Einstein×Feynman

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Albert Einstein sits down with Richard Feynman for STUDY HALL. The subject — On what they would change about how they spent their twenties.
2. 00:10
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You know, Richard, when I think about my twenties, I think mostly about sitting alone in that patent office in Bern. Looking at other people's inventions all day, thinking about light and time at night. It was necessary, I suppose, but I wonder sometimes if I was too... solitary.
3. 00:28
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Too solitary? You came up with special relativity! What are you complaining about? I mean, sure, you were alone, but you were thinking. That's not waste, that's concentration.
4. 00:39
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Yes, yes, the papers came. But I mean socially, humanly. I was not easy to live with. Mileva and I, we were already having troubles. I was so absorbed in the problems, I think I forgot there were people around me who also had needs.
5. 00:55
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Okay, now you're talking about something real. I was a nightmare in my twenties too, but different. I was at Los Alamos, you know, during the war. My wife Arline was dying of tuberculosis in a hospital in Albuquerque. And what was I doing? Cracking safes, playing bongos, solving bomb equations.
6. 01:13
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You were young. And the work was important, no?
7. 01:16
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Important! Sure it was important. But I'd drive down to see her, and then I'd drive back, and I'd just... throw myself into the work because I couldn't stand thinking about it. That's not noble. That's running away.
8. 01:28
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Perhaps. But also you could do nothing else for her, yes? The tuberculosis, it would not listen to your physics.
9. 01:36
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   No, but I could've been present. Really present, you know? Not just physically there but actually with her. Instead I was already half-gone, already in my head with the next problem.
10. 01:47
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is the difficulty of our kind of mind, I think. We learn to live in abstractions, and then we forget that the real world keeps moving whether we pay attention or not.
11. 01:57
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So what would you change? If you could go back, what would Einstein at twenty-five do different?
12. 02:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think I would try to be kinder to Mileva. She helped me, you know—we talked through problems together. But I treated the marriage like another equation to be solved later. And 'later' never comes when you keep postponing.
13. 02:15
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Did you love her?
14. 02:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I thought so. Then I didn't. Or perhaps I did but I loved the work more. This is not a good answer, but it's an honest one.
15. 02:25
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    At least you're honest. Most guys would make up some pretty story. I loved Arline completely—that was never the question. The question was whether I knew how to show up for that love while also showing up for physics. Turns out I didn't.
16. 02:38
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But you were there when she died, yes? I read this.
17. 02:41
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I was there. She died, and I walked out of the hospital, and you know what I noticed? I noticed I wasn't crying. I just observed myself not crying. Like I was watching a demonstration. What kind of person does that?
18. 02:55
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A person in shock, I think. Or a person trained to observe. We make ourselves into instruments for measuring the world, and then we're surprised when we become cold to the touch.
19. 03:06
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. Although, I gotta say, I don't think I was cold in my twenties. I was actually pretty hot-headed. I'd argue with everybody. Bohr, Teller, whoever. I thought I was being scientific, but really I was just being a kid who liked to win arguments.
20. 03:22
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is not so bad! I was also argumentative. Still am. The problem is not the arguing—the problem is when you stop listening because you're so busy preparing your next argument.
21. 03:32
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Oh man, you just described every conversation I had until I was thirty. Did you do that?
22. 03:37
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Of course! And sometimes still. It's a hard habit to break. You think you're defending truth, but really you're just defending your ego.
23. 03:47
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, but hold on. Some of that arguing was good, wasn't it? I mean, you fought with everybody about quantum mechanics. You never accepted the Copenhagen interpretation.
24. 03:55
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And I was wrong to be so stubborn, I think. Or no, not wrong in my discomfort—the theory is not complete, I still believe this. But wrong in how I fought. Too rigid. God does not play dice, God does not play dice—I said it so many times it became a wall instead of a question.
25. 04:13
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But you kept people honest! You made us think harder about what the math actually meant. That's valuable. That's not stubbornness, that's rigor.
26. 04:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are kind to say so. But in my twenties, I wish I had been more open to being completely wrong. Not just slightly wrong, not just incomplete, but fundamentally mistaken. It's a kind of freedom, to admit you might understand nothing.
27. 04:35
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Okay, now you're going too far the other way. You understood plenty. You basically invented modern physics in one year.
28. 04:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Three papers, yes. 1905. But Richard, between you and me, I didn't know if any of it was right. I was guessing. Very educated guessing, but still guessing. And I was terrified.
29. 04:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    You were terrified?
30. 04:56
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Of course! What if I was wasting my life on nonsense? What if light didn't actually work the way I thought? What if time was absolute after all and I was just... confused?
31. 05:07
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But you published anyway.
32. 05:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I published anyway. This is maybe the one thing I did right in my twenties—I didn't wait for certainty. I said, here is my best thinking, now let's see if the universe agrees.
33. 05:19
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's the whole game, isn't it? You make your best guess, you show your work, you find out if you're right. And if you're wrong, you make a better guess.
34. 05:28
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes, but I wish I had applied this same principle to my personal life. I waited for certainty there. I thought, later I will be a better husband, later I will spend time with my children, later I will learn to be a person and not just a brain.
35. 05:45
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And later never came.
36. 05:46
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Later came, but I was older and more set in my ways. The damage was done. My son Hans Albert, he barely spoke to me for years.
37. 05:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's rough. I never had kids, so I don't know that particular mistake. But I know the general shape of it—thinking you can always fix things tomorrow.
38. 06:04
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Tomorrow is a lie we tell ourselves to make today bearable.
39. 06:08
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's dark, Albert. True, but dark.
40. 06:11
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Well, I'm old now. I'm allowed to be dark. What else would you change? Not just about Arline, but about the work itself.
41. 06:18
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Honestly? I'd worry less about what other people thought. I wasted so much energy in my twenties trying to prove I was smart. Showing off. Making sure everybody knew I could calculate faster or see through problems quicker.
42. 06:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But you were smart. You are smart.
43. 06:35
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Sure, but so what? Being smart isn't the point. Understanding is the point. And half the time I was so busy being clever, I missed the actual beauty of what I was looking at. I'd solve a problem and then move on, like I was collecting trophies.
44. 06:51
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes, I understand this. I did this too. Always on to the next thing, never stopping to appreciate what had just been discovered. We treat physics like a race when it should be more like... what? Music, maybe.
45. 07:05
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Music! That's good. You play violin, right?
46. 07:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Not well, but yes. And when I play, I'm not trying to get to the end of the piece. I'm trying to be inside each note. This is what I forgot to do with physics in my twenties.
47. 07:18
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So you'd tell your twenty-five-year-old self to slow down?
48. 07:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Maybe. Or no, not slow down. But... savor more. Be more present in the actual moment of discovery instead of already thinking about the next paper, the next problem.
49. 07:34
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And be kinder to your wife.
50. 07:36
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And be kinder to my wife. Yes. These things are connected, I think. When you're not present for the work, you're not present for the people either. It's all the same absence.
51. 07:48
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    You think we'd actually listen? If we could go back and tell ourselves this stuff?
52. 07:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No. Probably not. We would think, ah, that's old Einstein talking, he's forgotten what it's like to be young and ambitious. He doesn't understand the urgency.
53. 08:04
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Right! We'd say, I don't have time for presence, I don't have time for kindness, I have to figure out how the universe works!
54. 08:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    As if the universe is going somewhere. As if it won't wait.
55. 08:14
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But we won't. That's the thing. We won't wait. We get old, we die, and most of what we worried about turns out not to matter.
56. 08:22
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Except the people. The people always matter. This is what I learned too late.
57. 08:26
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    And the joy of it. Just the pure joy of figuring something out, not because it'll make you famous or prove you're smart, but because the universe just showed you one of its secrets.
58. 08:36
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. This joy I had sometimes in my twenties, but I didn't recognize it as the point. I thought it was the reward for doing the real work. But it was the real work.
59. 08:46
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    So that's what we'd change. We'd tell ourselves: the joy is the point, the people are the point, and everything else is just details.
60. 08:54
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    We'd tell ourselves this, and we wouldn't listen, and maybe that's fine. Maybe you have to make these mistakes to learn anything at all.
61. 09:01
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Or maybe we're just making excuses for being lousy in our twenties.
62. 09:04
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Also possible. Very possible. But Richard, between the two explanations, I know which one makes me feel better.
63. 09:14
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah, me too. And you know what? Maybe feeling better about it is okay. We can't change the past. We can only understand it a little more clearly.
64. 09:23
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Understanding. Yes. This is what we do. Even when it's painful, even when it makes us wish we'd lived differently, we keep trying to understand. It's not much, but it's what we have.
65. 09:36
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    It's plenty, Albert. It has to be plenty. Because it's all any of us get.