successfully navigate an ever evolving business landscape. I'm really looking forward to share this conversation with you. Enjoy. Welcome, Professor Brian Cox. So nice to have you here. Thank you. Great to be here in this magnificent castle. Yes. Yes, we've taken the chance because you have been invited to speak at an event. And actually, that's what I wanted to start with, which is the prompt that led to you being invited here, was that you showed up on one of our social media feeds with this snippet from the COP Summit in Glasgow. Yeah. Where you'd been asked to do a one minute presentation for leaders. And I thought maybe it might be fitting that you might just share with us what you said to them and we could take it from there. Yeah, I said that, given what we know about the history of life on Earth. And I should say that this is a speculative, it's the question of how many intelligent civilizations might there be in a galaxy, like the Milky Way. So 400 billion suns, trillions of planets. So it would seem at first sight, the answer might be a lot. But it's true to say that we've looked a bit for signs of others out there, other civilizations. We don't see anything. Astronomers call it the great silence. And it's also known sometimes as the Fermi paradox after Enrico Fermi, the great physicist who essentially said, where are they all? Because if you think about it, the galaxy has been around for 13 billion years or so. And there's so many planets and stars that you would think there would be civilizations ahead of us. And if you think about us, how imagine us 100 years or 200 years or 1000 years or a million years in the future, if we survive, you would think that we would have written our, the signature of our existence across the sky. You'd think that we'd be detectable, just because we'd be a spacefaring civilization. And it's true to say we don't see anything. So that doesn't mean there's nothing there, but we don't see anything. So it's a paradox. And one of the most popular answers amongst people I speak to, my colleagues, is that there aren't, there isn't anybody else. So, and that comes from the observation that it took 4 billion years on Earth to go from cell to civilization. And 4 billion years, a third of the age of the universe is a very long time. And so here, we required an unbroken chain of life for 4 billion years in a violent universe to produce us. And so it could just be that the biology is against us, essentially. And you look out into the universe, the Milky Way may be filled with single-celled organisms. And for 3 billion years, that's all there was on Earth, right? So there's no evidence of anything more complex than a single cell back beyond about 600 or 700 million years ago. So we're talking 3 billion years of single cells, something happens, and suddenly you get the ecosystem that we see today with the civilization. So it could just be that it's extremely unlikely to produce complex life. So that's the background. So the guess is, then, that we might be the only intelligent civilization in a galaxy of 400 billion suns. So I said at COP, then let's imagine that's true. It's a good working hypothesis. If it's true, then you, the world leaders, assembled at COP, are responsible for meaning, essentially. Meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion suns. Because we argue, I would argue that without complex biological systems, there's no such thing as meaning. There's no emotion. There's no, you know, it's the life, right? Complex life. So I said to them, so you're responsible for this. So if you destroy this through deliberate action or inaction, then you will be personally responsible for destroying meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion suns, potentially forever. Now go and have your meeting. Yes. Discuss. Discussing position. Thanks a lot. Which I think is a reasonable thing to say. Because it's a possibility. It could be that's wrong. It could be that a spacecraft lands tomorrow. Or we see evidence of a civilization out there. and I was asked recently actually what I would think it was actually by an actor who was going to who was playing the role of someone who would see this for the first time and I said I'd be absolutely delighted and they were like wouldn't you be frightened or scared if a flying saucer landed because then the weight of the responsibility would be lifted from our shoulders somewhat at least as someone else there but I genuinely think and many of my colleagues think it's at least a possibility perhaps a strong possibility there isn't anybody else in the Milky Way galaxy at least so there's this mic drop moment of take some responsibility we need to go and have some real conversations about this we have to do something and that was kind of the prompt because we saw that and we both were thinking well that would be fantastic to be able to hear from you about you know the thoughts that built up to that and the meaning of life and it also made us think about just because you were pointing to world leaders there and we're often talking to business leaders and I know Steve you were just thinking you know that's yeah it's the same yeah it's the same I think when Edelman Trust Barometer yeah the Trust Barometer they answered the people on the planet who do you trust to solve the worthwhile problems of humanity and they point to business leaders not politicians or NGOs so it is down to us and we've been we've actually been exploring that for a while so what does that mean and there is you could say growing acceptance around the fact that at least people in organizations or leaders experience a growing complexity it is as if you know with geopolitics and inflation and world crisis and wars and COVID and so forth that it just comes again and again and again and the complexity of those crises are growing so that you as a leader need to develop you could say a mindset and new capabilities to to embrace that complexity and somehow make meaning out of it but also sometimes collapse that complexity into action to actually move forward yeah and yeah what's your what do you think I mean it's a skill in that this argument this subject of how many civilizations are there there is a contradiction here and contradictions apparent contradictions are extremely useful to confront because you develop skills that you can then deploy elsewhere and the apparent contradiction here is the collision between two ideas one is our physical insignificance so we are on one planet around one star amongst 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy itself by the way one of two trillion galaxies in the small patch of the universe that we can see which may be infinite beyond the horizon so it's definitely true that we're physically insignificant and but then the collision is the idea of our value so if it is true that this is the only place where complex life exists in that galaxy the 400 billion suns then this is by any measure I would argue the most valuable planet in the galaxy now that's a quite a bold thing to say but I challenge you to argue otherwise if it's the only place where there's any intelligent life so so there is something you have to wrestle with it's like how do you reconcile those and of course it's not about reconciling it's not it's not a compromise actually to accept these two apparent contradictions it's necessary and I think that for me that's true in in politics or as you said complex systems in business it's what you might call what might look like a compromise because you say okay well I'm going to have to accept this but I'm also going to have to accept that you need them both to be accepted with clarity to develop a true picture of the position so that's not so you're not compromising you're actually making a step a step a big a leap in your understanding once you have the skill and the skill is to hold apparently contradictory pictures in your head or apparently contradictory ideas in your head just by looking at your face when you talk about this you smile you seem to like this idea about those opposing ideas and having them it's like some kind of plasticity you have in your mind that kind of thrives from that idea it's central to science and the reason why I bring it up is that when you talk about black holes for instance I don't feel comfortable there's a part of me that wants you to go away it's terrifying and I want the black hole to go away because I don't get it and I know that I don't get it and I and I think a lot of leaders looking into the world we're looking into have a an element of that kind of stuff that you're looking at where you're going I don't like this this is big I don't understand it I don't think I'll ever see the big picture I don't have control all of the nice things that you know you want so how do you not just shut down when you're facing such big kind of thoughts and complexity I see I have a simple picture of the joy of science you said I smile when I talk about the delight if you think about research of any kind in order to enjoy it you have to be comfortable with standing on the edge of the known obviously because research is peering into the unknown it's almost like you're on a cliff looking out into an uncharted landscape and so I think is that a skill or is it a character type is it the explorers of old the people that want to go beyond the horizon but that's what we're talking about intellectually that's the character type you need because as you rightly say when you're dealing with a society a global society that faces global challenges for the first time really climate being one but the pandemic disease is another one the disease doesn't care about borders and so any solution to dealing with a pandemic can't care about borders either so if you're fixated on a model of I don't know the organisational structures that we have today they're predicated on the nation state which might be a useful thing and it is useful for some things but you will have to become confused and frightened at some point because you're facing new challenges for the first time as a civilisation so you have to learn to be delighted with standing on the edge of the known and if you can't learn that you shouldn't actually be a leader in business or politics but I think you can learn it so I'm going to be optimistic I don't think there's a particular character type but that's where I think even just popular science that we've been talking about is useful because you mentioned black holes they absolutely if you read about black holes they confuse and they are frightening I mean just to say the Einsteinian description of a black hole is that it contains the end of time right so the singularity which is you might think of as an infinitely dense point to which a star collapses is more properly described as a moment in time and the simple way to say it is that space and time have got so mixed up and distorted that they kind of swap roles in a very real sense so what you think of as a point in space is a moment in time and then you draw a little diagram a map and you find out it's the end of time and then we have a photograph of one of these things so we have a photograph of the end of time right and so that's supposed to be frightening and very confusing and so what's your response is the thing so the response of people from the moment that that idea emerged which is very early on in the history of relativity by the way it's 1916 Carl Schwarzschild had done the mathematics for this although it wasn't fully appreciated what it meant but certainly post-war people are confronting this and as you said many physicists felt it'd be better if something stock stars doing that so most people in the 20s certainly and 30s were trying to avoid it Oppenheimer by the way a very famous paper showed that under certain assumptions a star will collapse without limit to form a black hole just before the war this paper 1939 and so you have to confront it but I would argue that if you if you can train yourself if you train yourself on something that isn't emotionally problematic for emotionally challenging but just intellectually challenging that's an easy way in because then you don't have the other baggage and then you can go back once you've got that skill you're kind of detaching from it so that you can actually see it and not be part of it because I mean without you'll always be a part of the equation when you're talking about the universe or whatever it might be well as societies politics of course we all have our vested interests and things and our prejudices but if you're thinking about black holes then you can be confused and you can be terrified about being confused and then you can learn not to be terrified and then once you've done that then apply it I think there is something in the you know this thing about not being emotionally connected with the idea and I think for many leaders one of the traits for you to be a good leader is that you really commit to an idea around an organization around a purpose and so forth so the whole idea about holding that more lightly as a scientist would do around an idea or theory is a new territory we need to find our way into because we are very often married to the mission and the vision of the company and therefore we are connected emotionally to the idea and therefore this thing about being comfortable in discomfort is difficult because I'm emotionally attached to something weak somebody following you might say well I'm expecting Steve to know the answer and he appears not to and it's kind of that's where we're thinking we can learn something from this scientist because because and it's just that's the difference is that and Richard Feynman always used to say is nature does not care who you are it just it's just there to be understood and it's irrelevant whether you can be the most popular you could have been elected leader with 99% of the votes have gone to you everybody believes in but if you say you know the sun goes around the earth then you're not right so you can be completely wrong and I think that's such a valuable skill to not be insulted or upset or about being wrong that's the number one Feynman said it again a wonderful essay the value of science he said if you think about what democracy is at its most fundamental level you have to you have to accept that we don't know how to run a society because you change it every few years that's based on the fact that nobody knows how to do it if you thought you knew how to do it you wouldn't want the vote so it's so important and we all know it at the most fundamental level we know that when you a question for you you meet a lot of leaders you met them at the COP and you meet them all kinds of places when you look at us and you feel us what do you wish we got looking at us from the outside as a scientist say something about what comes to mind when you look at us as a world no us leaders in organizations so from an outside perspective looking at us I mean it's one of an admiration it has to be said because of course it's as you know it's tremendously difficult to run a large organization or a small organization or a country never mind a world and so I certainly don't underestimate the task but so I think but your question before that was is there anything that we could do better yeah and I think I don't see certainly in politics a really clear acceptance of this idea that that it's humility really it's the fact that it's such a complex issue running a country or even a city as a city mayor never mind the way the countries interact that there will be it's a trial and error process in many ways so there's a certainty I think that the I perceive certainty radiating from many people in high positions and as you said it could that part of that is because without that apparent you need it of course I suppose in a big organization you need a confident leader don't you don't want someone who's just sat there going well I don't know it's all very complicated that's not how you lead either is it but then maybe interestingly we're faced with another of these contradictions that you need to have both in your character don't you you need the acceptance that it's very complicated and you don't know how to do it because if you think you know how to do it you're wrong because there is an objective measure it's science it's obvious it's nature but I suppose it's the market the success of your organization or country or whatever so there is actually ultimately a reckoning but but I suppose the flip side is it's more likely that you'll get to a successful position by radiating confidence yeah so there's actually a term that an organizational psychologist called Adam Grant came up with which is confident humility which actually speaks to exactly this right so I think while we've been talking about this over the last you know maybe 10 minutes or so I keep thinking about both him and that and we also spoke to another leading strategist called Roger Martin who talks about you know this is my opinion but what do I not see here or here's what I think until I'm proven wrong and I think it's a good example of something very specifically in a conversation you can think of but it's also a mindset and way of being which I think is lived so thoroughly by the scientific community I mean like I can only imagine you're spending a whole career and lifetime working on something to be maybe proven wrong I don't know if that's something that happens almost always imagine we don't have any models of the universe theories let's say that we think are absolutely right I would say so we know there's a very famous saying all models are wrong which is true but it reminds me of so Oppenheimer is another I've become more and more interested in Oppenheimer over the years because post-war as someone said to me he spent a lot of time looking into himself of course because he felt you know he developed the atom bomb so he felt he delivered the means by which we would destroy ourselves and then he spent quite a lot of time thinking about how not to do that after he delivered the means not single-handedly I should say it wasn't all him but and there's a great just before he died early 1960s as a speech he gave I think was a Canadian university and it was an example of this this idea of holding multiple ideas in your heads and apparent contradictions so he started off by saying that we so he could have meant scientists but he means anyone we have to have things that we believe in right we have to have an anchor I think was what he said so you have to have a picture an anchor things that you're going to stand by and argue for and it could be something as simple as the earth isn't flat right or whatever it is there's to be a person of depth and consequence and character you have to have an anchor right so you but of course then you have to realize that other people have anchors and he said at the end it was he said that we have to we have to learn as a society to talk to each other again and we have to learn to really listen and but it was it was deeper than it sounds because it's not just it's not some kind of wishy washy relativism it's not like well everybody's everybody's kind of right yeah he started off deliberately saying that's not true right people are people can be absolutely wrong but the contradiction that the difficult thing to hold is that you still have to have the conversations and to listen even though you must also have your position yeah it's very it's quite a deep but I think but I think you're touching upon very much I think maybe pointing to the DNA of the leader of the future that is actually a paradoxical kind of thing where you can hold opposing ideas and views without collapsing into one or the other yeah and then take a view and take a view yeah yeah you have to and and but but it's it's just that it's a very different type of invitation from a deep human perspective that you that you have to make then compared to the the old classic invitation that a leader made safe hand on the steering wheel here's our strategy 2030 this is where we're heading this is the truth about the future in our business this is what we communicate to the stock market every quarter so there's a logic in in this whole thing about knowing what's going to happen so that you can tell the people what to do and you can tell the shareholders what to expect in 10 years time that that has been historically what you've been you know honored for being able to do and and what we're exploring here I guess is that yes that's also a trade for the future and you also need to do all the things that we're talking about here holding that truth in a slightly different way that than the way you held it before yeah yeah absolutely there are so many that there are yeah I think there are intellectual lessons you can draw from the study of a simple thing which is nature in this case so nature is simple relative to other bits we can study a simple relative to society societies are very complicated things so I think all that that we're certainly not saying that I'm definitely not saying that scientists should run things what I'm saying I'm just I think I'm just saying that there are ways that modes of thought that you can more easily develop by by asking questions such as why are why the leaves green on a plant right ask that question and then it's good practice so even though I feel like I would love to keep talking about this for many hours on how we can learn from kind of the the mindset of the scientist I think we're coming towards the end of our conversation today and when when we close these talks on our podcast we end with what is it that we are going to take out of this conversation into the next one so so based on the talk that we've had just now and so so that's a that's how we'll close off and and actually for me it's kind of clear because there's a word that has not gone out of my head since it's been said which was delight and and when we talk about like complexity and holding competing demands all this stuff that just well it feels uncomfortable and it feels well just like I don't want to be there but when when we talked about delight and the smile on your face Brian while we're talking about some of these things that can otherwise be kind of terrifying I'm kind of thinking that is a nice antidote and maybe a precursor to curiosity so I'm going to take that one with me yeah because what's the opposite because so the opposite is being in a in a world in a where you understand it all yeah so that would be that that's dull isn't it yeah why would you why would you so then I'd be you'd be undelighted because you it's just a simple system and it's all fine and you know then so what what do you do then so delighting in the unknown that's what I'll take with me how about you Steve I was a little bit puzzled about this thing that this this thing about exploring for instance black holes and and going into the science of that to and try to stay curious and and and hold on to my delight in accepting the fact that I don't get it but actually watching my own nervous system when I get that sensation of I want to put this away I wish it would all go away I think I think this thing about training the plasticity of my mind to be even better in those situations where I'm sitting with maybe I'm sitting with a leader and there's a super super complex problem I think I would I would love my plasticity in my brain to be to be even even better and I think that could be an inroad that's my that's one of my takeaways yeah to be excited about it because it's a complex problem which will have a solution yes and then the delight the joy is in searching for that solution and of course you know in science often the very deepest of questions we don't know if the solution is accessible to us at all it's one of the most fundamental questions is it really possible for us to understand the universe at its most fundamental level that history says yes we keep making we make progress but there's nothing that there's no reason to think that we are capable of that but it's kind of an act of faith it's almost like well but it's been our case so far so let's carry on down that path how about you Brian as we're about to exit this kind of strange marble room that we're currently talking in what do you take with you into into the next part of your day oh it's very interesting to me that that your world which I don't access so often has the same it's it's the same the same intellectual challenges and emotional challenges as my world and that the more I think about it the more interested I am in that because then you can map it doesn't have to be a one-way flow necessarily either it's interesting how the skills we're both facing very complex systems and I think as I said the physicist faces rather simpler complex systems and then you do facing human systems but but it's it there must be a two-way transfer of skills available yes so then the question I become fascinated then by how do you facilitate that two-way transfer let's think about that yeah conversation to come all right thank you so much for your time Brian this has been a fantastic conversation thank you so much thank you you