Conversations with History - Leonard Shlain

welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies our distinguished guest today is Leonard Shlain who is a surgeon writer inventor architect than just general all-around Renaissance man he was chairman of lappa scopic Surgery at the California Pacific Medical School and an associate professor of surgery at UCSF he has written three bestsellers art and physics parallel visions and space-time and light the alphabet versus the goddess the conflict between word and image and sex time and power how women's sexuality shaped human evolution dr. slain welcome to Berkeley thank you very much where were you born and raised I was born and raised in Detroit Michigan I left there when I was an intern came out to California and had my mind blown by all the opportunities in California and the 60s and 70s I promised my father that I would go return and I did after my internship and then I left for Bellevue in New York and and then transferred back out to California and I've been here ever since and and let's go back to your childhood a little looking back how do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world oh I had a very conventional upbringing I don't think that they influenced my wide range of thinking my father never understood me he was focused in his work and I was all over the place helpful so we never really quite understood each other my mother was a very easygoing and loving human being so but I don't know where I obtained this wide range of interests what was there in your childhood a lot of museum attendants a lot of book reading so you you start a new tradition in your family exactly exactly and what what about it I mean I never saw my father read a book nah he read the financial pages and he but he never read a book and my mother read romance novels mm-hmm and and so so what do you what do you attribute the path that you took to just the invite different environment you were exposed to I can't attribute it to anything I just I just know that I'm I was unusual and what about your secondary your high school education any teachers that really influenced you or how are you you're very young my father was pushing me through schools so I graduated high school when I was 16 and 16 is a lot different than 18 so I was you know somewhat immature and and kept to myself and did a lot of reading and so I don't know whether that that contributed to it and college where did you get your undergrad do your undergraduate work well I I am I went to University of Michigan and found that I loved it and that's when I became aware that I was pretty smart II know so because I was competing with all these other kids and then I got accepted to medical school at the age of 19 to Wayne State University I applied out on my junior year and University of Michigan told me that they would accept me if I waited a year and applied when I was 20 but my father said you know a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush mm-hmm so you're going to Wayne State University so I am I am going there I went there and and it's been and then I you know I left and I came out to California the back to your undergraduate education what did you major in did you did you say I didn't have time to major in anything because it was a three year you know it's three years jammed into four so I had to take all these science courses you know it's basically a pre-med I mean it was so I say all science and and and when did you know you wanted to be a doctor my father looked between the slats of the crib when I was two years you're gonna be a doctor career planning and in medical school what what what interested you have I mean you well I was very interested in psychiatry I always thought I want to be a psychiatrist and I applied you know that that's all I talked about you know and and and at that you know you have to appreciate that this is the time of the 50s and the 60s when Freud was so popular and and I remember flying out from work when I finished the army I was in the Army for two years and I finished it and the army will fly you anywhere in the world for free on the last day here in the army so I flew from Paris to San Francisco and being inexperienced than young I didn't realize how long that was going to take and I arrived and still in my uniform and drove right to the to the UC and and was in a terrible shape and and the woman said you're late and and I and I got interviewed by two men who came just did the most complete interviews for psychiatry and then afterwards I just was so exhausted I started to cross the street and and I just remembered how wonderful it would be to cross the street and not get run over because in France you would get run over and I started to cross the street and a driver came down a little box bought in and started honking at me mm-hmm and I flipped him off and then he did it again and I flipped them off again and then he stopped the car and he got out of the car and he and he it was the guy that just interviewed me so that wasn't that wasn't wonderful so so he he said that he wanted me to start the that he consulted the other guy and they wanted me to begin and a week and I said well I I can't get started in a week I'm getting married I'll give you two weeks and I was applying for the following spring you know and I said well you know I was so hesitant so I ended up he was very annoyed and got back in his car and he said you know you decide when you want to be and you let me know and he drove off and I thought to myself you know something in my life has changed and I ended up getting married and then going on my honeymoon to New York and and I was confused about what I wanted to be and I went into the Department of Surgery asked for some information and they said well this guy interviews for the persons from out of town and dr. Dumont so I interviewed with him and I didn't know that it was an interview and then he said and this was during the Vietnam era we'll we were getting drafted you know so he said well he said they if your transcript is correct we want you to start in a week no I can't start in a week hi mama honey I said why you start in two weeks mm-hmm so I thought no I said well this you know opportunity doesn't I you know ring twice so I came back to the hotel and I my wife at that time wanted to live in New York and I said well would you like to live in New York City on it yeah do it whatever it is and I said well I haven't told you what it is it's a I'm gonna be a surgeon so so I went from the west coast of Langley Porter and psychiatry to the East Coast at Bellevue which is couldn't be much more different and and when I was when I was studying Sakaya tree I was learning how the mind works and then I began in vascular surgery and I had to understand how the brain works so so I became very interested in right brain left brain you know because you know you you're driving to work in the morning as a surgeon and you're mulling over what you're doing that day and you're thinking let's see now is that a is that a right side of her knee or all upset agree you know and you know you don't want to make that ever make that mistake you know I've never have and with with vascular surgery there's an added mix because you need to know is the person right-handed or left-handed because operating on the right or left carotid produces different things if they're right-handed or left-handed mm-hmm so I always thought that was very odd hmm so I combined my right brain left brain interest in the highway the brain works with my interest in psychiatry about the way the mind works and I've written these three books that now I'm writing a fourth that all have kind of a subtext of right-brain left-brain - but before we get to that because I am really interested in the forces that shape you were during this Odyssey that would describe this for well you were a person reading everything I mean obviously you were given opportunity and obviously seem to have had candle power that was recognized very early but but were you were you reading you know all fields that in this early it's amazing I I came out here from Detroit and and Detroit everything was Freud and what when I got out here everything was young and and and I became very interested in Eastern philosophy and I remember my former wife used to say God you know you're really you really read weird books you know and and I just manure all grist for the mill I mean it just all became part and parcel of what I wanted to convey to my audience mm-hmm and so so in a way in thinking about the brain and the mind you had a lot to work with in terms of what was going on in in in in your own head now you you're most importantly a writer and you're a surgeon I want to have you give us before we talk about what you've written a sense of what is involved in two of these several vocations that you have being a surgeon what what what does it take what are the skills involved what is the terrain you're mapping you have to be powerfully constant and I started out as a vascular surgeon and I did that for about 25 years the general in vascular and then this new opportunity came along with laparoscopic surgery and I became one of the pioneers in this field and devoted my energies to developing Piatt laparoscopic surgery to the point that I'm the chairman of laparoscopic surgery in my hospital and and laparoscopic surgery required an entirely new way to visualize because you know you're operating off a screen and you're operating with very long instruments and because you're using a screen because you're using a camera like device to see where you you're reacting so it's completely I mean there's never been in a hundred years a development like laparoscopic surgery that's completely transformed the the in the operation that we perform and and as a result of this I began to invent instruments for this particular kind of surgery and then I was teaching courses in training surgeons and then I was going up and down the coast of California setting up about 30 community hospitals and then I was invited to Japan and other places there to teach this kind of surgery so all well all that was going on I also had mm-hmm the new book coming out of art and physics which so I thought to myself Jesus what why couldn't I why couldn't this be sequence I mean why did why they but why do these things both have to happen at the same time but I want to go back let's get you back to just the surgery before you were using the technology what if a student were watching this program what what they which what are the skills what what is it that you have to be like and have to know in order to do that well well first of all you had to be very right brained because I built a house and I worked with an architect and we realized I would go over to his house and describe the kind of operation I did and then he would describe and and I realized that were three-dimensional thinkers you know as opposed to that is brain surgeons yeah as opposed to two-dimensional thinkers that that's the way most people are I mean I would show the plans to people and they couldn't understand or I draw the drawing of what I did in an operation they couldn't get it but when when you're a surgeon and you're you're looking in the bottom of a wound you have to know and visualize what's ahead of you what's behind you what's to the side of you and you know the most dangerous word in surgery is not whoops I mean whoops just simply means you've got something that's out of control the most dangerous word in surgery is hmm because because mmm means what the hell were where am I you know I mean what's happened here why is bio leaking out of this it's a sense of design in a space and but but unlike an architect you're actually moving through time right I mean because you you're you constantly have to Rican rethink where you are so so you have to have a very good three-dimensional brain which and I was you know I was it came easy to me you know so so in that respect that that's my right brain I mean that's the that's the skill of the right brain and you know most surgeons are not particularly expressive and the right bring people and you know I guess you have to have a lot of courage to don't you or does it develop over time either you you have to be willing to go places you have to have courage I mean it's I'm glad that you brought that up because surgeons you come to a moment in an operation when you have to make a decision and you have to make a decision to go for it or to not go forward if you're gonna try to take a tumor out you may not find out to the very end that if unresectable so there's so there comes there's a lot of courage involved and self-confidence and self confidence now now in in moving from just being a surgeon to being a pioneer in the development of a new kind of surgery that's a that's a kind of an interesting leap because you're you're secure being a regular surgeon but and and I guess what I'm curious about and in this this new kind of surgery you were doing which you've explained to us you're actually been a successful inventor of new technologies to use so tell me about that that leap does that that innovative distant come naturally to every surgeon well I you know laparoscopic surgery was embraced by young people and I was one of the oldest people in that group you know whenever we went on a tour or was invited somewhere as I would always I'd always look around and I think myself that I'm the oldest person here you know and you know I adopted it in March and UCSF didn't do their first laparoscopic procedure till August in what year was this this would have 1990 1990 yeah and it really took it took medicine by storm because you know this was an industrial medical complex that was pushing these machine and and didn't come it was invented by a man who wasn't part of a university you know so this this sort of was a counter movement from the private sector to the public to the university sector and this is the third like that's the first time that that ever happened or maybe you know I'm not quite sure but you know most things come from the universities but this was the this was a different kind of movement mmm-hmm so what did it take to be able to embrace a movement when you're the oldest guy in the bunch well I I never thought of myself as a no and and I remember that my malpractice and I'm sure said that it would be improper for me to go train these guys in all these communities because it would be called itinerant surgery if you weren't following the patient you know you you could be accused of malpractice and I said well that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard I mean how are we ever gonna get to started so I I just ignored this rule and went to all these other communities and taught them how to do surgery now in this movement from one kind of surgery to another are you are you then drawing on other qualities in your brain and when you make this left-right distinction or are we still in the same realm of the brain well I I think that this requires another step back from what you would see when you're looking at a wound because now you're looking at a screen and you have two instruments that are going in and when you want when you want your instrument that you're seeing on the screen to go up you have to put your hand down mm-hmm when you want your instrument to go right you have to put your hand left but when you want your instrument to go in if put it in so you have two movements that are contrary and one that's the same mm-hmm so that means that a complex three-dimensional movement is very difficult for anybody to learn because you have to retrain your brain and I've seen surgeons just break out in a sweat trying to learn how to do this you know because it's not it's not intuitive it's not simple and it takes experience to learn how to do it mm-hmm no I think they're probably the kids playing the video games today you know we'll be pretty attuned to this but you know we all started out having to learn this and to this day I mean there's some guys that having total knack for it and some people that just don't get it you know the do you have a photographic memory or is it or is is that not the way to understand qualitatively what you seem to be able to do it's not a photographic me yeah that's just it just means that it just means that you have a holistic view of the whole thing mm-hmm and in this new kind of surgery with this technology what what what are you operating on you're operating on the midsection or it's mainly Cheston and an abdomen mm-hmm you know I've done one biopsies that done gall bladders I've taken out spleens and you know so but now it's it's getting into all kinds of things and this is spreading to become a very useful tool in surgery now hands are very important also in surgery correct yes yeah and it you describe this and as I think about this it there there are elements of being an artist in being a surgeon yes I've always maintained that surgeons are not technicians they're not mechanics they're artists you have to make a series of artistic decisions that that that are made intuitively I mean you can't you can't follow you can follow the mechanics you know of going down the list but there comes a time when you have to use an artistic vision so then you know I said this in my book you know because people said to me well how could you write a book about art in physics because you're not an art historian and you're not a physicist but on the other hand I think that surgeons are trained to be artists and at the same time they have all the science background to be a physicist alright now before we talk about the ideas you've pursued and how they've come from this I'm you're a writer so so the the in a fast selling author who's covered a number of fields so so what what does it take to do the kind of writing you do the skills that are involved I talked a little about that well I you know the most I ever wrote was in a progress note but you started doing the progress notes are not you know literary masterpieces and doctors are not known for not really was clarity yeah so so I I just developed well what happened is I had a non-hodgkins lymphoma and when I was age yeah yeah 37 and I recovered from that and that was 1974 and kubler-ross wrote her book death and dying and the country was grieving and for Watergate and Vietnam and and somebody invited me to this conference in Berkeley to to to sort of give a give a talk on an upon the fact that I was a a brain surgeon know you'll have to forgive me because I'm just had brain inspiration so but you'll have to they they wanted me to be a surgeon who spoke from the American College of Surgeons it from the American Cancer Society and then I was a patient so I had to give those two points of view so I didn't even talk and a guy came up to me afterwards Charlie Garfield and he said Jesus this was just wonderful do you have this written down and I thought well you know I don't you know so he said well I'd like you to be in a book that I'm writing or I editing with Linus Pauling and Hansel yeh and I'm from Norman Cousins and Karl Menninger that's sure you know I wrote this chapter out and then people started contacting me about the chapter you know and I thought oh gee it's something I wrote actually affected people so then the publisher came to me and said that they wanted me to expand this book into a larger book on this chapter into a larger book and I said I don't want to do that because I I want to put this behind me and I want I don't want to be a victim all the time so I had this other idea for writing a book about art in physics and and you know I was told well you know you're not an artist or Ian and you're not a physicist and then the book I had a literary agent come up to me at the end of a talk that I was giving and he said do you have this written down and I said well you know yeah but he says I'd like to represent you and then he took it back to New York and there was nine a bidding war from this is the first book the artist yeah so there was just incredible interest so it just came naturally you to you to write or let's talk about because your books are very well researched but but you use what you find in the books and as a platform to take it to a new level correct so so so what what is involved in that kind of writing a lot of reading obviously but then does it just sort of come out as you see connections and others don't you know I I see patterns I see patterns were not many other people see patterns they don't see them and I I see I think that's what made me a good surgeon and now this is what's making me a good writer in that I asked you know I used to M be a very annoying student because I was always asking questions and the questions I asked were unusual questions and you know the the three books that I've written the first one is you know that the artist anticipated every idea in modern physics using an image in metaphor prior to their expression in numbers and equations and all of those you know because it's usually said that well the physicist comes first but I I maintain that this was the artist and and this is about right-brain left-brain so then I was going to write a sequel to that and then I went on a archeological tour of the Mediterranean sites and we had this University of Athens professor who was telling us that you know this temple was dedicated to a goddess and then it would change to a god and and I thought well that's kind of really strange and I look back at the ancient world and saw that all these civilizations worship the goddess and then these three Abrahamic religions denied the existence of a goddess you know Eve and Mary and you know they were all demoted so so I thought that was kind of strange and and I concluded that it was the invention of the alphabet the reading and writing is different than speaking and listening and speaking and listening as a right brain left brain activity but reading and writing as a left brain activity mm-hmm so that by switching into this patriarchal masculine mode of thinking the woman's rights were diminished and the goddess disappeared and these three religions emerged Judaism Christianity and Islam and and then one time in Western culture is when literacy was lost was in the dark ages and everybody went back to worshipping Mary and yet this I mean you have to ask a word Mary come from because she's mentioned only eight times in the synoptic Gospels mm-hmm and she's a peripheral character in the story and then suddenly she's all over the place and then the Protestants come back with you know when literacy starts rising again and they say we want to reform this religion we want to get rid of Mary they you know and we want to so so there's been a I traced the the course of the the course of women's rights and and the goddess throughout history and how I proposed presently that because of the enormous amount of images that were bombarded with which are mainly a right brain function that we're leaving 5,000 years of text now we're moving into the iconic age which is about the image and that's why women's rights are rising I mean my wife as a judge and you know she there were no women judges a hundred years ago and and all the you know I trained surgeons at UCSF and over 50% of the surgical residents are now women which would have been unheard of a hundred years ago so yeah can I just ask you so you basically obviously like the second book that you were just talking about where you you focused on hey what happened to women in in the in the rise of Western civilization now in doing that research in doing that book when we when you look at your bibliography you then read everything but you're also being affected by the times right that the book is a product of a new Sensibility so that's also at work here and in generating these ideas that's correct that's correct absolutely and and you know as a result of writing that book I was you know criticized but mainly by people that read it they said well surely you're not saying that literacy caused this profound change and you know you could find non literate tribes that mistreat women so I started to ask myself why is it that we humans of the three million sexually reproducing species don't mate in a way that everybody else means and that and then the women don't have estrus you know they don't they have menses and and they're available for sex all year-round you know whereas the other animals are not so that led me to write this third book which is about evolution and how we evolved into where we are today and that's sex time in power so Gigi third book so I've written three books that are all different there you know I think you couldn't get three more different books they all have a theme of right-brain left-brain but they're they're there they're three different books and they're all national bestsellers and then it occurred to me that book about Leonardo's brain would combine all these three books and why is that and Leonardo was this extraordinary figure who I wrote about in art and physics but I used his brain because he was so exceptional you know if you were to design a Nobel Prize Committee that gave out only two awards one in art and one in science and we opened up the competition to the entire world and I think just think of all the people who would have won the art award and then think of all the people who would have won the science award who can you name who could have won the award in both categories and you'd be hard-pressed to come up with five or six candidates but after a while you'd have to think well you know that the the the the their their contribution to the opposite side is that quite world-class so the only person that would win it in all categories is Leonardo da Vinci so so I wanted to understand how is his brain I mean what kind of brain did he have well for one thing he was gay for one thing he was illegitimate for one thing he was for another thing he was left-handed but ambidextrous he was a vegetarian he used to eat meat and when you asked him why he said because I don't want to harm any other animal so he had a very global mindset in the modern sensibility of a moderate he could take up residence in the bay yeah exactly so and and I I've just developed this theme of right-brain left-brain and where we're going with this and I'm postulating that you know we're a species that's only 150,000 years old and most species live to be a million to a million two before they either go extinct or they become something else so we're about 10 or 12 years old and and and and we can manifest that because you know look where we're starting to harm each other we're starting to you know that this is the age when a child becomes more mature but at the same time we're also achieving a maturity so I'm writing and writing the last chapter now and it's it's I think this book is going to be terrific and and what excites you I mean is it because you've used this word reconfiguring the brain rewiring the brain and obviously in talking about your own life you you've actually been here and thought about it and and so on so so what because this is you're suggesting that we're going to go to new plateaus that we can't even anticipate yes and it sounds like it's gonna involve rewiring and then the the the use of technology to take us to these places you know there's three million species a sexually reproducing species mm-hmm they're all based on the carbon benzene ring and then humans came along and we invented language and language was the first entity organism that didn't need a physical body because all of us depend on language we have a symbiotic relationship with it we all depend on language but language is an entity that depends on us and it can't exist without us and we can't exist without it so so what's happened now is the other common element in the world is silicon dioxide and silicon dioxide forms you know sand and glass and so what's happened is that as a result of silicon dioxide being impressed into bodies as insulin pumps and defibrillators and at what point that we cyborgs I mean at what point our you know is all this machinery that we're putting inside of ourselves that's adding to our health at what point is that making us a cyborg and then the use of transistors has aided us in the communication across the world that the internet and and computers and all of this is now bringing us and we're becoming a different species mm-hmm so we're making a transition that no one could have expected who could have anticipated when we first got computers that there'd be the internet I mean it's just you know now you're in your work as I understand you're working in our conversation you are a person who has insights about what brings the humanities together with the sciences and and in in the sense because you're saying it's physics and art in a way and and that they're talking to each other well the fact of the matter is they often don't know that they're talking to each other so usually not talking so so what how is is that going to happen you know that that in other words the the very positive future that that you're suggesting will happen when we're actually when we're down here on earth living in a world in which the humanities and science don't talk which we're oblivious to our own history we're oblivious often to the power relations that define the world that we're actually living well we have a trend to specialize in knowledge because knowledge is becoming so specialized that each person is you know seeking out a different little keyhole that they're going to specialize them and I'm a synthesizer I'm trying to say you know this is not the way to go I mean we need to synthesize more the relationships between artists and scientists and men and women men and women and and and and Leonardo best and he sort of managed to achieve that so so it's it's a book about trying to bring it all together mm-hmm now you strike me as someone who can really help us think about creativity and if you look at your work you know you're not a specialist on some of the fields that you've written about you've taken criticism for that but it's clear that one has to think out of the box in order to move this this human enterprise forward talk a little about that I mean what is it about creativity that we have to get a handle on so that it's not lost in the context of the missile silos where we develop new knowledge creativity is a result of two of two instincts one is lust and the other one is danger so you know all animals are equipped with a means to tell the difference when something in the environment has changed and it usually means it's about to eat you so so you have to be you have to be very alert so so danger is one of the basis of creativity the other one is lust because of the three million species of animals we're the only one that has decided that beauty health and and youth shall be the criteria that we will want to mate with somebody and you know men don't get erections unless women are healthy young and beautiful and other animals definition of beauty changing over that but other men I mean other animals don't have this problem I mean you know they usually respond to pheromones you know you don't see a dog going around to the front of the dog and looking to see whether she's good-looking before doing something with her so so this is a very unusual factor that we ended up that that that creativity which emerged later came from these three things health youth and beauty so so then we became the only animal that roamed the world I mean there's no other animal that doesn't have a Flyway or a you know a migratory path or you know we go everywhere so we needed something to change the way we thought about when we were in an environment that would be healthy so we we morph this sense of beauty into the sense of beauty of natural beauty I mean you know we're the only animal that you know that really gets taken by Beauty I mean you don't see other animals oh wow look at that you know some chimpanzees and other and Jane Goodall has identified some activity of that but you know you don't see the chimpanzees rearrange their their housing you know so so we moved it over to include natural beauty and then we moved it over to become artefactual beauty and we started making things with our hands that were beautiful and you know there's 250,000 year old by facial hand acts and in the center of this by facial hand acts is a very carefully preserved seashell fossil shell so you have to wonder you think yourself well what was what were they thinking why why did they preserve this shell because it was beautiful so we know that this was something that came a long time ago and we've we've now shifted this to be the creative impulse and the creative impulse is dependent upon based on less than danger now look we're in in times that with we have a new president where we're we're at the peak of what technology can give us so it's a it's a it really offers great possibility but in in in the history and some of which you cover in your books I mean power does things to the you know power corrupts it corrupts absolutely and that it can derail the possibilities that we might be in reach of top talk a little about that I mean does do do I you obviously are very sensitive to to the brain the mine to to biological factors that determine our existence but the beside language and art you know in our relations we produce power Toto talk a little about that and how does that enter into your analysis III I think that the human species is on its way to extinction because number one we objectify nature our language allows us the objectify nature which means that we're not part of it so we can say oh that's nature over there and we can destroy it so we're destroying our natural habitat in addition to which we're the only animal that engages in war I mean chimpanzees have been known to do that but no other animal they have dominance fights then usually don't result in death but a large-scale killing of other members unheard of and we have a problem in that because we stood up we positioned our intestines directly above our anus which made a problem because in order to support the intestines the the pelvic hole had had a diminished and it shrunk and as a result the baby's brain kept getting bigger and the pelvis kept getting smaller and we're the only animal that has a high degree of eternal mortality rate so when it began having a terrible time having their babies and they and it's been estimated that according to primate gestational periods that a woman should be pregnant for 18 months but she can only be not a week beyond nine otherwise she may die or the baby will die so we bring the babies very immature into the world and the saving grace is that we've developed language so that we can hold the cup in a culture all the information that the baby needs and then we got to socialize them but it contains a error and that is that by socializing the people so long they can acquire dangerous belief systems that are not true and and these belief systems we see all over the world right now are part of a process that is you know and instituting war so so war and objectifying nature and then the third thing is that we're the only animal that doesn't know when to stop breeding I mean all other animals have an intuitive instinctive kind of knowledge that they're they're they're challenging the environment but you know so though Matt eclis start diminishing their brood but we don't have that so overpopulation and the war and the objectification of nature are the three things that will do us in however we also are at a stage where we can change and that's why I'm the the changes that have been in the universe so far have been so unexpected that if you were to be a observer you would have never anticipated that you know the DNA molecule would form out of amino acid and you know that the stars would turn on from atoms that were so tiny you know that you know just think of it you we have two stories of the creation one is about a creator that creates the store in the world and seven days six days and rest on the seventh and the other one is about a Big Bang that happens out of nothing thirteen billion years ago which is which is more unbelievable I mean but but we now know that the science thing is pretty solid and and you know it's been proven or proven but the this long story of thirteen billion years ago makes more sense than that other story I guess also another hope is always the next generation I and you know I know you're a proud parent of four children and I'm sure you have grandchildren so so so that that is also a place where our humanity will move us forward well I I'm I'm very encouraged by these two trends the what the one trend you know if you think about the Renaissance you know cuz I'm immersed in the Renaissance right now and and during Leonardo's lifetime when he was a baby the printing press was invented and the printing press transformed the world because there were 8,000 books circulating not circulating anything they were and they were in private collections or behind a locked church doors and then these 8,000 books became 15 million in the space of 40 years so the society was transformed so the society moved way to the left and then that started the Reformation and the Reformation said no no no laughing no no no sex no and what the for me what the Renaissance was about was about new clothes new dances new music a new attitude towards sexuality a new humanistic attitude and in Protestantism was you know no you're dressing only in black and white and no dancing and and then the religious war started and the religious wars lasted 200 years and then the Enlightenment occurred well what's happened in the 50s was television and television transformed the world and television produced a huge shift to the left with new dances new music new new clothes and a new attitude toward sexuality and a new you know humanism and that produced the Reformation of the 90s which were all these evangelicals and and people being okay no no no no we're not going to have any of this and now we're into the religious wars with the being attacked from the the jihadists and at the same time being attacked by our evangelical base that want to change the rules about everything well does Obama represent the new generation the Enlightenment I mean I think so because everything is speeded up in in our culture from the Renaissance so instead of it taking 200 years it's taking 30 years and and we're witnessing what I think is that's a pretty dramatic change well one final question we have only a few minutes left what how would you advise students to prepare for the future I would prepare how would I advise students to prepare for the future well let me think about that I think you have to have a very global view mimosas are are concentrating and I did it too you know you you're concentrating on a narrower and narrower field of expertise and that that process should go on like that it but then there comes a time in your life when you want to expand but and you don't you you want to enlarge your view so I don't know that I could advise students to do that when they're concentrating on gaining a skill that's a very narrow area but there has to come a time in their life when after they've acquired that skill then they open up and unfortunately you know you're in college and you're you're studying all these courses and then afterwards you don't study those courses but you need those courses after after you're in midlife on that note dr. slain I want to thank you very much for being with us and I'm going to take a moment to show your three books to our audience art and physics sex time and power and the alphabet versus the goddess and I can't show yet but when you come back to be on our program when your book comes out we'll show your new book on Lonardo - thank you thank you very much for taking the time to be here my pleasure and thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with history

Channel: UC Berkeley Events

Views: 11,213

Rating: 4.8873239 out of 5

Keywords: UC, Berkeley, ucberkeley, event, Science, Images, Visual, Perception, Values, Leonard, Shlain, Harry, Kreisler, yt:quality=high

Id: rOvtNLJL6mI

Length: 59min 52sec (3592 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 22 2008