To The Best Of Our Knowledge; Edges of Science

It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Ann Strainchamps. Today, the edges of science. And one thing we like to do on this show is ask really big questions, like, what is reality? How did the universe begin? Where does consciousness come from? Used to be those were questions philosophers and theologians grappled with. But today, we talk with a lot of people who believe the only way we'll ever answer any of those questions is with science. For instance, physicist Lawrence Krauss said something like that on this show just the other week. You're not going to answer these questions philosophically or theologically, for that matter. But what's really frustrating when some people say, oh, science will never answer this question. Well, how do you know if you don't try? Let's say there's something, sorry, it's beyond the domain of science. It's just to close your mind. Later this hour, physicist Leonard Malodinov, who works with Stephen Hawking, says something similar. We've decided as scientists that we don't want to just philosophize or just use pure reason about the physical world as people used to do many centuries ago. We want to require of our

ideas that they be testable, falsifiable before we accept them. So here's our big question today. Can science or the scientific method really explain everything? I think some people think we know more than we actually do. That's Marcelo Glazer. He's also a physicist, but less certain than some of his colleagues that science has a main line to the truth. Steve Paulson got together with Glazer recently to talk about his book The Island of Knowledge, The Limits of Science, and the Search for Meaning. Because science has been so successful over the last two centuries to explain so much about the natural world, yes, there is a seductive side of it. And some people call it scientism, which would basically mean that science is the only way to make sense of things. And that's where the danger lies, I think. In what way is our knowledge limited? Well, I think there are two ways in which we can immediately show that there are simply limitations in the way science actually works. So the first one is that in order to do science, you

have to gather data about nature. So what we do is we amplify our senses with instruments. Just think of the microscope and you think of the telescope. And what was happening before the invention of these two instruments and how they both transformed completely the way we think about the world. And you can even tell the history of science by telling the history of technological innovation if you want, how the two go hand in hand. However, we have to remember that instruments can only amplify our vision of nature up to a certain point. And we cannot see beyond that point. There is always going to be a blind spot, so to speak, things that we cannot see. So you're saying that our knowledge is almost by definition limited to the technological instruments we use. I mean, we can't see beyond them. And we'll keep having new technologies that will reveal new things about the world. But we'll never get the whole picture. Exactly.

I think the whole idea that we can see everything, or that our instruments can catch everything, is just simply very naive. Just as a comparison, let's think about this for a second. So Galileo's telescope, which he didn't invent, but that he used and perfected, he saw things that no one else had seen before, right? However, nowadays, with, you know, garden variety telescopes that you can buy at Walmart, you can see these things too. And our most powerful telescopes can see remarkable stuff, right? They can go and see galaxies being born billions of light years away. But that does not mean that they can capture the whole story. So apart from the limitations from an instrumental perspective, you also have limitations. And these are really the tough ones. We have limitations that come from the way nature itself operates. What do you mean? For example, the speed of light. So light is incredibly fast, right? 186 ,000 miles per second. You basically, you blink your eye and light can go seven and a half times around the earth. It's a

ridiculously fast speed, you know, but it's not instantaneous, right? So if the sun exploded right now, it would take us about eight minutes to find out. Granted, it would be the last thing you would ever know, right, boom, that's it. But the point is that everything that we see is in the past. Now, you combine this with the fact that the universe has a finite age, 13 .8 billion years. That basically means that, you know, that's one time, as we know, it started to tick. That's fascinating. You're suggesting, then, that we can only see the light that can travel over 13 .8 billion years. But it's possible that the universe might be much bigger. It could be infinite, but we would never know because we just, we don't have an F light to be able to see that far. Exactly. So the point of this, which is kind of very fascinating, is that we could be fooled into believing that our view of the world is the real thing when it really isn't. So what really irks me is when we have, like, very famous

scientists write books or make public pronouncements stating that we have solved some very fundamental questions about the universe such as, what is the big bank's singularity or the theory of everything? But the whole search for the theory of everything, that has propelled so many famous physicists in recent decades. I mean, that's sort of the holy grail of physics for a lot of people is to come up with an all -encompassing theory that will unite all of these sort of disparate parts of physics so everything works together. Me included. I went into physics exactly for that reason. I wanted to work on the theory of everything. I did my PhD on super -string theories, which is sort of the modern incarnation of this theory of everything. But, you know, with age and with experience, I came to realize that perhaps that is really not how you should be looking at nature. You know, it strikes me that you are rather unusual for a physicist. You seem to have a deep philosophical streak. And there are a lot of physicists today who don't like philosophy at all. I mean, famous physicists like Stephen

Hawking and Lawrence Krauss, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and they've all said very dismissive things about philosophy, basically, that we don't need philosophy anymore because we have science. Science has replaced philosophy. Right, and I think that's a big mistake. Not so much Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I think that what Hawking and Lawrence Krauss are saying shows how embarrassing he can be when a scientist does not know philosophy and starts to say things like that. What we are doing, you know, you cannot separate the technical aspects of physics, which is the mathematics, the concepts from the philosophical conceptual structure of what physics is about. Whenever you split these two things, you become a technician. And when you deal with questions of the origin of the universe, or the structure of matter, and what is space, and what is time, you just can't be a pure technician. Well, I want to follow up on this, though, because you write about your early fascination with sort of the connection in particular between Eastern mysticism and quantum physics. And this is back when you were a

graduate student in physics, and in fact, you were very taken by Fritschov Copperis, best -selling book, The Dow of Physics. This huge bestseller back in the 1970s, and you actually contacted him to see if you could work with him, and that did not work out. So there was something there for you. Absolutely. I can say that I was a very grew up in Rio, and in Brazil, we have this syncretic combination of Christianity and the African religion. It's a very mystical place. And you see this in the streets. Every Monday morning, people like light candles on crossroads and black chickens, and then they put a cross in the middle of it. It's really weird how they combine the two things. But the point is that, yes, I grew up in this kind of environment, and I was very spiritual, and I was interested in Taoism and Eastern yoga, et cetera, before I was interested in physics. So one day, after I started physics, I was walking around the library at my university in Rio, and I saw this book called The Dow of Physics, and it just blew me away. I was 18 years old. It was a

driving notion for me for many years. And nowadays, however, I think very differently of the relationship between religions and science. Are you religious at all today? No, I'm not. But I'm also not an atheist. I call myself an agnostic, because basically what you're saying is that, look, I don't see any evidence of God or God's, but I cannot shoot it down because I don't have any evidence to contrary. Okay, so you call yourself an agnostic, you say that you were not religious anymore, would you describe yourself as spiritual? Absolutely. I think I'm a very spiritual person, and every time on Sundays, when I go run my trails in the mountains here of New Hampshire, I think of people going to their temple, and I say, here I am going to my temple, which is just being close to nature. So I think that a lot of the drive for me to be a scientist and to explore these fundamental questions of knowledge that we talked about here today comes from a very spiritual connection with nature. Why do you call that

spiritual? I mean, why not just say you're a scientist, you're trying to understand how the world works. That's what science is all about. What's spiritual about that? Because I think that if you just say I'm a scientist and I'm just trying to understand how the world works, you sound like you could be just a shoemaker, and you could just building shoes because I want to know how a shoe can work. There are different kinds of scientists, and I think I stand kind of in the middle as being a person that does not believe in supernatural causes in the universe, but on the other hand, believe in the beauty and sort of the mystery of our existence. So given all that you have said about how science is inherently limited in some ways, to our quest to understand reality, where does that leave us? I mean, what's a healthy response to how we should approach the world? The healthy response is this, is that the fact that there are limits to knowledge should not be seen as the end of the story. It should be seen as the beginning of a new story because

essentially obstacles are opportunities for growth. So to me, identifying the limits of knowledge is actually a liberating experience because we take off our shoulders the weight of carrying this truth with capital T, which is really a burden. So to me, identifying limits is actually the first step to transcending them. That's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. Marcello Glazer is a physicist at Dartmouth College. He talked with Steve Paulson about his book, The Island of Knowledge, the Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. So what do you think? Does science have inherent limits? You can comment on our website at ttbook .org or on our Facebook page. One of the most

remarkable episodes in modern science was the friendship and collaboration between psychologist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli. They met after Jung had broken away from Freud and was deep into mysticism and the occult. Pauli was a brilliant young physicist. He'd become one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics and win a Nobel Prize. The really interesting thing is how open Pauli was to some of Jung's most far -out ideas. Physicist Arthur Miller tells the story. It is interesting that this man who by day was an austere, dramatic physicist had these occult interests and he was working along lines of the occult even though he didn't know it until he met Jung and was psychoanalyzed by Jung in 1933 to 1934. Pauli went to see him because he had reached a dangerous low point in his life. He was on a binge of drinking, drugs, prostitution. He was a doctor,

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. By day, he was an austere physicist. By night, he frequented red light districts that he was sometimes thrown out of a bar was a mixed blessing because they often got into a brawl in which he was beaten up. And it was at that point that he, although he hated his father, he took his father's advice and went to see the celebrated psychoanalyst called Jung who at 57 years of age was actually at the height of his power. Jung's analysis was of great help to Pauli. Pauli was a dreamer. When he went to see Jung, he had dreamt 355 dreams which he had written up and he dreamt another 45 before the end of their psychoanalysis. What Jung would do is use a person's dream images and compare the dream images with images from alchemy and then Pauli begins to draw mandalas. Mandalas are essential in Jungian psychology. And the mandala that Pauli draws is an amazingly complicated one. And in

that way, Pauli finds equilibrium between his conscious and his own conscious. The relationship turned from a patient analyst relation to a college ship and then a friendship. They would meet at Jung's fortress like house, gothic matching on the shores of Lake Zurich and you know, dying on fine food and smoked the finest cigars and drink the finest wine and speak about topics that range from physics, psychology, UFOs, Jesus Christ, Yahwa, Armageddon, you name it, they talked about it. Pauli believed that quantum physics was not the end all which is what Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg felt. Pauli believed that what quantum physics gave you was a mathematical description of nature. But why is it? I mean, how is it that the atoms and molecules that make up our body, although they're considered in quantum physics as dead matter,

all add up and give you consciousness? How does that come about? And one had this very important physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, whose research to some extent was driven by his delving into mysticism, alchemy, and viewed his creativity as being driven through dreams. All through their relationship, they both respected each other's fields of knowledge. Pauli respected Jung's delving into the occult and the alchemy religion was a big topic which they discussed. And Jung was of course impressed with Pauli's knowledge of physics and what they both gained was a friendship, a very close friendship and a profitable insight into a very different way of thinking and of seeing the universe. In fact, Pauli's last words when he died, apparently, was that? He wanted to speak with Pauli Jung. Arthur Miller is a physicist. His

book about Pauli and Jung is called Discifering the Cosmic Number. And if you want to hear more about this story, you can find a complete interview with Miller on our website at ttbook .org. Up next, what happened when some of the world's greatest scientists went looking for ghosts. And deep back Chopra and Leonard Molodinoff waged a war of worldviews, science versus spirituality. I'm Anne Strange -Champ's. It's to the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio and PRI, Public Radio International. Public Radio. Public Radio.

Public Radio. Shed. Public Radio. Shed. Public Radio. Shed. Public Radio. Shed. Public Radio. Public Radio. Shed. Public Radio. Public Radio. Shed. Speaking of far -out experiments, I once tried to bend a spoon with my mind. I was about 13 at the time and had been watching Uri Geller, the psychic, on TV. I remember being disappointed, but not terribly surprised when my spoon refused to budge. There are still plenty of psychics and mediums on TV and online. Most scientists wouldn't touch the subject, but that wasn't always so. A hundred years ago, a small group of high -powered scholars and scientists set out to investigate the paranormal. There was the world -renowned psychiatrist, William James, two Nobel laureates and several

university presidents, so their scientific credentials were impeccable. This was the last time scientists of this stature took the paranormal seriously. Science writer Deborah Blum tells the story in her book Ghost Hunters. People would go to mediums and psychics and there was a hugely thriving trade. Shops, medium shops, and they would hang out their psychic shingles at war. You know, people would make appointments or they would have mediums and psychics into their house for their more personal sayances. But when you read it, you go, boy, these people desperately needed to believe. And then some of it, and especially with the people I were looking at, they did their best to say, what are all the different ways we can kind of box this up and rule out cheating? And see, there was a lot of luxurism at the time. I mean, there were people who said they can produce ectoplasm and people who said they could fly through the air and appeared too, but with using parlor tricks. Yeah, you know, I saw a really good recipe for ectoplasm involving egg whites. They're like, you, and I have to say, just as someone who likes the history

of science, I thought this was one of the best periods in science. I mean, these scientists, they were hiding in closets and creeping around under tables. And I mean, they really had a very exciting life for second, just, and most of it was fraudulent. Did they find anything that in the end, they thought was genuine? Yes. And in a way that still to this day, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how you improve on what they did in some ways. I mean, that's the other thing that looking back, I was sort of frustrated by is you can look at this moment where you have really brilliant people studying this. They had some fascinating ideas about how it might work. And I've wondered sometimes if you took people that smart and with the abilities we have now, really a concerted effort and looked at the problem again, instead of, you know, rolling your eyes and just thinking it's not worth looking at, then maybe we could sort out a little of this. So to give you a

idea of that, one of the things they looked at was, why would ghosts wear clothes? I just love that. Good practical question. That's my favorite. One of my favorites, the problem of the ghost of clothes, because if you believe that ghost is some kind of energy generated by a person in crisis or a person in the moment of death, if you believe there's some kind of energy involved, or if you believe that it's a spirit, clothes don't have spirits, right? That to me is an example of a really interesting question. Well, it is, but how is it remotely scientifically testable? That's another really interesting question. How would you get at that? And so one of the things they looked at is they classed these kind of visions into empathy. And they said, here's your problem, right? Of course, it's not clothes, right? But let's just say, for instance, that it's an energy transformation from someone that you knew, then you're the receiver you put the clothes on the ghost. Tell me about one or two of the cases that they finally said, okay, maybe this person's

genuine. There was a really good, and in her day quite famous medium, named Leonora Piper, who was discovered by William James, actually, or at least made famous by William James. And she had a really, even when you read this stuff, you know, from many, many years ago, you go, how did she know that? She had an uncanny ability. And one of my favorite cases involved another professor at Harvard. He worked with James. He did not believe, but Mrs. Piper had gotten so much publicity who decided to go visit her. And he made an appointment anonymously, came there determined to reveal no information. And this is all recorded in the letter he wrote to James afterwards. And he said, so I went and sat down, said two words, and she talked for 45 minutes about personal things, that she couldn't have known, that I'm not going to tell you because they're too private. And then he told James about this weird experiment he had conducted,

in which he and his mother had exchanged rings. And he had put in his mother's ring the first word of his favorite proverb. And his mother had put in his ring the first word of her favorite proverb. And he had lost that ring, the ring she gave him. But she had died about five years previously, and he had gotten back the ring he gave her. So he had the ring that had the first word of his favorite proverb, and he took it with him. And he held it in his hand, and he said to her, I'm holding this ring, and I want you to tell me the word that's inside mother's ring. And she immediately told him the word in the lost ring. Not the ring he was actually holding, but the other one. And then he said, I just don't understand how she did that. And I've turned that over and over in my head, and I don't understand how she did it either. You know, it's like, and I love those home moments. To me, they're what makes the story

so interesting and they allow you to say, there's a reason why these really well -known scientists stuck with this their whole life, because they got close enough or saw just enough to make them say, no, there's something here. One of the things I don't understand about this is that, I mean, about this subject, is that since that time, we've come up with quantum physics, quantum mechanics, which has become mainstream theory, which asks us to believe all kinds of much weirder things. You know, the idea that particles can be in two places at once. If we can accept something as weird and strange as quantum theory, why can't we begin to accept the idea that there may be telepathy, there may be other forms of energy? See, I think that goes back to that power struggle for science and religion. What's real on who gets to tell you what's real? And in this period where my guys, I always like to lose my guys, we're trying to sort of lay down this path of evidence or this edifice that people could build on. One of the things that

way laid them was that the science of the time was very determined to get rid of all superstitious ideas and also to tame religious beliefs. You got scientific leaders making statements saying, we're the dominant worldview now and we're telling religious leaders to step aside because science defines everything. And I think that we still basically fight that fight. But I think that one of the victims of that fight is anything that can't be measured by scientific methodology. Right. You have to question whether or not it's real. If it can't be proven, measured, quantified, tested, replicated, then we have no way as scientist of telling you it's real. And this has been a curious thing for me. Since I started working on this book, people have come up and talked to me about different experiences that they've had in a constant and steady flow and they form a really

interesting pattern of experience. And I tend to believe with William James that the pattern is trying to tell us something if we would listen to it. What do you think it's trying to tell us? I don't have a clue. I think it's hubris to dismiss all of those experiences which are occurring today and 100 years ago and say, you know, throughout our history we've been delusional in this one aspect. I think that there's something there that we just haven't figured out. And I do think that asking questions about those things we can't explain is incredibly valuable. It leads us in all kinds of interesting directions that I would hate for us to not explore because we thought we were too smart to do so. Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer Prize -winning science writer and author of Ghost Hunters, William James and the search for scientific proof of life after death.

A few years ago, the spiritual teacher and alternative health advocate, Deepak Chopra, was giving a talk in a crowded auditorium at Caltech. A man in the audience stood up to challenge what he had to say about quantum physics. And that guy was physicist Leonard Moladenov, who's co -authored two best -selling books with Stephen Hawking. The two men started talking and they eventually became friends and together wrote a book called The War of the World Views, Science versus Spirituality. Steve Paulson sat down with Chopra and Moladenov to hash out their differences on science and the origins of consciousness. You call your book War of the World Views and let's talk about these two worldviews. Leonard, first of all, what do you see as the basic outline of the scientific worldview? Well, first we have to understand what science is and what it is. And I think that's a big issue in all these discussions. What science is a methodology for understanding the physical world. The scientific worldview is a worldview based on observation in which we've decided as scientists that

we don't want to just philosophize or just use pure reason about the physical world as people used to do many centuries ago. We want to require of our ideas that they be testable, falsifiable. That's in contrast to other ways of looking at the world which answer other questions, such as philosophy and various spiritual endeavors. Okay, Deepak, how would you define the spiritual worldview? Yeah, I will define it in a second, but I want to comment on what Leonard said. Okay. Many times people interpret the scientific methodology as exploring the truth. And I would qualify that as saying that scientific methodology is a method for exploring partial truth because everything we know about nature is not about nature as it is through science but nature as it reveals herself to the questions we

ask. So you're saying that there are some inherent limits in what science can reveal? Or another way to put it, you're arguing that science cannot tell us all that is real. Yes, and I'm also thinking that's where spirituality comes in because spirituality starts with who am I? Spirituality actually says, just as I can observe the external world, I can observe me and I can observe me through observing my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, and actually through meditation and contemplative self -inquiry, I can even go to an experience called transcendence where I go beyond the subject, object, split, where in fact I see a sense of connection to the cosmos and that for me is a spiritual and sacred experience. Leonard, do you accept that definition or that understanding of spirituality? Well, I think everyone has to find their own spirituality. My point of view is that science tells us, as Deepak said, yes, partial

truth, at least observable truth about the observable universe that we observe and that leaves the inner universe of the meaning of life or the questions as to why should the universe be the way it is for everyone to decide for themselves. But I hear Deepak actually taking this one step further. The spiritual perspective is not just sort of what you personally bring to it. He's also suggesting there's some deeper underlying reality there, an unseen reality. Well, the way you write about it, Deepak, in your book, an unseen reality that is the source of all visible things. I don't accept that. I don't see evidence for an unseen reality, but I have nothing against people philosophizing about it. The deeper reality I'm talking about is, you know, in perennial philosophies, called consciousness. Consciousness that creates a subjective experience and also consciousness that creates an objective experience. So that both are two sides of that deeper reality. It sounds like you're suggesting that consciousness, in some

cases, at least, comes before material reality. I guess, I mean, the way we might say it, the mind comes before brain. Actually, I'm saying that consciousness comes before mental and material reality. It's not the way biologists or scientists talk about it, but it's the way that has been understood in the perennial philosophies of, I'll just, Huxley and Emerson and Theroux in the Eastern philosophers like Lao Tzu, in Buddha's teachings, but it's very experiential. And I'm not talking about religion here. I'm talking about observing your self, observing your thoughts. Okay, let me bring Leonard back into this discussion here. What's your understanding of this word consciousness? Well, I think that Deepak's definition and the definition of science are two different things, and this happens to be the same word. You know, in science, we don't see any evidence for this kind of

connectedness that Deepak is talking about. That's kind of a philosophical, those are philosophical ideas, which we respect, but what we look for when we talk about consciousness, are very specific processes in the brain. What happens in the brain when you feel in a specific emotion, when you see a color, when you feel love? I don't mean to be saying that we're understanding through that, the meaning of love, but just that's the scientific approach is to say, how does the brain create these feelings? But the dominant paradigm in science, especially in neuroscience, is that everything that happens in the mind is a product of brain function, right? Right, I think Deepak agrees with that. Is that not? I don't. Actually, my experience of the world is that it's a pretty messy, noisy, colorful, smelly place. My experience is not neural firings or neural networks. Well, as a question, is the mind a product of the brain or is the mind outside the brain? And I'm saying both mind and brain are a product of a field of awareness, which is prior to subject, object, split.

Well, all science can tell you is that the experiences that are reported by the mind are experiences that are produced in the neural system of the brain. For instance, one story I tell in the book is about a split brain patient. Split brain means that the patient has had surgery to cut the brain left in the right hemisphere off from each other to control severe epilepsy. And when you do that, you essentially cut the person into two personalities. There's one story that I tell a neuroscientist that was interviewing a woman who had had this surgery and asked how many seizures have you had in the last week. And her left hand says two, and her right hand puts up three. So the two parts of the brain disagree. And they end up eventually arguing with each other and fighting each other. And one hand tries to suppress the other hand. So this shows that when you cut the brain in half, you cut the mind into two also. That this person now became from one consciousness to two consciousnesses that each side of the brain is now an individual mind. So this shows you the connection between mind and brain. And the mind is a product of the brain really literally is the same as the brain. Well,

listen, the material world has its origins in a domain that is not material. And I'm thinking so does the mental? Deepak is immaterial, another word for supernatural. No, but immaterial, I mean, not having units of mass or energy. The experience of love or compassion or joy is not something you can measure in units of mass and energy. Okay, let me turn to Leonard here. What about these concepts or these experiences like love or hope or beauty? We all have some sense of this, but are these are these beyond science? The science have anything to say about these things? Look, scientists are people who have all and wonder at the universe around them. And we as scientists in a way, we have even more all and wonder than people who aren't scientists because we're dealing with these wondrous things all the time. The astronomers are studying thinking about colliding black holes. It's not something that the average person normally thinks about. The question of, is that really real? Is

that an illusion? How real is it? Or what does it mean to be real? These are things that scientists really consider. Okay, let me ask a more specific question. Let's talk about love. Given what neuroscience, what brain science might be able to reveal about the brain in the future, will science ever be able to explain the experience of love? Scientists believe that all the experiences in the brain are come from physical laws. So in science, if you find out what is the scientific explanation of love, that will tell you that love comes from this part of your brain, and when these neurons take the blah, blah, blah form, then you feel love and oxytocin is secreted in whatever else neuroscientists discover, will be a scientific explanation of love. Now, the idea of what is the meaning of love is beyond that, and that's for us all to figure out for ourselves. You know, we can measure in the brain that oxytocin goes up when you're feeling that experience of love. But oxytocin is not the experience of love, just because we can measure oxytocin or where we can

see a neural network that corresponds to that experience. It still isn't the raw experience of life, and what spirituality seeks to understand is the raw experience of life. A mechanistic explanation cannot give us the answers to the most important experiences that we have in life. Look, either the brain follows the laws of physics or it doesn't. If it follows the laws of physics and I can take the brain at any given time and tell you what it's going to do at a later time, that doesn't leave any room for free will. Do you think creativity and imagination... Creativity can come from a mechanistic algorithm. What's creativity and imagination to one person is just a normal way of exploration. We are running very short a time at a deep pack of the last word here. The last word is Leonard using data to explain experience. I'm using experience to explain data. Oh, I agree with me. Experience is much important than data. And I agree with that too, but it's not science.

That's a good place to leave it. Thank you so much. This has been very invigorating. Thank you. Thank you. Deepak Chopra and Leonard Maunov talked with Steve Paulson about their book War of the World Views. You'll find the complete uncut interview on our website at ttbook .org. We're going to take a quick break and then change the subject. When we come back, novelist Joshua Ferris tells us what to read next and NBA superstar LeBron James is heading home to the Rust Belt to play for the team he left behind. But do his old fans still want him back? I'm Anne Strange -Champs. It's to the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio and PRI, Public Radio International. I agree

with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. Now, look at the lawyers. And now, bookmarks, writers on books they love. Hello my name is Joshua Ferris. And I'm the author of TERIS again at a decent hour. And I'm here to recommend the Jame Salter Collection of Stories, DoSK and other stories. The reason I'd like to recommend Dusk is mainly because it's so very romantic. Salter has a way of introducing

you to the shores of Spain or to a patch of grass and Idaho. Wherever it is that he focuses takes on a real romantic cast. I think it's mainly the way that he writes. He's a very oblique writer and leaves a lot of the work to the imagination. But he will have these very poetic and limped lines that make you very convinced that you're right there. Here's a little passage from a story called American Express. And it doesn't say much but it really evokes a great mood. Leaving Venice, Frank Drove. He couldn't ride in a car unless he was driving. Alan sat back looking out the window. Sunlight falling on the hillsides of antiquity. European days, the silence, the needle floating at 100. That's very evocative. It's not trying very hard. It doesn't say exactly where they are or what he's seeing. But then you

also have these nice turns of phrases that really click things in the place. It's not just sunlight falling on the hillsides but sunlight falling on the hillsides of antiquity. He'll take a line and just stretch it out by a word or two more. These are stories of lust and of longing and of conflict and of leaving. He's really good at showing you the despair of people whose relationships have crumbled. But really the real heart and soul of it is the heat between bodies. He's a very romantic writer, a very sexy writer, and he is able to do that in so few words. He's really in the tradition of Hemingway. But his characters are so much softer than Hemingway's characters. They're not so possessed by this need for machismo. They're much more interested in making good connections and falling apart. It's just a fine book. Salter has influenced me because he's so fully his own thing that you would sort of detect it immediately. I have certainly written

sentences that are salt or like and then scratched them out because they just don't belong in a book about a voice driven dental book like my last novel. So I haven't been able to really incorporate him, which is why I come to him over and over again. He seems inviable. Joshua Ferris recommends Dusk and other stories by James Salter. And you can find more bookmarks on our website at ttbook .org. And now it's time for On Our Minds. One of the Summer's top sports stories has been NBA superstar LeBron James' decision to come back to Cleveland. He's leaving the glitz and glamour of Miami where he led the heat to two championships to return to the blighted Rust Belt of Cleveland. Home to what was once one of the NBA's worst teams. Could seem like a career killer of a move, except that LeBron has a history in Northeast Ohio. He was

born and raised in Akron and played his first seven seasons for the Cleveland Cavaliers. And then during an infamous ESPN special called the decision, he announced, I'm taking my talents to South Beach. Now the prodigal son is returning and everyone wants to know how he'll be received back home. Charles Monroe Kane is also a native of Northeast Ohio. He put that question to his Rust Belt Comrade, journalist David Giffles. We're used to people leaving here. We're used to people, talented people leaving here. When he said, I'm taking my talents to South Beach, the ring of that was different in Akron and Cleveland than it was in the rest of the country in ways that only we can really understand. And I've spent my whole life listening to people saying, I have to take my talents somewhere else. So when one person very notably says, I'm coming back and in what sounds like a very sincere way, because that's my home, because that's where I belong, because it's a good place to be, that also rings, I think, differently here, even than it did with the rest of the country, which

is derided as he was for what he said and how he said it during the decision. He's been really, I think, applauded. Well, I want to read you something, you spoke about the announcement, because when I read this announcement, I couldn't believe how intense his essay was saying, it's come back, I wasn't really opening paragraph to you, and I asked you a response. He said, although a lot of our listeners would have read this. So it goes, before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from Northeast Ohio. It's where I walked, it's where I ran, it's where I cried, it's where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up, I sometimes feel like I'm their son. Their passion can be overwhelming, but it drives me. I want to give them hope when I can. I want to inspire them when I can. My relationship with Northeast Ohio was bigger than basketball. I didn't realize that four years ago. Now I do holy macro, how did you feel when you read that? It's one of those rare things where you actually cannot make it hyperbolic. It's also

one of those things that if there was a shred of cynicism or calculation behind it, we would hear it because one thing we do have here is a really good BS detector. So when I heard it, I was genuinely moved and euphoric. We can't put ourselves in LeBron's mind. Why is he coming back? LeBron James has virtually nothing in common with any of us, but one thing in common with all of us. And by us I mean people here in his home in Northeast Ohio. He is at a point in his life where he recognizes that. He can be anything anywhere. He can be comfortable anywhere. So to choose a place, it has to mean something. Otherwise he chooses a situation. Right. And I think that's fascinating. And I think it's really validating not only for us as a place that's really struggled to be accepted and understood by the rest of the country, but also for just

for people who believe in the true value of family and sort of common Midwestern values. You know, I should do a full disclosure here is the guy interviewing you. And I think you might know this, but I'm from your place as well. I'm from Northeast Ohio. From a place called Warnow, Ohio. And my father and my grandfather both worked in still mills. And then when the tire and still more factories started closing in the early 80s, where I lived, it just completely went downhill. The rusting factories, polluted rivers, foreclosed homes. Really awful strip malls, run down strip malls. It was just too much for me and I left. Why did you stay? Why are you there? I'm looking down at you for leaving and you're looking down at me for staying. You know, I think we're about the same age too. So you know, going through high school here that there was a lot of push by parents to say, you know, when you get out of high school, you get out of here. Yes. Go to college and don't

come back. Yeah, there's not opportunity here. And you know, I stayed because I went to the University of Akron, which was, you know, the state school in my hometown because I could afford to. So that first step of, you know, leaving for college, I didn't take because I didn't really need to. And then while I was in college, it happened to also engage me with the city for the first time, because the university is right downtown. And so as a young person, I was exploring this almost like post -apocalyptic landscape of abandoned factories and empty storefronts. And the canal runs, you know, behind the alleys downtown with my friends. And as a young person who didn't really fully, maybe naively, didn't understand the economic and cultural and civic implications of this, it was exciting. It was like this playground that was ours. Nobody else wanted it and we could do anything. And then soon enough, you know,

my wife and I bought a house very cheaply here, which you can do and started working on it. So I started to feel invested early enough that when opportunities came where I could have left, I didn't feel like I had to take them. And how do you feel about the people like me who did go to the state school and another state or like me went to a private school and I never, I've never been back since that was a long time ago. I hate you for betraying us. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's okay. No, I don't. I completely understand why you left and why most of my friends left eventually because they had to. And of course, I understand. I mean, you know, you're living in Madison, Wisconsin. That's a really awesome place. So I wouldn't expect you to come back here. So why did you leave and if you could somehow come back, is that a choice you would make? I do go back for funerals and for way for weddings and go back to visit. But every time I go back, any romantic idea I have of Warren Ohio, it's just blown away by

boarded up houses and meth and foreclosure and lack of opportunity. And I just find it so depressing. My wife says every time I go there after like I need a couple days of existential recovery when I come back. Because I'm just so affected by it. I just don't see any of the opportunities there. It's really fun. Like all of a sudden, I'm hearing all of the mothers of Northeast Ohio wagging their fingers at their son saying, well, it's good enough for LeBron James. Why isn't it good enough for you? I could see my four mom. LeBron James moved back in his mother lives there, right? It's like, oh my god, I'm such a terrible son. You know, my mom, if you said, aren't there public radio stations in Ohio? I'm like, yes, mom. There are public radio stations in Ohio. You know, it's funny, you know, you know, the irony for me though, is that factory towns, Detroit being the best example, but Akron being a rubber town, my town being a stymil town, they're defined by work. That's why they're there. That's why they exist on that river. And that's what they're doing there. But when that work goes away, is there still a sense of place without work? Yeah, that's,

that's a great, because you know, the problem is, and the problem that we've struggled with is that the sense of place that's the perceived sense of place is it's a place where there's no more work. And if that was your only identity, you have to struggle with that. And so, you know, a lot of my book is about growing up in a place that's lost its identity just as I'm trying to find my own personal identity. I mean, to be 16 years old, you know, trying to find your identity, which is hard enough in a place that was the rubber capital of the world, that was the nickname, and there were no more tires being built here. All of that, to be happening simultaneously, in retrospect, is interesting, but also a great struggle. So, how you define yourself, yeah, I mean, for a long time, these cities had no choice, but to define themselves by loss. Right. You define yourself by what you're not as well. Yeah, but knowing what you were and knowing you're not that anymore, well, what are we? And I think that's why LeBron James was, you know, there was so much weight on

him, because it's like, it's not like he will be our identity, but it's like, he will be something that people around the world recognize as being from here. Right. So, certainly a cornerstone of an identity. And, you know, also importantly, he very much identified as an acronym. He has 330, the local area code tattooed on his arm. The fact that, well, LeBron left, he didn't ever actually denounce his hometown, made me think, I want him to succeed. I just want him to wish he was succeeding for us. And now I can think, you know, I think maybe he was wishing he was succeeding for us, even when he was doing it in Miami. A conversation between two Ohio sons, Charles Monroe Cain and David Giffles, author of The Hard Way On Purpose, essays and dispatches from the Rust Belt. LeBron James isn't

the only favorite son of Akron Ohio, the Grammy -winning indie band, The Black Keys. Also hail from the rubber capital of the world. We're listening to their Northeast Ohio anthem called Ohio. That's all for our show today. If you have comments or questions on anything you've heard, we'd love to hear from you. Just go to our website at ttbook .org or visit our Facebook page. To the best of our knowledge is produced at Wisconsin Public Radio. This hour was put together by Steve Paulson, with help from Sarah Nicks, Doug Gordon, Charles Monroe Cain, Raymond Tungacar and Will Hancus, with also some audio artistry from Joe Hart Key. Our theme music was composed by Steve Mullin at Walk West Music. Our technical director is Carille Owen, I'm Ann Strange -Hamps. Thanks for joining us today. P -R -I Public Radio International.