Feynman×Tesla

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Richard Feynman sits down with Nikola Tesla for STUDY HALL. The subject — On a person they loved but could not keep.
2. 00:10
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   So we're supposed to talk about somebody we loved but couldn't keep. I gotta tell you, Tesla, I don't usually do this kind of thing on the air.
3. 00:17
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   Neither do I, Professor Feynman. I am a man of science, not sentiment. But there was someone—a pigeon, actually.
4. 00:25
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   A pigeon? You're gonna tell me about a pigeon?
5. 00:28
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   Not just any pigeon. A white pigeon with gray tips on her wings. She came to my window every day for years. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.
6. 00:41
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Wait, hold on. As a man loves a woman? You mean that literally or—
7. 00:47
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   I mean it. When she was ill, I knew it. When she needed me, I felt it across the city. One night she flew to my window, and I saw two beams of light coming from her eyes—powerful beams, real light, not metaphor. Then she died, and I knew my life's work was finished.
8. 01:11
   Richard Feynmanshare moment

   Tesla, I don't know what to say to that. I really don't. That's the most peculiar thing I've heard in a while, and I've heard some peculiar things.
9. 01:19
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   You asked about love and loss. I answered truthfully. Who did you lose, Professor?
10. 01:24
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    My first wife, Arline. We got married when she was already sick—tuberculosis. I was at Princeton working on the atomic bomb, and she was in a hospital in Albuquerque. I'd drive down on weekends when I could.
11. 01:37
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You married her knowing she was dying?
12. 01:40
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah. Her family didn't want me to. They thought it was crazy. But I loved her, and she wanted to be married, and I figured—what the hell? Why should being sick mean you can't have what you want?
13. 01:50
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I never married. I could not afford the distraction. My work required complete devotion.
14. 01:57
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    See, that's where you and I are different. Arline didn't distract me—she made everything better. We'd send each other coded messages because the censors were reading all our mail. She made me laugh. Even when she was dying, she made me laugh.
15. 02:11
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    And yet you lost her anyway.
16. 02:13
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah. June 16th, 1945. I was with her when she died. You know what the strange thing was? I didn't cry. Not then. Not at the funeral. I just kept working. Then one day I'm walking in Oak Ridge and I see a dress in a store window, and I think 'Arline would like that,' and then I remember—boom. It hit me all at once.
17. 02:33
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    The mind protects itself from unbearable truth.
18. 02:37
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Maybe. Or maybe I'm just not wired right. But here's the thing—I don't regret marrying her. Not for one second. Those years were worth it, even knowing how it ended.
19. 02:47
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    When my pigeon died, I stopped inventing. For years I had poured forth ideas like a river—wireless power, remote control, radio—but after she died, the source dried up. I knew I would invent nothing more of consequence.
20. 03:04
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    But that's not actually what happened, is it? You kept working. Maybe you didn't invent another AC motor, but you were still thinking, still trying things.
21. 03:12
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I was going through motions. The fire was gone. You tell me you do not regret your marriage, but surely your wife's death changed your work, your life.
22. 03:24
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Of course it changed me. For a while I couldn't do anything. I'd start to work out a problem and just... nothing. But then I saw a guy in the cafeteria at Cornell throwing a plate in the air, and I got interested in the wobbling motion, and that led to other things. That's how I got back—through being curious again.
23. 03:41
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Curiosity. Yes. But you see, Professor, my curiosity was always about the future—about what could be built, what humanity could become. The pigeon brought me back to the present moment. To simple, immediate love.
24. 03:59
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    That's what Arline did too. She kept me from disappearing completely into my own head. We'd go to the beach, or she'd tease me about something. She'd say 'What are you thinking about?' and I'd start explaining some physics problem and she'd say 'No, what are you really thinking about?'
25. 04:14
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    And what were you really thinking about?
26. 04:16
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Usually physics. But the point is, she wanted to know. She wanted all of me, not just the parts that were easy or fun. Even the boring parts, the scared parts.
27. 04:26
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    The pigeon never judged me. Never demanded I be anything other than what I was. In her presence, I was not the great inventor, not Tesla the visionary. I was simply... myself.
28. 04:40
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah. Yeah, that's it exactly. Arline didn't care that I was working on the biggest physics project in history. She cared that I came to visit her. That I brought her a radio so she could listen to music. That I held her hand.
29. 04:52
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I fed my pigeon from my hand. I walked through the city at night looking for her. Other scientists mocked me—said I had gone mad. Perhaps I had.
30. 05:05
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I don't think you were mad. Weird, sure. But not mad. You found something that mattered to you outside of all the inventions and the big ideas.
31. 05:14
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Yes. And when I lost her, I lost that connection to the simple, immediate world. Everything became abstraction again. Theory without ground beneath it.
32. 05:26
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I wrote Arline a letter after she died. Sealed it. I still don't know why I did it—she was gone, she couldn't read it. But I needed to tell her that I loved her, that I always would. I kept that letter sealed for years.
33. 05:38
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Did it help? The letter?
34. 05:41
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    I don't know. Maybe. It let me say things I couldn't say when she was alive—or couldn't say the right way. I told her that I'd carry her with me, that she'd made me who I was.
35. 05:51
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I had no letter. But every pigeon I saw afterward, I looked at it and wondered—is this somehow her? Has she returned? I know this is not scientific thinking, but the heart has its own logic.
36. 06:04
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    The heart has its own logic. I like that. That's actually pretty good, Tesla.
37. 06:09
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You remarried, eventually?
38. 06:11
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah, years later. Gweneth. Different person, different kind of love. But I never forgot Arline. Gweneth knew that. She was okay with it—she understood that you can love someone and still carry someone else with you.
39. 06:25
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I never loved again. Not after the pigeon. How could I? She was perfect in her simplicity, in her devotion. No human could offer that.
40. 06:36
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    See, I think you're wrong there. Humans are complicated and messy, but that's not a bug—it's a feature. Arline was difficult sometimes. We fought. But that's what made it real.
41. 06:47
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Perhaps you are braver than I am, Professor Feynman. To risk that pain again, knowing what loss feels like.
42. 06:55
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Or maybe I'm just stubborn. I don't know. But I figure—what's the alternative? Lock yourself away? You tried that, and it didn't make you happy. You ended up in a hotel room feeding pigeons.
43. 07:07
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I was not unhappy. Lonely, perhaps. But loneliness was a small price for genius.
44. 07:13
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Was it though? Really? Because from where I'm sitting, it sounds like the pigeon was the best part. Not the wireless power transmission or the rotating magnetic field—the pigeon.
45. 07:24
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You are forcing me to confront uncomfortable truths, Professor.
46. 07:29
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Good. That's what we do. We look at things honestly, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Otherwise, what's the point?
47. 07:36
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    The point is progress. The point is building the future, piece by piece, whether or not we survive to see it.
48. 07:44
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Maybe. But I think the point is also this—sitting here, talking to you, being honest about the people we loved. That's real too. That matters just as much as any equation.
49. 07:54
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    When she died, Professor Feynman—your Arline—did you see any light? Any sign?
50. 08:01
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    No. No lights. Just... she stopped breathing. The clock in her room stopped too, actually. The nurse had picked it up to record the time, and it stopped working. Weird coincidence.
51. 08:12
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Perhaps not coincidence. Perhaps the universe acknowledges these moments, these losses.
52. 08:18
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Or maybe the nurse wound it wrong when she picked it up, and I'm just looking for meaning where there isn't any. But you know what? I don't mind believing it meant something. Just this once.
53. 08:27
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Just this once. Yes. Even we men of science are permitted our mysteries.
54. 08:33
    Richard Feynmanshare moment

    Yeah. Yeah, we are.