A cosmologist's guide to the end of the universe | Katie Mack and Debbie Millman

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Cosmologist and TED fellow Katie Mack spends her days thinking about things that are almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend.
Dark matter, black holes, the Big Bang, even the possible end of the universe.

**Katie Mack** (0:25)
I can't conceptualize these scales really any more than anyone else can. But the work itself is very tied to our humanity because these are just things that come out of our imaginations that are tested with the data. And we are constantly making choices and constantly, you know, trying to better understand the universe we live in.

**Elise Hu** (0:46)
In this conversation with Debbie Millman, host of TED's Design Matters podcast, Katie shares more about the strange and beautiful creativity behind theoretical physics, the childhood curiosity that first pulled her toward the cosmos, and what it means to study a universe that is so much bigger and longer lasting than we can possibly imagine.

**Katie Mack** (1:05)
When you read a story, you want to know the beginning, the middle and the end. I feel like it's really part of how we fit into this cosmos.

**Elise Hu** (1:13)
Even though Katie's work can make humanity seem very, very small, this conversation is grounding, reminding us that meaning doesn't have to come from lasting forever. And maybe it's all about how we learn to be present and pay attention to the strange temporary moment we're in. It's coming up right after a short break.
And now our TED conversation of the day.

**Debbie Millman** (1:42)
Katie.

**Katie Mack** (1:43)
Yes. Hi. Hi.

**Debbie Millman** (1:45)
I understand that you earned your private pilot license during the pandemic.

**Katie Mack** (1:52)
Yes.

**Debbie Millman** (1:53)
And are now doing aerobatic training. I've heard of acrobatic training, but never aerobatic training.
Tell us what that is.

**Katie Mack** (2:02)
Yeah, so aerobatics is flying the airplane in unusual ways. So things like loops and spins and rolls and really learning how to control the airplane at all areas of the envelope, you know, really beyond the normal straight and level flying. And it's super fun because it's like creating your own roller coaster in the sky.

**Debbie Millman** (2:26)
And it's not scary?

**Katie Mack** (2:28)
It can be scary sometimes.

**Debbie Millman** (2:29)
So you're a daredevil.

**Katie Mack** (2:31)
No, I enjoy it because it's challenging, it's interesting, it's a different perspective, and it's a way to learn enough about how the plane behaves to be safer when you're trying to just fly straight and level. Sometimes things happen and you need to learn how to recover. So I do it because it's a challenge because I enjoy it. I'm not an adrenaline junkie in any way, but it's just something that I feel like it can make you a better pilot and it's just a different way of seeing the world.

**Debbie Millman** (3:04)
Has flying given you a different perspective on your work as a cosmologist?

**Katie Mack** (3:09)
I think what it has done is it's allowed me to have a space where I don't think about work, actually. It's when you are fully, fully absorbed in something and fully focused, you get into this zone where nothing else can touch you. And when you're flying, you have to be focused. You can't think about other things because things will go very badly if you take your focus away from what you're doing. And so I really enjoy that opportunity to just be in the moment, be in the plane, have that different view of the world.
And I enjoy the extra challenge of trying to do something else.

**Debbie Millman** (3:52)
Your grandfather worked on the Apollo 11 mission.

**Katie Mack** (3:56)
Yes.

**Debbie Millman** (3:56)
And I believed he saved the lives of the Apollo 11 astronauts. Can you share some of that story with us?

**Katie Mack** (4:03)
Yeah. So my grandfather was a meteorologist in the Navy, and he worked on things like creating satellite views of the weather with these new rockets that they just developed. And he was asked to help with the Apollo 11 mission. And his job was to figure out if the weather conditions at the splashdown site, when the capsule came back, were going to be okay, right? Because you don't want to come into a storm when the capsule is coming in on the parachutes. And he was checking all the usual charts, and it looked fine, but he knew there was a secret satellite that was a weather satellite, but it was a secret because it could also be used for spying, and he had been in the Navy.