The UIUC Talkshow

Mike Ross is the Director of Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois.When we asked him what he would work on if he had all the time in the world, his answer was simple: “Exactly what I’m doing. Just more of it.”Ross did not grow up planning to run one of the country’s major university performing arts centers. As a young person, he had to choose between two things he loved: architecture and music. He chose music, became a high school music teacher, fell deeply into composition, earned his doctorate, and eventually found himself helping build the Miller Theatre at Columbia University before coming to Illinois.But underneath that career is a much bigger philosophy.Ross believes the purpose of the arts is to “deepen the value of being”—to make the experience of being alive richer, more connected, and more meaningful.That idea takes the conversation far beyond music.We talk about why people become unhappy when their personal values fall out of alignment with the institutions they work for, why universities push people toward specialization, and why Ross describes himself instead as a “passionate generalist.” He argues that becoming excellent at one thing matters, but that something is lost when we begin believing we are only allowed to be one thing.For Ross, art offers a way back toward connection.A concert can be intensely personal while simultaneously being shared with hundreds of strangers. People with completely different politics, beliefs, backgrounds, and lives can gather in the same room and, for a few moments, experience something together. Ross sees that as one possible antidote to the fragmentation and disconnection of modern life.We also talk about gratitude, happiness, spirituality, climate change, rhetoric, authenticity, quantum physics, architecture, creativity, and why the misuse of words bothers him so much.Perhaps most interestingly, Ross explains how decades of composing music changed the way he approaches almost everything else.Composition involves energy, texture, density, structure, tension, release, iteration, editing, knowing when to keep working and knowing when to walk away. Ross now finds himself using many of those same instincts when thinking about organizations, programming, leadership, and life itself.The conversation eventually arrives at a deceptively simple question: how should a young person build a life they are proud of?Ross’s answer is not to follow a predetermined formula.Believe that such a life is possible. Be aware of the human tendency to limit yourself. Keep looking for possibilities you have not considered yet.And above all, keep inquiring.Because, as Ross puts it, curiosity may be one of the things that provides us with fulfillment over time.*EPISODE LINKS:*- Mike Ross' UIUC Website: https://music.illinois.edu/people/profiles/mike-ross/- Krannert Center for the Performing Arts: https://krannertcenter.com/

Nicolás Yunes is a Physics Professor at the University of Illinois studying gravity, black holes, gravitational waves, and the places where general relativity might finally break.In this conversation, we ask some of the biggest questions in physics: What is gravity? Can time bend? Could anti-gravity exist? Are wormholes possible? Why is the universe expanding? And why, after more than 100 years, has Einstein survived every serious test?But Yunes’s own story is just as interesting.He grew up in Argentina, nearly pursued soccer, came to the United States on a scholarship, struggled to learn physics in English, and watched Argentina’s economy collapse while he was in college.We talk about luck, regret, AI, choosing problems actually worth solving, and the advice he gives his daughter: don’t give up.A conversation about understanding the universe—and figuring out what is worth spending your life trying to understand.*EPISODE LINKS:*- Nicolas Yunes's UIUC Website: physics.illinois.edu/people/directory/profile/nyunes- Yunes Gravity Theory Group: yunes-gravity-theory-group.physics.illinois.edu- Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe (ICASU): icasu.illinois.edu- Is Einstein Still Right? (Book): https://amzn.to/4drCac9*OUTLINE:*0:00 - What’s the Next Big Thing in Physics?1:49 - Why Good Ideas Arrive When You Stop Looking3:06 - LISA: Testing Einstein From Space6:06 - How to Capture an Idea Before You Forget It7:29 - Is Einstein Still Right?13:43 - What Would It Take to Prove Einstein Wrong?17:44 - What Is Gravity, Really?28:15 - How Can Time Stretch?32:16 - Could Relativity Solve Nuclear Waste?34:20 - Can We Artificially Bend Time?36:01 - Why Humans Are Terrible at Understanding Scale40:37 - What Shape Is the Universe?47:49 - Does Anti-Gravity Exist?50:11 - Wormholes, White Holes & Faster-Than-Light Travel52:51 - Is Dark Energy Actually Anti-Gravity?56:35 - Why Physicists Think Beauty Might Point Toward Truth58:45 - Why Does Mathematics Describe the Universe So Well?1:00:43 - How Computers Changed Physics1:07:48 - Differential Geometry & the Curvature of Spacetime1:11:05 - Is Math the Best Language for Describing Reality?1:14:30 - Do You Think Differently in Spanish and English?1:21:47 - What Gets Lost in Translation?1:25:00 - What Do Black Holes Sound Like?1:29:15 - Growing Up in Argentina & Choosing Physics1:35:08 - From Goalkeeper to America on a Soccer Scholarship1:38:24 - Argentina’s 2001 Economic Collapse Changed Everything1:40:17 - Becoming a Professor in Montana1:41:29 - Learning American Culture the Hard Way1:42:28 - How Much of Success Is Luck?1:45:02 - Advice to His Daughter: Never Give Up1:49:11 - How to Live With Regret1:51:06 - “We’ll Burn That Bridge When We Get to It”1:52:00 - What Does He Regret?1:54:47 - Thinking Five or Ten Moves Ahead1:56:38 - Which Problems Are Actually Worth Your Life?1:58:26 - Why He Changed His Mind About AI2:00:07 - AI Is the New Calculator2:01:49 - The Coming Era of Precision Data2:03:33 - Why the Biggest Discoveries May Happen Between Fields2:04:31 - Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe 🚥 Overrated or Underrated 🚥2:10:33 - 🇦🇷 Tango & Carlos Gardel2:14:53 - 🧠 Edward Witten2:17:15 - 🌌 Quantum Gravity & Carlo Rovelli2:22:54 - ⚽ Lionel Messi2:24:45 - Closing Words*Consider Supporting Us*If you enjoy our talk show and videos, your support means the world to us! Your contributions help us keep the show running and focus on creating interesting conversations with interesting people. Every dollar goes towards our basic needs, allowing us to dedicate more time and energy to this project. Support us here: https://uiuctalkshow.substack.com/

Bruce Reznick is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.He entered Caltech at 16, studied at Stanford, and spent over four decades at Illinois thinking about mathematics, teaching, and working on problems that sometimes stayed with him for decades.In this conversation, we talk about Richard Feynman, mathematical intuition, randomness, pattern recognition, unsolved problems, AI and theorem proving, whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and why some problems are worth spending a lifetime on.We also discuss love, luck, teaching, Caltech, Ramanujan, confirmation bias, the Champagne Problem, and Reznick’s advice for young people.Math is groovy.*EPISODE LINKS:*- Bruce Reznick's Website: https://reznick.web.illinois.edu/- Bruce Reznick's UIUC Website: https://math.illinois.edu/directory/profile/reznick*OUTLINE:*0:00 - Retirement, Horses, and the 30-Hour Workweek3:18 - Math Is Like Writing Jokes6:10 - Dating Advice for STEM Students10:14 - How Much of Life Is Luck?12:29 - Love14:37 - Can You Understand Love With Math?17:14 - Unfinished Work as a Gift to Your Future Self18:05 - Getting Into Caltech at 1619:22 - Why He Became a Teacher22:45 - Growing Up With a Mathematical Mind24:09 - A Culture That Made It Safe to Be a Nerd27:47 - Why Do Anything for Its Own Sake?29:40 - Were People Ever Really in College Just to Learn?32:35 - What Mathematicians Understand About the World33:43 - The Beautiful Things Math Can’t Explain35:32 - Meeting Richard Feynman at a Party39:04 - What Made Richard Feynman Different41:13 - Doing Quantum Mechanics Without Understanding Quantum Mechanics43:22 - Why Caltech Was “Safe to Want to Learn”45:17 - What Illinois Could Do Better46:18 - How UIUC Changed During His 44 Years Here47:37 - What COVID Did to Students52:19 - A Math Problem He’s Been Thinking About for 40 Years54:03 - What Makes a Problem Worth Solving?55:57 - Why Spend Your Life Studying Polynomials?57:00 - Ramanujan, 1729, and Why Some Numbers Feel Special1:00:21 - Why Humans Can’t Stop Looking for Patterns1:02:30 - The Greatest Unsolved Problems in Mathematics1:04:23 - How Smart People Convince Themselves They’re Right1:07:02 - Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered?1:09:44 - How a Mathematician Approaches a Problem He’s Never Seen Before1:12:34 - How a Math Problem Ended Up on a Beer Can1:14:10 - What We Lose When Math Becomes Too Algebraic1:17:20 - What Is Intuition?1:20:40 - Why Randomness Still Creates Patterns1:22:57 - Is Mathematics Objective?1:24:39 - Advice for Young People 🚥 Overrated or Underrated 🚥1:25:41 - 🧮 Ramanujan1:26:03 - 🏛️ Altgeld Hall1:26:27 - 📐 Euler1:26:46 - ♟️ Game Theory1:27:47 - 📈 The Fourier Transform 1:28:23 - Can AI Discover New Mathematics?1:29:47 - His Favorite Theorem1:30:56 - What It’s Like to Attend a Celebration of Your Own Life1:32:09 - Closing Words1:33:12 - “Math Is Groovy”*Consider Supporting Us*If you enjoy our talk show and videos, your support means the world to us! Your contributions help us keep the show running and focus on creating interesting conversations with interesting people. Every dollar goes towards our basic needs, allowing us to dedicate more time and energy to this project. Support us here: https://uiuctalkshow.substack.com/*SOCIAL:*- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uiuctalkshow- X: https://twitter.com/uiuctalkshow- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@uiuctalkshow- Patreon https://www.patreon.com/uiuctalkshow- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ezoc4xJa4DrGq7N4lhqQn- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-uiuc-talkshow/id1611427075- Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1H9UJqXvJXr3qlx9c89Rv76c6IpnwGeC- Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UIUCTalkshowClips*What is the UIUC Talkshow?*Our goal with this show is to introduce you to the most interesting people with the most interesting ideas.

Deke Weaver is an artist, writer, performer, and professor whose work sits somewhere between theater, storytelling, science, environmentalism, and performance art.For years, Deke has been building The Unreliable Bestiary, an ambitious lifelong project: a performance for every letter of the alphabet, each centered on an endangered animal or threatened habitat. What begins with a whale, wolf, elephant, tiger, or monkey quickly becomes a way of talking about much bigger things—climate change, extinction, politics, culture, fear, and what it means to be human.But this conversation became about much more than animals.Deke talks about growing up without a clear career plan, moving through San Francisco and New York, treating cities almost like universities, and building an artistic life while keeping a day job. We talk about why the best work tells the truth, why people can sense when something is authentic, and why fear and controversy are easy shortcuts while truth takes much more work. And eventually, all of it comes back to the same question: what are you actually trying to make with your life?College can make it easy to confuse a career with a life. Deke argues for something bigger: stay curious, go toward things you barely understand, find people worth keeping around, take the opportunities that may not come twice, and keep making things that feel true.*EPISODE LINKS:*- The Unreliable Bestiary: https://www.unreliablebestiary.org/- Deke Weaver's Glorious Self-Promotion: https://www.dekeweaver.com/- Deke Weaver's UIUC Website: https://art.illinois.edu/people/profiles/deke-weaver/*OUTLINE:*0:00 - Building a Whale—and Finding the Money to Do It2:20 - Why College Prepares You for a Job, Not Your Own Projects3:22 - Choosing Cities and People Over Careers5:16 - Art as a Place to Tell the Truth8:15 - Why Most Artists Need a Day Job9:05 - Treating a City Like a University11:32 - “The Best Work Tells the Truth”12:35 - Can Art Actually Change the World?16:25 - When Your Own Art Scares You18:54 - Self-Censorship & the Fear of Getting Cancelled21:02 - Marriage, Collaboration & a Tattooed Wedding Ring23:26 - Why Spend a Lifetime Making Art About Endangered Animals?26:09 - How Wolves Literally Changed Yellowstone28:28 - The Stories We Believe Change the World We See30:26 - Elephants, Tourism & What Happens When a Way of Life Disappears36:55 - From Tiny New York Rooms to Making Art Across Illinois39:15 - How to Tell a Story People Actually Remember42:10 - Velocity, Momentum & Surprise45:25 - How Do You Tell the Story of Climate Change Without Fear?49:49 - Which Feedback Should You Actually Listen To?53:05 - Finding the Right People to Make Something With55:03 - Stop Waiting for Inspiration. Show Up and Make the Work.57:32 - When a Project Starts to Feel Like Magic59:10 - Where Good Ideas Actually Come From1:00:03 - Why Creativity Needs Silence1:03:30 - Trusting Yourself When You Don't Know What Comes Next1:04:32 - Can Art Restore Trust?1:10:20 - What Should Our Generation Believe In?1:11:16 - Sending Signals Into the World1:14:52 - Where Art and Science Meet1:17:19 - Fear Gets Attention. Truth Takes More Work.1:19:52 - Truth vs. Authenticity1:22:04 - Why People Can Tell When You're Being Fake1:24:09 - Art as a Way of Bringing Completely Different People Together1:25:51 - If You Had All the Time in the World, What Would You Make?1:30:10 - What Can a Professor Still Offer the Next Generation?1:32:34 - The Pressure to Turn College Into a Job Machine1:34:31 - Choosing Art When Everyone Tells You Not To1:37:18 - Advice for Young People: Go to Things You're Barely Curious About🚥 Overrated or Underrated 🚥1:39:36 - 🐋 Free Willy1:40:30 - 🌀 Cybernetics1:44:11 - 🦇 Batman1:47:55 - 🦁 Disney's Animal Kingdom1:50:20 - 🦬 Is Yellowstone Basically a Giant Zoo?1:52:43 - 🎭 Sleep No More1:53:20 - 🧔 Growing a Beard for 365 Days1:58:46 - Closing Words

Daniel Simons is a Psychology Professor at the University of Illinois whose work asks a deeply uncomfortable question: how much can you trust your own mind?Most of us think deception is something that happens to other people.But he argues that the mechanisms behind those failures are completely ordinary. - We trust people who feel familiar. - We scrutinize ideas we disagree with more than ideas we already believe. - We mistake confidence for accuracy. And once we commit strongly enough to an idea, we can become extremely good at explaining away evidence against it.Professor Simons has spent much of his career studying the ways perception, memory, and intuition can mislead us.We talk about scientific fraud, cults, replication, Theranos, tech hype, AGI, and why being wrong can sometimes be the most interesting outcome in science.Toward the end, the conversation turns to college and life. Simons argues that young people specialize too early. Try more things. Take the class outside your field. Get comfortable being pretty good at several things instead of needing to be the best at one.Because whether you’re choosing a major, evaluating a scientific claim, or deciding who to trust, the problem is often the same:You’re making a judgment from the small piece of the world you can see, while forgetting how much remains outside the frame.*EPISODE LINKS:*- Daniel Simons’s Website: https://www.dansimons.com/- Daniel Simons’s UIUC Website: https://psychology.illinois.edu/directory/profile/dsimons- Daniel Simons’s Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Simons*BOOKS*- Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do about It: https://amzn.to/3SDw55g- The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us: https://amzn.to/4gJ9Wvp*What is the UIUC Talkshow?*Our goal with this show is to introduce you to the most interesting people with the most interesting ideas.*Learn more about Juan David & Aaryaman:*Aaryaman- Website: https://www.aaryamanpatel.com/ Juan David- Website: https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/

Eryn Van Wijk is an astrophysics and philosophy student at the University of Illinois. Eryn is also a Stamps Scholar, an artist, a violinist, and now vice president of the Illinois Astronomical Society.But most importantly, Eryn is one of our dear friends.What makes this episode different is that this was the first time we ever met Eryn.In April 2024, we had an idea.YouTube probably knows an absurd amount about you from what you watch. So what if instead of using that information to recommend another video, you could use it to recommend a person?We made a post on r/UIUC called “Can You Make Friends Based on Your YouTube?” We asked people to send us whatever weird combination of channels, topics, and videos appeared on their Recommended page. Then we tried matching people whose feeds looked eerily similar.Eryn filled out the form on a whim.Eryn’s YouTube page matched remarkably well with Aaryaman’s.And instead of simply introducing the two, we thought: why not bring Eryn into another experiment we were running—the UIUC Talkshow?So we sat down and started talking. And kept talking. For nearly five hours.This became the longest episode of the UIUC Talkshow we had ever recorded, but what makes it special is not the length. You are basically watching a friendship begin in real time.At the beginning, we barely know each other. At one point people at the table are literally asking each other’s names. From there, the conversation wanders through astronomy, philosophy, online friendships, Oppenheimer, music, art, uncertainty, failure, nihilism, college, science, whether reality could be a simulation, whether absolute truth exists, and how to live when you have absolutely no idea what you are doing.Eryn came to Illinois undeclared, interested in both the universe and the questions underneath it: What is real? What can we actually know? What makes a life meaningful? Why do we believe the things we believe?But another question keeps appearing throughout the conversation: What are you waiting for?Eryn talks openly about being risk-averse, overthinking decisions, revising emails too many times, wanting certainty before acting, and being afraid of failure.Then, more than four hours into the conversation, Sean Carroll comes up.Eryn had listened to Carroll for years. Doing graduate work with Sean Carroll was described as something close to “the dream.”So we said: email Sean Carroll.The immediate reaction was that this sounded intimidating.But why?His email exists. You can write to him. The worst outcome is basically the situation you are already in: you don't talk to Sean Carroll.Eventually Eryn arrives at one of my favorite realizations from the entire conversation: “You make certain people seem more inaccessible in your head than they actually are. Like people are just people.”We told Eryn to send the email that night. Eryn did.And not long afterward, Eryn actually had a conversation with Sean Carroll.Suddenly Sean Carroll was no longer just “Sean Carroll, famous physicist on the internet.” There had been an actual conversation. The imaginary wall had gotten a little smaller.That idea ended up extending far beyond Sean Carroll.Since this recording, there have been many more conversations. Eryn became a regular at our Coldplay nights, played violin during them, met more of our friends, and eventually even went skydiving together, something we first talked about barely five minutes into this conversation.The UIUC Talkshow usually records conversations with people after we already know why we find them interesting.This one accidentally recorded the moment we found a friend.A Reddit post led to a Google Form.A Google Form led to a YouTube match.A YouTube match led to a five-hour conversation.And the conversation led to everything that came afterward.Sometimes that is just how friendships start.

Alex Epstein is a philosopher, author of Fossil Future, and founder of the Center for Industrial Progress. *EPISODE LINKS:*- Alex Epstein's Website: https://alexepstein.com/- Alex Epstein's X: https://x.com/alexepstein- Alex Epstein's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexepsteinenergy/*OUTLINE:*0:00 - Introduction0:39 - Climate mastery5:48 - Hope about the future10:14 - Change culture with stories12:45 - Personal mastery17:51 - Policy19:29 - Being wrong21:43 - Advice for young people🚥Overrated or Underrated Section 🚥27:16 - 📊 Tyler Cowen29:06 - 💡 The Fountainhead29:26 - 📐 Human Ingenuity29:44 - 👀 Maryland29:52 - 🤝 Yaron Brook*Consider Supporting Us*If you enjoy our talk show and videos, your support means the world to us! Your contributions help us keep the show running and focus on creating interesting conversations with interesting people. Every dollar goes towards our basic needs, allowing us to dedicate more time and energy to this project.Support us here: https://uiuctalkshow.substack.com/*SOCIAL:*- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uiuctalkshow- X: https://twitter.com/uiuctalkshow- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@uiuctalkshow- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ezoc4xJa4DrGq7N4lhqQn- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-uiuc-talkshow/id1611427075- Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1H9UJqXvJXr3qlx9c89Rv76c6IpnwGeC- Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UIUCTalkshowClips*What is the UIUC Talkshow?*Our goal with this show is to introduce you to the most interesting people with the most interesting ideas.*Learn more about Juan David & Aaryaman:*Aaryaman- Website: https://www.aaryamanpatel.com/- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaryamanpatel/- X: https://x.com/aaryamanpatelJuan David- Website: https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/- X: https://x.com/jdcampolargo- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdcampolargo- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jdcampolargo/

Steve LaValle is a roboticist, professor, and former Chief Scientist at Oculus whose work helped shape the mathematics behind modern virtual reality.This conversation is about figuring out what kind of life you actually want, and then having the nerve to choose it.LaValle grew up in Missouri without an obvious path into academia. When Illinois said it did not accept out-of-state transfer students into computer engineering, he wrote a petition arguing that the university shouldn't decide someone's future based on which side of the Mississippi River they grew up on.He got in.Years later, while on sabbatical, LaValle received a random email from Jack McCauley, who had found his free online book while searching for the mathematics behind 3D rotations.LaValle flew to California, put on an early Oculus headset, looked straight up—and broke the tracking.His robotics background gave him exactly the mathematics Oculus needed. Soon, code written by LaValle and his wife was appearing in Oculus demos on Jimmy Fallon. He became Chief Scientist, worked alongside Palmer Luckey and John Carmack, and was there for Oculus's rise and acquisition by Facebook.Then he walked away.LaValle says leaving meant giving up roughly half the wealth he could have received by staying. He could have remained in Silicon Valley, advised startups, invested, and made considerably more money.Instead, he returned to academia. Why? Because he liked universities more.He wanted to publish openly, admit what he didn't know, follow his curiosity, spend time around interesting people, and have a life with his family. Eventually, that same thinking led him to Finland, where he found a culture closer to the values he wanted his children to grow up with.From arguing his way into Illinois, to pursuing robotics when few people cared about it, to joining Oculus and then walking away from Silicon Valley, LaValle has made plenty of decisions that looked strange from the outside.But they make sense once you understand what he was choosing for: the freedom to stay curious, keep learning, and keep choosing the life he actually wanted.*EPISODE LINKS:*- Steven LaValle's Website: https://lavalle.pl/*OUTLINE:*0:00 - Introduction1:42 - Think for Yourself 4:27 - Programming7:17 - What Would He Study in College Today?13:09 - Why He Moved to Finland20:03 - Why Finland Works24:07 - The Decision to Join Oculus27:13 - The Random Email That Changed His Life29:20 - Breaking the Oculus Headset on Day One34:35 - Failing in Front of Bill Gates36:00 - Why He Walked Away From Half His Oculus Money41:14 - “I Don’t Know”42:12 - Was VR Really the Future?48:11 - VR is “Perception Engineering”50:45 - How VR Hacks the Human Visual System53:10 - Why Universities Need “Undisciplined” People57:51 - How He Would Redesign Education58:22 - ChatGPT and the Collapse of Authority1:01:41 - What Happens When You Can Reinvent Your Life at Any Age1:04:54 - What Would Make Him Move Back to America?1:06:57 - The Finnish Fear of Winning Awards1:07:40 - Raising Four Kids Across Countries1:12:01 - Surround Yourself With Interesting People1:13:16 - What Happened After Oculus Opened Every Door1:18:24 - Inside the Early Oculus Team1:19:16 - Palmer Luckey Told Him About Bitcoin at $81:21:06 - Why He Didn’t Join Anduril1:23:57 - Do Robots Need to Look Human?1:26:17 - How 2001 and TRON Shaped His Life1:29:48 - The Company He Would Start Today1:33:19 - The Greatest Discovery He Can Imagine1:43:58 - Advice for Young People1:47:30 - Love1:49:56 - Having Children🚥 Overrated or Underrated 🚥1:51:25 - 🎬 TRON1:54:09 - 📖 Snow Crash1:54:29 - 🤖 Tesla Optimus1:54:57 - 💻 John Carmack1:56:04 - 🦿 Boston Dynamics1:56:38 - 🇫🇮 Finland1:59:35 - 🚀 2001: A Space Odyssey2:00:18 - 🌐 The Metaverse

Michael Lembeck is an aerospace engineer who has worked across JPL, NASA, Boeing, and academia. He currently leads CEPStone, LLC and has taught aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois.In this conversation, we talk about what decades in aerospace taught him about engineering, why space is still so expensive, NASA vs. commercial spaceflight, SpaceX, national security, building an economy on the Moon, and why sometimes the most important thing an engineer can say is, “I don’t know.”One of the best stories comes from a meeting Dr. Lembeck had with Elon Musk at the LAX Marriott, back when Musk was still trying to figure out how to get to Mars cheaply. Dr. Lembeck and the other engineers basically told him the math didn’t work. Rockets were too expensive, and reusability wasn’t even part of the conversation yet. Musk left looking for a different answer. We now know what happened next. Then we get into UAPs.Dr. Lembeck is skeptical of extraordinary claims, but thinks the phenomena deserve serious scientific investigation. He talks about unexplained lights he personally saw over Houston with an astronaut, why military sensors can detect things ordinary cameras miss, the importance of multiple independent sources of data, and what it would actually take to understand something that appears to violate what we currently know.And after the interview technically ends, the conversation goes somewhere completely different: death, consciousness, immortality, and whether you would still be you if your mind could be uploaded to a computer.*EPISODE LINKS:*- Michael Lembeck's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellembeck*OUTLINE:*0:00 - Introduction2:06 - Anything Is Possible4:49 - College Friends10:00 - National Security12:12 - Drinking Vodka With Russian Engineers at NASA16:00 - How Defense Changed His Worldview19:59 - What Would You Tell a 10-Year-Old About the World?22:04 - Leaving America26:53 - Can Space Bring Humanity Together?29:44 - Why He Became a Professor35:18 - NASA46:07 - Moon Economy49:04 - Why We Never Went From Apollo Straight to Mars55:10 - Does the World Need Another SpaceX?57:28 - The Day He Met Elon Musk1:01:08 - UAPs1:07:44 - Why Haven’t Our Cameras Solved the UFO Mystery?1:13:44 - He Built a UAP Detector in His Backyard1:18:23 - Warp Drives & New Physics1:28:38 - Advice for Young People🚥 Overrated or Underrated 🚥1:32:29 - 🪐 Galileo1:33:37 - 🚀 Science Fiction1:34:45 - 👽 Arrival1:35:27 - 🕺 Paul Kwiat’s Dancing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJboh3aUhzc)1:37:16 - 🍺 A Pub on the Moon🎬 After the interview🎬 1:39:00 - What Happens When We Die?1:40:35 - Why He Wants to Live Forever1:44:19 - Are You Still You If You Replace Your Brain?1:44:40 - Can We Upload Consciousness?1:46:27 - “When My Brain’s Dead, I’m Gone”*Consider Supporting Us*If you enjoy our talk show and videos, your support means the world to us! Your contributions help us keep the show running and focus on creating interesting conversations with interesting people. Every dollar goes towards our basic needs, allowing us to dedicate more time and energy to this project.Support us here: https://uiuctalkshow.substack.com/*What is the UIUC Talkshow?*Our goal with this show is to introduce you to the most interesting people with the most interesting ideas.*Learn more about Juan David & Aaryaman:*Aaryaman- Website: https://www.aaryamanpatel.com/- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaryamanpatel/- X: https://x.com/aaryamanpatelJuan David- Website: https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/- X: https://x.com/jdcampolargo- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdcampolargo- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jdcampolargo/

Klara Nahrstedt is a Computer Science Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose research has spent decades asking a deceptively simple question: how can technology make communication between people feel more real?Long before that became her career, Klara grew up in a world where communication itself was restricted.Her mother left Czechoslovakia for Stanford in the late 1960s, expecting the rest of the family would eventually follow. Then the political situation changed and the borders closed. Klara stayed behind and later studied and worked in East Germany.She remembers living in East Berlin, seeing the Berlin Wall, and knowing she could not cross it. When her mother visited, they eventually had to say goodbye at Friedrichstraße. Her mother could leave. Klara could not.Even access to scientific information had limits. Klara recalls Western journals that were available only to Communist Party members. If you were outside that system, certain knowledge could remain out of reach.Then, in January 1990, she left East Germany for the United States. She calls it the best decision she ever made.America felt almost surreal. After growing up with shortages, she saw aisle after aisle of choices in a Philadelphia grocery store. At the University of Pennsylvania, she encountered computers, networks, and robotics systems far beyond what she had previously used.That transition led to a career working on high-speed networks, real-time video, tele-immersion, 3D video, virtual reality, augmented reality, and distributed computing.The challenge is often the same: moving increasingly rich information across networks fast enough that humans do not notice the delay.Later, Klara helped develop tele-immersion systems where dancers at Illinois and Berkeley could appear in the same virtual 3D environment and perform together thousands of miles apart.Today, she is thinking about what comes next.What if a remote student could appear to sit in an empty chair inside a classroom? What if people physically present could meet alongside others rendered into the room through augmented reality? What if the internet could transmit not only video and audio, but touch and even smell?A digitally generated smell still has to travel through the air to your nose. Haptic systems may require responses faster than ordinary operating systems can provide. Virtual reality must update quickly enough that differences between what your eyes see and your body feels do not make you sick.At the center of it all is one of multimedia’s hardest questions: what information does a person actually need?If you are looking at one part of a virtual room, why transmit every pixel in the rest of it at full resolution?That is where machine learning becomes useful.But when asked why she has not spent the entire conversation talking about AI, Klara gives a simple answer: AI is a tool.For her, the mistake is starting with whatever technology is fashionable and then searching for a problem to attach it to. She starts with the problem. If machine learning helps, use it. If the problem requires networking, optimization, computer vision, or distributed systems, use those instead.She gives similar advice to students: knowing AI alone is not enough. Become useful across several domains. Study outside your major. Read beyond engineering. Travel. Meet people from different cultures. Learn how other people think.Scientific knowledge matters, but understanding people and knowing how to communicate with them may matter just as much.Klara grew up in a system where borders separated families and access to information could depend on politics. She came to America and found a world overflowing with information, technology, people, and possibility.She has spent much of her career trying to remove another kind of distance.Not the Berlin Wall this time, but the technological distance between one human being and another.