Michael's Favourite Science Books

0:00 I've brought a lot of things.

0:02 Look at that stack.

0:03 And that's only some of it.

0:04 I know.

0:05 I'm finally answering a question that I get asked all the time.

0:08 And I was sick of not having a good answer.

0:11 So, I put the work in and I've I've got an answer.

0:14 Just turn it around one more time.

0:15 I want to see how well leafed through they are.

0:17 Okay.

0:19 Couple of those are very loved.

0:20 Some of them Some of them listeners rather than

0:23 viewers look like they've only been read in digital form.

0:27 And this is the hard copy that sits on a shelf to prove I'm not sure.

0:31 That's interesting that you bring that up because

0:34 that is not true at all for these books.

0:39 Okay.

0:37 I love physical books so much that I and I and I

0:41 dislike reading on a screen so much that I read the hardbacks.

0:46 So these have all been completely read every page of them.

0:50 And the ones that look cleaner,

0:51 I think they just look cleaner because they are after all

0:54 like really highquality hardcover books that stand up to wear and tear.

1:00 Um, I used to buy paperbacks and this is why I don't anymore.

1:03 Like this paperback,

1:04 it's all getting browned and yellowed and the pages already feel brittle.

1:08 So, what I focus on nowadays is acidfree archival copies and they're often

1:14 cheaper than the new paperback because it's just like an old used book.

1:19 It's not even a first edition.

1:21 And so it'll be like 23 bucks for the paperback version or $9 for this used

1:27 copy from a little bookstore in Indiana that is

1:30 printed on archival paper with a hard binding.

1:33 And I'm like, it's a no-brainer.

1:35 And they also look nicer.

1:37 They look nicer.

1:38 And a lot of times though, you you are going to have like old library binding.

1:42 Um, and I love that.

1:44 I like having the little sticker on it that has

1:46 it's like Dewey decimal number and it says like,

1:49 you know, Wasuka County Public Library and then there's got

1:52 a big stamp on it that says, you know, removed.

1:55 And I love that it's got this whole story.

1:57 Sometimes there's little pe like people's notes.

1:59 I'm wondering if I have No, not here.

2:01 But a lot of people have made their notes in it

2:03 and I can like respond to their notes and be like,

2:06 "You are you not understanding this book or yes, who are you?

2:10 You're brilliant." And I never find out.

2:12 Well, this was supposed to be a hook and tease for our second half,

2:14 but um but I think we've given it away now

2:16 that we're going to be talking about Michael's favorite books,

2:18 but that's okay because we haven't given away any of the titles.

2:22 Michael's favorite science books.

2:24 I mean, I I am not surprised that this is

2:26 a question you've been asked multiple multiple times.

2:28 Yeah, I'm asked it a lot and I finally got good good answers because it came

2:32 to a head when I was waiting for a a sushi

2:35 order for takeaway and the the waiter asked,

2:40 "What book would you recommend?" And I was like,

2:42 "Oh my gosh, I don't know who the heck you are." Like, I don't want to say, "Oh,

2:48 you should read The Illusion of Conscious

2:50 Will." Because that's like an academic book, but maybe that is what you want.

2:55 And like I had to figure out what's an answer

2:57 I would tell to anyone regardless of their background,

3:00 regardless of what they're used to, and also

3:03 regardless of like what they have access to.

3:05 Because a lot of the books I would recommend might be like,

3:07 "Okay, there's a copy on eBay right now for $800.

3:10 Mine belong to my father, but I want to be able to say, "Look,

3:13 you can get this on Amazon for five bucks if

3:15 that's what's going to be easy for you or or Kindle.

3:18 I think a lot of people want to read them on on a screen.

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4:39 [music] Okay.

4:45 Well, that is coming up in the second half of this episode.

4:48 But as always in Field Notes on our Thursday episode,

4:50 we uh we start off by taking a dip into some of your questions,

4:54 our mailbag as it were, the things that have been troubling you,

4:57 the things that have been on your mind.

4:58 And as ever, we have some amazing questions that have come in from you,

5:01 including this one for you, Michael.

5:03 This is from Larden Marovich, who asks,

5:06 "How much time do you think passed between the invention

5:09 of the laser and a laser pointer being used to play with cats?"

5:13 I'd never considered this, so I had to look it up.

5:16 And it's almost exactly 21 years.

5:18 So by the time lasers were old enough to drink alcohol in the United States,

5:23 [laughter] they had become cat toys.

5:26 That's obviously a bit of a guess,

5:29 but it's based on the fact that the first laser was operated in May of 1960.

5:34 It had of course it was resting on the shoulders

5:37 of work that went back to Einstein and before.

5:41 But the first laser which used a ruby was operated in in 1960 and it

5:47 was the very early 80s like 198182 maybe is the first time you started

5:52 to see consumer laser pointer devices and I've got to imagine that as soon

5:58 as someone opens up their laser pointer

6:00 that they ordered a cat starts playing with it.

6:03 Like I don't think it's very long between the availability

6:05 on the market to hey my cat enjoys this.

6:09 I haven't been able to find any reports

6:11 like an oral history of laser pointers in cats,

6:14 but I I cannot imagine it was more than a couple weeks before someone noticed.

6:20 But then hold on, because there were

6:22 lasers that existed before they were commercially available.

6:25 I mean, are you ruling out the idea that a scientist

6:28 wouldn't have just uh pointed it near a cat before that point?

6:32 I guess that's a big flaw in my approach.

6:34 I'm assuming that the laboratories were cat-free environments.

6:39 [laughter]

6:39 These lasers would have been in development, the ones that were sold in the 80s,

6:42 some of the first laser pointers,

6:44 they would have been in development for a long time.

6:47 And did the the R&D teams like not have a cat around at some point?

6:52 Like you would bring it home, you'd show, you know,

6:55 you'd show your spouse and then oh my gosh,

6:58 you know, boots or socks is really in love with this pointer.

7:04 And by the way, socks and boots, those are great names for cats from the 80s.

7:08 Today, cats are all named things like Theodore,

7:11 Jessica, Tiffany, but back then, we just had socks.

7:17 I think there's something nice about that question, though.

7:18 The distinction between between hard science and play is

7:23 actually much uh much much fuzzier than you might imagine.

7:27 Um because I agree with you that as soon as there

7:29 is an object that that can be used for joy,

7:33 I think inevitably it does become so.

7:35 Inevitably it does.

7:36 And and oftentimes it's the opposite where

7:38 an item used for joy becomes a scientific tool.

7:41 Well, there's lots of these, right?

7:42 I mean, I'm thinking about the James Web telescope,

7:45 the way that they launched that was based on an origami fold.

7:50 Ah, yes.

7:51 also computer graphics which required a particular type of processor

7:55 so that you could when you're playing when you're

7:57 kind of moving around and gaming so that the worlds

8:00 appear as rich and visual as quickly as possible.

8:03 It required a very particular type of computer processor

8:06 and that is now the reason why we have artificial intelligence.

8:08 I mean it ended up having this extremely important scientific purpose after all.

8:12 So then what what cat toy what current cat toy

8:16 is going to become the seed of the next scientific revolution?

8:20 Maybe the little dangly fish on a stick.

8:23 The fish on a stick is going to unlock some orbital

8:26 mechanics technique or some sort of unification of macro and microphysics.

8:34 Of course, I'm going to get working on that after the podcast if you could.

8:38 Here's a question for you, Hannah, from Dwayne Chory.

8:41 Dwayne says, "I have two German shepherds

8:43 who shed aggressively while driving on the highway.

8:46 I wondered whether there is an optimal way to use air flow

8:49 and pressure differences to remove dog fur from a car while driving.

8:53 Which windows should be open by how much?

8:56 And is there an optimal speed?

8:57 Okay, first of all, you have become the fluid dynamics goto of the cues.

9:06 I know this this is great.

9:08 Do you know what?

9:09 I had such a fun afternoon thinking about this question.

9:11 I've done more fluid dynamics for this podcast

9:13 than I have in the preceding 10 years.

9:15 It's absolutely great.

9:15 I'm loving it and I've got answers for you.

9:17 Right.

9:18 So, I'll tell you what the bad ideas are.

9:19 If you're in, you know, you're going down the motorway,

9:22 you want to get as much fur out as possible.

9:24 Bad idea is to open one window.

9:26 Don't do that.

9:27 That's just it's just terrible because um what happens when you do

9:31 that, it's a bit like when you blow air over a bottle neck.

9:34 So, what happens is this this hunk of air that's right

9:37 by the the one open window essentially starts acting like a plug.

9:42 Um, and as air rushes past it from the outside,

9:46 it compresses the air inside the cabin, inside the car, uh,

9:50 which then decompresses and you end up with what is effectively

9:54 acting like a solid block of air that's wobbling back and forward,

9:57 which is why when you're driving, you open one window,

9:59 it goes like that's what you're hearing.

10:03 It's called a Helmholtz resonance.

10:04 That's essentially what you're hearing.

10:06 Don't do that.

10:07 The best thing that's going to happen in that scenario

10:09 is the dog hair is going to float up into that um into that trapped block

10:15 of air and just vibrate next to your head.

10:17 Bad idea, right?

10:18 That's that's not going to work.

10:19 The other thing that you might be tempted to do

10:21 is to just just wind down all of the windows.

10:24 Okay, don't do that.

10:25 Also a bad idea.

10:27 This happened actually.

10:28 I was in um Florida last summer doing some filming.

10:32 Um and I don't know if you spent much time in Florida, Miami in particular.

10:36 the mosquitoes.

10:38 I could not believe I could not believe the level of mosquitoes.

10:42 But we were in a car with a local and he said, "No problem.

10:46 Here's what we do.

10:47 We'll wind down all the windows and we'll just drive

10:49 along with all the windows open for a few seconds.

10:51 It'll blow them out and then we can close

10:53 the windows safely." And I sat there and was like,

10:56 "No, [laughter] no, local man with your with your knowledge.

11:01 The fluid dynamics of this situation is uh is all you're going to do

11:05 is you're just going to create loads of pockets of turbulence if you do that.

11:08 You've got wind coming in and out in all directions.

11:10 You're going to have little eddies,

11:12 especially near the surfaces where the mosquitoes are sitting.

11:15 They're going to be boundary layers.

11:16 You know, you're you're going to give

11:17 the the mosquitoes a little roller coaster.

11:20 Sure, they're going to have a wild ride,

11:22 but you're not going to you're not going to kick all of the air out.

11:24 This is a bad approach.

11:26 Bad approach.

11:27 So, what's what's the best approach,

11:29 right?

11:29 There's two there's two different approaches you can use.

11:31 So, what you want here is you want you want slick, fastm moving laminina air.

11:37 All right?

11:37 That's what you want.

11:38 You want you want the slippy stuff.

11:40 How do I get that?

11:40 Cuz I don't I don't have a dog, but I do sometimes fart in the car and I

11:45 [laughter] don't want my family to to notice or even suffer.

11:50 And rolling down one window seems to it just

11:52 produces a a bad smell and a bad sound.

11:56 So, what do I do?

11:58 If you know in advance that it's coming, okay,

12:00 then then then what you can do is you you know

12:03 that high pressure always is looking for low pressure areas, right?

12:06 So what you can do, keep the keep the windows closed,

12:10 turn on the air con full whack,

12:12 make sure that it's drawing in air from the outside.

12:14 So you increase the pressure in the car and then crack

12:18 both the back windows a tiny amount like one or two

12:20 inches and then you've got high pressure in the front

12:23 of the car and it's pushing the air through to the back.

12:26 That will be good, right?

12:27 that will work.

12:28 But your air con in your car isn't isn't strong enough.

12:32 You know, you don't think it's going to be able to keep up with that.

12:34 The other option is to create this diagonal flow.

12:39 So, you crack your window, the driver's window by maybe 2 cm or so,

12:44 2 in maybe, and then the back passenger window by a similar size gap.

12:50 Maybe maybe another couple of inches there.

12:53 Do them both at the same time.

12:54 And then because you're driving at like 60 miles an hour, say,

12:58 there's this big high pressure area at the front

13:00 of the car that will kind of roll around, enter in the driver's window.

13:05 You got high pressure there, and then at the back of the car,

13:08 as the car's kind of moving through, there's low pressure.

13:10 So, you are you're effectively creating this physical

13:13 bridge between a high pressure area outside the car,

13:16 low pressure area outside the car,

13:18 you're going to get this slipstream all the way through.

13:21 your doggies sitting in the back seat,

13:23 they're going to be bowled by the time you get home.

13:25 Is cracking the window just a little bit.

13:27 Part of it is if you open them all the way, what?

13:29 Too much turbulence.

13:30 Too much turbulence.

13:31 Exactly.

13:32 Right.

13:32 So, this I mean there's something called Reynolds number which basically tells

13:36 you about uh in effect how turbulent the flow is likely to be.

13:41 I'm simplifying slightly, but you can go with me.

13:43 And one of the things in Reynolds number is the size of the of the aperture.

13:47 So, if you uh you you want it to have

13:49 this like a slightly smaller aperture so that it slips through,

13:53 goes too big, you're going to get messy air.

13:56 Do not want messy air from moving fluid through.

13:58 There you go.

13:59 Scientific life hack.

14:00 Next time you fart in the car, your wife and daughter can thank me.

14:04 Okay, they will.

14:05 I'll make sure they do.

14:06 This is also how you get hot air out of the car in the summer.

14:10 By the way, this was actually my most viral video last year.

14:14 You can do that while you're driving, the diagonal thing.

14:16 Or if you want to do it before you take off,

14:18 when you get in the car and it's really,

14:19 really crazy hot, leave your driver's window closed,

14:23 crack the back passenger door a tiny bit and then open and close

14:27 your driver's door and it will take all of the air out.

14:30 Like a bellow almost.

14:31 You're pumping out the air cuz the air

14:33 inside the car is warmer than the outside.

14:36 Yeah.

14:37 I'm always trying to like I need new air to get in here.

14:40 Yeah, exactly.

14:40 That's the quickest way to do like two or three open and close and you're done.

14:43 You're good.

14:44 Okay, we've had two pet themed questions so far.

14:49 Um, but here we go.

14:50 Uh, this is a question from Minori who says,

14:53 "After listening to the recent podcast

14:54 episode where you discussed the Cyclops effect,

14:57 I was wondering what other experiments should I stockpile to do on my child?

15:02 I don't intend on having one anytime soon.

15:04 I just feel like I should be prepared when I do."

15:07 Well, you don't have to experiment on your own children.

15:09 I think other people's children are are

15:12 just as fine to do psychological experiments on.

15:16 Um I I I really wish I had done more on my daughter.

15:21 Um the one I want to try soon is about uh hypotheticals.

15:27 So, if you talk to like a five or six

15:30 year old child and you ask them questions about the world,

15:35 a really famous example I've seen going

15:36 around on social media involves an experimentter saying,

15:40 "Okay, if you hit a glass with a feather,

15:43 what happens?" And the kid says nothing.

15:45 And they go, "Why?" Well, because the feather is soft.

15:47 It's It's not hard enough.

15:48 Okay.

15:49 Well, what if what if there's a new rule,

15:52 which is that if you hit a glass with a feather, it will break.

15:56 If you hit a glass with a hammer, what'll happen?

15:58 A young kid will be like, "Well, it won't break." But a 13-year-old goes,

16:02 "Oh, well, okay, in this madeup scenario,

16:04 it will break because you said that's the rule."

16:07 And it's amazing just how hard it is

16:10 for the younger child to understand that you

16:13 are describing a different fantastical universe with different rules.

16:18 And that that switch to being able

16:20 to understand hypotheticalities happens around like seven years old.

16:26 And you should also test the difference between their ability to understand

16:31 hypotheticals in the future and in the past

16:33 because they don't happen simultaneously.

16:36 Um research has shown that young

16:38 children understand future hypotheticals better.

16:42 Like if it rains tomorrow, what should we do?

16:45 But if you ask them, if it had rained this morning, what would we have done?

16:48 That's a harder question.

16:50 And I still don't know if it's because of the the conceptual

16:54 nature or if it's simply like a language barrier of like,

16:58 yeah, but it didn't or I don't know what conclusions

17:02 to draw from this, but we need we need more studies.

17:05 So, let us know.

17:06 I have one daughter who is younger than

17:07 that and one daughter if you think it happens around seven.

17:10 I have one daughter younger than seven, one daughter older than seven.

17:12 So, I'm going to try that and I'll uh I'll report back.

17:15 Try it out and see if they have different answers.

17:19 Obviously, there's also the famous consistency of matter experiments,

17:25 which my daughter did fail when she was very young.

17:28 I haven't tested her recently, but this is where you take a tall glass

17:32 and a short glass and you fill the short one with water.

17:37 And then you take that glass and you pour

17:40 the water into the taller glass and you say,

17:44 "Which one now has more?" Sorry, does that make sense?

17:47 I should explain this better.

17:48 The tall glass is skinny, right?

17:51 Yeah.

17:50 So, the water level sits the the same water level sits higher

17:54 in this tall skinny glass than it does in the short wide one.

17:57 That's right.

17:57 And you start with the water in the in the short wide glass and you say,

18:02 "Okay, there's there's a certain amount of water here.

18:04 You pour it into the tall skinny glass and the water of course is higher.

18:09 The water level is higher in altitude and you

18:12 say which one has more water in it.

18:15 Was it the one before or this tall one?

18:17 And under a certain age, kids always choose the tall one.

18:21 I think that's so gorgeous.

18:23 I like that so much.

18:24 It's so sweet.

18:25 What I think is so fascinating is that you

18:28 cannot explain the problem in that reasoning to a child.

18:32 You can teach them, look,

18:34 I've poured all the water from the small glass to the tall glass.

18:38 None was added, none was taken away, so it should be the same amount.

18:42 They still will get it wrong.

18:44 The only way children have demonstrated that they

18:48 learn the difference is by experimenting with this themselves,

18:52 by playing with water, with blocks, with Lego, with whatever,

18:57 with sand, and realizing, ah, it's always the same amount.

19:02 because there's a difference between the size of the pile and the amount in it.

19:07 And they have to come to that realization through their own cognitive processes.

19:12 It cannot be taught to them with words.

19:14 I also think it's notable how incredibly well

19:17 tuned small kids are to portion size basically,

19:21 which is what I was thinking as you were describing it.

19:24 You know, if you give two kids two glasses,

19:27 one with slightly more than the other, you bet any amount, you know,

19:32 the kid is going to notice and like pick the one with slightly more.

19:36 They're sort of incredibly tuned to the height

19:38 of a fluid in a glass, for instance.

19:40 There is a book actually that I um whenever I have a friend who has a baby,

19:44 it's uh it's the stock book that I give them.

19:47 You know, I s you sort of do like a congratulations on being a parent box.

19:51 And this is the book that I always put in it.

19:53 And it's called Experimenting with Babies.

19:56 And it's 50 science projects you can perform on your own kid.

20:00 And they're all it's so good.

20:02 It's so good.

20:03 None of them are none of them are Little Albert, okay?

20:06 None of them are like nasty things.

20:07 They're all like very sweet stuff that you can look

20:10 at the reflexes that your kid has when they're born.

20:12 There's one that's particularly memorable about when a when a kid is just born,

20:16 they have this reflex which is where if you lie them

20:18 on their backs facing upwards with their arms in the air,

20:22 so sort of like ready to give a high 10 and turn their head for them,

20:26 they will straighten the arm that they're looking at.

20:29 And it doesn't matter whether you turn their head the other way,

20:31 they will then straighten the arm they're looking at and bend the other one.

20:35 It's called the on guard reflex because it's like you're fencing, right?

20:38 On guard.

20:38 Oh.

20:39 So, and this is this the arms are up like they're above their head.

20:42 Even they're laying flat on their backs

20:44 and their arms are like flat on the floor basically.

20:46 They're not straight up like this.

20:49 Correct.

20:48 Yeah.

20:49 I love all these weird reflexes babies have that they lose.

20:53 I've I've even heard people argue that the fact

20:55 that we lose them is like a little micro form

20:57 of metamorphosis that humans go through where we become

21:00 a different creature with different reflexes after a certain age.

21:05 I got to get this book,

21:07 Experiments to Do and I got I'll have to have another baby, too.

21:10 But I think it's worth it.

21:11 There is another one, Experimenting with Kids,

21:12 which you can do with slightly older kids.

21:14 But yeah, there's a none of them are cruel.

21:17 All of them are fine.

21:18 They're all just very sweet little things

21:20 that you can you can test on your children.

21:22 The marshmallow test where you sort of you see

21:24 if they have got a an ability to delay reward.

21:28 You say you can have one marshmallow now or if you wait, you can have two later.

21:31 And loads of kids fail it.

21:33 Um, yeah, lots of really sweet experiments that you can do.

21:37 I need to look into more about the marshmallow experiment because I've

21:39 seen a lot of videos about it in the last few years.

21:42 I don't know if there's been an updates

21:44 on the conclusions or the results, but yeah,

21:47 I've heard that the younger a kid is,

21:50 if they're able to pass the marshmallow test and say, "Oh,

21:55 I can either have this one or if I wait 5 minutes,

21:57 I'll get to have two." a kid that chooses

21:59 to wait to have two at a early and earlier age,

22:03 it really does show that that child

22:05 will have better outcomes later in their life.

22:08 Yeah, it really does.

22:09 It really does.

22:10 Sort of like a uh it demonstrates a kind of internal resilience,

22:14 I guess, that then shows up in lots of other factors.

22:17 That's right.

22:18 It shows they have a better maybe concept of of planning

22:21 and time and also a stronger veto power over their non-concious urges.

22:28 So yeah, there's a lot of experiments you can do.

22:30 I'm not sure how I feel about having

22:31 a book on my shelf called Experimenting with Kids,

22:34 but it'll make a good conversation piece.

22:36 Cuz we're on the topic.

22:37 Can I just tell you one of my favorites ever, just cuz we're on the topic.

22:40 Okay, so if you if you want to work out what your kids going to be like,

22:43 there are very few things.

22:44 I mean, the marshmallow test is one which it's correlated.

22:47 It's not deterministic, right?

22:49 But it's like there's a chance, you know, sort of is indicative.

22:52 If you want to work out what a kid's

22:53 math's ability is going to be later in life,

22:56 then I mean pretty much everything you can measure,

22:59 how quickly they know their times tables,

23:00 how quickly they learn addition doesn't make a difference.

23:03 Nothing, nothing, nothing makes a difference.

23:05 The one thing that is correlated to future mathematical ability is if you

23:11 take a 5-year-old and you manufacture a toy scene in front of them,

23:19 say a car crash, right?

23:21 and you say, "Oh, look.

23:22 No, what's happened here is that um this car has been driving and what?

23:26 They've crashed here." And then you have all

23:28 of these other toys that are watching on from the scene.

23:31 Ask the 5-year-old to tell you the story from different perspectives.

23:36 So, you say, "Okay, what did what did the guy

23:38 in the car think?" And they'll be like, "Oh, no.

23:41 Whatever." It's like, "Okay,

23:42 but what did Barbie think up the hill?" And some

23:45 kids at five are really able to do that.

23:47 they're really able to just switch their mind

23:49 from one perspective to another to another to another.

23:52 And other kids find it incredibly difficult, just don't really understand.

23:55 It's like they all saw it from the same perspective

23:57 as they themselves saw it from from the child perspective.

24:01 And no one is quite sure, at least last time I checked on this research,

24:04 it may be that it's been updated since,

24:06 but no one is quite sure why this should be

24:08 the thing that ends up connecting to future mathematical ability.

24:13 But there is one idea which is that when

24:16 you take something like the number eight, right?

24:20 The number eight is like this character in a kid's mind.

24:23 But what that character does changes depending

24:27 on what you do with that character.

24:29 You know, you multiply by eight,

24:30 it's doing something very different to dividing by eight or taking away eight.

24:35 Um, and it's sort of like that ability to be

24:39 mentally flexible based on what you see in front of you.

24:43 There's this there's an idea that that's

24:45 the the earliest sign of future mathematical ability.

24:48 Is there a name for this?

24:49 I'd love to know more about how to actually orchestrate it.

24:53 It sounds really similar to the Pia mountain test where

24:58 you give mountain task where you have children look at mountains

25:02 uh little toy mountains on a table and they have

25:05 to answer questions about what various characters in the scene can see.

25:09 I think it's the same thing.

25:10 I think it's the same idea.

25:11 And the other element of that, of course, is the spatial reasoning, right?

25:14 That you're having to change your physical position

25:18 and being able to manipulate that in your mind,

25:21 which also ends up being quite useful as a mathematician.

25:23 Wow.

25:24 Okay, I know what I'm doing tonight.

25:25 I mean, frankly, I've got my own list of experiments lined up as well.

25:28 So, uh, if you too are experimenting [laughter] on children in your lives,

25:32 then let us know how it goes.

25:33 Let us know in the comments.

25:34 Right, we're going to come back after the break with the question that many,

25:38 many, many people over the years have asked you, Michael.

25:41 What are your favorite science books?

25:51 This episode is brought to you by Project Hail Mary,

25:54 the new spectacular space adventure movie coming

25:57 to cinemas from the author of The Martian,

25:59 Andy Weir, and the directors of the Spider-Verse movies,

26:02 Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

26:03 But here's an even better combination.

26:06 Teachers in Space.

26:09 Hello.

26:09 Thank you.

26:10 Project H Mary stars Ryan Gosling as science teacher Ryland Grace,

26:14 who is sent unexpectedly on an impossible mission into space

26:18 to discover why the sun and the stars are dying.

26:21 And he teams up with an unimaginable ally

26:24 to defy all odds and save the universe from extinction.

26:28 Okay, here's a question for you, Michael.

26:29 What What kind of prep would you hope Ryan Gosling had done

26:32 for this role in order to play the role of a of a science teacher?

26:35 He should have spent a bunch of time with cool teenagers and tried

26:41 to teach things to them so that it wasn't just like a good

26:44 explanation but also kept their interest and made them want to hear more

26:49 and understand it so that they could share it to be cool too.

26:53 See Project Halary now in cinemas and IMAXs everywhere.

27:01 [music] I'm intrigued about this one.

27:04 I want to know how many of these I've read and how many how many wonderful

27:09 things wonderful things there are out there

27:11 in the world that I am yet to discover.

27:13 It's like, you know,

27:14 when you when you feel jealous of people who haven't watched Breaking Bad yet

27:17 because of all of the joy they have ahead of them in their life.

27:19 This is this is how I feel right now in this conversation.

27:22 I've got to be honest with you.

27:23 So, yeah, we're answering the question of, "Hey, Michael,

27:24 what books do you recommend?" Because I think we

27:27 we've got this emailed to us by so many people.

27:29 We can't even name you all.

27:30 I'm sorry.

27:31 you won't get any credit.

27:32 But um I love books.

27:34 I love physical books.

27:35 Um I love the weight of them.

27:37 In fact, I find it hard to even read

27:39 a book if I don't love the book as an object,

27:42 which means I like them heavy and full of like hard covers.

27:47 It just I I don't know.

27:48 I literally my reading list,

27:50 the order that I choose them in is based on how the book looks.

27:54 Like I had a a a a paperback copy of American Psycho, the book,

28:00 and it was just so beautiful because it was just white and it

28:04 had the title way down in the lower left corner and that was it.

28:08 And I just couldn't stop looking at it um

28:10 on the table and I'm like, I got to read this.

28:12 And so I actually read it because I just could

28:15 not stop admiring the objecthood of it, the beauty of it.

28:20 Turns out you really can judge a book guy by its cover then, Michael, huh?

28:23 I do.

28:23 I've got a lot to say about that.

28:25 In fact, covers of books because um it

28:27 it matters a lot what the cover looks like.

28:30 I I generally prefer the UK covers of books.

28:32 They're just so much more cool.

28:34 I I don't know why.

28:36 Um but like you'll have to you'll look this up yourself.

28:38 You'll almost always find that the UK cover is better.

28:42 Why do they do two different covers?

28:44 I don't know.

28:44 And I have had books published in the States and then

28:47 the cover art has come back and I've been like, I'm sorry, what?

28:50 The first time I really noticed this though, uh,

28:53 and I see it now everywhere, was with Katie Mac's book, The End of Everything.

28:57 I think both covers are really good, but the UK edition looked so [sighs] cool.

29:05 And the American version looked like, yeah, it's a space-time book.

29:09 It's It's a great book.

29:11 It's It's I don't I don't want to put down the cover.

29:14 You shouldn't judge it by the cover if you're in America, is what I'm saying.

29:18 It's a fantastic book that deserved to have the cover that the UK gave it.

29:22 So, here here at my office,

29:24 I have all of my u philosophy, math, and science books.

29:30 There's the shelves,

29:32 and a lot of them are really specific to the kinds of episodes I've made.

29:38 So, like I would never recommend it to anyone unless, oh,

29:42 are you doing an episode about how many holes the human body contains?

29:45 because here's a book that helped me when it comes to just

29:48 general like I think anyone would like this and should read it.

29:51 My number one recommendation outside of like a science

29:54 book even though it kind of is uh

29:56 it's it's David Eagleman's sum and this book was

30:00 recommended to me by a mutual connection Jake Chudnau

30:04 who does all the music for Vsauce.

30:06 He's the one who told me about this.

30:08 So you've read it?

30:09 I have.

30:09 Yeah.

30:09 He's he's amazing.

30:10 He's amazing.

30:11 Hold on.

30:11 He's a neuroscientist isn't he?

30:13 He is.

30:14 Yeah.

30:14 Do you know him?

30:15 I know of him.

30:16 Yeah, he's great.

30:16 He's incredibly charismatic.

30:18 He's really good at storytelling.

30:20 Uh, as evidenced by the book, um,

30:23 what he's really good at doing is I don't know,

30:27 some people are just very very good at understanding what draws

30:30 people into a story and he does that with his research.

30:34 It's not just his storytelling, it's his research, too.

30:36 His research is just endlessly fascinating.

30:39 So, for those of you who aren't familiar, Sum, what is it about?

30:42 It is a a book full of 40 different chapters.

30:45 Each one is a little hypothetical madeup version of what the afterlife is like.

30:51 He's not saying that they it is like this, but he's

30:53 saying imagine that this is what happens after you die.

30:57 And it is so wonderful for reflection.

31:00 The one I think about the most is the chapter that's about like,

31:03 you know, uh, when you die, you go to heaven,

31:05 which happens to be just the same world you always lived on, except the only

31:09 people who live there are people that you were friends with in your life.

31:13 And at first, it's really awesome because you've got your best

31:17 friends and your family and all the co-workers that you loved.

31:20 And then you start to realize after a few days, a few weeks,

31:23 a few months that you didn't have a friend who could vulcanize rubber.

31:27 you didn't have a friend who could uh winnow

31:31 a field and it just makes you step back and go

31:35 man we are so dependent on the knowledge

31:38 and the labor of so many people we never talk to absolutely

31:43 so I won't spoil any more of them but each one is

31:45 a little short digestible thought experiment

31:48 on life and uh meaning it's fantastic extremely short book as well

31:55 it's very short yeah so it's a great It's

31:57 a great book to recommend because it's not like, oh man,

32:00 this is a huge tome and if I'm not

32:01 into it after a few pages like I'm gonna hate Michael.

32:04 It's more like after a few pages there's

32:06 another neat chapter and there's another neat chapter.

32:09 So yeah, I love this book.

32:11 Um I'd say the early days of Vsauce were very much

32:15 inspired by books like Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.

32:21 Okay, this is a classic.

32:22 I bet a lot of listeners have already listened

32:24 to or have read uh a short history of nearly everything,

32:27 but the way he writes about everything in this book

32:32 really inspired a lot of ideas for early Vsauce videos.

32:36 And I I actually even referenced this book in my most recent video about ghosts

32:41 and how we're remembered because he has this great

32:43 fact about how rare it is to become a fossil that he's like of all

32:48 the humans alive in the United States today within

32:52 millions of years what will be left and actually

32:54 fossilized will not even be one full skeleton.

32:57 Like not even one of us alive today is going to be a fossilized skele.

33:02 It's it's pretty cool.

33:03 He has this absolute gift for just the lightest

33:08 of touches and like honing in on the joyfulness of absurdity.

33:15 I I am I am endlessly envious of his ability to write Bill Bryson.

33:20 He is phenomenal.

33:21 That's right.

33:21 Yeah, Bill Bryson.

33:22 Any book by Bill Bryson is going to be a good read.

33:25 Home I haven't read yet, but I've got it.

33:27 And I've got a nice hardback cover.

33:29 Tell you what though, the co the cover of that one.

33:31 Let's have a look at the cover of that one.

33:33 I would say that's not a very good cover.

33:35 That's the American cover, isn't it?

33:37 No.

33:38 No, it isn't.

33:39 I bought Oh, yeah, it is.

33:41 I read this in England, but I must have bought it in America.

33:44 You know what?

33:45 Actually, I don't think that the English

33:46 cover is that much better, to be honest.

33:48 The cover of of what I have is it's a paperback with a blue

33:51 cover and it's got a picture of Earth on it with an asterisk.

33:54 and the asterisk uh brings us to this note which is the title of the book.

34:00 So in a way the title of the book is actually a photo

34:02 of Earth and then an interpretation

34:05 of that is a short history of nearly everything.

34:08 I think that might be better than the British cover on on this on this instance.

34:11 The British cover is is half the top half is white, the bottom half is orange.

34:15 There's sort of earth as though it's printed

34:17 out and has a a dashed line around it.

34:20 It's not particularly inspiring.

34:21 Around the same time that I was reading the Bill Bryson,

34:25 which was again I think this is like when Vsauce became an educational channel.

34:28 I also got a lot from this book which is

34:32 called The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Merchie and it

34:36 has a very like black and white cover with waves

34:39 on it and then the title is printed in yellow and white.

34:42 Its subtitle is an exploration of science and philosophy.

34:46 And this book is also about everything.

34:49 It's about insects and planets and storms and math and it

34:55 has a much more spiritual bent and everything that I read

34:59 in this book I had to fact check and a number

35:00 of the things were like uh that interpretation is not popular

35:04 but this inspired a lot of questions like how big are

35:08 you like does your body end at the at the hard

35:11 surface or is your is your smell kind of like you

35:16 to a cat I might be as big as my smell.

35:19 and how how widely does my smell travel, right?

35:22 And he he just keeps bringing up weird things like

35:24 that and doesn't really even answer them or attempts to.

35:28 I mean, I don't think that one's actually answered in here,

35:29 but it it it inspired a lot of great thoughts.

35:32 So, I'm really grateful to that book.

35:34 That looks like quite an old book, that one.

35:36 This book is the reason why I get hard covers

35:38 with acid-free paper nowadays because this is not that old.

35:42 I mean, I am old in the sense that I

35:44 think I bought this in like 20 probably 2013,

35:50 so it is like a 13-year-old copy of the book,

35:53 but it's gotten very brown and it's kind of falling apart.

35:57 And as I go back and read it, I'm like, man, this doesn't have a lot longer.

36:01 I want to be able to leave this to my daughter.

36:03 When was it published?

36:04 The '9s.

36:05 Copyright 1978.

36:07 That's fun, though.

36:07 I like the idea.

36:08 I haven't read that one.

36:09 It has really good illustrations.

36:11 This is about the electromagnetic sense, this little section.

36:14 And so I found it very enjoyable.

36:17 Funny enough, do you know who recommended this book?

36:21 Tell me.

36:22 I bought this off of Rain Wilson's recommendation at a TED talk.

36:25 He was like, "You got to read this one." And so I got it.

36:29 I didn't have him down as a as somebody who would

36:32 be particularly good at recommending philosophical

36:34 science books, but there we go.

36:35 How wrong I was.

36:36 Now, you know, let's get really like hard hard science here.

36:40 Physics.

36:40 Um, I very much recommend these two.

36:45 The guy's name is Lewis Carol Epstein.

36:47 Thinking physics blew my mind.

36:50 It's It's kind of a workbook.

36:52 It's just got a bunch of problems, but they're all really strange ones.

36:56 They're they're ones like, okay,

36:58 if the universe was empty except for two pieces of mass, what would happen?

37:02 They would come together eventually,

37:04 but what if the universe was full of nothing

37:06 but matter and there were two empty hollows?

37:10 would they come together?

37:11 Would they have a force on each other

37:12 or would they have a repelling force on each other?

37:15 And he answers them.

37:17 He answers them so well.

37:18 The ability to explain the concept of things like energy,

37:23 momentum, uh it's just leverage.

37:26 Um what do we mean when we talk about

37:28 the pivot point or the lever arm of something?

37:30 This one gets it right so clearly.

37:32 It's so well done.

37:33 Normally, this is sold for teachers to use.

37:36 And photocopies of the pages are like one of notoriously one of the most common

37:42 copyright violations of science teachers because it's just

37:44 it's hard to beat how clear these are.

37:47 And I mean, I'm an adult who I still learn so much from this.

37:50 I crack it open and I go, "Oh, yeah.

37:53 The way a hard hat works is a great way to talk about force." Yeah.

37:58 It's just it's wonderful.

37:59 And then he wrote a book called Relativity Visualized,

38:03 which is the best book I've ever found about

38:06 relativity and how to understand what's being said by Lorent

38:11 contractions and time dilation and all those things that can

38:15 often feel a bit woowoo or a little bit beyond.

38:18 This one has it also has the very best um

38:22 diagrams of of of like how to think of spaceime.

38:25 And a lot of this inspired my Which way is Down episode where

38:29 I talked about different surfaces representing

38:32 different structures of spaceime geodessics and whatnot.

38:37 Right.

38:37 What I will say is this, Michael,

38:39 at the moment um I'm up to uh £54 in my Amazon basket.

38:45 So, thank you.

38:46 Wait, you're buy you're you're buying these as I say them.

38:48 The ones I haven't read.

38:50 Yeah, of course.

38:50 I don't want to I don't want to miss out.

38:52 Okay.

38:52 Now, if you really want to dive into classical mechanics,

38:56 the theoretical minimum books are also really phenomenal at explaining concepts.

39:02 At the end of the day, though,

39:03 I do recommend that if you want to understand a concept,

39:05 you just need to read everything ever said about it.

39:07 You need to hear everyone's different voice on it.

39:10 And that doesn't mean you have to spend hundreds of dollars.

39:13 Um, it it just means like read a bunch of stuff.

39:15 you know, pick up a book uh at a thrift store and just

39:18 read the chapter about the thing that you're interested in or, you know,

39:22 just read a bunch of stuff on on Reddit online.

39:24 Like, you just need to hear everyone try their best at explaining

39:27 it and someone will say it in a way that hits your wavelength.

39:31 Julian Barber's the discovery of dynamics

39:35 is a different approach to understanding mechanics.

39:39 This is a historical approach.

39:41 It's the stories behind the people and the ideas

39:44 and the debates that led to the formation

39:47 of F equals MA the the solar the sun centered view of the um solar system

39:56 and it's this also helps you understand first

40:00 of all that things like energy and force are

40:02 concepts it's not like Newton caught some force

40:06 in the wild in a jar and studied it.

40:09 He just said guys let's do this.

40:11 Let's say that the product of mass and acceleration is force.

40:14 Okay, I made it up.

40:16 Um, but it's weird if you start treating it like a thing.

40:20 And this one has it's just great.

40:22 First of all, he talks a lot about how if if humans had evolved on the moon,

40:26 science would be so much further ahead because friction and air resistance

40:31 got in the way of us understanding dynamics for for a millennia.

40:36 These are great.

40:37 Do you know what's so nice about this is that like

40:40 lots of these books are just not on my radar at all.

40:42 I'd never even heard of this one,

40:44 the Barber one, the the the discovery of dynamics.

40:46 But it's so up my street.

40:48 This is Yeah, I absolutely love it.

40:50 Um and I I will I will take the knowledge I've gotten from some

40:54 of these books I've been mentioning that will be in my video about levers.

40:59 Okay, I'm going to I'm going try to go a little bit more quickly.

41:01 So, when it comes to mathematics,

41:02 I got to shout out uh Nosen Yanowski's The Outer Limits of Reason.

41:07 Notice a lot of my books don't have book jackets on them.

41:09 I find book jackets so annoying.

41:11 I take them off.

41:12 I put them in a drawer.

41:13 Me, too.

41:14 Actually, I throw them away because I just always wind up ripping them.

41:17 I think they [clears throat] look much prettier.

41:18 I much prefer what they look like.

41:19 Like that.

41:20 Okay.

41:20 The Outer Limits of Reason is a book that is

41:23 like ostensibly it's about how far can reason take us,

41:26 but it's not a philosophical work.

41:30 It is a mathematical work about okay here's what reason

41:33 is and here is where we reach problems that we

41:36 know that we cannot solve unless we brute force

41:40 it for you know forever like the traveling salesman problem.

41:44 It talks a lot about the difference between um hard problems and the whole

41:49 NPP distinction and it it explains it in a way it talks about tearing machines.

41:55 It goes through this.

41:56 I didn't know any of this stuff when I started

41:58 the book and I loved it so much I I

42:01 mentioned it in a few of my videos and the author

42:03 sent me an autographed copy of his quantum computing textbook.

42:08 So I'm a big fan.

42:09 He's a proper mathematician, right?

42:11 Like this is this is the kind of person who normally writes textbooks.

42:14 I wouldn't say that that was a book that was written for broad,

42:17 you know, sort of like a it's quite meaty, right?

42:20 Yeah.

42:20 I mean it's from the MIT press.

42:22 So, I wouldn't recommend this to just like a a person

42:27 um I that I don't know who they are.

42:30 They might be like, "Dude, this is so boring." And I'm like,

42:32 "Well, you know, look, I don't agree, but I might to them say,

42:37 you should read some." And and it's it's it's like a a proc.

42:40 It's like a ladder.

42:42 Um I wanted to cover just three little philosophical books.

42:45 I think that Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions is a a real kind of must-have

42:52 for some of the big questions people ask about all kinds of things.

42:55 This is where the famous what is it like to be a bat comes from.

42:59 Yes, of course.

43:00 That's chapter 12 in the book.

43:02 And uh the very first chapter is about death.

43:06 And unlike a lot of other philosophical books written by true philosophers,

43:10 this one he finishes with like and here's just how I feel.

43:13 you know, he's like, "Look, I don't know.

43:15 I just This is how I get by.

43:17 And here's why." Then, uh, when it comes to consciousness, I've got two.

43:21 One is the user illusion.

43:23 This one is by Tor Nortranders, and it is very much about free will,

43:30 conscious will, and what exactly is going on there.

43:35 But I found Daniel M.

43:36 Wegner's The illusion of conscious will much I don't know how to phrase this.

43:42 it it it's more academic focused whereas

43:44 the user illusion is more for popular audiences.

43:48 But these both really make it quite clear that we don't have as much

43:53 control over our wills and ourselves as we think that we do and that's okay.

44:00 That was an absolute treat.

44:01 Um what I will say is this.

44:03 I uh I had read a lot less of them than I thought.

44:06 So I am now £124.37 down in my Amazon basket.

44:11 But boy, do I have a lot of joy ahead of me in the reading months ahead.

44:15 You sure do.

44:16 You sure do.

44:17 And look, like that's just a little taste of like,

44:19 okay, for a science podcast, what would I recommend?

44:22 I do want to do a special shout out to yesterday.

44:25 I finished reading The Lord of the Rings.

44:29 I'm I'm on a big fantasy kick at the moment.

44:32 Uh I started with science fiction and Ursula Leguin

44:35 and then I wanted to read her Earth Sea books, but I thought, you know what?

44:38 I'm going to go back to like honestly the books that started the fantasy genre.

44:44 It wasn't called fantasy when Tolken wrote them.

44:46 It was like fairy tales is what they called books like his.

44:48 I just finished Let me grab them.

44:51 I finished Lord of the Rings yesterday.

44:53 I read this in two weeks.

44:54 I started it on the 15th of February and I finished it on March 1st.

44:59 So, this is all three of the books combined.

45:02 And uh now that that's done,

45:04 I'm going to move on to Earth Sea, which look at this tome.

45:09 Oh my lord.

45:09 I mean, they both they're both beautiful books, though.

45:12 Talking about judging books by their covers, those they are.

45:15 Uh the Lord of the Rings one has a a black cover on it.

45:18 Red edging on the on the pages.

45:21 Beautiful.

45:22 I don't know what the Middle Earth writing is called,

45:25 but [laughter] beautiful writing etched on the side.

45:27 The language of Mordor, one ring to rule them all, blah blah blah.

45:31 that we got the white book ribbon.

45:33 And so, yeah, I I just last night started the first Earth Sea book.

45:37 You can see from the book ribbon that I'm only a few pages into it,

45:41 but I love the heaviness of it.

45:43 I love that it strengthens my fingers.

45:45 It just makes me feel like I'm I'm I'm moving

45:48 the wheels of the world by diving into someone's mind.

45:51 And that's what I love about the book, too.

45:53 I think if you're going to read something

45:54 like this, you should read it all in one

45:56 sitting as much as possible because you get

46:00 to be inside someone else's head for so long.

46:04 And that's an experience that we don't get

46:05 from reading short little snippets on social media, on forums,

46:10 but to just be like, "Yeah, Tolken,

46:12 take two weeks of my life and just you're a nut,

46:16 man." and I love it and I'm glad that I got to participate in that because so

46:20 many people are like I wanted to get

46:21 the references which you cannot escape in our society.

46:25 What's your Amazon review rating for uh for Lord of the Rings going to be?

46:29 How many stars?

46:30 I mean you got to give it five stars.

46:32 It's the Lord of the Rings.

46:33 I mean it's hard it's hard to to separate it from its cultural impact.

46:38 I started watching the movies last night.

46:41 I got about 30 minutes through the first one and I was just like,

46:44 man, there's not enough in here, [laughter] you know?

46:46 I know.

46:47 I know it's like nine hours of movie,

46:49 but I was just like, "Oh, gee." Was telling my wife,

46:52 "Ah, there's so much." They've cut out

46:54 and and they're they're making things are going so quickly.

46:56 Like the the conversation between uh Gandalf and Sarm.

47:00 Okay.

47:01 In the book, you're like, "Oh my gosh,

47:03 like I think I think this guy might have gone to the wrong side." Like,

47:06 whoa, this is re it's it's there's a lot more mystery.

47:09 In the movie, it's like Sarman is like, "I'm evil now.

47:12 Let's work with the dark lord, please." It's just like,

47:15 "You got to move on." And I get it.

47:17 They're two very different mediums, but the the like I'm trying to understand

47:21 you portion of a book is what's so wonderful.

47:24 I think it's that idea of being able to dip into somebody else's world view,

47:29 you know, walk a mile in their shoes, as it were.

47:31 I think that's what's so And I think I don't know.

47:34 I I I generally read non-fiction, if I'm honest.

47:37 So maybe once or twice a year I will dip into some fiction.

47:40 But I think that's even true when you read really really good non-fiction.

47:44 Um a few of the examples that you gave there

47:46 of people who who have a way of seeing the universe,

47:50 a way of seeing problems that is just totally illuminating.

47:54 Yeah.

47:54 That's what you get from books that you don't get from short snippets.

47:57 Yeah, exactly.

47:58 I've gotten so many ideas out of fiction books.

48:01 Like I didn't expect this, but like let me show you.

48:03 Here's all the notes I took from Lord of the Rings.

48:06 I've got like just pages and pages of wow, you know what this is?

48:10 Is this something about human nature or is it human nature in the 20th century

48:15 and like what does this tell us about

48:17 interiority and what it like what is bravery?

48:20 Why does it matter to us?

48:21 Does it matter to all of us?

48:22 How is it framed?

48:24 There's so many things to learn from from fiction

48:28 even though it's not necessarily pretending to teach.

48:31 Well, I hope that you enjoyed that um

48:34 that absolutely glorious delve into Michael's bookshelf.

48:38 That was um yeah, really wonderful, Michael.

48:40 Thank you so much.

48:41 Um if you have any questions that you would like us to answer,

48:45 um you can send us them at the restiscience goalhanger.com

48:49 and you can join our newsletter at thereis.com/science.

48:54 Bye-bye.

48:54 Stay curious.

48:57 [music]