The Vanishing Mr. Feynman (Update)
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What curious places did Richard Feynman explore in his final years?
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. We have been replaying our series on the physicist Richard Feynman. This is the third and final episode. I hope you've been enjoying it. We will be back next week with a brand new episode of Freakonomics Radio. As always, thanks for listening.
The Auguries of Innocence by William Blake. To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
There's just times that I wish Feynman was here. Many, many times. I'm sorry, but this happens when I think of him, and I can't predict when it's going to happen. So give me a moment, because I'm not good at controlling the upwelling. It does happen, and I miss the man.
Ralph Layton is a retired school teacher who lives just north of Berkeley, California, with his wife, Phoebe. From their front porch, you can see the San Francisco skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Pacific Ocean. When Layton was a teenager, he started hanging out with a man who had become a lifetime friend and inspiration, Richard Feynman. Feynman and Ralph Layton's father both taught physics at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California. But Ralph Layton and Richard Feynman didn't bond over physics. They bonded over their love of playing the bongos.
We would drum often at his place, but sometimes at my place. And then after that, you know, then he'd just talk. And then sometimes we'd drum again, and then he'd talk.
This talking is what Leighton helped turn into two books that made Feynman famous toward the end of his life. The first one was called Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Adventures of a Curious Character.
If he would ever say, oh, did I ever tell you about the time I blah, blah, blah? I would always say, oh, no, I never heard it because I wanted to hear the story again.
The second book was called What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character.
So many crazy things really did happen to him that I think he prepared the ground for. See, most people wouldn't go to the lengths that Feynman did to make a story happen. He was aware that he would tell a story later about a certain experience that he was going through.
There was, for instance, the time he was stopped by the police while standing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night thinking through a physics problem. There was the time he helped investigate the Challenger space shuttle disaster and angered the head of the commission, William Rogers, by not going easy on NASA, as President Reagan had asked. Also, the time he convinced Ralph Layton that what the two of them really needed to do was to go visit a remote place in Central Asia called Tanutuva.
It's a friendship like, you know, unique, unique. And what luck upon luck upon luck. I do feel strongly that I want to keep his memory or memory of him. So this is part of it and why I'm happy to spend as much time with you as you're willing to put up with me.
Leighton calls himself the keeper of the flame of Richard Feynman's legacy. So he will be our main tour guide today in this third and final episode of our series about Feynman. We will get into Feynman's 11th hour adventure into a new state of mind.
I said, have you ever tried psilocybin mushrooms? And he said, no. And I asked, would you like to?
We'll ask what sort of inspiration we should take from Feynman.
You know, the great thing is to be endlessly curious and want to find out. But if you can't find out, well, live with the doubt.
And we'll hear whether he ever made it to Tanutuva.
I was so emotional on this trip. Like, I couldn't get through anything without crying.
The vanishing Mr. Feynman begins now.
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.
Chapter 7, The Three Graces The Esalen Institute is right on the edge of the country, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. To get there, we drove south from the Monterey Peninsula, straight down Highway 1, winding high above the coast and into Big Sur.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What curious places did Richard Feynman explore in his final years?
0:03–6:12
2
How did Ralph Layton and Feynman bond over music?
6:12–16:34
3
How did Feynman contribute to the investigation of the Challenger disaster?
16:34–34:32
4
What unique experiences did Feynman have at the Esalen Institute?
34:32–45:03
5
What was Feynman's relationship with the concept of scientific inquiry?
45:03–54:30
6
What role did psychedelics play in Feynman's exploration of consciousness?
54:30–1:00:48
Speakers
10 identifiedMore from Freakonomics Radio
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