0:08

Hi, this is Lawrence Krauss

0:10

and welcome to the Origins podcast. For

0:13

this podcast I have my guest

0:16

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi who is

0:18

an astronomer, physicist

0:21

and also president of the Black Society

0:23

of Physicists in the US. His

0:27

story is a remarkable

0:29

one. If you had to pick someone

0:32

who you would imagine would never get to college,

0:36

much less post college experience

0:38

and then becoming a faculty member at a university in

0:41

physics and astronomy, you would

0:43

have picked Hakeem. He's

0:46

written about it in a book that he produced

0:48

a while ago. We talked about his

0:50

origins and not only the things that got him

0:52

interested first in science but

0:55

the many, many challenges he had to overcome to become

0:59

a scientist. It's inspiring

1:01

and enjoyable and actually

1:04

also he's a

1:06

remarkably pleasant and jovial

1:09

fellow to talk to about this and other

1:11

things. We also talked about a more

1:13

recent experience of his and another challenge he had

1:15

to face in a remarkable piece

1:18

of work following the claims made

1:20

by some people that James Webb was

1:23

a homophobe and racist who

1:26

while administrator

1:28

of NASA had

1:30

excluded those people from

1:34

positions and also spoken out against

1:37

them. Hakeem did a

1:40

remarkable piece of what I would almost call investigative

1:43

journalism or historical journalism.

1:46

He was at NASA and he went

1:48

through all of the materials to see

1:51

if this was corroborated because he was quite

1:53

concerned when he heard it. And

1:56

what he discovered was that of course

1:58

the claims were untrue.

1:59

For that

2:02

he should have been celebrated. What happened

2:04

immediately afterwards was he was vilified by

2:06

the same people who had been promoting this

2:08

notion that the James Webb

2:10

Space Telescope name should be changed, who

2:13

acted in an anti-scientific manner in the

2:15

sense that they assumed the answer before

2:17

they had the evidence. He provided the

2:19

evidence and he didn't have a position

2:24

on this, he just wanted to find out what the truth was exactly

2:26

as a good scientist or scholar should do. And

2:29

he was vilified for it in ways we talked about

2:31

and unduly. And

2:34

so I think the lessons we

2:36

learned from this are that keep focused

2:39

on the truth, keep working hard

2:42

and that you can overcome a lot of difficulties and also

2:45

once again to be willing to change your mind

2:47

in the presence of evidence. It's a great

2:50

discussion, I really enjoyed talking with

2:52

Hakeem and I hope you enjoy the discussion as

2:54

well. You can watch it without

2:58

advertisements on our Critical

3:00

Mass or you can watch it after that on the YouTube

3:03

channel for the Origins Podcast. Either

3:05

way I hope you enjoyed, you can also of

3:07

course listen to it on any podcast site.

3:10

And by the way if you happen to be in Southern California

3:14

on

3:15

October 15th or 17th the Origins Project

3:18

will be having two events, one

3:20

in Santa Ana on the 15th and another in San

3:22

Diego. I'll be joined

3:25

by Brian Keating and we'll be filming

3:27

actually this podcast and his podcast at

3:29

the Air and Space Museum there on the 15th at the

3:32

Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. And

3:34

I'll also by the way be lecturing two days earlier

3:36

in Vancouver for those of you up north. So

3:38

I hope I get a chance to meet some of you in

3:41

person as well. With no further

3:43

ado our podcast with

3:45

Hakeem Olushehi.

3:55

Okay Hakeem Olushehi which I

3:58

think I got right.

3:59

It's really good

4:02

to have you on. I wanted to have you on, talk to you for

4:04

a while, as you know, we've been going back and forth. And

4:06

I have to say, in all honesty,

4:10

what originally I want to talk to you about, and we'll get to

4:12

it, is James Webb and the James S.A. Celskope

4:14

and the supposed controversy regarding

4:17

the naming of it, which you played a key

4:19

role in. And I also wanted

4:22

to talk to you, and I will talk to you, because you're

4:24

president of the National Society of Black Physicists. And

4:26

I wanted to have a frank conversation about that as well. But

4:29

this is the Origins podcast, and

4:31

I don't know if you've ever seen any of it, but what I try

4:33

and do is go into people's origins at the beginning to try

4:36

and find out what got them turned

4:38

on to what they're doing. And

4:40

I was

4:41

going to do that, and I have done

4:43

that, but you helped me in a way, because

4:45

what happened is, you said, by

4:47

the way, I got this book called The Quantum Life,

4:50

My Unlikely Journey from the Streets to the Stars.

4:53

And I asked for a PDF, and I spent the last four

4:55

days reading it. And so I

4:57

now know about your origins, which are even more

4:59

fascinating than I had assumed.

5:02

So I want to, before

5:04

we get to those things, and I

5:06

also want to talk about your work as well. I

5:08

want to talk about what sort of ultimately

5:11

led you to become the man and the scientist

5:13

and writer

5:14

that you are. And so the

5:17

first thing I knew was that before

5:20

age 13, you'd been to lived in a whole bunch

5:22

of places, 9th Ward

5:24

of New Orleans, Watts, South Park,

5:26

Houston, 3rd Ward

5:28

of...is that the 3rd Ward of New Orleans

5:30

or Houston? Houston, 3rd Ward. And all

5:33

awful places to be. And then rural

5:35

Mississippi. Yeah.

5:39

Your book begins when you were four years old,

5:42

when your family got busted apart for the first time.

5:46

And you

5:48

had this experience of growing

5:50

up in both what one might

5:53

call urban ghettos and the rollback

5:56

woods of New Orleans

5:58

and Mississippi and Maryland. particular.

6:01

And I found it obviously fascinating.

6:05

Your unlikely journey is indeed an unlikely

6:07

journey and a remarkable one, a truly

6:10

remarkable one. I found the read fascinating.

6:12

I also found it interesting.

6:15

I was wondering whether I had noticed specifically

6:17

when in your writing

6:22

when you quote yourself, when you're

6:24

younger, you're quoting yourself and

6:27

the way you speak is very different than when you quote yourself

6:29

when you're older. I shouldn't that was with Malice

6:32

and forethought or you,

6:34

the way. Right. So I wanted to be true

6:36

to my voice. Right. And so my voice evolved.

6:38

Like I showed up in graduate school.

6:41

So I was in Mississippi from the age of 13 to 24.

6:43

Yeah. Before that I was in inner

6:45

cities. Okay. Yeah. And you

6:48

know, all of these places have their unique

6:50

accents. New Orleans does. Right. So

6:53

man, I show up to Stanford

6:55

university at the age of 24 for graduate

6:57

school and no one can understand

7:00

a word I say. Okay. So

7:02

I, you know, I basically have to change

7:04

the way I speak in order for people to understand

7:07

me. Yeah. And, and I'll tell you what's funny

7:09

is that, you know, I love, you know, I, I

7:11

love the diversity of human cultures

7:14

and you know, America has so many subcultures

7:16

and my deep woods location.

7:18

I just love to take people there. Right.

7:21

And I do, they all react about

7:23

the same way around day two or three,

7:26

they'll put me to the side and they'll go,

7:28

Hakeem, do you really understand

7:30

what these people are saying? Are you faking it?

7:32

You know, you know, my ears trained,

7:35

you know, Yeah, no. And it's funny, you know, people

7:37

change the way they speak. And a lot of people think it's sort of

7:39

a feat and it really is not,

7:42

it's not the case. I remember my wife

7:44

lived in Australia and her accent,

7:46

she grew up in America, but her accent

7:49

was very difficult to place. And

7:52

what, and she worked for the government of Australia.

7:54

And what, what she said was at some point, it

7:57

wasn't a matter of wanting to suddenly have

7:59

an Australian

7:59

It was a matter of being understood by the people

8:02

you work with right? That was exactly that's exactly

8:04

is a hundred percent Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean

8:06

I feel cursed on occasion, you know, but There's

8:10

so many different features of the of your upbringing

8:12

that want to hit on but one I want to start

8:14

right away Which is

8:16

before we get to the I mean and you know, there's so

8:18

many obstacles. There's there's parents

8:20

who break up. There's poverty a little

8:23

access to good education Drug

8:25

dealing so many and potential

8:27

violence all around you all of those things that you

8:29

might imagine for a

8:32

poor black man young man in

8:34

many places and for a poor person in many places

8:37

but one of the things I ask people who become scientists

8:40

is To what extent reading

8:42

impacted on there becoming scientists

8:44

and in your case You know

8:47

the first thing that comes out is is

8:49

is how Reading saved you and you

8:51

want to tell the story of the book of the month Club because I kind

8:54

of found that kind of Interesting one.

8:55

Yeah. So, you know, I discovered I fall in

8:58

love with books and I have

9:00

this older friend Darren Brown Yeah,

9:02

who is pretty successful in his own

9:04

right? He grew to be the highest ranking African-american

9:07

in the US Navy submarine fleet

9:09

and his last post was to

9:13

Run the the Navy base there at Ames in

9:16

San Jose, but you know Darren was

9:18

a couple years older than me He was a smart kid

9:20

and he was like Giving

9:22

me advice and so one of the things

9:24

he told me was that as a minor I

9:27

can't be held accountable to a contract.

9:29

Yeah, so I signed up for Time

9:31

Life books, you know And I received books

9:34

on you know, the weird stuff. Yeah, you know

9:36

what the irony of it is I grow up

9:38

to write a book with Time Life. Yeah,

9:41

and I confess to them. They're like, okay, we forgive

9:44

you By the way, I had

9:46

a subscription Time Life books when I was younger first year

9:48

book of the month But then yeah, I had all the timeline

9:50

books. In fact, it's it's not behind me But

9:52

but there's a bookcase you can see all that. I have

9:54

the 24 volumes or whatever it was It

9:57

took many years to get them and when I and

9:59

they were one I spent my entire allowance

10:01

on them, but oh that you'd book of the month,

10:03

but I think it's a great idea that you yeah now

10:06

But I forget what how

10:08

you knew you want it you love books because

10:10

there was the Bible in your house But was

10:12

there something else that you saw before

10:15

before the book of the month Club? I know that roots event. I'll

10:17

be able to play the role, but yeah, so long the fact.

10:19

Yeah, so long before that I was a seven-year-old

10:23

in Elementary school to my sister

10:25

was in middle school and she brought home

10:27

Edith Hamilton's Mythologies,

10:30

oh man. I just ate that

10:32

up. You know, I love everything superhero, right?

10:34

Yeah Yeah, and so a year later,

10:36

you know I'm living in New Orleans and there I am with Darren

10:39

Brown and you know Darren and I you know Darren

10:41

sees me everything He sees me how to play chess. He

10:43

sees me how to play football You know

10:45

and and we're in the woods But

10:48

the next year I get to Mississippi and

10:50

I'm introduced to comics Marvel and DC

10:52

Comics might say comics. That's right

10:55

Yeah, they have crates and crates of comics,

10:57

right so up until this time I'm not really,

10:59

you know, Edith Hamilton is as close as I've gotten

11:01

a reading in adult books Yeah, but

11:04

you know again, there were the time life books that

11:06

had you know, go You know Oak

11:08

Island Loch Ness Monster all this weird stuff.

11:10

I loved it, right? Yeah, and at

11:13

the same time, you know Once I moved

11:15

to the country once I moved to

11:17

rural Mississippi

11:18

man when winter hits, you know, it's

11:21

a lot more boring, right? I

11:24

live in Canada. I don't think rural Mississippi

11:26

is exactly the same. It's all

11:28

relative man It's all relative, you know, it gets down to 60 you're

11:31

free. No, we had a fire, you know 60 and

11:33

we got our T-shirts on anyway,

11:36

it would be 80 my aunt Minnie who I live with she'd be

11:38

like build a fire. Yeah But

11:41

man I

11:42

Was so bored this you

11:45

know at this time period and everybody was talking

11:47

about this book roots and lo and behold There it is

11:49

in the house. And this is the first time I really

11:51

read a novel Don't yeah,

11:53

and it really just blew my mind and

11:56

how vivid the pictures

11:59

in my mind were

11:59

how emotionally invested I

12:02

was in the story. And so, you

12:04

know, coming out of it, it was like awakening to

12:06

me like, you know, whoa, that's awesome. Let's do

12:08

it again. Yeah, absolutely.

12:10

I think well, you know, I want to come back then

12:13

a second, but you mentioned comic books and I'd forgotten

12:15

about that part. And, you know, I

12:17

again used to spend my weekly allowance where my brother

12:19

and my brother would get me to spend my weekly allowance

12:22

on comic books that we both read. But but

12:24

but, you

12:25

know, that's a great way of young

12:27

kids beginning to learn to read. And and

12:29

and and

12:30

and, you know, I encourage that, you know, who

12:32

cares what the subject matter is. It's a way

12:34

of getting gripping with stories. And

12:37

and then the root story. Yeah,

12:40

it's as far as I could tell, it was the first book that really grabbed

12:42

you and to go way ahead. I

12:44

was going to talk about the end, but it might as well in some

12:47

ways in the circularity

12:49

of Oregon, go on the story of your life. It had an

12:51

impact because ultimately you changed your name.

12:54

That's right. And to some extent,

12:56

it's because of, of course, the hero

12:58

of roots being forced to change his

13:01

name.

13:01

You know what, man? I did not have that

13:03

thought until I was writing this book. You know,

13:06

as I'm thinking about my life and,

13:08

you know, you know, I took a year to really like

13:10

think that, you know, Josh, the guy I wrote a book with, you

13:12

know, we spent a year just talking about these stories

13:14

to try to narrow it down. I had like a billion.

13:17

Yeah, not literally anecdotes.

13:19

But how do you create a weave, a narrative out

13:21

of it? What are the important stories? And,

13:23

you know, I started to see things that I had never seen before.

13:26

And once I, you know, I talked

13:28

about how big that story of Kunta Kinte

13:31

and being forced to change his name, the big emotional

13:34

impact it had on me. Yeah. And as I was

13:36

thinking, I was like, wait a minute, could that have influenced me

13:38

when I decided to change my name? I

13:41

can't say that it did not. I can't say that it did. But

13:43

it's about employment. Well, whether

13:47

an influence you're not. Yeah. Jumping

13:50

ahead. We might as well. So if we write up, you

13:52

did change your name rather late, right? In the last

13:55

years of graduate school. That's right. Yeah. And

13:57

your PhD. Yeah. It's nice to have a new I mean,

13:59

having your. So if you're going to, in some sense, reinvent

14:01

yourself, that's a good time. But

14:04

what was, was it more than that? What

14:06

caused it at that instant and nowhere

14:08

before after? You know, man, a big part

14:10

of it was that I felt like I

14:12

was a new person. Like that's the reality. But,

14:14

you know, when I showed up, you know, I had been

14:16

in, and this was

14:19

relevant for this time, right? Because

14:21

when I get to Stanford and I discovered their libraries, talk about

14:24

books, you know, creating libraries, you

14:26

know, I'm like, I'm not going to do any

14:29

library became my second home,

14:32

if not my primary home,

14:34

right? And so, you

14:36

know, we were born into this world and we're given

14:39

all these narratives. Yeah. And,

14:41

you know, I would hear all these narratives

14:43

about, you know, so there's like what school

14:45

is telling me, but there's what the older brothers in

14:48

the hood are telling me, right? You know, they

14:50

pull me to the side and they

14:51

say things like, well, you know, black men created

14:53

civilization, a black man, you know, and I'm like, what

14:55

the hell? And I felt like, you

14:57

know what? Let me find out for

14:59

myself. Let me get into this library

15:02

and unwind human history. I

15:04

want to under, I wanted to, you know, I used to play this game

15:06

with people, you know, tell me a year, tell

15:08

me a century, and I'll tell you what a dominant power is wearing

15:11

the world. What was happening in that? And, you know, pretty

15:13

much Eurasia and Africa at that

15:15

time, you know, the rest of the world, I really didn't have a good view

15:17

on, and I wanted to understand human

15:20

religions, right? I wanted to understand

15:21

the, not just the, the,

15:23

the Western traditions from

15:25

the fertile, from the Levant, right? Yeah. Judaism

15:28

and Islam and Christianity

15:32

or the Eastern philosophies of Hinduism

15:34

and Buddhism, but also, you know, what was going on

15:36

around Africa, what were the Native American beliefs? And

15:38

so I did all of this studying and at the

15:40

same time I'm learning everything

15:43

that humanity knows about the natural world

15:45

for the most part as a physicist. Right? So

15:47

this history, this physical

15:49

world, and man, let me tell you,

15:51

it was as if I took my head, poured

15:53

out a lot,

15:54

everything I was born with, right? Refilled

15:57

it. And I'm like, okay, now I'm this new dude. And,

16:01

you know, I want to claim, cause I

16:03

also did have that idea of self-determination.

16:06

And I'll tell you what's funny is funny,

16:08

not funny, but you know, I always saw

16:11

myself, I'm African-American, clearly

16:13

I'm descended from slavery. Well

16:15

it turns out that there's not that much in

16:18

my ancestry, right? You know, once we did our

16:20

family history, it turns out my mother's paternal,

16:23

or both my paternal lineage, my

16:25

father's paternal lineage and my mother's paternal lineage,

16:27

there was no slavery, but on the maternal

16:29

lineages there was, right? So

16:32

it's a, but even then, you know, my father's

16:35

mother is, you know, half

16:37

Choctaw Native American, right? Yeah.

16:40

So I'll tell you, you know, so as I'm doing this studying and

16:43

I find out my father's lineage, what's really crazy

16:45

about it is that both of his grandfathers were Irishmen,

16:48

white Irishmen.

16:49

Interesting. Right? Yeah. Get

16:53

this. His paternal grandfather,

16:55

his father's father had two families.

16:58

He had his white family and

17:00

he had his black family with which he had four

17:02

kids. One of whom

17:05

was my grandfather, Charlie

17:07

Plummer, right? But here's the crazy thing.

17:09

All right. My dad was born in 1933. I

17:12

don't know what year his dad was born, but

17:14

this white guy clearly is born at some point in

17:17

the mid 19th century. When

17:19

he died, he left us, his black

17:21

family, a ton of land in Mississippi.

17:24

That's the land I grew up on. Wow. The

17:26

Plummer land in Clark County, Mississippi. Wow.

17:29

That does go against the narrative, doesn't it? You're supposed to have been forgotten

17:31

when he dies. Yeah. You're supposed

17:34

to be like, Oh, I don't claim you. Right? But

17:36

no, he

17:37

provides the land that I grew up on. Well,

17:39

this is good. There are a number of times I want

17:42

to talk to you and sort of challenge

17:44

the

17:45

traditional narratives or at least ask questions

17:48

because the big thing, I mean, you got the right

17:50

guy. Well, and I hope, yeah, I

17:52

do. I think I do. And you got the right guy

17:54

for me in the sense that nothing is sacred for me. So

17:56

I'm going to ask questions. And some people say, how dare

17:59

you ask that question? Nothing sacred buddy.

18:01

Every question is Nerds

18:05

that you know feel like we're from another planet Okay,

18:07

good. Um, objectively not

18:10

like we're members of the human species Before

18:12

we leave the books which we and we sort of circled

18:14

around them for a while, but this is great I have no, you

18:17

know agenda in that sense You

18:19

went from the novels though The one thing that really

18:21

I was intrigued by and it was clear

18:23

to me that that was

18:24

Your desire to have an encyclopedic knowledge

18:27

came from the fact that the first Books you really

18:29

had access to were encyclopedias and you ate

18:31

them up You got this world book encyclopedia

18:34

and you started to read it from a to

18:36

z Absolutely. And as far as

18:38

I can tell been obnoxious to everyone around

18:40

you by telling absolutely Yeah,

18:43

mama, you know, my mom had to pull me to the side

18:46

and you know inform me, you know how

18:48

to interact with the humans Especially,

18:51

you know in the deep south man a kid correcting

18:54

an adult.

18:54

Yeah, they say something correct

18:56

You know that that's not gonna fly, you know that could

18:59

Especially if you correct a teacher and which which

19:01

I know you did and I remember I had that experience But

19:03

for you and especially I don't and there may have

19:06

been a different amix with correcting a white

19:08

teacher and we'll we'll talk about that I don't know

19:10

if yeah, I think most many teachers were offended

19:12

either way if a kid would correct them Right,

19:15

right, but there may have been even more if it

19:17

wasn't a white kid only at this one school, man

19:20

At this one school is one teacher in quitman,

19:22

Mississippi And you know, that's the that's the other thing about the

19:24

narrative that is, you know, that

19:26

is interesting is that You

19:28

know whatever group of people you you interact with they're

19:31

gonna be people that are gonna be great to you They're gonna be but are gonna be awful

19:33

to you. Yeah, most people gonna be a spectrum and

19:36

different You're gonna be a spectrum, right? So yeah, I

19:38

ran into that person that was awful

19:40

to me in that way That happened to sit

19:43

in a teacher's desk. Sure now if I

19:45

had to judge teachers as a whole

19:47

Love them teachers. We're gonna get to because

19:49

I as far as I can see teachers were incredibly important I

19:52

want to challenge the narrative because one of

19:54

the things I want to Look, I'll

19:56

I want to talk later about many claims of systemic

19:58

racism, which I don't buy And I want to

20:00

talk to you about them because I you know but

20:03

but But

20:06

yeah, there's so the world book encyclopedia you

20:08

you correct me you always you know You correct

20:10

people around you and that was great. That was I love

20:13

myself and and I you know cuz I

20:16

cuz even in my new book I point out that the

20:18

one thing that parents and teachers don't say enough

20:20

is I don't know which is right Oh,

20:22

you always got to seem to know when you're a teacher and

20:24

that's not the way it should be it should be you know

20:26

What I don't know. Let's discover that together. Let's

20:28

let's because that's discovery

20:30

but so so the world was a good idea, but the other

20:32

thing that Cyclopeia introduced you to when

20:35

you finally got to e and

20:36

I think was under e and not a Albert

20:39

Einstein Einstein absolutely

20:42

That was a huge profound

20:44

moment in your life. Am I am I right? Absolutely,

20:46

man It was you know, love at first

20:49

read love at first sight whatever have

20:51

you? You know, I because

20:53

think about it this way, right I was so in love

20:55

with the natural world, you know I was watching

20:57

jock who stole wild America.

21:00

I just lived in the woods in Mississippi Just

21:02

you know, I was just fascinated by everything fire.

21:04

I was a huge pyromaniac And

21:08

oh man in the country, you know, I had gunpowder

21:10

kerosene gasoline burnt I

21:12

trash had a fireplace we were

21:14

doing it all right the natural world and

21:16

weird stuff that I talked about earlier I get the

21:18

time life books, you know

21:20

What's that's relativity man? That's you

21:22

know, you bring those two things together weirdness and

21:25

the natural world and not only that I

21:27

now have this esoteric knowledge that nobody

21:29

around me know how it makes you that superpower

21:32

Which you've been craving in the comic books to some extent.

21:35

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so it all came together

21:37

man But you know think for me though Is

21:39

that it was almost like a puzzle in a challenge at

21:41

the same time? Because I wanted to really

21:44

really get it and understand it. Yeah Yeah,

21:47

and I became obsessed with just reading reading reading

21:49

and quickly realize hey man, I'm gonna have to learn

21:52

some math here

21:53

Eventually,

21:55

if there's some math and you have a bunch of times

21:57

where people you were good at you were really good at certain

21:59

parts of math and your mother encouraged you to do that.

22:03

She was very excited when you could count well and

22:06

solve problems.

22:07

You know, to think about one of

22:09

my big discoveries

22:11

as an adult scientist who also

22:14

interacts with the education world, because

22:16

I've come to understand that you get well educated

22:18

in math by the time you graduate high school, in

22:20

one of two ways. Either it's

22:22

in your house or

22:24

you're lucky. I

22:27

was neither. Most Americans

22:29

are neither. But if you go to school and learn math well,

22:31

oh, you got lucky. Let me tell

22:33

you. But because the mathematics

22:36

of special relativity is so simple. Yeah,

22:38

really, it's high school. It's even, well,

22:41

depending on where you go. In Europe, it's

22:43

middle junior. It's public school. In the US, it's

22:45

high school or university. But I was able

22:47

to reason my way through it. And so by the time I'm like 14,

22:50

I'm getting it. I understand

22:52

it. And computers come out.

22:54

And I'm 16.

22:55

And I'm like, hey, I can code this

22:57

up. Yeah, we'll get to the science first. Because I'm trying

22:59

to think. In many cases, I want to

23:02

see what the key elements are that make

23:04

people scientists. But in your case, it's even

23:07

for the same reason you wrote the book. It's even

23:09

more interesting because it's such an unlikely journey.

23:12

These things is a factor that when

23:15

we think of the kind of things we can do to help

23:19

more kids climb out of a

23:22

future that's unfortunately determined for them when they're born

23:25

otherwise, think of what are the things that can

23:27

help? Well, obviously books are one

23:29

thing. The other, I'm a, they're

23:31

Jaron Brown,

23:33

man. Yeah, you're having a friend. A kid that's two years older than

23:35

me. One peer is all it takes. One peer.

23:37

All it takes, one peer.

23:39

I remember even when I was a kid was a son

23:41

of a neighbor who was an engineer who had a model

23:44

of an atom. My mother wanted me to be a doctor,

23:46

so I thought doctors were scientists. But when I saw the model

23:48

of the atom, I remember that. And then it was a book

23:51

on Galileo for me. But the

23:53

other thing, I'm trying to think of the other things that, you

23:55

know, some people might have think of are disadvantages

23:58

from having come where

23:59

But there were advantages, because everything

24:02

can be, you know, everything cuts

24:04

two ways. And in this world of everyone suddenly

24:06

being a victim, people realize that

24:08

sometimes, you know, what you think of as a victim, it can be an

24:10

advantage to you,

24:12

building a strength out of the building. I'll give you one example. Okay,

24:14

good. I'll give you one example. I arrive at Stanford

24:16

University,

24:17

and I spent the summer before

24:19

at Berkeley, working in Bernard Soutolle's research

24:22

group. Yeah, yeah. An

24:24

old friend of my colleague. Oh, nice, yeah. I worked

24:26

on some of the papers you were working on later, but anyway, it doesn't

24:28

matter. That was my very first physics research

24:30

of my life. So I knew

24:32

that I was vastly under educated, compared

24:34

to everybody else, from my Berkeley experience, right? I ran

24:36

the Sall Pearl Mudder, who was a buddy, but

24:39

you know, Sall, as a postdoc at the time,

24:41

was not pulling punches, let me tell you. Yeah,

24:43

okay, okay, okay. He was being pretty

24:46

frank, but anyway. Okay.

24:48

But I appreciate that, right? I appreciate,

24:51

I appreciate knowing where I need to shore things up.

24:54

So anyway, I show up at Stanford,

24:56

and I'm looking at different

24:59

things about the people around me. I'm looking at

25:01

their intelligence, and I'm looking

25:03

at their education. And I'm like,

25:05

oh,

25:06

what I see is that

25:08

you guys are, I would not consider you to be intrinsically

25:10

more intelligent than the people I knew that

25:12

were uneducated. Yeah, sure.

25:14

But you're way better educated, for

25:17

sure. But then I said, but you know

25:19

what? Can anyone in here outwork me?

25:22

Because, you know, I was forced

25:24

to do hard manual labor, like

25:26

this moment you hit double digits. And

25:29

you know, when you learn that resilience of,

25:31

I'm gonna, you know, the pain doesn't exist. I must

25:33

drive forward and get this done.

25:36

You, we both went to the same place. I was thinking,

25:38

I was thinking, I was reading, I'm looking at my notes, your

25:40

book, and you said that your rural backwards,

25:42

rural backwards Mississippi was a training

25:45

ground for life as a research scientist. Heck

25:47

yeah. You learned to work hard.

25:49

You learned to work hard, and you learned to

25:51

solve problems, man. You weren't, you know,

25:53

when you didn't have money, you weren't calling somebody to fix

25:55

anything. You were doing everything,

25:58

no matter how complicated it was. you know

26:00

the interesting thing is again one might think okay

26:02

your father was was ultimately an addict

26:05

your mother was you know Watch your mouth.

26:07

I'll kick your anyway Yeah, yeah,

26:09

and but they're both you know, they so they were both negative

26:12

influences one way But they're both incredibly positive influences

26:14

another way your mom Well,

26:16

let's go your dad first. Your dad was knew how

26:18

to do everything you okay, and

26:21

he and he and he and he taught you Yeah,

26:23

I think it's really a great thing and

26:25

often he you know, you can see that

26:28

influence in you and your mom For

26:30

all of her other, you know Pluses

26:32

and minuses was excited

26:34

for you

26:36

By because of your intelligence and

26:38

encouraged it. I mean there was a chemistry set at some

26:40

point. She bought a computer You

26:42

know, these are amazing things You

26:45

get me. Yeah, Ira it could go

26:47

the other way. I remember yeah, just to

26:49

give you an example. I remember when I was a

26:52

Chair of a physics department at cleveland. I tried

26:54

to get and my university we

26:56

donated Old scientific

26:58

equipment to some of the inner city schools that would because

27:00

they need it then cleveland There's nothing and there

27:02

was but there was a really neat school there called the cleveland

27:04

school for the arts Which was right next to the university and

27:06

I used to go there and I was a I think I

27:09

was I was involved with it Because we donated

27:12

old physics equipment to their science labs And

27:15

and I remember going to a play. I mean these were kids

27:17

that were gifted artistically and

27:20

I saw this girl young woman

27:23

Performance she was great and afterwards I

27:25

saw her come out and I just saw her mother

27:28

yelling

27:28

or why did you spend there? Why didn't you come home? And I thought

27:31

you know That's the difference between a parent

27:33

who you know When your kid does excel to

27:35

someone who just puts them down for excelling and

27:37

that's a and you know It's a really big difference

27:40

And so I was really pleased to see how tickled

27:42

your mother was at a variety of times In

27:44

your life and how for your father in spite of introducing

27:47

a drug dealing and ultimately

27:50

Ultimately becoming you know,

27:52

a unfortunate addict

27:54

Nevertheless

27:56

taught you how to work hard learn

27:58

things solve problems

27:59

And and those are there was another aspect

28:02

that I thought of that

28:03

of being in rural, Mississippi

28:05

You know, I'm gonna interrupt you here, man I'll

28:08

interrupt you you interrupt me. That's the way it works. You know

28:10

you say being a drug dealer There's

28:12

being an honest drug dealer He

28:15

taught me how to be straight. Yeah

28:18

where professional honest in that

28:20

world Oh, absolutely important things

28:22

like not go out in the street and sell, you know, all

28:24

sorts of things He you know, he gave you wise

28:26

street wisdom Exactly.

28:29

And don't treat people because you're gonna it's gonna come

28:31

back and get you in the end. Exactly No, no, it was it

28:33

was really he taught you to be in that sense.

28:35

He was an entrepreneur when he was absolutely

28:38

He was an entrepreneur. He was in a prize. He had

28:40

he brought money into the house That

28:42

was essential for living which which which

28:45

was uh, you know and buying that that

28:47

club, uh, the oh, yeah I would have called a nightclub

28:49

I guess and getting everyone working and it was Yeah, I mean

28:52

I was fascinated by that But the other thing that

28:54

it seemed to me that you got

28:55

out of that rural That one

28:58

some people might think it was a negative was the night

29:00

sky I remember the fact when

29:02

you came from a city To suddenly the

29:04

first time when you went saw the night sky when you

29:07

were in the country Again

29:09

a pivotal moment. I don't know if it determined

29:11

why you wanted to be an astronomer and astrophysicist,

29:13

but tell me about it

29:15

Man, listen, I look, you know, I

29:17

was amazed and I had no references

29:20

to know Okay, here's what you know, all I knew

29:22

was the big dipper and of course

29:24

Just like everyone else thought the pleiades was a

29:26

little dipper. Yeah, right. Yeah, but I'd

29:28

see the planets And I knew that there was something different

29:31

and amiss with them. Yeah, right. I

29:33

didn't figure it out until to go that those were planets

29:35

Yeah Meanwhile,

29:37

too, so it's okay You know

29:40

the cities where everything where they air is so bad You really

29:42

can't see the fact that they don't twinkle and you get yeah

29:44

Well, I didn't know this, you know, like like basically in

29:47

the country We had two channels channel seven channel 11

29:50

only channel seven came in for the most part until

29:52

people got to the point where you get that Antenna

29:54

outside your house where you go outside attorney antenna.

29:56

Yeah Like

29:59

we literally do

29:59

in a trailer in the woods, you know?

30:03

And so having information to

30:05

tell me here's what I'm seeing in the sky,

30:07

I did not have that. But as far as like

30:09

being there and just being fascinated by it,

30:11

right? But here's the funny thing is

30:13

that again, as I started to learn

30:16

once I went to Tougaloo, you know, I'd come home

30:18

because you know, they had a library, they had people that knew

30:20

things about astronomy. I took an astronomy class. Just for

30:22

people, just for people, our listeners, Tougaloo

30:24

was the first university you went to. Some of them may have not heard

30:27

of Tougaloo. Okay, but we'll get there. Tougaloo

30:29

College. I like to say it's so exclusive. We don't

30:31

even tell people to be there. Perfect.

30:33

But it's

30:35

funny because one of my good high school friends,

30:37

this guy named Jackie Pugh, he passed

30:39

in 2022. But he was hilarious,

30:42

man, because once I started learning, you

30:44

know, I wanted to tell everybody, you know, being annoying again.

30:46

Yeah. And Jackie, he would always

30:48

say, you know, if I see somebody, I'm like,

30:50

Hey, you see that right there? And Jackie

30:53

would always go, Oh, he go with

30:55

that shit again. Yeah, they would

30:57

tease me about

30:59

it, but

31:01

they love me for it. You know, well, you know, I never

31:03

I interesting thing is it really hit me

31:06

because it was a long I lived, I grew up in a city

31:09

and you know, I liked that I even had a telescope

31:11

and I remember once to a little show with

31:13

a friend of mine and we had just telescopes.

31:16

But I never really knew what the sky looked like

31:18

for years and years and years because I never went to the country.

31:21

And you know, and I and where I live now, it's just I've,

31:24

I've almost 360 degrees like living in a

31:26

planetarium. It's just dark. But

31:29

the first time you go out and see the night sky

31:31

without being in a city, it's just a different

31:33

experience. It's totally really because it's not just out

31:35

there. It's it's all around you. It

31:38

is almost it's almost it's if I

31:40

believed in the word spiritual, I'd say it's a spiritual

31:42

man. I mean, you know, you feel connected. Yeah, you feel connected.

31:45

I was just saying to someone, you know, I wrote in one

31:47

of my books in South America, you

31:52

understand why, you know, they used to view

31:54

the Milky Way as a river continuation

31:56

of Amazon. And the reason is why because

31:58

it's it's around you. It's not just out there. And

32:01

it's the kind of feeling you can't understand until

32:03

you've seen it yourself anyway.

32:05

Oh man, yeah. Okay,

32:08

so let's go to the next thing. I'm

32:10

trying to think of the things that I, from reading your

32:13

history,

32:15

that were important to developing

32:17

you. The encouragement to do math and your mom's encouragement

32:20

to at least be good accounting. And accounting.

32:23

You know, I'm from a world where nobody really

32:26

knows what math is. As a matter of fact, you

32:28

know, at Tougaloo College, you know, when I got there. So

32:30

first thing was, I went to the Navy after high

32:33

school. Yeah, yeah. And there, you know,

32:35

I was in this program that was designed

32:37

to take enlisted people and

32:39

turn them into officers, right? So the way it worked

32:42

is they gave you a year of academic

32:44

and really hardcore military

32:46

training run by the Marines, right? And

32:49

there were two math classes. The regular math

32:51

class and the remedial math class.

32:53

In the remedial math class, we

32:55

were taken from arithmetic

32:58

through calculus in one year. I

33:00

have atopic dermatitis, which you're not allowed

33:02

to be in the Navy with. Yeah, that's the reason you

33:04

had to leave.

33:05

Reason I had to leave. But luckily

33:08

I learned algebra right before I got kicked

33:10

out. That's what you said. The Navy gave

33:12

you algebra and also exposure

33:14

to systemic racism. But we'll get, maybe we'll get there. But

33:17

those are two things the Navy gave. But it was great.

33:19

I mean, it gave you, and a kind of a new kind

33:21

of discipline, although we'll get to the, I

33:24

love the definition of Mr. Cross's version of

33:26

this. Oh yeah. We're gonna

33:28

get to. Man, I almost already had a billion times. Yeah, well, it's

33:31

a wonderful phrase. And I think we'll repeat it right

33:33

now. Because the other thing I wanna talk about is the

33:36

other thing that was really important, and I've met, and I've

33:38

talked a lot of scientists and other people

33:40

about the importance of teachers. And I've been

33:43

amazed for some people, like

33:45

my friend Neil deRast-Seis, he said teachers didn't matter

33:47

to him. He had no good teachers. But for

33:49

the rest of us, we didn't. For you, you made

33:52

the beneficiary of a few key

33:54

good teachers. And the other thing was interesting,

33:56

was a number of them are white teachers, right?

33:58

Oh, absolutely.

33:59

And I remember later

34:02

on you were surprised when you went to the science, it's

34:04

a music camp,

34:05

and you got these prizes that people weren't,

34:07

that people respected you, you know, they weren't, they

34:10

were white, yet they gave you all the prizes, and you thought, why

34:12

should they be prejudiced against me? But you didn't

34:14

expect it in the scientists, which I thought was interesting.

34:16

So early on, you'd been, you had

34:18

this experience of these, and it's, you're

34:21

probably right, a bunch of these guys came down to the Freedom

34:23

March and decided to stay. Yeah,

34:25

yeah, that's right. But Mr. Cross, well, Dr.

34:27

Teal, the, yeah, the McGinnis,

34:30

Bruno, I

34:31

wrote the book, I'm

34:33

impressed by all of these teachers

34:35

who really not

34:37

only put their faith in you, but went out to bat

34:39

for you and, and really took you

34:41

under the wing and said, I see something in you,

34:43

and I'm going to help. And so, and

34:46

I think, man, you know, that's,

34:48

you know, that I hate where our country

34:51

is. So, Lawrence, I've been to 44 countries at

34:53

this point in my life. You know, I didn't, I didn't leave

34:55

until I was 32. Wow. All

34:58

right. Now I'm 27. Yeah.

35:01

Compared to me, I want you to know that. Okay.

35:04

So, um,

35:06

I see that every country has

35:09

these identity hierarchies. And so

35:11

the thing that, that, that was interesting to me,

35:13

you know, when you live in a single locale, you

35:15

buy into the, the,

35:17

the one of your location

35:21

and you buy into the one that's

35:23

recent, right? The ideas that are

35:25

recent, you know, and so it

35:27

gets painted with this brush. And

35:30

sometimes in your cultural narrative,

35:32

you're still living the fight of three,

35:34

four generations ago. Yeah. Right.

35:38

And, and, and so like, I'll be honest with you, you know, when you talk about narratives,

35:40

when I left, so we, we talk about the

35:43

Navy and systemic racism, I'll give you an

35:45

example of what it is, what it really has

35:47

to do with man. I think in large

35:49

part is character. Yeah. Yeah.

35:53

And here's what I mean by that. If

35:55

you're a bully, if you're somebody that's going to pick

35:57

on somebody, if you're somebody and they're around us.

36:00

Right. Most people are concerned with themselves.

36:02

There are a few people that are really good. There's a few jerk

36:04

stuff. Yeah, okay They're

36:07

looking for the vulnerable. Yeah or

36:09

the who those who are perceived to be

36:11

vulnerable. So let me give you an example of

36:13

myself Before

36:15

I left, mississippi Man, I was

36:17

pulled over by the cops. I left at the age of 24. Okay Dozens

36:22

of times yeah, you know between 15

36:25

and 24 like it was routine routine You

36:27

know by the time that to do is like lie down

36:30

search your pockets. All right, I go

36:32

to stanford. I start speaking differently

36:34

Yeah, okay. I dress differently. Yeah

36:37

Now I get pulled over by the police. Uh-huh.

36:40

It plays out completely different. Yeah the

36:42

second I start speaking they're like Oh, yeah,

36:44

I noticed that you swerved a little bit These are you

36:46

know because i'm no longer perceived

36:49

as vulnerable As as like a

36:51

late teenage kid who dresses like

36:53

he's from the hood and talks like he's from the hood Yeah, right,

36:56

you know, so The

36:58

the the and you know these people can be anybody

37:00

like man i've been forcing people's perceptions

37:03

in advance and people People, you

37:05

know, you we all whether we like or not make

37:07

quick assessments And one of the

37:09

first ways where they dress the way to speak. I mean, it's

37:11

just exactly

37:12

Exactly. Exactly. And and and

37:15

you know, that's what I say about too about going

37:17

to stanford One of the greatest lessons I learned

37:19

was class camouflage, right? People

37:21

would see me like five miles away Oops is one

37:23

of them. But now they're like, oh dr. Olu.

37:26

Shay. Come on in Think

37:28

to the president of the country the ceo, you know,

37:30

it's like hi there They're

37:32

like, oh i'm your big fan like oh P

37:35

crumpets But

37:38

you know the the the

37:41

But

37:42

I how you interpret things

37:45

is based on your narrative. Yeah, so when

37:47

I left the south Where

37:50

I did experience, you know because think

37:52

about it this way i'm having conflicts with

37:54

black guys and white guys Sure, right

37:56

i'm having black guys who love me and white guys

37:58

who love me. Yeah Right. But what

38:01

are they going to pick on you about when they come

38:03

at you? If they're trying to hurt you, right? So

38:05

the black dude might say something about my crooked teeth, my

38:07

nappy hair, my big lips, right? The white dude,

38:10

he's going there nine times out of 10, Mississippi,

38:13

right? That's where he's going to go with it. Yeah. So

38:15

what you do to, to self

38:18

survive, to manage your own mind, you don't

38:20

want to encounter those sorts of

38:22

statements, right? Because it hits you a certain way, right?

38:25

Yeah. So, you know, like, like, somebody

38:27

being like, I guess you say

38:29

you're Jewish, which I didn't know. But if somebody says

38:31

something anti-Semitic to you, it

38:34

hits differently than someone just saying something jerky.

38:36

Yeah. You know, for me, I guess it's just something, and that's

38:38

why I've said this before. It may be a

38:41

character flaw. All it did was make me think they

38:43

were stupid. Yeah. Well, I

38:45

grew into that, right? I grew into that,

38:47

right? Because what I'm praying to do is, Oh, if I

38:49

hear this certain word, I'm supposed to lose

38:51

my mind, get really angry and be violent.

38:54

Right? Yeah. And then after a certain point,

38:56

I'm like, why? That's your problem. That's the

38:58

problem. Yeah, exactly. So you

39:01

own how you react to things like that. You own how

39:03

you feel like a victim or whether you don't

39:05

in some sense. Right. But when

39:07

you're a young man, when that's the narrative

39:09

that you're in. So I leave Stanford University.

39:12

I mean, I leave Mississippi head to Stanford University

39:14

at the age of 24. And I'm like, Oh, every white person

39:16

is a racist. Yeah. So I had ample evidence

39:18

to the conference. Like I said, I had these white dudes that

39:20

love me. Yeah. Yeah. And all

39:23

the science fairs and the music camp

39:25

and all of the. And I had a black dude that

39:27

punched me in the face. You know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

39:30

So anyway, what I learned though, you know,

39:32

cause you have

39:34

this racist radar to avoid

39:37

these people. And one of the things that trigger

39:39

it is when people talk to you like they're superior

39:41

to you. Okay. Well, guess how academics talk

39:43

to people quite often. Guess how physicists in particular

39:45

thought. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I

39:47

had to learn, Oh, you're not a racist.

39:50

You're an asshole. Right. And

39:53

it impacts me. You know, and so,

39:55

but you know, now as I mature and

39:57

as I age, right, I get to.

39:59

the humans with whom I interact.

40:02

And they run the gamut. And

40:05

what I see is, if we look at our narrative

40:07

publicly, you

40:10

think we're a country where everybody's at each other's throats

40:12

over partisan politics and race.

40:14

But in my everyday, man, that

40:17

is not what I experienced and see at all.

40:19

I interact with people

40:22

that are extremely liberal, extremely conservative,

40:25

and everything in between. People of all

40:28

races.

40:29

We're all getting along. Big reasons

40:31

we're all well-fed and housed, right? You

40:34

put us under some stress, things may change, but. You

40:37

know, again, I'll jump ahead, but

40:39

obviously what your second father figure was your

40:42

PhD, Art Walker. And

40:45

he said something which I think

40:47

was really important. When you talk about the experience

40:50

of having the

40:55

failure in the graduate

40:58

qualifying exams and what appears

41:00

to be people taking it out on you. And

41:03

I'll talk about that later. Because having been a professor,

41:05

I'm gonna put on the other hand and say why

41:07

one might have assumed that you were ready to fail.

41:10

But anyway,

41:11

what he said was an organization's like

41:13

a bell curve, but it's not just an organization, it's society.

41:15

It's the center of the vast majority.

41:18

They're indifferent. They're apathetic. They're self-centered.

41:20

That's what he just said. A small minority will help,

41:23

and there's a small minority that'll be hostile. Don't

41:25

let that small group of doubters derail you.

41:27

And I think that's the key point. If we

41:30

always, in any organization,

41:33

we're gonna find people who are assholes.

41:35

And if we label them

41:37

and nothing else, we're gonna say that there's a systemic

41:40

something in that thing, where in fact it's just a spectrum.

41:43

And part of being, whether you're African

41:45

American, whether you're Jewish, whether you have

41:48

red hair, whether you're a woman, whether

41:50

you're gay, or whatever, is to

41:52

recognize that if you assume

41:55

that everyone is

41:57

reacting because of a certain trait,

41:59

than just because who they are and

42:01

learn how to deal with

42:03

it

42:04

then the world just becomes this view of

42:07

power and

42:09

racism that just distorts it

42:11

and ruins it for you and everyone else it seems to

42:13

me.

42:14

No I see what you mean there

42:17

and I agree with it in large measure. You do

42:19

control how you react. You do need the

42:21

resiliency to say I'm not so fragile that

42:23

you being unkind to me

42:25

is not going to stop me. Yeah and

42:28

the resiliency is all

42:30

well behaved right yeah but

42:33

I'll tell you what a systemic part comes into

42:35

and I think I stated earlier. Yeah. It's what

42:37

is the default right so just like people buy

42:39

into narratives yeah there's

42:41

a lot of narratives about that are bought into so

42:43

if you look at African Americans in

42:46

physics right if there is a criticism

42:48

they seem to fall into typical

42:51

categories right that seem to be reminiscent

42:54

of how African Americans or how Black folks

42:56

were represented you know prior

42:59

to us being a more enlightened society and that

43:01

is you know not as good mathematically uh

43:03

not as creative and not as hard

43:05

working right. I mean you say that yeah I remember

43:07

you said that later on and it and it's

43:09

interesting to say that narrative I mean I guess I just

43:13

like for example I think about that experiment. I think

43:15

of being good at math do people buy into

43:17

it. I think of my friend Jim Gates who I knew when

43:19

I was at MIT and then Harvard. Yeah I just saw him at

43:22

MIT a few weeks ago. Okay and so Jim

43:24

Gates is pretty good in math

43:26

and and and and and so I

43:28

never I guess I never and everyone knew that. What

43:30

did Jim Gates say to me?

43:32

What was that?

43:33

Let me tell you what Jim Gates said to me. Okay. So

43:35

I left uh

43:38

academia and went to industry yeah

43:41

and then I decided this stuff is boring I want to come back I

43:43

want to do some cosmology yeah all right so

43:45

in 2004 I was at the University of Chicago and

43:48

I had been seeing Jim Gates since the 80s when

43:50

I was a undergraduate student 88. Yeah and

43:52

you made a big point that Jim was really good at trying

43:55

to mentor. Oh yeah well let me tell

43:57

you what he did. He walked up to me and my poster

43:59

there on the Super for Nova acceleration pro satellite if

44:01

you remember that. Like he had never met

44:03

me in his life and grilled me on

44:06

the hardware, the theory, the

44:08

systematics. And then

44:10

after I answer all of his questions, he goes,

44:14

good to see you, right? Good

44:16

to see you, right? So I say to him, I was like, hey

44:18

man, remember, Cauley Institute was new at

44:21

Stanford at the time. They were hiring

44:23

people, Roger Blantford, others. And I was like,

44:25

hey man, you think they're gonna hire you?

44:27

And Jim pauses. And

44:29

he goes, if you

44:31

think these people will,

44:35

can believe that a person descended

44:37

from Africa is capable

44:40

of a creative thought, you

44:42

have a few things to learn. Jim

44:44

said that. No, yeah, he said, no, I do not

44:46

expect that. I do not expect that

44:48

invitation. That's what Jim said.

44:51

So man, you know,

44:53

there are people in our field that don't even talk to

44:55

people that don't have a PhD.

44:57

I know what academia is like.

45:00

I know I'm always that good. The thing is,

45:02

is that you can't wipe it with a

45:04

broad brush. You have to say it's this individual,

45:07

that individual, this individual, right? And

45:09

the other thing that happens is, I'll

45:11

give you another example. I sat on the NSF

45:14

post-doc panel for many, many years.

45:18

And so at this time when I was doing it, it

45:20

was a lot of

45:22

planetary exoplanet science, right? And

45:25

so I see these same letters from these same professors

45:27

at these same top universities and they make comparisons,

45:29

right? It's like kind of the same every year. Oh, this

45:32

person is my top- Yeah, I use

45:34

those letters myself so I know. But

45:36

then they make comparison to other people in the field.

45:39

And I noticed that one person who

45:42

they were comparing with like, oh sure, they're

45:44

way better than this person, was one African-American

45:47

guy. You know what I'm just like, why

45:49

is he always the foil? You

45:52

know, but I didn't do a systematic study of

45:54

all the letters. It was a small sample. And

45:57

maybe I just happened to get a biased sample. But

45:59

in three- second of years, this guy was the,

46:02

you know, and this guy has top positions,

46:04

has had top positions at multiple institutions,

46:06

right? Multiple top institutions. So,

46:08

you know, in some people's

46:11

minds, man, just like there are people

46:13

that are anti Semitic, there are people that are misogynist,

46:15

there are people that are, you

46:18

know, James Webb, right? Dead white

46:20

man, you know, there, you know, there are

46:22

people that I

46:23

can't even be wearing a blue shirt. I hate blue shirts.

46:26

Think of this, how often do you see a scientist

46:29

on television that gets prominent like you and

46:31

me that has a strong southern accent?

46:34

Right? I mean, there's all these little biases

46:37

that people have. And I think that's the real story.

46:39

It's not that none of them exist, is that

46:41

they do exist, but they

46:43

exist more on and you know, you have to look

46:46

at things, you have to judge people individually,

46:49

you don't paint people with groups. And

46:51

so that group ideas

46:53

that we have, because let me tell you, man, you know,

46:55

I don't know if you ever done interracial dating, and got to live

46:57

with people of other cultures. What,

47:00

you know, who they talk about, you know, but

47:02

people have wild ideas. And even,

47:04

you know, in my youth, I would think about

47:07

people in groups, right, not as individuals,

47:09

you know. So, you know, when people say

47:11

they're colorblind, I hope

47:13

that's what they're saying is that I judge people

47:16

on an individual basis. I see, you

47:18

know, I love the culture, the diversity,

47:20

you know, I love to go to another country,

47:23

eat their food, hear their music,

47:25

do their thing and be them with them. I love

47:27

that richness, right?

47:30

And so I love

47:32

that, right? But we can't let

47:35

that, you know, especially here in America, man,

47:37

because as a pluralistic society, you

47:39

know, and again, here's another narrative,

47:41

right? How America's so torn apart, dude. Yeah.

47:45

The way our country is constructed is a recipe

47:47

for nonstop conflict. But yet we

47:49

are peaceful as hell.

47:50

Right? Well, I'm not sure I agree with the

47:53

last part. But you're right. I think the recipe

47:55

for nonstop conflict is built into the country.

47:57

We don't have militias running around.

48:00

We're not taking up arms against each other

48:03

in a systematic way. Not yet. It

48:05

happened once, right? And, you know, I'll

48:07

remind people that was white people versus white people.

48:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you think about

48:12

it, it sounds like it was a race war, right? But

48:15

it's not. Because if you look at modern

48:18

society in America, if you

48:20

listen to different groups talk

48:22

about their

48:25

politics,

48:28

it seems like it's a different reality

48:30

that each group is living in. Yeah,

48:33

yeah, I guess. And you're absolutely right. And

48:36

there's, and there's, and people, as I said,

48:38

people pick up, people are used to certain things.

48:41

People have stereotypes, not necessarily racist, but we all have

48:43

preconceptions

48:45

of things. And the great thing about being

48:47

a scientist that scientists should

48:49

train you to do is ultimately be suspicious of your preconceptions

48:52

as we'll talk about at the end. Just want to

48:54

learn over and over again. And it'd be great if more

48:56

people just more generally learn to

48:58

be suspicious of their preconceptions. But

49:02

I do worry about

49:03

labeling as Bob Broth. I mean,

49:05

not just, when I look at, and

49:08

you're pretty frank about your history

49:10

at Stanford, and I know all the people, because a lot of them are

49:12

colleagues, and I've known them for, I mean,

49:14

you're professors, I've known them for a long

49:16

time, one way or another.

49:19

And there were people who

49:22

were hard on you, and

49:25

maybe unfair to you. That

49:27

happens to everyone.

49:28

But on the whole, the community

49:31

you were in,

49:32

ultimately, and

49:34

it wasn't just art, I don't think, ultimately,

49:37

you know, treated you with respect, ultimately treated

49:40

you with respect as a scientist that you have ultimately

49:42

gained. And

49:45

so I don't, I guess it's not, I don't,

49:48

the question is, in what sense is there, were

49:51

there systemic barriers or are there systemic

49:53

barriers?

49:54

When I read your history,

49:57

I think of it as a, I mean, it's a heart-wrenching.

49:59

warming and such an

50:02

uplifting

50:03

story. It really is. There's no doubt about it. I

50:05

mean, throughout, I, you know, I would constantly

50:07

smile. You were crying. You were crying. Well,

50:10

you know, I don't want to cry. But I was but I was

50:12

I was I was smiling anyway.

50:15

My more usual case than crying, although it's

50:17

not. But anyway, so there were a lot of people,

50:19

you know, you were supporting a high school and then you know, the faculty.

50:23

Let's go. You know, why not? You know, you're absolutely right, man. There

50:25

was one person who was over the line.

50:28

Yeah,

50:32

over the line. And you talk about that one person, I think. But

50:35

but here's the other thing, right? The other thing is,

50:38

is that, you

50:40

know, as a as a mentor,

50:43

as a leader myself, yeah, I

50:46

have people that we oversee, not

50:48

oversee, that's maybe not a bad word. But

50:50

we, you know, we mentor, we look out

50:53

for them, we manage them. And one

50:55

thing that I had to figure out,

50:57

and it's hard to figure out is for this particular individual,

51:01

what is the best thing forward for them

51:03

encouragement or a kick in the pants?

51:05

Yeah. Right. So for me, I'm

51:08

the type of guy that if you tell

51:10

me, Oh, I don't think you can do it, or you're not good

51:13

enough.

51:13

Yeah, I'm like, I'll show you right. But

51:16

that's not how the average person in my experience

51:19

reacts. Yeah, that's right.

51:21

But I was reading your story. And I was, I

51:23

was looking at both ways. Because, you

51:25

know, when I was a student, I experienced some

51:28

things that were not too dissimilar in

51:30

one or two cases. Well, what I remember,

51:32

I just remember when I taught at Yale, I just remember,

51:35

there were some students that we all and I hate to have

51:37

to do it. So you know, what,

51:40

it's really appropriate you leave the program. And

51:42

then ultimately, you, you, you, you

51:45

really felt like you were doing them a favor earlier

51:48

rather than later. The earlier that

51:50

they learned that they weren't really, it

51:52

wasn't the right

51:54

road for them, it wasn't, shouldn't be the end of their life, it

51:56

just wasn't the right direction. And it was hard

51:59

to do.

52:00

And on paper, you know, after having

52:02

to having to take undergraduate courses

52:04

when you're

52:05

a graduate student and then and

52:07

then not doing well in the exam first time after

52:09

four years, I could see how independent

52:12

of color or anything else I would I

52:14

would be willing to say, you know, what is, you

52:16

know, maybe,

52:17

maybe this isn't the right. I'm gonna

52:21

go to the premise of this topic here. Yeah. Because

52:24

it's almost sounds to me like somehow

52:26

you read if you read my book,

52:28

I never level an accusation

52:31

of racism. No, no, no, no, no, no,

52:33

no, no, absolutely. No, no, you don't. And

52:36

it's right. And you never

52:38

do. In fact, and I think you take that attitude

52:41

of arts that some people are going to be. I

52:43

tell the story of here's what happened. And I don't go to

52:45

their motivations of why I think happened. And

52:48

some people in there, you know, and so I'll give you. And you're

52:51

great, by the way, let me just interrupt. I think

52:54

the person who was probably in charge of the

52:57

qualifying exams was the one who said to you, hey,

53:00

you're gonna fail it again, you should be prepared, you should

53:02

get a master. He was trying to do the right thing. And

53:04

then when you got a PhD, I know him

53:06

well, he's a man.

53:22

two

53:37

groups of faculty, there were the lower, the

53:39

younger faculty who were not in favor of this thing

53:41

that they had been doing of, you

53:44

know, because, you know, for people who don't know, between 79

53:47

and 89, Stanford graduated 30 black

53:49

PhDs in physics. Not

53:52

doing it through affirmative action, but basically recruiting

53:54

the top physics undergraduates who

53:56

were African American come to Stanford. And they were

53:58

motivated to do so because William Shockley

54:01

was an outspoken racist guy who made him look

54:04

bad. So that's what they were doing to

54:08

repair. But by the time

54:10

I show up, things are now changing. The

54:12

attitude has changed in the department. And here

54:14

is the thing. And

54:17

it has to do with gatekeepers

54:19

and how they draw judgments on who

54:22

is worthy to come through the gate and who isn't. So

54:24

here's something that I've struggled with as

54:26

an educator. So there was this

54:28

one young lady in my class when I first started teaching my

54:31

very first I was working in Silicon Valley teaching at a

54:33

junior college. And this young lady, her

54:35

first name was Teresa Latino young lady man,

54:37

she worked her butt off, sat

54:40

on the front row of the class asked me all

54:42

kinds of questions, did not

54:44

get it at all. Okay.

54:47

She earned a C and I gave her a C.

54:50

Okay. And I regretted it from that

54:52

moment until today. Right.

54:55

I should have get you know, I have that after that

54:58

I put in a bonus like,

55:02

you know, this sort of

55:04

class participation thing points. So

55:06

I could swing. Yeah, I know. But would

55:08

it have been a favor? No, I don't know. I mean, I've

55:11

I told look, you know, ultimately, you got

55:13

to grow to my growth. I'm

55:15

not saying college, she worked hard. Yeah.

55:18

I mean,

55:19

she grew. Yeah. So if you grow

55:22

from, you know, it's like American Idol

55:24

to show American Idol. Yeah. One of the worst

55:26

things that can happen to you is just killing it

55:28

on the first day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

55:30

Right. Nobody, you know, they want to see you grow.

55:32

Yeah, yeah. So I was not taking

55:35

people's growth into account. Yeah,

55:38

I can understand that.

55:39

So when you're, when you're a gatekeeper,

55:41

you should be looking at I think resilience

55:44

and growth. It's like if you have a child, right,

55:46

you're concerned about their, you

55:49

know, Oh, is there something wrong neurologically?

55:51

Well, do they actually learn? Are they improving?

55:54

That's the question. And so in my case,

55:57

you know, my reputation was being super hardworking.

55:59

But I was coming from so deep a hole.

56:02

Sure. Right?

56:03

That, you know, that, that, that

56:06

if you saw my, my relentless, I

56:08

don't think it's a situation where you can't get there.

56:11

Your mind, Hakeem, your mind doesn't came because here's what Art

56:13

Walker, here's the other thing. There

56:15

are the people that work closely with you and what

56:17

they think of you. And some people on the committee

56:19

who never work closely with you and see how you

56:21

think. Yeah. Right? So if all the

56:23

people who work closely with you see you one way,

56:26

but then other people say, Oh, look at this number.

56:28

I don't like. Man, I got students

56:30

working in the community right now that were

56:32

terrible on paper. And I, and

56:35

I, you know, like one, you know, a couple that work

56:37

at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is one here

56:39

in Charlottesville, one in New Mexico.

56:41

Yeah. And you know, the people called me up like,

56:43

Hey, and I'm like, dude, forget about the grades.

56:46

This person is amazing. And they, and they've kicked

56:48

butt, you know, in their, in their work life. Right?

56:51

Yeah. So

56:52

I was prejudged man by certain

56:55

people. Sure. Sure. I didn't blame it on

56:57

race. Yeah. It's not as

56:59

people just look at numbers as one way.

57:02

And it's, and, and, and the point is that everyone, you

57:04

know, stereotypes are just that and they're meant to be

57:06

changed. And you're absolutely right.

57:08

I've known, you know, we, we, it,

57:11

what's, it's not,

57:12

it's not, you're not an awful person for,

57:14

for having, having prejudgment. You're

57:17

awful person. If you don't want to ever change

57:19

that prejudgment, the face of evidence and

57:21

that, and that's, and that's the, that's the difference.

57:23

I think that's the difference. I

57:26

don't want to harp on that too much, but, but I think, you

57:28

know, and, and I think you, you

57:30

know, I relate to the fact that, you know, you

57:33

write in the, in the, in the book, whenever you did really

57:35

poorly, it was useful

57:38

for you to know you don't really poorly because it was a kick

57:40

in the pants. Absolutely. Say, Hey, I, this

57:42

is a reality check. Hey, I thought

57:44

I was cool. I thought I knew it. I would say, Hey,

57:46

I did, I got A's in high school and,

57:48

you know, and, and then, Hey, now

57:52

I have something to learn. Now other people, when they

57:54

get a board rate, that's it that they're

57:56

done. And so it, of course, it depends on how

57:59

you. You've got to be realistic with

58:01

people, but it's still encouraging and I think you know art

58:03

was clearly both when art was disappointed

58:05

with you He told you why but he oh, man,

58:08

I mean there's that episode where you with the Of

58:12

that of that rocket.

58:14

Yeah, when he when you were clearly it mattered

58:17

a lot

58:18

To you that he was disappointed

58:20

in you at the time. Oh, absolutely But

58:22

he was one when I when you quote him, however,

58:25

right?

58:25

Um

58:27

You quote he talks like he

58:29

dealt with racism much of his

58:31

academic life Yeah, that was a generation

58:34

or so before you that's right. And and and

58:36

I think things have changed Um, oh, yeah

58:38

things absolutely have changed things have changed drastically

58:41

over the course of my life Yeah, of course and mine too.

58:43

Yeah, and and uh, um, and

58:45

I feel I felt badly interestingly enough I

58:47

was surprised though when when he said that people

58:50

Still question his intelligence. They never

58:52

accepted a black man as their intellectual equal

58:54

or you can make an original

58:57

I was surprised when he said that because he was a full professor

58:59

at stanford

59:00

Yeah, which usually is again. It's a pre-judgment

59:03

When someone comes into room they're a full professor

59:06

at stanford You make some assumptions

59:08

about them and i'm surprised that

59:10

that didn't give him

59:11

A leg up or at least he didn't perceive

59:14

it as giving him a leg up at the time Well, you know what?

59:16

It was really weird because there was two things happening.

59:18

So it turns out that the very you know Private

59:21

students talk to each other. Right?

59:23

So

59:25

There was this one guy he's now a professor at north

59:27

western He comes

59:29

in and he works with this other professor,

59:31

but he had started working with art first Yeah, and

59:34

he comes back to the group. He's like, oh man, you should have heard

59:36

what this professor said about art now when

59:39

I Started in this world of physics,

59:42

right? You know you get accepted to some university

59:44

you go in there and you go and you talk

59:46

to every professor in the department You have a meeting with each one of

59:48

them, right? Then you go to silicon valley and you

59:50

go talk to every manager Then you

59:53

go to this other universe for how you talk to everybody

59:55

and you know at these top

59:57

tier places Subprecision folks,

59:59

maybe a quarter

59:59

a quarter or a half are going to talk trash about

1:00:02

their colleagues, about how they're not as smart,

1:00:04

how they're right. Yeah. And

1:00:06

so the thing about that sort of dynamic

1:00:09

is, is that certain groups of people feel like,

1:00:12

yeah, it happens to everybody. If you're a white dude,

1:00:14

heterosexual, you're involved in your great

1:00:16

grandpa, like Parker, of the Parker

1:00:18

Solar Probe. He would talk trash about Parker

1:00:20

in Solar Physics, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

1:00:23

and what he knows, right? The living people.

1:00:26

And so my point is, is that

1:00:29

if you're like from certain groups, it

1:00:31

almost always finds you. You

1:00:34

know what I mean? Like, like suppose you'll be like, oh, I was at

1:00:36

this one institution and somebody came at me with this craziness,

1:00:38

oh, I'm happy that didn't happen. But if you find

1:00:40

that the craziness happens to you at every institution,

1:00:43

but why is that it? Because

1:00:46

that person that wants to do a misdeed is

1:00:48

looking for the one they perceive as vulnerable.

1:00:51

And because you're an outlier, they

1:00:53

perceive you as vulnerable, right?

1:00:55

Now when people try that with me, they learn quickly.

1:00:58

So I have a rep, I've always had a reputation, right?

1:01:00

Because art, just like my dad taught me how to do

1:01:02

things properly, art taught me how to do things properly.

1:01:05

Right? So, so, you know, I've

1:01:07

had to confront, you know,

1:01:11

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And

1:01:14

all it did was make you more, you know, more determined.

1:01:17

And that's because of the first work, which

1:01:19

was from your upbringing, which some people might say,

1:01:21

you know, having to deal with the dangers

1:01:23

and the street and everything else would say was

1:01:25

a disadvantage actually was an

1:01:28

advantage. Because academics

1:01:30

can't be anywhere near as scary

1:01:33

as a dope dealer on the street, no matter

1:01:35

how hard they try. And going

1:01:37

back to the beginning, this whole thing about web. Yeah,

1:01:40

the thing that was so crazy about this to me

1:01:42

is that when I released my article

1:01:44

in January 2021 on web,

1:01:47

and my colleagues

1:01:50

responded,

1:01:52

and then they tried to respond by bullying

1:01:54

me, you know, like cyberbullying me, I'm

1:01:57

like, you got the wrong guy. You got the wrong guy.

1:01:59

Well, I want to get

1:01:59

Because I I just want to I want I want I don't

1:02:02

want to be all about

1:02:04

What we're talking about now, although you know, you know

1:02:06

You did say when when art presented

1:02:08

his first full this solar image is

1:02:11

using his new technology Some celebrated

1:02:13

while is challenging on Fantasity

1:02:15

images

1:02:16

and doubts among some of his peers, but I think

1:02:18

I've seen that every I mean not always happen Let me

1:02:20

give you let me tell you what what you're absolutely right. It was

1:02:23

you know what it was It was one of these cases like

1:02:25

Einstein with the cosmological constant. Yeah. Oh,

1:02:28

I know what nature is doing Yeah,

1:02:30

because the data does not reflect that there

1:02:32

are something wrong with the data. Yeah.

1:02:34

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I Actually,

1:02:37

well anyway that when I first proposed

1:02:39

dark energy in 95 I

1:02:41

proposed it but I was absolutely certain something was wrong

1:02:43

with the data and my proposal

1:02:46

I said basically the data only is me

1:02:48

and Mike Turner the data only With

1:02:51

things if if there's dark energy,

1:02:53

I tried to sell saw permutation wrong,

1:02:55

but you know what's interesting I had a very similar Conversation

1:02:59

with all striker. He's like, yeah, you know, I predict the dark

1:03:01

energy before you know, yeah Yeah, no,

1:03:03

I mean, you know, they you might get a read the paper and I

1:03:05

really did because of my point was to say Hey, some

1:03:08

of the observers there must be something wrong because this is so

1:03:10

crazy It's only consists with us and

1:03:12

no one was more surprised than me

1:03:14

when it turned out to be exactly what what we

1:03:16

predicted And in fact, as I say solid

1:03:18

come when I lectured at Berkeley on that he said what

1:03:21

pretty wrong and then didn't but it Was it was

1:03:23

mostly device from the data that the

1:03:25

data had to be wrong and it was shocking to see it Right,

1:03:28

but anyway, and that's and by the way, that's

1:03:30

the internal story in Berkeley and how Re

1:03:33

published before saw because yeah,

1:03:36

I was around during it all. I was trying to it's everyone I

1:03:38

was going around giving colloquia saying there's this dark energy

1:03:41

and and Caltech and Berkeley and and

1:03:43

I'm and I remember it Spent a term spent the summer

1:03:45

there and I'll be Ellen and and

1:03:48

everyone just slightly smile This was

1:03:50

between 95 and 97 and all

1:03:52

later on when in 98 when they discovered

1:03:54

it was I mean it was satisfying

1:03:56

but it was interesting to to see how But

1:04:00

you know, I understood myself because I didn't believe it. I proposed

1:04:02

it, but I thought it was really so ridiculous

1:04:05

That that it had to be because some

1:04:07

of those wrongs Now let me I want

1:04:10

to get to the science in a second. There's

1:04:13

one thing I want to ask you I can't help it Yeah,

1:04:15

I Still have to understand

1:04:17

this and and you can help me

1:04:21

And I know it's it maybe it's just I

1:04:23

don't know if it's an editorial decision and I've seen

1:04:25

it in a variety of publications um

1:04:29

So black is is capitalized everywhere

1:04:31

and white isn't I know that friend and

1:04:33

I wondered I gotta ask why cuz I

1:04:36

yeah You know, we asked the publisher that

1:04:38

right? So it's funny because Josh did that

1:04:40

to me. He's like Hakeem.

1:04:42

Why are you?

1:04:43

Capitalizing black but not the W

1:04:45

and white and I was like, that's how I've always seen.

1:04:48

Yeah I know and I've always seen it I'm wondering what the argument

1:04:50

is and so it goes to the publisher

1:04:52

and we write a specific little paragraph like yeah You

1:04:55

know, what is the story here? And

1:04:58

the publisher is like, yeah, that's the way it's done black is

1:05:00

capitalized W is it so it's sort of one of

1:05:02

those things like It's

1:05:04

just the story the lottery. Yeah. Yeah.

1:05:07

No, I know. I just think I know the way it is.

1:05:09

Yeah It

1:05:11

was probably the point of at one point, but I just

1:05:13

think here's the question Would you would you

1:05:15

would you capitalize a word like Caucasian?

1:05:18

Is that capitalized? I Think

1:05:20

yeah, because it's a label. I think it's a so

1:05:23

I think that the reason why is because

1:05:26

Black you know, there was

1:05:28

no You know Negro

1:05:31

fell out of favor. Yeah. Yeah, right, you know,

1:05:33

African-american is a mouthful. Yeah.

1:05:35

Yeah. Yeah And so whites

1:05:37

don't you know your race and it's

1:05:40

really interesting because I think when you say black you really

1:05:42

mean African-american Generally, you know, you

1:05:44

don't you don't mean although,

1:05:46

you know, I try to get a Someone

1:05:48

a job in mind when I was chair who was who

1:05:50

was black But he was an African-american

1:05:53

and and what amazed me was the

1:05:55

rules were so ridiculous

1:05:57

He was really good. He's a good physicist from from

1:05:59

Urbana

1:06:00

That I couldn't get him in because he wasn't minority

1:06:02

and I anyway If

1:06:07

you're from like I tell

1:06:09

my friends, you know So I have like I said all over

1:06:11

the the gamut and you know I have friends that are very

1:06:13

afrocentric, you know, and since I've been all

1:06:16

over Africa. Yeah, of course I know Great

1:06:18

jobs working with South. I mean the end of your book

1:06:21

talking working with the South African kids

1:06:23

is really for me well among the most heartwarming part of it

1:06:25

in the last part of your book where you see them

1:06:27

succeed and You know and I and I and

1:06:29

I just admire

1:06:30

what you did there so much. I just have

1:06:32

to thank you Thank you. Well, but the point is

1:06:34

is that I tell my friends like look man. I've been all over Africa

1:06:36

I can't find black a stand nowhere. Yeah,

1:06:39

because people have actual

1:06:41

identities. They have actual I'm an

1:06:43

evil I'm a luco. I'm a luya. I'm a

1:06:45

kissy. I'm a Zulu You know and

1:06:48

and you take that from them You know if you're

1:06:50

French or if you're Irish or if you're German

1:06:52

and you come to an America and you're white like, you know

1:06:55

I've been all over Europe. There's no white Linda in

1:06:57

Europe, you know, you have a you know, but but

1:07:00

here's the thing man I think

1:07:02

that you know, and I didn't think this in my youth, but we're freaking

1:07:04

Americans but that's you know, we're all in this

1:07:06

together and you know,

1:07:09

we whatever your

1:07:12

Recent ingredients are cuz you know, we think

1:07:14

of them as our origins, but they're really our ingredients

1:07:16

nobody Yeah, you know, we're all worms,

1:07:19

right? All that yeah and Petropod

1:07:23

right. Yeah, and we're also probably at some

1:07:25

very basic level all black at all white. But anyway,

1:07:28

right exactly Well, especially a mixed up

1:07:30

person like myself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely

1:07:33

But but the thing is man is that

1:07:35

you know, I think that Give

1:07:38

you know having this I have a representative sample

1:07:40

of the planet. Yeah, you know I haven't

1:07:42

been all over the damn place And

1:07:45

and I think that what's going on in the US is really special

1:07:47

and it's somewhat miraculous And it needs

1:07:50

to be preserved and it needs to be protected

1:07:53

this pluralistic

1:07:55

peaceful

1:07:57

society that is

1:07:59

you know, it's

1:08:01

not to be taken for granted. And you know, we think

1:08:04

our infrastructure. It's as exceptional as you think it is, most Americans

1:08:06

do. I mean, I grew up in Canada, having lived in a few

1:08:08

different countries,

1:08:09

you know, I just. Have you been to the

1:08:11

developing world? I mean, you've been to the brand. Yeah, I've been

1:08:13

to the developing world, no, I know. Look, I'm lucky. I'm

1:08:16

accident,

1:08:17

every day, the accident of my

1:08:19

genes is lucky. I mean, the accident of my circumstances,

1:08:22

yeah, I could have been born, you know, in

1:08:24

so many places in the world where I wouldn't have had a chance.

1:08:27

Maybe you can appreciate it. I tell

1:08:29

my friends, I'm like, listen, man, America is so,

1:08:32

and the same of Canada, it's so prosperous. Our

1:08:34

houses just sit out in the open. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

1:08:36

Right? So in most places, right? You're either

1:08:39

in the slums or behind a wall. It has

1:08:41

razor wire and spikes, right? You

1:08:44

know, and- No, no, I know. Well, not most,

1:08:46

but a lot of them. Yeah, I mean, we just, we have

1:08:48

to be thankful. And that's the other thing. I

1:08:51

mean, I think a lot of this

1:08:53

sense, I hadn't planned to go here, but

1:08:55

I'll tell it. A lot of this ridiculous

1:08:57

sense of victimization that

1:08:59

we're seeing people, this identity

1:09:01

politics, it's people not having enough

1:09:03

to complain about. I mean, if they

1:09:05

were, if they, yeah,

1:09:08

I've been invited because of this one

1:09:10

little thing, but you go to most countries, my God,

1:09:12

you'd be killed. Or what, you know, it's- Yeah,

1:09:15

man, yeah, it's tough. Well,

1:09:17

you know, I think the other reason why there's a lot of victimization

1:09:20

that takes the character that it does,

1:09:22

there was a book I was reading several years ago. I forget

1:09:24

which one it was, but it gave the statistic.

1:09:27

When you have concentrated, tough

1:09:30

living situations. So minorities, you

1:09:33

know, it was something like, if you

1:09:35

are of this particular race and

1:09:37

you're below this particular income level, what's

1:09:40

the probability of your neighbors being

1:09:42

in the same demographic

1:09:45

boat? And so for minorities, it was

1:09:47

much higher than for a white person. When you concentrate

1:09:50

the sort of, you

1:09:53

know, the school issues, the

1:09:55

issues earning money, the issues with

1:09:58

violence and crime.

1:09:59

because you know it's not

1:10:01

when you live in the hood

1:10:03

it's also a Gaussian. Yeah sure

1:10:06

yeah right and those people are just you

1:10:08

know you go to any hood in the morning and you're

1:10:11

gonna see a train of people going to do their mental

1:10:13

waste job right yeah yeah

1:10:15

but

1:10:16

the cats that you see publicly out of the street

1:10:19

are the ones that are the really ends of the

1:10:21

Gaussian yeah are the ones that people

1:10:23

yeah just like on social media you see

1:10:25

the noisy and and and

1:10:28

they're the ones that and they

1:10:31

get and that's the unfortunate thing that you're

1:10:33

right right now is again really good people are before

1:10:36

they know they never you know you wouldn't ignore

1:10:38

them and now we still should ignore them but

1:10:41

they end up getting a voice that they didn't have before

1:10:43

yeah man twitter is that let me

1:10:45

ask you two other things um yeah uh

1:10:49

in this regard and then i wanna as i say i promise

1:10:51

i want to move first to science and then to yeah

1:10:53

web

1:10:54

um the

1:10:59

well let me add it's yeah just

1:11:01

it's because of the timing this i don't know when this will appear

1:11:04

but it's it's it's honest to say that yesterday

1:11:06

affirmative action was what the supreme

1:11:08

court you

1:11:11

know ended up in principle and i think

1:11:13

in practice it won't in academia yeah well

1:11:15

yeah but i think my own feeling is the university is

1:11:17

to get around it one way or another but but um

1:11:20

and i have to say i have mixed feelings about affirmative

1:11:22

action i and and

1:11:25

namely in the sense that

1:11:26

i think

1:11:27

if i think of your case and i want to present

1:11:29

it to you frankly and honestly

1:11:32

because i think we can do that and some people may be

1:11:34

shocked that i'm saying some of these things but i don't really care

1:11:36

um the so you

1:11:39

you went to tugolu

1:11:40

yeah

1:11:41

and it was a great it was a great

1:11:43

place for you and because you were able

1:11:45

to excel there yeah

1:11:47

okay

1:11:48

and if you had let's say if you

1:11:50

had somehow been aware and

1:11:52

this is the big problem you didn't even know your point

1:11:54

is was you said it somewhere when you

1:11:56

went to the navy you didn't even know about college

1:11:59

or how to get in and I think

1:12:01

that's part of the problem. I used to go into inner

1:12:03

city schools in Cleveland. My wife

1:12:05

at the time volunteered in them and I talked

1:12:08

to these kids about

1:12:10

the world. You know I tell them that Lake

1:12:13

Erie was right. They didn't even know they were two miles from the lake much

1:12:15

less than anything else but I talk about

1:12:17

being a son. They had no idea. I mean it was

1:12:19

just a different universe and they didn't see there was

1:12:21

any way to go from here to there. They

1:12:24

just didn't know how and you literally didn't

1:12:26

know how either. Absolutely. Had

1:12:28

no idea it existed. Yeah exactly and you

1:12:30

were lucky enough that some people somehow

1:12:32

showed those options to you. But had

1:12:35

you gone to Stanford as an undergraduate

1:12:38

instead as a graduate student

1:12:39

you would have just crashed

1:12:42

and burned. Exactly.

1:12:43

Yeah. And so

1:12:45

it's I think that's me. Well don't

1:12:47

extrapolate me to everyone else. But there are always tales

1:12:49

or people are gonna succeed no matter what. There are people

1:12:52

who aren't.

1:12:53

The question really is one of whether

1:12:56

when it comes to tertiary education.

1:12:59

Look there are inequities

1:13:02

in our society that I am aware of

1:13:04

as much as you and I become more aware

1:13:06

of when I read books like yours and others.

1:13:08

But

1:13:09

are we gonna solve it by at

1:13:13

that stage in a person? Shouldn't we not be

1:13:15

spending more if we're interested in affirmative

1:13:17

action? Should we not be spending more money making

1:13:19

sure young kids get the opportunities

1:13:22

and knowledge so that they know what

1:13:24

the options are for them in life and some education

1:13:27

and have good books in their schools and

1:13:29

have teachers that encourage them and environments

1:13:31

that encourage them. It seems to me that's the ultimate

1:13:34

only way out of the thing. That's a big ask. I know it's a

1:13:36

big ask but it's the ultimate. How are you

1:13:38

gonna construct that? I mean we haven't done it so

1:13:40

far. But does affirmative action solve

1:13:42

the problem? I'm not gonna solve it. I'm

1:13:46

being the devil's advocate here. I'm not scared. I ain't

1:13:49

scared Lawrence. No I know and I'm not scared

1:13:51

of asking. Let me go there. I'm

1:13:55

not scared of asking. I'm

1:13:56

not scared of asking. and

1:14:00

I, you know, you know how it is. Good people are hard to find.

1:14:02

Yeah, absolutely. And I have

1:14:05

had to hire lots of people. You know, my group

1:14:07

was typically, you know, 15 students

1:14:09

at a time, right? Undergrads, graduate students. And

1:14:11

there were these cats who would come to me, like some of the people

1:14:13

I mentioned to you at NRO, they're basically C

1:14:16

students. Now, if I, the one person,

1:14:18

for example,

1:14:19

I had met him because he was in nanotechnology

1:14:21

lab. Dude came across brilliant as hell.

1:14:24

He came across focus. He came across, and that's

1:14:26

exactly what he was. If you looked at his

1:14:28

transcript, it didn't reflect that at all. Yeah.

1:14:31

So if I am a gatekeeper, and

1:14:34

so that's what we're talking about. Affirmative action. It's probably the

1:14:36

gatekeepers. You're right. And I'm

1:14:38

looking at identifying talent.

1:14:41

What am I basing it on? Am

1:14:43

I basing it slowly, solely on grades

1:14:45

and test scores? Now I will tell you this.

1:14:48

I have been around the block enough to know that,

1:14:51

you know, I always wondered myself, Oh, why

1:14:53

is it black? Because

1:14:55

when I got to Stanford for the first time in my life,

1:14:57

the

1:14:58

black folks around me were not other poor

1:15:00

black folks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I'm

1:15:02

like, they're different. Yeah. That's the point.

1:15:05

You said it. There's a different from you. You joined the sorority

1:15:08

or whatever, or fraternity, and they're

1:15:10

different from you as anyone else. Right. Exactly.

1:15:12

And so I'm just like, yo, you know,

1:15:15

what about us back home in Mississippi? And,

1:15:17

and,

1:15:18

and so I think there's two things. I

1:15:20

also think that there's something you want for the

1:15:22

health of your society. And

1:15:25

that is, for example, here in America,

1:15:27

sometimes, you know, you hear conservatives talk about

1:15:30

the, uh, attacking

1:15:32

the, the, the, the safety net, the societal

1:15:34

safety net, the free money safety net, right? Yeah.

1:15:36

Yeah. Now

1:15:37

what our

1:15:39

ancestors in America had to deal with is

1:15:41

something that modern Americans have not had to deal with,

1:15:43

but we're starting to get there. And that is slums.

1:15:46

Yeah. Right.

1:15:47

You're in Johannesburg, South Africa,

1:15:50

just cause you live in the upper middle-class place,

1:15:52

you're not safe when you have slums. Yeah.

1:15:54

Yeah. Right. You're not going to be able to live without a

1:15:57

wall around your house. You're getting carjacked

1:15:59

in your own driveway.

1:15:59

Yeah, right. So that safety net

1:16:02

you might think is free money But what is doing

1:16:04

is that's protecting you from slums at

1:16:06

which point none of us are safe. Yeah, right. Yeah

1:16:08

Yeah, and so I

1:16:10

May I forgot the question?

1:16:13

Oh You

1:16:15

said but I remember that question

1:16:17

so here's the point though, right so take a

1:16:19

guy like me In

1:16:22

my community in rural Mississippi where I live going

1:16:24

to college people only did that to be teachers and

1:16:27

it rarely happened Alright, yeah, so

1:16:29

I have a nice I'll tell you the story of my niece Monique.

1:16:31

So I'm gonna tell you about the impact of you

1:16:34

know

1:16:35

how It

1:16:38

is that you can make an investment that

1:16:41

is is Pays off bigger

1:16:43

than you can imagine So my

1:16:45

niece was she was a sophomore in high school I

1:16:47

started encouraging her to attend college because

1:16:50

I saw how my life was transformed by my Stanford

1:16:52

education. Yeah, and She

1:16:54

wasn't hearing me man. She was like, no, I don't like school

1:16:57

I want to go to work and because we're in rural

1:16:59

America the job that she could get was working

1:17:01

at the chicken plant Alright, so after

1:17:03

three years working a chicken plant she announces

1:17:05

to me that she's now going to go to college

1:17:08

So

1:17:09

I go home for the holidays

1:17:11

This other family comes over and they

1:17:14

bring up the topic of how they're trying to encourage

1:17:16

their younger family member to go to college So

1:17:18

to poke fun at Monique, I said

1:17:21

hey just get him a job at the chicken plant

1:17:24

Playing got Monique to go to college And

1:17:26

Monique with her little attitude goes

1:17:28

that ain't why I'm going and I'm like

1:17:31

really why are you going? And she goes you

1:17:34

I see your life and that's what I want now.

1:17:37

Monique has a master's degree in education She's

1:17:39

an assistant principal to the leader in

1:17:41

education and people started

1:17:44

going to college From that community

1:17:46

because no one had ever seen anyone do it Yeah,

1:17:49

what was on the other side of that and even

1:17:51

though you see other people do it You

1:17:53

feel like you're so different from them Like

1:17:56

when I went to when I started college thinking

1:17:58

about becoming a medical doctor

1:17:59

See you to me like becoming president. Yeah

1:18:02

now that I've been through the education system I'm like, oh it's

1:18:04

super easy to become a medical doctor, right and way

1:18:06

easier to get the phd in physics

1:18:09

But

1:18:10

the average person doesn't see it that way. Yeah,

1:18:12

you just don't know you know and just like for

1:18:14

example as a as a Supereducated

1:18:17

phd scientist and I

1:18:19

looked at the mathematics I do every day to involve

1:18:22

numbers and i'm like, wait a minute All I ever do is

1:18:24

add subtract and multiply the single digit numbers.

1:18:26

That's you know, what is all this other stuff? You

1:18:29

know Well, you know,

1:18:31

but I think your point is right that it's nice Look,

1:18:34

I get the point. I think it's important for people to see

1:18:37

the possibility in themselves And

1:18:40

and and therefore giving some people

1:18:43

leg up, especially those who can succeed is

1:18:45

great Um is is

1:18:47

a good example for others, but one could also say

1:18:49

and again, i'm i'm to some extent taking the

1:18:51

devil's advocate position You're not entirely because I have

1:18:54

issues. I think my What

1:18:58

you said earlier actually really resonates with

1:19:00

my thinking which is hey what

1:19:02

we really got to do

1:19:04

Is

1:19:05

treat people as individuals and

1:19:07

try and look beyond the transcripts beyond

1:19:10

the but but that doesn't mean Labeling

1:19:13

them by race or by whatever

1:19:15

else is to see what is to is

1:19:17

to really look at them enough to say What

1:19:20

have they overcome? What what are

1:19:22

they really good in and what are the options?

1:19:24

And so In that sense, I kind

1:19:26

of agree with the screen court that having one

1:19:28

box that somehow gives you a leg up

1:19:31

Isn't the same because exactly what you said the

1:19:33

black kids who were at

1:19:35

stanford already had 10 legs up uh

1:19:39

before they got to stanford most of them and they

1:19:41

they didn't you know, so what you want to do is

1:19:43

give kids like you Who may not?

1:19:46

Well, actually look good on paper or

1:19:48

because you did well at tugaloo But but

1:19:50

I mean kids or like the kids you were talking about who

1:19:52

were really Intelligent and

1:19:55

hard working, but it may not be reflected

1:19:57

in a transcript or other things. You want to look

1:19:59

at those other?

1:19:59

Characteristics and schools are gonna end up doing that

1:20:02

which is they're gonna start giving more emphasis

1:20:04

to trying to see the life story and for me

1:20:07

The affirmative action should be to find

1:20:09

people who who for one reason

1:20:11

or another have had to overcome adversity Yeah,

1:20:15

you know and race isn't the only For

1:20:17

everyone not for everyone is race and adversity

1:20:20

there are other adversities and for some people race is an

1:20:22

adversity But take it on an individual

1:20:24

level Great

1:20:26

if we could but you know, there's so many biases

1:20:29

every way Yeah, you're in human minds that it's hard,

1:20:31

you know, even though we come up with these ideals. It's it's

1:20:33

hard to really

1:20:34

Implement them in real life. So I guess

1:20:37

what people were saying what affirmative action is like Okay,

1:20:40

even though we're trying to be objective about it.

1:20:42

We still like like like, you know, I'll

1:20:44

give you another example

1:20:45

Uh-huh

1:20:47

at the end of graduate school, you know, I had a NASA

1:20:49

GSRP fellowship It ended I was still

1:20:51

in graduate school. So I started teaching Kaplan

1:20:53

M cat Okay. All right. Okay,

1:20:56

and man, I it was so eye-opening.

1:20:58

I was like damn back at Tougaloo

1:21:00

We all just went and took these tests. Yeah,

1:21:02

right. Yeah. Yeah There's no way

1:21:05

someone could just walk it in could compete

1:21:07

against my students. I thought mcat physics my

1:21:09

students were

1:21:11

They were maxing the physics on mcat,

1:21:13

right? Yeah, exactly Because I remember

1:21:15

I when I was I grew up in Canada, I took the graduate

1:21:18

entrance exam I didn't I walked in I never

1:21:20

heard of it before then I learned that there, you know

1:21:22

Now I realize your kids taking classes

1:21:24

in it in advance to do it

1:21:26

Yeah, and so what you what's gonna happen is

1:21:28

is that if you base it on test scores if you base

1:21:30

it on Grades like like another

1:21:33

example my son, right? I have a son You

1:21:35

know, I homeschooled a kid till he was 10 But

1:21:38

you know, his sister is in large part responsible

1:21:40

for him learning to read All right, and this

1:21:43

kid could read like an adult when he was

1:21:45

three and a half. All right

1:21:47

So my mom says to me when he was very young,

1:21:49

you know, I think he's smarter than you are And

1:21:52

I was like no the hell he ain't his daddy

1:21:54

got a phd in physics He's one of my parents graduated

1:21:57

high school. It makes a difference. Yeah, it

1:21:59

looks like you want

1:21:59

to send your kids to the best school, having

1:22:03

parents who are educated in what

1:22:05

schools care about. Like, don't get me wrong,

1:22:07

right? We're all educated by our parents and

1:22:09

what they have to offer.

1:22:12

But not many of them have what's

1:22:14

going to get you into Harvard to offer, right? But

1:22:16

if they came from Harvard, they definitely do have it

1:22:18

to offer, right? Well, some

1:22:20

of them, or some of them's parents gave

1:22:23

a lot of money, but you never know. That's true too.

1:22:25

I get to Stanford. Three

1:22:27

guys in my research group, their father's a PhD physicist.

1:22:29

I know what he wrote about in the book. And I knew and I knew some

1:22:31

of their father. I rented a house from Bill Willis once

1:22:34

when I was a kid. Oh, no way. You know, I

1:22:36

got really, I got in contact with Tom Willis again.

1:22:38

We talked like back during the pandemic. Made me

1:22:40

feel old when I read your book because I knew the, I knew

1:22:43

the parents that you were talking about. Oh man,

1:22:45

that is wild. So did you know Max

1:22:47

Allen's father? Because he's from, I think he was at

1:22:49

McGill. Yeah, you know, Canada's a big

1:22:51

country. No, I didn't know. No, it ain't.

1:22:54

It's a big geography. It's a sliver. You

1:22:59

like Canadians early on. I read that. But anyway,

1:23:01

I still love Canadians, man. I work with these Toronto

1:23:04

production companies. Yeah. It's a blast up there.

1:23:06

Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it has, it has,

1:23:08

anyway, it has advantage. I've now

1:23:10

sampled both back and forth and there's advantages.

1:23:12

Yeah, I love both. Exactly. And you said something

1:23:15

when you're talking about, about your son and, and,

1:23:18

and education. I was going to, I didn't want to interrupt

1:23:20

you, but I lost that train of thought now, but

1:23:22

I think, but the bottom line is, oh yeah,

1:23:25

look,

1:23:25

I, when I was at Yale, when I taught at Yale, I,

1:23:29

I never got involved in undergraduate missions, thank God. But,

1:23:31

but I taught students and I

1:23:33

thought,

1:23:34

these Yale students aren't any different than, I

1:23:36

mean, the mean, it's a distribution. The difference

1:23:38

was the tail, the distribution was really

1:23:40

long,

1:23:41

but the middle ones I taught, you know, they were, I remember

1:23:43

teaching them, we were football players. They stuck to me. They could

1:23:46

have been football players anywhere. I don't know how they got into Yale.

1:23:48

Yale got a football team? Yeah, probably.

1:23:50

And, and, when I liked about being

1:23:53

at MIT as they didn't, but anyway,

1:23:55

the, the, I always said,

1:23:57

when it came to even graduate school, you know,

1:23:59

people,

1:24:01

I was on some selection committees there and

1:24:03

you know, there are transcripts and there are these tests and

1:24:06

I always basically said, you know I think we could

1:24:08

just throw all the applications down the stairs and take

1:24:10

the ones that fell to the bottom We'd end up getting

1:24:12

you know, the ability to know in advance who's

1:24:15

gonna who's gonna succeed wasn't I'm Very

1:24:18

dubious about all of these details like

1:24:20

but nevertheless I think I think the whole approach

1:24:23

of trying to look at each kid and realizing

1:24:25

that adversity Isn't

1:24:28

you can't I'm so much against

1:24:30

identity politics You can't say in advance on

1:24:32

the bait necessarily the basis of someone's race

1:24:35

their religion or sometimes even

1:24:37

even their economic level Oh economic level

1:24:40

probably a better determiner. You can't really

1:24:42

say whether to what extent they've suffered Well,

1:24:44

they they've had to overcome things or benefited

1:24:46

from things but one thing that I want to ask you

1:24:48

both and then we're gonna leave I promise is

1:24:51

Some people say oh look you chose a black

1:24:55

advisor and

1:24:58

and

1:24:59

And the book in the way you describe

1:25:02

it you chose it because you're really turned on by what he was doing

1:25:05

Not because he's black

1:25:07

Is that true? Well, it's it's

1:25:09

uh

1:25:13

It's hard to unpack It's

1:25:16

hard to know in advance because here's

1:25:18

the thing that happened and I talked about this in the book

1:25:20

as well After doing my summer

1:25:23

research programs, I've met a lot of

1:25:25

disgruntled about to graduate

1:25:27

graduate students Yeah, yeah, and they armed

1:25:30

me with these questions to ask The

1:25:33

people now, here's the other thing about

1:25:35

this There is diversity in

1:25:37

the diversity. Yeah, right. I've

1:25:39

never met a black dude like Art Walker before.

1:25:41

Yeah, sure at that age

1:25:44

He I would have called him what

1:25:47

I have been called Which is white

1:25:49

wash. Yeah In the book you

1:25:51

thought he was white wash. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't

1:25:53

like odd. He's my man, right? It wasn't

1:25:55

like that at all. But when I hit him with those questions,

1:25:58

dude, this dude came across so sincere

1:25:59

You know, and he came across

1:26:02

like he really did care about because that's what they were

1:26:04

saying make sure

1:26:06

Your advisor that you choose cares about

1:26:08

humans and yeah Great

1:26:10

thing to tell students because I've met so many advisors

1:26:13

who don't and I'm yeah, I'd to be an advisor

1:26:15

who does But yeah, and he

1:26:17

mailed that man and then I then I challenged

1:26:19

him was like, oh, yeah Well, what are your students doing

1:26:21

now? Yeah, yeah started with Hal Tompkins

1:26:24

that slack And then he goes and you may have heard of my other students

1:26:26

Sally ride Yeah, I should

1:26:28

have booked you. Yeah, that's all he had to

1:26:30

say for you. And then you Okay, you want

1:26:32

you overwrite that I'm like man, man.

1:26:34

We showed those solar photographs that yeah,

1:26:37

right with research class That's who that

1:26:39

that's yeah, then you clearly captured

1:26:42

you know, that's you Who's the photo

1:26:44

and I want to get to the solar photographs in a second? Yeah

1:26:46

the reason I'm saying is that some people say their

1:26:49

big problem is is they

1:26:51

don't see people that look like themselves

1:26:54

and Therefore they can't and

1:26:56

that's a big impediment

1:26:58

to going ahead and doing these I can understand

1:27:01

it to some extent Except I never saw people

1:27:03

that look to me. I always still felt

1:27:05

like an outsider and to free Frank.

1:27:07

Yeah, so and

1:27:10

my supervisor Was

1:27:13

a black PhD graduate from Stanford. Okay.

1:27:15

Yeah, whoo

1:27:16

Roscoe Giles his name I've

1:27:20

been talking to Roscoe all month. Yeah. Okay

1:27:22

Roscoe is and I chose Roscoe not

1:27:24

because You know, he looked like me cuz

1:27:27

he didn't but cuz he was really nice and

1:27:29

really smart And he

1:27:31

also said I was the kind of guy who had

1:27:33

to work on what I was interested in What someone

1:27:36

else was working and he did all of that and

1:27:38

he was a wonderful man and I didn't need so And

1:27:43

then us because for me I could have cared

1:27:45

what someone looked

1:27:46

like or where the back room was Let me ask you directly

1:27:48

man So so, you know, some people gonna hate me for

1:27:51

saying this but I noticed this when I was at to the loop

1:27:53

We would go to the summer research program. Yeah, and

1:27:55

I I said You

1:27:59

know

1:27:59

the students come back from the summer, so I'll

1:28:02

be like, oh, I went to this program. I was the only black student

1:28:04

there. It was horrible.

1:28:05

And I always joke that I'd be like, yeah, I was

1:28:07

the only black student there. It was great. Right? Not

1:28:10

because I was the only black student there. I'll give you an example.

1:28:13

My very first summer research program, I'm

1:28:15

going to admit this, man. It's in the book. I was a big pothead.

1:28:18

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I beat these white

1:28:20

dudes at University of Georgia. And

1:28:22

the next week, they get busted for selling pots.

1:28:26

But they're right back the next day. But

1:28:28

these guys were like, oh, man, you've

1:28:31

never done psychedelics? And I hadn't. Not that summer.

1:28:34

You don't know Pink Floyd. You don't know

1:28:36

Led Zeppelin. And they want to teach me. And every

1:28:38

day, I'm like hanging out with these dudes. I'm also

1:28:40

hanging out with my frat brothers. I'm also going to

1:28:42

play basketball. I go to the University of

1:28:44

Arizona, right, that summer. Same thing.

1:28:46

White dude takes me rock climbing

1:28:49

in Oak Creek Canyon and all this

1:28:51

kind of jazz.

1:28:53

And so I've always been a very curious

1:28:55

person. And I always knew this.

1:28:58

People of different cultures. So when I show up

1:29:00

at Berkeley in the summer of 91,

1:29:02

I'm very open about, I don't

1:29:05

know this. I don't know that. So I don't know if you know

1:29:07

Rebecca Bernstein at Carnegie Observatories.

1:29:11

So her and her Princeton classmate

1:29:13

and this guy from Haverford

1:29:15

were like, oh, man, we're going

1:29:17

to show you everything. Never had Thai food. Here's Thai

1:29:19

food. Never had an artichoke. Here's an artichoke. Never

1:29:21

had Indian food. Here's Indian food. And I was loving

1:29:24

it. And by the way, we're all Jewish. How come you didn't

1:29:26

know based on our names? I

1:29:28

didn't know. But

1:29:31

I understand, reading

1:29:33

about humans, that people come in a couple of times.

1:29:36

There are those of us that love nudists. And

1:29:38

there are those of us that hate nudists. They want everything

1:29:40

to be the same and that kind of thing. So

1:29:42

just like there are people, I don't understand, who

1:29:44

are like, oh, this person was not speaking

1:29:47

English in public. I'm angry at them. I don't

1:29:49

understand that.

1:29:50

One time I was saying. Yeah, but I guess

1:29:52

the question I'm asking is how important. And then I'm really

1:29:55

asking. Here's where it is important.

1:29:57

It's not important necessarily for inspired.

1:29:59

you into the field. Most of the black

1:30:02

astronomers and astrophysicists, I know in physicists,

1:30:04

they weren't inspired by a black physicist per

1:30:06

se, they were inspired by the universe or Einstein

1:30:09

or somebody like that, right? But where it

1:30:11

does matter is in mentoring,

1:30:13

right? That's what I'm wondering. You got

1:30:15

mentored, yeah, I was gonna ask about that. So

1:30:18

the way that art told me how, taught me how

1:30:20

to handle things, like I've had great mentors like Michael

1:30:22

Levy and Natalie Rowe at Berkeley,

1:30:24

right, were mentors. What they taught me was great mentors

1:30:26

in high school that were also mentored. Yeah,

1:30:29

Mr. Reed. And they were all white teachers. They were great

1:30:31

mentors. Oh yeah, Mr. Reed's, right,

1:30:33

our one white teacher. Yeah,

1:30:36

exactly. And so, you know, most of my adult,

1:30:38

most of my mentors this

1:30:40

century have been white women, actually,

1:30:43

right? Because a lot of it has been in media, and

1:30:46

to the extent that I have decided to like, okay,

1:30:49

I want to do something in another field, let me go find this

1:30:51

Croatian dude, I think he's Croatian, Joko

1:30:53

Ibezic. Oh, you know, I'm interested

1:30:55

in,

1:30:57

continue this project, who's the best at it? Oh,

1:30:59

Josh Bloom and Joey Richards, you know,

1:31:01

let me go work with them. Oh, now I'm interested

1:31:03

in this. Oh yeah, Dave McCammis

1:31:06

at Princeton. So for me, it's

1:31:08

like, I'm interested in a topic, and I'm looking

1:31:10

for a cool person to work with. I'm not looking for a

1:31:12

black person to work with. I'm looking for a cool person

1:31:14

to work with. But at the same time, because I

1:31:17

am a black dude, I'm like, yo, Stefano

1:31:19

Alexander, let's write a paper together, homie, right? You

1:31:21

know, right? Just like I did with my

1:31:23

friend, Dave Santiago, just like I did with my

1:31:25

friend, Nisha Turner, we're like, friends

1:31:27

like, hey, let's write papers together, right? Yeah, yeah.

1:31:29

You know, Lawrence, let's write

1:31:31

a paper together, man. But,

1:31:33

you know, and so I think, though, for

1:31:36

understanding the type of challenges that

1:31:38

you're going to have,

1:31:39

and how people perceive you, you

1:31:42

do have to operate in a certain way, right?

1:31:44

And so, art

1:31:47

taught me, so I'll give an example, in

1:31:49

Silicon Valley, after I left Stanford,

1:31:51

I got challenged. Here I am,

1:31:54

one day this guy, Korean dude,

1:31:56

Nam Han Kim, not Nam Han Kim, Won

1:31:59

Kyung.

1:32:00

whatever, Kim. He says, I

1:32:02

can't come here. I was terrorized

1:32:05

as a dude already. He was really serious. He

1:32:07

said, let me tell you something, man. I've been in this company

1:32:09

for many years. I want to have two black PhDs and

1:32:12

applied materials that had 3000 PhDs out of 22,000 total

1:32:15

employees worldwide. Right? One of two black

1:32:17

PhDs. He said, let me tell you something. Something

1:32:21

he's like, here's how I said it. I've been at this company

1:32:24

for a very long time, 15 years. I've

1:32:26

seen a lot of things. I've heard a lot of things. And

1:32:28

there are certain things I wish I hadn't seen and heard.

1:32:31

And I've heard something about you. And what I want

1:32:33

to let you know is that if you're a member of certain

1:32:35

groups, you get to hear certain things. And if you and

1:32:37

if you're not, you don't. And he was talking

1:32:39

about being a Korean guy. He said something

1:32:42

is about to happen to you. And it was about

1:32:44

to happen to you because you were black.

1:32:46

If I were you, I would go get an attorney

1:32:48

right now. Now, let me tell you how I've always

1:32:50

operated. Unless someone stands

1:32:52

up in a crowded room and starts yelling racial

1:32:55

explicit that I'm not bringing

1:32:57

it up. Yeah, right. So I don't see it

1:32:59

working out in my favor. Right. Yeah.

1:33:02

So when he says that to me, I'm like, Whoa,

1:33:04

dude, I have no idea what you're talking about.

1:33:06

I

1:33:07

don't want no parts of it. And it unfolded

1:33:09

exactly as he said it did. It was going

1:33:12

to.

1:33:12

But because I had Art Walker's training

1:33:15

and how to handle certain

1:33:17

types of injustices, I was already

1:33:19

prepared. And I survived that particular

1:33:22

event. Another thing that happened while

1:33:24

I was working at Applied Materials, I

1:33:27

get a call from the EEOC,

1:33:29

an attorney in

1:33:32

Washington, DC. And he says, Listen,

1:33:34

we have received strong evidence that you have been discriminated

1:33:36

against in hiring. So here's what

1:33:39

happened. I went to the Stanford career fair.

1:33:41

I gave out my CV to various

1:33:43

companies. And one of these Silicon Valley

1:33:46

companies north of

1:33:48

Stanford, not south like Applied Materials was.

1:33:50

Apparently I went and they were evaluating

1:33:52

and somebody in the room felt like I was being

1:33:55

discriminated against because of my race and they reported

1:33:57

it, right. I knew nothing about it. So again,

1:33:59

I'm like, dude,

1:33:59

I don't know anything about this. I can't say anything about

1:34:02

it, right? So this is in a way for me

1:34:04

here say Right not

1:34:07

you know, I don't know when people have come at me I

1:34:09

don't assume they're motivated by

1:34:12

anything other than what I can directly

1:34:14

observe They're being motivated by attitude.

1:34:17

Mm-hmm, right? But at the same

1:34:19

time I still have to handle this situation Yeah,

1:34:22

and I get it white dudes got to handle the situation

1:34:24

to women got it, you know, everybody, you know

1:34:26

It's a tough world out here,

1:34:28

right? Yeah, and so my attitude has

1:34:31

always been

1:34:32

so what but here's the thing

1:34:34

man. I Used to

1:34:36

have two ways of dealing with problems Right

1:34:39

before I met our Walker

1:34:40

moping and punching you in the face So

1:34:44

I needed that training Something

1:34:47

between those two that's not good. He knows

1:34:49

it right didn't the question I know I'm gonna

1:34:51

keep putting

1:34:52

he was a great mentor But

1:34:55

I like to think if I'd been your professor I might

1:34:57

have been able to give you that training too You

1:35:00

know what? It really depends.

1:35:03

It really really depends. Maybe you would have

1:35:05

or maybe you would not even know Yeah, yeah,

1:35:08

no to approach me and let me know

1:35:10

certain things in certain ways Right, like like

1:35:12

I anticipate you're gonna need this. So

1:35:14

let me show you how to do it the right way Yeah,

1:35:17

maybe that's why I'm trying to figure this I'm trying to yeah

1:35:19

I found it eye-opening to read your story because

1:35:22

I you know, I've had perceptions I've of

1:35:24

academia that I've seen and and and I

1:35:27

mean it's it it's it's It's

1:35:31

competitive and there's assholes and if there's

1:35:34

cowardice and there's all the rest at the same time It's

1:35:37

also more one of the more welcoming

1:35:39

enlightening environments And absolutely

1:35:42

and when I hear it talked about as if it's just like,

1:35:44

you know, but here's the thing No, man, it's

1:35:46

that whole vulnerability trick. Yeah Yeah When

1:35:48

you're when you're the vulnerable when there's someone looking to

1:35:50

make you know Like a new manager comes in they want to make

1:35:52

an example they're going right for the ball Yeah, and

1:35:55

I've been at the button of that and I probably for all

1:35:57

I know I've been at the other end too And when I was I

1:35:59

try never to be but but uh

1:36:02

well look let's i'm just gonna close this over here one

1:36:04

second i'm like fat joe y'all

1:36:06

talk that stuff i want that beef what

1:36:08

was that there's a uh line in uh you know there's

1:36:13

this dj college song called over

1:36:16

with all these rappers you know lil wayne and

1:36:19

one of them is fat joe

1:36:20

and he said y'all talk that ish i

1:36:22

want that beef right i

1:36:24

love you know bring me the beef i'll suited

1:36:27

to sleep but i enjoyed

1:36:30

this fight but not you know okay

1:36:32

no this is okay no this is great and i'm glad

1:36:34

we had that this particular frank conversation

1:36:36

about this because i think i think most

1:36:39

people would never yeah maybe people

1:36:41

talk about it i think and and

1:36:43

um

1:36:43

you know and it's it's just not black or white and

1:36:45

it's interesting for me to have seen my attitude towards

1:36:48

the affirmative action decision is different now than it would

1:36:50

have been a few

1:36:51

years ago as i've watched uh

1:36:53

people and but the key thing that art

1:36:55

told you and this was a great segue that

1:36:57

taught you this uh

1:37:00

is is you it's you say near the end of the book

1:37:02

art

1:37:03

art taught me the

1:37:04

the difference between what i believe to be true

1:37:07

and what i know as a scientist to

1:37:09

be true absolutely that's the final measure

1:37:11

of a researcher to be able to challenge one's

1:37:13

own beliefs and prejudices

1:37:15

let evidence tell the story and

1:37:17

like for me that's one of the most important lines in

1:37:20

the book believe or not because that's certainly what

1:37:22

i

1:37:23

i mean i spend most of my life trying to convince people

1:37:25

of is that that's the heart of science

1:37:28

and it's the nature of science and and if he

1:37:30

taught you that that's what really turned you into scientists

1:37:32

forget the mentoring and all the rest of stuff this

1:37:35

you know that's to get along with people he

1:37:37

taught you to get along with people and that's okay and

1:37:39

and it's a secret but scientists are actually people

1:37:42

but but but the really

1:37:44

important thing

1:37:45

that's just that's just wind addressing the really important

1:37:47

thing to be a scientist is that sentence

1:37:50

and that's the nature of science so what

1:37:53

so i want to talk to you about the nate because

1:37:55

i think all of this is also relevant to web we're

1:37:57

going to get to it right when i read this

1:38:00

It indicates to me your approach to James

1:38:02

Webb

1:38:03

was that of a scientist Absolutely

1:38:06

Which is to say the difference between what

1:38:08

I believe to be true and what I know to be true

1:38:10

and to be you know Challenged I

1:38:13

don't do believe Yeah, exactly I don't when

1:38:15

people say what do you believe I say belief isn't the

1:38:17

right no scientists should say that we're belief Things

1:38:19

are likely or unlikely and you can hear the

1:38:21

reasons why and hear the reasons why and yeah We'll

1:38:24

get there, but that's all what I when everyone says

1:38:26

belief and by the way Who hey,

1:38:28

would I ask the politician that what do you do

1:38:30

you believe who cares what you believe? Yeah,

1:38:32

exactly and yeah, and people have said you

1:38:34

believe in this of why it's just not the right word

1:38:37

for science And although I will say one of

1:38:39

the things I didn't cover. I was really amused by

1:38:41

your short career as a preacher. Oh Which

1:38:45

up and and and and Did

1:38:48

you ever come out by the way to the community is

1:38:50

not as not you know because I've

1:38:52

been with a lot of clergy There's a there's a clergy

1:38:54

project.

1:38:55