Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face (#445)
“I used to resent obstacles along the path, thinking, ‘If only that hadn’t happened, life would be so good.’ Then I suddenly realized, life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path.” — Janna Levin
Janna Levin (@jannalevin) is the Tow Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. She has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. Janna is also director of sciences at Pioneer Works, a cultural center dedicated to experimentation, education, and production across disciplines, as well as Pioneer Works’ virtual home, The Broadcast.
Janna’s books include How the Universe Got Its Spots and the novel A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, which won the PEN/Bingham Prize. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant awarded to those “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship.” Her last book, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, is the inside story on the discovery of the century: the sound of spacetime ringing from the collision of two black holes over a billion years ago. Her new book, Black Hole Survival Guide, is scheduled for publication near the end of 2020.
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#445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face
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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
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Want to hear an episode with Universe in Verse’s co-conspirator? Listen to my conversation with Maria Popova in which we discuss how to live a meaningful life, how to write for an audience of one, Maria’s note-taking system, and much, much more.
#39: Maria Popova on Writing, Work Arounds, and Building BrainPickings.orghttps://rss.art19.com/episodes/5f940ed6-b77d-4228-bbef-35601541b0cd.mp3Download
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Connect with Janna Levin:
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Pioneer Works
The Broadcast
How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin
Black Hole Survival Guide by Janna Levin
Columbia University | New York City
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Trolley Problem Explained | World Science Festival
Understand Calculus in 35 Minutes | The Organic Chemistry Tutor
The Trolley Problem and Self-Driving Cars | Foundation for Economic Education
Quantum Physics May Be Even Spookier Than You Think | Scientific American
The Large Hadron Collider | CERN
How the Higgs Boson Was Found | Smithsonian Magazine
The Higgs Boson Was Initially Called the ‘Goddamn Particle’ | ZME Science
Two Things Are Infinite: the Universe and Human Stupidity | Quote Investigator
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation | Space
If You Keep Going Around the Universe, Will You End Up Where You Started? | Gizmodo
PAC-MAN
Rippin’ the Rainbow a New One | Radiolab
True Facts About The Mantis Shrimp | Ze Frank
What Is a Four-Dimensional Space Like? | Einstein for Everyone
Life on a Möbius Strip: The Greatest Moth Story Ever Told, About the Unlikely Paths That Lead Us Back to Ourselves | Brain Pickings
The Moth
The Mathematical Madness of Möbius Strips and Other One-Sided Objects | Smithsonian Magazine
The Handedness of the Universe | Scientific American
The Human Genome Project | NIH
Why I Teach by Eric S. Lander | The Moth
The Long Ukranian Winters by Roald Hoffmann | The Moth
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Knopf Doubleday
Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Arrival | Prime Video
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee
Levels of the Game by John McPhee
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction No. 3 | The Paris Review
Little, Big by John Crowley
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
5 Real Possibilities for Interstellar Travel | PBS Space Time
Interstellar | Prime Video
The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan
Gravitational Waves Detected 100 Years After Einstein’s Prediction | LIGO Lab, Caltech
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll
“I Think We Have to Take Peyote and Speak to the Pangolin” | Twitter
What Is the Big Bang Theory? | Space
Stars: We Are Their Children | Cosmos
Pandemic, Recession, Unrest: 2020 and the Confluence of Crises | US News
Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by Brian Greene
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss
The Universe in Verse | Brain Pickings
A Brave and Startling Truth: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads Maya Angelou’s Stunning Humanist Poem That Flew to Space, Inspired by Carl Sagan | Brain Pickings
Earthrise | NASA
Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) | The Bible
The US Military Has Officially Published Three UFO Videos. Why Doesn’t Anybody Seem to Care? | The Conversation
SHOW NOTES
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Timestamps will be added shortly.
As a self-confessed reckless kid, does Janna recall any notable instances of getting in trouble in her youth?
The car accident that, for the sake of Janna’s parents’ sanity, led her to college.
What did Janna think she wanted to be when she graduated from college, and what seemed to point in this direction rather than where she wound up? How did she become an omnivorous reader?
What are the differences between the answers that Janna got in pursuit of philosophy and the answers that she later sought from science — and what made her switch tracks?
What did Janna’s college chemistry and math teachers see in her that led them to suggest physics as a potential focus? What might have indicated an inclination toward science from an even earlier age?
Favorite philosophers Janna might recommend to a philosophy newcomer.
As the classic trolley problem has moved from undergrad philosophy thought experiment to real-world application in the development of autonomous driving, what quantifiable answers can we start to expect from the field of theoretical physics?
In order to understand how it’s possible that the universe might be finite, one only needs to ask: how is it possible that Pac-Man is a donut that doesn’t live in a higher-dimensional space?
The power of math to extend beyond the limits of human perception.
Janna talks about Life on a Möbius Strip, called “the greatest Moth story ever told” by mutual friend Maria Popova.
Why did Janna initially keep this story a secret — even from her closest friends?
How did Janna feel during and after giving the talk? Has she taken other types of internal pressure, angst, or emotion and turned them into art?
How Janna thinks of writing as sculpture, and who stands out for her (and me) as truly masterful “sculptors.”
Janna shares her physicist’s-eye-view of time and what the math tells us about how interstellar travel would work.
Janna speaks to the tension between the vast, macro-longitudinal picture of the universe we’re stretching to reach and the comparatively minuscule day-to-day political and biological realities we’re currently enduring here on Earth.
What new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved Janna’s life, and what led to this realization?
Why privilege can be more of a disadvantage than a boon when adversity eventually comes knocking.
As a girl of words who became a woman of numbers, Janna has been taking part in poetry readings lately. What’s the story behind the poem she chose to read at the 2018 Universe In Verse?
Wine, UFOs, and other parting thoughts.
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Toni Morrison
Philip Roth
Ernest Hemingway
Immanuel Kant
Albert Einstein
Martin Heidegger
David Albert
Carl Sagan
Bertrand Russell
Ludwig Wittgenstein
John Locke
George Berkeley
David Hume
René Descartes
Leonard Susskind
Sean Carroll
Brian Greene
Warren Malone
Eric Lander
Roald Hoffmann
Catherine Burns
Kazuo Ishiguro
Don DeLillo
Cormac McCarthy
William Faulkner
Dan Frank
Ted Chiang
Jorge Luis Borges
John McPhee
Clark Graebner
Arthur Ashe
David Foster Wallace
Carlo Rovelli
Kip Thorne
Lynda Obst
Roger Penrose
Maria Popova
Emily Levine
Maya Angelou
Lia Halloran
