Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman is one of my favorite books. Bruce Jackson, a brilliant friend who recently died in a plane crash, recommended it to me. In one wonderful scene, Dick Feynman gives a short talk at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. He’s a young guy (in his 20s), full of good and bad ideas. As he begins to talk, he realizes Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr are both in the audience, along with several other science giants.

Feynman was taught by his father, as I was taught by mine, to not respect the rank or the uniform. Struggle to find what’s true, while being skeptical of those with rank and more open to those without. As these science legends made suggestions about Feynman’s talk, he argued back with vigor. He cared more about the idea than the personage.

He speaks in the video about how hard it is to know something. He explains how careful you have to be to know something in science. So many folks act scientific, act like what they are saying is true and scientific. So many times it’s just propaganda or wishful thinking.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgaw9qe7DEE

This long video was a pleasure for me to watch. Feynman discusses his time working in Los Alamos on the Manhattan project in the early 1940s and the jubilation, then depression after the atomic bombs were dropped. He’d watch men building a bridge and think, “How foolish, don’t they know that this will all be destroyed?” He assumed that nuclear war would closely follow the end of WWII. I’m grateful he was wrong.

If you want to stretch your world view, to learn better how to learn, consider watching this video or reading more Feynman. He’s a Curious Character who will make you laugh out loud sometimes and think deeply others.