Neri Oxman: Biology, Art, and Science of Design & Engineering with Nature | Lex Fridman Podcast #394

whenever we start a new project it has to have these ingredients of simultaneous complexity it has to be novel in terms of the synthetic biology Material Science robotics engineering all of these elements that are discipline based or rooted must be novel if you can combine novelty in synthetic biology with a novelty in robotics with a novelty in Material Science with a novelty and computational design you are bound to create something novel the following is a conversation with Nary oxman an engi

neer scientist designer architect artist and one of the kindest most thoughtful and Brilliant human beings I've ever gotten to know for a long time she led the mediated Mata group at MIT that did research and built incredible stuff at the intersection of computational design digital fabrication Material Science and synthetic biology doing so at all scales from the micro scale to the building scale now she's continuing this work at a very new company for now called oxman looking to revolutionize

how humans design and build products working with nature not against it on a personal note let me say that Nary has for a long time been a friend and someone who in my darker moments has always been there with a note of kindness and support I am forever grateful to her she's a brilliant and a beautiful human being oh and she also brought me a present War and Peace by Tolstoy and meditations by Marcus Aurelius it doesn't get better than that this is Alex Friedman podcast to support it please chec

k out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Nery oxman let's start with the universe you ever think of the universe as a kind of machine that designs beautiful things at multiple scales I I do um and I think of nature in that way in general in the context of design specifically I think of nature as everything that isn't anthropomas everything that is not produced by humankind the birds and the rocks and everything in between fungi elephants whales do you think there's an in

tricate ways in which there's a connection between humans and nature yes and we're looking for it I think that from let's say from the beginning of mankind uh going back 200 000 years the products that we have designed have separated us from nature and it's ironic that the things that we designed and produced as humankind those are exactly the things that separated us before that we were we were totally in complete completely connected and I want to return to that world but bring the tools of en

gineering and computation to it yes yes I absolutely believe that there is so much to Nature that that we still have not leveraged and we still have not understood and we still haven't and so much of our work is designed but a lot of it is science is unveiling and um and and finding new truths about the natural world that we were not aware before everybody talks about intelligence these days but I like to think that nature has kind of wisdom that exists Beyond intelligence or above intelligence

and it's that wisdom that we're trying to tap into through technology if you think about humans versus nature at least in the realm at least in the context of definition of nature is everything but um anthropo mass and I'm using on Milo who is an incredible Professor from The weissmann Institute who came up with this definition of entropomas in 2020 when he identified that 2020 was the crossover year when anthropomas exceeded biomass on the planet so all of the design Goods that we have created

and brought into the world now outweigh all of the biomass including of course all Plastics and wearables building cities but also asphalt and concrete all outweigh the scale of the biomass and actually that was a moment you know how in life there are moments that be a handful of moments that get you to course correct and and my it was a zoom conversation with Ron and that was a moment for me um when I realized that that imbalance now we've superseded the biomass on the planet where do we go fro

m here and you've heard the expression more more phones than bones and the entropomas and the antropocene um and and the technosphere sort of outweighing the biosphere um but now we are really trying to look at is is there a way in which all things technosphere are designed as if as if they are part of the biosphere meaning if you could today grow instead of build everything and anything if you could grow an iPhone if you could grow a car what would that world look like where the touring test fo

r sort of this this kind of I call this material ecology approach but this this notion that everything material everything that you design in the physical universe can be read and written to as or thought of or perceived of as nature grown that's sort of the touring test for for the company or at least that's how I started I thought well grow everything that's sort of the slogan let's grow everything and if we grow everything is there a world in which driving a car is better for nature than a wo

rld in which there are no cars is there is it possible that a world in which you build buildings in cities that those buildings and cities actually augment and heal nature as opposed to their absence is there a world in which we now go back to that kind of synergy between nature and humans where you cannot separate between grown and made and it doesn't even matter is there a good term for the intersection between biomass and entropyl mass like things that are grown yeah so in 2005 I I called thi

s material ecology I thought what if all material all things materials would be considered part of the ecology and would have an impact a positive impact on the ecology um where we work together to help each other all things nature all things human and again you can say that that wisdom in nature exists in fungi many mushroom lovers always contest my thesis here and saying well we have the mushroom Network and we have the mother trees and they're all connected and and why don't we just simply ha

ck into into mushrooms well first of all yes they're connected but that Network stops when there is a physical Gap that Network does not necessarily enable the the whales in the in the Dominican to connect with an olive tree in Israel to connect with a weeping willow in Montana and that's sort of a world that that I'm dreaming about what what does it mean for nature to have access to the cloud at the kind of bandwidth that we're talking about sort of think neuralink for nature you know since the

um first computer uh the um and you know this by heart probably better than I do but we're both MIT lifers um we today have computational power that is um one trillion times the power that we had in in those times we have 26.5 trillion times the bandwidth and 11.5 quintillion uh times the memory which is incredible so humankind since the since the first computer has approach and accessed such incredible bandwidth and we're asking what if nature had that bandwidth so beyond genes and evolution i

f there was a way to augment nature and allow it access to the world of bits what does nature look like now and can nature make decisions for herself as opposed to being guided and guarded and abused by by humankind so Nature has this inherent wisdom that you spoke to but you're also referring to augmenting that inherent wisdom with something like a large language model exactly so compress human knowledge but also maintain whatever is that intricate wisdom that allows plants bacteria fungi to gr

ow incredible things at arbitrary scales adapting to whatever environment and just surviving and thriving no matter where no matter how exactly so I think of it as large molecule models and those large molecule models of course large language models are based on the on Google and search engines and and so on and so forth and we don't have this data currently and part of our mission is is to do just that trying to quantify and understand the language that exists across all Kingdoms of Life across

all five kingdoms of life and if we can understand that language is there a way for us to First make sense of it find logic in it and then generate certain computational tools that Empower nature to to build better crops to to increase the level of biodiversity in in the company we're constantly asking what does nature want like what what does nature want from a compute view if it knew it what what could Aid it and whatever the heck it's wanting to do yeah so we keep coming back to this answer

of nature wants to increase information but decrease entropy right so find order but constantly increase the information scale and and this is true for what our work also tries to do because we're constantly trying to fight against the dimensional mismatch between things made and things grown right and and as designers we are educated to think in X Y and Z and that's pretty much where architectural education ends and biological education begins so in reducing that dimensional mismatch we're miss

ing out on opportunities to create things made as if grown but in the natural environment we're asking can we provide nature with these extra dimensions and again I I'm not sure what nature wants but I'm curious as to what happens when you provide these tools to the Natural environments obviously with responsibility obviously with control obviously with ethics and and moral code um but is there a world in which nature can help fix itself uh using those tools and by the way we're talking about a

company called oxman yeah I'll just just a few words about the team yeah what kind of humans work at a place like this they're trying to figure out what nature wants you know I think they're first like you they're they're humanists first um they come from different disciplines and different disciplinary backgrounds and just as an example we have a brilliant designer who is just a mathematical genius and a computer scientist and a mechanical engineer who has trained um as a synthetic biologist an

d um and now we're hiring a microbiologist and a chemist architects of course and designers uh roboticist so it's really it's Noah's Ark right two of each and always dancing between this line of the artificial the synthetic and the and the real what's the term for in the natural yeah the built in the grown nature and culture technology and biology but we're we're constantly seeking to to ask how can we build design and deploy products in three scales the molecular scale which I've briefly hinted

to um and their and the molecular scale we're really looking to understand whether there is a universal language to Nature and what that language is and then build build a tool that um I think and dream of it is the iPhone for nature if nature had an iPhone um what would that iPhone look like does that mean creating an interface between nature and the computational tools we have exactly it goes back to that 11.5 quintillion times the bandwidth that that humans have have now arrived at and and g

iving that to Nature and seeing what you know what what happens there can animals actually use this interface to know that they need to run away from fire can plants use this interface to increase the rate of photosynthesis in the presence of a smoke cloud can they do this quote-unquote automatically without a kind of a top-down Brute Force policy based method that's authored and deployed by humans and so this work really relates to that interface with the natural world and then there's a second

area in the company which focuses on growing products and here we're focusing on a single product that starts from CO2 um it becomes a product it's consumed it's used it's worn by a human and then it um goes back to the soil and it grows an edible fruit plant so we're talking about from CO2 to fruit yeah it starts from CO2 and it ends with something that you can like literally eat so so the world's first entirely biodegradable bi-compatible by renewable product that's grown yes either using pla

nt matter or using bacteria but we are really looking at um carbon recycling technologies that start with methane or Wastewater um and end with this wonderful Reincarnation of a an a thing that doesn't need to end up in a composting site but can just be thrown into the ground and grow Olive and find peace and there's a lot of textile based work out there that is focused on one single element in this long chain like oh let's create um you know leather out of mycelium or or less create textile out

of cellulose but then it stops there and you get to assembling the shoe or the wearable and you and you you need a little bit of glue and you need a little bit of this material a little bit of that material to to make it water resistant and then it's over so that's one thing that we're trying to solve for is how to create a product that is materially computationally robotically novel um and goes through all of these phases from the creation from this carbon recycling technology to um to the pro

duct to literally how do you think about you know Reinventing an industry that is focused on assembly and putting things together and using humans to do that can that you know can that happen just using robots and microbes and that's it and doing it end to end I would love to see what this Factory looks like and the factories is great too I'm I'm very very excited in October we'll we'll share first um first Renditions of of some of this working in February we'll we'll invite you to the lab I'm t

here and I've already applied I haven't heard back I don't understand okay uh I mean it's just before we get to number three it'd be amazing to just talk about what it takes with robotic arms or in general the whole process of how to build the life form stuff you've done in the past maybe stuff you're doing now how to use bacteria it's kind of synthetic biology how to grow stuff by leveraging bacteria is there examples from the past and yes and just take a step back over the 10 years of the medi

ated matter group which was my group at MIT um has sort of dedicated itself to biobased design would be a suitcase word but sort of thinking about that Synergy between nature and culture biology and technology and we attempted to build a suite of embodiments let's say that they ended up in amazing museums and amazing shows and and we wrote patents and papers on them but they were still n of ones again the challenge as you say was to grow them and we classified them into fibers cellular solids bi

opolymers pigments and in each of the examples although the material was different sometimes we used fibers sometimes we used silk with silkworms and honey with bees and or comb as the structural material with Vespers we used synthetically engineered bacteria to produce pigments although the materials were different and the hero organisms were different the philosophy was always the same the approach was really an approach of computational templating that templating allowed us to create template

s for the natural environment where nature and Technology could duet could dance together to create these products so just a few examples with a silk Pavilion we've had a couple of pavilions made of silk and the second one which was the bigger one which ended up at the Museum of Modern Art with my friend an incredible Mentor Paul Antonelli that Pavilion was six meter tall and it was produced by silkworms and and there we had um different types of templates there were physical templates that were

basically just these water-soluble meshes upon which the silkworms were spinning and then there were environmental templates which was a robot basically applying a variation of environmental conditions such as heat and light to guide the movement of the silkworm you're saying so many amazing things and I'm trying not to interrupt you but like one of the things you've learned by observing by doing science on these is that the environment defines the shape that they create or contributes or intri

cately plays with the shape to create and so so like and you get to that's one of the ways you can get to guide their work is by defining that environment by the way you said hero organism which is an epic term so that means like because whatever is the biological living system that's uh doing the creation and that's what's happening in Pharma and and biomaterials and by the way Precision Ag and and food new food design Technologies as people are betting on a hero organism is the sort of how I t

hink of it and and and and the hero organism is sometimes it's the palm oil or or it's a it's the mycelium there's a lot of mushrooms around for good and bad and and it's cellulose or it's you know fake bananas or the the Workhorse E coli but these hero organisms are being vetted on as like the what's the one answer that solves everything Hitchhiker's Guide 42 42 yeah these are sort of the 42s of of you know of the enchanted new universe and back at MIT we said instead of betting on all of these

organisms let's approach them as almost like movement in a symphony and let's kind of lean into what we can learn from each of these organisms in the context of building a project in an architectural scale and those usually were Pavilions and then the competition of templating is the way you guide the work of this how many did you say 17 000 17 532 so each of these silkworms threads are about you know one one mile um in distance and and and they're they're beautiful and when and just thinking a

bout the amount of material you know it's a bit like thinking about them you know the the length of capillary vessels that grow in your belly when you're pregnant to feed that incredible new life form um it's just nature is amazing but back to the silkworms I think I had three months um to build this incredible Pavilion but um we couldn't figure out how we were thinking of emulating the process of how a silkworm goes about building its incredible architecture this cocoon over the period of 24 to

72 hours and it builds a cocoon basically to protect itself it's it's a beautiful form of architecture and it uses pretty much just two materials two chemical compound saracen and fibrin the saracen is sort of the glue of of the Cocoon the fibroid is the fiber base material of the coconut through fibers and glue and that's true for so many systems in nature lots of fiber and glue and that architecture allows them to metamorphosize and in the process they vary the properties of that silk thread

so it's stiffer or softer depending on where it is in the section of the Cocoon and so we were trying to emulate this robotically with a 3D printer that was six axis Kuka arm one of these baby kookas and we're trying to emulate that process computationally and build something very large when one of my students now um a brilliant Industrial Engineer roboticist on my team Marcus said well you know we were just playing with those silkworms and enjoying their presence when we realized that if they'r

e placed on a desk or a horizontal surface they will go about creating their cocoon only the Cocoon would be flat because they're constantly looking for a vertical Post in order to use that post as an anchor to spin the Cocoon but in the absence of that post on surfaces that are less than 21 millimeters and flat they will spin flat patches and we say aha let's work with them to produce this this Dome as a set of flat patches and a silkworm mind you is a is quite an egocentric creature um and act

ually the furthest you go you move forward in evolution by natural selection the more um egoism you find in creatures so when you think about termites right they the their material sophistication is is actually very primitive but they have incredible ability to communicate and connect with each other so if you think about the entire All of Me All of nature let's say all of living systems as like a matrix that runs across two axes one is material sophistication which is terribly relevant for desi

gners and the other is communication um uh the the termites Ace on communication but their material sophistication is crap right it's just saliva and feces and some soil particles that are built to create these incredible termite Mounds at the scale that when compared to human skyscrapers transcend all of buildable skills uh at least in in terms of what we have today in architectural practice just in relative to the size of the termite but when you look at the silkworm the silkworm has zero conn

ection communication across silkworms they were not designed to connect and communicate with each other they're they're sort of a human design species because the the uh the domesticated silk moth uh creates the Cocoon we then produce the silk of it and then it dies um so the it has dysfunctional Wings it cannot fly it's not so so and and that's another problem that the sericulture um industry has is why did we in the first place author this organism four thousand years ago that is unable to fly

and is just there um to basically live as um to serve a human need which is textiles and so here we were fascinated by the computational kind of biology dimension of silkworms but along the way by the way this is great I never get to tell the full story so much I always I'm always like people say oh paragraphs they're way too long and this is wonderful this is like heaven you're driving so many good lines but but but really those uh those silkworms are not yes they're not designed to be like hu

mans right they're not designed to connect communicate and build things that are bigger than themselves through connection and communication so what happens when you add 17 000 of them communicating effects that's a really great question what happens is that at some point the templating strategies and as you said correctly there were geometrical templating material templating environmental templating chemical templating if you're using pheromones to guide the movement of bees in the absence of a

queen where you have a robotic Queen um but whenever you have these templating strategies you have sort of control over nature right but the question is is there a world in which we can move from templating from providing these computational material and immaterial physical and molecular platforms that guide nature almost like guiding a product almost like a gardener um to a problem or an opportunity of emergence where that biological organism assumes agency by virtue of accessing the robotic c

ode and saying now I own the code I get to do what I want with this code let me show you what this Pavilion may look like or this product may look like and I think one of the exciting moments for us is when we realized that these robotic platforms that were designed initially as templates actually inspired if if I may a kind of a collaboration and cooperation between silkworms that are not a swarm based organism they're not like the bees on the termites they don't work together and they don't ha

ve you know social orders amongst them the queen and the drones Etc they're they're all this the same in a way right and and here uh what was so exciting for us is that these computational and Fabrication Technologies enable the silkworm to uh sort of to to kind of hop hop from from the branch in Ecology of of of worms to the branch and Ecology of maybe human-like intelligence where they could connect and communicate by virtue of you know feeling or rubbing against each other in in an area that

was hotter or colder and they were so the product that we got at the end the variation of density of fiber and the distribution of the fiber and the transparency the product at the end seems like it was produced by a swarm silk Community but of course it wasn't it's a bunch of biological agents working together to assemble this thing that's really really fascinating to us how can technology um um augment or enable a swarm-like behavior and creatures that have not been designed to work as swarms

so how do you construct a computational template from which uh a certain kind of thing emerges so how can you predict what emerges I suppose so if you can predict it it doesn't count as emergence actually that's a deeply poetic line we can talk about it I mean it's a bit like this concentrated it doesn't count that's right right speaking of emergence an empowerment because we're constantly uh um moving between those as if they're equals in the on the team and one of them Kristoff shared with me

a mathematical equation for what does it mean to empower nature and what is empowerment in nature look like um and that relates to emergence and we can go back to emergence in a few moments but I want to I want to say it so that I know that I've learned it and if I've learned it I can use it later yeah and maybe you'll figure something out as you said of course Kristoff is the master here but but really we were thinking again what does nature want nature wants um nature wants to increase the inf

ormation Dimension and reduce entropy um what do we want we kind of want the same thing we want more but um we want order right and this goes back to your conversation with your shavat stochastic versus deterministic languages or processes his definition or the definition he found um was that an agent is empowered if the entropy of the distribution of all of it states it's high while the entropy of the distribution of a single state given a choice given an action is low meaning it's that kind of

uh um yeah Duality between opportunity like starting like this and going like this opening and closing and and this really I think is analogous to to human empowerment given uh infinite wide array of choices what is the choice that you make uh to you know to to enable to empower uh to provide you with with the agency that you need and how much is that making that choice actually control the trajectory of the system that's really nice so this this applies to all the kinds of systems you're talki

ng about yeah and to a human on an individual basis but or a silk or more a b um or a microbe a microbe that has agency or by virtue of of of a template but it also applies to a community of of organisms like the bees um and so we've done a lot of work sort of moving from you've asked how to grow things so we've grown things uh using um co-fabrication where we're digitally fabricating with other organisms that live across the various Kingdoms of Life and and those were silkworms and bees and uh

and with bees um which we've sent to outer space and we turned healthily and they were reproductive okay you're gonna have to tell that story you're gonna have to talk about the robotic queen and the pheromones come on like um so we've built what we called a synthetic apiary and the synthetic apiary was designed uh as an environment that was a Perpetual spring environment for the bees of Massachusetts they go on hibernation of course during the winter season um and then we lose 80 percent of the

m or more uh during that period we're thinking okay what if we created this environment where um before you template right before you can design with you have to design four right you have to create this space of mutualism space of sort of shared connection between you and the organism and with bees it started as the synthetic apiary and we have proven that that curated environment where we designed the space with high levels of control of temperature humidity and light and we've proven that the

y were reproductive and alive and we realized wow this environment that we created can help augment bees in the winter season in any City around the world where where bees survive and thrive in the summer and spring seasons and could this be a kind of a new Urban typology an architectural typology of symbiosis of mutualism between organisms and humans where these are by the way the synthetic apiary was in a co-op in you know nearby Somerville we had you know we had robots our team you know slept

there every day with our with our tools and machines and we made it happen and the neighbors were very happy and and they got to get a ton of Honey at the end of the winter and and those bees of course were released into the wild at the end of the winter Alive and Kicking so then in order to actually experiment with with the robotic Queen an idea or concept we had to prove obviously that we can create this space for uh for bees and then after that we had this amazing opportunity to send the bee

s to space on Blue Shepherd mission that is part of blue origin and we of course said yes we'll take a slot we said okay can we outdo NASA so NASA in 1982 had an experiment where they sent b b's to to outer space the bees returned they were not reproductive and um and some of them died and and we thought well is there a way in which we can create a life support system almost like a small mini bio lab of a queen and her retinue um that would be sent in this blue origin new Shepherd Mission uh in

this one cell and and so that's if the synthetic APO is an architectural project in this case this second synthetic apiary was a product it was right so from an from an architectural controlled environment to a product scale control environment and this bio lab this life support system for bees was designed to provide the bees with all the conditions that they needed and and we looked at that time at the national pheromone that the queen uses to guide the other bees and we looked at pheromones t

hat are associated with a b and thinking of those pheromones being released inside the capsules that go the capsule that goes to outer space they returned um back to our the media lab roof and those bees were alive and kicking and reproductive and you know and they continue to create comb and and it ended with a beautiful nature paper that the team and I published together we gave them gold nanoparticles and silver nanoparticles because we were interested if if bees recycle wax it was known fore

ver that bees do not recycle the wax and by feeding them these gold nanoparticles we were able to prove that um that the bees actually do recycle the wax the reason I'm bringing this forward is because we don't view ourselves as designers of consumable products and and Architectural environments only but we love that moment where these Technologies and by the way every one of these projects that we created involve the creation of a new technology whether it be a glass printer or the spinning rob

ot or or the um life support system for for the bee Colony they all involved a technology that was associated with the the project and I never ever ever want to let that part go because I love love technology so much um and but but also another element of this is it always these projects if they're great they reveal new knowledge about or new science about um the topic that that you're investigating be it you know silkworms or or bees or or glass that's why I say I always tell my team it should

be at MoMA and the cover of nature are science at the same time we don't separate between the art and the science it's it's it's it's one of the same so as you're creating the uh the art you're going to learn something about these organisms or something about these materials I mean is there something that stands out to you about these hero organisms like bees silkworms you mentioned E coli has its pros and cons this bacteria what have you learned that small or big that's interesting about these

organisms yeah it's a beautiful question what have I learned I've learned that um you know uh we did we also worked with shrimp shells with ago how we built this tower on the roof of SF Momo which by um a couple of months ago and until it was on the roof we we've shown the structure completely biodegraded into then well not completely but almost completely biodegrade to the soil and um and this notion that a product or part an organism or part of that organism can reincarnate is very very moving

thought to me because I want to believe that I believe in reincarnation I want to believe that I believe yeah that's my relationship with God I want to I want I I like to believe in believing most great things in life are second derivatives of things but that's part of another conversation I feel like that's a quote that's gonna take weeks to really internalize that that notion of I want you to want or I need you to need or um that that that it there's always something a deeper truth behind wha

t is on the surface and so I like to go to the second and tertiary derivative of things and and discover new truths about them through that but what have I learned about organisms and why don't you like E coli I like E coli and and a lot of the work that we've done uh was possible without are working on E coli or other Workhorse organisms like cyanobacteria how are bacteria used Death Masks the Death Masks so what are Death Masks so we did this project called Vespers and those were basically dea

th masks that was said as a process for designing a living product what happens and we looked at bit I looked at the remember looking at Beethoven's death mask and agamemnon's death mask and just studying how they were created and really they were sort of geometrically attuned to the face of the dead and what we wanted to do is create a death mask that not was not based in the sh in was not based on the shape of of the of the wear but rather it was based on their legacy and their biology and may

be we could um harness a few stem cells there for future Generations or contain the last breath Lazarus which preceded Vespers was project where we designed a mask to contain a single breath The Last Breath of the wearer and again if I had access to these Technologies today I would totally re-incorporate my grandmother's last breath in in in in in a in a product so it was like an air Memento so with Vespers we um we actually used E coli to um to to create pigmented masks masks whose pigments uh

would be recreated at the surface of the mask and I'm skipping over a lot of content but basically there were 15 masks and they were created as three sets The Masks of the past the mask of the present and the mask of the future um The Masks there were five five and five and the mass of the past were based on um ornaments and they were um embedded with natural minerals like gold yes yes yes and we're looking at pictures of these and they're gorgeous yes extremely delicate and interesting fractal

patterns that are symmetrical they look symmetrical but they're not this is intense this is we intended for you to be tricked and think that they're all symmetrical but there's imperfections there are imperfections by Design all of these um all of these forms and shapes and distribution of matter that you're looking at was was entirely designed using a computational program so none of it is manual um but long story short the first collection is about the surface of the mask and the second collec

tion which you're looking at is about the volume of the mask and and and what happens to the mask when all the colors from the surface yes enter the volume of the mask inside create pockets and channels to guide life through them um they were Incorporated with pigment producing living organisms and then those organisms were templated to recreate the patterns of the original death masks and so life recycles and re-biggins and so on and so forth the past meets the future the future meets the past

from the surface to the volume from Death to life to death to life to death to life and that again is a recurring theme in in the projects that that we take on but there from a technological perspective what was interesting is that we embedded chemical signals in the jet in the printer and those chemical signals um basically interacted with the um pigment producing bacteria uh in in this case E coli that were introduced on the surface of the mask and those interactions between the chemical signa

ls inside the resins and the bacteria at the surface of the mask at the resolution that is native to the printer in this case 20 microns per voxel allowed us to compute the exact patterns that we wanted to achieve and we thought well if we can do this with pigments can we do this with antibiotics if we can do this with antibiotics could we do it with with melanin and what are the implications again this is a platform technology now that we have it what are the actual real world implications and

potential applications for this technology and we started a new area of one of my students Rachel her PhD thesis uh was entire was titled after this new class of materials that we created through this project Vespers hybrid living materials hlms um and these hybrid living materials really paved the way towards a whole other set of products that we've designed uh like um like the work that we did with melanin for for the Mandela Pavilion that we presented at sfmoma um where again we're using the

same principles of templating in this case not silkworms and not bees but we're templating bacteria at a much much um much a more finer resolution and now instead of templating using using a robot or templating using a printer but compute is very very much part of it and the what's nice about bacteria of course is that um from an ethical perspective I think there's a range right so at the end of the silk Pavilion I got an email from Professor in Japan who has been working on transgenic silk and

said well if you did this this create amazing silk Pavilion why don't we create um um you know glow in the light silk dresses and and in order to create this glow in the light uh silk we need to um you know to to to to to apply um uh genes that are taken from a spider to a silkworm and this is what is known as a transgenic operation and we said no and that was for us a clear decision that no we will work with these organisms as long as we know that what we are doing with them is not only better

for humans but it's also better for them and and again just to remind you where um I forget the exact number but it's around a thousand cocoons per single shirt that are exterminated in in India and China and in those Seri culture industries that are being abused now yes this organism this organism was was designed to serve the human species and maybe we should maybe it's time you know to to to retire that you know that conception of of organisms that are designed for a human-centric world or hu

man-centric set of applications I I don't feel the same way about E coli um I not that I'm agnostic organism agnostic but but still I believe there's so much for us to do on this planet with um with with bacteria and so in general Your Design principle is to uh grow cool stuff as a byproduct of the organism flourishing so not yes not using the organism the win-win the Synergy a hole that's bigger than the sum of its parts it's interesting I mean it just feels like a gray area where genetic modif

ication of an organism it just feels like I don't know if you if you genetically modified me to make me glow in the light I think you have enough of an aura all right thank you that was I was just fishing for compliments thank you I appreciate it so absolutely right and by the way the gray area is you know is where some of us like to live and and like to thrive and and that's okay and and thank goodness that there's so many of us that that like the black and white and that thrive in the black an

d white my husband is a good example for that well but just to clarify in this case you're also trying to thrive in the black and white in that you're saying like the silkworm is a beautiful wonderful creature let us not modify it is that the idea or is it okay to modify a little bit as long as we can see that it benefits the organism as well as the final creation uh so with silkworms absolutely let's not modify it genetically let's not modify genetically um and then some because why did we why

did we get there to begin with four thousand years ago in the Silk Road and and we should never get to a point where we evolve life for the service of mankind at the risk of these wonderful creatures um across the kingdoms across the kingdom of life I don't think about the same kind of ethical range um when I think about bacteria nevertheless bacteria are pretty wonderful organisms I'm moving to my second cup here as things are getting serious now bacteria are yeah for sure let's give bacteria a

ll the love they deserve we wouldn't be here without them they were here for I don't know what it is like a billion years before anything else but in a way if you think about it they create the matter that we consume and then and then we reincarnate or dissolved into the soil and then creates an a tree and then that tree creates more bacteria and then that bacteria could I mean again again that's why I like to think about not recycling but reincarnating because that assumes a kind of imparting u

pon nature that dimension of agency and and maybe awareness but yeah lots of really interesting work happening with bacteria um directed evolution is one of them we're looking we're looking at directed Evolution so high throughput directed evolution of um of bacteria for the production of products and again those products can be a shoe um wearables biomaterials therapeutical Therapeutics and doing that direction computationally totally computationally obviously in in the lab with with with the h

ero organism the hero bacteria um and and and what's happening today in in um equal microbial synthetic biology synthetic biology that lends itself to ecology and again all of these fields are coming together it's such a wonderful time to be a designer I can think of a better time to be a designer in this world um but with um High throughput directed Evolution and I should say that the physical space in our new lab will have these capsules which which we have designed um that are um that they ar

e designed like growth Chambers or grow rooms um and in those Grow rooms we can basically um program um top-down environmental templating right top-down environmental control of Lights humidity light Etc so light humidity and temperature um while doing a bottom-up genetic regulation so it is a wet lab but in that wet lab you could do at the same time you know genetic genetic modulation regulation and and environmental templating and then again the idea is that in one of those capsules maybe we g

row transparent wood and in another capsule we you know we transparent wood for architectural application another capsule we grow a shoe and in another capsule we look at that language you know large language model that we talked about and there's a particular technology associated with that which we're hoping to reveal to the world in February um and in each of those capsules is basically a high throughput computational environment like a breadboard that has think of sort of a physical breadboa

rd environment that has access to oxygen and nitrogen and CO2 and nutritional dispensing and these little capsules could be stressed they're sort of a an ecology in a box and they could be stressed to produce the food of the future or the products of the future or the construction materials of the future um food food is a very interesting one obviously because of food insecurity and and and the issues that we have around both in terms of food insecurity but also in terms of the future of food an

d what what will remain after we can't eat plants and animals anymore and all we can eat is these false bananas and and and and and um you know and insects as our protein source so there we're thinking you know can we design these capsules to stress an environment and see how that environment behaves think about a kind of a an ecological a a biodiversity chamber right a kind of a time capsule that is designed as a biodiversity chamber where you can program the exact temperature humidity and ligh

t um combination uh to emulate the environment from the past so Ohio 1981 December 31st at 5am in the morning what did tomatoes taste like uh to all the way in the future 200 years ago these are the the input the environmental inputs these are some genetic regulations that I'm testing and what might the food of the future or the products of the future or the construction materials of the future um feel like tests like behave like Etc and so these capsules are designed as part of a lab that's why

it's been taking us such a long time to get to this point um because we started designing them in 2019 and they're currently literally as I speak to you under construction how well is it understood how to do this dance of control in these different variables in order for various kinds of growth to happen it's not it's never been done before and these capsules have never been designed before so I you know when when when we first decided these are going to be environmental capsules people thought

were crazy what are you building what are you making so the answer is that we don't know but we know that there has never been a space like this where you have basically a wet lab and a grow room at that resolution um that granularity uh of of of of of of control over organisms there's a reason why there is this incredible evolution of products in the software space um the hardware space that's a more limiting space that because of the physical infrastructure that we have to test and experiment

with things so we really wanted to push on creating a wet lab that is novel in every possible way what could you create in it you could create the future you could create a a you could create an environment of plants talking to each other with a robotic referee and the robotic referee we you know and you could you could set an objective function and let's say for for for for for the uh um transaction driven individuals in the world let's say the objective function is carbon sequestration and um

and all of those plants are um are implemented with a gaming engine and they have this reward system right and they're constantly needing to optimize the way in which they carbon sequest we read out the bad guys we leave the good guys and we end up with this like ideal Ecology of carbon sequestering Heroes that connect and communicate with each other and once we have that model this biodiversity chamber we send it out into the field um and we see what happens in nature and that that's sort of w

hat I'm talking about augmenting plants with that extra dimension of of bandwidth that they do not have and they're they're just just last week um I came across a paper um that discusses uh the in Vivo neurons that are that are augmented with a pong game and uh and in a dish they basically present sentience and the beginning of awareness which is which is wonderful like that that you could actually take these neurons from a mouse brain and and you have the electrical circuits and the physiologic

al circuits that enable uh these cells to connect and communicate and together arrive at Sort Of Swarm situation that allows them to act as a system that is not only perceived to be sentient but is actually sentient um Michael Levine calls this a gentle material material that has agency right so so so so this this this is of interest to us because this is sort of again this is emergence post templating you template until you don't need to template anymore because because the system has its own r

ules right what we don't want to happen with AGI we want to happen with synthetic biology what we don't want to happen online and software with language we want for it to happen with with bio-based materials because that will get us closer to growing things as opposed to assembly and and mechanically yeah putting them together with toxic materials and compounds if I can ask a pothead question for a second so you mentioned just like the silkworms the individualists silkworms got uh to actually le

arn how to collaborate or actually to collaborate like in a swarm like way you're talking about getting plants to communicate in some interesting way based on an objective function is it possible to have some kind of interface between another kind of organisms humans and nature so like a human to have a conversation with with a plant there already is you know that when we cut freshly cut grass I love the smell but it's a smell of actually it's a smell of distress that the Leaves of Grass are com

municating to each other so the grass when it's cut emits green leaf volatiles glvs and those glvs are basically one leaf of grass communicating to another Leaf of grass be careful mind you you're about to be cut these incredible life forms are communicating using a different language than ours we use language models they use molecular models at the moment where we can parse we can we can decode these molecular moments is when we can start having a conversation with plants now of course there is

a lot of work around Plant neurobiology it's a real thing plants do not have a nervous system but they have something akin to a nervous system it has a kind of a ecological intelligence that is focused on a particular time scale and the time scale is very very slow slow slow time scale so it is when we can melt these time scales and and and and connect with these plants in terms of the content of the language in this case molecules the duration of the language and we can start having a conversa

tion if not simply to understand what is happening in the plant kingdom Precision agriculture I promise to you will look very very very different right because right now we're using drones to take photos of crops of corn that look bad and when we take that photo it's already too late but if we understand these molecular Footprints and things that they are trying to say the stress that they are trying to communicate then we could of course predict the physiological biological behavior of these cr

ops both for for their own self-perpetuation but also for the the foods and and the Pharma and and the type of molecules that we're seeking to grow for the benefit of humanity and so these languages that we are attempting now to quantify and qualify will really help us not only better nature and help nature in its striving to surviving but also help us you know design better wines and uh you know and and better foods and and and better medicine and better products again across all scales across

all applications Mains is there intricacies to understanding the time scales like you mentioned at which these communications these languages like operate is there something different which in the way humans communicate and the way plants communicate in terms of time remember when we started the conversation talking about sort of different definitions in the context of design and then in the context of being that question requires I think a kind of a shift um a humility that requires a kind of a

humility towards nature understanding that it operates on different scales we recently discovered that uh you know that the molecular footprint of a rose or of a plant in general during night time is different than its molecular footprint during daytime so these are circadian rhythms that are associated with what kind of molecules these plants emit um given stress stresses and given um you know there's a reason why why the Jasmine Jasmine field smells so so delicious and 4am in the morning and

then there's like there's there's peace and rest amongst you know amongst the plants and you have to sort of tune into that time dimension of of the plant kingdom and that of course requires all this humility where in a single capsule to design a biodiversity chamber it will take years not months and definitely not days and to see these products and also that humility in design comes from Simply you know looking at how we are today as a civilization how we use an abused nature like just think of

all these Christmas trees right these Christmas trees they take years to grow we use them for one night the holiest night of the year and then we let them go and think about in nature to design a quote-unquote product an organism spends energy and time and thoughtfulness and many many many years and I'm thinking about the Redwoods um to grow these channels these you know this cellulose layers and channels and reach these incredible Heights takes sometimes hundreds of years sometimes thousands o

f years am I afraid of building a company that designs products in the scale of thousands of years no I'm not and the way of being in the physical world today is really not in tune with the time dimension of the natural world at all and um and and that needs to change and that's obviously very very hard to do in a community in of of human beings that is at least in the western world that is based on capitalism and so here the wonderful challenge that we have ahead of us is how do we impart upon

the capitalist Movement we know that we need to produce Now Products that will enter the real world and be you know shared and used by others and still benefit the natural world while benefiting humans and that's a wonderful challenge to have so integrate technology with nature and that's a really difficult problem I see parallels here with another company of newer link which is uh is basically like you I think you mentioned neuralink for nature that their short-term products you can come up wit

h but it's ultimately a long-term challenge of how do you integrate the machine with this creation of nature this intricate complex creation of nature which is the human brain and then you're speaking more generally nature how every company has an image like this one single image that embodies the spirit of the company and I think for neurolink it was to me that chimpanzee playing a video game it was just unbelievable but with plants there potentially is a set of molecules that impacts or inspir

es I like that word the plant to um behave or act in a certain way and allows still to plan the possibility of deciding where it or she or he wants to go uh which is why our first product for this molecular space is going to be a functionalized fragrance so here we're thinking about the future of fragrances and the future fragrances and flavors um you know these these products are in the industry as we know it today are designed for totally for a human-centric use and um and enjoyment and Indulg

ence and luxury um they're used on the body for the sake of I don't know attraction and and feeling good um and smelling good and we were asking ourselves is there a world in which um in which a fragrance can be not a functional fragrance because you could claim that all fragrances are functional but is there a world in which the fragrance becomes functionalized is again imparted upon or given agency to connect with another organism is there a world in which um you and I can go down to your gard

en and use a perfume that will interact with the Rose Garden downstairs um I've just been enamored with the statements that are being made in the media around oh this is completely biologically derived fragrance and it's bio-based and but when you look into the fragrance and you understand it in order to get to this bioderived fragrant fragrance you went through you blew through you know 10 000 10 000 bushes of rose to create five milliliters of of a rose fragrance and all these ten thousand bus

hes of Rose they take space they take you know water management and and so much waste um is this really what we want the future of our Agriculture and molecular Goods to look like and so when we did the ago Pavilion on the roof of SF Moma we calculated that for that Pavilion we had 40 000 calories embedded into this Pavilion that was made of shrimp shells and kaitizen and um Apple skins and and cellulose from tree tree pulp and we calculated that overall the structure had 40 000 calories interes

ting way to think about a structure right from the from the point of view of of calories but as you left the gallery you saw these three clocks that were so beautifully designed by Felix on our team and these clocks measured temperature and humidity and we were connected them to Weather Channels so that we could directly um look at how the Pavilion was biodegrading in real time and and and in our calculations I say this long-winded uh description of the Pavilion to say that in the calculation we

incorporated um you know how much electricity we used for our computers for the 3D printers that printed the Pavilion and you know and these were called emergy calculations right energy and materials and when you think about a product when you think about you know a shoe or a chair or a perfume or a building you don't stop at the object you want to go all the way to the system again instead of Designing objects or singular embodiments of a the will of the designer you're really tapping into an

entire system that is interconnected and if you look at the energy budget that characterized the project it traverses the entire planet right some of these shrimp shells were brought from places in the world we haven't thought of in terms of the apples and the shrimp shells and the tree pop and so going back to you know going back to to fragrances um it's really really important to understand the product in the context of the ecological system from which it's sourced and and how it's designed an

d that is the kind of thinking um that is not only desired but is required if we are to achieve Synergy between humanity and nature it's interesting because the system level thinking is almost always going to take you to the entire Earth to considering the entire Earth ecosystem which is why it's important to have a left brain and a right brain competing for attention you mentioned a fragrance that kind of sends out a message to the environment essentially a message in a bottle yeah a message in

a bottle so like so you can go to a rose garden and trick the Rose Garden to think it's 4 AM essentially you could if you wanted to but maybe that is not trick trick is a bad word right Inspire but Inspire I like I I like the idea of providing nature with a choice which is why I love that elegant mathematical equation of empowerment and agency empower the uh the Rose Garden to uh to create a romantic moment for the uh for the wearer of the fragrance but now again you're you're again all of this

to go back to back to that human-centric notion of romance but maybe there's another way to do romance right that that we haven't yet you know that we haven't yet explored and and maybe you know there's a way to tap into what happens to the Rose when it's dreaming assuming that plants are sentient and assuming that we can tap into that sentience what can we discover about what what does the Rose want like what is what is it actually want and and and what does it need and what are what what are

the Roses um you know dreams but do you think there's some correlation in terms of romance in terms of the word you sometimes use Magic is there some similarities in what humans want and what roses want and what nature wants I think so I think there isn't if I did not think so oh my goodness this would not be a nice world to live in I think we all want love I recently read this beautiful letter that was written by Einstein to his daughter um and was discovered Einstein asked his daughter to wait

20 years until she reveals these letters and so she did it's just one of the most beautiful letters I've ever read from a father to his daughter and the letter overall is imbued with a kind of a a sense of remorse or maybe even feelings of sadness and there is some kind of melancholy note in the letter uh where Einstein regrets not having spent enough time with his daughter having focused on you know the theory of general relativity and changing the world and then he goes on to talk about this

beautiful and elegant equation of E equals MC square and he tells his daughter that he believes that love is actually the force that shapes the universe because it is like gravity right it attracts people it is like light it brings people together and connects between people um and it's all empowering and and so if you multiply it by the the speed of light you could really change the world for the better and I I call me a romanticist I know you are too um which is why I so love being here I I be

lieve in this I I totally and utterly um believe in in love but let me just excerpt from Einstein's letter there's an extremely powerful force that so far science has not found a formal explanation too it is a force that includes and governs all others and is even behind any phenomena operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us this Universal force is love he also the last paragraph in the letter as you've mentioned I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in m

y heart which has quietly beaten for you all my life maybe it's too late to apologize but as time is relative that jokester Einstein I need to tell you that I love you and uh thanks to you I've reached the ultimate answer your father Albert Einstein yeah but that regret I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart maybe that's a universal regret filling your days with busyness and silly Pursuits and not sitting down and uh expressing that but it is everything it is everyth

ing it is why I love that expression and I forget who said this but I I love my daughter more than um Evolution required right and um I feel the same way towards my other half and and I feel that when you find that connection um everything and anything is possible um and it's a very very very magical [Music] um a magical moment so I I believe in love and I believe in the one it might be the same thing it might be a different thing but let me ask you a ridiculously big philosophical uh question a

bout beauty Dostoevsky said Beauty will save the world in the idiot one of my favorite books of his uh what is beauty to you you've created through this intersection of engineering and nature you have created some incredibly beautiful things what do you think is beauty that's a beautiful question maybe it is connected to the love question it is connected to the love question of course everything is connected to the love question okay um to me beauty is agency to me something that has agency it i

s beautiful there is this special quote from Buckminster Fuller which I cannot remember word for word Fest I remember the concept which goes something like this um when I work on a problem I never think about beauty but when I'm done solving the problem and I look at what I've created and it's not beautiful I know that I was wrong okay yeah he's a kind of a an agency that speaks to quote unquote the objective function of the creation right whether for Bucky it's useless or useful so this idea of

empowerment that you talked about yes they connected to it comes back to that yeah what's the difference that you hinted at between it empowerment and emergence is a emergence completely lacks control is it and empowerment is more uh is more controlled there's an agent making decisions is is there an interesting distinction there yes I think empowerment is a force with Direction it has directionality to it emergence is I believe multi-directional again that depends on the application emergence

is perhaps in terms of sort of a material definition is the isotropic spirit when um empowerment is at the end is a Tropic and counterpart um I think they overlap because I think that empowerment is a way of um inspiring emergence I think emergence does not happen without empowerment but empowerment can happen without emergence do you think of emergence as the loss of control like when you're thinking about these capsules and the things they create is emergence of things that is uh not a desirab

le conclusion I love that question because to some of us the loss of control is control in design we're used to like extreme levels of control over form and the shape of a thing and how it behaves and how it functions and that's something we've inherited from the Industrial Revolution but with nature there is this um there's this diversity that happens without necessarily having a reward function right this is good or bad things just happen and some of them happen to have wings and some of them

happen to have scales and you know you end up with this incredible potential um for for diversity so I think the future of of design is in that soft control is in the ability to design highly controlled systems that enable um that enable the loss of control and creativity is very much part of this because creativity is all about letting go and beginning again and beginning again beginning again and when you cannot let go you cannot be creative and you can't you you can't you can't find novelty b

ut I think that letting go is a moment that enables empowerment agency creativity emergence and they're all connected they're sort of associate themselves with definition of Destiny or the inevitable a good friend of mine shared with me elegant definition of Faith which is the ratio of of who you are and and who you want to be ratio of who you are who you want to be exactly and that sort of ends up defining you yeah and those tools I think when when when when you let go you sort of find you you

give peace to your will right to a sense of Will and and and so I think that's very very important in design but also in life she said this fate is the ratio of um who you are what you want to be who you want to be do you think there's something to this whole manifestation thing like focusing on a vision of what you want the world to become and in in that focusing you manifest it like Paula Cole said in The Alchemist when you want something all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it

is there something to that I think so yes and I always think of you know what I do as this the culmination of energy information and matter and how to Direct Energy Information and matter in the design of a thing or in the design of a life I think living is very much a process of channeling these energies to where they need to go I think that the manifestation or part of that manifestation is the pointing to the Moon in order to get to the moon and and and that's why manifestation is also direc

tional it has that vector quality to it that I think of agency is have you uh in your own life has there been things you've done where you kind of direct that energy information and matter in a way that opens up new possibilities yeah I mean you've also said somewhere I'm probably misquoting that uh you're you're you're many things you and Harry are many things and you become new things every 10 years or so oh I did say that somewhere somewhere that every decade you're sort of Switched that was

an old that was a previous scenario that said that yeah I did say some time ago that you have to sort of reboot reboot every 10 years um to to keep creative and keep inventive and and keep fresh is there things you've done in your life which is kind of uh doors opened I think everything everything uh everything good I've found in my life has been found in that way of um letting go and suspending my sense of disbelief and often you will find me say to the team suspend your disbelief I don't care

that this is impossible let's assume it is where does it take us and that suspension of disbelief is absolutely part and parcel of the creative act and you know I did so when um I was in medical school I was in Hadassah and in the Hebrew University and um I remember I left medical school for architecture the day my grandmother passed away and that was a moment of relief and that was a moment a door that was closing that opened other opportunities um but that of course required letting go of the

great vision of becoming a doctor and letting go of the dream of you know being surrounded by wonderful patience and the science of medicine and the research associated with that science and letting go of that dream to accomplish another um and and it it has happened throughout my life in in different ways um MIT was another experience like that where people pointed at me as you know the designer for whom the academic currency is not necessarily the citation index and of course in order to get t

enure at MIT you have to look at the citation index but for me it it was not that it was manifesting our work in shows and writing papers and writing patents and creating a celebration around work and I never saw a a distinction and you know between those ways of being I also think that another um kind of way of being or a modality of being that I found helpful is um Victor Frankel wrote this incredible book man searched for meaning after the Holocaust and he writes different people uh pursue li

fe for for different reasons According to Freud the the the goal of of life is to find pleasure and according to Adler it's you know to find power and um and for Victor Frankel it was about finding meaning and when you let go of the titles and the disciplines and the boundaries and the expectations and the perception you you are elevated to this really special yes spiritual but definitely very very creative plane where you you can sort of Start Anew look at the world through the lens of a bacter

ium or a robot or it or you know or look at ecology through the lens of chemistry and look at chemistry the lines of Robotics and look at robotics through the lens of you know microbial ecologies and so on and so forth and and I feel that kind of rebooting um not every 10 years but every minute every breath is very very important for a creative life and for for just maintaining this fresh mind to reboot reboot to begin again with every breath begin again and and that can be confusing for some ri

ght for my team members you know I I like to change my mind it's who I am it's how I think it's how I operate um you know and and and they'll come and and we found another technique or another technology that's interesting and we thought that you know that we were working on this functionalized fragrance but now there's another opportunity and let's go there and to me I would much rather you know live life like if I had to pick sort of my favorite Broadway show um to enter and live through it wo

uld be into the woods it's not a specific fairy tale it's not you know the Sleeping Beauty or or Little Red Riding Hood um or Rapunzel it's all of them it's sort of moving into the forest and seeing this wonder and getting close and learning about that and then moving to another wonder and life is really about tying all of these little fairy tales together uh in work and and also in life unafraid to LEAP into the unknown unafraid to LEAP into the unknown speaking of mid you got a tenure at MIT a

nd then you leaped to New York and start a new company that with a vision that doesn't spend a couple of years but centuries I did it was my destiny to start a company and and do I have mornings when I wake up and I ask myself what the hell am I doing yes I I have those mornings what do you do with those mornings by the way I embrace them and I I find gratitude and I say to myself thank goodness I I'm so lucky to you know to have the the the ability to be frustrated in this way um so I really re

ally Embrace these frustrations and I and I I I take them I wrap them in a bubble and I look at it you know on the outside of my my uh um aware mind um and and I laugh at them I smile at them if I could return actually to the question of Beauty for a second I forgot to ask you something you mentioned imperfection in the Death Masks what role does imperfection play in um our conception of beauty what role does imperfection play in um in nature there's a there's this Japanese Aesthetics concept of

wabu-sabi which basically uh Embraces imperfection nothing lasts nothing is finished and nothing is perfect what do you think of that I totally agree that change is the only permanence that imperfection is there if only to to signal that we are part of a bigger thing than ourselves that that we are on a journey um that that were that things are in movement um and if they were perfect I of of course when things are perfect it is just so boring we end up with stereotypes and as humans but I think

just in general as living beings we're here to find meaning and that meaning cannot be found without struggle and without seeking to not to perfect but to build to work to build towards something better um when I was a child my mother who who I love so much always explained to me how important it is to fall and to fail and to fight and to argue and um and that there is a way that there is a culture to to to to failing and and and to imperfection um so I I think it is it is uh necessary for some

thing beautiful to be imperfect and it is a sign that it is a sign of nature because nothing in nature is perfect what about human relations you mentioned finding love are the flaws in humans in perfection in humans a component of love like what role do you think the the flaws play it's a that's a really profound question I think the flaws are there uh to the flaws are there to present a a vulnerability and those flaws are um are um a sign of those vulnerabilities and I think love is very very g

entle right love with Bill we often talk about between the two of us about what drives all human behavior and for him it's incentive as you might expect and he will repeat this sentence to me oh incentive drives all human behavior but I I would say to me it's love love very much so um and and I think flaws are part of that because flaws are a sign of that vulnerability whether physical whether emotional vulnerability and those vulnerabilities these vulnerabilities they either tear us apart or th

ey bring us together um the vulnerability is what is the glue I think I think that the vulnerability enables connection the connection is the glue and that connection enables accessing A Higher Ground as a community as opposed to as an individual so if there is a society of the mind or if there are higher levels of awareness that can be accessed in community as opposed to again going to the silkworm as opposed to on the individual level I think that those occur through the flaws and the vulnerab

ilities and without them we we cannot find connection community and without Community we can't build what we have built as a civilization you know for the past hundreds of thousands of years so I think not only are they beautiful but they have a functional role in in building civilizations yeah there's a sense in which love requires vulnerability and maybe love is the leap into that vulnerability and I think yes I think a flaw think about it like physically I'm thinking about a brick that's flaw

ed but in a way the the I think of a flaw as a as an increased surface area that's a good line right a surface area that like physically emotionally right it sort of introduces this whole new dimension to a human or a brick and because you have more surface area you can you know yeah use mortar and build a home and and yeah I think of it as accessing this additional dimension of surface area that could be used for good or bad right to to to connect to communicate to collaborate it makes me think

of that quote from this incredible movie I've watched years ago Particle Fever I think it was called documentary about the Large Hadron Collider an incredible film where they talk about the things that are least important for our survival are the things that make us human like the the pure romantic act or you know the notion of and and Victor Frankel talks about that too he talks about feeling the sun on his arms as he's as he is um working the soil in two degrees Fahrenheit with without clothe

s and the officer berate him and says what have you done have you been a businessman before you came here to the camp and he says I was a doctor and he said you you must have made a lot of money as a doctor and he said I all all my work I've done for free I've been helping the poor um but he keeps his he keeps his um humility and he he keeps his um modesty and he keeps his preservation of the spirit um and he says the things that actually make him able to or made him able to outlive the the Terr

ible um experience in the Holocaust was the the really cherishing this moment when the Sun hits his skin or when he can eat it um a grain of rice a single grain of rice so I think cherishing is a very important part of um living a meaningful life being able to cherish those simple things like to notice them and to to notice them to pay attention to them in the moment and I I do this now more than ever I mean there is something the Bukowski has this poem I like called Nirvana where it tells the s

tory of a young man on a bus going through like North Carolina or something like this and they stop off in a cafe and he has this there's a waitress and just he talks about that he notices the magic something Indescribable we just notice the magic of it and he gets back on the bus with the rest of the passengers and none of them seem to have noticed the magic and I think if you just allow yourself to pause it just to feel whatever that is maybe maybe ultimately is a kind of gratitude yes for I d

on't know what it is it's just that I'm sure it's just chemicals in the brain but it's just so incredible to be alive yeah and noticing that yes and appreciating that and being one in that with others yes yes and and that goes back to you know to the fireplace right to the First Technology what was the first technology it was fire First Technology to have built community and it emerged out of a vulnerability of wanting to stay away from the cold and be warm together and and and of course that fi

re is associated with not only with comfort and the ability to uh form you know biorrelevant nutrients in our food and and and and and provide heat and comfort but also spirits and and um a kind of a way to enter up you know to enter a spiritual moment to enter a moment that can only be experienced as as in a community as a as a form of a meditative moment there is a lot to be said about light light um is I think an important part of these moments of I think I I think it's a real thing I I reall

y truly believe that we're born with an with a with an aura surface area that is measurable I think we're we're born into the world with that you know with uh with an aura and um and how do we channel that is really is sort of ends I mean and ends up sort of defining you know defining the light in our lives do you think we're all do you think we're all lonely you think there's loneliness in US humans oh yes yes loneliness is part yes I think we we all have that loneliness whether we're willing t

o access that loneliness and look at it in the eye or completely um you know completely avoid it or deny it it's like uh it feels like it's a some kind of foundation for longing and longing leads to this uh this combination of vulnerability and connection with others yes it feels like that's a really important part of being human is being lonely very it's very we are born into this world alone again being alone and being lonely are two different things right and you can be together but be lonely

and you can be alone but not be lonely at all we often joke bill and I that um he he cannot be lonely he cannot deal with being by himself he always needs people around him and I strive long um must have creative Solitude must find pockets of solitude and loneliness in order to find creativity and reconnect with myself so loneliness is a recipe for um for community in my opinion and I think those things complement each other and they're synergetic absolutely the yin and yang of of of of togethe

rness and they allow you I think to yeah to reset and to tune in to that ratio we've talked about of who you are and who you want to be if you if you go to this place of creative Solitude what's your what's your creative process is there something you've noticed about what you do that leads to your to good work I love to be able not only to lose focus but kind of to focus on the peripheral View and to allow um different things to occur at once so I will often in my loneliness Journeys I will oft

en listen to like Leonard Bernstein anything I can find online by Lenny Bernstein it's reading a nature paper it's War and Peace it's really revisiting all the texts that are so Timeless for me with opportunities that are very very timely and I think for me the creative process is really about bringing timeless problems or concepts together with timely Technologies to observe them I remember when we did the Mandela Pavilion we Read Moby Dick the whiteness of the whale the albino the different th

e other and that got us to work on melanin and and melanin also was sort of an output from the death mask so it's lots of things happening at the same time and really allowing them allowing them to come together to form this view about the world through the lens of a spirit being or a living being or a material and then focus on the world through the lens of that material the glass work was another project like that where we were fascinated by glass because obviously it's superb material for arc

hitecture but we created this new glass printing technology for the first time that was shedding light on the biomechanics of fluid glass the math and the physics of which was never done before which was so exciting to us but revealing new knowledge about the world through technology that's one theme The Reincarnation between things material and immaterial that's another theme Lenny Bernstein Warren Pete Tolstoy you've already tweeted I told a quote from War and Peace as of course you would ever

ything I know I know because of love love yeah I love this quote so you use these kind of inspirations uh to focus you and then find the actual idea in the periphery yes and then connect them with whatever it is that we're working on whether it's you know High throughput directed evolution of bacteria um you know whether it's you know recreating that Garden of Eden in the capsule and what it looks like the food of the future it is a little bit like directing a film creating a new project is a bi

t like creating a film and you have these Heroes you have these characters and you put them together and there's a narrative and there's a story whenever we start a new project it has to have these see these ingredients of simultaneous complexity it has to be novel in terms of the synthetic biology Material Science robotics engineering all of these elements that are discipline based or rooted must be novel if you can combine novelty in synthetic biology with a novelty in robotics with a novelty

in Material Science with a novelty in computational design and you are bound to create something novel period and that's how I run the company and that's how I pick the people and so that's another very very important ingredient of The Cutting Edge across multiple disciplines that come together and then in the background in the periphery there is all these messages The Whispers of the ancient oldies right the beethovens and the picassos so Beethoven's always whispering to you yeah how could one

not include Beethoven and The Whispers I'm going to ask you about Beethoven and The Afghani kissing you've mentioned because I'm I've played piano my whole life I've obviously know a lot about Beethoven um and it's it's one of the private things for me I suppose because I don't think I've ever publicly played piano by the way me too yeah yeah people sometimes even with guitar people ask me can you play something and it just feels like certain things are meant to be done privately yeah it's weird

I mean it's a difficult and and some of uh the times I have performed publicly uh it is It ultimately been vulnerabilities very very very difficult for me and I'm sure it's I know it's not for a lot of people but it is for me anyway we will turn to that but since you've mentioned combination of novelty costs multiple disciplines and that's what you seek when you when you build teams or pick people you work with I just wanted to kind of Linger on this um idea of what kind of humans are you looki

ng for in this endeavor that you're taking on this fascinating thing that you've been uh talking about want to think somewhere else a previous version version 5.7 of Nary said somewhere that there's four fields that are combined to create this intersection of biology and Engineering work in is computational design additive manufacturing material engineering synthetic biology I'm sure there's others but how do you how do you find these humans machine learning is in the mix I manifest and they com

e um yeah there are a few approaches to Memphis they show up okay um you know send your message upon the water I mean those job descriptions that you saw the first ones I wrote by myself uh and you find interesting people and brilliant people when you look we talked about second derivative when you look under and under and under and if you look deep enough and specialized enough and if you allow yourself to look at the cracks at the flaws at the the cracks between disciplines and between scales

you find really really interesting Diamonds in the Rough and so I I I I like for those job descriptions to yeah to be those messages in a bottle that bring those really interesting people our way um I mean they have to have humility they have to have a shine in their eye they have to be hungry and foolish it's his job so famously said a friend of mine who's a dean of well-known architectural School said you know today Architects don't want to be Architects Architects don't look up to the starchy

texts as role models starchitects are no longer Role Models Architects Want to Build by virtue of not building right Architects one she said we're back in the 60s when we think about architecture back in the hippie movement I think I think that in a way um they have to be somewhat of a hippie somewhat of a a kind of a um Jack of all trades master of all um and yet with humility now that is hard to find and that is why you know when I start an interview I talk about childhood memories and I aske

d about music and I asked about connection and through these interviews you can learn a lot about a person's future by spending time hearing them talk about their past do you find that educational back like uh phds versus like what's the life trajectory yours is an interesting life trajectory too like uh what's the life trajectory that leads to the kind of person that would work with you um it's you know people who have um ideally had industry experience and know what it's like to be in the quot

e-unquote real world they're dreamers that are addicted to reality as opposed to realists that are addicted to dreams meaning they have that innocence in them they have the hunger they have the idealism without um being entitled and with understanding the systems that govern our world and understanding how to utilize these systems as Trojan horses to bring those values into the world there are individuals who are feel comfortable in this friction between um between you know highly wondrous and d

reamy and incredible fantasy Renditions of what the world could be with extremely um and extremely brilliant skills in terms of their disciplinary background so PhD with industrial experience in a certain field or a double major and two fields that make no sense whatsoever in their combination I love it yeah are things that really really attract me and especially that that's been this the the technology biology yes Gap technology biology nature culture I mean the secret to one thing is through t

he lens of another and I always believe in that kind of translational design ability to be able to see something through the lens of another and always allows you to think Again Begin Again re-establish redefine suspend your disbelief revisit um and when you revisit enough times like a hundred times or like 200 times and you revisit the same question through the lens of any possible discipline and any possible scenario you you find you get eventually you get to the truth I have to ask you becaus

e you work at the interplay of uh the machine and the natural world is there a good definition for you of what is life what what is a living organism I think like 440 million years ago there were all these plants that [Music] um the cyanobacteria I believe actually that that God that that was like the first Extinction right there were six five extinctions we are apparently the sixth we are in the eye of the storm we are in the six Extinction we are going to be extinct as we speak I mean death is

upon us whether we want to admit it or not and actually they found in Argentina and in in you know various places around the world they found these spores of the first plants that existed on the planet and they emerged out of these cyanobacteria where the first of course and then they found these spore-based plants and because they didn't have seeds or only Sports the spores became sort of the fossils by which we've come to known of their existence and because of these spores we know that this

first Extinction existed but this Extinction is actually what enabled plants to resurrect right so the death of these first plants because they clinked to the rocks and they they generated a ton of phosphorus that went into the ocean by clinging to the Rocks like 60 times more phosphorus than without them and then all this phosphorus basically choked the oceans and made them super cold and a um without oxygen aoxic and then and then we lost the plant kingdom and then because of the death of thes

e first plants they actually enriched the soil and created nutrients for these new plants to come to the planet um and those planets had like more sophisticated vein systems and they were moving beyond spores to seeded plants Etc and flowering plants and so in a way you one mass extinction sort of LED in in the the or division period sort of led to Life as we know it and where would we be without plants in a way so I I think that death is very much part of life and through that definition that k

ind of planetary the wide definition in the context of hundreds of millions of years um life gains a completely new sort of a new light and that's where that's when the particles become a wave right where humans are we are not alone and we are here because of those plants right so I think death is is very much part of life so in the context of you know the redwood tree perhaps you know life is defined as uh ten generations and through the lens of a bacteria perhaps life is defined as a milliseco

nd and perhaps through the lens of of an AGI life is defined as all of human civilization and so I think it really is a question of um this time scale again the time scale and the organism the life form that's asking the question through which we can answer what is life what do you think about this since you're if we think of ourselves as in the eye of the storm of an another Extinction the the natural question to ask here is you have all all of nature and then you have this new human creation t

hat is currently being termed artificial intelligence how does your work play with the possibility of of a future super intelligent ecosystem and AGI that either joins or supersedes humans yeah um so I'm glad you asked this question and I hope full are terrified both I'm hopeful and terrified I did watch your interview with Ellie ezrautkovsky and I loved it because you were scared or because you were excited or because there's first of all I was both I I was I totally scared shamed excited and t

otally also inspired because he's just such an incredible thinker um and I can agree or disagree with what he says but I just found his way of thinking about AGI um and The Perils of humanity as a result there's an inevitability to what he's saying his advice to young people is that prepare for a short life yeah he thinks it's very almost simple it's almost common sense that AGI would get rid of humans that he can't imagine a trajectory eventually that leads to a place that doesn't have AGI kill

all humans there's just too many trajectories where a super intelligent systems gets rid of humans and in the near term and so yeah the the that Clarity of thinking is very uh sobering to me it's maybe it is to you as well it's super inspiring because I think he's wrong but it's like you you almost want to prove him wrong it's like no we humans are clever Bunch we're gonna find a way it is a bit like jumping into super cold water it's sort of a kind of a fist in your face it wakes you up and I

like these moments so much um and and he was able to bring that moment to life even though I think a mother can never think that way ever um and and it's a little bit like that that notion of I I love her more than Evolution requires on your question about AGI in nature look I think we've been through a lot in terms of to to get here we sort of moved from data right the ability to collect information to knowledge the ability to use this information for utility from knowledge to intelligence and

what is intelligence is the ability to problem solve and adapt and translate so that's sort of from from data to information to knowledge I think the next Frontier is wisdom um and what is wisdom wisdom is the ability to have or find Insight um about um the world and from wisdom to spiritual awareness which is sort of transcends wisdom and is able and to chart the world into new territory but I think what is interesting about AGI is that it is sort of almost like a self-recursive thing right bec

ause it's like a washing machine of like a third derivative Wikipedia it uses kind of like language to create language to create language to create language it feels like novelty is being constantly created I don't I don't it doesn't feel like it's regurgitating and that's so fascinating because you know these are not the stochastic parrots this is sort of a new form of emergence perhaps of uh of of novelty as you say that exists by virtue of using old things to create new things um um but it's

not as if the AGI has self-awareness right it's not as if it has maybe maybe maybe maybe it maybe it has but as far as I can tell it's not as if AGI has approached Consciousness or sentience just yet it it it's it's probably getting there but the language appears to present itself as if as if there is sentience there but it doesn't but I think that's the problem at the point where this AGI sounds like me and speaks like me and behaves like me and feels like me and breathes like me and my daughte

r knows the AGI to be me is sort of the end of it and the end of everything right it's the end of human agency but what is the end of human agency to humans I think is the beginning of agency to Nature because if you take all of this agency if you take all of these language models that can summarize all of human civilization and Consciousness and then upload that to Nature and have nature now deal with that World Of Consciousness that it never had access to so maybe through eliezel's lands the s

hort-lived human becomes sort of a very long-lived human like sentient weeping willow maybe maybe that's the end and the beginning and and and and maybe um on the more optimistic side uh for us humans um it's a different form of existence uh where everything we create and everything we consume and everything we process is all made up of six uh you know six elements and that's it and there's only those six elements and not 118 elements and um and and it's all the stuff of biology plus some you kn

ow fair amount of bits bits genes and atoms well I think the idea a lot of Beethoven a lot of Beethoven I think the idea of connecting AGI to Nature through your work is really fascinating sort of uh unlocking this incredible Machinery of intelligence that is Agi and connecting it to the incredible Machinery of wisdom that is nature has evolved through billions of years oh pretty crazy intense Evolution exactly and unlike sort of again I'm going back to directed Evolution unlike um this sort of

high throughput Brute Force approach if there is a way to utilize this Synergy for diversity and diversification like like yeah how like what happens if you ask a chat GPT question but it takes 10 000 years to answer that question like what does that look like right when you like completely switch the time scale um and you can afford the time to answer the question and I again I I don't know but but that world to me is possibly amazing do you think there's uh because when you start to think abou

t time scales like this looking at Earth all the possible trajectories in my take of this living organism that is Earth do you think there's others like it do you think there's other planets with life forms on them that are just doing their thing in this kind of way because you in what you're doing you're you're directly playing with what's possible with life life-like things that kind of maps the question of well what kind of other things are possible elsewhere do you think um there's other wor

lds Full of Life full of alien life out there I've studied the calculations that point you know towards the um verdict that the possibility of life in you know in in and around us is is very very low we are a chosen planet in a way right there's water and there's love what else do you need um and and and that sort of very peculiar juxtaposition of conditions the oxygen the water the carbon um again is is is in a way a miracle given the um massive extinctions that we've been through as life forms

and that said I cannot believe that there is no other life form I I want to believe um more than I know that that yes that there are life forms and you know in the white fountain that is the black hole right that there are these life forms that are um you know light years away from us and that are that are forming other forms of life forces yeah I'm much more worried about probably the thing that you're working on which is that there's all kinds of life around us that we're not communicating wi

th yes there's aliens in a sense all around us that we're not seeing that we're not talking to they were not communicating yeah because that to me just seems the more likely situation that they don't care that they're here they're all around us in different forms that that there is a connection there's a thing that connects all of us all of living beings Across the Universe and like we're not we're just beginning to understand any of it and I feel like that's the important problem is I feel like

you can get there with the tools of science today by just studying life on Earth unlock some really fundamental things that maybe you can start to answer questions about what is consciousness uh maybe this thing that we've been saying about uh love but in this in honestly in a serious way and then you'll start to understand that uh that there is alien life all out there and it's much more complicated and interesting that we've kind of realized as we're still look into human-like exactly human-l

ike things it's the variety of life that's possible is just almost endless I totally agree with you I I think again um fine alien right yeah Define intelligence Define life right and Marvin Minsky used to say intelligence is a suitcase word right it's a word so big it's a word like sustainability and it's a word like you know rock and roll and suitcase words are always very very dangerous speaking of rock and roll you've mentioned music and you mentioned Beethoven a bunch of times um you've also

tweeted about uh evgenie kissing performance and and so on what uh what can you say about the role of music in your life I love music um I always wondered why is it that plus plaque art meaning architecture and sculpture and painting can't get us to cry and music gets us to cry so quickly and connect so quickly there is something about music that it is and no wonder that plants also respond to music but that that is the top of the creative pyramid in in my opinion and it's a weird mystery that

we're so connected to music well by the way to push back a good bridge will make me cry a good Arc it's true and I I will say uh when I visited the Sagrada Familia I had that kind of spiritual reverence towards that spatial experience and being in that space and feeling the the intention and the space and appreciating every little gesture so it's true this is the universal language it's it's the language of waves right it's the language of the waves not the language of the particles it is the un

iversal language I believe and and that is definitely one of my one of my loves and you said that if you weren't doing what you were doing now perhaps you would be a film director so have to ask what uh what do you think is the best film of all time maybe top uh top three yeah maybe The Godfather Godfather okay The Godfather is is definitely up there Francis Coppola is one of my heroes have you met him I have met him yes yes yes I I was very very lucky we were very lucky uh to work with him on h

is new film at gallopolis which is coming out I hope in 2024 and think about the cities of the future in in the context of new materials and the unity between nature and culture Godfather is definitely up there um 2001 is up there I would watch that film again and again and again it's incredible the last scene in Odyssey 2001 that's um just watch the last scene of 2001 then listen to kovsky and then sort of and then go to the garden and that's pretty much you know the end in the beginning but th

at scene that last scene from 2001 is everything it says so much with so little and it leaves it it's sort of the embodiment I believe of ambivalence and um there's opportunity to believe in the beginning of humankind the end of humankind the planet child star or star child of the future um was there a death was there an reincarnation um you know that final scene to me is something that I go back to and and study and every time there is a different reading of that scene that inspires me so that

that scene just and then the first scene in The Godfather still one of the best scenes of all times sort of a portrait of America the ideals and values that I brought from Italy and a family of loyalty of uh yes of values of how how different values are constructed yes loyalty and and the human spirit and how Coppola celebrates the human Spirit through the most simple gestures in language and acting and I think in in Kubrick you see this highly curated and controlled and manicured um vision of c

reating a film and with with Francis it's it's like an Italian Feast it's like anything anything can happen at any moment in time and just being on the set with him is um is an experience I'll take with me to my grave it's it's very very very special and you said music is also part of that of creating a feeling in the movies yeah actually the The Godfather um That Tune that makes me like emotional every time at some weird level yeah it's one of these Tunes I'm sure that has you know they played

to to a Jasmine you'll get the best scent of all time so I think like there's but I think with that particular tune I learned staccato something very very happy and joyous and then made into this stretched in time and became kind of the refrain of Nostalgia and Melancholy and loyalty and all of these values that ride on top of this one single tune you can play in all kinds of different ways I've I've played on guitar in all kinds of different ways and I think in Godfather 3 the sun plays it on g

uitar to the father I think this happens in movies but sometimes a melody and that's a simple Melody you can just like and the Strauss melody in 2001 yep and when you juxtapose this um this Melodies with the scene you get this again hole that's bigger than some of its parts where you get this moment that is I think like these are the moments I would send you know with the next Voyager to outer space I definitely sent the Godfather in in 2001 would definitely be beyond that um golden record you a

re an incredibly successful scientist engineer architect artist designer you've mentored a lot of successful people can you give advice to young people listening to this how to have a successful career and uh how to have a successful life look I I think there's this beautiful line and Sheltering Sky how many times have you seen a full moon and um in your life and actually took the time to ingest and explore and reflect upon the full moon probably 20 I believe he says um I I spent time with a ful

l moon I take my time with a full moon and I pay attention to a full moon and I think paying attention to the seasons and taking time to appreciate um the little things the simple things is what makes a meaningful life uh I I was very lucky to have had you know to have grown up in a home that um taught me this way of being my my parents my grandmother who played a very important role in in my growing up um and and that ability to pay attention and to be present is so so so so I could not emphasi

ze it uh enough is so crucial um and be grateful and be grateful yeah I think gratitude and presence um appreciation uh really um the the the most important things in life if you could take a short tangent about your grandmother who's played a big role in your life what uh what do you remember what what lessons have you learned from her she had this blanket that she would give me every time I came back from school and say you know do your homework here and and meet with your friends here and it

was always in her garden and her Garden in my mind was ginormous but when I you know last I went there and saw the site which has now become the site for another tall building it was a tiny tiny little garden um that that to me seemed so large when when I was um growing up because it it had everything it had um it had fig trees it had olive trees it had mushrooms it had the blanket I would do my homework there it was everything and I needed nothing nothing else and um and and that was my Garden

of Eden that was my childhood being and she taught me you know you know we would lie on the blanket and look at the clouds and reflect upon the shapes of the clouds and study the shapes of the plants and there was a lot of wonder in that childhood um with her and and she taught me the the importance of Wonder uh in in sort of in an eternal childhood and and living uh adulthood as as a child and and so I I'm very very grateful for that I think it is the sense of wonder um the uh um speaking up wa

s always something that she adhered to to speak up your Truth uh to be straightforward um to be positive that these are things that I also got from my mom um and for my mom the sense of humor she she had the best sense of humor of uh that I could think of and and was just um just a joy to be around and and and my father taught me everything my father taught me everything I know my mom taught me everything I feel that's a girl my grandma taught me everything I Insight well I I see the sense of wo

nder that just carries through everything you do so I I think you would you make your grandmother proud uh well what about advice for how to have a career so you've had a very interesting career and a successful career but not not an easy one it took you took a few leaps I did take a few leaps and they were uncomfortable my father and I'll never um forget uh I think we were like listening to a rolling stone song in the kitchen and my dad was actually born in Boston he's American um he said uh I

I started to have sort of these second thoughts about continuing my education in Israel and I wanted to you know go I I was on my way to London to the architectural Association to do my diploma studies there and he looked at me and he said get out of here kiddo gotta get out of here and you know you've outgrown where where you're at you need to you know you need to move forward another thing he had taught me um the feeling of discomfort as you as you say the feeling of loneliness and discomfort

is is is imperative to growth growth is painful period any form of growth is difficult and painful birth is difficult and painful um and and it is really really important to place yourself in situations of discomfort I like to be in a room where everyone in the room is more intelligent than me I like to be in those in that kind of state where the people that I surround myself with are orders of magnitude more intelligent than I am and I can say that that is true of all of my team members and tha

t's the intellectual discomfort that I feed off of the same is true for for physical exertion um you gotta put yourself in these uncomfortable um situations in order to grow in order to find Comfort um and then on the other hand is is love is finding finding love and finding that um you know that human this other human that complements you and that makes you a better version uh of the one you are and even of the one you want to be but with gratitude and and attention and love you can go so so fa

r to the younger generation I don't speak of a career I never thought of um my work as my career ever and there was this constant entanglement between life and work and love and longing and being and mothering it's all the same and uh I appreciate that to some people that doesn't work in their you know in in their arrangement of of will versus um comfort uh versus the reality but for me it has always worked so I I think to the younger generation I say don't think of your career a career is somet

hing that is imposed upon you think of your calling that's something that's innately and directionally um moves you and it's something that transcends a career similarly you can think about the difference between you know learning versus being educated being educated something that's given to you that's external that's being imposed that's top down imposed this learning is something that comes from within it's also the difference between joy and happiness many times I'm sad and I'm still joyous

and it's very very important to understand the difference between these externally perceived success uh paths and internally driven value-based you know ways of being in the world and we together when when we combine all of these you know all of these uh uh the broken puzzle let's say of of of substance and um vulnerability we get this bigger Gestalt this wondrous world of a future that is is is peaceful that is uh um that you know that is wholesome and that that you know that proposes or you kn

ow advocates for that kind of synergy that we've been talking about throughout but it's all fun uh well thank you for this incredible conversation thank you for all the work you're doing and I just have to say that thank you for um noticing me and listening to me you you're somebody from from just today and from our exchanges before this like there's a sense where you care about me as a human being which is in which I could tell you care about other humans thank you for doing that thank you for

having empathy and just like um yeah really listening and noticing me that I exist so thank you for that I've been a huge fan of your work uh been a huge fan of who you are as a human being it's just an honor that you would sit with me thank you uh thank you and uh as long as I feel the same way I'll just say the same and I look forward to hearing the response to my job application that I've submitted oh you're you're accepted oh damn all right we all speak of you all the time thank you so much

thank you Mary thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with Mary oxman to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from Leo Tolstoy everything I know I know because of love thank you for listening I hope to see you next time