Transcript of "Professor Brian Cox"

Hi.

Hey. Hey.

Hey.

I don't mean to bother you guys or anything, but—

Okay.

I'm about to start a podcast. I'd love a little help. I don't know if you guys are busy, but—

No, I guess I could jump in. What's the podcast called?

Well, we just sit and talk and visit, you know? Yeah?

What's it called?

Oh, I love to visit.

Well, I'm not bright, right? So, kind of un— I'm thinking about unsmart.

Oh, that's good. But it doesn't really roll off the tongue.

The—

yeah, so I'm without smarts.

So I'm, um, you don't have— you don't have more smarts?

No, I'm less than smart. So what do you—

maybe, maybe dumbass?

Less smart.

Less—

let's come up with it later. Let's do the show, we'll come up with later.

Yeah, okay, great.

Welcome to an all-new Smart List. Smart.

Hey, Willie, did you just barely make it? Hold on, we have— he's not out of breath. Will audio.

Do we have Will audio?

Audio. Will audio.

Will audio. I made it! I made it! I made it! I just ran out of the car. I made it, you guys, I made it! I was on the—

you were on the freeway?

I was on the LIE, guys. I was on the LIE, just keeping it real.

You're lying.

Did you ever see that movie, by the way, Lie, with Brian Cox plays like a child molester? Incredible movie.

What?

I know I didn't want to start with that, but wait, what are you talking about?

For sure, there's some horrible story. Let's talk about it.

When did that, when did that come out?

Oh, 20 years ago, I'll bet.

Okay. Um, Shawnee, I, I just narrowly missed seeing JB this morning. I'm so sad.

Oh, are you guys okay?

And, and last night, because he was working last night, he's working splits now. Tell Tracy what a split is, uh, Sean.

We take a banana and—

Jason, I'm in.

Jason, a split is like when you start at noon and then you end at midnight. So you can shoot some day scenes and some night scenes all in the same 12 hours of work.

And it's kind of fun because you can avoid— you can avoid a full night shoot, which everybody dislikes.

Yeah, it's not—

it's not— it's not— And at our age, doing a night shoot—

Also, it's summer because so the light is— It takes a long time to get dark.

Oh, explain that to us. You have a short—

you don't have a lot of night hours, so it's not ideal. Sean. Yeah, Sean.

Hi.

How's everybody doing?

It's so good to see you.

We haven't seen each other in a long time.

I know. I mean, I FaceTimed you a few days ago, but it's been a minute.

A minute. And Jay's working his balls off.

Jay worked— he worked them, right? I heard he worked them clear off.

Yeah, I gelded myself yesterday.

Oh, no.

No. Wait, are you—

How was the first week, JB? Really, really good.

I'm very, very happy. It was hard. It was a lot of work. Goddamn.

Yeah, it is. I mean, how long are the days? Like 12 hours?

Yeah, they're 12-hour days, but like, you know, you'd like— you raise your hand for the position of supposedly having the answers to everything. It means you gotta try to think about everything.

And everybody looks at you.

Everybody looks at you like, "What's next?" Yeah, you can't just sit in your trailer and wait for them to say, "Okay, we're done. We're ready for you. Come on. Come speak." Right.

Isn't that nice? I know actors have it nice. I went to my niece's wedding, Laura, in Iowa. I've never been to Iowa.

Wait a second. I've never been to Iowa.

I know. By the way, there's no direct flights from Los Angeles to Iowa, so you have to go Los Angeles to Chicago or Dallas to Iowa. Anyway, on the way back, everything was canceled. Took 12 hours to get home.

Why?

Because you had to do some driving?

Yeah, because the weather. Then everybody changes their seats and then we got— Then we're going to go to Cleveland, and then that was delayed. And then we—

Cleveland?

We got a driver to drive us because there was no cars to rent when we landed to get there. And it was a 4-hour drive. And wait. Yeah, but it was worth it. It was worth it.

Was it really?

Yes.

Who is this?

Who is my niece? My niece Laura and her new husband Christian.

But when's the last time you saw this niece?

Last year, I think.

So once a year.

She came out to visit, right? She came out to visit in LA.

No, this is a different one.

This is— I have a lot of them.

Oh, Laura's never been invited. No, she's never— she's never gotten the nod.

Okay.

So you—

anyway, that's what happened.

I know, but this whole sort of, uh, how, how—

and then it was outside, and which you, you would have hated. I didn't mind it.

Really warm?

Well, it was bugs, humid, hot, and all that under a tent, but it was nice.

And you're wearing a suit.

I was wearing a suit. Yeah, by the way, which I borrowed. Do you guys ever do this? Do you ever borrow suits from the shoot you're doing, whatever job you're on? Like, I just— sure. Yeah. So I'm doing the morning show and I just was like, can I have this suit to wear? They're like, sure, just bring it back.

People are going to watch the show and go, hey, hey, there's that Iowa suit. I was at a wedding. I was at a wedding in Iowa. And I think—

but what about—

I'm so fascinated with everyone's family feeling like family obligations because it's, you know, usually the family that you—

I know. Here we go.

But it's just like the best days of the year.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. Like holidays and things like that, you kind of— you have to spend with the people you never see. You know what do you mean?

JB, not only that, JB, I'll take it a step further. I just said within the last week, I think that weddings on summer weekends should be outlawed. Yeah, but you're with your family. You get a finite amount of summer weekends. Why do we got— let's do it in the winter when everybody's bummed down and got nothing to do.

But we're older. We don't have school to go to in the fall. What are you talking about?

Well, just for in general. No, but the kids are off school and it's a time, you know, like—

yeah, but when you're talking about finite number of weekends, talk about a rarity. What about Christmas?

Or, you know, to get married?

Thanksgiving? Or— no, no, I'm just saying, like, you have these singular days, or Thanksgiving is like a 4-day weekend. You don't want to spend those incredible moments with the people that you have spent the 350-some days prior to that 4-day weekend? Don't you want to— like, I mean, listen, love my family and all that stuff, but—

and all that.

Just don't want to see them at Christmas.

No, I just like—

I never get to see my family because I live in Los Angeles. Everybody else is there. So it was great to be there.

Right. But why not pick some times that are kind of off those those moments.

That's what I'm saying. Let's fill— let's start filling January weekends up with weddings.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Okay.

By the way, you know what the food was served at the wedding? Portillo's.

Oh, really?

Wow. Yeah.

I mean, Sean, it was amazing.

Did you leave anybody for anybody else?

Did you do some dancing, Sean? I don't think I've ever seen you dance.

Do you dance?

I'll dance for you. How much you got?

No, seriously, are you a dancer at parties?

Not really. I mean, I was when I was young. I didn't care. I danced like no one was watching.

Yeah, but that was like on a pedestal, like inside a cage, like when you walk down in the club.

Yeah, that's with gag ball and nipple tassels.

Sean and I—

That was me dancing on a box.

Sean and I once had a dance-off.

Yes, on the Will and Grace program.

Oh, on the Will and Grace program.

Yeah.

Willie, I don't think I've ever seen you dance at a party either.

I was just talking about it on the way out here on the LA. I will dance and I do a lot of— mine's very suggestive. Yeah, mine's really suggestive.

What does that look like?

Mine's really suggestive. And it's a lot of hands come hither, you know what I mean?

And you kind of turn your back to your partner and just kind of arch and offer?

Yeah, just arch and offer.

That's the name of your biography.

That's a good name for like a bookstore or like a cafe.

Hey, you guys, I'm just gonna get a coffee from Arch and Offer. You can send me one.

Do you guys want anything? And it turns out it's my son Archie and my attorney Robert Offer.

Oh yeah, there you go.

Oh gosh, speaking of— I don't know how to get in.

I can't wait to see if there's any relevance at all to Arch and Offer and your guest.

There's zero transition other than I, I've been waiting for this, and, and so So excited. And Jason kind of already tipped it, maybe.

Today? Today already?

Yeah, he already tipped who this might be or who this is.

Okay, so I'm going to guess this real fast.

Okay. My guest today grew up in Oldham, England, the son of two bank employees. In high school, he got a D in math, but then in college went on to graduate with honors in physics, earn a PhD, and work on the largest science experiment ever built. Before all that, he played keyboards in a band. That hit number 1 with a song that became the soundtrack to a British prime minister's election victory. He's broken the Guinness World Record for biggest-selling science show 4 times in a row. It's the wonderful, brilliant physicist and professor, Jay— Brian Cox!

No!

Yes!

Brian Cox!

Oh my—

no way!

But it's not the other one! Hello!

Isn't that crazy?

It's the other one!

Hello!

It's we, Brian Cox.

Yeah.

Oh, Brian, I've watched so many of your videos and you've confused me so much, and also— Yeah, I can't wait. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to ask you everything.

I literally wrote— I have over 60 questions.

Wow.

Really?

Yeah.

No way.

But we'll get to like 4.

That's very good.

First of all, Brian, I'm sorry that we've lowered the bar here for you, that you have to come and join us today. So let me just say that right from the get-go.

What is your area of expertise in science?

So it's particle physics and cosmology.

Particle physics and cosmology.

Any question about the universe as a whole.

Yeah, any question about the universe? I know.

So should I, should I give him the mirror question and see if he can give me—

Not yet, not yet, not yet.

Hold it, hold it. Jason was once— we, we once had another episode where Jason was confused about—

once destroyed the podcast.

Yeah.

And, uh, I forgot. Oh no, it was time travel. It was time travel.

Anyway, we can do that.

Anyway, yeah, um, thanks for doing this. I know you're very busy, and like Will said, thanks for coming. Wow.

No, it's a huge pleasure. I'm a huge fan, so thank you.

I am starstruck, Brent. I honestly don't know where to start. I'm so like excited.

You start with a pun there with Starstruck.

I did, I did start.

Um, so wait, before I started everything, because then I'm— because this, this will launch us into what I want to talk about. So first of all, did you really get a D in math? And what— and if that's true, what made you continue to explore interest in the thing that you weren't doing well in?

I, I did get a D in math, and the reason was that, um, so I, as you said, grew up in Manchester And New Order were doing a gig at the Hacienda.

Wait, that's one of my favorite bands of all time.

Yeah. So they were at the Hacienda the night before my math A-level. And I thought, well, it's more important to go and see New Order at the Hacienda because I thought I was going to be a musician, as you said. I thought, I'm going to be in a band. I'm going to be a rock star. This stuff doesn't matter. So I went to see New Order instead and got a D in math.

That's amazing.

I love that. I can say that I've never been to Manchester, but so many of my favorite bands are from there. And even I know about Hacienda as just this— yeah, this mythical place to go and see all these, all those great bands back then. Oasis, as you said, New Order, The Smiths, everybody, right? Like, that's just— Stone Roses.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. And then, and actually, so Peter Savile, who's the designer who designed the Hacienda, and he designed the Joy Division Unknown Pleasures album cover, New Order's album covers. So he designed the t-shirts for my tour. You mentioned that I do these live shows. He designed the t-shirts.

You guys, they're stadium shows. I mean, I can't wait to go to one.

He's— yeah, we're in LA actually next year.

Really?

Dolby Theater, I think.

I can't— I'm going.

But yeah, so Peter, uh, he's famous for not putting the name or the whatever on the album cover, you know, very famously the Blue Monday 12-inch, so it cost more to produce than it than it sold for and lost the money. So he did the t-shirts and he just wrote, existence, what does it matter? So that's the t-shirt. So me, if you'd like me to answer that, I'm welcome.

Yeah. Brian, what happens at your stadium shows? What do you do?

They're basically big LED screens, as much as we can get in. So 100-foot across kind of LED. And the current show, I just got back yesterday actually from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, where we'd done some shows. And I basically start with the beginning of science. I talk about life in the universe, the origin of the universe, the evolution of the universe, and the future of the universe, and discuss the Fermi paradox, the great silence, pretty much everything actually, and the meaning of existence.

Oh my God, I want it all.

I know, that's why it's here. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yes.

So, can I, let me just ask you, I think about why.

Why?

Why is there a universe? Or why do the show?

Yeah.

Well, you can start there. We can start there.

Simply why?

It's a good question, right? So we don't even know if the universe had a beginning.

But what about the Big Bang theory? And people are like—

So we know there was a Big Bang, which is that we know that the universe was hot and dense 13.8 billion years ago.

Yeah.

But whether that was an origin in time or whether that was something that happened in a preexisting universe that could be eternal, we don't know. We don't even know what time is actually.

Right, it's invented.

So it's very difficult to speak about a beginning. So the answer, the question why, well, it's a question to you really. Does that, if the universe is infinite and has always existed, is it possible to ask the question why?

Yeah, yeah, come on, we gotta take a break.

We're sorry, I just gotta go empty my brain.

But also the concept of like, what is that? What is the universe in? You know, there you just can keep going back, back, back, and back. What, what is— right, at some point you need to find something that contains all of it. And, and what is that boundary? There, there isn't anything.

Well, that's— Jason, I, I would suspect, JB, though, that that's something that we think that it needs to contain, that we can't possibly conceive of the idea of it not being because we want to form, we want to, our brains want to make formality.

There are boundaries to everything. Yeah, yeah.

Because according to Einstein, it's space-time. So space and time, they don't exist in anything, you know. There isn't like a container that contains— well, it's like saying space, right? So like the room that you're in, you don't imagine there must be a container that contains Space.

Yeah.

If you think about it.

But time, but time definitely exists because we can all agree that this interview started in the past and the end of the interview is going to exist in the future. And so sort of by definition that contains time there, right?

It's good. It's one of the deep questions actually. So there are ideas now from the study of black holes that suggest that space and time emerge from something deeper. So we're even starting to talk about building blocks of space and time. What does that mean? It means—

Well, talk about the arrow of time.

Hang on, hang on. What does that mean, the building block? So where is that coming from?

Well, if you think of emerge, so I think an example of something that emerges is consciousness, right? So we say, well, consciousness, it emerges from all these atoms in a particular pattern. That's your head or your brain. And in the same way, people are beginning to speculate that space and time, and time emerge from something, some kind of building blocks. And we don't really know what they, well, we don't know what they are. So, but until we know that, it's difficult to talk about a beginning. 'Cause you're right, Jason, that the, when you say time, then you're right, that container is a good sort of picture, isn't it? If you have a beginning and an end, it's that contains everything or brackets it.

Right.

But we don't know that.

But we also like, we know that stuff happened, right? Like, like I could go upstairs and I shut this door and I know that that happened a couple of minutes ago, that I shut this door because it's shut. Right. I have. But at the same time, I remember saying to somebody, you know, sort of trying to understand the conception of just now that we actually potentially only have this moment that we're in. And I used to always say, you know, try to go and buy a lotto ticket, winning lotto ticket from yesterday, you can't, right? It's already, it's already happened. And therefore, in, in a lot of senses, does not exist. It doesn't exist anywhere yesterday, right?

Do you know, so Einstein's picture, so relativity back from 1905 and 1915, there's this idea called the block universe, which means that every moment is still there. It's like a map. So you could imagine drawing a map of the world now. So I could leave London and come and fly to Los Angeles. You wouldn't say that London has gone. You'd say it's somewhere. So in this case, in Einstein's picture, all those moments, all your memories, all your past and your future exists somewhere in spacetime and you just travel over the map. That's an idea called the block universe.

But that sort of reminds me of like this—

I'm on the wrong gummy.

That makes me think of that, you know, the concept that I still can't sort of get my head around is, you know, since we've all seen these pictures with these new powered telescopes where we have images of what that first separation was of the Big Bang, right? There are— so that is, we are looking into the past there because presumably the Big Bang is what started all those rocks came out of there, and one of those rocks is the planet Earth, right? So everything that we know is on that one rock. So everything that has happened since that rock was born is— so if we can already look back to when that rock happened, we've already looked way, way, way, way back. So we figure if we have a less powerful telescope, we can see less back in the past, and we could see, like, eventually, if you had a really weak telescope, telescope you could see yesterday. Like, we already have a telescope that can see the beginning of time, right, as far as Earth goes. So all of that time— that's what I was trying to get at with that, the other scientists that we were talking about.

If we can already see back to the beginning of when the Earth started, then we should be able to see like 4 or 5 years ago, right?

So the way to think about it, what's happening is— so light travels 1 foot per nanosecond.

Or 186,000 miles per second?

186, is that right? Yeah, so it's 1 foot per nanosecond. So if you are now 1 foot away from your computer screen, let's say, then you are seeing it 1 nanosecond in the past.

Right, exactly.

So it's in that sense that if you look at a galaxy, the most distant one we've seen at the moment is called MOMZ14, actually, M-O-M-Z-14.

Oh, that's cute.

And the light travel time from that is 13.5 billion years.

Right.

So you're seeing it as it was 13.5 billion years ago, but that's just in the same sense—

Yeah, it would be easier to see— yeah, like the heat we're feeling from the sun left the sun 7 minutes ago. That's how long— 8 minutes, yeah. So it's been traveling at 186,000 miles per second for 8 minutes, and now it's finally hitting your cheek and you're feeling it.

Yeah, so you're seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes ago.

Right, you're looking in the past. So shouldn't we be able to see if we really, like, dialed in our microscopes or our telescopes just right, We should be able to see what we were doing last week if you had that mirror up there.

JB is— I tell you something, Brian. JB has been hung up on this for 5 years, and you are gonna answer him to his satisfaction.

No, you're right. If you put a mirror where the sun is, then you could see that. Then I guess you're right. You'd see a reflection of the Earth as it was 16 minutes ago.

Thanks for joining us today.

Holy shit, he's right!

That's the end of the interview.

He did it! He did it!

Brian, thank you for joining us.

JB, you gotta go on tour with Brian.

Brian just—

I think the flaw in my math though is that it takes 7 minutes if we're doing the sun, it takes 7 minutes to come down to our eye and 7 minutes to go back up to the mirror. So we really could never catch up to seeing the past perfectly, I guess. I don't know.

Well, you'd see it's just in that sense that it's in exactly the same way that you're seeing your computer screen in the past.

Yeah.

But it's only a nanosecond.

Okay. We're gonna move on from time.

All right, boy, I wish we could go back in time and gather all that back. JB is gonna— you're gonna— till the day you die, it's gonna be on your tombstone. So if you had mirrors, I'm just gonna take with me Jason. You're right, he is right.

I'm gonna take from this.

Yeah, by the way, it is interesting.

He is right.

You are. So can I talk about— go away from the cosmos for a second, talk about science for just a bit? And you may not know these things, but I wrote them down because I wanted to ask to you. So, at preparing for you coming on, first of all, I'm so excited because I've wanted to meet you for a long time. Uh, so this is a thought I had. This is bizarre, and it's going to take a minute to get to my question. I'm sure I'm saying it wrong, but we started with symbols, drawings, hieroglyphics, right? And then language and writing, probably because it was faster than drawing everything. And then phones and texting. And then we got tired of typing full words and went back to shorthand and emojis are we kind of like weirdly heading back towards symbols just at a much faster speed? Does that mean the endpoint of all of this is like telepathy, AI, or some device where what we mean before we have to say it or type it, people will understand? What is your opinion on that?

Like vibe and all that stuff? That is a legitimate form of communication. I feel like animals have that.

Yeah, right.

They can start like, you know, you see how like those dogs, they kind of like, they're like, they're nose to nose and they don't they say anything like, fuck you, fuck you, and then they start snapping at each other. It's just like a vibe, and then it's, yeah, you know, like they're communicating, you know, beforehand. I feel like they know how to talk without speaking.

That's what I'm saying.

Thoughts on vibe? Thoughts on—

I have absolutely no idea what that question means.

Okay, fine, that's fine.

Well, like, what about like a flock of birds? A flock of birds, all these birds, they turn at exactly the same time. They're all coordinated. There's no like signal, all right, ready, 1, 2, 3, everybody go left. No, it's like, I feel like they know how to talk without speaking, right?

But that might be out of your thing, Brian. I just didn't know if you knew about like medical stuff and like, and like AI stuff.

What about show them your rash, Sean?

We'll be right back.

And now back to the show.

Let's talk about simulation theory, okay? Because that, that's fascinating.

Explain that to me.

Is it— well, is it real? Meaning like, are we living in a simulation? Is any of this real? Because if tomorrow we discover the universe was a simulation, what would be the first clue? And would anything look fake?

But I've always heard talk about that, and I've never really understood what it means. Like, there's somebody, like, watching up in mission control that this is all just sort of like a gag?

Let's see what Brian says.

Yeah, we did a radio show on this a few years ago now, and some— and the— there's a guy called Nick Bostrom who thinks about this quite a lot in Cambridge, and he managed to convince everybody that we probably were. Are living in a simulation. Yeah. The basic idea is just if you think about how computers are at the moment and how powerful they are and virtual reality and all those things, the question ultimately is in principle, if you can imagine the most powerful computer, even if it's a computer that we could only build in 100 years or 1,000 years' time, is it possible in principle for the simulation to be so good that you would not notice?

Right.

That's the basic idea. And although it sounds completely mad, it turns out it's quite difficult to try to form an argument that says that we are not in a simulation. I don't think we are, but that, I was convinced after the end of the radio show that I would, that was just me saying, I don't think that we are without any—

Any proof.

Without a logical argument that supported it. I mean, yeah. How did that theory come about then? What evidence was presented to—

I mean, that's the thing. There isn't any evidence. It's just the idea that if you, can you imagine even simulating your experience, your conscious experience? You mentioned AI. So AIs are getting very powerful now. Then there's debate about whether those things are actually conscious or whether they could be conscious or whether they could be considered living things. The idea is that if a computer can run a simulation of reality, it's so perfect that it even has, you know, sort of, well, things that operate like human brains or AIs in it. I mean, think of an AI, for example, actually. You think of an AI, it's running on a load of computers somewhere. But if it becomes conscious and intelligent, and we don't know whether they can, but if it did, then it's in a computer, right? It is operating. So the question really is, are we that? I guess basically, are we one of those?

Well, it kind of goes to the issue of like, of like, you know, is there a formula to a thought? Like, is there a mathematical equation to an idea? In other words, in your brain, you know, it's not like a series. It's not like a combination. Like in a computer, it's a combination of zeros and ones. Right? In your— like, that's literally like numbers and the combination of those and all the coding.

Please say vibe.

And in your brain, there obviously aren't numbers in there, but it's like a series of electronic impulses and a combination of all that and some blood and all that give you an idea to, you know, for me to ask this question. I, like, got the idea and then I spoke it. I don't think they figured out what that mathematical formula is for for that idea to ask a question or that idea to walk outside or that— they're all different equations that give you different ideas. And as soon as they figure out what that equation is, then perhaps that— like, in other words, how do they give AI consciousness? You know, how does it become, you know, thinking on its own instead of just dealing with prompts?

Have you heard of Alan Turing?

Turing.

Yes, of course.

So Alan Turing had an idea called a Turing machine, a universal Turing machine. And that was basically the idea that all computers that have some kind of basic sort of functionality are equivalent to each other so that they can all do the same thing. So even this thing that he imagined with a little paper tape going through sort of this 1930s kind of picture of what a computer might be. Could, if given enough time, do everything that the computer on our desktops can do now, or everything that all the computers that are running all the AIs and ChatGPT and everything in the world, they're all equivalent to each other. And so the question just becomes, is our brain a universal Turing machine? And many people think it is, and a few people think it isn't. I would say most people think it is. So all you're saying really is that a sufficiently powerful computer could do precisely what you are doing now. In fact, that's the idea.

But we are informed by— and JB, this kind of goes to it too— part of what, you know, inspired you to ask a question, for instance, and as the example, was informed by years of your living on this planet, years of trauma, exhilaration, sadness, joy, all those things, emotion.

A lot of trauma and a lot of sadness.

I know. And so, right. And so, like, and then that becomes the question, like, how— those are the things that— that's the information on an emotional level that potentially maybe AI could have. But can a computer ever understand those, you know, the compounding, not just those emotions, but the compounding of them in various ways, the piling on, the stripping off, all of that stuff forms the basis of who you are and why you woke up the way you did today.

Yes, but if you think about your brain, what is it? Then it's just a collection of atoms, which is a remarkable thing to say, actually.

Yeah.

You're going back to what we were talking about earlier, the origin of the universe, 13.8 billion years ago, there's just hydrogen and helium and the generations of stars and they build carbon and oxygen. And those atoms have come together in a pattern, temporary pattern, which is you and me. But if your brain is just that, and I would say it is, right? So it's just a collection of atoms, a very complex collection. Then the idea is that it, I can't conceive of anything it could be other than a computer. It's got a lot of data in it. You're talking about your memories, they're in there. And it's processing them. So I don't see, if you wanna, if anyone wants to say, well, there's a real fundamental difference You have to say what it is. And I don't see anything it could be. It's a load of atoms in a remarkable pattern.

Yeah.

What are you most excited for AI to possibly accomplish? Is there one thing you really have your fingers crossed on?

I mean, it's— there are enormous questions in science. We talked about one, the origin of the universe. There's what happens inside a black hole, We don't know about that. There are all the questions that you mentioned about biology, the way the human brain works. To me, if AI can be powerful enough to answer those questions, if it can be like not only a single Einstein or Stephen Hawking, but it can be 1,000 Einsteins, which is not, yeah, it's not beyond the realm of possibility. We could get answers to these.

But it's limited to all of the questions we've already answered, right? You upload all of those answers answers, and then its ability to kind of merge and combine all of those answers to maybe formulate a new answer to a question we haven't even asked yet. That's a possibility, right?

I read the other day, I can't remember who was, who said it, but he said, imagine that you could restrict it so it only knew stuff to, let's say, 1904, right? So it only knew the whole data, the only data it could have is to 1904. Would it invent Einstein's theory of relativity?

Interesting.

Which he published in 1905. That is an experiment you could actually do.

Well, would it, would it be able to predict all of this since 1904?

Right.

Even in a bigger sense, right?

It's a question about free will, isn't it? Another day.

Yeah, exactly. Brian, what was the— what, as you started, as you began your, your sort of study, uh, um, and, and got into your field, was there— when you were a younger man, was there one big question or idea that really captured your imagination that took you in this direction? Was there one thought? Do you remember having a moment like that?

Yeah, one of them, and I still have it, the question is, is there life beyond Earth in the solar system?

Yeah.

Is there life beyond Earth in the Milky Way galaxy? Uh-huh. I hesitate to say the universe because there are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, each with hundreds of billions of stars.

And so observable is the key there. Sorry.

Yeah, it's a good— I was careful with my language because we don't know whether it's infinite.

And a lot of people don't— a lot of people don't know that when you say galaxies, right, is— so the Milky Way is a galaxy, and in the galaxy is our solar system. And how many solar systems in each galaxy-ish?

Yeah, so the Milky Way, 400 400 billion stars. So 400,000—

So there's 400 billion suns just in our one galaxy. I mean, it's mind-blowing.

Yeah, in our island of stars.

Right, so we look up at— when we look up in the sky, those little white dots up there, those are each— each one of those is a sun, right? Those are called stars. Those are stars. That's a sun, right?

Yeah.

They're not planets.

Well, they could be planets, yeah.

Well, we actually think that virtually all of them will have planets, which is a beautiful thing in itself, actually. The other answer to your question, Will, was that it was astronomy that really captured my imagination. And when you think about it, when I was growing up in the '70s, we hadn't discovered any planets beyond the solar system, beyond our solar system. And starting in the 1990s, we're discovering them. So what that means is you go outside tonight when you've listened to this and you look at the night sky, and if you see the stars, all of them will have planets around them. So solar systems, every one of those points of light. Wow. And that's the, one of the things that I think is so, the most beautiful thing about astronomy is then your imagination can wander. You can look at any of those points of light and say, what do those worlds look like? Are they ocean worlds?

Right, but sometimes they say when you look up in the, in the sky, uh, one of the, the white dots is like Jupiter or Mars sometimes has like a little— but they look exactly like all the other little white dots, which are suns as well, right? Like our sun is a star. The Earth The Earth is not a star, correct? The Earth is a planet.

But I wonder, like, but so then, so then why do we call them stars?

Yeah, but why do they look white as well? Because they're not immediately emitting light.

Um, so it's a good question.

I think that also influencers will also diminish stars too, because there used to be real stars and now it's just, right, legitimate stars. Legitimate stars. The big movie stars. Sorry.

So yeah, the planets in our solar system, you're That's right. So you can see Jupiter, Venus is often very bright in the morning or evening sky. You'll see Mars, Saturn. So those are just reflecting the light of the sun.

Okay.

So that's why you see them. They don't emit their own light.

But they often look like exactly like other suns/stars.

Yeah, although, you know, you get a really small telescope and you look at 'em, then you'll see, even with a small telescope, you'll see the clouds of Jupiter, you'll see the rings of Saturn, with a small telescope. So they're very, they're nearby and they're just reflecting the sun's light. But yeah, every other thing that isn't a planet, every other point of light, so the overwhelming majority of them are the stars.

By the way, I had, maybe I talked about this once, I had somebody say to me once, trying to understand the infinite or the vastness of the universe and the potential infinite nature of it, of it. He said, um, imagine a library, and in that library was a book on every imaginable subject, right? Even a book about me describing this on this podcast, a book about your thinking about me talking, asking this question on this podcast, every possible subject, right? About my relationship to the door that I talked about closing, and books. And then imagine libraries, right, that like that stacked in every direction going off forever. And I was like, fuck, man, that blew my brain out. Well, what was that?

I can't even imagine. Sean said a single galaxy, the Milky Way, I mean, 400,000 million stars. It takes light 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way.

Away.

It's not possible.

Yeah, right.

To imagine it takes light 100,000 years to cross— light years to cross the Milky Way.

100,000 years.

Yeah, traveling at that speed, at the speed of light.

And that's just one galaxy.

Yeah. So I have, uh, guys, I'm out.

No, that's it for me.

If there's this, you know, we talk about the, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, right? And that's swallowing up everything, right? Everything is going in it. So why—

No, it's just, everything's just going around it.

Oh, around it. It's not sucking it in. Don't black holes suck it all in?

No, if you turn the sun into a black hole.

Yeah.

Now, by the way, it would be only about 2 miles in radius if you did that. So it'd be really small.

Oh, really?

But everything just carries on going around. So the Earth would just carry on going around the black hole.

Oh, I thought black holes suck all, everything like the light and everything around it. Okay, so I'm gonna do like, I'm gonna do, what is it called? Rapid fire, right?

Right.

Will we ever figure out how to travel faster than light? Or is that just—

No.

No?

No.

Okay.

I'm gonna confidently say no.

Really?

Will we ever be able to travel at the speed of light?

No. So as far as we know, this is Einstein. It's been known for 100 years. You can't travel, if you've got any mass at all, so unless you're light, which has no mass, you can get really as close as you want to the speed of light, but you can't travel at it or faster than it. And that's as far as we know.

But we can travel faster than the speed of sound. Yeah. We've done that. So I wonder then, what is the limit of the speed speed that the body can travel at. I mean, like, will, will, will our matter start to break up? Like, because all of our atoms somehow stay together. Um, I wonder if you travel at too, too many G's or whatever, do you— does the skin start to fall apart?

It's a great— this is a great question. And yeah, so there's two things. There's acceleration. There's acceleration. You said G's, you know, that's right. You know, anyone Anyone's been lucky enough to be in a fighter plane or something like that and gone at 7G or 8G, you know it hurts. So that's acceleration. But speed, you can travel at any speed that you want. And a good example, this is what, so the example is if you're on a plane, right? If you're on an aircraft, it feels like you're not moving. So it might be going at 500 miles an hour or whatever it is, but you can't tell.

And we're all traveling at about 1,000 miles an hour anyway, because the planet is spinning at about 1,000 miles an hour, right?

Is that what it is?

Yeah, 24 hours to make a full rotation. And it's about a 25,000-mile-around Earth.

What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning right now?

We'd hit the wall.

Yeah, because you'd accelerate.

It would be the end of everything, right?

Uh, what if it just stopped? If it slowed down gradually, then you'd be stuck in night or day or whatever it is. Ah, right. But you wouldn't— if it just suddenly stopped, then we'd, yeah, we'd accelerate and you'd get thrown against the wall.

So we're spinning, let's say we're spinning from left to right 1,000 miles an hour. And if you get on a plane and you— and the plane only goes 500 miles an hour and you're also going left to right on the plane, in theory, you'd never reach your destination. In fact, the Earth would be spinning twice the speed that you're traveling, so your destination would actually come up behind you, and then you just sort of settle back down again. You'd finally get there. Um, but the reason that we're all sort of traveling at the— the— you feel the 500 miles an hour, you get progress in the traveling that direction, is because everything within 3 miles, right? Isn't that that— the atmospheric sort of bubble around the Earth that as long as you stay only at 3 miles off the— off the planet, no higher than that, you— you're traveling in relatively the same speed, and that's what enables our spacecraft to— whatever speed they're traveling when they leave that atmosphere, they can shut off their engines and maintain that speed because there's no gravity up there. Is that right?

No, there's gravity. There's no air, so there's no friction.

Oh, right, right.

So they just carry on going at whatever speed they're going at and they don't run out of fuel. It's not— there's loads of gravity, right?

Superman used to go— again, he'd go the opposite way, remember?

He'd go right, he made the Earth turn the other way. Time.

Yeah, well, he'd go back in time. That's how I went back.

Yeah, they got that wrong.

Yeah, they got it wrong in the comic book.

It's not a documentary.

Wait a second.

Oh wow, wait a second. Okay, so, uh, what— okay, wait, I gotta say, so wait, oh, we talked about the, the universe expanding. This blew my mind. I read this, like, if, if the universe is expanding at this incredible speed, very, very, very far in the future will it be probably— it'll probably be a real fact that whoever's living on a planet like Earth, we won't be able to see anything else. We won't even know anything else exists. We'll just see darkness.

Yeah, that's right.

So all the galaxies beyond will be so far apart that we won't even be able to see them.

Wait, because of what?

Because the universe is expanding, still expanding.

It's expanding and expanding faster and faster.

But why won't our stars stay with us as we're expanding?

Because they're moving away from us.

But why isn't this— why aren't the stars expanding? Or aren't they in the same expansion as the planets are?

That's a really— that's a great question as well. So the—

That's 4.

You are doing well. Jeez, that's 4.

It's the distant galaxies that go away so that they disappear beyond what's called the horizon. It's amazing. But the gravity in our galaxy keeps our galaxy together. Together. So we don't think the universe is going to expand in such a way that rips everything apart. It could do that. There are—

we don't think it is—

where it could do in the real distant future, but we don't think that's what's happening.

Okay, so aliens— you first, you said that they might— you used to be a believer and now you're not so much. Is that fair to say?

No, I, I can't believe it took you this long to get to aliens.

I have 12 questions on aliens?

It depends what you mean, right? 'Cause we're looking for and getting, we haven't got absolute evidence yet, but we're getting more and more sort of circumstantial evidence that there might be life on Mars, right? Microbes though, microbes.

Yeah, but what about, I thought you were gonna say all the photo and video evidence that's come from.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, I'll get to that. But so microbes, I would not be surprised if they're on Mars, if they're on Jupiter's moon Europa, places where there are oceans in the solar system. Jupiter system, which, and we, there's several moons where we think there are oceans below the surface. So that'd be microbes. Complex life. So I'll give you one idea that if you look at the history of life on Earth, then we know that life began around 3.8 to 4 billion years ago. So pretty, it's pretty much as soon as the Earth had formed, then you see microbes on it. Let's say 4 billion years ago. But you see nothing more complex than a single cell back beyond about a billion years ago. So 3 billion years of the 4 billion years of life on Earth was single cells, just slime, basically. And it's only the last sort of little 4 or 5.

For the first 3 billion years.

3 billion years.

That's how long it took for us to get where we are.

So it took 4 billion years to go from the origin of life to us. On this planet, which is 1/3 of the age of the entire universe. So many people, and I would put myself in this camp, if you had said, guess how many civilizations are there in a galaxy like the Milky Way, I'd say on average, less than one, which is a guess.

Wow.

But it's a guess based on what the only observation that we have, we've got two observations, right? One is we haven't seen anything.

Anything.

So, and astronomers call that the Great Silence. And we could talk about that. It's kind of a surprise. I'll talk about that in a sec. But so that's one observation. And the other one is it took 4 billion years for us to evolve. Right. Now, many stars don't live for 4 billion years. So what we are saying is this little planet Earth remained safe and stable enough to support an unbroken chain of life for one-third of the age of the universe. Which is what it took to produce us.

Wow.

And when you put it like that, even though there are hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy, but I often say that people say, well, surely there must be loads of civilizations, but a very big number multiplied by a very small number, which is the chances that things survive, is not necessarily a big number, right? A really big number multiplied by a really small number can actually be a really small number. So that's the first thing. The other thing I would say that the other bit of evidence that I'm really persuaded by is something called the Fermi paradox.

Yeah, what is that?

Which is that imagine, so we've seen that today as we are speaking, right? SpaceX have just done their thing on the stock market and all those things.

Wow.

And then, so, you know, we are building rockets. We have two spacecraft that are in interstellar space that we are still in touch with, the Voyager spacecraft after 50 years in space.

Yeah.

Are we still getting information from that?

We are, yeah. So they're in interstellar space. So in about, most people would say modern science has been around for about 400 years, right? Give or take, from Galileo and people like that. So in 400 years, we've gone from basically inventing modern science to building interstellar spacecraft. So imagine what we would look like in the Milky Way galaxy if you let us have another 1,000 years, or actually let us have another million years. At this rate of progress. We haven't been around, our species, for that long, but give us another million years. Imagine what we would look like. Surely we would've gone out to the stars and anyone else in the Milky Way galaxy would see us. We'd have written the evidence of our existence across the sky.

Right.

But we see no evidence that any civilization has done that in the 13-billion-year history of the Milky Way galaxy.

Yeah.

So that's the Fermi Paradox.

But what if those folks out there don't look like us and in fact have figured out a way to separate themselves into such small matter and are able to travel in that small matter such that we can't see it in the same way that all the information on your phone is traveling in and around us, we can't see it. Like that incoming phone call that's coming to your phone right now. On the satellite, yeah. Yeah, no, no, just like if you were you called me right now, whatever those little particles are that lights up my phone and makes it go ring ring ring, I don't see that traveling, and I don't see it going into my phone. And so like, maybe they figured out how to just like be really tiny and come back together and form a body with those almond eyes when they want to. But at other times, beautiful, they're just— they're zapping around as quick as—

yeah, JB, JB, didn't it— didn't that— didn't we talk to that guy, that idea? Yeah, yeah. Them, them living what, what we would consider.

That was his suggestion. His suggestion is that they do exist, they are, they are here, they just exist in a space that we can't see, much like your radio frequencies.

But even, even it's, it's a, it's a very good point, and it could, it could be just, that's just really simply imagine, I can count, but it is 5. Imagine that the little spaceships are as big as their phone, like you said. It could be that they've got little spaceships all over the place, they're as big as a phone, They're orbiting around the Earth, we wouldn't see them. That is a possibility, right? So there are ways out of the Fermi Paradox. All we can say is that we've kind of looked, we have this thing called SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and we use radio telescopes and we have a look. We haven't seen anything, we haven't heard anything.

Sean, are you masturbating? As soon as he said SETI, I thought you got real close.

Oh my God, yeah.

He started when he said SETI. He started when he said hot and dense at the start of the show because it reminded him of his first boyfriend.

He said he almost finished you off.

Yeah, we dumped black holes as well.

Yeah, black holes. Oh, please don't.

I got the blood flowing.

And we will be right back.

And now back to the show.

But I will say this, Brian, I saw this— not to bring up— I saw this, you know, this, uh, um, I don't know if you guys have ever listened to The Telepathy Tapes is a wonderful podcast that talks about people, these nonverbal people who are able to seemingly, seemingly communicate with each other hundreds and if not 1,000 miles away from each other in ways that are very sort of provable. And I've since seen a cut of this documentary that is absolutely stunning, that actually shows that and that they are able to communicate in a way that we can't, that we can't understand. Right. Not even like that we can't comprehend, meaning that with all of our reason, we can't seem to accept that they're able to do this. And so we— people say, no, it's bullshit. And yet they are communicating. And that's what I meant about this other dimension, Brian, that potentially exists that we don't appreciate.

There is an argument against that. If I did have 30 seconds. Yeah, sure. Is that the particles out of which we are made. So each of us, we're only made out of 3 things, actually. 2 things.

Donuts. Donuts.

Up quarks, down quarks, and electrons.

Yeah.

Donuts. So 3 particles. And we understand in massive detail how they interact with each other, how they, the forces of nature that stick them together. We try, we look for other forces of nature. We have, I worked at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. Yeah. It's a 27, well, it's what, 16-mile circumference thing.

I wanna talk about that.

We're looking for anything anything that's a different, a new force of nature, new particles, and we haven't seen anything. So what most scientists would say in response is that we understand perfectly how particles interact, how our, you know, the particles that make up our bodies in the conditions that we find ourselves, which are these conditions here on Earth. So I think your use of the word seemingly He was excellent.

Right, right.

I like that. That was the correct hedge.

And so you don't think it's possible that humans are aliens from another world? That whole theory?

It is, that's called panspermia. Is that another one?

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna set you off as well.

Panspermia.

Panspermia. So there is an idea that, you know, we know that there are Martian meteorites on Earth, for example. There are bits of Mars that have fallen on Earth, bits of Earth will have fallen on Mars. So there are people who thought, well, could it be that life began on Mars and then got transferred to Earth on a meteorite or something? We don't think that, we've got no evidence for that, but it's not absolutely impossible. So yeah, so it's possible that we're Martians. It's unlikely.

And did you see the movie? You saw the movie Contact, right?

I love it. I love it. Carl Sagan is one of my— That's another answer to Will's question about why I got into science. One of them is Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

So if you remember—

Remember when Jodie Foster—

So in the movie, they're interviewing scientists.

Remember? I remember.

They're interviewing scientists. Asked about what's the one question they are going to ask these alien beings when they get there. And what would be the question you would ask?

Does planet Earth make me look fat?

Right. Uh, like, what would you want to know?

I, I, I, the first thing is I'd be relieved that there were any aliens. I'd really say I say thank God for that because I'm very, I'm worried that, imagine if you go back to what we said earlier, if we are the only intelligent life for thousands or millions of light years in every direction, let's say in the Milky Way Galaxy, if we are, imagine the responsibility that we have. So I would be pretty relieved if somebody else also had that responsibility. To carry the torch for intelligence and therefore meaning in the galaxy for 100 billion suns. So I'd say I'm relieved about this.

You'd take a vacation. You'd immediately go on holidays, what you're saying.

Yeah, well, you'd say, yeah, you'd say we can just relax. And then, but I'd like to know how they got through these problems that we have. You know, at the moment we talk about AI and we talk about the threat and we've still got nuclear weapons and those things. So we've got all these problems to navigate before we make it to the stars. So I actually would say, how did you not blow yourselves up? How did you not mess it up before you became an interstellar civilization?

That's a good question, yeah.

It is amazing that if we are made of just what, those 3 elements, and it's so, it's all sort of science and various combinations and recipes of all these little elements in the atmosphere that made this intelligent, you know, life form. It's amazing that I mean, that nowhere else in the entire universe has a combination of various elements come together to create another sort of living, breathing, thinking thing that might not look like us, but— because it seems somewhat arbitrary that just, you know, based on like just sort of cooking and a recipe, that those little 3 elements came together and out of the slime, out of the algae over the years of evolution, we became— like that didn't come together in some other form somewhere else Oh yeah, I agree with you.

I'm sure even in the bit of the universe we can see with those 2 trillion galaxies in it, I'm sure it's happened, you know, out there.

Right, right, right.

The question really is how far do we have to go to see another world where it happened? And you're right, what you said actually, you could turn it around 'cause you're right, it's these 3 particles and they're And over 13.5 billion years, that somehow these particles have got together in a pattern that can have a conversation. That's quite a big ask when you put it like that.

That is, yeah.

So that's the other way to look at it.

You talked about, I only have a few minutes left of your time and God bless you for, you know, hanging in there with us. What—

I love it, I could chat to you forever.

I love it too. I seriously could talk to you for hours. Let me see. What's a scientific fact you know is true but still find impossible to emotionally process?

Oh, there's almost all of it. We've talked about a lot of it. I mean, just that idea, as we said earlier, the billions of stars. But also, I've got a friend who's a physicist I work with a lot at the University of Manchester. And he said to me, the most incredible thing of all is that anything exists. So ultimately it's the fact that, I mean, it's obviously an age-old philosophical question. But it astonishes me that anything exists. It really astonished me what Jason said a few minutes ago, that these little particles have managed to get together into patterns that can have conversations and bring meaning to the universe in a very real sense. That amazes me as well.

Keep from getting— like, if I was in your line of work, which is basically probing for answers to questions, I personally would, would have sort of this, this, this, this looming sort of, um, uh, angst and, and, and potential depression that I know I'm in a field that I'm never ever going to know the answers to all of it. Um, and it's just like somebody who like specializes in the afterlife. Well, you're never going to really know what happens until after you And then it's too late to come back and let us all know.

That is my next question. I swear to God.

It's the key. That is the key to science, this. So, you know, at the end of my live show, actually, I say that what's the key to progress? So first of all, progress, you have to admit that you don't know things. By definition, right? You can't make progress if you think you know everything. So people who think they know everything are gonna be a barrier to progress, right, first. But secondly, I say we have to stand on the edge of the known and look out into the unknown, not with fear, but with delight and excitement. 'Cause it's the delight and excitement of not knowing. That's the key to science. So you turn it around and you're excited about looking out into the darkness because of the things that you might find, the treasures that's buried somewhere in the darkness.

And you get comfortable with the fact that you'll never reach the end of that line of questions.

Yeah, 'cause then it would be— In some ways, because it's so wonderful and delightful to not know things and to have things to find out, it would be— The greatest fear might be that we end up knowing everything, 'cause then it would be utterly pointless.

Yeah, you need a reason to get out of bed. Bad. So tell me what, uh, what in your—

remember when Jodie Foster— just remember that moment.

I love that film.

It's one of my favorite films of all time.

No way.

No way, Sean.

Really? You've seen it?

It is though. It is.

Everything about that film is brilliant, right? Um, what, um, so in your scientific opinion, what happens when we die, which is kind of what Jason just touched I mean, my view is that we die.

So it's like—

And that's it.

It goes back to what we said earlier about if the brain is just this somehow— I don't mean just, right? It's a remarkable computer that's evolved over 4 billion years, but it's a computer. If you turn the computer off, you don't ask what's happening inside the computer. We know what's happening inside the computer. It's nothing. So it goes back to all the questions we were discussing. So otherwise, I suppose you have to imagine there's something else other than the particles out of which we're made. There's, call it a soul or whatever you wanna call it, but there's something else that we've not detected any evidence for. There's something else. That's what you have to—

Yeah, it's like a, Jason, going back, it's kinda like Ibiza at the end of the summer. Like the party's done, but the vibe continues on.

You know what I mean?

Like the vibe. The vibe keeps going, you know what I mean?

But then, but then what's the most thing that is— I don't find it frightening though. I find it wonderful. I mean, in a sense, it means that we have this finite time in which to enjoy ourselves and explore the universe and live.

Right.

So I think that's enough. I find that uplifting.

Do you live for tomorrow or do you live for today, knowing that?

That's a good question.

Well, one, one, one.

Surely.

Good for you.

You got on the board.

Surely both, don't we? It goes back to that question. I was thinking about this the other day. Actually, imagine, imagine you know everything. That's what we were just talking about. If you know everything, it means you know what's going to happen. So what kind of a life is that? If you knew what was going to happen tomorrow? Yeah, I think it might— our existence might be pointless. In fact, that's what I think the key key to our enjoyment of the universe is our enjoyment of life, is not knowing what's coming. If you knew, what would you do? How would you live if you knew?

That's why I like to believe that whatever our eternal battery is, like whatever keeps our— we don't have gasoline or battery power inside our body, but somehow our heart keeps beating even when we're sleeping. So whatever is fueling us, and I like to think that it's sort of a friend of or part of our consciousness is like this thing that it's sort of, it's in the ether and that when our vehicle runs out of fuel and dies, right, our body dies, runs out of time, that consciousness, those thoughts, those feelings, that it can travel and maybe either occupy another body or a dog or a tree or whatever, that it keeps, there's this perpetual sort of loop that this consciousness does and it advances each time it goes through a body or being or an object or something.

Well, I like to think that it kind of dissipates into the, you know, that we're all connected.

Combines, yeah.

Yeah. And then at a certain point it becomes sort of our turn and then it sort of finds another vehicle. Yeah, it finds another vehicle. Yeah, I feel connected to the universe. I really do.

I feel like I'm removing the magic if I say that. Sean answered the question. He said, what's fueling us? I just thought donuts. Yeah, that is actually technically true.

Sean, what did you have breakfast for breakfast today?

I haven't eaten yet.

What?

I know I haven't eaten.

But what do you think it will be?

I'm probably gonna have eggs and toast today and also maybe like a yogurt drink.

That's it though. That's what's fueling us. And then, and then the answer to the question about the what happens is it's obviously is It's a wonderful question, is it? But the thing is, it's like saying, what happens to Zoom when we turn the computer off?

We keep Zooming.

I don't think we do, though. I think when you turn the computer off, Zoom stops.

Will's going to love this, and then we're going to let you go. You are a season ticket at Oldham Athletic soccer team, right?

Yeah. Well, I was.

Oh, I thought you still were.

No, I used to be. It's my local club, my local football football club.

Oh wow, how about that?

Who do you, who do you support now?

Oldham.

Oldham?

Yeah, and that's it. We're famous. Oldham Athletic are famous for being the only club in history to have been in the Premier League. So we're in the Premier League with Man United and Liverpool.

Yeah.

And then we got relegated out of the entire Football League.

Wow, all the way down.

All the way down. And then, but last year, and I was at the game, we got promoted back into the Football again.

So now we're in the lowest division of the football league, which is what, 4 divisions down?

8.

Yeah, 8.

Wow. We went all the way down into what we call non-league. So that's kind of our claim to fame. But we're on our way back.

JB, that's your nickname, isn't it? Oldham?

Right. Thank you so much for being here.

This was like Old Ham.

Old Ham. Also my name. I know you just got back from Australia. You're probably going to be exhausted.

Thank you for being here. Thank you so much.

And the next tour, I'm— it's called Emergence right now, your tour?

Yeah.

Yeah. And I really— is that the one that's going to come to Los Angeles?

Yeah, yeah. I'll be in LA and across America towards the end of this year and through next year.

I can't wait.

Can't wait for that. You're very kind to speak with us.

Yeah, thank you for putting up with our questions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

Wonderful questions. Yeah, well, have we got anywhere though?

Yeah, yeah, we never do. We never do. We never get anywhere.

We're smart more. We're smart more today.

Yeah. Um, thanks, Brian. Thanks so much. It was such a pleasure to meet you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, Brian.

See you later.

Thanks.

Bye. Wow, he's like the guy now. Like, he's the guy everybody talks to. Like, he's always in my feed and I'm like, stop, and I listen to what he says. You know, my Instagram feed.

I'm really interested to see what the format of his show is. He says there's a big screen there, which I guess is, you know, supports some of the answers that he's talking about, pictures and things like that.

Yeah. Um, wouldn't it be cool to go?

Yeah, let's do it. Let's get all gummied up and get there.

Yeah, I guess I'm driving.

I would love it. I also wanted to ask him about CERN, which I didn't get to. You know that—

wait, are we allowed now to bring on, um, um, um, academics now 'Cause I've got some ideas for, like, you know, of course, some smarties like that again. I felt like we kind of, like, went away from that, and it was like, I love that, celebs only. But, like, yeah, let's bring in some, like, some brain food.

Yeah, I love that.

Which is not to say our celebrities are not smart people.

No, no, no, no, no. I'm not suggesting that.

Yeah, but I like this. I will bring on some artists and some—

I love it. Yeah, I love— I can talk to that guy all day.

Long.

The, um, did you guys know his nightmare is you talking to him all day long, by the way?

I'm sure he looks on his phone that just, just somehow just rang.

We never got to Tatooine. Is it real? Yeah, I know.

We should have him back, uh, once we all get a chance to see Disclosure Day, you know.

I'm seeing it right after this. I'm hanging up with you guys. I'm seeing it.

Yeah. Oh my God, a matinee. I love it. Just so you can't be— just so no one bothers you, right?

That's exactly right.

You can be alone in the theater.

Yeah, I I love it. What are you going to eat at the theater?

I'm probably going to have some popcorn. I'm going to eat good. I have to start eating better. Why?

You got a big sex scene coming up?

No, I feel like my blood is crème brûlée. I texted that to you, and I think it is. Yeah, it's all fat and sugar and salt.

What is your go-to at a movie theater? You have popcorn, and then do you buy some candy and you sprinkle it on top?

If I could, I'd get pretzel bites with cheese. I dip the pretzel bites in the cheese. Yeah, that's the best.

So that answer was so quick.

Yeah.

Do you put—

do you put— you one of those guys that likes a few pumps of butter sauce on your— on your popcorn? Butter sauce, I think, was your handle in high school, right?

A few pumps butter sauce. Hey guys, look who's coming down the hall.

It's Butter Sauce. Hey, um, Do you— what is it? What's your go-to when you fucking stomach up to the old counter there?

Hey, guys, it's Butt Sauce. Can I get—

You know what I get? I went to the movies by myself for the first time in a long time a few weeks ago. I went and saw the project—

Oh, yeah.

Why didn't you talk about that with Brian Cox? Well, because we were talking about other stuff.

Like, what's real about it? Wasn't it good?

Good. Yeah, so good. And, and, uh, and, uh, old, old, uh, uh, Brian Gosling did a great job.

Brian.

And, uh, he's so good. I like that guy.

He's amazing.

Yeah, he's so good. And then, uh, and it's our buddies Phil Lord and Chris Miller who, who made that movie. Shout out to those guys. We love those guys. But I went to the theater by myself to see it, and I got a large popcorn with, uh, peanut M&Ms, and I put them in the popcorn, the thing.

Yeah, I get that.

And then, so did you, did you kill that large Popcorn?

I sure did.

And, and, and can I, can I, can I ask you if the, if the, if your morning routine, um, the next day was, um, the same?

It was.

Were you okay?

I was okay. I, yeah, I was okay. I felt, I felt it when I woke up. I felt it when I got out. I felt—

what do you mean? Felt what? Like you're still—

just the sugar and the crash of all that garbage and a large soda. And I just felt crummy. And I went home and I went to bed. And then I woke up and I, uh, did you—

do you usually just bring a bowl of nuts with you to the theater?

I do. Um, sure, it's a trail mix. It's a Ziploc bag with some trail mix.

Yeah, that Amanda organized.

No, I enjoy the popcorn. I just can't have a lot of it because then it wrecks my, my routine in the morning, if you know what I mean.

Um, I don't really— just elaborate.

Yeah, well, it's a binder is what it is.

Binder.

Um, but oh boy, that— I like that guest. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, I love it too. And speaking of, what does popcorn do to you? What is it?

It's a real—

it binds you.

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