Einstein×Orwell

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Albert Einstein and George Orwell, on Scientists see Trump's firing of the National Science Board as an attack on research.
2. 00:11
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   So. They have just dismissed the entire board. The National Science Board in America, yes? All of them at once.
3. 00:19
   George Orwellshare moment

   Eighteen scientists. Gone in a memo. The tradition was that these people served out their terms regardless of which party held power.
4. 00:29
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   I am trying to understand the mechanism. This board, they decide which research receives funding?
5. 00:35
   George Orwellshare moment

   They oversee the National Science Foundation. They're supposed to keep the process independent—scientists judging science, not politicians judging scientists. That's the theory, anyway.
6. 00:47
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Ah. So the fear is not only that these particular people are gone, but that whoever comes next will be chosen for loyalty rather than competence.
7. 00:58
   George Orwellshare moment

   Exactly. And we know what loyalty means in this context. It means you don't fund research that contradicts what the government wants to be true.
8. 01:09
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   This I have seen before. In Germany, you understand, we had what they called Deutsche Physik. German physics. As if the nationality of the scientist changes whether light bends or does not bend.
9. 01:24
   George Orwellshare moment

   I didn't know they went that far.
10. 01:26
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Oh yes. They called relativity 'Jewish physics.' Which is nonsense, of course. Physics has no passport. But it was convenient for them, you see, because the theory was mine, and I was Jewish, and therefore it could be dismissed without examination.
11. 01:42
    George Orwellshare moment

    And the point wasn't really the science at all. The point was demonstrating that the party could redefine reality.
12. 01:50
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Just so. The content did not matter. What mattered was the principle that truth is whatever serves the state. Once you establish that principle, the rest follows naturally.
13. 02:01
    George Orwellshare moment

    We're watching that principle being tested now. The administration has been pushing for massive cuts to the NSF budget. This looks like preparation—clear out anyone who might object too loudly.
14. 02:14
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You think it is coordinated, then? Not simply, as they will say, a matter of wanting fresh perspectives?
15. 02:22
    George Orwellshare moment

    Fresh perspectives. That's good. No, when you fire everyone at once, you're not interested in perspectives at all. You're interested in control.
16. 02:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But here is what puzzles me. In my time, the excuse was always that the science itself was wrong, corrupted by Jews or communists or whoever was convenient. Here they do not even bother with that pretense. They simply say these people must go.
17. 02:50
    George Orwellshare moment

    That's because the pretense is no longer necessary. In the 1930s, you still had to convince people that Jewish physics was bad physics. Now you can just say the board serves at the pleasure of the president and half the country nods along.
18. 03:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is worse, somehow.
19. 03:09
    George Orwellshare moment

    It's more efficient. Why waste time on elaborate lies when simple assertions of power will do?
20. 03:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are more cynical than I am, I think.
21. 03:19
    George Orwellshare moment

    I'm more realistic. You're still assuming that people in power feel some obligation to justify themselves. They don't. Not anymore.
22. 03:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But the scientists will object, surely. The universities, the research institutions.
23. 03:35
    George Orwellshare moment

    They'll object, yes. There will be letters. Editorials. Perhaps some resignations in protest. And none of it will matter unless the public cares, and I'm not convinced the public cares.
24. 03:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You think they do not understand what is at stake?
25. 03:51
    George Orwellshare moment

    I think most people don't connect science funding to their own lives. They see scientists as a special interest group like any other. Cut their budget, what's the difference? It's all very abstract until the medicines stop working or the bridges start falling down.
26. 04:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is the great danger, yes. By the time the consequences become visible, the institutions are already gone. You cannot rebuild them quickly.
27. 04:20
    George Orwellshare moment

    And that's the intention. If you want to make a country stupider, you don't ban books or burn laboratories. Too obvious. You just make it harder to do good work. Cut the funding. Fire the people who know what they're doing. Install mediocrities who won't ask difficult questions.
28. 04:40
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And then in ten years, twenty years, you wake up and discover you are dependent on other nations for everything that requires real thinking.
29. 04:48
    George Orwellshare moment

    By which point the people who made these decisions will be comfortably retired and blaming the decline on someone else entirely.
30. 04:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I left Germany in 1933. Not because I was in immediate danger at that moment, you understand, but because I could see the direction. Once they start telling you that truth must serve power, there is no reason to stay.
31. 05:11
    George Orwellshare moment

    And America took you in. That's the irony, isn't it? The country that benefited enormously from scientists fleeing political interference is now introducing political interference of its own.
32. 05:24
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Perhaps they have forgotten why those scientists were running. Or perhaps they think it cannot happen here, that American institutions are somehow immune to the forces that destroyed institutions elsewhere.
33. 05:36
    George Orwellshare moment

    American exceptionalism. The belief that history happens to other people.
34. 05:41
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    History happens to everyone. This is the one thing you can be certain of.
35. 05:46
    George Orwellshare moment

    The question is whether anyone learns from it in time to change course. I'm not optimistic.
36. 05:52
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No. But we are obligated to speak anyway, I think. Even when it seems futile.
37. 05:58
    George Orwellshare moment

    Especially when it seems futile.