#468 – Janna Levin: Black Holes, Wormholes, Aliens, Paradoxes & Extra Dimensions

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Janna Levin, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist specializing in black holes, cosmology of extra dimensions, topology of the universe, and gravitational waves in space-time. She has also written some incredible books, including How the Universe Got Its Spots on the Topic of the Shape and the Size of the Universe, A Mad Man Dreams of Turing Machines on the Topic of Genius, Madness and the Limits of Knowledge, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space on the Topic of LIGO and the Detection of Gravitational Waves, and Black Hole Survival Guide, all about black holes. This was a fun and fascinating conversation.
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**Janna Levin** (1:32)
Let's go.

**Lex Fridman** (1:34)
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm, a platform that offers music specially made for focus. And when I say music, I mean audio experience. If you ever see me out in the wild, like a Starbucks, I'm usually either writing or programming deeply in focus with headphones. In those headphones are layers of audio, a mixture of some noise, beats, rain, layers, many layers that help me deeply, deeply, deeply focus. Speaking of audio, did you know that the Roman Empire used synchronized war drums to coordinate legions? Just imagine the sound of those drums. I need to do a lot more episodes on ancient Rome, on ancient Greece, on ancient China. Anyway, I'm not listening to war drums. I'm listening to Brain.fm, but I'm focusing. You too can increase your focus and try Brain.fm free for 30 days by going to brain.fm slash Lex. That's brain.fm slash Lex for 30 days free. This episode is also brought to you by Better Help, spelled H-E-L-P, help. It's raining outside, thunderstorms, like somebody's knocking on the window. If that's not a metaphor for prodding the subconscious mind, I don't know what is. Alan Turing comes up in this episode. He was crucial in the whole code breaking effort in World War II. I should probably do an episode on that. His work, his person, his mind has been a presence in my life. What an incredible human being. But anyway, I think of the human mind, the conscious and the subconscious is a kind of code and therapy is a kind of code breaking process. I wonder if AI will be able to help with that. Not just basic therapy, but ultra deep personalized therapy. Boy, that's a dangerous world. Anyway, check out a human therapist at betterhelp.com/lex and save in your first month. That's betterhelp.com/lex.
This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. The more I study war, of course, the more I study business too, but war, the more I realize the importance of the organizational layer, of the supply chain, of the logistics, the stuff that nobody talks about, the stuff that most historians don't talk about. Actually, I've read a lot of James Holland recently and spoken with him, had the great honor of speaking with him, had the great joy of speaking with him and learning from him. He's one of the historians that does look at the logistics, does look at the details of how everything is run. And NetSuite in the company setting is doing exactly that, the details of how everything is run. Because a business is not just a CEO with a bunch of sexy ideas, or the late night engineer crouching over a table, trying to fix a bug, trying to find a breakthrough idea. Nope, it's also all the other stuff that actually make the thing work, make the thing efficient. Have great tools to do so. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com/lex, that's netsuite.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. Since I mentioned history, the merchant networks were crucially important in ancient Greece, were crucially important in the Roman Empire, and of course, Genghis Khan, very, very, very important. Of course, Genghis Khan was well known for protecting the merchants. And I think any empires, any civilizations, any state of the global affairs that protects the merchants from the friction of geopolitics, of military tensions, and military conflicts, is a successful empire, a successful civilization. Because trade is really, really important. It's a kind of a financial freedom. So it's nice when in the digital age, we build systems like Shopify that allows you to exercise that financial freedom by buying stuff, selling stuff, create the market at scale in the digital world, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Because I mentioned peak performance, I'm reminded of Nietzsche. In the book, I read maybe freshman, maybe sophomore year in college. Thus spoke Zarathustra. It's been forever. I've been reading summaries of Nietzsche, way more than Nietzsche directly since college. That's one of the worries I have with AI is the summaries, the talking about the talking about the talking, is so damn efficient and fun and easy and even insightful that you don't want to go to the original sources because it's a lot of work. But you must, of course, if you want to understand. As the meme goes, but have you been there? That never gets old. And anyway, I think about that with some of the classics, but even some of the 20th century, 19th century works, you want to read Marx directly. You want to read Nietzsche directly. You want to read Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung directly. Because of course, there is great books about them, about their ideas, summarizing their ideas, elaborating on their ideas, putting them in the proper context. But there's nothing quite like reading it directly. But anyway, I brought that up because in The Spokesman of the Tooster, there's the pursuit of peak human potential. And we in the West, on the health front, have at times taken that to an almost ridiculous place. I think it's still really useful. But sometimes it's also useful to fuck off a bit, to relax a bit and not care. Funny enough, AG1 helps me in a certain kind of way. Relax and not care. I got my nutrition handled. I can do all kinds of crazy physical stuff, mental stuff, because I'm drinking AG1. They'll give you a one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.