Neural crest genes affect brain development. A wolf (Canis lupus) has been domesticated into a dog (Canis lupus familiaris). Aurochs mutated into the domestic cattle called cows.
Sue Blackmore calls a techonological meme a "teme."
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Sue Blackmore calls a techonological meme a "teme."
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#throughthewormhole
#season6
#episode3
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#morganfreeman
#spacedocumentary
#reasonofus
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:01What is the meaning of life?
00:04Don't you believe there's a reason for us being here?
00:07Join the Greenleaf community.
00:09Join the Greenleaf community.
00:11We are, after all, such sophisticated creatures.
00:15The result of billions of years of evolution.
00:19Surely life is about more than just our biological needs.
00:24More than the daily rat race.
00:27Is all the knowledge we've gained over the generations aiming towards some final goal?
00:34Are we architects of our own fate?
00:38Or is life just a series of random accidents?
00:43Is our existence just a fluke of nature?
00:47Or are we here for a reason?
00:50Space. Time. Life itself.
01:00The secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.
01:06Why are we here?
01:20I know you've thought about it.
01:22We all have.
01:24What is our purpose?
01:26What is our destiny?
01:28We're born.
01:30If we're lucky, we reproduce.
01:32And then we die.
01:34Repeat that a few billion times and you get from the first simple life forms on Earth to us.
01:41Ever since Darwin, scientists have been working on how we got here.
01:48But now they're asking the question we all seek the answer to.
01:53Why?
01:55Is all our wonderful complexity directed towards some greater goal?
02:01Do our lives have an ultimate purpose?
02:05To English biochemist Lee Cronin, everything exists for a reason.
02:13Even haggis.
02:18The bizarre sheep stomach dish that the Scots can't get enough of.
02:24Haggis exists because it's the Scottish national dish and it's been refined for hundreds of years.
02:31And that has a lot of parallels with actually with biology.
02:343.5 billion years ago, the first living cell appeared.
02:39Before that, Earth was just a vast soup of chemicals.
02:42Why did those chemicals combine in just the right amount, in just the right sequence, to become living things?
02:51Lee's convinced that it couldn't have been dumb luck.
02:55Just as a chef can invent haggis by randomly throwing ingredients together.
03:06The invention of the haggis recipe required feedback.
03:11So, as information passed back over time, and the customer, if you like, is going, no, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's awful.
03:17And this gets better and better and better, until we get to the perfect haggis.
03:21Lee thinks the environment on early Earth played the role of the chef's customer.
03:27What we think happens is there is a natural law of evolution, that it refines the chemicals in steps over time, where we can go from this easy to start with, to this very special dish.
03:40If Lee is right, the forces of evolution were at work long before the first cell.
03:49Chemicals competed against other chemicals.
03:53To find out the sure, Lee thought, why not play God, and try to evolve chemicals into life forms in the lab?
04:03This is a machine that simulates millions of years of chemical evolution in a matter of weeks.
04:09Lee starts with four simple chemicals that can be mixed in 17 million possible combinations.
04:15So, in the first step, the ingredients are selected by the machine, and then they are pumped into the wells here.
04:23And they make a random recipe, so they just select random amounts.
04:28The machine then squirts out tiny blobs of each chemical cocktail into a water-filled petri dish.
04:36It's videoing the actual droplet behavior, so it's looking at how much the droplets are moving, so that's one feature that we want.
04:45Another feature we're looking for is droplets that divide, so it's like replication.
04:50Another property we're looking for is droplets that can vibrate and sense the environment.
04:55When the blobs show signs of life, that recipe is selected for replication, and the inferior recipes are destroyed.
05:05Then, with each generation, the machine makes small, random changes to the recipe.
05:12After several weeks of trial and error, Lee's chemical blobs come alive.
05:20They get mobile.
05:23They hunt and capture other droplets.
05:26Oh, there's a fusion. Oh, it's done it. That's nice.
05:31They even reproduce.
05:35If you found them outdoors, you would probably mistake them for little gelatinous life forms.
05:42Even though they're not.
05:45At least, not yet.
05:47The next thing we want to be able to do is to feed the droplets on their own, so they can take food naturally from the environment and grow and get bigger and divide.
05:56And then, we're really on the pathway to turn this random chemistry into living chemistry, into biology.
06:03Evolutionary biologists say that DNA in genes gives life its foundational purpose, to survive and evolve to be better at surviving.
06:14But if Lee is right, DNA is not the only chemical that can exist for this purpose.
06:21This is why we're really excited, because we can show that evolution can occur in the natural world without genetic material.
06:29Lee believes we are here for a reason.
06:33A reason shared with all life forms and the chemicals that constitute them.
06:39To live, to survive and to evolve.
06:43Where there is energy and there is matter, chemistry transforms into biology over time.
06:50And this is a natural law.
06:53At the deepest level, inside every cell in our body, we are driven by the never-ending struggle of chemicals to make copies of themselves.
07:09But if the only purpose of life is to make more chemicals, why did we ever become more complex than this?
07:20This guy can replicate dozens of times a day, reproducing its bags of chemicals far more efficiently than we can.
07:31And yet, here we are.
07:36What's the reason for bags of chemicals like you and me?
07:44Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski at Michigan State University is a biological time traveler.
07:51So, any biologist would love to see the way the film of the life on Earth played out.
07:58And to actually watch the transitions that occurred over these several billion years.
08:04And ask, why did it work out the way it did?
08:07Richard doesn't have billions of years to watch evolution in action.
08:12But he does have the span of one lifetime.
08:14Which he has dedicated to performing the longest evolutionary experiment in the history of science.
08:2527 years ago, Richard plucked 12 genetically identical E. coli bacteria from a container.
08:33And allowed them to start their own populations in 12 separate worlds.
08:37Ever since, day after day, he's watched each of the 12 populations multiply and compete amongst themselves for a limited amount of food.
08:50A key part of the experiment is just keeping it going day after day after day.
08:55Transferring a small amount from each flask into fresh medium each day.
09:00And the bacteria grow and replicate in that fresh medium until they run out of the sugar that they grow on.
09:07And then they sit there until the next day that whole process is repeated.
09:11At the end of every day, he allowed a small sample of the survivors to continue producing new generations.
09:19Year after year, the daily process went on and on.
09:23In each flask, the cells of bacteria replicate, passing on tiny random mutations to their offspring's DNA.
09:35For the first 15 years of the experiment, the separated populations evolved pretty much in lockstep.
09:43Each strain gradually adapting to this flask environment.
09:48But one night, one of the colonies had a sudden and dramatic victory in the arms race of evolution.
10:00One day, we came in and found that one of our flasks had many more bacteria than the others.
10:06One of the lines of bacteria, after they'd finished the glucose, they said, hmm, there's something else to eat.
10:12And that gave them a huge advantage.
10:13Overnight, these E. coli had switched on new and complex internal machinery that allowed them to extract energy from a benign chemical additive.
10:28Armed with this new talent, they vanquished their competitors.
10:32But when Richard examined the DNA of these E. coli, he realized that the mutation that switched on the new talent was merely the last in a long series.
10:45The others had lain dormant for thousands of generations.
10:49Richard thinks of it as life playing a grand version of his favorite game, poker.
10:55I always liked playing games that involved a mixture of luck and skill.
11:00Most card games, you've got the shuffling, and yet poker takes some skill to make a lot of money.
11:07For E. coli and humans alike, each genetic mutation is like a new card dealt to the species.
11:14If the right hand is made in the right order, the organism can win big for posterity.
11:20In this case, the bacteria have this key mutation, but it had to happen in the context where there were other mutations before it.
11:29When there is a queen and a king of hearts on the table, and you have the ten and ace of hearts in your hand,
11:36you are set up to potentially make a royal flush, the most powerful hand in poker.
11:41All you need is for the final card to be a jack of hearts.
11:48Well, if you were looking for a third seven, that does you no good at all.
11:52But if you got the other parts of a royal flush, you're happy.
11:57E. coli adapt to meet their immediate needs through genetic mutation.
12:03But some mutations don't have an immediate reward.
12:05They are investments for their distant descendants, so that they can win a big evolutionary jackpot.
12:16It's a purpose that Richard sees mirrored in the story of his own work and in his own species, Homo sapiens.
12:24Thousands of generations of those who came before him adapted to meet their immediate needs,
12:29but also made tiny contributions that set Richard up to be a jack of hearts.
12:35They allowed him to run an experiment that forever changed humanity's understanding of evolution.
12:41One that would be carried on by his protégés long after he's gone.
12:47Could this be the purpose of all life, from simple, single cells to human beings?
12:53Well, my wife says my purpose in life is to take out the garbage, but I do have a couple of other purposes.
13:00I don't know what the deepest possible meaning of life is.
13:04So many happenstances and contingencies and lucky events went into it.
13:08To me, that's just an amazing story that I'm one tiny little speck of, and I'm very glad to be a part of it.
13:15Why do we so desperately search for the meaning of life?
13:24Perhaps it is because we must.
13:27New science suggests that 50,000 years ago, human beings dramatically transformed.
13:34And ever since, the survival of our species depends on each of us finding our unique purpose.
13:42When you look at yourself in the mirror, do you see the person you truly believe you are?
13:54I'm lucky.
13:56I discovered that I have a love and a talent for acting.
14:00What's your reason for being here?
14:03We're often told that our purpose can be anything we want it to be.
14:07New evidence suggests that may not be true.
14:13Evolution may have required that each of us be born with a specific purpose.
14:22What is the meaning of life?
14:24Geneticist Razeeb Khan says that the answer is different now than it was to our prehistoric ancestors.
14:30The change began with the explosion of agriculture and the rise of an entirely new class of animal.
14:44The wild ancestors of these animals would have violently attacked Razeeb for threatening their territory.
14:49But now these domesticated descendants cuddle up to him for food and detention.
14:57Razeeb knows that this difference in behavior is all in their genes.
15:03Many of the changes in mammals occur in a group of genes that are termed neural crest genes.
15:09Basically, it's just a shorthand way to say that it affects the development of their brain.
15:15And they're more childlike.
15:19Every species of animal has a set of chromosomes made from thousands of genes.
15:25Most of these genes are common to all life.
15:27When early farmers allowed only the tamest offspring to breed,
15:33a specific set of genes mutated, eventually giving rise to the domestic goat.
15:40Those same genes in the wolf mutated to give rise to the domestic dog.
15:46Wild aurochs had these genes also.
15:50When they mutated, domestic cattle came to be.
15:54In fact, nature uses essentially the same genetic recipe to turn any wild animal into a domestic.
16:04But one barnyard animal is not like the others.
16:10Obviously, you know, unless you live on the planet Melmac, you don't eat cats.
16:15They're not a food animal, but cats feed on mice.
16:19And mice really, really are attracted to human granaries.
16:24So it seems entirely likely that cats were tolerated in early human villages
16:29because they served a useful role for the nascent farming communities.
16:34Cats were not intentionally tamed.
16:36So Raisip and his colleagues looked to their DNA to see how they became so friendly.
16:46We found in this study that the comparison to the wild cat, the domestic cat,
16:52exhibited many changes in the genome that have been seen in other domestic organisms,
16:56in particular the genes that seem to be involved with docility.
17:01So our study suggested that the cat is, to some extent, a self-domesticated organism.
17:06No farmer set out to breed a domestic cat.
17:10They domesticated themselves.
17:12So that led Raisip to wonder, did we humans also turn ourselves into a domestic species?
17:22Humans exhibit a lot of changes in our genome over the last 10,000 years.
17:28My own personal opinion is, yes, you can define humans as a domestic animal.
17:32We live in large groups.
17:34If you took humans individually and put them on an island, they really couldn't survive.
17:39Compared with our wild ancestors 50,000 years ago,
17:44we are more docile, slower, weaker boned, and more childlike.
17:51But don't let that get you down.
17:54The apparent downgrades of domestication have actually given each one of us a more important purpose in life.
18:02Hunter-Gatherer had to be jack of all trades because probably there was only 10 to 20 other people
18:07that you interacted with on a regular basis.
18:11When you go up to a village of 500, you could have a warrior or two,
18:15maybe someone who specialized in healing.
18:18Once you get to the size of cities, you have whole castes of specialists
18:22that do things that everybody else in the past might have done.
18:26When animals are domesticated, individuals in their populations are more likely to develop exceptional and specific talents.
18:32Humans are no exception.
18:35It's what has kept our civilization humming along.
18:43Think of a farm.
18:45It takes a lot more than two people to keep it running.
18:49Carpenters, mechanics, arborists, veterinarians.
18:54The farm relies on all of them to develop their natural talents into useful skills.
19:01Razeeb nurtured his gift of intelligence and now his research adds to our collective wisdom.
19:08But he also has another natural talent that doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all.
19:15The one thing that I can probably do that impresses people is I can eat hot peppers.
19:23That's the one thing where it's like I'm pretty sure I can beat anybody that I see and meet.
19:30Eating this pepper would send most people scrambling for water.
19:34But for Razeeb, it's candy.
19:39Our species thrives because each of us feels driven to pursue our own highly specialized ambition.
19:52But our individual purpose in life may come to haunt us.
19:57They could make our very reason to exist obsolete and mean lights out for humanity.
20:06Have you ever shared a funny image with a friend online?
20:18A meme made you do that.
20:21But memes aren't just internet jokes.
20:24They are any idea that spreads.
20:27Great ideas like those of Da Vinci, Einstein and Buddha are the reason humanity has thrived.
20:33In fact, memes may be the real purpose of life.
20:38We may exist not to spread our genes, but to spread ideas.
20:44As long as the ideas we produce, we may be dispensable.
20:48If you ask evolutionary theorist Sue Blackmore about a universal purpose of all life, she'll say it's to spread genes.
21:02So, my lovely chickens, for example, those are kind of living machines to carry around the genes and lay an egg and carry on and so on.
21:14And over the centuries of domestication, they've become nice fat chickens that lay lots of eggs.
21:18That is what we might call the first replicator.
21:21That information, coded in genes, in DNA molecules, in bodies of us, chickens, trees.
21:27That's the first replicator on planet Earth.
21:30Get them on, chickens! Get them on!
21:33Go, Mr. David, go!
21:34Here we go!
21:39But humans have one critical difference.
21:42When we developed the capacity for imitation and language, we became vessels for an additional replicator.
21:51Hello?
21:52The meme.
21:54Memes are the cultural equivalent of genes, if you like.
21:58They're information that's copied from person to person, person to book.
22:01They encompass all of the habits, skills, stories that we pass from person to person.
22:08And they compete to use our brains to get themselves copied.
22:12And in that way, they evolve.
22:15Like genes, memes are selfish replicators.
22:19They spread whenever they can, regardless of the consequences.
22:25Long ago, the meme of fighting tribal enemies with a stone axe spread far and wide.
22:32But it wasn't long before a new meme arrived.
22:37The meme of fighting with a bronze sword.
22:40Memes compete to survive.
22:43The best memes get their carriers to copy them, remember them, and pass them on.
22:48And just like bad genes, the inferior memes usually end up extinct.
22:53When it comes to memes, the same evolutionary competitions going on, the memes that we like, or that provide something for us, or that trick us into copying them, they thrive, culture fills up with them, and the rest disappear.
23:08We are constantly spreading memes.
23:12A knock on the door is a meme.
23:15A handshake is a meme.
23:17There are countless other ways to get someone's attention behind the door, and countless ways to greet them.
23:22But in Western culture, these memes stuck.
23:27In fact, Sue and her friends are all spreading a meme that came from the other side of the globe.
23:32Samba music.
23:42Our samba band is mimetic.
23:44This interesting evolution of samba, because it's evolved in Brazil as street music.
23:48So it's evolved to be loud, active, fun, bright clothes, to suit the sunshine and the streets.
23:59It comes over here to Britain, and we play the same music, but it slightly changes to fit in its new niche, just like animals do when they evolve into different biological niches.
24:08Memes have taken the world by storm, but now something new is coming.
24:19The technological replicating meme, or the dream.
24:26Now we have all this amazing silicon-based technology with digital information flowing about all over the place.
24:33This is a new kind of copying.
24:35It's this digital information that is competing to use the resources of all this information technology that we've created.
24:45Live music is a meme.
24:48But music on your smartphone is a dream.
24:52Because technology can effortlessly copy and share it.
24:56Dreams can spread fast and wide.
24:59They are often spread by computers that don't need humans to like, share, or treat them.
25:06Sue thinks that someday, when our computers can spread and copy streams more effectively than we can, we will all lose our uniquely human reason for existing.
25:17It sounds like a dystopian nightmare, but it may be something we willingly choose.
25:23I think it's important to know that this wouldn't be happening if a lot of it weren't good, because we wouldn't let it happen.
25:33The only reason that all these dreams can take off the way they do is because we want more music.
25:38We want more books.
25:39We want more fun videos, informative videos, and because these things are chosen by us and we like them, we are willingly producing all the hardware and all the software that is gradually taking over.
25:52So is this the ultimate purpose of 3.5 billion years of life on Earth? To be replaced by ever more sophisticated information replicators?
26:05It sounds strange, but as physicists begin to examine life's purpose, they are finding that life and information could be one and the same.
26:18What is the ultimate purpose of life?
26:25Is it to be cast aside and replaced by machines whose only pursuit is information?
26:32Well, some scientists now believe that we have always been nothing more than evolving algorithms.
26:54Physicist Sarah Walker is crafting a new definition and understanding of life.
26:59I think about biological systems as physical systems, but they are a unique kind of physical system.
27:06And they are uniquely defined really by the way they handle information.
27:11Sarah defines life as a self-replicating algorithm.
27:15A computational machine that processes information and then makes copies of itself.
27:21It's a concept that really hits home for Sarah.
27:30Now that she's made a little algorithm of her own.
27:36What's amazing about having a small child in your home is how they learn things.
27:42Look at that big mess! What is all that stuff?
27:45So he's really just like an information junkie running around the house being like, what is this? What is this? What is this?
27:52And so it's pretty fun.
27:55Sarah sees her son, Corwin, as a collection of logical processes working hard to solve the problems of staying alive.
28:03In other words, an algorithm.
28:05In everything he does, he's processing information about the world he lives in.
28:11Even when he's doing his best to just eat lunch.
28:15Eating is definitely information processing.
28:16You're taking chemicals from your environment and you're ingesting them and your body has to actually be able to figure out how to use those chemicals for the right kind of chemical reactions.
28:25Sarah believes that Corwin and all of us humans came to be because evolution guided life to become better information processes.
28:33I do think evolution has an arrow. I do think it actually evolves toward more complex systems and better information processing systems.
28:42Evolution's arrow locked living organisms into an information gathering arms space.
28:49Vision and hearing get sharper. Teeth and claws get better at grabbing prey and sampling the information in its beak.
28:57Sarah believes everything we do follows this evolutionary drive to gather and decode more information.
29:08Yay! Great job, Corwin!
29:11In fact, even the technology that we create follows the same pattern.
29:17So one thing that you might think we humans want to do is remember what our kids look like when they're little.
29:23So originally people used to capture that kind of memory or image by actually painting it, right?
29:29And then we figured out something very clever, which is that we can actually just capture the light and store that image from the light we capture.
29:42And those are cameras.
29:43The information gathering algorithms of cameras are evolving too.
29:49Digital cameras evolved to process more information.
29:54They record full color and even recognize when a face is present.
29:59Then came the smartphone camera, which can even figure out who that person is.
30:05And we've now evolved technology, which is helping us process information even better.
30:09It's not only humans fit in this framework, but even our modern social systems and our technological systems are sort of a natural outcome of the way the universe operates.
30:19Biology and technology are locked together in a joint quest for more information.
30:25In fact, this could be the ultimate purpose of life.
30:29Evolution is really about capturing more information about the environment.
30:34And through that process, the environment becomes more complex.
30:38Living systems fundamentally change the universe that they're in and use that to do the kind of amazing things that we as biological systems do.
30:46Perhaps that actually is the purpose of living systems is to figure out how the universe actually works.
30:51So living systems in this kind of framework are somewhat fundamental to the universe because they're the way the universe figures itself out.
31:03Life is an epic quest for knowledge.
31:06I'd love to think we humans will reach the end of this long road and know everything there is to know about the universe.
31:14But evolution may have other plans.
31:18Our thirst for information could soon wipe us from the face of the planet.
31:27It is common to think of evolution as progress.
31:31Species locked in a struggle to become the fastest, the strongest, and the tallest, reach ever higher levels of complexity and skill.
31:40But life is not an ever-growing edifice of biological refinement.
31:47It's a series of dramatic collapses.
31:55Jim Sethner is a physicist at Cornell.
31:58He researches the fine lines separating success from catastrophic failure.
32:03These Rice Krispies could sit on the shelf for years, but expose them to milk and they crackle as they collapse into mud.
32:14Most of the systems we see crackling noise, it's at a transition between two different states.
32:20So in the, in the Rice Krispies, it's a transition between the dry state and the salt state.
32:25Jim is interested in how any system behaves when it sits on the knife's edge between stability and crackling apart.
32:35A so-called critical point.
32:39A burning log crackles as pockets of air, small and large, expand in rapid succession.
32:46Mountain snow builds up until a tiny movement escalates into a crackling avalanche.
32:54Jim and a growing group of scientists believe that our own bodies are also poised at the edge of collapse.
33:02Ironically, it's what has kept us out of harm's way for millions of years.
33:07Think about our sense of hearing.
33:19Evolution pushed us so close to a tipping point that a tiny change in the air around us
33:26causes a cascade of thoughts, senses and images in your brain.
33:33Your hearing is, is so finely tuned that if it were any more sensitive, you would be sensitive to the, to the, uh, random motions of, uh, of air molecules hitting your ear ground.
33:52Our eyes are even more sensitive.
33:55A single photon can send billions of neurons crackling into overdrive and conjure up a phantom that isn't there.
34:08Species have developed all kinds of senses and each of them has been, over billions of years, honed to the absolute limits.
34:16In fact, being poised between function and collapse is the normal state of every functioning cell in your body.
34:27Jim and his colleagues, Ishan Mitra and Sarah Shelby, are investigating why.
34:32The membrane of a human cell exists on a knife's edge.
34:38When there's a tiny change in the outside environment, the structure of its fats and proteins instantly collapses and rearranges itself.
34:47The cells have to be very finely tuned to distinguish the things it wants to expel.
34:51They sit near this critical point in order to make it easy for the cell to respond sensitively and quickly to new information about its outside.
35:02The membranes of cells exist on the border of disorder.
35:07The same is true for the systems of cells that comprise our senses.
35:11And as Jim is learning, entire systems of organisms can also teeter on the air.
35:16Consider the mesmerizing movements of flocks of starlings.
35:23It is virtually impossible for a predator to feast on this flock.
35:28The movement of one bird changes the entire shape of the murmuration.
35:32Each bird is sort of programmed in its head to fly in roughly the same direction as its neighbors.
35:40But it's tuned in this way so that they're at the border of stability.
35:47And that is what makes them respond quickly and efficiently to their environment.
35:53Dinosaurs were also poised at the knife's edge.
35:57Their massive size optimized them to weather any predators.
36:02But optimization always comes at a price.
36:07When you optimize things, they naturally end up at some kind of critical point.
36:15Because you're trying to milk as much as possible out of a system before you hit a catastrophe.
36:21A change in climate eradicated the dinosaur.
36:27A single miscue can collapse a murmuration.
36:30A few aberrant neurons can trigger an epileptic fit inside the human brain.
36:37A cell's membrane can collapse into a state of disarray and die.
36:42And human life itself may also be poised for a dramatic collapse.
36:47After all, we constantly optimize ourselves to the point of failure.
36:52And hold on as long as we can.
36:55Jim, however, is hopeful.
36:58In spite of our never-ending quest to better ourselves, we have one critical talent to prevent catastrophe.
37:08We have an unusual advantage that we are a system that's at a critical point but itself aware.
37:18That it's able to analyze the problems and avoid the disasters which are getting more serious.
37:25And we get better at controlling the world.
37:26If life is built to so easily come crackling apart, what's the point?
37:33This scientist says that it's really quite simple.
37:37The point of it all is to discover the point of it all.
37:41Because when you think about purpose, everything changes.
37:45Is humanity on a path to knowing all there is to know about the universe?
37:53Or are we bound to be replaced?
37:57It's hard to think about our ultimate purpose when everyday life can be filled with so many hurdles.
38:03But that may be a mistake.
38:09Because taking the time to think about why we are really here could be what makes those daily struggles much easier.
38:18We all came from somewhere, and we all have somewhere we want to go.
38:29Psychologist Tony Burrow has thought about this journey his entire life.
38:34Which began with his atypical family.
38:38When I was two months old, I was adopted by two white parents.
38:42When you have parents who are of different racial background than you,
38:45it gives you a lot of opportunities to talk about race.
38:50I wanted to know how do people who experience chronic forms of discrimination and oppression deal with this?
38:57And for me, this gives rise to questions of purpose.
39:04Hiking is walking with purpose.
39:07There is an end goal, but that's not why people like Tony go through all the trouble of reaching the trails in.
39:13Tony thinks that having a purpose in life is not only necessary for happiness,
39:21it subconsciously changes how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
39:32Tony is a professor at Cornell University, where students every morning face an infamous challenge.
39:37A figurative and literal uphill climb.
39:42The slope.
39:44This 500 foot long ascent is the wall between a warm, cozy bed and a long day of intense classwork.
39:52So, a couple of semesters ago, a student came up to me after class and said,
39:56Professor, I'm really sorry I couldn't make it to class last Tuesday.
40:00And he said, you know, I really just couldn't get up the slope.
40:03I didn't have the energy.
40:05And I started to think about, was this a question of motivation?
40:11Excuse me. Do you have a few minutes to participate in a study?
40:14Oh, sure.
40:15As students begin their journey, he asks them what goal they want to accomplish that day.
40:30At the top of the slope, a researcher asked them how difficult the climb was and to estimate its steepness.
40:38So, we found a strong and reliable relationship between the angle that they perceived after ascending the slope
40:46and the degree of effort that they said was necessary to get to the top.
40:50The steeper you feel the slope is, the more effort you think you've expended to climb it.
40:55No big surprise there.
40:57But Tony adds a twist.
40:58He asked some subjects at the bottom of the hill to write not about their goal for the day, but their long-term purpose in life.
41:08The goal is terminal. It's something that you can accomplish.
41:11A sense of purpose is a broader framework that describes and orients how one approaches the goals that they've laid out for themselves.
41:19So, we don't think of purpose as something that you can actually accomplish.
41:22Students prompted to think about their life's purpose still thought the climb was just as brutal as the other group.
41:30But they didn't mind it.
41:32While the students contemplating their daily goals huffed and shrugged,
41:37the purpose-minded group tackled the hill with a sense of purpose.
41:42Tony believes having a purpose frees us from feeling the full weight of the obstacles in front of us.
41:48Whether a literal hill we must climb, or a personal challenge we must overcome.
41:56I think what purpose does first and foremost is reminds people that where they are right now is not forever.
42:03That they're heading in a particular direction.
42:05And just like when we're on a hike, it doesn't really matter if you're confronted with a challenge.
42:10The goal is to continue the hike.
42:12And for individuals who can cultivate a sense of purpose, they may begin to see other life challenges in the same way.
42:18In our lives, having a purpose can flatten the mountains between where we are and where we're going.
42:25Are we here now, alive for a reason?
42:30People like Anne Frank and Nelson Mandela asked that question in their darkest hours.
42:37Their determination to make a reason for life gave them the strength to carry on,
42:43and the power to shape the world.
42:45Life may not have one unifying purpose, but that shouldn't stop us all from searching for it.
42:53Finding a reason, and believing in it, may be all the purpose we need.
42:59Finding michaelas
43:07To make a difference,
43:09Eternal huh
43:11To make a difference,
43:13to take more purpose in change,
43:15Hasta la promenering,
43:17eradicating,
43:19To make a difference in change,
43:20to steal the havade,
43:22Aliens,
43:24a launches,
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