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Dan Levitt - Five Way Interview

Dan Levitt spent over 25 years writing, producing and directing award-winning documentaries for National Geographic, Discovery, Science, History, HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute).  He has filmed with Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Bernard Carr, and Sean B. Carroll among many others. His latest book is What's Gotten Into You?

Why science?

I’ve always been drawn to the beauty of science. It offers me a way to appreciate the natural world and the fantastic physical, chemical, and biological web we’re part of. I think my sense of that deepened when I lived for a few years near a game park in Kenya. There was a small rainforest close by and everywhere I walked I had a view of Mount Kilimanjaro. It gave me a visceral sense of how enmeshed we are in a much larger ecosystem. Of course, science also helps us understand things that would otherwise be inexplicable, like the question at the heart of this book—how did we end up here?

Why this book?

The inspiration came when I realized that I really didn’t know what my body was made of, much less where that stuff ultimately came from. Once I realized that every particle within me sprang out of the Big Bang, I was hooked. I began wondering what happened— how did particles that were zipping around 13.8 billion years ago end up creating us?

At the same time, I began wondering how we are able to peer back billions of years in time. How did we do that? Those were the questions that started me off and I just kept thinking about them until I decided I would write the book.

In researching this book, what did you find most surprising?

I had never realized that life itself profoundly influenced our planet’s geology. Once photosynthesizing cyanobacteria came along, they began releasing oxygen that transformed Earth and made it possible for more complex cells and creatures to evolve.

I didn’t know some scientists suspect that the first life on Earth might have been microbes that hitched a ride on meteorites from Mars.

Something else that surprised me was how often scientists were initially dismissive of theories that we now recognize were groundbreaking. After finishing the first draft of my book, I circled back to try to understand why and I saw that cognitive biases had cropped up again and again. I ended up giving them nicknames, like the 'Too Weird to be True' bias and the 'As an Expert, I’ve Lost Sight of How Much Is Still Unknown' bias. I hadn’t expected to be thinking about cognitive biases at all.

What’s next?

First a really good vacation. Then I’ll be writing another book about scientific discovery. I haven’t settled on the topic yet, but I had a great time writing What’s Gotten Into You. It led me to think about so many things that I hadn’t expected to, so I’m looking forward to the next one.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

I’ve been listening to War and Peace on audiobook and loving it. Tolstoy is a master at making you feel like you’re present in the scene. I’ve also been playing with ChatGPT a bit and trying to understand what it will be capable of. At this point I can tell you that it’s a long way off from writing like Tolstoy.


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