Alex Garland: Fundamental questions inspire art and science

The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss

Lawrence M. Krauss

Science, Natural Sciences, Physics

4.4 • 592 Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2022

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alex Garland is probably best known to the world for writing and directing the blockbuster film Ex Machina about the consequences of the coming of age of an AI humanoid robot. Before that, he wrote the film 28 days later, about the fictional aftermath of a mysterious incurable virus that spreads through the UK. Most recently he directed a television series for FX called Devs, about many things, but hinging on quantum mechanics and issues of a multiverse.

The human implications of new technology seem to play an ever present role in his films, and I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to chat with him about science and art in the past, and was eager to sit down and record a podcast. He is remarkably thoughtful and at the same time self-deprecating. Since the origins podcast tends to focus on issues of science and culture, Alex was the perfect guest, and he seamlessly blends the two. We sat down and talked about his own origins, emerging from a period of more or less complete disinterest in science to returning to the kind of questioning that his scientist grandfather used to embark on with him when he was a young boy. Recorded in the building in which his most recent TV series Devs was being recorded, we had to talk about the quantum universe as well.

It was a fascinating and thoughtful conversation about the human interface with modern science, as displayed in film, writing, and art.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers . Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, and welcome to the Orgence podcast.
0:11.4	I'm your host, Lawrence Krause.
0:13.9	One of the things this podcast tries to do is celebrate the connections between culture and science,
0:18.9	and celebrate science as an important part of our culture.
0:21.6	And I was therefore particularly happy to be able to sit down some time ago with the wonderful writer and director Alex Garland,
0:31.6	who's known for his writing of books but also films including 28 days later and his directing of that
0:40.0	blockbuster ex machina about artificial intelligence he went on after that to create a
0:47.7	series called devs which is really about actually quantum mechanics in the
0:52.4	multiverse and I was really happy to be able to sit down and talk to him about all of these things.
0:59.0	He's incredibly interesting, thoughtful, and self-deprecating, and his background is interesting
1:05.0	because of the way it merges, if you wish, art and science.
1:08.0	His grandfather was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, and yet as he described to me,
1:13.2	he really felt he had no aptitude or interest in science early on. A developing interest in art
1:17.9	and literature caused him to begin to ask fundamental questions, and that in his 20s got him
1:24.5	interested in science. And then he carried that interest clearly in his writing and has merged beautifully
1:30.3	this fascination of science and science fiction that's led to his success as a writer and film director.
1:37.3	And it was great to talk about this interest in questioning and also the relationship between science and art, many of the
1:45.0	similarities in the way it's carried out, the collaborative nature of science and art, both of
1:49.5	which are often thought to be individual pursuits, but are really quite collaborative.
1:53.3	I hope you'll be as fascinated by this discussion with this remarkably interesting man as I
1:59.8	was, and you can watch it without advertisements on the critical mass. with this remarkably interesting man as I was.
2:00.9	And you can watch it without advertisements on the Critical Mass Subsdack site.
	...

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