Um, Tony Dean. And today we'll be calling history to speak with Albert Einstein. He'll be answering our call on March 14th, 1955 on his 75th birthday. At a young age, Albert Einstein was bored to death with school. It was too easy for him yet. Instead of his teachers embracing his brilliance in mathematics and in physics, he was told that he was difficult. And what amount to nothing.
By the age of 26 though, while working as a patent clerk, he published a handful of papers that changed the world forever. That year has since been referred to as his miracle year. One of those papers, contradicted Isaac Newton's belief that gravity was this mysterious force pulling two objects toward one. Another Newton was beloved. Contradicting him was not popular, but it didn't matter because Einstein was right. Another paper unlocked the secrets of energy E equals MC squared.
Basically it said that if you could break the bonds that hold mass together, an unimaginable amount of energy would be released. At that time though, he had no idea how it would be used and definitely didn't foresee the creation of the atomic bombs that decimated Japan and world war two. Einstein was a pacifist yet he realized that Hitler could only be stopped with violence.
He was a reluctant world superstar who apparently never combed his hair, but most of all, he was as interesting as he was brilliant. So much so that upon his death and despite his wishes, his brain was autopsied finding significant differences that might've made his extraordinary cognitive ability possible. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow history, lovers, and benders of light everywhere. I give you Albert Einstein Hello, is that you, Mr. Einstein? Yeah, this is me. I'm Mr. Einstein.
Sir, it is a pleasure to speak with you today. My name is Tony Dean, and I am talking to you from the future in the 21st century. The device that you're holding in your hand is called a smartphone, and it's kind of like the telephones of your time, where you can have a conversation on it, but it also allows me to share a record of our conversation with people around the world.
And sir, after the life that you have lived, this extraordinary life, I was hoping that I could ask you some questions today, but before I do, I understand this is a very strange introduction. Can I answer any questions that you might have first? Well, it it amazes me that you are able to communicate with me from such a great distance.
, however I should point out that I and my colleagues, the, all these believe that there is no reality that includes the past, the present on the future, that is a construction of the mind. So in some sense, I accept the fact that you are able to communicate with me from the future. I would like to know how you are able to do this. Of course, I want to understand the physics , behind this remarkable application, but suffice it for another time.
And to be quite honest with you, that was one of the reasons that I was nervous about speaking with you, because I didn't know if I was going to be able to keep up, because if I tried to explain this to you, you'd probably understand it better than I would, but I will tell you this, if you had one of these devices in your time, you would very much enjoy it, because some of the scientific calculations That you did and , maybe some of the thoughts that you were trying to organize and remember.
You could do them all on this device. Oh, that's wonderful. That's a wonderful device. But may I tell you something? Yes, please. Yeah, well, at one time when I was living in Germany my, my wife and I, we had a little cottage not too far from Berlin, and it was close to a lake. And there was another cottage nearby, and I did not have a telephone in the house.
So, if somebody wanted to reach me, they would call the neighbor, and the neighbor would take a little trumpet, and he would stand outside, and he would blow a few notes, and that way I would know if the phone call was for me or for my wife. And it worked marvelously. hee hee hee hee hee hee. That's right. My wife taught him how to play the different tunes, so we would know for sure who was calling. So did she have a tone and you had a tone? Did both of you have a tone?
Yeah, , well, it was a sequence of notes, so what you could say it was a little melody. Like a little bird song, and we could recognize, ah, that is the sparrow, so it must be for Albert. No, that is the crow, it must be for my dear wife, Elsa. That's fantastic. You know, one thing that it appears is that it doesn't matter what situation you were in, whether you were doing something very challenging or something simple like this, you were always found a way to be resourceful.
You were with what you had in front of you, and that, that is fantastic. This is a good neighbor, by the way. Yeah, you know, it's so much time has passed since then. I have forgotten his name. I think that he was a, what you call a potter. That he made things out of clay. But that is what I think from this great distance in time. , Speaking of time.
You know, as I was reading about you, which is just so much written about you in our time, one of the things that I came across, and I always wonder what is the genesis of a person doing extraordinary things, and it appears that when you were young, One of the first things that that felt maybe mystical to you was this time when your father gave you a compass. Was that the start of your genius and your curiosity in your life?
Yes, I, well, Looking back at that time, I was home, and I don't think I was feeling very well, so I stayed home, and my father came home with a little present, and it was a compass. And I was only five or six years old, and then I opened the compass, and I held it in my hand. I noticed that the arrow would point consistently in one direction to the north. Then, as a child I did not understand why, but I did see there was some kind of mysterious influence, or you would say today, a force.
And that was, I think, the beginning of , my journey. To understand what is these forces? What is behind the curtain that we call observable reality? What we can see. with our senses. But there must be something else, something that is deeper. And I wanted to understand what are these mysterious forces. So yeah, to answer your question, that was the beginning. Is Is that something that you remembered in your early years?
So that when you were going to school and you were studying mathematics that pushed you to excel so quickly in some of these things? I believe that I had a certain natural ability with mathematics, and I owe this ability in part to my own makeup, but also to the influence of my uncle Uncle Jakob, and also a medical student that I met when I was very young. His name was Max, and he introduced me to some mathematical concepts that stirred my imagination.
And also it fueled my curiosity to understand geometry, . I thought when I first had, the work of Euclid and all The propositions, the theorems in that little book, that was so, so amazing to me, that I had to work out the Pythagorean theorem all by myself, and I did. And that just added more fuel to the fire of my imagination and my curiosity. So, how old were you when you worked out Pythagorean's Theorem on your own to check if it was correct? I believe I was twelve years old.
Yes, I was still very young. But through the influence of, as I said, Pythagoras and Euclid I continued to study on my own, and that I was able to, to master advanced mathematics at a very young age, when I was what you call adolescent, uh, equations advanced equations, and even calculus, when I was still quite young. Yeah, and I could discuss this with Max Talmud. He was a medical student that would come to the house, yeah, and then at a certain point he was no longer able to keep up with me.
Then and I am not boasting, it is just a matter of fact, yeah. So Max was your teacher basically, and you just, he just couldn't keep up with you at some point, and That is correct, yeah. So, how did your other teachers respond? Because this is not a normal thing I don't think, for somebody to look at a complex theorem like that and go, oh yeah, hey, you know, I need to deconstruct this. Did your teachers see you as a good student, or were you challenging for them?
Huh. I would say that I was exceptionally challenging for my teachers. thing, I did not like school. For the first few years, I was educated at home or on my own. I would study, and I would have a tutor come to the house, and when I finally entered the school system, it was already for, I think it was for the second grade, and actually I felt that I understood the grade more than the teachers, of some subjects, not all subjects, but some subjects, and I think I had a certain attitude.
That perhaps irritated my teachers, and sometimes I would sit in the classroom with my arms folded across my chest, and a rather smug expression on my face, and I know that was wrong. Irritating the teachers. They could see the look on your face that, okay, look, you're boring me. That's the look that was probably on your face. I'm bored, right? That is exactly correct. Yeah, I was bored.
Yeah. I would have loved to be able to teach the class myself for some subjects or some aspects of the subjects. But I am still a child, yeah, and I don't know everything. And, but what I remember is that I would show great interest in subjects that I was truly interested in, but for the other subjects, well, I would close them out. I wasn't interested in these things, so I paid little attention, and that is where I got into a little trouble.
I see, because they didn't want, they wanted to follow their routine, , they needed to take you to biology, and then they had to take you to mathematics, and then you had to learn history, and you didn't want to learn all that, you knew what your specialty was going to be. That is correct. Yeah, I was not interested in the other subjects. And also, a bigger problem was the nature of the school system in Germany when I am growing up.
I was not comfortable at all because the teachers they tended to treat us like little soldiers. We had to be obedient. We had to memorize and then repeat what we had memorized. And I thought to myself, well, this is no way to learn. No, we have to open our minds. We have to expand our curiosity. But this was of no interest to the teachers. , So, I'm thinking about this. If you're born in We're still talking the 1800s then.
So you're like Yeah, we're talking maybe like the 1890s and already the teachers are , treating the kids like they're soldiers at that point. Well, I use the term or the analogy but of course we are not soldiers, we are little boys and girls, but it was the nature of the German school system to be very rigorous in their discipline and their expectations that we would be memorizing and repeating what we have learned.
And as long as we could pass the test or the exams, then they felt they were doing their job. But what about Albert, who was thinking of other things, who wanted to have a teacher that would encourage him? That was what was missing, and that is why I did not want to remain in the German school system.
, it's interesting that you ever accomplished anything in what you're describing because this sounds to me like the exact opposite, , situation that you needed for your creativity to thrive because they're trying to stifle your creativity and you want it to run like a wild horse. Oh, that, that is a wonderful analogy. Yeah. And I recall that uh, may I tell you a little story? Yes, please.
Yeah, well, I remember that one of my college instructors once said to me, , You are never going to amount to anything uh, Einstein. You are nothing more than a lazy dog. That was his opinion of me. perhaps because of the attitude that I showed in class. But it happens that I left Germany and I went to a school in Switzerland that was a very very modern school, it did not adopt the same methods as in Germany, and there, the teachers, they encouraged creativity and curiosity.
And I felt very much at home in this particular school in Ro, Switzerland. Yeah. So , did this have something to do with the time that you renounced your German citizenship? Or did that also something to do with the, with conscription. Yes, well, I did not want to be conscripted into the German military system, and my father and my mother and my sister Meyer, they all left Germany and they moved to Italy for that my father could start a new business with his brother.
Yeah. Well, they left me behind. In Munich, they wanted me to complete my secondary, where you say high school education. And well, I was so unhappy. I was lonely. I missed my family. I didn't want to stay in the school, so I got the permission to leave. And I took the train and also I renounced my German citizenship because I didn't wish to be conscripted. Yeah? And so I moved to Italy and my father and mother were very upset with me. How, what about your schooling?
I said, well, I will study on my own and and I will go to Zurich and I will take the entrance exam to the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. But before that, my father was concerned. He said, now you are here in, in Italy with us and you are not doing anything. But that was not true. I was studying on my own and I was exploring Italy. You were never not doing anything. I have this picture in my head right now of this going a different way.
When you look at somebody like your life and all the things that you've done, I mean, you think of , these moments in time where you could have just taken a right turn instead of a left turn. , what if you had ended up in the German military? Can you imagine, , standing in lines and walking through with your cup to get , your chow for the day and like all the routine of the military, like your brain would have exploded.
Yeah. It's put to bed very Very difficult for me I did, Have to appear to be conscripted and the medical professionals there they said, well, your feet are very sweaty, so we cannot let you be in the military, from sweaty feet. Can you imagine? Oh my. Yeah. Yes. When I am little. I would sometimes look out the window of the apartment where they are living in Munich, and I would see formations of soldiers marching in the street. And this also filled me with such a feeling of oppression.
While other people are smiling and praising the soldiers, I felt this was a terrible thing for humans to behave, to have to conform to this regimen. And of course this did not fit my personality at all.. So, my father thought that I was becoming what is well, he called me a high school failure, or what you might call dropout, when I had come to Italy, and afterwards I took the entrance exam in Zurich, and I failed. Yeah, I did not pass the subjects that were of no interest to me.
So I had one year to finish those subjects at secondary level. Then I could take the exam again, and that time I passed. So I could enter the Zurich Polytechnic Institute at a very young age. I think I was 16 or 17 years old, yeah. Incredible. Look at all of these people that are trying to hold you down. This teacher says, you'll never amount to anything. Your father thinks that you're going to be, drop out of school and so you're not going to end up with any degrees.
And then you take this test at the Zurich Institute and the first time you fail it? Yeah. So, , what pushed you forward right there? You have to be wondering if maybe you're not going to be a success because all these people are telling you that you're going to fail. Yeah, that is a very interesting question. I have to commit to the the fact that, yeah, there were times when I doubted myself, that I wondered, where am I going with my life? What do I want to do?
My father wanted me to become a electrical engineer. Like his brother, and that was of no interest to me, although when he had a factory that was producing electrical generators, I learned a great deal about the machinery and how it functioned, and that, of course, was interesting to me. But my interests, my true interests were at a much deeper level, and I could never let those interests go. Thank you.
No matter what I was doing, of course there were books, and I could read, and I was looking for somebody with whom I could discuss the latest findings in science, in particular in physics. That was my main interest, and , by going to the Zurich Institute, if I completed the four years, I would be eligible to be a high school teacher. of physics and mathematics. Yeah. That was one way to earn my living. But that was not my highest dream at that time, no. I wanted to be a knight of reason.
That is to say, my models, my heroes, were people like Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Copernicus. These are people who challenged what everybody thought was true. They just took for granted. But not Galileo, not Newton, no. They said there is more to reality than what we can observe. And I wanted to be like them, to make discoveries that would transform the way they understand the world, reality. Yeah, It's interesting that you bring up Isaac Newton , I had read that he was one of your heroes.
And when Isaac Newton, theoretically, the apple fell and hit him on the head, and he said something is pulling, , the apple down. I was re and I don't know if this is correct, but I read that later on that you proved that the apple actually wasn't being pulled down by something, it was actually being pushed down by the atmosphere. Did I read that right? there is a certain truthfulness to what you have said if you will pardon me, I will make a few minor changes to that story.
. I do not believe that the apple actually fell on Newton's head That is perhaps one of the stories that has developed over the centuries. But I do know that he was living with his mother outside of London because of the bubonic plague. He escaped to his mother's farm. that it would be safer for him.
So it is probably true that one day the apple fell from a tree and it hit the ground, but at the same time saw the moon in the sky, and he wanted to connect these two realities, the falling of the apple and the orbiting of the moon. Could there be an explanation that would combine these two things into one reality? And, yeah, and that is what gave way to his conception of what is gravity. Yeah, well, well, it, it became my uh, to build upon his theory of gravity.
Did your theories contradict his? Well, his theories are still relevant today, the mathematical foundation of these theories. Yeah, those are intact. However, He believed that gravity, he said, I don't really understand what it is, but it is a force between objects. There one object is pulling on another object, like the sun and the earth and the moon. I don't know what this force is, but it is instantaneous attraction. Between bodies like the earth and the sun.
Yeah, and that is why the moon is completing an orbit around the earth and the earth around the sun and so on. But when I started my work. I said, well, this would contradict what we know about light, when the speed of light, that is an absolute limit nothing can go faster than the speed of light. So, for there to be an instantaneous attraction between celestial bodies, it must be happening faster than the speed of light, which would violate. a principle understanding of reality.
That is where Newton needed some elaboration. And that is where I contradicted him. I said, no, there is no instantaneous attraction between bodies. The earth is not pulling on the moon and the sun is not pulling on the earth. That is something we have to re think, and my theory of relativity was my attempt to imagine the theory of gravity that Newton proposed.
If you were to go back in time, I mean, you look at Isaac Newton and all that he accomplished with the tools that he had to work with and the restraints of his time. If you were able to go back and have a conversation with him in his time, like I'm having with you right now, what are some of the questions you would have wanted to ask him? Well, I so admire Isaac Newton. He was one of the greatest minds that humanity has produced. So for me to challenge him, it was difficult. I did not want to.
And my colleagues, they would, sometimes they would warn me, they would say, Einstein, , you are putting your career at great risk to undermine what they have followed for centuries. The ideas, the theories of motion as put forth by Isaac Newton. Well, I didn't wish to dethrone Newton, but as a scientist, I was obliged to follow the truth. And the truth led me to a completely different conception of the cosmos and how it is structured and the forces within.
If I could have a conversation with this great person, I would first of all question him. I would say to him what happened? On that fateful day at your mother's farm, when the apple fell from the tree, how did it lead you to this incredible insight into the movement of the moon and the falling of the apple? What was your thought process? , that is one of the first questions. And also, I would say, what was your understanding of Galileo, who died, I believe it was one year before Newton was born?
And how was it that you could build upon his conception of reality and relativity? What was it about his ideas of relativity that you used for your own work? , we're talking about some pretty heavy stuff right here. And there's one thought I cannot get out of my head. And it is not uh, question, it's more of a, I think a question of maybe physics.
And that is when the military said that you had sweaty feet, I just feel like they never figured out that they should maybe look at your feet when it was ten degrees outside because they probably weren't as sweaty then. I mean, it makes me think of how small their minds really were and how hard it would have been for you to be there. , you know? So , let me go a little a little further though with with the theory of relativity A actually, hold on before I go into that.
Is it, this is totally like way off what we've been talking about. Is it true that later on in your life that is real contacted you about being the president of Israel? That is exactly correct. Yeah. What happened there? Well, it was more an honorary post because of the certain status that I had achieved in my life.
The , Israeli government, they perhaps, I thought that having me as a president in an honorary post would endow the state of Israel with even greater dignity and importance in the eyes of the world. But I turned down their invitation and I thought to myself, they would have regretted it from the first day that I assumed that post. They would not be happy. don't think that was your calling, to be the president of a country. No, I did not wish to be the president of any country.
No, that has taken me far from my true pursuits, yeah. You probably, this is a total guess by the way, but I'm guessing you probably hate politics in general. Probably just gets in the way of your work. Well, now that is interesting. I, I did in fact become involved in politics, perhaps not because it was my greatest interest, but because of the nature of the world and what was happening.
And I felt that if we had to make a response if it was a political response, then no. Well, that is what would be. As in the case of Israel, I was never in favor of , a Jewish state, Israel. And therefore, why would I become president of a state that I did not believe should exist? A state with the military, borders, and all of the rest of the things that, that grew to a state no, that, that was in opposition to my own values.
I thought it was in opposition to Judaism and to the inherent values in my religion, Judaism. Yeah. , but in terms of the political question, yeah, then I had to take stance. Certainly during the First World War, the Second World War and so forth. And you cannot completely shut out what is happening in the world. You must be aware of these things. And you must decide upon what are your values. What is your stats? What would you say?
You cannot remain silent when these questions present themselves. At the level that you reached of both fame and the level of intelligence that you reached and the contributions that, , you made to the world, , It seems like it would be very difficult to be neutral and be quiet. It seems like people are always going to want to know what your opinion is about everything.
Did you find that at different times when you would express your opinion, that it would be so controversial that it would get you in trouble or create problems for you?
, well, when I first came to New York City with my wife Elsa, the ship had docked in the harbor and the reporters came on board and they were asking me questions that were not necessarily political, but they were Questions like Professor Einstein, how far away is the moon how far away is the sun, and sometimes these questions annoyed me. I said, I don't carry this information in my head. If you wish to know, go to the library. That is what books are for. You can find these answers.
But in terms of political questions, I was asked about during World War II. One I tried to, to pursue my own scientific interests, but I was aware of what was happening in Europe, and I was greatly opposed to the war and , whenever the opportunity presented itself, I would express my opposition. To the war there was a paper was signed by some of the most prominent scientists and intellectuals in Germany in support of the First World War.
Yeah. Then there was a counter manifesto that was in opposition to the German involvement in the war. And only three or four people signed that manifesto. And I was one of them. , I was not in favor of this aggression, with this bloodshed that was occurring in Europe. And I did not attempt to hide my political views.
At the end of the war there was an assembly in the Berlin Philharmonic, and that was my, perhaps it was my first political speech, in which I celebrated the end of the German monarchy, on the beginning of what I hoped would be a more democratic government in Germany. Yeah, that didn't work out. Right away, though, did it? No, not at all. During the 1920s, of course, there were countervailing trends. At the same time that people were experiencing more personal freedom.
In Germany, and more artistic freedom and liberties there was also a rising tide of anti Jewish feeling, and that coincided with what we call Nazism. And these two trends certainly had a profound influence on my own life and my fellow Jews in Germany. And wife and I, Elsa, these traveled greatly. We left Germany at the time I was living in Berlin, we had the apartment area.
And I would receive invitations from different universities in different parts of the world to come and to share my experience. My understanding, my scientific work, and also that gave me an opportunity to express my other views political views.
And I wanted so much for the world to understand that Germany was much more than World War I. Much more than the trenches and the bloodshed, it was the culture of Goethe, Schubert, Schumann, the great composers, the German composers, the Austrian composers, Mozart, for instance, Beethoven. But more importantly, when I am in the other capitals of the world, I wanted to rebuild the bridges that had been broken by the war.
To rebuild the context, the connections between scientists in different parts of the world. We should not ourselves as enemies. We should work together to strengthen our ties. And because of this, my own people judged me to be a traitor. A traitor to Germany, to the history, to the greatness of Germany. Not all people, but certainly people on the right. They regarded me as a traitor, even though I am trying to rework the image of Germany in the eyes of the world.
And to portray the contributions to civilization that Germany has made. But in my own country, no. I am regarded as this filthy dog who has not yet been hung. They had no idea that you were probably their greatest ambassador. They should have been right behind you supporting you. Yeah, No, they hounded me. I've received death threats. And That is one, another reason why we often left Germany to travel to other cities, other countries, yeah. And that my life was in danger.
As long as I remained in, in Germany, and I thought, well, I was bitter about this. Yeah. I thought, well, I am an ambassador of goodwill, and yet in my own country you see how they treat me. Wow. Not everybody, of course, but people on the right, yeah, and the media, especially the right wing media, oh, they had a wonderful time to make fun of me to mock me, to to portray me in these cartoons where there is a caption to one of them said, not hung yet.
You know, as far as the newspapers making fun of you and all that, , you gotta give them a little leeway here. And the reason I say that is you do some pretty wild things with your hair, if we're being honest. I mean, that's good for newspapers. Yeah. You know, I cannot remember that came to be. You know, when I was a young man, I was very meticulous about my appearance. My hair was always brushed nicely, and I dressed conservatively.
And but at some point I was less concerned about my appearance and more concerned about other things the state of the world my own scientific work, and well, I have to quote this, perhaps there was a certain amount of vanity in the way I let my hair grow. And I know that it served my purpose for people to regard me as this well, very eccentric scientist, if you want a word for eccentric, yeah. It was good for the newspapers, I can see that.
You know, It had to be maddening to you to live through these two world wars and see the world just completely trying to destroy itself, , and at the same time, here you are, , before World War II, you're trying to reconnect Germany to the world, but also, you know, Your work is all about the connection of the universe, it appears and the logic the mathematics, the reason behind how all of this is connected and how it's all created, and how it works, and at the same time,
the world's just trying to kill itself. That had to be maddening. Oh yeah. That is very well said. Very well said. That I am working to make the connection James Clerk Maxwell, the great Scottish scientist, he connected to the Electricity with magnetism, called electromagnetism. I am trying to connect even now in my work, to connect the smallest particles, subatomic particles, with things that exist at the cosmic level.
And earlier in my work, to connect gravity with quantum what we call quantum mechanics these are all attempts to connect, to make one unified reality. At the same time, the world is disintegrating into , roaring clans and whatnot. And it is so disturbing to me so distressing to me. And perhaps in some day, my work is a, is an answer to this disintegration and this lack of unity.
It comes from a very deep part of me and of my life to, to recreate, to unify, to bring together that which has been broken. You know, I'd like to talk about some of the specifics of your work because I do have some questions about that. But before I do, you had mentioned the word borders a couple minutes ago. And when you said that, it made me feel something, because I'm wondering what the world looks like to you. Or what, The ideal world would look like to you.
You were talking about Israel and their borders and , you've been citizens of a lot of different countries. You've been citizen, I think you are a citizen of the United States right now and citizen of Germany. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, citizen of, I think, Switzerland, and I think at one time you were a citizen of nowhere. Is that correct? Yes, when I am still a adolescent and living in Italy, , I was not a citizen of Italy, and neither was I a citizen of Germany.
I had renounced my citizenship, and I believe I had to wait till I was a little older to apply for Swiss citizenship. Because I had renounced it when I was only 16 or so, it did not have legal validity. So I had to wait till I was older and then apply for citizenship in Switzerland, where I was going to school and studying in Zurich.
And then That is where I married my, my first wife, Mileva but yes not to have a home, it is it creates a certain feeling of that you have no solid ground to stand on. . But, when I developed my work, my, my thinking about this I said, well, why do I have to belong to a certain country? Why cannot belong to all of humanity? Why cannot be a citizen of the world? . That's the question I was going to ask you. What does the world look like to you if you could redraw the borders?
Are there no borders? Is it one world with just people? How do you see that? When you have borders, you must have military to defend the borders. Yeah, and that will, of course, will give way to wars, conflicts. How do I see the world? I see that, of course, we cannot magically put an end to all conflict, because there are different interests in the world, and they conflict with one another.
But I believed, and I strongly believe, that if we had one government a world government, and that every country in the world, yeah, it would have borders, of course, but it would surrender a certain portion of its sovereignty. It would by necessity do this, and the sovereignty it would give up to the world government that would have an ultimate authority. And of course we have to make sure there are safeguards that , this world government would rule justly and with compassion.
And to promote equality among peoples of the world. And that is of course controversial. It is easy to say, no, such a government would be tyrannical. But all I am saying is that if every country surrendered a certain portion of its sovereignty to this world body, such as the United Nations, we would have a much better world. And I have to say that yeah , my thinking has led me to socialism. And I will say that I am truly a socialist.
I think that the world would be better off if the goods of the world were shared equally among the people of the world. And that no one country had dominance over any other countries, or under the goods and services that are produced for the people of this country or that country or whatever. So, I think that if socialism was to take the place of capitalism, the world would be far better for everybody.
Do you think that if the world was socialist, and if we had no borders, which by the way, as you're saying that, I can picture a world where all of the money that gets spent on armies and munitions, I can just see all that money not being spent there and being spent , to help the poor and, , to fund research , that would be amazing, but in that world of socialism, do you think that people would have that desire to rise if there was no reward for rising.
. Would the Einsteins of the world not need to work? 'cause there was no money to work. Yeah. , there's be are very important questions. And of course, we have not solved any of these, we have not answered these questions. But it is only through experimentation, a willingness to risk, to go forward, to try. There is no ultimate solution. Of course, there will be conflict. There will be people who wish to rise above others.
And In my vision of the world it would be founded on very different values. And of course, people would have to be raised in a socialist milieu where they are not always trying to get the better of somebody else, but where their needs are essentially met. Then why would they have this drive to to overcompensate, to dominate, to put down others? Then you have sufficient for yourself and your family.
Yeah, because the whole social fabric is not making it so impossibly difficult for you to have a good life. That is what we want for people, to have a good life. I'm not going to take away your freedoms. No, we are not going to say you cannot achieve, you cannot try to do more with your God given talents. No. We want everyone to rise, yeah, to their best, to be the best possible human beings they can.
Will there be , those who are selfish, who wish to hold who wish to, to profit from the misery of others? Yeah. Yeah. But in a world where these values are not given so much importance, I foresee there will be a turn, a shift to a much more humane life. , spoken like the future leader and president of Israel, or maybe president of. Of the one big country. Well, let me correct you. It is not that we are going to do away with borders. Let there be borders.
Fine. Every country has its own traditions, and values, , and culture. Yeah. But let us not make these borders so hard that people will defend them at all costs. . I see. So it's okay for people to have their own cultures and there to be different races and religions, but we don't necessarily have to put fences up or guard those borders with guns. We can just know that we're still people. Yeah, we are shared humanity. That is what is important.
Yeah, you are German you are French, you are Italian you are a Jew, whatever. But that doesn't mean I have to kill you. All it means is that I have to respect you. I have to get along with you. I don't think Hitler got the memo on that. he was reading from a very different manual of how to run the world. Yeah, I think you're right. Oh my gosh, speaking of Hitler. Alright, so Hitler rises to power in I think that was 1933, is that right?
That is correct, yeah, 1933. So Hitler rises to power in 33 and around, wasn't it around that time that you were traveling in the United States and the Nazis decide to raid your home or something like that? Can you tell me about that? . You know, I traveled to the United States on several occasions with with my wife El, and on this particular occasion, , I want to say equation. My, I am always thinking about equations. I, I had gone to a. California. Yeah. By a boat, a ship.
And that is where I went to Hollywood. I met Charlie Chaplin, and we became good friends, and there were producers there. They wanted me to be in a movie, but I said no. If I cannot be president of Israel, I don't want to be in your movie. Well, I should correct myself because in 1933, there was no state of Israel that would come later. Yeah. But what was I saying?
Yeah. Charlie Chaplin and I, we become good friends and one time he said to me, you know, Albert the world, the people, they love me. Because they understand me. And they also, they love you, but they don't understand you. But that is a mystery. And, no, we let it be. So, we traveled my wife and I, we traveled across we went from California. We headed east back to to New York City.
And along the way, we stopped in We met with the Navajo people and one of the, one of the leaders they called me the great relative. I think they were trying to be funny. But yeah we go to New York City and I'm going to get the boat to come to go back to Europe. Then I had to go to the The German consulate, and that is where a, a functionary, a bureaucrat, he said to me, you know, Professor Einstein there have been some things that are happening in your absence that you should be aware of.
I said, what things? And he said, well, the, uh, the Germans, the, what you call the Nazis, they have they have broken into your apartment , in Berlin. They have broken into a little house on the lake they are looking for something, they are looking for weapons they believe that you are a communist or a communist sympathizer, that you are a traitor, that you are involved in the efforts to overthrow the government of Germany under the leadership of Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
And I said, well, so what did they find in my little cabin by the lake? And this person said, yeah, they found a bread knife That was my only weapon knife, that I am going to challenge the Hitler in his regime. This was ridiculous, but I, yeah, I knew that, well, we could not go back to Germany. So, instead, the because our life would, my life in particular would be in danger, so we went to Belgium.
Now I knew the king and the queen of Belgium, and they allowed me to stay on the coast of Belgium in a house that they had there. And they also appointed soldiers so that we had armed guard in case there was attempt to assassinate me. And probably my wife, too. And so, we went there But, now, , where am I going to go? I can't go home. I can't go back to Berlin. I cannot stay here in Belgium, so I had invitations from Oxford University and also from Princeton University.
And at first, , I wanted to go to Oxford. I thought that would be a more benign place to live and to continue my work, but by September of that year, 1933, yeah we decided to go, to accept the invitation to go to New Jersey to the University of Princeton. And so we disembarked from Belgium and I came , to Princeton and we rented a little place for a while and then we put down the money for a little house on Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey. And that is where I have been living since 1933.
Living on Mercer Street and working at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University. Speaking of putting money down on this property, , when you're overseas and the Germans go into your place looking for, you know, a bread knife or other weapons that you would have such as that, what happened to your property there and your money there? Did it just all get wiped out, or was it all gone in an instant? Yeah it was taken over by the Germans.
And it went through several changes they did not destroy the house the little, it was not that little, but it was very comfortable for us. We could get away on the weekends, make a little vacation for ourselves, and I could go sailing in the lake. I had a little sailboat that I called Dumla. which is an old German word for dolphin. So that was my boat.
But my possessions that were priceless to me that I had in my home, my apartment in Berlin, and some of them were in Kapos, in the little house in Kapos. My stepdaughter Ilsa was able to remove from the house and the apartment and safeguard them, take them , with her husband and herself to France, , which is where they were kept and eventually they were returned to me. Then I was able to settle here in America. So these would have been like your notes and writings? Yeah, my notes.
Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. My work, my papers, my books, and also some very beautiful pictures. Carpets that I was able to procure when , my livelihood increased. So I had some beautiful carpet and I had some, I had a wonderful picture of Isaac Newton that I wanted and other paintings that were important to me, photographs. of my family that were preserved thanks to Ilse, my stepdaughter. Wow, that is amazing. I'm wondering . , you have to have a fantastic memory.
, if the Nazis had gone through your properties before she was able to collect , some of these that would now be artifacts for us if she was unable to collect them and they had just looked at your notebooks and said, Oh, those are just books, and you know, they're burning books like crazy back then. If they had just thrown those things into a fire, would you be able to have recreated that work from memory?
Yeah, well, many of my papers had been published, so they existed, yeah, so I , would have access to them, and yeah, and because I had invested so much time in developing my work, yeah, you do not lose those, they're always with you. Now, perhaps they don't exist on paper in terms of equations and what, but I would always have them. I could retrace the steps that I took.
And I had colleagues that, with whom I consulted, and we could reflect back on our conversations and the work that we achieved together. And that would help me to reconstitute whatever work had been destroyed some of which was collected already in journals and in books. So, not have been totally lost, no. Okay, that makes sense. You have a history of being known as a pacifist.
And I read once that you had said that war was, I don't know if you'd said this or not, it might not be true, that war was a disease. And yet I guess I, I question I've debated this in my head and I think a lot of people have throughout their lives that I don't know if there's any way with pacifism to stop somebody that's determined that has an army then without an army. Sometimes people just can't find common ground.
How do you reconcile being a pacifist with the fact that sometimes only an army can beat another army? I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Well, let me think about that. It's a very profound question It's amazing to think how much Einstein accomplished while living through two world wars, he could have made one bad decision and ended up being a Jew trapped in Nazi Germany at the worst possible time.
Even when his money was taken and his homes were rated, he just kept finding ways to move his scientific pursuits forward. In the next episode, we're going to talk about some of his theories. He's going to answer the question of whether or not his wife deserved credit for them. And he's going to answer my favorite question of all. Why would he occasionally walk out of the house without his pants on? I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast.
And if you haven't yet subscribed now, and we'll see you at the next episode of the calling history podcast with part two of Albert Einstein