0:00

ABC Listen, podcasts,

0:02

radio, news, music and

0:05

more. If

0:08

you look at the bulletin of the American Academy

0:10

of Arts and Sciences for a few months ago

0:12

you'll find an extremely interesting article by an American

0:14

seismologist who went around

0:16

China very recently and was

0:18

shown everything and he was

0:20

tremendously impressed with the literally

0:23

army of 25,000 quote, barefoot

0:25

seismologists, which was busy in

0:27

different parts of the country measuring radon

0:29

content of deep wells, manning

0:32

listening apparatus for rock slips and

0:34

doing all sorts of things which are going to help to predict. And

0:37

there was a case, I think at the beginning of

0:39

this year, where they felt one

0:41

was coming, they thought the evidence was that

0:44

one was coming and they turned out the

0:46

population of some town in Yunnan or southern

0:48

Sichuan and sure enough it did come

0:50

within an hour or two and a lot of people, they saved

0:52

a lot of lives on that occasion. Unfortunately

0:54

with Tangshan it didn't work and

0:57

the situation remains obscure. We

0:59

don't know, they're just trying and they're trying

1:01

it on a huge scale. He

1:03

was very tall, a nudist, looked

1:06

like a giant Harry Potter, wrote

1:08

a thousand page book on Chinese innovation,

1:11

then six more books equally

1:13

long and influenced 20th century

1:15

science on a truly gigantic

1:17

scale. His name was

1:19

Joseph Needham. Hello,

1:33

Robin Williams of The Science Show. And Needham,

1:35

you need to know, could be a clue

1:37

to why our hundred Australian top scientists, if

1:39

you get to know some of them, may

1:42

be a way to galvanise our own

1:44

science for a safe and vibrant future.

1:47

You see many people and famed author

1:49

Simon Winchester is one, are convinced that

1:52

Needham's monumental works when they got back

1:54

to China convinced Deng Xiaoping and the

1:56

leadership that yes, they had the brains

1:58

to do it. and inventiveness already

2:01

to end the century of humiliation,

2:03

as they called it, and

2:05

bounce back. Here's Winchester

2:07

with his bomb book and compass

2:10

and Ramona Kaval on the then book

2:12

show a while ago. Well

2:14

this book is in the tradition of one arm

2:16

of your interests and that is,

2:18

I suppose you could say, in reference books. We've

2:20

spoken before about your work on the makers

2:22

of the Oxford English Dictionary and you've written

2:25

on the making of the world's first geological

2:27

map. So I can understand

2:29

the pull of the Needham story but tell

2:31

us about this massive work, Science

2:33

and Civilisation in China. Give us a smell

2:35

and a feel for it. Well

2:38

the first volume I got, I was doing a book

2:40

on the Yangtze River and I wanted to know

2:43

something about the kind of junks that managed

2:46

to get up the river against

2:48

the phenomenal currents in what used

2:50

to be the three gorges. Obviously

2:52

nowadays there's this enormous dam and

2:55

there are no great currents to fight against. For

2:58

many hundreds of years sailing junks had

3:00

to battle upstream against torrents of water.

3:02

What did they look like? Well

3:04

I asked a fellow who owned a

3:06

rather wonderful bookstore in Salisbury, Connecticut, what was

3:08

the authority on this kind of thing? And

3:11

he said oh without a doubt it's volume

3:13

four part three of Science

3:15

and Civilisation in China by Joseph Needham, a book

3:17

I'd never heard of, but he happened to have

3:19

a copy in his bookstore for $75. And

3:23

I read it. It was

3:25

984 pages. It's

3:27

an enormous tombstone of a book. And

3:30

it was everything you can imagine

3:32

about China's historical relationship with water.

3:34

So it was about lighthouses and

3:37

canal design and lock gates and

3:39

rudders and anchors and the

3:42

use of the compass and the shapes

3:44

of boys. And I

3:47

was completely enthralled. I sat in the

3:49

car outside his shop looking at this

3:51

mighty volume and thinking who

3:54

on earth put this together and not

3:56

only that but what Mike McKay

3:58

had told me in the bookstore. was

4:00

true. Twenty odd at that time, this was 15

4:02

years ago, I think there were 22 volumes in

4:05

print, volumes equally detailed,

4:08

equally massive, equally magisterial about

4:10

all these other subjects like ceramics and alchemy

4:12

and astronomy and mathematics. Who was the chap

4:15

that put them together? And so I vowed

4:17

there and then that one day if I

4:19

ever became halfway competent at writing

4:21

biographies, which at that stage in my career

4:23

I never had, I would ultimately tackle this

4:25

man. And when I started looking at his

4:28

life three years ago or so, I discovered

4:30

that he was just as fascinating as the

4:32

books he was writing. But Joseph

4:34

Needham was born in 1900 as

4:37

the last century unfolded. He

4:39

was the son of a doctor and

4:41

a musician. But he was at first,

4:43

in the first bit of his life,

4:45

a world-class biochemist and embryologist, an unstoppably

4:48

curious man. What were his

4:50

early passionate intellectual forays? Well,

4:53

difficult to know where to begin. I mean, first of

4:55

all, he was intellectually very much

4:57

a Marxist. So he was affected when he

4:59

was a schoolboy, when he was 17 years

5:01

old, by the events

5:03

in Moscow. There was that. He was interested

5:05

in the left generally. He was

5:07

also a tremendously keen muscular Christian.

5:09

And he looked for a church

5:12

that would accommodate his Marxist views

5:14

and found one fairly rapidly in

5:16

a village called Faxter, about 20

5:18

miles from Cambridge. And

5:20

what were the muscular Christians compared with other ones?

5:23

Well, muscular Christians were ones that proselytized

5:26

in a sort of healthy, they went

5:28

walking and they thought boxing was a

5:30

good thing to do. Boxing for Jesus.

5:33

Boxing for Jesus, exactly. I saw quite a lot of

5:35

that when I worked in the Philippines years ago, wrestling

5:37

for Jesus, I think it was in those days. But

5:40

anyway, it was quite literally muscular Christianity. And

5:42

the priest or the vicar that he liked

5:44

most of all was in himself

5:47

a remarkable man who's deserving, I

5:49

think, of a biography, a chap

5:51

called Conrad Noel, who was extremely

5:53

left wing Himself. He Used to preach with

5:55

a parrot on his shoulder, which is rather

5:57

amusingly distracting for the congregation, you would have

5:59

thought. And he used to

6:01

to stay his political affiliations by not

6:03

only it's running the English flag up

6:06

the spire of his church, but also

6:08

the Sim fans lagged to show that

6:10

he was in favor of Irish Home

6:12

rule in this didn't please this Tory

6:14

heart is from Cambridge colleges who would

6:16

swarm down on Saturdays to the texted

6:18

clamber up the steeple to tear down

6:21

the flag, undisclosed the police to be

6:23

called, and there were riots in the

6:25

St. Nicholas Needham. thought this was all

6:27

the wonderful says that interested him, but

6:29

so. Did many other things and you've mentioned

6:31

these I guess on. Gymnosophist

6:35

gymnasts city in those days. being

6:37

polite terms of what was very

6:40

much a session is practice. The.

6:42

Practice of taking a sense of in public

6:44

and he he loved doing that because it

6:46

was felt by these socialists of at this

6:49

particular persuasions that if you took your kid

6:51

off that you revealed yourself to beat. Entirely.

6:54

Equal to your brother, Man or

6:56

and sometimes Noriko. Well.

6:58

South so I should think. And Joseph Needham's

7:00

guys, who is? He was six foot four,

7:02

He was gigantic, He looked like. Some.

7:04

Harry Potter on steroids. He had this

7:07

round glasses and great massive brown hair

7:09

and I should think naked. He was

7:11

pretty impressive to but and let you

7:13

imagine that. I will imagine

7:15

that as and now, imagining mice dancing,

7:18

That. Is too horrible to contemplate really. The thought

7:20

of him that you mention and your in stocks new

7:22

hoped he didn't do it. naked in there is such

7:24

a bad assets are able to I just wondered if

7:26

he did. I

7:29

think he didn't and I think you

7:31

would hope that he didn't expense morris.

7:33

Dancing in and of itself is a

7:35

pretty bizarre kind of calling when he

7:37

of gyrates in a very peculiarly pagan

7:40

way, with bells and straw around your

7:42

wrists and ankles to tuneless music played

7:44

on a pipe. He did also play

7:46

the accordion very well and some wag.

7:48

mentioned the other day that said just as

7:50

well being a nudist he didn't pay the

7:53

symbols sept i said that i'm sure the

7:55

accordion but do just the same job any

7:57

rather more sony she was or he was

7:59

also of and Sorry, we shouldn't linger on this

8:01

kind of thing. He was also a

8:03

chain smoker, but he lived to 95, which

8:05

should give smokers some comfort. He

8:07

didn't smoke until noon had struck

8:10

every day on his college clock. He

8:12

went to that college in Cambridge, Keyes

8:14

College, which is made famous

8:16

by the film Chariots of Fire. And

8:18

you may remember the athletes trying to

8:20

run round the main court before that

8:22

clock struck 12. Well, that was

8:24

the clock that signaled when he could smoke. And

8:27

when it did strike 12, he would light up and

8:30

smoke like industrial Manchester, I think,

8:32

for the rest of the day. Simon

8:34

Winchester with Ramona Cavall on the

8:36

book show ABCRN. It's

8:38

centric, yes. And don't forget

8:40

the origins of Monty Python in Cambridge. Serious

8:44

and funny. But here's

8:46

Needham himself with John Merson in a series

8:48

we produced on his work. It

8:50

certainly was a great surprise to me

8:52

to find that for 600 years before

8:55

the first invention of more or less

8:57

accurate mechanical clocks in Europe, the Chinese

8:59

had a tradition of hydro mechanical clockwork,

9:02

which embodied an escapement. The escapement, you

9:04

know, has been called the soul of

9:06

the mechanical clock. And here's a

9:08

device, a mechanical device, which divides

9:11

time into lots of very

9:13

small equal intervals. In

9:15

fact, it's the ticking that we hear if we put

9:17

the wristwatch to our ear. And

9:19

this started not in the 14th century in

9:21

Dante's time like it did in Europe. But

9:24

in Ising's time in the beginning of

9:26

the eighth century in China, possibly a

9:28

lot earlier, but there can

9:31

be no doubt at all that Ising's clock,

9:33

which was experimented on and set up in

9:35

the College of All Sages, what is now

9:37

called Sian in the west of China. That

9:40

is early eighth century. And

9:42

then from that, after that, many

9:44

other clocks were built, generally in

9:46

palaces and public buildings and

9:49

provincial governors, residences and

9:51

so on. What's

9:53

this use of the clock significant in

9:55

terms of scientific observation? Because one thinks

9:57

of the importance of time. and

10:00

accurate observation of time in the development of

10:02

Western science, for instance. Of course, it's just

10:04

as important as temperature. And until

10:06

you can measure those things, modern science

10:08

couldn't begin. There are of course other

10:11

examples of technologies which have gone out

10:13

of China through the Arabs and had

10:15

a phenomenal effect in Europe. Things such

10:17

as gunpowder, the stirrup and various simple

10:19

technologies, which in China didn't have the

10:21

same impact, but in Europe, it did

10:23

have enormous consequences. Yes, right. I

10:26

mean, I think that is perfectly true. That's been

10:29

shown in instance after instance. The

10:31

ones you mentioned are very good examples

10:33

of it really, because the beginnings of

10:36

the stirrup for boots, for

10:38

riders, for knights, on

10:40

horseback, first found around about 300 AD

10:44

in China. And then later

10:46

on, it surprised the badanthans when they

10:49

were fighting against the Avars and similar

10:51

Central Asian tribes around about that, it'd

10:53

be about the eighth or ninth century.

10:56

And then the same is quite true

10:58

of gunpowder, because that was ninth

11:01

century invention in China, the first

11:03

chemical explosive known to man. It

11:06

was used for warfare from about, well, from,

11:08

I know we know from exactly when, almost

11:11

exactly 919 AD when it was first used

11:13

as the, a slow match in a

11:15

flame thrower in China. And

11:18

then around about 1000 AD, you get

11:20

bombs and explosive shells,

11:23

not fired from guns, but lobbed

11:25

over by catapults. And

11:27

then you get the fire rocket and you get the

11:29

fire alarms so that everything developed there. And

11:32

we believe that the barrel gun also did.

11:34

Anyway, in Europe, it's first found just about

11:37

1320 AD. And

11:40

it had an enormous effect in Europe. Both

11:42

of these inventions, in fact, it's a domestic

11:44

tool, anything to reflect that the whole system

11:47

of feudalism in medieval Europe did

11:49

depend to a considerable extent upon

11:52

the night, the night in armour for

11:55

whom the tariffs were absolutely indispensable in

11:57

the use of the lands. And

11:59

it's ever extraordinary to reflect that just

12:02

as a Chinese invention helped

12:04

very greatly to set up feudalism in Europe

12:06

after the decline of the Roman Empire, so

12:09

in the same way another Chinese invention came

12:11

to Europe and helped to

12:13

break it down before everyone knows

12:15

that the coming of gunpowder to

12:17

Europe was one of the things that heralded the end

12:19

of the Middle Ages. It always

12:21

amuses me to recall that only a hundred

12:23

years later in 1440 the artillery train of

12:26

the King of France made a tour of

12:28

the castles held by the English and various

12:30

parts of France and battered them down at

12:32

the rate of about one a month, which

12:35

would have been utterly inconceivable only 40 years

12:37

earlier. It's another great

12:39

invention of course which had repercussions later in

12:41

Europe was paper. Yes well I

12:44

think you're perfectly right in saying that

12:46

paper was another of these inventions which

12:49

didn't affect China so much but had

12:51

revolutionary implications in Europe. I think this

12:54

is quite true. Paper goes

12:56

back rather further than people

12:58

have usually thought. It's associated generally with

13:00

discovery in the beginning of the second

13:02

century AD but actually it goes back

13:04

a good bit more to about more

13:06

like the second century BC according to

13:09

more recent discoveries in the

13:11

desert in North West China where bits of

13:13

paper have been preserved and

13:15

no doubt it increased the efficiency

13:17

and functioning of the civil service

13:19

of the Chinese bureaucracy as also

13:21

did printing when it came into

13:23

being in the ninth century AD. There

13:26

was a larger spread of intake into

13:29

the civil service but it did not

13:31

fundamentally upset the whole civilization while in

13:33

Europe obviously paper and then

13:35

later on printing were earthshaking their

13:38

consequences. Joseph Needham himself with John

13:40

Merson ABCRN. So

13:42

these inventions in China itself augmented

13:44

the power and spread of the

13:47

vast civil service and did not

13:49

have the same revolutionary effect as

13:51

they did on reaching Europe. Back

13:54

to Ramona and Simon Winchester. All

13:56

Right, the door's opened, he learns.

13:59

Chinese. He learns the kind

14:01

of everything about set Chinese, and he

14:03

learns. Calligraphy. He just throws

14:05

himself into this whole. New

14:07

area So he ends up in China

14:09

in nineteen forty three because he's had

14:12

a very big interest in have a

14:14

chinese her academics and intellectuals a going.

14:16

During the assault by the Japanese

14:18

during the war and he becomes.

14:20

Part of a sort of the British diplomatic

14:22

mission, doesn't He. He does every.

14:24

What has happened was that one of

14:27

the sadder corridors of the Japanese invasion

14:29

which began the Nineteen thirty Seven was

14:31

that all the great East and Chinese

14:33

universities in Shanghai and Beijing and to

14:36

engine the Nanjing had been desecrated to

14:38

been sacked by the soldiers from Tokyo

14:40

and they had decided not to give

14:42

up the ghost but to pack up

14:45

all their blackboard, some books, bunsen, burners

14:47

and things, put them on their backs,

14:49

on the backs of horses or mules,

14:51

and walk thousands of miles. Westwards.

14:55

Into. The comparative safety of free, unoccupied

14:57

China. And so Beijing University of set

14:59

itself up in Kunming, Shanghai University said

15:02

itself up in Chongqing and so on

15:04

and so forth. And these universities in

15:06

the early nineteen forties sense a deputation

15:08

out to England to say to the

15:11

British academic community you know we need

15:13

help and in with dying here we've

15:15

got the Japanese to the east to

15:18

be, got the Himalayas and the Gobi

15:20

Desert to the west. In the North

15:22

we getting no books, no supplies, Nothing

15:25

can. You help us and at first

15:27

the British government do that. but eventually. Churchill.

15:29

Himself got the message and said

15:32

yes, We must help these Chinese

15:34

universities. We must send someone to

15:36

find out what they need. And

15:39

this person will them. Travel.

15:41

Everywhere in Free China. Find.

15:43

Out what's necessary to tell us in

15:45

London we'll put it on the airplane.

15:47

Service the we runs the same as

15:49

average ever what known as the hump

15:52

from Calcutta to Kunming and Western Union

15:54

Province. And with any luck we'll save

15:56

these universities from dying And so the

15:58

man that they to. The to send

16:00

was pistole, flamboyant, loud, chain smoking, nudist

16:03

studies speaking biochemist Joseph Needham City put

16:05

him in a convoy of send him

16:07

to Calcutta. He got there early nineteen

16:09

forty three. They gave him an Army

16:11

uniform, they gave him a gun which

16:14

he had never have been it's just

16:16

Cambridge boss and yet ever touched a

16:18

gun in his life and put him

16:20

on a plane and took off some

16:22

dumb dumb airport in March. Nineteen forty

16:25

three and arrived on the crystal clear

16:27

spring morning and Kunming and for him

16:29

it was. Everything that he expected

16:31

and dreamed about and the things that

16:33

happened on that says day. Where to

16:35

change everything and just the way as

16:38

that incident in his room so done

16:40

six years before because well, He

16:42

records it once again in his diary.

16:44

He had i should say parents as

16:46

it it's been over to New York

16:48

just a few weeks previously. It's to

16:51

see Gray Jen who by this time

16:53

was teaching a course at Columbia University's

16:55

and she had said to him joseph's

16:57

when you go to China, don't be

16:59

arrogance like for your West and colleagues

17:01

and assume as people have been assuming

17:03

for the previous hundred odd years said

17:06

China is just a sort of bankrupted,

17:08

intellectually doe sales civilization. We

17:10

have. I know she said i know

17:12

in my heart time from what my

17:14

father taught me. that far from being

17:16

on the periphery of civilization, China in

17:18

fact created most of it. So please

17:20

I employers He said when you go

17:22

to China. Keep. An open

17:24

mind found. That. Very

17:26

first day. He. Records in

17:28

his diary. Lou. Crystal

17:30

clear day with this lovely it.

17:33

Up listed eaves of the houses in

17:35

the early blossoms coming in on the

17:38

trees in the snow dusting the tops

17:40

of Tibet and mountains in the west

17:42

sitting. Watching. An

17:44

old gardner. Top. Crafting

17:47

a plum tree. And

17:49

he sat smoking watching this man for half

17:51

an hour or so and then suddenly realized

17:53

that the way the man was grasping this

17:55

tree. Was. very different from the

17:57

way that he remembered his own father grafting

18:00

fruit trees in the back garden of their

18:02

house in Clapham. So he thought he'd ask

18:04

him to see if he could use this

18:07

language that he had been taught by Guizhen

18:09

back in Cambridge. And so he approached him

18:11

and asked him some questions and found, amazingly,

18:13

the man could understand him and he could

18:15

understand the man's replies. So they

18:18

started talking about grafting. And then

18:20

Needham thought, well, perhaps

18:22

also, as I can read Chinese, I

18:24

can go back to the botanical archives

18:26

here in Kunming and find

18:28

out how old this technique that he's explained

18:30

is. And moreover, I can find out by

18:32

sending a few telegrams back to my colleagues

18:35

in Cambridge and London to botanists. I

18:37

know there how old similar techniques would be

18:39

in the West. Well, the upshot of all

18:41

of this was that four or five days

18:44

later, he was able to

18:46

write down that he had incontrovertible evidence

18:48

that fruit grafting techniques in

18:50

China was 600 years

18:53

older than the earliest known

18:55

fruit grafting techniques recorded in

18:58

ancient Greece. And

19:00

this indicated to him that what Guizhen

19:02

had told him was probably true, that

19:05

Chinese scientific technical achievement, this kind

19:07

of thing, anti-dated

19:09

Western techniques by

19:11

many, many, often hundreds of years.

19:14

So he vowed there and then that as

19:16

well as doing his job for the British

19:18

government, he would try and collect to make

19:20

a catalog of all the things

19:22

he could find that the Chinese did first.

19:24

And it is amazing that it took Needham

19:27

to report what was freely available, I

19:29

suppose, in Chinese ancient texts long

19:31

before he indicated. You're absolutely right. Interestingly

19:34

enough, I had an email a couple

19:36

of weeks ago from a Chinese friend

19:38

in Beijing who had seen the Olympic

19:40

opening ceremonies, which of course all of us

19:43

have seen now. And he

19:45

said, you do realize, don't you, that this

19:47

cavalcade of inventions that was on

19:49

display in Beijing on that opening

19:51

night Was a list

19:53

of inventions that we didn't know about

19:55

until this Englishman came to China and

19:58

told us the extraordinary thing. The

20:00

thing about Needham who's known by every

20:02

educated Chinese is Chinese name is leave

20:04

you sir And if you to go

20:06

into any Chinese restaurant down there in

20:09

Melbourne. I do it here

20:11

in New York and say have you

20:13

ever heard of leave So they come

20:15

alive and same? Of course we have

20:17

I'm it's most famous English whenever to

20:19

have lived in China he taught us

20:21

about ourselves. So although as you said,

20:23

the information in Syria was freely available,

20:25

no one actually knew. Some.

20:27

In Winchester on the bookshelf

20:29

with Ramona about in two

20:32

thousand eight one man message

20:34

scholarship such a galvanizing of

20:36

Chinese enterprise understand Yelping and

20:39

asta. Simon. Stories in

20:41

bomb book and compass and one

20:43

wonders whether a similar realization of

20:45

what we have scientifically in Australia.

20:48

Could. Finally, wake up this nation and

20:50

enable us to face a turbulent

20:53

future with more understanding and confidence,

20:55

the side so on our. Ai

21:14

not mentioned on this program for at

21:16

least a few days them everywhere else

21:18

he looks so to catch up he

21:20

is l a single who writes the

21:23

cosmos with her consideration of a i

21:25

won, I won. A. Little

21:27

Lanes the latest Mission Impossible

21:29

movie things He the guy

21:31

who cooks up all the

21:33

gadgets realize is the New

21:35

Zealand isn't a I, it's

21:37

Cold. The entity. As

21:40

the revelation slowly dawned on him

21:42

he say something like. A

21:45

cell so when the shame that

21:47

wants to take over the world.

21:49

Just what we've been expecting. yes

21:52

indeed benghazi that's why

21:55

last august a group

21:57

is nineteen philosophers neuroscience

22:00

and machine learning experts penned

22:03

a discussion paper. It's

22:05

subject, how to

22:07

test consciousness in a machine. The

22:11

group included Yoshua Bengio, an

22:14

AI pioneer and Turing Award

22:17

winner, who has warned of

22:19

the dangers of AI and

22:21

now sits on a United

22:24

Nations Scientific Advisory Board. But

22:27

the instigators of the discussion

22:29

paper were two philosophers, Robert

22:33

Long at the San Francisco-based

22:35

Center for AI Safety and

22:38

from the University of Oxford's Future

22:41

of Humanity Institute, Patrick

22:44

Butland. Of

22:46

course, philosophers have been thinking

22:48

about consciousness for two millennia.

22:51

And the trope of conscious machines

22:54

goes back nearly as far to

22:56

the Golem of the Jewish Talmud,

22:59

a being made of dust or

23:01

clay like Adam. But

23:04

what triggered these philosophers was

23:06

a distinctly more recent event.

23:09

In 2021, Google engineer, Blake

23:12

Lemoine, got himself fired. That's

23:17

because he became convinced that

23:20

an AI he was testing was

23:23

sentient. These large

23:25

language models, like the one he

23:27

was testing, are trained

23:29

on vast amounts of language

23:32

text to imitate

23:34

human responses. So

23:36

of course, they can appear

23:39

sentient, but are they

23:41

really? Well,

23:43

you can't stick an EEG onto

23:45

a computer and measure brainwaves. So

23:48

how can you test it? The

23:51

philosophers bravely decided to do

23:53

some cat herding. They

23:56

invited experts from three very

23:58

different fields they

24:00

could brainstorm ideas on

24:02

how to identify a new

24:05

species of conscious being, a

24:08

machine. Philosophers

24:10

were key. As the

24:12

traditional owners of the field,

24:14

they've spent a long time

24:17

examining consciousness. Like

24:19

taxonomists, they could help

24:21

decide if a new

24:23

conscious species had indeed

24:26

arrived. The

24:28

neuroscientists were important because

24:30

they're the ones using

24:32

sophisticated instruments like functional

24:34

MRI to probe human

24:37

and animal brains to

24:39

signatures of consciousness. And

24:42

the AI experts? Well, they're

24:45

the ones who design these machines, even

24:48

if they don't exactly know how the

24:50

machines do what they do. After

24:53

a couple of workshops, the

24:55

group decided they could do

24:57

no better than consult several

24:59

of the reigning theories of

25:02

consciousness. All of

25:04

them were based on evidence from

25:06

neuroscience and allowed

25:08

that consciousness could arise

25:10

in any computational network,

25:13

be it made of biological neurons

25:15

or silicon chips. Here's

25:18

a brief summary of what these

25:21

theories hold to be the key

25:23

features of consciousness. Recurrent

25:26

processing theory says it's

25:28

all about feedback loops.

25:31

Global neuronal workspace theory

25:34

says it's about independent

25:36

streams of information combining

25:38

in a limited workspace and

25:41

then being globally broadcast.

25:45

Higher order theories say

25:47

it's about taking inputs from the

25:49

senses and making

25:51

a second annotated draft.

25:55

Attention schema theories say

25:58

it's all about controlling attention.

26:01

Agency and embodiment theories say

26:04

it's all about getting feedback

26:06

from the outside world. From

26:10

these theories the team derived a

26:12

checklist of 14 features

26:16

for a conscious system. Then

26:19

they applied that rubric

26:21

to AI's with different

26:23

architectures. Their reasoning?

26:26

The more features they had the more

26:28

likely they were to be conscious. And

26:31

now to the results. Were

26:34

any of these AI's conscious? Spoiler?

26:38

No. But they

26:40

picked some of the boxes. Many

26:44

of them picked the box

26:46

for recurrent processing theory which

26:48

was not surprising since all

26:50

AI's rely on feedback networks.

26:53

ChatGPP in

26:56

particular a variant called Perceiver

26:59

also scored a tick for a

27:01

global workspace. DeepMind's

27:04

transformer based adaptive

27:06

agent which was

27:09

trained to control an avatar

27:11

in a 3D space got

27:13

a tick for agency and

27:15

embodiment. So

27:18

did Google's Palm E which

27:20

receives inputs from various robotic

27:23

sensors. Palm E

27:25

also scored a small tick

27:27

for a global workspace. So

27:31

none of these AI's are

27:33

likely to be conscious but

27:35

apparently designing the sort

27:37

of features that they ought to have

27:40

to be conscious would be trivial. Jose

27:43

Benjio also believes it

27:46

might be worth a try.

27:48

He suspects the superior efficiency

27:50

of human learning has something

27:52

to do with consciousness. Consider

27:56

that chatGPP4 has

27:59

to be trained on

28:01

10,000 times more text than a

28:03

human being could absorb in a

28:05

single lifetime. So,

28:07

Yoshua Bengio wants

28:09

to engineer conscious attributes into

28:12

a machine? Uh-oh,

28:15

that's starting to sound a little bit

28:17

like the entity. But,

28:21

philosophers say that self-awareness

28:23

and consciousness don't necessarily

28:26

have to go together. Ella

28:28

Finkel, who wrote about AI and consciousness

28:31

for the journal Science, she's

28:33

a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe

28:35

University in Melbourne. And

28:37

last week on The Science Show, we visited

28:39

Aruba in the Caribbean with the guidance of

28:41

Pauline Newman. This week

28:43

she's with Christi Metters, the coordinator

28:46

of their Metabolic Foundation. Explain

28:49

Metabolic Foundation. You're involved with citizen

28:51

science projects, but I want to

28:53

know more. Yeah, we're a foundation

28:56

based in Aruba and we work

28:58

on what we call democratizing technology,

29:00

using open source technology and developing

29:02

tech that we think can help

29:05

bridge some gaps that exist on

29:07

the island. And in particular, you've

29:09

got projects looking at

29:12

the ocean, haven't you? And

29:14

you're involving students and anyone

29:16

else who wants to take

29:18

part. Yes, we've had a makerspace

29:20

for a while and last year we were

29:22

lucky enough to get a grant from the

29:24

European Union and through this grant

29:26

we were able to spend a year developing

29:28

and testing methods

29:31

to measure coastal changes.

29:34

So we're measuring water quality, we're

29:36

measuring air quality, also using a

29:38

lot of remote sensing data to

29:40

look at changes on our reef

29:42

islands, on our coastal vegetation. And

29:45

we're using citizen volunteers to

29:47

help us collect the seafloor data

29:50

to map changes on our

29:52

seafloor. So really a all-around

29:54

data collection project. And

29:56

the thing that intrigues me, so we're

29:58

in your home in Aruba. and

30:01

you've got several rooms devoted to what

30:03

you refer to as the maker space.

30:06

3D printers here, I can

30:08

see technology scattered around, you're

30:11

allowing people to come here and

30:14

make the sensors, is that right? Pretty

30:16

much this year we've really worked on

30:19

getting the design down and

30:21

really making it replicable so all of

30:23

the sensors we're using you can just

30:25

buy them online and we've worked with

30:27

a lot of different interns like bachelor

30:29

students, also high school students to come

30:31

and build the sensors and test the

30:33

replicability of it. So the way we

30:35

build the sensors this time around they

30:37

have solar panels on top and they

30:39

have sim card slots so you can

30:41

just put a cell phone sim card

30:43

in there and it can just log

30:45

data and upload it directly. This is

30:47

for the water quality and the air

30:49

quality so you just need a

30:52

buoy or a boat or

30:54

abandoned anchor that you can tie

30:56

it on so that it

30:58

can continuously monitor there and doesn't just go

31:00

out to the ocean. So

31:03

this is the air quality sensor that

31:05

we're using. It uses two plant power

31:07

sensors, a Lily Go board similar to

31:09

an Arduino board, it's a very common

31:12

open source board that you can use

31:14

to develop your own electronics controller. So

31:17

it's on the inner box here, so

31:19

this is what you show people how to

31:21

build, you've got the instructions on the

31:23

website? Yes, we have all of the

31:25

instructions and the bill of materials and it's

31:28

pretty straightforward. We just have it here

31:30

in an electrical junction box. This measures

31:32

the air quality. This one

31:34

we install on the coast so we

31:36

can see for example the impact of

31:39

sahara and dust but also just different

31:41

drought periods on the air quality and

31:44

this is the water quality sensor. We

31:46

use a lot of the design based

31:48

on the Maker buoy which is a

31:50

current measuring buoy that's also completely open

31:52

source developed by a professor in the

31:55

US. His project is called Maker buoy.

31:58

His is to measure the ocean current. and

32:00

we built a similar floating

32:02

buoy that then dissolved oxygen,

32:04

pH, water temperature, and conductivity.

32:07

So again, citizen scientists can

32:09

use this. Yes, for

32:11

sure. So a lot of the parts are 3D

32:14

printed, and yet we use

32:16

Atlas scientific sensors, which you can buy,

32:18

and they're relatively cheap for ocean monitoring

32:20

sensors, so they're from 30 to 100

32:22

dollars per sensor. And

32:25

yeah, you can start with a single sensor and

32:27

then expand. And are people actually

32:29

doing this at the moment? So

32:31

far this year we really focus

32:34

on validation. So we've been building

32:36

the sensors and testing the replicability

32:38

of the designs, and then we've

32:40

been working with a colleague Tatiana

32:42

who has been comparing them with

32:45

more commercial, standard scientific methods to

32:47

see the quality of the data

32:49

we're collecting. But it's been going

32:51

really well, and so we hope to promote it more

32:53

at the end of the project. I

32:55

know that you're actually looking at the coral

32:58

as well, aren't you? Yes,

33:00

we're looking at the seafloor coral,

33:02

but also beds of seagrass and

33:05

sand. So what we did is use

33:07

this simple method where we tie a

33:09

GoPro under a kayak, and then we

33:12

have a cell phone in

33:14

the kayak. So the cell phone collects

33:16

the GPS data and the

33:18

GoPro, the images, and then we just

33:20

kayak an entire bay. Then

33:22

we upload it and then put the

33:24

GPS data from the phone into

33:27

the images. And then

33:29

we had it on Zooniverse for just

33:31

anyone to initially sort the images. So

33:33

we really promoted it in schools and

33:35

stuff to include more kids in

33:37

the program. And then we

33:40

used that to train an AI that now

33:42

automatically sorts the images. So what we hope

33:44

is to make this a cheaper way and

33:46

a replicable way in which we can map

33:49

more of our coast regularly, because

33:52

we're experiencing rapid changes on our

33:54

seafloor, which is really

33:56

expensive to map using the standard

33:58

methods with each. drones or

34:01

divers. So that's what we're testing

34:03

out with Corals. And you've actually had a

34:05

lot of help from Australian scientists haven't you?

34:08

Yes we work almost

34:10

fully with open source data or

34:12

open access data and so we've

34:14

been using a lot of satellite

34:16

data as well using remote sensing

34:18

methods and in that we've used

34:20

CoastSat to measure changes of our

34:22

coast which was developed by Dr.

34:24

Keelan Voss from the University of

34:26

New South Wales and is openly

34:28

available on the GitHub. And

34:31

has he been talking to you? No we

34:33

have not been in contact with Dr. Keelan

34:35

Voss but we have been in contact with

34:37

Dr. Chris Rulsma from

34:39

the University of Queensland who helped

34:42

us go through our methods for

34:44

validating remote sensing data that we've

34:47

been collecting. So we also had

34:49

the validation measuring it directly by

34:51

walking the coast because

34:54

he had more experience of using the data.

34:57

So Dr. Chris Rulsma is

34:59

the scientist who Tatiana who

35:01

is our field validation expert

35:03

was using his methods and there was

35:05

part of the process that she felt

35:07

unsure about so she reached out to

35:09

him for advice and he was very

35:11

helpful. Tremendous so

35:14

maybe he should come over and visit

35:16

and see your project. Yeah

35:18

that would be really awesome. Can you see that

35:20

this would be a way of mapping

35:23

oceans in other areas as well?

35:25

Can this method be extended? We

35:27

are hoping that these methods can also

35:30

help other islands that lack this type

35:32

of data to be able to monitor

35:34

their coast like for us in Aruba

35:37

we didn't have this data

35:39

being collected on a national scale

35:41

anywhere so a lot of

35:43

the changes that are happening are not

35:45

being recorded at all. So we looked

35:47

at these open source methods to see

35:49

like can we build something that fills

35:51

this gap for the island where we

35:54

can really gather attention and show the

35:56

changes that are happening to our coast and I

35:58

know that there are many other islands, facing similar

36:00

challenges where, you know, the institutions are not

36:03

there on the islands to collect this type

36:05

of data. So we would hope that this

36:07

can help others do the same. Yes,

36:10

I can see this being applicable on

36:12

a worldwide scale actually, if citizens want

36:14

to help. Yes, for sure.

36:16

A lot of smaller communities don't collect

36:18

this data and a lot of the

36:21

changes that are affecting small islands are

36:23

very hard to measure on a larger scale,

36:26

like the currents in the nearshore,

36:28

the changes on the reef

36:30

islands are very hard to monitor. So

36:33

it is really good to be

36:35

able to develop methods we think that

36:37

are applicable to small islands that are

36:39

experiencing these effects yet aren't

36:42

recording it. What

36:44

sort of changes are happening around Aruba? One

36:46

of the changes we've seen is we've seen

36:48

a lot of our reef islands shrinking

36:51

and even disappearing, which I think is a

36:53

pretty big impact for the island because the

36:55

reef islands along the

36:57

coast protected from storm surges

37:00

and sea level rise. Which is very

37:02

crucial on Aruba because it's an extremely

37:05

flat island, it's actually a very, very

37:07

low lying island, isn't it? Yes,

37:09

it's a pretty small and flat island, so

37:12

I think this could be a very important

37:14

issue that hasn't really been monitored

37:16

before. Right now we're also having

37:18

issues with high sea

37:21

temperature, which is happening everywhere,

37:23

but again in

37:25

islands that are very dependent on fisheries

37:27

and their coastal ecosystem it can have

37:29

a very big impact. And talking about

37:31

global warming and sea level rise, is

37:33

that something that is bothering people in

37:35

Aruba? I think more and

37:37

more so. We've seen some changes

37:39

in storm patterns that I

37:41

think is one of the main ways

37:44

in which people are considering it, also

37:46

unusual heat waves. We're

37:48

also a desert island, so luckily we

37:51

use desalinated water for drinking water, so

37:53

that has insulated us from some of

37:55

the impacts of the

37:57

longer drought periods, but the same is

38:00

not true for a lot of our natural

38:02

landscapes. So people are starting

38:04

to talk about it more and more. How

38:06

long has your project been in existence? So

38:09

we've been working on coastal monitoring systems

38:12

now for, I think since

38:14

2019. So we had a

38:16

few rounds of funding from UNESCO

38:18

that helped us to build initial

38:20

prototypes. And now we've

38:22

been working on validating these systems and

38:24

having continued monitoring for a year, which

38:27

support from the EU funding from resentment.

38:29

Basically it's yourself and your husband who

38:31

also works at the university here in

38:34

Aruba. My husband is currently doing his

38:36

master's at the university. And yeah, I

38:38

work at the university and then

38:40

we have a whole team. So Tatiana, who's

38:43

doing the validation, Jeremy, who's working on the

38:45

web development for the database and the AI,

38:48

Suyin, who's working on communications

38:50

and illustrations, a whole host

38:53

of interns, Manuel, Sean, Stephen,

38:56

who's also been working on the air quality.

38:58

So yeah, we've been lucky to have

39:01

more than 20 people work on this project this

39:03

year. That's amazing. And you're obviously

39:05

so young and so

39:07

enthusiastic. Yeah,

39:10

we're very excited to be able to do this work

39:12

for our island, you know. Thank

39:14

you. Thank you. Never

39:17

underestimate what a remote nation or island

39:19

may be doing to examine and look

39:21

after its ecology. Citizen

39:24

science plus improvisation. Pauli

39:26

Newman with Christi Mettez in the Caribbean.

39:42

And so to some of those Matildos,

39:44

the superstars of STEM we talked about

39:46

last week, selected by Science and Technology

39:48

Australia to take training to become

39:51

wise media explainers about their research.

39:53

Here's one. So my name

39:56

is Dr Sophie Andrews. I'm

39:58

a senior research fellow at the University of of

40:00

the Sunshine Coast. Now I

40:02

haven't been there for a long long time.

40:04

What happens at your university? Well

40:06

I work at the Thompson

40:09

Institute so it's just down the

40:11

road from the main campus and

40:13

we do neuroscience research into mental

40:15

health and marine

40:17

biology and ecology,

40:20

environmental science and

40:23

then we have a whole range of

40:25

other nursing, psychology and

40:28

I think we also very embedded

40:30

locally regionally in the area

40:32

so it's the main university for that

40:35

region and so we you know

40:37

always looking at how to educate the next

40:39

generation of people on the Sunshine Coast and

40:41

what they need in terms of education as

40:44

well. The Thompson Institute where I work has

40:46

only been around for five years. So where...

40:48

Why was it set up in the first place? There

40:51

was a real recognition that mental

40:53

health is a real concern for people up

40:55

on the Sunshine Coast. There wasn't any specialized

40:58

mental health research and

41:00

it was founded with a big donation

41:02

from philanthropists that were local to the

41:04

area and really recognised the need for

41:06

this research and wanted to help create

41:08

something that was really cutting-edge looking

41:11

for new mental health treatments and for

41:13

also reducing risk of dementia which is

41:15

another big issue up on the Sunshine

41:17

Coast. I see so super-silious

41:19

people would have said if you're on the

41:21

Sunshine Coast everyone's happy and there shouldn't be

41:24

a problem. Yes

41:26

you know this obviously we get

41:29

lots of sunshine which always helps but you

41:31

know we have the same challenges except we

41:33

are in a regional area so you don't

41:35

always have the same access that some of

41:37

the capital cities do and we also have

41:39

a large proportion of people who come to

41:41

retire on the Sunshine Coast which

41:43

is great it's a lovely place to retire

41:45

but it does mean that diseases of aging

41:47

and dementia can be a bigger issue here

41:49

than in other parts of Australia. As

41:52

well as having worked all your life suddenly you

41:54

don't have the work to concentrate your mind and

41:56

so you're somehow at a loose end

41:58

do you find that? That can be a

42:00

big issue that transition between work and

42:02

retirement can be a real time where

42:04

you're not only facing some of the

42:07

challenges of aging but also maybe losing

42:09

that purpose and that can have those

42:11

mental health implications as well. So you're

42:13

right that can be quite a crucial

42:16

area for people. So for your own

42:18

concentration what are you working on yourself? So

42:20

I lead the healthy brain aging

42:23

research team there. So we really

42:25

focus on some of those different

42:27

aspects of lifestyle like exercise, diet

42:29

and sleep and how that can

42:31

impact on brain health and help

42:33

people to age better. So we

42:36

use different kinds of neuroimaging so

42:38

MRI brain scans, EEG and other

42:40

types of assessments to look at

42:42

how people's lifestyle can

42:44

actually make a difference to brain

42:46

health and reducing risk of dementia

42:49

as they age. I woke

42:51

up last night again at part past one

42:53

thinking I'm gonna lie here looking at the

42:55

ceiling for another two hours. What

42:57

do I think of this time? Is that

43:00

a common syndrome in older people? Yes

43:03

sleep does get affected. We know that sleep

43:05

can be of poor equality as people get

43:07

older and it's

43:10

very important for brain health as well. So

43:12

there is a lot of focus now on

43:14

how to help older people improve

43:16

their sleep and certainly if

43:19

you do find yourself in that position recommend

43:21

not staying in bed actually getting up. Maybe

43:23

having a cup of tea and a little

43:26

stimulant. Well you'd think so. Well maybe

43:28

a decaf. Another

43:31

glass of red wine.

43:34

Actually well the latest

43:36

evidence suggests that there's no harm in

43:38

an occasional glass of wine so maybe

43:40

one to two

43:44

standard drinks. Thank

43:49

you very much indeed and good luck. Thank

43:52

you. Dr Sophie Andrews,

43:54

superstar of STEM from the Sunshine

43:56

Coast and sitting next to her

43:59

is Sally Hurst who's been on the sound

44:01

show before. But here's a different take on

44:03

how she can help you with your mysterious

44:05

fossils. I'm the founder of

44:08

the company Found of Fossil and it gives

44:10

information to people of what to do if

44:12

you ever discover a fossil or an Aboriginal

44:14

artifact or site. Have you attached

44:16

some organisations? I work at

44:18

Macquarie University and the Australian Museum. They're

44:20

a long way apart, how do they

44:22

work together? They do not

44:25

but I've flicked between both. Do you

44:27

know Leslie Hughes? I do,

44:29

I believe I've met her at Macquarie University. She

44:31

came in for a talk about science communication for

44:33

our class. What did you learn from her? She

44:36

is an excellent science communicator. She

44:39

won't take crap from anyone and

44:41

she is helping to change the game of climate

44:44

change and get people to actually believe in it

44:46

and do something about it. Do you have a

44:48

sister at all? I do not,

44:50

unfortunately, I've only met her the once, but

44:52

I think the advice that she gives to

44:55

the public of Australia about what they can

44:57

do to help change climate change and make

44:59

an impact, it's definitely something that I've tried

45:01

to introduce into my own habits and lifestyle.

45:05

And to combine two fields,

45:07

that is paleontology and

45:09

climate change, have you met Tim Flannery? Oh,

45:12

again, he's another big name in the museum. I haven't

45:14

had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but if

45:16

you know, I'm giving him a call, I'd love to

45:18

meet him. When the

45:21

public comes into museums or anywhere

45:23

else where there are fossils, what

45:25

do you think turns them on? Because there

45:28

they are in glass cases covered

45:30

up, just with funny

45:32

names, and they look at them for

45:34

25 seconds. How

45:36

do you turn them on? I think dinosaurs are

45:38

obviously a big selling point. Just

45:41

the scale of them, I think, can

45:43

often inspire, wonder and awe about the

45:45

amazing things that have lived on

45:48

our globe for millions of years and

45:50

how their extinction led to where we

45:53

are today and our existence. But

45:55

in terms of museums as well, I think

45:58

while things are behind cabinets, it also adds

46:00

to the mystery. It helps to

46:02

maintain that illusion of we still have

46:04

a lot of questions, we still don't

46:06

have a lot of answers about things

46:08

in the past and maybe the people

46:10

who are in the museums can help

46:12

to solve these mysteries in the future.

46:15

Let me give you a little story about I've got

46:17

lots of stories and I've told this one only 26

46:20

times over the decades. Kids

46:23

going to museum and

46:25

there's a big scary monster

46:28

going and

46:30

they look at that rather frightening

46:33

edifice for maybe

46:35

30 seconds. Next to

46:37

it is a pit with

46:39

sand in it or something like that and

46:42

amongst the bits of sand are bits of fossil

46:46

and they spend half an hour or more

46:48

looking for that even though what they turn

46:51

up is not really

46:53

identifiable until it's explained. Two

46:56

different rather surprising

46:58

contrasts. I

47:00

think kids are a lot smarter at making those

47:02

linkages than we give them credit for. I think

47:05

they can see a dinosaur an entire skeleton

47:07

or even just in a book and they

47:09

have that sense that it came out of

47:11

the ground and someone had to dig that

47:13

up and I think there's

47:15

definitely a sense of excitement in they

47:17

could be that discoverer they couldn't dig

47:19

up the next dinosaur skeleton. And

47:23

when they've finished fauceting

47:25

around is there

47:27

any follow-up because having seen the thing

47:30

or found the thing what happens

47:32

next? So it often really

47:34

depends on the parents and how engaged

47:36

they were. Or teachers. Or teachers absolutely.

47:38

So sometimes they can book

47:41

in for a program at the museum. We

47:43

have an amazing program called scientist for a

47:45

day. So if it was the paleontology that

47:47

they love they can come and meet our

47:49

paleontologists. They can see our collections and see

47:51

the whole process of how it comes out

47:53

of the ground and gets into the museum.

47:55

For Parents It might

47:58

be that they contact us with. At

48:00

bottom of mine that they found on

48:02

the base as a kid has think

48:04

curious enough to always the on the

48:06

lookout for something and safe be interested

48:08

enough to contact us and we send

48:10

it to our paleontologist and say hey

48:12

you actually have found something really cool.

48:14

Maybe it's two hundred million years old.

48:17

Well, that's exciting. The desert years.

48:20

It's a two million years old.

48:22

Whoop. Two hundred million years old.

48:24

But the the names of the

48:26

bones of fairly obscure and difficult

48:29

Nz animal itself t Rex we

48:31

understand. But the diplodocus or whatever.

48:34

Long a name is. how did you

48:37

yourself and learn these things? Again,

48:39

I think there is no one with

48:41

as much dinosaur knowledge as a four

48:43

year old and honestly it's by osmosis.

48:46

Some the end times they might read

48:48

the name or they can see the

48:50

name and stuff like that. They've gotta

48:52

say I know so many kids who

48:54

a better pronouncing time so names and

48:56

myself and other paleontologists and when I

48:58

go to school they will often be

49:00

like have you heard of these dinosaurs

49:02

and like I've never heard of that

49:04

dinosaur in my life Limit on Google

49:06

that Five Kids has so much knowledge.

49:09

And especially for name is one of

49:11

the best flights to get the money

49:13

to raise as well. But once you

49:15

kind of understand the breakdown of different

49:17

things and what they mean, sides to

49:19

run a source. Rex is the tyrant

49:21

Lizard King. One gets kind of start

49:23

to break those syllables down. They are

49:25

unstoppable and has no dinosaur named. I

49:27

Want One. Thank you thank

49:29

you sorry host is for the

49:31

museum and find the fossil is

49:34

her outfits. they're hoping you to

49:36

identify the strange objects you sound

49:38

and the boss. And

49:40

says when anniversary on federally the

49:43

sixteenth seventy years ago distressing

49:45

the ketamine science was founded. The.

49:47

first president was this man one

49:49

of my very top one hundred

49:51

scientists and spread it does help

49:54

revolutionize the twentieth century and your

49:56

kitchen as well but was left

49:58

out of the film oppenheimer A

50:00

brilliant Mark Olyphant. In

50:17

Australia we have learnt recently

50:19

that economics is indeed the

50:22

dismal science. We

50:26

have the people with skills to do

50:28

almost any. We

50:31

have the materials required for

50:33

almost any task. What

50:37

we lack is the will on

50:40

the part of governments, industries

50:42

and individuals to

50:45

go ahead and do the job. When

50:49

we dig to produce our own

50:51

vegetables or prune our

50:53

fruit trees or even build

50:55

our own garage, we

50:58

do not feel that we are thereby in

51:00

debt. Our

51:03

labour has produced something which did

51:05

not exist beforehand. We

51:09

have created an asset and

51:11

owe no one anything as a

51:14

result. But

51:18

as a nation we create

51:20

enormous debts rather than assets.

51:24

We import rather than make.

51:27

There is something wrong somewhere

51:30

in a land which in general

51:33

prefers the creative skills of

51:35

other nations. Sir

51:41

Mark Olyphant who took the letter to New York and

51:43

made the Manhattan Project happen and Oppenheimer do the rest.

51:47

He was the first president of the Australian

51:49

Academy of Science exactly 70 years ago. We

51:53

shall remember him next week when the science show will also go

51:55

to Chile. Production

51:57

by David Fisher and do keep checking the top

51:59

unhookers. hundred coolest scientists on

52:01

our website. Like Mark, I'm

52:03

Robin Williams. You've

53:57

been listening to an ABC podcast. discover

54:00

more ABC podcasts, live, radio

54:02

and exclusives on the ABC

54:04

Listener.