh, it's the mycelium. There's a lot of mushrooms around, uh, for good and bad. And, and it's cellulose or it's, you know, fake bananas or the, the workhorse E. coli. But these hero organisms are being betted on as, like, the... What's the one answer that solves everything? (laughs) Hitchhiker's Guide?

    23. LF

      (laughs) 42.

    24. NO

      42.

    25. LF

      Yeah.

    26. NO

      These are sort of the 42s of, of, you know, of the enchanted new universe. And back at, at MIT, we said, "Instead of betting on all of these organisms, let's approach them as almost like movement in a symphony. And let's kind of lean into what we can learn from each of these organisms in the context of building a project in an architectural scale." And those usually were pavilions.

    27. LF

      And then the competition templating is the way you guide the work of this l- how many did you say? 17,000?

    28. NO

      17,532. So each of these silkworm's threads are about, you know, one, one mile, um-

    29. LF

      Yeah.

    30. NO

      ... in distance. And, and, and they're, they're beautiful. And when... And just thinking about the amount of material, you know, it's a bit like thinking about the am- you know, the, the length of capillary vessels that grow in your belly when you're pregnant to feed that incredible new life form. (laughs) Um, it, it... Just nature is amazing. But back to the silkworms, I, I think I had three months, um, to build this incredible pavilion, but, um, we couldn't figure out how... We were thinking of emulating the process of how a silkworm goes about building its incredible architecture, this cocoon over the period of 24 to 72 hours. And it builds a cocoon basically to protect itself. It's-

  4. 36:25 – 47:25

    Biological hero organisms

    1. LF

      or something about these materials. I mean, is there something that stands out to you about these hero organisms like bees, silkworms? You mentioned E. coli has its pros and cons, this bacteria. What have you learned that small or big that's interesting about these organisms?

    2. NO

      Yeah. It's a beautiful question. What have I learned? I've learned that, um, you know, uh, we did... We also worked with shrimp shells with ǀ/á?eǰ ǀʼōhéḗɂ. We built this tower on the roof of SFMOMA which by, um, a couple of months ago and until it was on the roof, we, we've shown the structure completely biodegrade into then... Well, not completely, but almost completely biodegrade, uh, to the soil.

    3. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    4. NO

      And, um, and this notion that a product or part... (clears throat) An organism or...... part of that organism can reincarnate is very, very moving thought to me.

    5. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    6. NO

      Uh, because I want to believe that I believe in reincarnation.

    7. LF

      I want to believe that I believe.

    8. NO

      That I... Yeah, that's my relationship with-

    9. LF

      I want to believe.

    10. NO

      ... with God. I wanna... I want... I- I like to believe in believing. Most great things in life are, um, second derivatives of things, but (laughs) that's part of another conversation.

    11. LF

      I f- I feel like that's a quote that's gonna take weeks of-

    12. NO

      (laughs)

    13. LF

      ... to- to really internalize.

    14. NO

      That- that notion of I want you to want or-

    15. LF

      Mm-hmm

    16. NO

      ... I need you to need, or, um, that- that- that it- it... there's always something, a deeper truth behind what is on the surface.

    17. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    18. NO

      And so I- I like to go to the second and tertiary derivative of things a- and- and discover new truths about them through that. But what have I learned about organisms?

    19. LF

      And why don't you like E. coli?

    20. NO

      I like E. coli. Uh, and- and a lot of the work that we've done, uh, was not possible without our- our working on E. coli or other workhorse organisms, uh, like cyanobacteria.

    21. LF

      How are bacteria used?

    22. NO

      Death masks.

    23. LF

      (laughs)

    24. NO

      The death masks.

    25. LF

      So what are death masks?

    26. NO

      So we did this project called Vespers, and those were basically death masks that were set as a process for designing a living product. Okay, what happens... And we looked at be- I looked at... I remember looking at Beethoven's death mask and Agamemnon's death mask and just studying how they were created. And really, they were sort of geometrically attuned to the face of the dead. And what we wanted to do is create a death mask that not... was not based in the sh- in... was not based on the shape of- of the- of the wearer, but rather was based on their legacy and their biology, and maybe we could, um, harness a few stem cells there for future generations or contain the last breath. Lazarus, which preceded Vespers, was a project where we designed a mask to contain a single breath, the last breath of the wearer. Um, and again, if I had access to these technologies today, I would totally, uh, reincorporate my grandmother's last breath in- in- in- in- in a- in- in a- in a product. So it was like an heir memento. So with Vespers, we, um, we actually used E. coli, uh, to, um, to- to create pigmented masks, masks whose pigments, uh, would be recreated at the surface of the mask. Uh, and I'm skipping over a lot of content, but basically there were 15 masks, and they were created as three sets, the masks of the past, the masks of the present, and the masks of the future. Um, the masks, there were five, five, and five, and the masks of the past were based on, um, ornaments, and they were, um, embedded with natural minerals like gold. Yes, yes, yes, exactly.

    27. LF

      And we're looking at pictures of these, and they're gorgeous.

    28. NO

      Yes, yes.

    29. LF

      Um, extremely-

    30. NO

      (laughs)

  5. 47:25 – 55:42

    Engineering with bacteria

    1. NO

      for sure.

    2. LF

      Let's give bacteria all the love they deserve. We wouldn't be here without them. They, they were here for, I don't know what it is, like a billion years before anything else showed up.

    3. NO

      But in a way, if you think about it, they create the matter that we consume and then, and then reinc- reincarnate or dissolves into the soil and then creates an, a tree, and then that tree creates more bacteria.

    4. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    5. NO

      And then that bacteria cre- I mean, again, again, that's why I like to think about not recycling but reincarnating, because that assumes a kind of imparting upon nature that dimension of agency and, and maybe awareness. Uh, but yeah. Lots of really interesting work happening with bacteria. Um, directed evolution is one of them. We're looking, we're, we're looking at directed evolution, so high-throughput directed evolution of, um, of bacteria for the production of products. And again, those products can be a shoe, um, wearables, biomaterials, therapeutical, therapeutics.

    6. LF

      And doing that direction computationally.

    7. NO

      Totally computationally, obviously, in, in the lab with, with, with the hero organism, the hero bacteria. Um, and, and, and what's happening today in, in, um, eco-microbial synthetic biology, synthetic biology that lends itself to ecology, uh, and again, all of these fields are coming together. It's such a wonderful time to be a designer. I can't think of a better time to be a designer in this world. Um, but with, um, high-throughput directed evolution, and w- I should say that the physical space in our, uh, new lab, um, will have these capsules, which, which we have designed, um, that are, um, that they are designed like growth chambers or grow rooms. Um, and in those grow rooms, we can, uh, basically, um...... program, um, top-down environmental templating, right? Top-down environmental control of lights, humidity, light, etc. So light, humidity, and temperature, um, while doing, uh, bottom-up genetic regulation. So it is a wet lab, but in that wet lab, you could do at the same time, you know, genetic- genetic modulation, uh, regulation, and- and environmental templating. Um, and then, again, the idea is that in one of those capsules, maybe we grow transparent wood. And in another capsule, we... you know, we... transparent wood for architectural application. Another capsule, we grow a shoe, and in another capsule, we look at that language m- m-... you know, large language model that we talk- talked about. M- and there's a particular technology associated with that, which we're hoping to reveal to the world in February. Um, and in each of those capsules is basically a high throughput computational environment, like a breadboard that has... think of sort of a physical breadboard environment that has access to oxygen and nitrogen and CO2 and nutritional dispensing. And these, uh, little capsules, uh, could be stressed. They're sort of a- an ecology in a box, um, and they could be stressed to produce the food of the future or the products of the future or the construction materials of the future. Um, food- food is a very interesting one, obviously because of food insecurity and- and- and- and the issues that we have around both in terms of food insecurity, but also in terms of the future of food and what- what will remain after we can't eat plants and animals anymore and all we can eat is these false bananas and- and- and- and, um, you know, and insects as our protein source. So there, we're thinking, you know, can we design these capsules to stress an environment and see how that environment behaves? Think about a kind of a- an ecological, eh, eh, a biodiversity chamber, right? A kind of a time capsule that is designed as a bio- uh, m- m- biodiversity chamber where you can program the exact temperature, humidity, and light, um, combination, uh, to emulate the environment from the past. So, Ohio 1981, December 31st at 5:00 AM in the morning, what did tomatoes taste like?

    8. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. NO

      Uh, to all the way in the future, 200 years ago, these are the- the input, the environmental inputs. These are some genetic regulations that I'm testing, uh, and what might the- the food of the future or the products of the future or the construction materials of the future, um, feel like, test like, behave like, etc. And so these capsules are designed as part of a lab. That's why it's been taking us such a long time to get to this point, um, because we started designing them in 2019, and they're currently, literally, as I speak to you, under construction.

    10. LF

      How well is it understood how to do this dance of controlling these different variables in order for various kinds of growth to happen?

    11. NO

      It's not. It's never been done before, and these capsules have never been designed before. So I... you know, when- when- when we first decided these are going to be environmental capsules, people thought we were crazy. "What are you building? What are you making?" So the answer is that we don't know, but we know that there has never been a space like this where you have basically a wet lab and a grow room at that resolution, um, at that granularity, uh, of- of- of- of- of control over organisms. There is a reason why there is this incredible evolution of products in the software space. Um, the hardware space, that's a more limiting space. That... because of the physical infrastructure that we have to test and experiment with things. So we really wanted to push on creating a wet lab that is novel in every possible way. What could you create in it? You could create the future. Um, you could create a, um... you could create an environment of plants talking to each other with a robotic referee.

    12. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    13. NO

      And the robotic referee, we... you know, and you could- you could set an objective function, and let's say for- for- for- for the, uh, um, transaction-driven individuals in the world, let's say the objective function is carbon sequestration.

    14. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    15. NO

      And, um, and all of those plants are, um, are, eh, implemented with a gaming engine, and they have this reward system, right? And they're constantly needing to, eh, optimize the way in which they carbon se- sequest. Uh, we weed out the bad guys, we leave the good guys, and we end up with this, like, ideal ecology of carbon-sequestering heroes that connect and communicate with each other. And once we have that model, this biodiversity chamber, we send it out into the field, um, and we see what happens in nature. And that- that's sort of what I'm talking about, eh, augmenting plants with that extra, eh, eh, dimension of- of bandwidth that they do not have. Eh, they're- they're just- just last week, um, I came across a paper, um, that discusses, uh, the in vivo neurons that are... that are augmented with a Pong game and, uh, and in a dish, they basically present sentience and the beginning of awareness, which is c-... which is wonderful.

    16. LF

      Yeah.

    17. NO

      Like that- that you could actually take these neurons from a mouse brain and- and you have the electrical circuits and the physiological circuits that enable, uh, these cells to connect and communicate and together arrive at sort of swarm, uh, situation that allows them to act as a system that is not only perceived to be sentient but is actually sentient. Um, Michael Levine calls this agential material, material that has agency, right? So, eh, eh, so- so- so this- this- this is of interest to us because this is sort of... again, this is emergence post-templating. You template until you don't need to template anymore because y- because the system has its own rules, right? What we don't want to happen with AGI, we want to happen with synthetic biology. What we don't want to happen online, in software, with language, we want for it to happen with- with bio-based materials, because that will get us closer to growing things as opposed to assembly and, um...... and mechanically, yeah, putting them together with toxic materials and compounds.

  6. 55:42 – 1:09:05

    Plant communication

    1. NO

    2. LF

      If I can ask a pothead question for a second.

    3. NO

      (laughs)

    4. LF

      So you mentioned just like the silkworms, the individualist s- s- silk silkworms got, uh, to actually learn how to collaborate-

    5. NO

      Yes. Yes.

    6. LF

      ... or actually to collaborate-

    7. NO

      Yes.

    8. LF

      ... like sw- in a swarm-like way. You're talking about getting plants to communicate in some interesting way based on an objective function. Is it possible, uh, to have some kind of interface between another kind of organisms, humans, and nature? So, like, uh, a human to have a conversation with, with a plant?

    9. NO

      There already is. You know that when we cut freshly cut grass, I love the smell.

    10. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. NO

      But it's a smell of, actually, it's a smell of distress that the leaves of grass are communicating to each other. So the grass, when it's cut, emits green leaf, uh, volatiles, GLVs. And those GLVs are basically one leaf of gr- grass communicating to another leaf of grass, "Be careful. Mind you, you're about to be cut."

    12. LF

      (laughs)

    13. NO

      These incredible life forms are communicating using a different language than ours. We use language models, they use molecular models. E- at the moment where we can parse i- we can, we can, um, decode these molecular moments is when we can start having a conversation with plants. Now, of course, there is a lot of work around, uh, plant neurobiology. It's a real thing. Uh, plants do not have a nervous system, but they have something akin to a nervous system. It has a kind of a ecological intelligence that is focused on a particular timescale. And the timescale is very, very slow, slow, slow, slow timescale. So it is when we can melt these timescales and, and, and, and connect with these plants in terms of the content of the language, in this case molecules, the duration of the language, and we can start having a conversation, if not simply to understand what is happening in the plant kingdom. Precision agriculture, I promise to you, will look very, very different, right? Because right now, we're using drones to take photos of crops of corn that look bad. And when we take that photo, it's already too late. But if we understand these molecular footprints and things that they are trying to say, the stress that they are trying to communicate, then we could, of course, predict the physiological, biological behavior of these crops, both for, for their own, uh, self-perpetuation, but also for the, the foods and, and, and the pharma and, and the type of molecules that we're seeking to grow for the benefit of humanity. And so these languages, um, that we are attempting now to quantify and qualify, uh, will really help us not only better nature and help nature in its, uh, striving to surviving, but also help us, uh, you know, design better wines and, uh, you know, and, and better foods and, and, and better medicine and better products, again, across all scales, across all application domains.

    14. LF

      Is there intricacies to understanding the timescales, like you mentioned, at which these communications, these languages, like, operate? Is there something different between the way humans communicate and the way plants communicate in terms of time?

    15. NO

      Remember when we started the conversation talking about sort of definitions in the context of design and then in the context of being? That question requires, I think, a kind of a shift, um, a humility. That requires a, a kind of a humility towards nature, understanding that it operates on different scales. We, we recently discovered that, uh, you know, that the molecular footprint of a rose or of a plant in general during nighttime is different than its molecular footprint during daytime. So these are circadian rhythms that are associated with, um, what kind of molecules these plants emit, um, given stress, stresses, and given, um... You know, there's a reason why, uh, why the jasmine, a jasmine field smells so, so delicious in 4:00 AM in the morning. And, and there's, like, there's, there's peace and rest amongst, you know, amongst the plants. And you have to sort of tune into that time dimension of, of the plant kingdom. And that, of course, requires all this humility where, in a single capsule, to design a biodiversity chamber, it wi- will take years, not months, and definitely not days, and to see these products. And also, that humility in design comes from simply, you know, looking at how we are today as a civilization, how we use and abuse nature. Like, just think of all these Christmas trees, right? These Christmas trees, they take years to grow. We use them for one night, the holiest night of the year, and then we let them go. And think about, in nature, to design a, quote-unquote, product, an organism spends energy and time and thoughtfulness and many, many, many years, and I'm thinking about the redwoods. Um, to grow these channels, these se- you know, these cellulose layers and channels and reach these incredible heights, takes sometimes hundreds of years, sometimes thousands of years. Am I afraid of building a company that designs products in the scale of thousands of years? No, I'm not. And the way of being in the physical world today i- is really not in tune with the time dimension of the natural world at all. And, um, and, and that needs to change. And that's obviously very, very hard to do in a, uh, community, in, uh, of, of, of human beings that is, at least in the Western world, that is based on capitalism.

    16. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    17. NO

      And so here, the wonderful challenge that we have ahead of us is how do we impart upon the capitalist movement we know that we need to produce now products that will enter the real world and be c- you know, uh...... shared and used by others, uh, and still benefit the natural world while benefiting humans, and that's a wonderful challenge to have.

    18. LF

      So integrate technology with nature, and that's a really difficult problem. I see parallels here with, with another company of Neuralink, which is, uh, is basically like you, I think you mentioned Neuralink for nature, um, that there are short-term products you can come up with, but it's ultimately a long-term challenge of how do you integrate the machine with this creation of nature, this intricate complex creation of nature, which is the human brain, and then-

    19. NO

      Yeah.

    20. LF

      ... you're speaking more generally, nature.

    21. NO

      You know how every company has an image, like this one single image that embodies the spirit of the company.

    22. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    23. NO

      And I think for Neuralink it was, to me, that chimpanzee playing a video game.

    24. LF

      (laughs) Mm-hmm.

    25. NO

      It was just unbelievable. But with plants, there potentially is a set of molecules that, um, impacts or inspires, I like that word, the plant to, um, behave or act in a certain way, um, and allows still the plant the possibility of deciding where it or she or he wants to go, uh, which is why our, our first product for this molecular space is going to be a functionalized fragrance. So here, uh, we're thinking about the future of fragrances and the future of fragrances and flavors, um, you know, these, these products are in the industry as we know it today, are designed for totally for a human-centric, uh, use and, um, and enjoyment and indulgence and luxury. Um, they're used on the body for the sake of, mm, I don't know, a- attraction and, and feeling good, um, and smelling good. And we were asking ourselves, is there a world in which, um, in which a fragrance can be not a functional fragrance, 'cause you could claim that all fragrances are functional, but is there a world in which the f- the fragrance becomes functionalized, is again, i- i- i- im- imparted upon or given agency to connect with another organism? Is there a world in which, um, you and I can go down to your garden and use a perfume that will interact with the rose garden downstairs? Um, I've just been enamored with the statements that are being made in the media around, "Oh, this is completely biologically derived fragrance, and it's bio-based," and, but when you look into the fragrance and you understand that in order to get to this bio-derived fragan- fragrance, you went through, you blew through, uh, you know, 10,000, 10,000 bushes of rose to create five milliliters of, of a rose fragrance, and all these 10,000 bushes of rose, they take space, they take, you know, water management, and, and so much waste. Um, is this really what we want the future of our agriculture and molecular goods to look like? And so when we did the A Goyaha pavilion on the roof of SFMOMA, we calculated that for that pavilion we had 40,000 calories embedded into this pavilion that was made of shrimp shells and chitosan and-

    26. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. NO

      ... and, um, apple skins and, and cellulose from tree, uh, tree pulp. And we calculated that overall the structure had 40,000 calories. Interesting way to think about a structure, right-

    28. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    29. NO

      ... from the, from the point of view of, of calories. But as you left the gallery, you saw these three clocks that were so beautifully designed by Felix on our team, and these clocks measured, uh, temperature and humidity and we were connecting them to a weather channel so that we could directly, um, look at how the pavilion was biodegrading in real time.

    30. LF

      (laughs)

  7. 1:09:05 – 1:12:27

    Albert Einstein letter

    1. NO

      I recently read this beautiful letter that was written by Einstein to his daughter.

    2. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    3. NO

      Um, and was discovered... Einstein asked his daughter to wait 20 years until she reveals these letters, and so she did. It's just one of the most beautiful letters I've ever read from a father to his daughter. And the letter overall is imbued with a kind of a, a sense of remorse or maybe even feelings of sadness, and there is some kind of melancholy note in the letter, uh, where Einstein regrets not having spent enough time with his daughter, uh, having focused on, you know, the theory of general relativity and changing the world. And then he goes on to talk about this beautiful and elegant equation of E=MC². And he tells his daughter that he believes that love is actually the force that shapes the universe because it is like gravity, right? It attracts people. It is like light. It brings people together and connec- connects between people. Um, and it's all empowering. And, and so if you multiply it by the, the speed of light, you could really, uh, change the world for the better. And I, I... Call me a romanticist. I know you are too.

    4. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    5. NO

      Um, which is why I so love being here. I, I believe in this. I, I totally and utterly, um, believe in, in, in-

    6. LF

      In love. By the way, let me just... The excerpt from Einstein's letter. "There's an extremely powerful force that so far science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomena operating in the universe, and has not yet been identified by us. This universal force is love." He also, the last paragraph in the letter, as you've mentioned, "I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it's too late to apologize, but as time is relative," that jokester Einstein, "I need to tell you that I love you. And, uh, thanks to you, I reached the ultimate answer. Your father, Albert Einstein."

    7. NO

      Yeah.

    8. LF

      But that regret, "I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart," maybe that's a universal regret. Filling your days with busyness-

    9. NO

      Yeah.

    10. LF

      ... and silly pursuits, and not sitting down and, uh, expressing that.

    11. NO

      But it is everything. It is everything. It is why I love that expression in... I forget who said this, but, "I, (sighs) I love my daughter more than, um, evolution required." Right? And, um, I feel the same way towards my other half, and, and I feel that when you find that connection, um, everything and anything is possible. Um, and it's a, a very, very, very magical, um... a magical moment. So I, I, I believe in love and I believe in the one.

  8. 1:12:27 – 1:17:23

    Beauty

    1. NO

    2. LF

      It might be the same thing, it might be a different thing, but let me ask you a ridiculously big philosophical, uh, question about beauty. Dostoevsky said, "Beauty will save the world," in The Idiot, one of my favorite books of his. Uh, what is beauty to you? You've created, through this intersection of engineering and nature, you have created some incredibly beautiful things. What do you think is beauty?

    3. NO

      That's a beautiful question. (laughs)

    4. LF

      (laughs) Maybe it is connected to the love question. I don't know.

    5. NO

      Uh, it is connected to the love question. Of cour- Everything is connected to the love question.

    6. LF

      (laughs) Okay.

    7. NO

      Um, to me, beauty is agency. To me, something that has agency, it is beautiful. There is this special quote from Buckminster Fuller, which I cannot remember word for word, but I remember the concept, which goes something like this. Um, "When I work on a problem, I never think about beauty, but when I'm done solving the problem and I look at what I've created, and it's not beautiful, I know that I was wrong."

    8. LF

      (laughs) Okay. Yeah.

    9. NO

      So it's kind of a, an agency that speaks to, quote-unquote, "the objective function of the creation," right? Whether for Bucky it's useless or useful.

    10. LF

      So this idea of empowerment that you talked about-

    11. NO

      Yes.

    12. LF

      ... is fundamentally connected to it.

    13. NO

      Comes back to that, yeah.

    14. LF

      What's the difference...... that you hinted at between empowerment and emergence. Is, uh, emergence completely lacks control? Is it, and empowerment is more, um, is more controlled? There's an agent making decisions? Is, is there an interesting distinction there?

    15. NO

      Yes. I think empowerment is a force with direction. It has directionality to it. Emergence is, I believe, multi-directional. Again, that depends on the application. Emergence is perhaps, in terms of, sort of a material definition, is the, is a tropic spirit. When, um, empowerment is the an- is a tropic, uh, counterpart. Um, I think, uh, they overlap because I think that empowerment is a way of, um, inspiring emergence. I think emergence does not happen without empowerment, but empowerment can happen without emergence.

    16. LF

      Do you think of emergence as the loss of control? Like, when you're thinking about these capsules, uh, and then the things they create, is emergence a thing that is a not a desirable con- uh, conclusion?

    17. NO

      I love that question because to some of us, the loss of control is control. In design, we're used to, like, extreme levels of control over form and g- the shape of a thing, and how it behaves, and how it functions, and that's something we've inherited from the Industrial Revolution. But with nature, there is this, um, there is this diversity that happens without necessarily having a reward function, right? This is good or bad. Things just happen. And some of them happen to have wings, and some of them happen to have scales. And, you know, you end up with this incredible potential, um, for, for diversity. So, I think the future of, of design is in that soft control, is in the ability to design highly controlled systems that enable, um, that enable the loss of control. And creativity is very much part of this, because creativity is all about letting go, and beginning again, and beginning again, and beginning again. And when you cannot let go, you cannot be creative, and you can't, you, you can't, you can't find novelty. But I, I think that letting go is a moment that enables empowerment, agency, creativity, emergence, and they're all connected. They are sort of, associate themselves with definition of destiny or the inevitable. A good friend of mine shared with me elegant definition of fate, which is the ratio of, of who you are and, and who you want to be.

    18. LF

      Ratio of who you are, who you want to be. (laughs)

    19. NO

      Exactly.

    20. LF

      (laughs)

    21. NO

      And that sort of ends up defining you.

    22. LF

      Yeah.

    23. NO

      And those tools, I think, when, when, when, when you let go, you sort of find, you, you give peace to your will, right? To a sense of will. And, and, and so I think that's very, very important in design, but also in life.

  9. 1:17:23 – 1:27:09

    Faith

    1. NO

    2. LF

      So, you said this fate is the ratio of, uh-

    3. NO

      Who you are-

    4. LF

      ... who you are.

    5. NO

      ... and who you want to be.

    6. LF

      W- who you want to be. Do, do, do you think there's something to this whole manifestation thing? Like, focusing on a vision of what you want r- the world to become, and in, in that focusing, you manifest it? Like Paolo Coelho said in The Alchemist, "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." Is there something to that?

    7. NO

      I think so, yes. And I always think of, you know, what I do as this, the culmination of energy, information, and matter.

    8. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. NO

      And how to direct energy, information, and matter in the design of a thing or in the design of a life. I think living is very much a, a process of channeling these energies to where they need to go. I think that the manifestation, or part of that manifestation, is the pointing to the moon in order to get to the moon. And, and, and that's why manifestation is also directional. It has that vector quality to it that, that I think of agency as.

    10. LF

      Have you, uh, in your own life, has there been things you've done where you kind of direct that energy, information, and matter in a way that opens up...

    11. NO

      New possibilities?

    12. LF

      Yeah. I mean, you've also said somewhere, I'm probably misquoting, that, uh, you're, you're, y- you're many things, you and Area are many things, and you become new things every 10 years or so.

    13. NO

      Oh, I did say that somewhere.

    14. LF

      Somewhere.

    15. NO

      That every decade, you sort of switch, and-

    16. LF

      That was an ol- that was a previous Narie that said that. (laughs)

    17. NO

      (laughs) Yeah, I, I did say some time ago that you have to sort of reboot, reboot every 10 years, um, to, to keep creative, and keep inventive, and, and keep fresh.

    18. LF

      Is there things you've done in your life where just kind of, uh, doors opened?

    19. NO

      I think everything. Everything. Uh, everything good I've found in my life has been found in that way of, um, letting go and suspending my sense of disbelief. And often, you will find me say to the team, "Suspend your disbelief. I don't care that this is impossible. Let's assume it is. Where does it take us?"

    20. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    21. NO

      And that suspension of dis- belief is absolutely part and parcel of the creative act. Um, you know, I did so when, um...... I was in medical school. I was in Hadassah, and in the Hebrew University. And, um, I remember I left medical school for architecture the day my grandmother passed away. And that was a moment of relief, and that was a mom- a, a door that was closing that o- opened other opportunities. Um, but that, of course, required letting go of the great vision of becoming a doctor, and letting go of the dream of, you know, being surrounded by wonderful patients, and the science of medicine, and the research associated with that science, and letting go of that dream. I had to accomplish another. Um, and, and it, and it, it has happened throughout my life in, in different ways. Um, MIT was another experience like that, where people pointed at me as, you know, the designer for whom the academic currency is not necessarily the citation index. And, of course, in order to get tenure at MIT, you have to look at the citation index. Um, but for me, it- it- it was not that. It was manifesting our work in shows, and writing papers, and writing patents, and creating a celebration around work. And I never saw a, a distinction, um, you know, between those ways of being. I also think that another, um, kind of way of being, or a modality of being that I found helpful is, um... Viktor Frankl wrote this incredible book, Man's Search for Meaning, after the Holocaust, and he writes, "Different people, uh, pursue life for- for- for different reasons." According to Freud, the- the- the goal of- of life is to find pleasure, and- and according to Adler, it's, you know, to find power. And, um, and for Viktor Frankl, it was about finding meaning. And when you let go of the titles and the disciplines and the boundaries and the expectations and the perception, you- you are elevated to this really special... Yeah, spiritual, but definitely very, very creative plane, where you- you can sort of start anew.

    22. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    23. NO

      Uh, look at the world through the lens of a bacterium or a robot or- or, you know, or look at ecology through the lens of chemistry, and look at chemistry through the lens of robotics, and look at robotics through the lens of, you know, microbe- microbial ecologies, and so on and so forth. And- and I feel that kind of rebooting, um, not every ten years, but every minute, every breath-

    24. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    25. NO

      ... is very, very important for creative life and for- for just maintaining this fresh mind to reboot, reboot, to begin again with every breath, begin again. And- and that can be confusing for some, right? For my team members, you know, I- I like to change my mind. It's who I am. It's how I think. It's how I operate.

    26. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    27. NO

      Do you wanna open? (laughs) Um, you know, and- and- and they'll come, and- and we found another technique or another technology that's interesting, and we thought that, you know, that we were working on this functionalized fragrance, but now there's another opportunity, and let's go there. To me, I would much rather, you know, live life, like, if I had to pick sort of my favorite Broadway show, um-

    28. LF

      (laughs)

    29. NO

      ... to enter and live through, it would be Into the Woods.

    30. LF

      Mm-hmm.

  10. 1:27:09 – 1:46:58

    Flaws

    1. NO

    2. LF

      What about human relations? You mentioned finding love. Are the flaws in humans, the imperfection in humans, a component of love? Like, what role do you think the- the flaws play?

    3. NO

      That's a- That's a really profound question. I think the flaws are there, uh, to... The flaws are there to present a- a- a vulnerability. And those flaws are, um, are, um, a- a sign of those vulnerabilities. And I think love is v- very, very gentle, right? Love... With Bill, we often talk about, between the two of us, about what drives all human behavior, and for him, it's incentive. (laughs)

    4. LF

      (laughs)

    5. NO

      As you might expect. And he will repeat this sentence to me, "Oh, incentive drives all human behavior."

    6. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    7. NO

      But I- I would say to me it's love. Lo- very much so. Um, and- and I think flaws are part of that, because flaws, eh, are a sign of that vulnerability.

    8. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    9. NO

      Whether physical, whether emotional vulnerability, and those vulnerabili- these vulnerabilities, they either tear us apart or they bring us together.

    10. LF

      Mm-hmm.

    11. NO

      Um, the vulnerability is what is the glue, I think. I think that the vulnerability enables connection. The connection is the glue, and that connection enables accessing a higher ground as a community as opposed to as an individual. So if there is a society of the mind, or if there are higher levels of awareness that can be accessed, um, in community as opposed to, again going to the silkworm, as opposed to on the individual level, I think that those occur through the flaws and the vulnerabilities, and without them, we- we cannot find connection, community, and without community, we can't build what we have built as a civilization, you know, for the past hundreds of thousands of years. So, I think not only are they beautiful, but they have a functional role in- in building civilizations.

    12. LF

      Yeah, I- There's a sense in which love requires vulnerability and maybe love is the leap into that vulnerability.

    13. NO

      And I think yes. I think... A flaw, think about it, like physically, I'm thinking about a brick that's flawed, but in a way, the- the- I think of a flaw as a- as an increased surface area. (laughs)

    14. LF

      (laughs)

    15. NO

      Sorry. (laughs)

    16. LF

      God, that's a good line. That is a good line.

    17. NO

      Right? A surface area that, like, physically or...

    18. LF

      Whew. That's a good line.

    19. NO

      ... emotionally, right?

    20. LF

      Yeah.

    21. NO

      It- it sort of introduces this whole new dimension to a human or a brick-

    22. LF

      Yeah.

    23. NO

      ... and because you have more surface area, you can, you know-

    24. LF

      Yeah. (laughs)

    25. NO

      ... use mortar and- and build a home, and- and yeah, I think of it as accessing this additional dimension of surface area that could be used for good or bad, right, to- to- to connect, to communicate, to collaborate. It makes me think of that quote from this incredible movie I've watched years ago, Particle Fever, I think it was called, a documentary about the Large Hadron Collider-

    26. LF

      (laughs)

    27. NO

      I- an incredible film where they talk about the things that are least important for our survival are the things that make us human... Like, the- the pure romantic act or, you know, the- the notion of... And- and Viktor Frankl talks about that too. He talks about feeling the sun on his arms as he's- as he is, um working the soil in two degrees Fahrenheit with- without clothes, and the officer berates him and says, "Wh- what have you done? Wha- har- have you been a businessman before you came here to the camp?" And he says, "I was a doctor." And he said, "You- you must have made a lot of money as a doctor." And he said, "I- all- all my work I've done for free, I've been helping the poor." Um, but he keeps his- he keeps his, um, humility, and he kee- he keeps his, um, modesty, and he keeps his preservation of the spirit, um, and he says the things that actually make him m- able to, or made him able to outlive the- the terrible, um, experience in the Holocaust was the- the really cherishing this moment when the sun hits his skin or when he can eat a, um...... a grain of rice, a single grain of rice. So I think cherishing is a very important part of, um, living a meaningful life, being able to cherish those simple things.

    28. LF

      Like, to notice them and to-

    29. NO

      To notice them, to pay attention to them in the moment. And I, I do this now more than ever.

    30. LF

      I mean, there is some sub- uh... Bukowski has this poem I like called Nirvana where it t- tells a story of a young man on a bus going through, like, North Carolina or something like this, and they stop off in a cafe. And he has this, there's a waitress and he just, he, he talks about that he notices the magic. Something indescribable, he just notices the magic of it, and he gets back on the bus with the rest of the passengers and none of them seem to have noticed the magic. And I think if you just allow yourself to pause and just to feel whatever that is, maybe, maybe ultimately it's a kind of gratitude.

Episode duration: 2:18:25

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