Good afternoon. I am Jane balogh vice president for State marketing and government Affairs at Control Data and a member of the Minnesota meeting board of directors. It's a pleasure to welcome all of you to Minnesota meeting today. We also extend a welcome to the radio audience throughout the Upper Midwest who are hearing this program on Minnesota public radio's midday program. Minnesota meeting is a public affairs Forum which brings National and international speakers to Minnesota. Members of Minnesota meeting represent this communities leaders from corporations government Academia and the professions the next scheduled speaker for Minnesota meeting is Benjamin Barber holder of the Walt Whitman chair in Democratic politics at Rutgers University and educator and creator of the PBS series democracy. Minnesota meeting is pleased to present today's speakers Richard Hutton and George page talking on why science and Science Education are important. The nine and a half hour PBS production the Mind investigates the roots of behavior of mental process the essence of Consciousness and the nature of human awareness. They will also talk about this program why it also is important as a part of Science Education the series on the mind a co-production of wnet and the BBC will begin on public television beginning, October 12 As a company described by its chairman president and chief executive officer Robert price as dedicated to harnessing the power and creativity of the human mind. It is appropriate and with pride the Control Data Corporation is the sole corporate sponsor of this outstanding series joining the James S McDonnell Foundation the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health and sponsoring this program. We're pleased also to note the presence today a Peter Meyers from Katie see a TV channel 2 and Frank Ryan Control Data is Vice President of communications who will be pleased to answer your questions. If you're interested in using the mind and related educational materials in their schools colleges service clubs or other organizations Richard Hutton is the Creator and executive editor of the mind he developed and served as science editor of the acclaimed eight-part series. The brain which aired in 1984 he is also developing to new series for public television the future of medicine and the American Science specials with his colleague George page. George page is director of Science and natural history programming for wnet New York and is known to viewers as the host narrator and executive editor of the Emmy and Peabody award-winning nature series following their presentation questions will be addressed from the audience. Please use the cards at your table to jot down your questions for discussion, Jane Rasik executive director of the Minnesota meeting will move among you to manage the question and answer session. Now before we start just a word to our radio audience through the generous support of the Oppenheimer wolf and Donnelly Law Firm, the Minnesota meetings have been broadcast on public radio this program highlights the outstanding public television series Highlights portion of the program being shown today. Well, our radio listeners will not see the spectacular Graphics color and movement of the film. We hope they will enjoy this first with George page himself providing the commentary for portions of the presentation. It's now my pleasure to present George page and Richard Hudson Sarge. Thank you very much Jane. We are flattered to be invited to the Minnesota meeting and we are flattered and pleased that a minnesota-based company controlled data is the underwriter Soul corporate underwriter of our series they Are the ideal underwriter I can tell you that I don't think I've ever experienced such commitment to a project as we've had from Control Data as we present the Mind series. Last week a colleague told me that at the gym. She had seen a woman with a t-shirt which said of all the things I've lost. I miss my mind the most I know exactly how she feels after spending almost 10 years now working on brain and mind matters why a 9 and 1/2 hour television series on the mind can there possibly be enough to say about the Mind? Well, obviously we believe there is at one point in the series we say the mind is infinity and so in fact, we could have produced a much longer series. But there is another reason one which I believe was the driving force for all of us who worked on this series. In a democracy, it is terribly important for the people to know what's going on in the Sciences. I like to think of our series as an exercise and science journalism, which offers new information about the terribly important work that's going on in the neurosciences and the cognitive Sciences work that has profound implications for the people not only of the United States but the world The Mind series also reflects an exciting coming together of the biomedical Sciences such as neurophysiology and disciplines like psychology Psychiatry anthropology and even philosophy. My main hope is that we have made the seminal work of a lot of brilliant scientists accessible to the viewing public because those scientists are actually now beginning to unravel the mysteries of the human mind. For almost 10 years now my colleague and our efforts to make first the brain series and now the mind has been Richard Hutton Richard is a multi-talented. Human Dynamo who is a joy to work with he is the author of seven books including genetic prophecy beyond the double helix, and the cosmic Chase. He is a superb science journalist and during the time he has been with us. He has turned transformed himself into a superb producer executive producer executive editor, and now creator of this series The Mind Richard Hooten Thanks, George. Thanks so much. I'd like to read a portion of a letter. I received from Maryland Hoyt of the New York Hall of Science when she invited me to speak their last May and I quote. We're looking forward to your comments three to five minutes on the importance of public education. Three to five minutes three to five minutes is two to four times the amount of space the Evening News devotes to its average science Story 3 to 5 minutes is about what it takes to read the average story on science in the Daily Newspaper three to five minutes to convey a situation is urgent as this one. Last spring I saw a movie called Stand and Deliver where a computer specialist comes becomes a high school teacher and tries to teach calculus to ghetto kids in LA. There's a scene early on where he's talking about a basic fact of algebra that a minus number multiplied by a minus number equals a positive number. He gets the kids chanting negative times negative is positive negative times negative is positive. Everybody's doing it. Even the kids who seem to hate him two minutes before and I'm sitting in the theater thinking to myself. No kids are going to come around that quickly and they're still chanting negative x negative equals positive and he cuts them off stops them short and asks, why That's the question and I've been asking myself the same thing ever since why does a negative times a negative equals a positive? That's good teaching. I've written half a dozen books on science and medicine. I've been involved in the brain series of 1984 and the mind which will Air in about two weeks and people inevitably ask me about my background. I'm a physician a science is a scientist who turned to writing and producing what kind of education could have prepared me for the complicated task of translating science and into lay terms. I really love the question but mainly because I love the answer in college. I majored in Russian History Science was like food that had been left in the refrigerator too long. It was suspicious. I'm not exactly sure why but I think I can pinpoint when in ninth grade. I took a course in biology. I was interested but not particularly ready to do homework and the second week. We had our first test it consisted of one question. And this is it is a freshly picked tomato a living organism. It's a great question. I thought it seemed to involve Notions of life and death and I wrote like crazy handed in my paper a week later. I got it back marked with a zero a tomato is not an organism. I was told. My thinking was all wrong the answered been in a homework assignment the whole test turned out to be a trick. So I went through that entire year looking for other tricks and I learned to avoid science to me it consisted of lists of uninteresting facts content without context and it was only when I got out of college and met an orthopedic surgeon named Stanley hopin failed that I got interested again. Dr. Hoffman field was a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He wanted to write a medical textbook. He offered me $40 a week free run of the college and exchange for my writing skills. So I started to follow him around and I found out what the Cutting Edge of science and medicine is all about and I've been hooked ever since Why should we stress Science Education today? The reasons are obvious when we talk about science. We're talking about the possible destruction of the world as we know it by ecological catastrophe or by human design the explosion of technology and computers engineering Transportation Communications medicine the search for the essence of life the exploration of the nature of what it means to be human. These are not trivial Notions to be resolved by a catchy phrase in a newspaper headline. These are issues that require knowledge understanding thought true discussion and they go to the heart of much of science to the heart of this most human endeavor. Science is an incredible Enterprise. It touches every part of our lives. And unless we make the learning of it an important experience. We run the risk of creating a society divided between those who know and those who don't a society that is functionally ignorant of elements that lie at its very foundations. That's why I cannot help but be appalled at the state of Science Education in this country today. It's not just conventional wisdom that says that Science Education in the United States is falling apart at the seams. Let's examine some facts developed by the educational testing service in the nation's report card which came out just this month. It's a fact that a grade 5 the u.s. Ranks in the middle of science achievement relative to 14 other countries by Grade 9. Our students ranked second to last. It's a fact that in the last two years of high school Advanced science students in the u.s. Ranked last in biology and in the bottom half in chemistry and physics. It's a fact that over half of this sign this nation 17 year olds appear to be in adequately prepared either to perform competently and competently in jobs that required technical skills or even to benefit from specialized on-the-job training. Only 7% of those same 17 year olds have the knowledge needed to perform. Well in college-level science courses since high school proficiency is a good predictor of whether or not a young person will continue to study science the odds that many more students will embark on future careers in science are very low one Trend that leaps out through these facts is equally disturbing. Our students deficits increase as they get older the further they get in school the worse off they are in relation to students in other countries. There's a logical and worse at worrisome portrait of the future that we can draw from these facts. If you agree that science is one of the most significant factors shaping our world and if our ability to provide effective Science Education both to our students and to our population as a whole continues to lag behind other countries, then we are probably witnessing the beginnings of our decline as the leader of the world's scientific community. That's one reason that I've been involved in the kind of Journalism. I practice and why I'm positively Messianic about the need to make science attractive compelling and relevant without allowing it to be over simplified our series and other series like like this our attempts to do just that they are in a sense reality checks ways of finding out just how serious we truly are about Science Education in this country. In two weeks our latest reality check the mind will begin its run. It's now nearly four years since we started it and we had it only in our imagination. It's nearly to since our first day of shooting in that time. Our crews have traveled to Tanzania Sweden, Japan Kenya and Hawaii in Midwinter. We filmed on a helicopter Cara carrier into the Atlantic Ocean and in the caves of lascaux in France. We shot about 200 hours of film and if we put our editing day's end to end they cover three years. We also had one producer who came with down with malaria another fighting. What seemed like 20 labor unions in England to film a ballerina for one day a third who got on a plane from st. Louis to Salt Lake City with his crew and 70 exposed rolls of film and found when he derived the airline had lost the sound that went along with the exposed rolls four days later in the middle of the night. He got a phone call from a baggage handler to Handler named Raul Salazar who will always live in our memories who had found the box containing the sound in Anchorage, Alaska somehow we finished. I have the privilege of standing here today, but you should know that film is the most collaborative medium in existence 50 people could be here producers associate producers production assistants, cinematographers editors are core staff indeed the hierarchy of Channel 13, which supported this project from its Inception as a group. They are living proof that science can absorb compel even motivate people from all walks of life for the effort. They put forth to make the mind to reality was astonishing they did so I think not because it was their job because the series became their passion, they saw the importance and relevance of science, but I suspect they also felt the romance the excitement they understood why it is so crucial that this series and others like it be made available to students in general public alike. The mind is you know is a sequel to the brain but it's a bit more complicated to produce because while the brain is three inanimate pounds, it's still visible. It can be represented visually, so our problem was straightforward. How do we make the invisible visible? Fortunately while the Mind might not be visible some of its manifestations in the form of human behavior are so we decided to follow the form of the brain series using human stories to drive the science we decided to do a series not purely on science, but on what science means to society not on the mind, but on your mind the real we're about to show you reflects that it's the ultimate distillation 21 minutes of the nine and a half hours of film in the series itself 125th of what we shot the real contains excerpts from four of the nine shows shows on development aging addiction pain and healing depression language thinking Free Will and violence and we put them together in a kind of mini mind show. It's a real that I think has the feel of an actual show in the series and it should leave you with a strong sense of how we undertook our explanation exploration into the nature of what it means to be human and for the radio audience. I'd like to say that you get to use your minds because will actually be watching the show now. I'd like to run the real Witness the dawn of human life. Each baby is a tale about to unfold a fantastic dialogue between Gene and environment within each tiny body lies the full range of human potential the makings of the artist or the addict the genius or the manic-depressive what might their Futures hold. We don't yet know but we are beginning to understand how their lives and ours are shaped by the very thing that makes us all human the mind. What is the human mind I can give you the answer in a single sentence. The mind is what the brain does but while that is in essence the theme and solution to our nine part series and Quest. I must confess that I've actually told you very little the object of our Quest the human mind defies the neat punch line. It's easy to say that our minds depends solely on our brains and that the brain itself is the single most complex organ in the world but a simple definition would be wrong. If only because of what it leaves out Herman Melville wrote not the smallest atom stirs our lives on matter but has its cunning duplicate and mind in the Melville tradition. We therefore proposed a journey a nine and a half hour Journey on film that sets about exploring some of the complexities the contradictions. The Impossible infinity and variety of that most wondrous of processes the human mind we begin our search with another beginning of sorts with the emergence of mind with birth A newborn 24 hours old contrary to Conventional wisdom. He's already able to do extraordinary things. Well when I was in medical school, I was told by my resident that baby's really were brainstem preparations. And that's all they were really capable of and you really had to wait for this magical time of three months of age and then they became human beings fingers. They're all white hanging on real strong and it actually seemed very strange to me because if you looked at infants and you watch babies after they were born when they were exquisitely awake and tuned into their environment, they were responsive to their mothers and they were turning towards sounds and in fixating on their mother's face. And so newborn babies, even those born prematurely emerge from the Dark World of the womb fully capable of seeing and hearing in this extraordinary experiment William Pfeiffer tests, a newborn babies preference for its own mother's voice over other female voices. He is hearing my mom's voice right now sucking a lot more good good. The baby actually sucks longer on the nipple when it hears the voice it recognizes. How does that feel the baby's reaction indicates that it's actually prepared by biology to respond to its mother while still in the womb then finally. It is ready to develop the abilities that lead to the emergence of the human mind. There is a major change around two to three months of age. Now. The baby doesn't cry as much starts to babble a lot more and most important reacts to surprise because it is now able to recognize that that face that voice that posture that toy. That's unfamiliar. I haven't seen that before you remember me after all. It's me, Mom, very important to appreciate that. The child is learning new information every day because that is the way it is. My lovely analogy is a well-fed seagull on a summer afternoon. We'll just fly around it has no reason to fly around but that's the way seagulls are built human beings are built to seek new information to learn from it to consolidate that knowledge and move on. While the explosive rate of learning as characteristic of childhood children aren't the only ones capable of processing new information. The nature of the mind is such that as we age we continue to lay down new knowledge into a lifetime's accumulation of experience. The positive change with age as the 17th century Dutch Master Rembrandt observed in himself begins long before old age for the artist. The Gathering maturity might have been no more than a passage of being the grave Empress of time. Today Rembrandt students and modern scientist may share to beliefs in old age creativity need not diminish and wisdom May flourish before our eyes Rembrandt's technique grows in subtlety vanities fade. and within this life passage is evoked the fermentation of experience the encumbrance of self-doubt from these brush Strokes of self emerges Rembrandt's particular wisdom punctuated just before death by the Masters final offering the unforgiving statement of who he is and how he had come to be The way that I think of the mind is not as a separate kind of thing or an arena, but rather as the sequence of thoughts and feelings and experiences and mental so-called mental phenomena that go on in US mind is the name of a process not a thing. Now that process is entirely caused by physiological and events in the brain and it goes on in the brain. It's not something mysterious that Sands stands outside of the natural world is just part of our ordinary biological life, it includes thoughts and feelings and experiences and dreams and pains and tickles and itches all of those things that we think of as part of our mental life. Now, that's what I mean by my that's the mind in so far as a thing called the mind is just the that expression is just a name for that sequence of processes going on. brain But we've got to let me just go on about this little bit. We got a demystify that. I mean we have this tradition that makes that seem well that's pretty spooky stuff. There's nothing spooky about it's just part of the world we live in is just it's part of our biological life. The only thing is is what matters to us most about our biological life. I mean we can give up our thumbs are in a pinch even our eyes, but if we give up our Consciousness, that's it. We're dead. We go to remember sitting down. No, I reckon we've been here about 10 minutes at least acknowledges Mars has started working now and I've always seen the whole time. I've been seeing anything at all. Is that Clive is an outstanding musician even take his work may be seriously at the same time. He loved music so much that he just really threw himself into it. Totally Clive was a musician of enormous Integrity. He was the world's expert on Iran Lazarus, one of the three or four great composers of the Renaissance Clive wearing through a cruel Twist of Fortune shows us how fundamental Consciousness and memory are to our lives. I'm conscious it's the first time I've seen anybody do not been conscious before I've been here before this haven't you? Haven't no, I'm not seeing anything at all. I'm completely blind all done it all started with a headache. Clive came home one day and said he had a very bad headache the headache didn't lift. It didn't respond to analgesics by the fourth day. He developed quite a high fever and on the evening of the fourth day for a little while. He forgot his daughter's name by the fifth day. He was very Delirious climb stuff. Violin careful Isis which has led to the damage of the left and the right temporal lobes plus a good portion of the left frontal lobe the temporal lobes contain a structure called the hippocampus, which we know is implicated in memory function and in Clive. It is almost certainly been completely destroyed in both sides of his brain. There's this that's primarily responsible for his severe memory impairment in addition the damage to his frontal lobes also causes a number of additional memory problems which are manifest mostly in terms of him repeating himself a lot and generally showing emotion highly emotional Behavior Clive's world now consists of a moment with no past to Anchor it and no future to look ahead to it is a blinkered moment. He sees what is right in front of him. But as soon as that information hits the brain, it fades nothing makes an impression nothing registers. Everything goes in perfectly. Well because he has all his faculties. His intellect is virtually intact and he perceives his world as you or I do but as soon as he perceived it and looked away it's gone for him. So it's a moment-to-moment Consciousness as it were of a Time vacuum and everything before that moment is completely void and he feels as if he's Awakening of fresh the whole time and that's why he looks at his watch all the time to record it to record the fact up. I've woken up. I'm this is an important event. Therefore I will write it down in my diary. So he writes 11:54. Am I am now completely awake for the first time and he underlines time and the whole diary every page is a succession of Entry saying almost the same thing a first awakeness and each time. I walk into that room it is as if it's the first time he see me for years Could Happen. Hello. You surprised to see me first time. I've seen anybody at all. It's business. Is it your hand right? Yes, I know nothing about it at all. So, how do you think it got there under observe the doctor don't know but you must know I haven't you learned to be pleased them sake when I say no, I mean exactly that I haven't seen the book at all till now. No, I'm all I've said no, that's me. That means I haven't seen it. I have no knowledge of it at all. That's all there's no knowledge of that bookstore this entirely new to me, but I just use your intelligence but you put who would put that I don't know but no no no, we'll use your intelligence Clive gets extraordinarily angry and who wouldn't because here you're not dealing with somebody who is demented who is oblivious. Who is Gaga you are dealing with a perfectly Lucid highly intelligent man who has been robbed of knowledge of his own life, and he feels deeply humiliated to be put in that position very very frustrated that he can't grasp what's wrong with him because even as you're telling him, he's forgetting the previous sentence Clive has lost a form of memory which probably Is human beings perhaps from all other animals, he's lost the highest form of memory the former memory that enables you to relate yourself to the past and project yourself into the future. So in a sense, he feels like a man adrift the know the saying you never forget how to ride a bicycle well to Clive Singing playing sight reading score reading music is as automatic as riding a bicycle or eating a meal or getting dressed. It's an ingrained skill. It's something you never forget. He's Center. His soul is absolutely functioning as it ever. Did the very fact that he is so despairing so much in anguish. So angry so much in love with me. Those are all real human passions and he's showing them to the almost to the exclusion of everything else. All he shows us is raw human passion Straight From the Heart of the Mind. Four five then music maybe one of the few doors back to a former self. As with Clive it can be said that the creation and enjoyment of music represent some of the highest functions of mind. Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg is rehearsing for her upcoming concert analyzing and integrating the details of apiece. She's going to perform. That's an audience will watch you walk on stage and hear you play and and there goes the legs moving around and he goes face and all this stuff's going on in this great music is coming on. It's very intense and behind that for months and months and months as a In analyzing of the piece which is intense and will never end because you always feel differently about the piece. So you reanalyze reanalyze it and and by that, I mean you have a structural analysis. Where's the theme in other words? Where's the second thing? Where's the development? How does it fit? What's the whole picture? What's the small picture? And how does it fit into the big picture? I think although what I'm doing stays exactly and then you write and fingerings you write in Boeing's then you do harmonic analysis, you do melodic analysis. You do a Power structure analysis, readying a piece of music for the concert stage is not simply a question of applying innate talent and emotion. It's an act that requires thought and intellect it demands concentration. It draws on memory perception practice planning and it builds toward a recognized go in a highly logical organized way. So in in effect, you breaking the peace down to nothing and perfecting each of these little details and then you put it back together like a model airplane and then you build your model airplane. It's ready to go when you walk on stage is when you paint That's the finished product. One thing that goes to the heart of human beings I think is the importance of an emotional life. It seems that we take very great pleasure in having our emotions moved either by the real world, but also by imaginary events now why we take such pleasure in having our emotions moved in this way is a deep mystery. Probably one of the great triumphs of evolution of the human brain is the ability to read something in a book has no reality except for the abstract meanings of a bunch of symbols on a page and just by Acquiring that information you can change your whole life the human mind then is capable of liberating us from the Eternal present. It lets us bill from the past for the future it puts meaning and purpose into our lives and allows us to hope not always realized that we are making progress in this world. What is the mind the mind is the brain fully realized it is infinity as we shall see over the course of our series. And now for your questions and George page and Richard Hudson, will you join me up here and I will just start them off. Jane boracic is going to take your questions in the audience and I will ask one question and it's to Richard Hutton in view of went up in view of your your theme on Science Education and how little television time or radio time is devoted to Science Education. How can we increase the amount of Science Education programming on that most powerful and influential medium of television? money I think there has to be a commitment to it at every level of society and government I think to quote somebody. I think we all recognize it's not just good enough to be the education president or to want to be you have to commit resources to it. And I think the issue today is whether or not this country is willing to do to offer more than rhetoric to solve the problems that exist in Science Education. It's not just a question of students. It's not just a question of whether or not teachers are well enough trained in this day and age or whether they're in Thai stand and attracted by science. It's also a question of of the home of people around the country with their children sitting down and watching series like the mind and discussing it with them making it dinner table conversation Making Science, the centerpiece of the various kinds of things that we discuss and and deal with in society. Good Richard. We have a question back here. Thank you. I was wondering it several times. We say you said in that that the mind is what the brain is doing or it's the brain fully expressed and so on and I'm concerned that that limits what mind is to you know much like we might have somebody analyzing a television set and Concluding something about TV signals that it's the mind seems to be part of it or a television camera and talking about the possibility. I my analogy isn't even good science is forever limiting because of cause and effect seems to be limiting itself to explaining what they see with the thing that preceded it and saying well that caused it or that limited at it or something and then later on finding out there weren't humors in the blood and there weren't this and that and that to somehow account for everything that is mined with somehow brain expressing itself. I'm wondering if we're not going to just find out that wasn't so to I have a hard time believing that intentionality and commitment and some of the other things that seem to be uniquely human or even some of these abilities with language are sufficient to have several times the thing about mind being the brain expressing itself. I'm not sure. What's the question so so to limit seemed like at the beginning and the end it was stated that what the mind is really is the brain expressing itself. Well, I'm concerned that that's I understand what you're saying. I think that up till now science has had very little to say about brain and mind and the the issues of brain mind Free Will intentionality and so on have been issues of philosophy and theology. They've been dealt with outside of science. I think what we're saying is that this is a science series and these are the things that science can talk about now. I think that things that are sort of outside the realm of brain of emergent property of organizational qualities of the brain are things that science can't deal with I think I agree with you in in one way. However, I think if a scientist says absolutely You know mind is what the brain does and nothing else is possible. There's Hubris in that but if a scientist says we're taking the position because it's all we can do in science to study the properties of mind that are part of brain. That's a legitimate literally legitimate response to the problem. I think part of what's happened is that people have tried to study scientifically aspects of mind that are not a part of the brain and at least in our opinion and I underline that those studies tend to be found wanting. But wouldn't they always because science has as its on and always box the need to explain what they see with something that preceded it. So they're they're necessarily inside a box of cause and effect that has observable causes produce observable effects in there forever finding that they you know, missed. Oh, yeah we missed this cause the other well the best rooms, you know best scientists don't accept the cause and effect relationship of brain and mind. Yeah necessarily. They recognize that the notion of parallel processes that there may be cause and effect of and there may be it may be also a relationship that transcends cause an effect that doesn't stop the that doesn't change the basic premise but cause and effect is certainly the scientific way to look at something. I'm not sure what other tools science has. No, that's right. We have one deck here Jane. Just from one broadcaster to another let me say I think it's a marvelous piece of work. But I like to know just a little bit about the nuts and bolts with Clive particularly that he continually forget why the camera was there? And how did you how were you able to deal with the idea of his granting permission and constantly forgetting what it was all about? Yeah. It's a good point and the question of Ethics has come up in various instances when we did this series and the Brain I mean we did a show in schizophrenia and if you think about somebody who's delusional and hallucinating to consider the notion of informed consent is very difficult. So I understand your question. It turns out that Clive was before he was still a member of the BBC as part of his life. Every time that we asked him and he could hold the question in mind he gave permission for filming. Every time that we talked about it, he was willing to be filmed. Of course when he turned away. He forgot why but that didn't change his consistent notion of being of accepting the filming his wife of course approved his doctors approved. And so we really went I think that there's an absolute that you simply can't reach in a case like this. You have to go by your judgment and your sense of Ethics how you're going to treat the case of Clive what you're going to use it for? I think we are are using it to express something about the nature of Consciousness. It's a it's a I think an extraordinary case that does that it really raises incredible issues about Consciousness and memory and so we went forward with it understanding I think the issues that you're raising and did our absolute utmost to make sure that that we had the kind of informed consent that you're that you're referring to we have another question. They saw me writing something and ask and the irreverent form of the question. I want to ask you is here if Leonardo DaVinci were born in America today. Would he be more likely in your estimation to be a rock star or an investment banker, but the series watch but but the serious form of the question is or the thought behind it. I think is pretty clear and that is don't all the values of our society. Influence how people use the gifts and talents they have and to what extent are which values in our society in which contrasts with which things would need to change to to affect some of the changes you talked about in science. Could you comment a little bit more deeply on that? I think that really goes to to Richard's remarks, but I will at least say this, I mean obviously everything is in the context of society and society's values. We live and function and work in the context of those values the series however is We have tried to be as objective as we possibly can and I don't believe in journalism. There is any such thing as total objectivity that's impossible in my opinion, but we've tried to be as objective as we can and what we've tried to provide is a report on what science now knows and does not know about how our brains and Minds operate we have learned a tremendous amount in the last 20 or so years more than men had learned in scientific terms throughout his whole history about this extraordinary process that we call the human mind and we're attempting to to provide the solid information to a broad audience to a lay audience is films not made for the scientific Community really it was made for Or the for the lay audience about what is going on in these specific areas of Science and then one hopes in a democracy that each individual frankly and groups of individuals will attach their own values to what they've seen Richard when I add to that. Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with what you're saying completely somebody when we were doing the research for the show on thinking. Sorry for the show and development. There are a lot of hours of film up here. We were talking about nature nurture and 11 psychologist said to me if Bobby Fischer had had the capacity to play chess as he did and if there had been no chess would he have walked around for the rest of his life knowing that he had something to say but having no Outlet in which he could say it and so I think that that sort of combination of predisposition to answers right and wrong morality and the environment within which you live which determines precisely what you consider right or wrong or good or bad. It's the combination that really matters its nature and nurture together and I think that what I what we can do is it's very clear from the world today that that it's possible to have societies interested in science and I think in our case what we have is an environment that is Not conducive to Science Education and so in my mind the key not quick fix, but most effective fix right now in this country is is an environmental fix. Yes, I'd like to ask you a question. Obviously one of the most interested lay audiences for the education or information about the the science of the Mind are those who seek or require Mental Health Services? It seems to me there's a great opportunity for for education to occur there mid-career education if you will my interactions with with clinicians, and I think I've had an average or above average number of those haven't given me a great deal of hope that that kind of education is occurring the tendency is to diagnose and prescribe not offer and not be very responsive to further inquiries about the deeper nature of what's going on. I guess to what extent have you learned through the course of your work perhaps whether these Mental Health Providers are either equipping themselves or being prepared or are charged in some way by their profession to provide that sort of information. I think you have to look at it over time. I think there have been changes. It's a lot of people are filled with despair if they look at today and they realize precisely what you're saying that there isn't that sort of wonderful human response that you'd want in the medical the Mental Health Community. But if you look over time, I think that there have been some substantial changes when we did the show on schizophrenia and the Brain series we found that families of people with schizophrenia were incredibly angry at the the medical and mental health communities for the way. They were treated in the 1950s. It was thought you know that Mother's cause Schizophrenia, there was something called the schizophrenia genic mother a mother whose personality cause her child to become schizophrenic. Now, what if you think about the amount of guilt you probably feel as a parent. Anyway, if your child is schizophrenic imagine if all of a sudden the doctor comes along and reifies that and says, yeah, it was your fault and stay out of my way while I try to fix this, you know, incredible blunder this waste of a human life that you've created. It's terrible that's changed Society organizations like Nami, which is the National Association for mental illness and who would come is an organization of parents and caregivers. That's that is concerned about this very issue of information and slowly but surely I think that we're moving toward the time where where mental illness and what will not be a stigma or at least as stigmatized and where we will begin to understand the nature of mental illness and do a little more than describing. I mean the Advent of psycho. Of drugs of drugs that deal with certain kinds of mental illness really make a difference not only do they change the lives of some of those who not all but some of those who have mental illness, but they also allow us to recognize the physical nature of mental illness and so not stigmatize it so much so, I think it's coming around. I once heard a speech by the Nobel prize-winning physicist Murray gell-mann in which he said he's a self-proclaimed agnostic and he said that more he looked into the mysteries of the physical world the more he became convinced that at some point there was reached an unknowable area, which he reluctantly attributed to Supernatural or Divinity or something. I'd be curious to know if in your exploration of the mind you ever came to a point where you kind of come to an unknowable point, which you have to say beyond that is something that we can't understand or can't explain. Easy question. Maybe I like this one word answers. I don't you know, I'm a committed agnostic to I recognize the possibilities that exist beyond what we can and can't know but I think it's difficult for me to know whether they exist or not. So I really can't answer the question. I when I run into the ultimate reductionists the people who say that everything about the mind about Behavior will be explained when we understand the exact molecular connection between two neurons one neuron squirting chemical juices at another neuron. I wonder how they can ever think about the notion of emergent properties, you know, that the organization of all these neurons may be the ultimate sort of template for mind and I think also personally and this is very personal has nothing to do with anybody else that I'm not sure that we'll ever get to the point where we can describe that organizational quality in physical terms. So in a way there will I suspect that that may be right that there will always be something It's unknowable, but it may be unknowable in the same way. That light is both particle and wave. I mean that's so hard to comprehend. We can say it but it's hard really to know it and I'm not sure that that I mean physicists may be able to deal with it. But the rest of us have an enormous difficulty understanding concepts where something is something and something else at the same time because we're so used to in our printer experience is not having that happen. I don't know if that answers the question. Before you go. I want to present to you the Minnesota meeting peace pipe, which is created by Minnesota artist Robert Rose bear. It's symbolic of the human bonds with which we must maintain in order to live peaceably. Thank you very much. Hey Richard, and we want to thank you both for sharing with us your dedication your expertise and your Artistry and we look forward to seeing the series of program on television want to thank you are guests in the audience and also in our listening audience. We look forward to our next Minnesota meeting. Good afternoon.