Jon Swift: Making Friends with the Cosmos

Has something astronomical ever made you reassess your life's trajectory?

Jon Swift is an astrophysicist and lifelong surfer with a PhD from UC Berkeley. He runs a research observatory at The Thatcher School in Ojai, California, teaches math and science, and his music has featured in cult surf films from the 2000s, like Shelter and The Drifter.

Jon shares his story of living alone in Mexico after finishing a physics degree, and the cosmic event under a desert sky that lit his path forward. 

In this conversation, Jon takes us from the ocean to the outer edges of the galaxy. He speaks to the golden age of modern astronomy, and explains how a small, autonomous research observatory still does meaningful work by moving fast on transient events like exploding stars and tidal disruption events near supermassive black holes. 

We talk about the disjoint between flashy space exploration narratives and the realities of basic research funding, plus what higher education is worth when running the student debt math.  

Jon pinpoints the origin of Earth's water, speaks to how surfing trains pattern recognition, and explains why so much of the universe, including waves, moves in spirals.

It's rare to hear someone move effortlessly between a black hole and a backyard, without either one losing its significance. With deep curiosity, Jon shares stories that get at the timeless mystery of why phenomena like waves and stars can still rearrange what we care about.

Listen to Jon's music from the episode here and here.  

Learn about his forthcoming children's book here. 

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Co-Hosts + Production: Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray   + Ben J Alexander 

Closing track: 'Sunseekers' by Andysixstring

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

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Thanks to our generous sponsors this season:

Patagonia Australia: in business to save our home planet

Ngalung Kalla Eco Retreat: surf adventure paradise 

The Sunglass Fix: give your favourite sunglasses new life

Sodii: hydration for salty humans

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Transcript

Earth Is Not A Water Planet

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We're not a water planet. The water is all on the surface. And it's pretty clear that that water was almost certainly delivered here from a collision from an outer solar system body. And that's kind of crazy because if you were sitting out in the outer solar system with a bunch of snowballs and you're like, okay, who can hit Earth first? Like it would be really hard to hit Earth. We're just this little thing, you know. It's kind of improbable, but how improbable, I'm not exactly sure.

Welcome To Water People

SPEAKER_05 0:26

Welcome to Water People, where we talk story about the aquatic experiences that shape who we become back on land. I'm your host, Lauren Hill, joined by my partner Dave Rastovich. Join us as we gather stories, insights, and useful skills from some of the most outstanding water folk on the planet. We acknowledge the Bungelung Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and waters where we work and play, who have cared for this sea country for tens of thousands of years. Respect and gratitude to all First Nations people, including elders past, present, and emerging. This season is supported by Patagonia, whose purpose-driven mission is to use business to save our home planet. Today we're in conversation with John Swift. He's an astrophysicist and lifelong surfer with a PhD from UC Berkeley. John runs a research observatory at the Thatcher School in Ojai, California. He teaches math and science, and his music has featured in cult surf films that so many of us know and love from the 2000s, like Shelter and The Drifter. In this conversation, John takes us from the ocean to the outer edges of the galaxy. We talk about where Earth's water came from, how surfing trains pattern recognition, why academic autonomy in America has fallen behind Bhutan and Mozambique, and why so much of the universe, including waves, moves in spirals.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

People living like they're told all across the land. So lost in the supposed to be that they don't understand. Drifting alone. Living in the unknown.

John Swift’s Life Across Worlds

SPEAKER_05 2:24

We always begin the podcast in the same place, and that's by asking about a time or experience after which you were never the same. Would you be willing to share a moment like that with us today?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Absolutely. I yeah, I've been thinking about that. There were several I was that were on my mind that would definitely qualify. I think I'm gonna

Mexico Solitude And Comet Hale-Bopp

SPEAKER_02 2:44

land on this experience I had in early 1997. I finished up my physics degree at UCLA. And I was, I didn't really do anything in high school. And I could academically I was very, I didn't do a lot of academics. I was I mostly just focused on surfing, and that was about it. We had a pretty good surf team. Rob was on our team, and you know, it was a big thing, and we did pretty well. And so when I got to college, I that's where I really like that's where I started actually being really interested in in some things, and physics was really where I focused in on. And and so I did pretty well in in college and focused on particle physics, which kind of mostly takes place in basements, like the particle physics research. Like you're always kind of underground or you know, somewhere that's not super awesome. And uh, and so when I was done, I wanted to just get the hell away. And and I was actually, I graduated like at the top of my class in physics, and then it was just weird for all my peers and professors to be like, wait, what are you doing? And I'm like, I think I'm just gonna go to Mexico. And they're like, wait, what do you mean? And I'm all, I don't know. I'm all my friends have like a little plot of land, and like I'm just I'd like to just go there and just that's it, you know? And um, so I I did, I just went to this little spot. It was down in Cabo, out towards the East Cape, but like kind of when you go uh east of San Jose del Cabo, and it used to be a dirt road from San Jose eastward, all the way around to La Paz. And then just about a mile and a half or two miles out from uh San Jose was a little town called La Plaita, which was just a little fishing town and it was mostly just you know Mexican locals. And my friends have had uh bought a little plot of land, just a like literally a square of dirt, nothing on it. And they were like, Yeah, that would be cool if you went down there because we, you know, just to figure out the situation and you know, maybe figure out some kind of structures that we could put on a little plot. And so I just went down that we I we drove all the way down and then and they dropped me off and then they drove back, and I was just down there in this little village, and it was great. I had my guitar, I had like some books, and I had like, you know, that was basically it, you know, and all kinds of crazy things happened. That could be a whole story, you know, an hour-long story that I'll spare you. But the the thing that was, I think, relevant for this whole never be the same thing, I used to just like to explore around and I wasn't very good at it, but I would just I had my like my school backpack and I would make like I'd make like six peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and then like and then like I'd take a gallon of water and then I would just kind of walk out into the desert. And then like when three sandwiches were gone, I was like, okay, I probably should turn around and go back. And so I'd I'd go out and I'd sleep out in the, you know, follow the little mule trails and just like explore out and see all kinds of crazy things. And I was doing that one one evening. So where I was staying, there's kind of hills to the north, and I I kind of went up into the hills, and when I got up near the top of one of the hills, there was and it was evening time, and it was freaking giant comet. It was comet hillbop, which I don't know if you remember that one. You guys are in the south, it was mostly in the north, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:03

No, I I was in Florida, so I remember sitting in I could see it from my childhood bedroom window, and I remember the the overwhelm of seeing something like that in the sky.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

Did you know it was coming? Did you know that was about to happen? No, oh, that's in cola, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

No, I like literally discovered it, you know, because of course other people discovered it, but I had no idea. And it was literally like I was a caveman, like seeing some astronomical event for the first time. And it was, it was seriously like it blew my mind. Like it totally blew my mind. And so, you know, I I just had finished this physics degree and I was doing all this crazy stuff, but it wasn't it didn't really grab me in terms of like continuing on. And so it I just like I started like going, oh my god, the the freaking sky, like the night sky. Like like I'm like, and and I sort of was realizing that I had all of these crazy tools to really investigate what was going on with the cosmos. It was like this, um and it was all this weird stuff because then I remembered, I actually remembered that I used to be completely fascinated with the night sky when I was a kid. And I even I I even in in in high school, I said I didn't do much in high school, but I did a couple things. And one of the things I did is I built a telescope in high school and with with Rob's dad. Rob's dad and me designed and built a telescope, you know, and so it was like one of these moments where all of these different sort of historical strains of my life like just kind of like converged, you know? Wow. And I was like, and and so I it was crazy. I I built a chair that I could lay in and like sleep in, but it would hold my head so that I wouldn't be like flat on the ground so I could like stare at the sky. I had like I could send you pictures, I have pictures of it, like out of this like just scrap wood, and I I made it and I would just go outside at night and I would just stare at the sky, and I would just like my mind would go all kinds of crazy places. And like through this, you know, it was it didn't, it wasn't like an instantaneous thing, although the shock of seeing comet nail bop was an instantaneous thing. But as everything, as the dust sort of settled, I it was like that's where I was like, I want to know what we know about this. And like I'm I don't want to read popular books, I like I want to, I want to figure out where is the frontier of what we understand about the cosmos. And I realized that like I go, I I have all the tools for it. Like I go, this is like I'm perfectly positioned to to do this. And so over the course of that month or two after Comet Hail Bop, I was down there for about four months total, but it was a couple months. I think that when I saw Comet Hail Bop, it was like early March in '97. And then that's when it was in its full glory. And I think I got down there January of that year, like late January. And then so I was there until May or something like that. I came back just going, like, I'm I'm gonna just figure out who are the people that know all this stuff, and I wanna like I'm just gonna be like, I want to go and study all this stuff. And so, and that that whole experience was, you know, and it was it was everything that I loved. It was like I was surfing every day, it was like warm water, it was like beautiful people, like Fisher people that were just, you know, living a simple life, and it was like a lot of just open space, a lot of alone time, you know, which I I personally just like that's what I love, you know. And and so it was like all these things that came together. I wrote a whole like album called Mexico down there. I ended up recording and like, you know, it was it was just like, I don't know, everything kind of came together in a way that it was, you know, I I had been I felt like I'd been bouncing around in all these different worlds, and then you know, from that trip onward, it was like that that was that set a direction that is yeah, is that from which I am still you know following. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Oh, I've got a thousand things I want to ask, but you go wow,

Surfing As Necessity And Wilderness

SPEAKER_04 10:28

okay.

SPEAKER_05 10:28

So you stepped away from well, not stepped away from university, but you let surfing navigate you down to Mexico in a way, right? Bit of spaciousness. You moved away from academia. Hailbop lights up your life, and then you decide to pivot back toward study, toward academia. What happened with surfing in that time? Were you able to reconcile the multiple universes that you were occupying as you moved forward?

SPEAKER_02 10:58

That's a really great question. And um, you know, I sometimes still feel like I don't navigate those worlds very well. I I still feel like I have like I have a multiple personality disorder or something that I'm like in all of these different worlds simultaneously. But and sometimes it feels smooth and sometimes it feels disjoint. I mean, even still, I still have a lot to learn about that. I don't I don't even know. I'm I'm still trying to unify all those things and being in those different worlds, it's like I have different roles. You know, like a very simple one that I think about sometimes is, you know, when I was in academia full time, I was often the person that was, you know, speaking crazy about like metaphysical things with people and like speaking about things like like belief. Like belief is a thing that like a lot of science-minded people will sort of scoff at or will really like will kind of have somewhat of a like superiority complex about like belief. You know, and and I I would be the one going like no dude, like you believe. Like you can't not believe. And they're all no, I don't believe. I'm all yeah, you believe that you don't believe. Like that's it's like there's no way you're getting away around that one. You know, and so it's like so it's it's not really um, you know, these worlds of like human experience and um things that are not that don't fall under the umbrella of like empirically determinable or repeatable, because there's lots of that. And and so that kind of is already out of the world of of science, you know, like experiences that you had, things that have changed your life. Like that's not a really a scientific thing, but science is just a tool, it's not it's not a thing on its own, and and there's only one species that we know of that uses it, and that's humans, and so you can't disentangle those. So, you know, I would be like the I would be like the the human sort of like side of it a lot of the times, you know. And then, you know, I I I move to places like OHI, and I have lots of friends, you know, who are not scientists or you know, and then I'm I'm like the person like telling people like no chemtrails, like you're actually like like no. I'm I I know about the the cloud seeding programs. Like, no, it's those are not chemtrails, those are like contrails. Like, let me tell you how that works. Like, you know, and then like the logic police like on that side of it. And like, it's just weird how how like it's it's like I'm I'm in all of these different worlds, and I I try to manage it well, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it's difficult.

SPEAKER_04 13:43

I find that super fascinating because I feel like we live in such a specialist world in this modern era where we've all been sort of groomed as kids to be deep specialists. And coming from the surfing world, we all all three of us can relate to this, where it's like if you want to come out on top or be at the tip of the whole surfing organism, um, you have to be a full-blown specialist, and nothing else in your life can get a look in. You just have to be that kid that's obsessive, that sacrifices family and relationships and other skills and knowledge sets just so you can be that one that wins the event over and over and over. And so, you know, that's our our experience, specifically like us three here with surfing, but I feel like that's in so many um practices, so many art forms, so many industries. Where that becomes interesting to me is when you can have someone like yourself who can actually be at the forefront of something, be it astrophysics, but also you do other things, and it's kind of uncommon a little uh to a degree, don't you think, to to be able to dance between different practices and skills in that way. And so I feel like perhaps not many of us were shown how to do that well as kids. You dance between music, surfing, physics, family life, and many other things, I'm sure. And yeah, just wondering how you how you manage that because it from the outside it seems like you do it quite well.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

I think it's it's maybe not as premeditated or deliberate as it might seem from the outside. I learned a long time ago, like I can't not surf. You know, like my first year of grad school, like I barely surfed like for an entire year. You know, it was so intense, it was crazy, you know. But you know, when I would go surfing, I would find the time to go surfing, it would be like a totally crappy day at like ocean beach, like completely blown out. Ocean beach is always difficult, you know. And I would like jump in the water and I would like get giddy. I would like giggle to myself. Do you know what I mean? Like, like it's like, dude, and I'm and it's like having those experiences over and over again. I just, you know, I mean, I just had I was out of the water for a month or so. I have this knee thing that I'm dealing with, but then just things got busy. And then I just, you know, forced myself. I didn't even look at like whatever. I'm just like, oh, it doesn't matter, dude. Just grab, I'm going to the beach. And I went down, I had my longboard, and I just went out. I blew my mind. I'm like, why have I not been doing like this is crazy? I like I can't believe that I'm not doing this like every single day. And to me, surfing definitely embodies the human experience that gives me strength and and and purpose, right? Because to me, it's a it's the wilderness. Like the the ocean is the wilderness. And I totally see it that way. Like when I get out there, it's like there's forces of nature like happening, and there's like wildlife, and and and it's like, and you, and you get into that groove where you're just like, where you're like, I'm gonna just I'm gonna paddle this way, and then and then you're like, oh dude, there's a left coming in over there, you know, and like you start to feel that you're communing with nature in a way that's just like deep and and like restorative, and that's what uh it's all about. I mean, me and my daughter, we went and surfed this beach break this morning where we literally ran up the beach like a mile. Just we ran all the way up there. Absolutely, we mean there's nobody uh throughout the whole mile, but we just went all the way up and just jumped in and just you know, sloshed around and got some close-out barrels, and you know, it was like I came back just like feeling like okay, like things are gonna be okay. Things are gonna be okay, you know? And so that that to me is you know, I I um I it's just something that I for sure will do until I just like literally can't do it anymore because you know, and then I'll probably just body surf or just like freaking bodyboard or something, you know?

SPEAKER_05 18:09

Yeah, I'm really curious about how one world spills into another of your worlds.

Pattern Recognition And Big Picture Thinking

SPEAKER_05 18:15

And so I'm wondering what about being a surfer? What about a life built around pattern recognition in the ocean? What did that allow you to see in the sky that maybe gave you a slightly different point of view?

SPEAKER_02 18:29

That's a great question. The thing that I think surfing has given me is really different than technical skills. I have to think about it more, but like for me, I it's really weird because I understand almost everything through like a surfing analogy. Literally every life lesson I can frame in terms of like a surfing scenario. And and and that's to me like where where surfing is is the gift because I I also realized at some point when I was at Caltech, I did a postdoc at Caltech. And where I found my my spot there, I found a couple little spots, but one that surprised me a little bit was that there were definitely people there that were just like I I had a hard time even tracking because they were so freaking smart. And where I really found where I I excelled was that I could see the big picture in ways that the folks I worked with couldn't. And even, you know, and I could see where they fit and how it fit with our overall kind of goals of where we wanted to go. I ended up project managing this exoplanet telescope project there with just some really great people. And I I I I really felt like I excelled at that in a way that made sense with my surfing experiences of being able to see the larger piece and to hold the larger piece even when you're consumed by details.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

I love that. That makes me think of pattern recognition and some of the conversations we've had with this podcast over the years with different people, like food growers and people who work in like system, you know, like complex living systems. And I feel like that surfing lens to look through makes me just think of like waveforms and the in the interesting nature of what you're talking about, where you're saying you you were in a dungeon or a basement that was like a dungeon studying particles, and that whole thing of like, you know, in popular culture these days, people talk about particle and waveform and the mystery of all of that dance, and how when we surf, there's you know, this is teetering on that line here where we start to talk about surfing in cheese ball ways, so we disappear and become one with the wave and all of these funny things that actually feel really real for us. But for some reason, when we try and use words, it comes out kind of cheese ball. Yeah, yes, you're nodding. I I totally get that you get that. Though there is this thing where it's it that experience of being kind of singular or an individual among that moving space of the ocean and waveforms and patterns, and when we are in the water with people who read those patterns very, very well, you can see it and it feels like magic, and they do position themselves in a way that's like many steps ahead compared to other people who don't frequent that space. And I just can't help but think that you you are one of those people there able to see those patterns and those bigger pictures. Does that ring a bell at all for you?

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah, I I do spend time focusing on that kind of stuff. Definitely. I've gained definitely some experience with that. So I don't know how to speak about it. Kind of like you're saying, though, I don't really know how to to even you know, uh to me, where where it goes for me is it goes to just the nature of consciousness. Like That's that's where my mind goes when you when you bring up these kinds of ideas, because it's such a paradox, right? It's like it's human consciousness is the is the ultimate mystery, but it's also the thing that we all have, right? So you're like, wait, how can it be the ultimate mystery if it's like literally that's what we're exercising in this very moment? You know, you know, one of one of Einstein has so many crazy quotable quotes, but um, the one where uh is like the the most unfathomable thing about the universe is that it's fathomable at all. That's the crazy thing about it. And you know, in terms of physics and astrophysics and that like hard, what we call hard science or physical science, it's really incomprehensible that you can come up with some type of mathematical relationship that expresses what nature does and doesn't have a choice but to do to follow these patterns. And and the the mathematical equations, just to be clear here, like I don't have that kind of mind where I think that the mathematical equations are the ultimate truth. Like, because I I guarantee you they're they're they're not the ultimate truth. And in fact, there's no hard theory that is ultimately correct. They're all wrong to some degree. And and that's you know, but that's not the fascinating part. That's like the of course that's true, but the fascinating part to me is that there are realms in our existence where those things describe in crazy detail, in a predictive way, exactly how they work within those realms, you know. And and that part is like, I don't even know how that's true. I don't even know why that's true. It's sort of in a weird way makes sense because time moves forward, right? Time moves forward. And so everything that comes, you know, in this moment is built upon the previous moments. So that sort of movement, it sort of makes sense in a fuzzy way, but it makes sense that that there would be some type of logic to that. That there would be like this has to because this was this is this now that it's not the moment anymore, it's what we call fact. It just like happened and these things happened, and those things have something to do with what's happening. Do you know what I mean? Like, and so that logic to me is kind of there just in the forward motion of time. The fact that we can get so precise with it is just mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_04 24:42

100%. Lauren, did you want to bring up that conversation we're having around time?

SPEAKER_05 24:48

You mentioned physical science, and I'd love to hear a bit more about what you have been searching for in the cosmos first.

A Small Telescope In A Golden Age

SPEAKER_02 24:55

So the things that I've been searching for with this observatory is sort of varied in some ways, but it sort of follows the same theme in other ways. And that theme is that our telescope, it I'm sure looks pretty impressive, and it is pretty impressive in a lot of ways. But if you compare it to sort of national level facilities, it's just a little guy. It's just a little guy that we have and you we can poke around with. Astronomy is really kind of in a golden age right now. It's really incredible, like where we are. If you think about, you know, what would Newton think if you could, if you could transport them to this moment and be like, this is what we know, or like, you know, any one of the of the sort of great minds of you know, before of long ago, they would be absolutely like they couldn't even imagine, right? I mean, Einstein knew about gravity waves when and he's like, and he just was like, nah, we're never gonna do that. So, you know, we're not. And now we have like we're literally detecting gravitational waves of colliding black holes. It's like insane. And so the facilities around the globe are are are so advanced now. And there's there's one down in Chile called the Vera Rubin Observatory. I don't know if you've heard of this one. It there's it's doing a survey, it's an eight-meter telescope. Okay, so the the diameter, you know, our telescope here has got a diameter of 0.7 meters. Okay, but this is like an eight-meter telescope, and they have the largest camera in the world on the telescope. And it takes this really deep, crazy, beautiful image of the sky, you know, like this incredible image of the sky, like every 30 seconds, and it just scans the entire cosmos and it and it returns, um, and it'll do the whole sky in I think three nights, and it will return back to doing it again every three nights for 10 years on an eight-meter telescope. So when you think about facilities like that, you're like, well, what the hell are we doing then? You know, like what are you gonna do with that thing that is gonna contribute anything? And so, really, our niche is that I don't need to answer to anybody to observe anything I want at any time. So we have uh ultimate control about when and what we observe. And because I'm lucky to have these ongoing relationships with colleagues and friends still in the astrophysics community full time, it's like we can we can sort of leverage those relationships and some of the information that's coming in on like just streaming in from all of these different observatories, from LIGO, the gravitational wave detector, from Rubin, from PanStars. It's like all these different things. And and there's like literally tens of thousands of things that pop up every night as being something that would might be worthwhile to dig deeper into. And some of those things are really perfectly suited for what we can offer. And it's really a matter of tr of staying on top of the game and then just finding the place where we can do some really useful work. Like, so for instance, exploding stars, I know you're getting me going here, you're gonna be like, okay, Swifty, there are another works. But um, so uh so exploding stars, there's many different kinds, and there's, you know, they do it in lots of different ways, and the the preconditions to these explosions are all kind of a mystery. Although we know beyond any reasonable doubt that these explosions are absolutely essential to understanding our existence, why we're we're here. You may have heard these phrases. Carl Sagan popularized one, that you know, we are made of star stuff, right? So that's just a reflection that we we know when the universe began that there was hydrogen and helium and a little bit of lithium. That's it. That the entire universe was just these very, very light elements. And and we're not really made out of that, right? I mean, we have water and there's two hydrogens and water, but you know, all the carbon and phosphorus and oxygen and all that. All of every single one of those elements was created inside stars or during the explosion of stars. And then not only was it created inside stars, but the stars had to explode and then repopulate the cosmos with this with this enriched material. And then that enriched material then formed you know later generations of stars, and it just kept enriching and enriching. It's almost like compost. It's like cosmic compost. And then finally, you know, at some point, the the richness, the chemical richness of the cosmos was enough that it could evolve into things like us, you know? And so these explosions are absolutely essential to just appreciating that whole arc. Yet there's so much that's unknown about them. And and and really one of the frontiers is really understanding the very, very early times when these when these things explode, what's happening like right as it explodes. And so this is something that we can write, because I can get a text from a colleague, you know, at like 1 a.m. And they're just like, oh, this thing's happening. And I can just pick up my phone and I can program this observatory on my phone. And we're like on that target within like two minutes. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 30:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

So this is a place where we can really contribute, you know, we can really kind of fill a little niche that can do something meaningful.

Exploding Stars And Fast Follow-Ups

SPEAKER_02 30:30

And so exploding stars is one of them. There are these things called tidal disruption events that we do. There's like some asteroids, new asteroids that we go after. Okay, quickly, what's the tidal?

SPEAKER_04 30:41

What's the what's the short of a tidal disruption event? Is that what you said? Tidal? Yeah.

unknown 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Tidal, yeah, like the tides. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, tidal forces are very interesting. That's a long

Tidal Disruption Events Near Black Holes

SPEAKER_02 30:52

conversation, too, on for many different reasons. But a tidal force, including the one that creates our tides on Earth, is is what we call a differential gravitational force. And what that means is it sounds all complicated, but it's not. It just means that Earth, you know, or gravitating bodies typically have a size, black holes notwithstanding. But you know, planets and stars or whatever, moons, they have a size. And so if you have a couple different bodies, and they they pull towards each other because gravity is an attractive force. But because they have actual sizes, it means that the force of gravity on this side of the body is actually a bit larger than the gravity on that side of the body. And that creates a stretching force. That's the differential, it's the difference between this gravity here and gravity there. And what it tends to do is it stretches out objects. So if you have a gravitational field that's like insanely strong, like around a supermassive black hole, let's just say, the gravity on this side can be so much stronger than the gravity on that side that it'll completely rip it apart. And so these tidal disruption events, they're pretty the idea goes back to the 80s or maybe 70s. Really, they weren't really kind of discovered, and and people really think that they know that's what's happening until like the 90s. And there's still less than a hundred of these things known. So what's happening is you look at a galaxy. We know that almost all galaxies have these supermassive black holes at their cores near the center. And so what will happen is some hapless star or maybe a binary system or who knows what travels into close towards the black hole, but right into this zone where the tidal forces are so strong that it destroys it, rips it apart. And then what happens is that the like basically half the material then spirals into the black hole and creates like this burst of crazy energy. And those the bursts are what we call TDEs, title disruption events. And yeah, they're they're a bit of a frontier right now. It's a way to probe the conditions near supermassive black holes. So, and that's that's why that's one of the things that's really driving that research right now, is that you're not gonna go fly your little, you know, DW bug or whatever up to a supermassive black hole and like see what's going on. There's like, how do you know what's going on around a black hole? Well, these you can think of a little star that's sacrificing its life to go probe that area of the universe. And then you can, if the more you know about what's happening there, the more you know about what's going on and around supermassive black holes.

SPEAKER_04 33:34

Is that visual? Is this is your other scopes looking at this? And that's a visual telltale, or are you reading that through other mains?

SPEAKER_02 33:42

That's a great question. Um all of these things, all the TDEs, the tidal disruption events happen so far away that we don't resolve, we can't see like the star going in like spatially. It's all just unresolved. Um, but we we measure mostly invisible light, but a little bit into the infrared. And we can measure what's going on at multiple wavelength bands between like, say, you know, really blue light and all the way into the near infrared. So we track over time how that's how that's changing.

How Water Spreads Through Space

SPEAKER_05 34:16

Hearing you speak about the birth of the universe as we know it makes me think about where water comes into play in this equation. And I just wanted to ask about how how rare is water in the cosmos?

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Not very rare. Yeah, it's kind of everywhere. Yep. Has that changed?

SPEAKER_05 34:37

Has that understanding changed in our lifetime?

SPEAKER_02 34:39

I feel like maybe that's um in our lifetime, has that changed? It was known even when we were little kids that water was out there. Actually, sort of as an aside, but kind of cool thing. Like my PhD advisor at Berkeley was part of the first study that discovered polyatomic molecules for the first time in outer space. And that was like the 60s, late 60s. So I think but we're all younger than that. But at any rate, before the 60s, it was people didn't know for sure if there were complex molecules in the cosmos. So that's very recent. Yeah. That's insanely recent. Water, as it turns out, was it was pretty quickly recognized that water is water's kind of everywhere. And we know that water is in our solar system. And you know, I'm talking about more like in the within the galaxy. First polyatomic molecule was actually ammonia, NH3, nitrogen and three hydrogens. And but from there, now the catalog of molecules that we know exist in interstellar space is mind-boggling. They like found like amino acids in space. You know what I mean? It's like insane. And tons of water in our galaxy. Oxygen is hydrogen, obviously, is very abundant. It's the most abundant element in the cosmos. Oxygen, actually, it turns out, is pretty easy to make as long as you get stars. Once you get a population of stars, you're gonna have oxygen. And so water is a relatively abundant molecule in space, but space is pretty empty. Just to get that picture in your mind that it's not like water is just floating around there, like you can go out with a cup and go get some. But you know, we've had a couple interstellar comets that have come by. There's water, there's water, they had water, or there was there's water kind of in places where matter has condensed, water will be part of that. All in the, you know, in our outer solar system, you know, when when comets come in and with Kuiper belt objects, like there's water. That's it's not as rare as you might think. Although it is weird that there's so much water on the surface of Earth. That is a weird thing. And because we know that the conditions where Earth formed when it formed in this disk, it was too hot to maintain water. It would have evaporated and been blown away. So we were like we're not a water planet, right? Like if you take the density of Earth, like the density of Earth is like silicates. It's like it's not one gram per cubic centimeter, it's more like five or six grams per cubic centimeter. It's just like rock, it's made out of rock. But the water is on all on the surface, and it's pretty clear that that water was almost certainly delivered here from a collision from an outer solar system body. And that's kind of crazy because if you think about it, if you were sitting out in the outer solar system with a bunch of snowballs, you know, like kids, and you're like, okay, who can hit Earth first? And you're like, we're throwing snowballs at Earth, like it would be really hard to hit Earth. Like, we're just this little thing, you know, kind of improbable, but I I mean, how improbable, I'm not exactly sure.

Mars Dreams Versus Earth Reality

SPEAKER_05 37:44

Yeah, there's there's all this rush of money and ambition pointed at Mars and the idea of backup planets at leaving Earth from inside the science. What does this urge say to you about how we feel about home and who we are as a species?

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Yeah, I think you know, at least the people that I converse with in the astrophysics world on a regular basis, like the the sort of Mars as a backup planet is is not like a real feasible thing. I mean, just you just look at Mars in your own way. So you're saying that is better than this. Like, you're a what are you even talking about? You're like that, that's like absolutely insane for like many different reasons. As far as I can tell, a lot of it is just driven by Elon Musk's like sort of childhood fantasy of going to Mars. And he's a trillionaire, or you know, damn near a trillionaire. So you can do that. I mean, I think that's it seems to me that's what's driving most of it.

SPEAKER_04 38:47

That's to me, that's an example of that kind of discord, you know, like people who are the most studied people in communities like yours that are looking at those planets and the space between, and then that idea that's of going there and populating a planet like that. That to me is that kind of discord outrageous.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Yeah, I I it's hard. The the Mars thing's weird too, because like it's kind of like you know what I would see. Like, this is the understanding in terms of surfing analogies. It would be like, you know, what's the crappy break like around your house that's like really crappy, but like if you're a beginner, it's kind of rad. But like, you know, I don't know, maybe there's one around there somewhere. We got ours over here, you know. And like for us, you know, we have one of those breaks there. And you know, it'd be like there's like a six-foot swell, okay, perfectly glassy, the tide is perfectly right, and everyone is like, dude, we gotta go to like Mondos. And you're like, dude, Rincon is like firing. Like, and you want to go to Mondos. I I'm kind of like, I don't know, man, go to Mondos. Like, you should go to Mondos. Like, that's what I the way I think about it. I'm like, dang. Like, but um, but you know, it gets obviously more complicated when you're talking about the course of humanity because you know, the money that's being used to do that is driven by what we do. It's like it's our money in a lot of ways, you know. So that gets way more complicated.

Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_05 40:19

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Space Ambition And Shrinking Research Funds

SPEAKER_05 42:38

I was so excited to chat with you about this topic because you you mentioned there it's you're in a golden age of astronomy. And I was wondering if this space exploration piece is part of that golden age, or if you see it as cleaved off as something else. Because observing what's what's the gap between observing and penetrating the atmosphere going there?

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Yeah. Of course. Yeah. There's some overlap, you know, in the Venn diagrams, but it's also pretty disjoint for me, at least. There's definitely a piece, and if if rocket technology keeps progressing and getting better and better and reusable and cheaper, that there's a lot of interesting things we can figure out about our own origins by sending things and probes and all that. That's definitely a fringe benefit. But it it feels in terms of like calling or um you know setting up a base on the moon. I guess when it comes down to it, I just don't know. You know, it doesn't feel uh aligned in a lot of ways. And especially when um, you know, I was just at this um American Astronomical Society conference in Pasadena where you know it's a lot of like the real deal folks, you know, and people are losing money like crazy, like federal funds to do basic research. And so you're like, wait, so if this was about learning. then the funding for the learning part wouldn't be getting pulled, right? So that's the part where it doesn't make sense to me. I'm also it's so it's not so what are what is actually the thing? And of course, there's some, you know, it doesn't take a genius to sort of surmise why countries might want to be doing these things. But to be honest, I don't know. I just know that it does not seem aligned with the, with, with really the, the goal of deepening our understanding and appreciation of, of the world and the universe that we live in and you know, and building technologies that benefit humanity. Like it doesn't feel aligned with that to me. And I think the direct evidence is that like everyone's losing money that's doing that. And it's actually a little bit I've never seen we there was like there were like politicians at the meeting. They were like giving politicians the ones that were supporting the National Science Foundation, which is a big deal in America for funding for basic research, they were like giving them awards for like thank you for supporting basic science because I've never seen in that level of I wouldn't say it's like crisis, but researchers are like, wait, dude, so we don't know if we can are going to be able to do anything. You know, the the basic research money has to be government funded because the immediate commercial returns are are not ever, they're never really predictable. Yet it's what drives everything. The basic research drives everything. And so so it's definitely disjoint.

Higher Education Value And Academic Freedom

SPEAKER_02 45:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:30

I was really keen to ask you about how you think about and speak about higher education with your students. A lot of people make the argument that pursuing a bachelor's degree is no longer a financially worthwhile investment. So yeah I was really keen to chat with you about the maybe uncaptured benefits or life upgrades that come from pursuing learning through academic institutions specifically.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Yeah great question. And and it's interesting because I'm at this boarding school where you know sometimes I feel like as a faculty what we're trying to do is sometimes not perfectly aligned with what the students and the families believe they're trying to do. You know, and it's like the classic thing where they're just like I want to go to Yale like that's what I'm doing. I'm like I don't give a damn about Yale like that has nothing to do with it. Like for me personally.

SPEAKER_05 46:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:34

Education is in a weird spot right now. There was just this thing I saw in Scientific American about the academic autonomy in America has just plummeted like in the last decade it's become I think I even have the graph on my computer. Do I have this? I do we're below Bhutan, Mozambique, Angola, Kuwait Gabon, Ecuador, Singapore, Morocco, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, those are all countries and there's a bazillion countries above us where academic autonomy is a gro is greater than in America right now. That's insane.

SPEAKER_05 47:20

Meaning that can you parse out what what that what that looks like?

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Yeah it's a scientific American article and there's lots of links and stuff that you can follow and I haven't followed all of them but they have many metrics for how they gauge all of this. But I think on the surface easily understandable level is um is the um the way that our current administration has attacked universities um for whatever whatever it's attacking the universities for and pulling funding and you know there's a thing in America like once Congress like like um grants money you know it's sort of it the con Congress is the people that hold the the the wallet and they're okay and they decide where the money goes. It's a it's the Congress it's not the it's not the executive branch that does that. But now we have so much the checks and balances that the sort of forefathers have thought of is is being compromised in so many ways that the Congress and and the you know the executive branch aren't really independent parties anymore. And so there's this thing of of threatening to take federal funding that has already been granted. You're all you can't do that. Like the executive branch can't do that. But they are doing it and they're like getting away with it. And it's like really weird and and then like the universities they're all afraid because they're like wait but we need so we have to do what like what do we need to do to like get funding and it's like and now we're it's like this really weird situation where in fact this happened I was reading because I I went to Berkeley so I get the Berkeley sort of some updates and stuff and this just happened at Berkeley and the university itself didn't didn't stand up for what's actually legally like what what the what the law actually says and it took some lady I must have been a lawyer in the law school or something I can't remember her name but she individually actually fought the government on this funding issue and won actually but the university as a whole was either I don't know what too afraid or I don't know what the deal was but they did they they didn't do it. And and so it's like this really weird situation where I mean Harvard actually stood up to some of the decisions but other universities had compromised and so it's like literally the government is bullying the top universities in in the in the country to change based on the I current ideology of our administration. That definitely has something to do with that that ranking but I'm sure there's lots of other stuff too so yeah and so the the education situation in America is really in a weird spot and and it's like like you were mentioning Lauren it's like we have to pay for it. What? Okay wait so I mean we just travel around the world and like basically every country we went to was they like college degree a higher education level that is like the foundation for a prosperous society is something that the government will happily pay for. But somehow if you want to go to college in in America you're also accepting like a $2500 like debt and you're like wait what? And like so what's the job situation look like I mean I luckily at UCLA I was able to to get an academic scholarship at some point sort of prove that you know a certain level of um whatever but um so I I had like I think I had like $15 or $20,000 of debt but that literally took me until I was 34.

SPEAKER_05 51:05

Yeah the comp the compounding the compounding interest gets you doesn't it? Yeah it's so unfair those even in Australia where you might have to take out a loan the loans don't accumulate interest which changes the lifetime of that loan and its impact on you completely.

SPEAKER_04 51:20

And also you pay it back when you start working in that field.

SPEAKER_05 51:24

Yeah. So only if you're working in that field specifically and I think there's a pay scale you pay based on how much you're earning so it yeah it's sliding right yeah yeah so that all makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 51:35

So so um it's kind of interesting and and I feel this is an unpopular sort of well I don't know how unpopular it is. Sometimes it seems unpopular maybe it's more popular than I than I give it credit for but the way I feel about education is that there's this sort of antiquated view of education where it's like well this is the thing that you need to do so just like go ahead and do it and then like it's going to be better after you do it. I think that model is dead in my opinion. And to me if you're not the active driver of your education don't waste your time just don't even waste your time okay and and I think that and I think that this is a thing that that universities in America in particular are going to have to grapple with more and more because they've had the sweetest business setup. I mean other than gambling you can't beat gambling gambling is the best business venture ever you like literally make up a game that's like you lose but somehow you still want to play the game like that's amazing. Okay you can't beat that. But other than gambling I mean you if you think about it for decades every parent in America thinks their kid's going to be a loser unless they go to college and they're willing to do whatever it takes because they love their kids. And it's like as a if you think of your of the university as a business you're like well that's easy we don't need any marketing we're just like yeah we do that we do the thing that you need so your kid's not a loser. And um and it's it's not true. So that's part of it. But now I think especially in this sort of economic climate and and with the the cost of colleges is going up and up and up that it's a real issue of like a kid that you know is 18 that doesn't I'm not talking about like people all can pay for it because that's a different thing. But that's also a minority. And it's like but someone who's like okay I want to go to college and it's just like okay how much is that going to cost? And it's like wow like wow I'm gonna be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And then but I just you know maybe your thing is like an area of study that doesn't have like a big paycheck attached to it, you know, then it it just becomes this thing where it just really gets really messed up. And in this day and age I I feel like with the ability to network and and to really find things that you are good at and that you love that like if you can find a a way to fit that can also sustain you as an 18 year old I'm like dude do that. Do that. Okay. And then later on maybe if you're like yep I I'm doing this and I'm I'm it's awesome and I want to get to the next level and what's going to really help me do that is if I go study with these people at a university I'm all yeah then go back. And by the way they will admit you because that's one of the best investments of all time because they're like here's a person who knows how to get things done. They know what they want they know that they need us we need them like boom done. It's like because that's if you think about it in an admissions uh sort of lens, you know, when when a college admits somebody it's a bit it's like an investment you know they're like so we get you know whatever $50,000 a year from this kid for four years unless that kid is just like whoa this sucks and then changes colleges or drops out. The the sure bets are the good for everybody, you know and so that that that really makes sense to be a re-entry student or I don't even know what they call them these days. So I'm not tied to it as a necessity. I freaking loved it I will tell you that and my time at in grad school was the best some of the best times of my entire life and I was really involved in something that I found really fascinating and it was like there was no better place to be for me. So it can be that it can be that for you. But if it's like this thing where you're all well they said if I do this and I'm gonna get a good job like I'm all ooh I don't know if that's actually going to work out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:39

Yeah. Lauren and I were talking about this this morning about your experience where you learnt how to learn and when you were at university like you came out of it, global financial crisis was happening. There were no jobs available for the skill set you just cultivated though what we've found over years now since that time is that your skill set of learning how to learn and stay curious and research and communicate well has stayed with you since that time. And it's so valuable.

SPEAKER_05 56:09

I'm a defender of higher education because like you I loved it so much and I feel like there are there are a lot of gifts of higher education that aren't necessarily captured in a salary. There's something about a quality of life for someone who wants to perpetually be a student and stay curious about the world there are gifts from pursuing education that I think keep giving.

SPEAKER_04 56:34

Yeah yeah and to come on board with that and additionally I'm someone who wasn't in that world and I love that you have kept your curiosity I think born from those times and the feeling of having a curiosity and then following it and following a trail of sorts comes from that period.

Stars As Friends And Shared Awe

SPEAKER_04 56:51

And that makes me think of now you John and you looking up into the night sky and feeling a sense of awe and wonder in particular and that the wonder is filled with curiosity and questions and wanting to pursue that. We have recently had a night sky to die for where we had a big block of rain that has moved on it's like it's washed the night sky crystal clear and every night we sit out under the Milky Way and the Southern cross and Maui's hook Scorpio constellation coming up out of the east we look at the negative space in the Milky Way down here. So in Australia there's a there's a deep time history with the First Nations culture about the negative space among the stars which I love and I can't wait to talk out with you about. And we would look up in the the center of the Milky Way and the emu the dark emu the head of the emu sits right under the crown of the Southern cross and extends all the way down the legs are are captured almost by Maui's hook or Scorpio constellation and we are just filled with awe and wonder. And recently sailing at night with a friend from Hawaii Chris Miyashiro he would describe to me how the stars every night when we were sailing this coast for a month or so in a tiny sailing canoe that we have he would speak about the stars as friends and friends of light that he would see every night and go, ah, here I am here they are this is where we are in the big picture of things. Super beautiful and I was so grateful to sit with him who has been through the junior program with Hokale and the Voyaging Society in Hawaii you know studying the night sky with people like Ninoah Thompson so a deep culture that has reference to celestial bodies and uh and so anyway all of that is just filled with awe and wonder and when we're listening to your song which is the run the rivers what is the name of the song again the Run Run River um you speak of the stars in a similar way.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

And that by the way that so I wrote that song when I was living in Berkeley at the time but that phrase that sentiment at the end of the first verse is from my time in Mexico. That's where that comes from when when I was when I was talking about building that chair and that is I mean I still have the vision in my mind that still can evoke the same feelings of looking out into the cosmos and feeling connected and feeling like cared for in a way. You know what I mean? Like it's like this thing where it's almost like a recognition us recognizing the cosmos is really just the cosmos recognizing itself. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's that connection that and it's you can feel it. That's the crazy thing about the the cosmos or the night sky that everyone feels I say this sometimes when I speak in like public lectures that you don't need to know a lick of astrophysics to just like have to take a pee one night and you go out and you're taking a pee and you're looking up and going oh my God like you don't need to know anything to have that feeling to the feeling that there's grander things that are like in ways unreachable, untouchable but at the same time totally relevant to your individual life like that's you can realize that without one piece of physics knowledge and that's a really powerful thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:47

Indeed I was curious to know if we could dive in even further with with those lyrics and with that sentiment.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

Friends though what why the word friends what speaks to the to the similarity to the to the constantness of the human experience you know across cultures across you know I think it I think that it the cosmos is really a unifying thing in that way so so why friends real I mean I'm happy to dive into the feeling more I don't know why I can't even remember and a lot of times when I write like that like I don't know it just freaking there it was kind of a thing you know it and I didn't think real hard about it but I will say that when I wasn't living in Mexico I was totally alone like 100% alone and um they you know I spent an enormous time alone which I really I thrive a lot in those atmospheres but I also really love people too you know and it's like that sometimes has been an interesting balance. I think just kind of quite simply the feeling that I have and it doesn't have to be stars although for me you know it really it it is connected to the stars but I've had these similar feelings even just being like sitting next to our stream. Like I like to just hike up here and sit next to the stream and I'm watching you know little you know the little water skaters and you know and then like I ran into a bear the other day and you know and just like kind of melding with the natural patterns of nature and feeling like the same feeling when you arrive at a party you know not like a rager but you arrive at like you know a Thanksgiving dinner or something and you see the people that you haven't seen and you feel all full you know like that feeling of like you're like you feel full. You're like oh my God this is amazing. And it's like that to me is like it's not people but it's like but it but it is it's it sort of is right because I think it's the same thing. It's the same thing that we're connecting with but in a in a different context. It's like this connection it's like a appreciation it's like it's the magic part where you don't you don't know what's going on but you somehow do know what's going on. You know it's like all of that I think fills us in a way that I don't know friends it just makes it makes sense to me that that would be the word it feels homey. It feels comfortable you know relationship is a fantastic yeah there you go that's the word I'm missing it's the relationship. It's absolutely the

Teaching Teens To Catch The Moment

SPEAKER_02 1:03:36

relationship.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:36

John you get to work with teenagers and let them have a go maybe at this incredible piece of equipment this research telescope you're pointing it out into the cosmos. What do you see deep time and space do to teenage brains?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

Yeah it does some good things for sure I can imagine I uh yeah and I'm also you know yeah I I want to link this back to your point about ed higher education Lauren because I too am a I feel like a defender of higher education but I'm not like I don't know what others peop other people's lives are and I can imagine someone's life that like doesn't have that and I think that's okay too you know but like because there's something that transcends education that is more important than the education itself. And to me if that piece that transcends education isn't the thing that's getting you into education then I don't think the education is worth it. I don't feel like I I push the kids in any direction and there are some kids that go through here that never do the program, never participate and they're awesome kids and I'm like totally fine with it. You know when you have like a good book that you or even you know even worse sometimes like a a song that you just is like blowing your mind and you're just like oh my God dude you gotta hear this song. Like the song is like the craziest song it's like the most crazy thing. And then you like sit down with your friend or whoever it is and like you play it and you're like oh yeah and then this part and then like and you see that they're just like they're all yeah it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:26

You know that's me with dad when I share it with Lauren.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

So and like I think that's totally fine. And and it's like neither of those experiences are any more valid than the other but it's like at the same time like if if you're not ready for it like it ain't worth it. Like you can't make some kid read a book and have the experience that you had when you read the book. I'm all about like the book passing off as a timing thing. Do you know what I mean? It's like because Books, I mean, some of the books that have had the biggest impacts on my life, like they were just they came in at the it was the Mavic thing. It's not that it was the real, I mean, it was the book, but it's also the timing, you know. And it's like you're all, oh my God, this is like this is the thing. And so what I try to do with my kids is I try to set them up. I try to like corral them in the most sort of subtle way to be ready for those moments, to be ready to because it's happening all the time. That's kind of a crazy thing. It's happening all the time. And it's like it's really this dance of where are these things, like, you know, almost like a pinball of like ding ding-ding. And it's like those moments where it like locks in, like the one we started with, like seeing Hail Bob, like that was a crazy moment where it all came together. You know, like if I was in New York City partying, or you know, like I may and I may have seen Hail Bop and went, well, that was red, and like that was it, right? It was like everything that was like coming together. And it's like I try to build this the soft skills in these kids to recognize that it's not about being a robot. It's not about like just doing the things transactionally, because if I do this, then it will lead to this, or like whatever, like a surfing analogy. It's like whatever, you surf a lot of crappy waves and stuff, and and you like it, and it's great, and like you stay with it. And and it's like in a lot of ways, it's like there will be these moments in your surfing life where it's like, you're all dude, that this is like the wave, like, oh my God. And it's like if you have it, it's everything needs to come together for you to like be in the right spot, for you to like have the timing down, for you to like, you know, and it's like those, that's where the meaning is. And it's like we're constantly prepping for those moments in our life, and that's kind of what we're doing. That's like what meditation is to me. Like, it's just like you're just getting ready for like when things are like when you're all ah, this is it, and I'm not gonna miss this one. I'm catching this one, like we're doing this, you know? And so that can be the cosmos for kids. And I've seen it be the and it's like, and I feel lucky to be there in those moments because I feel like I'm pretty good at like, I'm all, oh, you got I'm okay. We're this is it, then this is it. Then we go, then we're then there's no limit. There's no limit. We can go, you know, you can do that as as far as you want. And if you don't, I'm like, cool, then don't. That's cool too. I think my whole thing, like, I do love the Astro and I love all that stuff, but it's just a piece of the of the whole. And and the things that really matter actually transcend any of those individual pieces, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:50

Yeah, wonderful. I'm curious to know what you were gonna raise with Lauren when you were talking earlier, where you said something about there was something you had

Surf Physics And The Magic Of Trim

SPEAKER_04 1:09:00

to bring up.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

Well, I just I want to tell you this story just because it's kind of fun and uh and uh I I it's not a big long one. I think I called you or I can't remember what happened, but I remember like the second you started talking about like the vision for your project, I was just like totally delighted. I'm all oh my god, I'm all she already knows this shit. I'm like, I'm all this is amazing! Like this, I can't believe like you knew your stuff, like you fully knew your stuff, like way beyond the level that I would have thought. And so it made it like so joyful for me to work with you because of your own level of expertise. But you're clearly I'm all dude. She did her homework like 100%. And it felt like really amazing. So I wanted to give you kudos for that. And I forget the context that that came up, but it was like super awesome because more often than not, you know, it's like, oh, my friend has like he has this idea about quantum mechanics that he wants to tell you. And I'm like, okay. And then I like I go sit down at dinner and I'm all, oh my God, I need to get out of here.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:04

I'm glad it didn't turn up. It was not. I don't know if you recognize it, but this is the room where physics was just I see that. I'm so grateful for your time and your incredible enthusiasm and the way you weave the hard science with the wonder and the magic. And that was what I was really trying to convey with that project while focusing in on this part of surfing that has captured my imagination for my whole life. And I just wanted to pay a little bit of homage to the beauty of it. So thank you for making that possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:41

Uh it was a pleasure working with you, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:44

Yeah, it was a real enrichment for me too, as uh someone who walks or trods or trips up to the nose and then winds the windows up, winds the windows down, and then eats shit every time. I have no physical understanding of what's going on, nor a cerebral one. But now I have a cerebral one at least in my mind. I know what's going on, the coander effect and all these pressure points and everything. And it was really enriching and really enlightening because of that um that magical sense of what's going on. And I get these like tiny glimpses before I fall over where I'm like, whoa, there is this levitational feeling where you are standing on a point of the board where the board is perhaps not even touching the water, the rest of the board is, but you're on the tip, like, and when you see Lauren or people who can ride the nose well do that, it's mystifying. And it is, you know, those. I think there was a couple of home seas shots in there, that one in particular where it's like an underwater shot where you see the water. And you see the vortex.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

I know exactly which one you're talking about. I've actually talked to Dave about that exact shot. Yeah, he nailed it. Gorgeous shot. Yeah. He nailed it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:59

I still get messages from teachers who say they they use physics in the classroom, which is just like ultimate success for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

That's like highest measure of success. Actually, I I haven't used it, but I'm I'm gonna be teaching fluids next year. And I'm totally gonna I'm totally gonna use it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:17

Okay, I've I've gotta

Spin, Vortices, And Spiral Universes

SPEAKER_04 1:12:18

I've gotta, while we've got you trapped here for a moment, I've gotta ask you about spin and and vortex, the the spiral nature of things. Are you forever in awe of what happens, the magic or the dynamic nature of spin? What happens? Are you observing like spin and that motion just like everywhere throughout the galaxies, throughout particles? Yes, yes, lots of nodding. Yes, yes. Can you share a little?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

Yeah, well, yeah, okay, there's lots of different contexts for it. But uh spin is a whole world, rotational motion is a whole world. And um there's a whole set uh of principles that underlie how things rotate and the quantities, okay. So in physics, one of the sort of really deep concepts that are really universal are um conservation laws. So things that are conserved, things that once you have it, it doesn't go away, but it it gets transferred in other ways. Okay, so the conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, conservation of mass slash energy, um things like that. But there is also a conservation of angular momentum, which is once something starts to spin, that will continue spinning until it is dissipated by external forces or dissipates to the molecular scale, essentially. So when you have, I mean, a lot of what we see in the cosmos is a balance between uh gravity, which holds things together, the the laws of thermodynamics, which is when you try to contain something, when you compress something, it heats up. Okay. This is where stars come from, right? It's a battle between the laws of thermodynamics and gravity, okay, and angular momentum. Those three things can really account for the majority of everything that you see in the cosmos is kind of crazy. And, you know, everything in our solar system is revolving around the sun essentially in the same direction. There's some weirdos and stuff, but most of the angular momentum of all the planets is in the same direction. They even spin in the same direction that they revolve for the most part. Venus is a weirdo and Uranus is a little bit of a weirdo, but everything, all the other major planets and the sun, all doing that. And the reason that they're doing that is because they formed from a cloud that collapsed. And as gravity collapsed it down, it spun faster and faster and turned into a disk that was all rotating in the same direction. And everything that formed in that disk was rotating in the same direction, and the sun itself was rotating in the same direction. So our entire solar system is really this conservation of angular momentum. Are galaxies the same thing? Spiral galaxy. It's that's a conservation of angular momentum.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:40

How do humans act out that spiral pattern? How do you think that impacts us on an individual level?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:46

Well, what I would say is this we could use the physical models of the physical universe that we understand to help gain insight into our own psychological and spiritual patterns. I think that's a valid use. Um, though I would be cautious to go the other direction and to try to quantify, like, oh, I have an equation that, you know, describes your mood in the morning or whatever, right? Like it's like I think the model can be used validly, but I think it it's limited uh into what it can actually predict, or you know, it the power of that analogy is somewhat limited. But um, but yeah, I mean, the whole cyclical, you know, the cycle of life absolutely is like falls within this grander concept, right? Or just you know, the rise and fall of nations, you know, or just you know, or when we have a bad thought, and then that bad thought makes us feel a certain way that amplifies the bad thought, right? We call that a downward spiral, right? There's like a momentum to it, right? There's like nervousness, like you can you can spiral, you can be you can, you know, the analogy of being caught in an eddy, right? Of when you're like in these states. Like I think that's those are totally valid, and I think that they're insightful into the way that human consciousness works. Though I will be the first to tell you, like, I don't really know how human consciousness works, but we do see we do see these patterns. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:19

Yeah. I feel like one of the most beautiful and wonderful and awe-inspiring areas that we see this pattern is as surfers and as kids, or just people interacting with you know, liquid water with the ocean in particular, with wave forms. And just the other day we we were playing at the beach, and uh the waves are only like one foot and mostly straight, and I just kept stuffing my head into these little close-out

Wave Energy, Sound, And Consciousness

SPEAKER_04 1:17:46

tubes just so I could see that spiral around me. Yeah, yeah. And we all are totally transfixed and changed by that. There's something that changes in us when we're in that space and we come out. We don't have to be on a board doing theatrical, technical things, just being in that space does something to us, and it's not always understood with our minds what it is, but there's a there's a wonder and a joy after being in that.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:14

We we know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So, what happens to that wave energy? Do you feel like it it pours through us and then ripples onward? How do you how do you think about what happens?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:27

How do I view that? I okay, this is interesting because I I in some ways I think I know too much because that energy, I could account for all of that energy physically. I could account for it. So that's gonna turn into well, sound is part of it, right? Um, the what's gonna happen is the water is going to become turbulent, okay, but that turbulence in the water is going to cascade down from larger scales to smaller scales to smaller and smaller scales that eventually dissipates on the smallest scale, which will actually warm up the water in some incremental way. And there's there's none of that energy that I feel is unaccounted for. So that's an interesting piece. But at the same time, what is that interaction that makes us feel ways that then changes the way that we make decisions in our life? Because that's also some kind of energy. And what is that and where does that come from? And like what I have no idea. It's not the energy of the wind, which is the energy of the sun, right? You talk about this in your film, right? We you go through the whole thing, like the sun, right? It creates these temperature gradients, which then create winds, and the winds two fluids across two surfaces. You have an instability called the Kelvin Helmholtz instability that create when you have two fluids of different densities going across each other, that means that any the tiniest microscopic deviation from a perfectly flat surface will amplify because the second it's a tiny bit of deviation, the wind will push on it. And when it pushes on it, it will grow. This is called the Kelvin Helmholtz instability. And that's what creates waves. This is what this is the birth of every wave that you've written in your life, is the is the two fluids of different densities flowing across each other, right? And that energy is a kinetic energy. And then it gets translated into a gravitational potential energy. This is what gives the waves their height, right? And then these things travel almost frictionlessly, you know, without dissipation through some dissipation, but not much, through these oceans over vast, vast distances. And then they hit the the sh the bottom, and then that kinetic energy gets translated into potential energy. And those that rising of the water, that's the thing we ride, you know, and it's incredible to be part of that. It's cosmic, like by its very nature, and you know, and then and then we come away changed people. But the energy that all of that energy, the sun, the wind, the kinetic motion, the gravitational potential, it can all be accounted for in ways that don't land inside us. So so then it's like, so what is that connection?

SPEAKER_04 1:21:21

I'm curious.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:21

You're gonna have to let me know when when you figure that out. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:25

I'm curious in that little spot there where you speak about sound, and if it is trans if a if a tiny measurable amount of that broken wave translates to sound, and we are standing there and we are porous creatures, and that sound moves into us. Yeah. Yep. So then do we not?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:47

It moves into us, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good point. Is that measurable? So some of that energy, yeah. Absolutely. It goes into your ear, it moves the little hairs in your cochlea. That movement of those hairs create electrical signals that then translate into the electrical energy in our brains. So, so that that is that energy, that energy, cosmic energy is entering our bodies. Correct. Yeah. But how is that different? You can just listen to the same sound in the earphones and you won't have the same experience.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:21

Is that a proximity thing? Is that because it's gone through so many other things to get to that recording then play in your mind compared to when we're in that space physically?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:30

I don't know. I mean, you can say the same thing about, you know, like the things that you see, right? So the barrel that you're in, right? It's like, well, you couldn't see that unless there was light. Where does the light come from? Well, usually mostly coming from the sun. That's that's essentially nuclear reactions happening deep inside the sun that are then, you know, filtering, you know, um, what is that, diffusing out of the sun and then streaming across space, you know, hitting the surface of the water, illuminating it, and then bouncing those photons into your eyeball, which then hits your retina, that then creates an electrical signal that goes into your brain. So we are receptors of that energy. So that's true. But what is it about? That's just energy. Energy is what we call it's it has a quantity of an amount. It doesn't have necessarily, it has a form, but not necessarily a quality. Like, you know, 10 joules of energy is like 10 joules of energy. Why does that 10 joules of energy change your life? And then the other 10 joules of energy is like it's just noise.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:42

So that that's the part where I don't, I don't know. So I mean, I think you bring up a great point. It is we are receptive.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:49

Yeah, I love it. Maybe that's the reason why we, you know, we keep going back in the hopes that if we expose ourselves to that over and over for decades, maybe we will get it one day.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:00

Yeah, or maybe, you know, like I don't know enough about like cognitive psychology or neuroscience to to know this stuff, but it's feasible to think that you know, those experiences are patterns that then create patterns within us that then ultimately start defining like who it is that we are. It becomes your very nature because the patterns that those experiences are actually creating inside of us. You know, and so in that way, in a very that's a very rudimentary take on all of it, but that is essentially the energy and the way that that energy is entering into us is creating the pattern that is the thing that we call ourselves.

Aging, Inner Space, And Gratitude

SPEAKER_05 1:24:41

Do you feel like there's still a question that compels you, one that you're still trying to get to the bottom of?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:48

Yeah, I feel like uh in a lot of ways, uh I've felt like this for a long time. Like I felt like I was born to be an old person. It's kind of a weird thing to say, but you you? Me too. Okay, okay. Me too.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:04

I've never heard anyone else say that before.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:06

Yeah. So I'm I'm totally born to be, and I think it all makes sense. Like, you know, because I was really stupid when I was young. One of the things that I just love is that I feel I'm getting less stupid. And I'm like, that's amazing. And I I really, if I could just get rid of the bodily pain part, aging would be the best thing ever. Like, I'm like, dude, this is way better, except for the pain. You know, and and so to me, peeling back these layers and understanding, contextualizing and just practicing life in new and exciting ways that I feel like are aligned with deeper and deeper levels of my core self is like what it's all about. And I I feel super motivated to keep doing that. I feel like the cosmos, the infinity that we observe in space and time in our cosmos, that is in some ways, that is exactly a mirror of our inner worlds. Do you know what I mean? And I think that no matter how far we go, there's always farther. There's always like, and then that way going out is going in. Like I feel like that very acutely, that the more sort of exploring you do this direction is really just an exploration in that direction, you know, and it's like in so many different ways. And so I feel like I'm lucky to be alive, you know, and and it's like, sure, bad things happen and I've been super unlucky in some ways, but I feel overall like I feel insanely lucky. I'm feel insanely lucky to know the people that I know, to have had the experiences that I've had, to have the family that I have. And I feel like it's just I don't feel like it's ending. You know what I mean? I'm all know there's like there's even more. There's more and more beautiful, and like the more I feel like I understand, the more enriching the experience becomes. And so there isn't a question, but I think there's like kind of a direction, you know, that I've still inspires me and yeah, keeps me moving forward.

Closing Music And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_01 1:27:26

Run, run river, carry me to my home in the ocean. Carry me away. I know I have a home somewhere far, and I'll move like the stars that make you feel like you got friends.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:48

Thanks for listening with us today. Our editor this season is the multi-talented Ben Jake Alexander. The soundtrack was composed by Shannon Soul Carroll, with two tracks from John Swift, including Living in the Unknown and Run River. We'll be continuing today's conversation on Instagram, where we're at Water People Podcast. And we're now on Substack. Sign up to get bi-monthly updates in our newsletter called Field Notes. It's where we share behind the scenes stories from making the podcast and the books, films, and music we're absorbed in at the moment. Written by us, free to read. Link is in the show notes.