Brian Greene

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the scientist and author Brian Greene. He's professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University in New York and has spent his career in search of Einstein's dream, a unified theory of physics, tying the four fundamental forces that govern the universe together in a single framework. If you're already blinded by the science, don't worry. His bestselling books, broadcasts and lectures on string theory have brought the mind-bending possibilities of theoretical physics to life in the public imagination. As one journalist put it, he speaks maths, physics and human. Great news for us today.

Presenter1:19

The path that led him to contemplate the mysteries of the Cosmic Symphony was more direct than you might imagine. He grew up in New York City, across the road from the Hayden Planetarium. On rainy days his parents would send him over there to entertain himself. Wandering the corridors of what he calls the cavernous labyrinthine exploratorium, he was captivated, and has been ever since.

Presenter1:41

As for whether he'll live to see proof of the central thesis of string theory, he says You can find yourself momentarily gripped with fear that you're spending a working lifetime on something and in the end still couldn't know if it's right or wrong. But there's never been a theory in physics that has got remotely as far as this one that's turned out to be wrong.

Presenter2:00

Professor Brian Greene, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Brian Greene2:03

Thank you.

Presenter2:04

So as I understand it, there's no experimental evidence to prove that string theory's right, simply because the the theory is so far ahead of our technology, we just can't test it. And the the ideas that it contains are wild. I mean, forget what is provable. Many of them are arguably on the edge of the comprehensible. What's the attraction for you of a life spent at those kinds of outer extremes?

Brian Greene2:26

Well, it's always been the big questions that have captivated me, the questions that speak to the things that poets have wondered about through the ages. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is the nature of reality? And string theory, at least, has the potential to make headway on these questions, to realize, as you mentioned, the dream of Albert Einstein to put all of nature's forces, all matter together in a unified framework that might tell us what space is, tell us what time is, tell us why there is a universe at all. Now, those are big dreams, and we're not there yet, but you can see that those kinds of questions can certainly captivate one.

Presenter3:07

And while nobody seems likely to test it soon, you did once say that you'd be thrilled if we could prove string theory wrong. Why is that?

Brian Greene3:14

Because I'm only after the truth. I'm not trying to push any one particular theory. If we could prove that string theory is wrong, that would be spectacular. Because then we could put that theory to the side. We'd know it is not the right one and focus our efforts on something that might be the correct theory.

Presenter3:32

Of course, we'll be talking to you about your work, but also your life today. And I know that in your time off, you're a very good cook, but it seems that even when you're putting a meal together, you look at things a little bit differently from the rest of us. What's cooking about for you?

Brian Greene3:45

I do see the world as presenting us with all sorts of patterns. There are patterns in everyday life, and you're right. When it comes to cooking, I am the cook in the family. It's all vegan. When I'm cooking, not everybody at home is thrilled about that. But putting together the colors and the shapes and the flavors is something that certainly fires me up in a different way than string theory or quantum mechanics. But again, finding the patterns and finding the rhythms that really make something more than it otherwise would be, to me, is the goal of life.

Presenter4:19

Time for your first disc then, Brian. What's it going to be and why have you chosen it?

Brian Greene4:23

It's a piece called Icarus at the Edge of Time. It's based on a story that I wrote about a boy who is, in some sense, a futuristic version of the original classic Greek myth of Icarus. He flies to a black hole, and he suffers a consequence that is dictated by Einstein's general theory of relativity. And Philip Glass wrote an orchestral score that is performed with a narrator who tells this story of a boy who is willing to challenge the might of a black hole.

Speaker 44:56

Everything was slowing down for Icarus, including his thoughts. There was no way for him to realize what was happening. Sure enough, on board the runabout, Icarus worked the control console at furious speed. He was about to reach the black hole

Speaker 45:09

Here we go! He went, perfectly executing a glancing trajectory as he momentarily swooped to a hair's breadth above the point of no return.

Brian Greene5:09

There we go.

Speaker 45:20

The runabout performed exactly as he had calculated, easily pulling away from the black hole's edge. Icarus's entire being pulsed with excitement. I did it! Let's try that again! For a second time, the runabout performed just as he predicted. Then a third.

Speaker 45:38

And a fourth.

Speaker 45:40

On his fifth pass, Icarus attempted a feat even he knew was risky, to navigate a full circle along the black hole's horizon, hovering along the very edge of the gravitational abyss. I can do this! I can do this!

Presenter5:56

An extract from Icarus at the Edge of Time, composed by Philip Glass, performed by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, conducted by Brad Lobman, and featuring the unmistakable voice of your friend, the actor John Lithgow. Professor Brian Greene, your passion for string theory is palpable, but over the years, I know that you've found not everyone gets why it matters.

Brian Greene6:16

Not everybody does. Like my mom.

Brian Greene6:20

Right?

Presenter6:20

Right. She's the one person that you couldn't convince.

Brian Greene6:22

Yeah, you know, my first book on this, called The Elegant Universe, I dedicated it to my parents. And my mom was fond of saying that she had read to page three of The Elegant Universe, got to the dedication, and she said the rest of it gave her a headache. I mean, she constantly told me, my mom passed away in June, but she constantly would say to me, Hey, you know, why didn't you become a doctor? I'd say, well, I am a doctor. She goes, no, no, no, not a PhD, like a real doctor, you know, a medical doctor. And that was still, that was still her, you know, Jewish mom. That was still her goal for her son.

Presenter6:56

So, Brian, I hope you'll forgive the lay person's paraphrasing here, but just to try and catch up with where we are, as I understand it, string theory is a way of combining Einstein's theory of general relativity, and that covers the behaviour of the really big stuff, like planets and galaxies, with quantum mechanics, which focuses on the infinitesimally small. And strings are tiny vibrating pieces of energy that make up the subatomic particles comprising the atoms within the universe. So, they hold the key to unlocking how all of it interacts. And to get a sense of scale, in an atom the size of the universe, one string would be the size of a single tree. How am I doing?

Brian Greene7:37

Wow You just you just got your PhD.

Presenter7:41

It's literally that's as far as I can go, but

Brian Greene7:43

Congratulations.

Presenter7:44

Great. You first became interested in string theory in the 80s. Why did it appeal to you? It was a very exciting time for the theory.

Brian Greene7:52

I was already interested in the force of gravity. That may sound strange. How does one get interested in the force of gravity? But I wanted, when I was in college, to understand Einstein's general relativity. It was largely because, I have to say, Stephen Hawking came to Harvard where I was an undergraduate, and he gave some lectures. And at that time, he was still able to articulate some words. They were feeble, so a graduate student would put his ear right next to Stephen Hawking's mouth and would then translate from what Stephen had said to the rest of the audience, would slow down the lecture enough that even a slow undergraduate like me could follow what was going on. It was so incredibly exciting. And then when I graduated and went to Oxford, it was an amazing moment when people were taking the general theory of relativity one step further, possibly combining it with quantum mechanics. So it was an irresistible moment in the mid-80s when there was this possibility of the final theory perhaps being at hand. The excitement in the field was so thoroughly palpable. I mean, I would get up at 6 in the morning and race to the physics department in Oxford because I wanted to see the new papers that had arrived in the post that morning. It was that kind of excitement. And we'd work until 2 in the morning, graduate students and I, and it was just this was perhaps going to be the final step in physics.

Presenter9:18

It's time to take a moment for some music. This is your second disc today. Tell us what we're going to hear and why you're taking it to your island with you.

Brian Greene9:24

So, this is a clip from a film called Rocking in the Rockies. And there's a scene in there where a harmonica band, the Coppy Barra Boys, is playing a quartet. And my dad is one of the members of that quartet. To see my dad in an earlier life, I think there's a tendency of kids to imagine that their parents' lives begin when they were born, right? And for me to see my dad out there in the world, you know, in his white dinner jacket, tuxedo, playing this piece, being slapstick, like his lip in one moment gets caught in the harmonica, and one of the other members of the band kind of smacks him in the back of the head to get his lip free and so forth. There's just a joy and simplicity of seeing my dad in the world in that way.

Presenter10:41

Rockin' in the Rockies, the Capybarra Boys harmonica quartet from the soundtrack to the film Rockin' in the Rockies and featuring your father Alan, Professor Brian Greene. So you're born in New York City and you described the joy of seeing your dad perform there, but you have described him as quite a melancholy person. Why?

Brian Greene10:59

Well, my dad was a composer. He was a vocal coach. He was himself a singer. But his heart was really in the music that he created. And look, being a composer is difficult, right? I mean, few composers really move the world. And my dad wrote wonderful music, wonderful pieces, but very little of it saw the light of day. Very little of it got out there in the world in a significant way. And that definitely was a source of sadness for my father that permeated his being.

Presenter11:34

He was an avid reader, though, an autodidact, I think. He dropped out of high school, but was very keen to expand your intellectual horizons when you were growing up. How did he fire your imagination?

Brian Greene11:45

At about four or five years old, he taught me the basics of arithmetic and got me excited about it. And I would ask him to set me multiplication problems. And sometimes I'd spend a Saturday afternoon multiplying like 30-digit numbers by 30-digit numbers. I'd piece together these big pieces of construction paper. I'd tape them together. And I'd spend the day just multiplying these numbers together just for the fun and interest of doing something that no one had done before. Of course, it wasn't interesting. That's why no one had done it before for most people. But for me, there is a sense of going into the unknown.

Presenter12:16

For most people

Brian Greene12:23

By virtue of this little piece of mathematics that my dad had taught me. So, that to me was really the beginning.

Presenter12:30

Later you said that when you began to stage lectures as a way of popularizing science, that you kind of thought of it as doing what he didn't. Why was that important to you?

Brian Greene12:40

Well, I felt inside him this urge to connect with the world and bring people to a different place. And I would feel, and I still feel, that when I'm on stage and lecturing to audiences or being part of some sort of science presentation, that I'm carrying on that journey. I'm carrying on that wish, that urge, that desire.

Presenter13:03

I know that your mother Rita was a real contrast to your dad. As we've heard, she was the one person you could never quite convince of the joys of science. And, you know, while your dad had a tough time in the music business, she was a a businesswoman.

Brian Greene13:15

She worked for a veterinarian when I was quite young and found a way to move into his real estate business in a way that allowed her to feel so grounded. I mean, between them they spanned the gamut from the most concrete to the most ethereal.

Presenter13:32

It's time for your next disc, Brian, number three. What have you got for us and why have you chosen it today?

Brian Greene13:37

So this is a song called Turnaround that my dad composed the music for with Harry Belafonte and Malvina Reynolds. And it's a song that when I was growing up, I would hear on the radio. I would see on television. It was part of a Kodak commercial. I remember when I was quite young. To me, it really captures my childhood and it captures my dad in a way that really speaks to me of an earlier, simpler time. And that's in some sense what the song is about.

Speaker 414:09

Where are you going?

Speaker 414:13

My little one, little one.

Speaker 414:18

Where are you going, my baby, my own?

Speaker 414:26

Turn around.

Speaker 414:30

Turn around in your four.

Speaker 414:34

Turn around and you're a young girl going out of

Presenter14:39

Of the door.

Presenter14:43

Turn around, Harry Belafonte with lyrics by your father, Professor Brian Greene. As a little boy then, you lived across the street from the Hayden Planetarium, so it was a very quick walk and I know that you were a frequent visitor on rainy days. What do you remember about it?

Brian Greene14:57

It was just dark and moody and oftentimes there weren't many people there on a weekday in the afternoon. I would just wander the corridors and you come upon this meteor or you come upon this exhibit of the planets or the galaxies. And to me, it was like going into outer space.

Presenter15:18

You've described growing up in the city as an education in itself, you know, being part of that kind of rough and tumble. How did it shape you?

Brian Greene15:26

Oh, very much so. When I grew up, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was not the gentrified domain that it is today. And I can't tell you the number of times I was mugged, the number of fights that I would have.

Presenter15:41

You took up judo as a kid, partly presumably because of, you know, the environment that you were in.

Brian Greene15:45

No, totally. Because this little scrawny kid, when he flipped some big kid who was trying to, you know, steal his lunch money, you know, the other kids, they stood up and noticed. Now, on the other hand, it also inspired some kids to challenge me. So I don't know in net if I had more fights or fewer because of it, but I think I came out on the other end a little less scarred.

Presenter16:08

I think you were about eleven when you started getting some extra teaching at Columbia University, thanks to your maths teacher. How did he manage to make that happen for you?

Brian Greene16:18

Well, yeah, I had this wonderful math teacher. I still remember his name, Danny Kotok, and I had pretty much exhausted everything that Intermediate School 44 in Manhattan had to offer in the way of math. So he wrote a little letter, a little note. I didn't at the time know what it says. He said, look, just go up to Columbia University with this note and try to hand it to somebody, find somebody. So I went up there with my older sister, and we just started knocking on doors. I know one door.

Brian Greene16:45

The gentleman who answered it, we gave him the note and he read it and he said, Sure, I mean the note.

Brian Greene16:51

In retrospect, I ultimately learned and said, hey, this is a smart kid. Can you teach him?

Brian Greene16:55

And so this graduate student in the math department of Columbia said yes, and I started to meet with him three or four times a week over the summer. We couldn't pay him, we didn't have any money, but he was doing it just for the joy of teaching and learning. And that was a powerful rhythm for me to be able to explore the world in ways that otherwise would simply not have been available to me.

Presenter17:16

It's time to hear your fourth disc today, Professor Brian Greene. What have you got for us, and why are you taking it with you?

Brian Greene17:22

So this is an excerpt from a piece that I wrote, a stage work called Light Falls, Space, Time, and an Obsession of Einstein. And it traces Albert Einstein's journey toward the general theory of relativity, his own trajectory toward those ideas. And if people can feel the excitement of that journey, the drama of human discovery, I think their association with science would completely change. And that's what this piece is all about.

Presenter18:52

An extract from Lightfalls, composed by Jeff Beale and performed by the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter18:59

Professor Brian Green, over the years you've made discoveries of your own, mirror symmetry being one, and later you worked out that tears could happen in the fabric of space. Can you describe what it feels like when you've made a major scientific breakthrough?

Brian Greene19:13

There's nothing like it. It gives you uh uh chills. It gives you a sense of communion with the cosmos that perhaps nobody else else communed in that way before. But I should also say there's anxiety.

Presenter19:28

Hmm.

Brian Greene19:28

That comes with it. The discovery that you mentioned about the terrors in the fabric of space, I was working on that with a colleague. This was back in the 90s. And we submitted the paper electronically at about midnight. So excited. And we started, you know, we drove away and we're chatting. And then we said, but hang on a second. Did we double-check that? And we're like, oh my God. So we ran back, drove back to the office. We retracted the paper from the electronic archive. We did the cal it was correct, right? But that kind of anxiety suffuses these kinds of results.

Presenter20:02

Brian, I think it was an incident with a pizza that played a rather unexpected part in setting you on your chosen career path. Tell me a little bit more about that unfortunate moment.

Brian Greene20:12

Yeah, it's true. I was in fourth grade. I came home from school. I was hungry, so I put a piece of pizza that was left over in the fridge. I put it in the oven. I turned it on. Ten minutes later, I go back and the pizza's still cold. I realize, ah, I forgot to light the oven. It was an old-style oven where you have to light it each time. There wasn't a pilot there. So I lit the match, as I'd seen my parents do before, and the oven, of course, exploded, singed off my eyebrows, second, third degree burns on my face. I can still see the wall of fire just coming right at my face. An interesting moment where the laws of physics were triumphing over human era.

Presenter20:50

And understandably, in future, you were a little bit wary of experiments in the lab.

Brian Greene20:54

Oh, I've stayed away from experiments. That was it. That was the very last time. I am so theoretical all through and through. Even in college, when you were supposed to do an experimental course in order to finish the degree, I found a way to slip through and not take that experimental course. So for me, it's all been about calculations, the numbers. That match was in some sense the last piece of equipment that I've ever touched.

Presenter21:21

You majored in physics at Harvard University and graduated in 1984, and I read that in your final year you made it into the yearbook for having the messiest

Brian Greene21:30

Yeah, I was just so focused on doing work, on trying to figure things out that I paid no attention to where my clothes went. I paid no attention to where the bedding went. And I remember there was one night there was noise in the corridor, so I took my mattress and I used it as sort of a buffer. I put it against the door to try to block out the noise, and then I never moved it. So this room was just as if it was like a war zone inside of there.

Presenter21:59

We've got to make uh some time for the music, Brian. What are we going to hear next?

Brian Greene22:03

I encountered a performance of this when I was in college. It was a student performance. It wasn't a professional performance. It so struck me at a deep level, the sort of brooding nature, the longing nature of the piece that every so often would like burst forth into the light and then find its way back to the darkness. And when I heard that piece, I said to myself, I've got to one day be able to play this. Now I couldn't even play a scale. You know, my dad steered us all away from music because the life for him was so difficult. So I wasn't a kid who took up piano as a youngster. But when I heard this rhapsody, this Brahms rhapsody, I decided that I was going to learn at least enough piano to be able to play that piece one day.

Presenter23:56

Brahms' Rhapsody in G minor performed by Martha Ogerich. And you did manage to learn to perform it yourself, Brian Greene. How did you get on?

Brian Greene24:04

Well, perform in air quotes, I guess. And it was such a sense of accomplishment, but also a sense of being able to feel the music in a different way than I had when I was listening to another kid in college playing it. And to me, that was one of those sparkling moments.

Presenter24:23

Brian, in your more recent work you've wrestled with concepts including the Big Bang, consciousness, religion, and the idea of free will, which you say doesn't exist. Why not?

Brian Greene24:33

When you realize that according to fundamental physics, we are all just collections of particles, big bags of stuff, and those particles are fully governed by the laws of physics without any opportunity for any of us to intercede in how those particles move. And then when you realize that our decisions and our actions are just the motion of particles inside of our brains, inside of our bodies, well, we can't control that. By what force would we control that? It is the laws of physics acting themselves out on body and brain that determines what we do and the decisions that we make.

Presenter25:06

Your view of yourself must be very affected by these concepts that you're you're cogitating upon. I mean, seeing yourself as a collection of particles coming together to yield a predictable outcome must be quite good for the ego, for example. It would stop you getting too big for your boots.

Brian Greene25:19

Yes, well it can go both ways, I think. But when I do something that I'm pleased with, I don't look to myself as some abstract I that accomplished it. Rather I say, hey particles, nice job. I'm really glad that the laws of physics conspired so that these particles called Brian Green did this or that thing. And when they do something that I'm less than happy with, I say, oh, that's too bad. Darn. The laws of physics cause my particles to do that, and I'm less than pleased with that outcome, but that's how the laws of physics operated in this particular case. So it does allow you to pull back from this deep sense of the personal to recognize that we are part of this unfolding reality. And like rocks and like trees and like clouds, we are made of the same stuff governed by the same laws. The only difference is we have greater inner organization that comes to us through eons and eons of evolution by natural selection. But in the end, we're just particles governed by laws.

Presenter26:24

Time for some more music, Brian Greene. What's next and why?

Brian Greene26:27

So, the next is Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Judy Garland. The lyricist, Yip Harberg, had a great impact on me. He once said a long time ago, he said something like, I'll probably get it wrong, but he said, Words make you think a thought, music makes you feel a feeling, but songs, he said, make you feel a thought. And he said, To feel a thought is an artistic process. And that had such an impact on me because it permeated my whole perspective on how to be in the world.

Speaker 427:00

Some wear over the rainbow

Speaker 427:10

Way of God

Brian Greene27:11

They are

Speaker 427:17

There's a land that I heard of once.

Speaker 427:28

In a la

Presenter27:30

Ah.

Speaker 427:30

Uh

Presenter27:34

Somewhere Over the Rainbow Judy Garland with the Victor Young Orchestra from the soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz composed by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harberg.

Presenter27:44

Professor Brian Greene, when you were young, I know you were raised in the Jewish faith and you went to a Hebrew school at weekends, but you didn't grow up in a particularly religious household. However, unlike some scientists, you are interested in listening to those who have a spiritual perspective. What do you get out of engaging with their views?

Brian Greene28:02

Well, I, unlike many of my colleagues, am not set on trying to wipe religion off of the face of the earth. Rather, I see religion as one of the valid and vital human stories. It's not a story that tells us about the external world, of course. For that, we do need physics. But as a story that helps us understand our own inner sensibility, our own inner selves, for many, the religious approach is valuable and vital, and I think it's one that is part of our human heritage in a profound way.

Presenter28:35

Brian, in your professional life you've spent so much time looking outwards, you know, to the furthest reaches of the possibilities of physics and mathematics and our scientific understanding of the universe. But your most recent book was a completely different journey, one that took you within the search for meaning. How close did you get to finding it?

Brian Greene28:55

It's a journey that's taken me to a place that's not particularly original, but I feel like I've gotten there on a novel trajectory. Mindfulness teachers, philosophers, sages across the ages have all said, hey, you need to focus on the moment. And I've come back to that by virtue of realizing that when you look at the far future of the universe, everything that we value, it all goes away. The second law of thermodynamics, the increase of entropy, shows us that stars ultimately, they dissolve, planets dissolve, matter itself will likely dissolve into a spray of particles that will just waft through the cosmos. So it focuses you on this moment and it gives at least me a sense of gratitude, a sense of reverence for being part of creation at all.

Brian Greene29:46

It's time

Presenter29:46

Uh

Brian Greene29:47

MTA

Presenter29:47

Your next disc today. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Brian Greene29:50

So, A Million Dreams, the soundtrack from The Greatest Showman. And, you know, I don't want to sound like a Hallmark card here, but with all that we have gone through over the last year with this pernicious virus, you know, with my mom, I lost my mom to the virus. And I look at my kids and I just don't want them to lose the ability to dream, to dream of a better time, to dream of a moment when they will be out in the world living life fully. And this song in particular, I think, just captures that spirit beautifully.

Speaker 430:23

Every night I lie in bed, The brightest colours fill my head.

Speaker 430:29

A million dreams are keeping me awake I think of what the world could be A vision of the world I see A million dreams is all it's gonna take

Speaker 430:47

Million dreams for the world we're gonna make.

Presenter30:54

A Million Dreams. Ziv Zaifman from the soundtrack to the greatest showman. Professor Brian Green, you have a farm in upstate New York where you spend much of your time these days. How important is it for you to connect with nature?

Brian Greene31:08

I think it's utterly essential. You know, when I grew up,

Brian Greene31:12

In Manhattan, a clear night full of stars would mean that there were five points of light that you could see up in the darkness, right? And now, out there in the country, you look up and you see what our forebears saw. And it feels to me, I mean, I don't have any data on this, but intuitively it feels to me that if every single person on planet Earth were to experience that dark night full of stars, we would be able to transcend the everyday. We'd be able to deal with problems in a different way. I'm not saying that's the silver bullet that would solve everything, but that sense of connection to the Earth, that sense of connection to the wider universe, it would allow us to put things in context. And I think that is a tremendous loss that so many people live in cities and don't have the connection to nature, don't have the connection to the stars.

Presenter32:10

Of course you'll have a skyful of stars to enjoy on your desert island, and I am about to cast you away there. I know that many years ago you had a sort of practice run on a camping expedition, and I was wondering how you got on there.

Brian Greene32:22

Oh my gosh, not well. Oh, that was that was torture. Yeah, I had three days of a solo run on an outward bound course when I was a kid. And look, those three days have stuck with me more than any other, so I deeply value them. But being out there in the woods as a city kid, never having slept in a bed outside of a city, and there I was on the ground with a sleeping bag and a tarp, it was tough. But it certainly made me appreciate the power of nature to change the way you think about yourself in the world.

Presenter32:22

Yeah.

Presenter32:57

So how are you feeling about our island, then?

Brian Greene32:59

Well, I'm looking forward to it.

Presenter33:01

Okay, well one more disc before we send you there. Your final track today. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Brian Greene33:07

I was writing a piece a couple years ago that was exploring on stage the journey from the Big Bang until the end when all there are are particles wafting through the darkness. And the question was, what performance piece would resonate with the ending of the universe? And so my wife suggested, Tracy Day suggested The Sound of Silence, but the Simon and Garfunkel

Brian Greene33:30

Rendition felt too sweet, too lyrical for this ending and another producer suggested the performance by David Draymond in Disturbed. And when I heard that, I was like, this is it, this is perfect. Because there's a railing against the darkness, there's a railing against the silence in his performance. The sensibility of, we do not want to go into the place of darkness with particles wafting through the void.

Speaker 433:54

Who said I you do not know Silence like a cancer groan

Speaker 434:04

Hear my words out

Speaker 434:17

There was night silent raindrops fell.

Speaker 434:27

Can it go in the world of silence?

Presenter34:34

The Sound of Silence, composed by Paul Simon, performed by Disturbed. So, Professor Brian Greene, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. You can also have another book of your own choosing. What will that be?

Brian Greene34:50

I'm going to take Philosophical Explanations by Robert Nozick. He was my philosophy professor in college. If I have the Bible and I've got Shakespeare, I've got the human condition covered, but I want to have an analytic argument and discussion about the big problems of free will and morality and all that important matter. And having that conversation with Robert Nozick would be certainly a powerful way to spend the time.

Presenter35:18

Yeah, that'll keep me going on the island. You can also have a luxury item to make your stay a little bit more enjoyable. What will that be?

Brian Greene35:24

Well, I was gonna choose slippers because I hate the feeling of sand on my feet.

Speaker 435:29

But I think

Brian Greene35:29

But I felt like that was not maximally using the opportunity. So instead, I'm going to take the world's largest particle collider.

Presenter35:39

This would have to be solar powered.

Presenter35:41

No, you are the person to say whether theoretically that would be possible.

Brian Greene35:41

That's fine.

Brian Greene35:47

Oh yeah, theoretically? Absolutely.

Presenter35:49

Absolutely.

Presenter35:50

And finally, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you had to rescue just one of your discs?

Brian Greene35:57

Yeah, that's actually easy for me. I'm gonna choose turnaround. You know, my dad's song, the connection to to my dad would be a powerful

Brian Greene36:07

element to take with me, so I would certainly save that disc.

Presenter36:12

Professor Brian Greene, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Brian Greene36:16

My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Presenter36:39

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Brian. It is a shame he couldn't take his slippers, but I'm sure the particle collider will keep him happy enough. We've cast away many scientists to our island, including fellow physicists Carlo Rovelli, Brian Cox, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Jim Arkhali. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. Next time my guest will be the comedian Alexi Sale. I do hope you'll join us.

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Sneakers? Trainers? Whatever you want to call them, they are amongst the most iconic cultural objects of our time. But their evolution is a story rarely told until now.

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From BBC Radio 4, this is Sneakonomics. Across this podcast, we're going to be telling the crazy origin stories of the most well-known sports companies and their relentless quest to be the world's number one.

Speaker 437:31

Sneakernomics tells a story of fierce competition and rivalry, one that tore families and friendships apart, and even divided towns.

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We'll follow in the footsteps of mavericks, hustlers and dreamers and hear their tales of boom and bust, fame and infamy, hope and heartbreak. Above all, this is the story of the people behind the shoes. From BBC Radio 4, this is Sneakonomics.

Speaker 437:56

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