YouSaid · the spoken record

Janna Levin

lines on the record: 117
first: 2020-07-09
most recent: 2020-07-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I always had to do calculus as my math requirement. And there was a similar, they were like, hey, consider doing some math. I was like, ah, gasp. And then it really, really funny that that's not how it came. Because what happened is in a philosophy class where we were arguing about Heidegger, who is a philosopher who's very contentious, but who I really enjoyed, really enjoyed Heidegger, but more as a word played poetry, you know, mind teaser than like admiration for the individual, which, and there's a lot of that in philosophy, you know, the hero worship. So anyway, so we're in, I'm in this class, and this young guy comes in to do his job interview, to become a professor at Columbia. And he has a PhD in physics. His name is David Albert. He's now a very famous philosopher of science.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just to prep this, we had very rigorous science requirements, which I decided to get over with because I didn't think I had any interest in science. And so my first year in college, like I went through chemistry and organic chemistry and I did all the super hardcore subjects. And I remember my chemistry professor pulling me aside and was like, have you ever considered physics? And I was like also because I didn't finish high school, I had never had physics or calculus. Like I wasn't that kid who had AP physics and I didn't finish high school. And so I was offended. I was literally recoiled and I was like physicist. Memorize equations and they build bombs and there's no creativity. And like I was absolutely insulted.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, personally, I mean, for me, like, how did it happen? Yeah, for you. It was through philosophy. So when it happened.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can have erased from my mind that Einstein existed as long as nobody erases special relativity from my mind. And I can share it with anybody in the universe. That's a whole other level of discovery and transcendence. And I don't like things that whose truths are rooted in a single man's mind or a single cultural meme. I want it to be true in Bangladesh. I want it to be and true for me in New York. I want it to be true in another galaxy. And that was the shift for me.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when, which we'll get to, I think, in this conversation, when Einstein exposed special relativity, what he discovered, nobody, I swear to you, nobody who studies it is going back and saying, what did Einstein mean? And that's an enormous difference. We don't become obsessed with the cult of personality, we are obsessed with the cult of personality with Einstein, but not to extract the meaning of what he said.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, that is spot on the question the question because I enjoyed studying philosophy, but I was really frustrated with the fact that, and this is the example I often use because it was really a specific example in my experience what Kant meant when he said it drove me bananas. So at the end of it, infuriated. I was like, if Kant Who barely left his home village sealed in his mind the secrets of life? I don't buy that narrative. That's not possible. It must not have been universally true Or he chose the wrong methodology for conveying it.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I became an omnivore. And so I carried that with me and I never thought I was very intimidated by everything. I was very, very intimidated by all of it. I didn't think I would have what it takes to bring to be the creative original in any of those subjects. I came in to be a student. Very much so.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and maybe not everybody wants it at that level or they want others at that level and not this one. All that's fine. You have to reach many levels to have a truly great sculptural construct. And that's what she showed me. And it was totally, it wasn't at all like sit you down. I'm schooling you at all. It was very much just sharing. Like I just read Beloved. You have got to read this. You will not believe what Tony Morrison does in this book. And it was lots of things and a big range. It was Philip Roth. It was Hemingway. It was whatever.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't feel like teaching at all. It felt like sharing something precious to her. So my mother's a voracious reader. I remember when I realized we would have bookshelves and I would pull the first book back and realize they went three deep. Just an absolutely voracious reader and an excellent reader, like an intimate deep reception of layers of stuff. And what I learned also about that was that you can write a book that not everyone has to read at every level and it can be wonderful.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I read for school, but my mom kind of taught me how to read a book. And a very strong memory, Tony Morrison's beloved was the first one where she Prepared me to slow down and not to show off as a reader, but to be, you know, a receiver of this and to slow down and to appreciate the depth of the language. And I absolutely, my mother taught me that. And I remember that so strongly discovering literature.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it never crossed my mind science being a scientist never crossed my mind when I started here. I was really interested in philosophy and I think in retrospect what I was actually interested was the big questions, not the stylistic study of philosophy, but the questions. But I didn't know that at the time and loved literature. I often say my mother taught me to read and I don't mean like sounding out phonetics as a child. I mean when I was 14, 15, which is the first time I actually started reading.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I loved the intense intellectualism of this place and paired with an absence of a requirement to conform, which is a New York City thing or a feminist college thing or, you know, a Columbia University thing. And that combination, just I was extremely grateful. Also, I think because unlike maybe other students who had gone through college and the SATs and written all of their essays and had the horrible experience of being rejected and accepted, like I didn't have that, I didn't have that experience. I was just pure gratitude that they took me in two months after my accident. I was in college. And I just, I really carried that feeling with me for the years, that just thank God, thank God, it could have gone so bad.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was all of it. I was still very interested in New York life and New York was real rough around the edges and it was exciting and things I had never seen before and subversive things and all of that fascinated me. But yeah, the actual scholarship was incredible. And it wasn't a two-switch situation. I was either a maniac or I was a scholar. Like here at this particular place, I could be a little bit of both in a better balance. And the scholarship here was absolutely one of the most, I mean, for sure this incredible experience. Also being that age, your mind is voracious and undisciplined, but spongy.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In high school, and they said we can't take it anymore. We just can't take it anymore. You need to go to college. And it was a smart sort of instinct on their part that I should do something more constructive and I'll be less wild. And I have an old sister's older than me who they've been through it before. And they were like, we're not doing this again. And so it was by the summer of that year when I didn't finish my junior year because of the accident. And by the summer of that year, I was applying pleading with two colleges to let me in. And one of them had just accepted women in their curriculum. It was an all-male school, Columbia. And its sister school, Barnard, accepted me. And so two months later, a little banged up, I started college. It ended up saving my life, I'm sure of it.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I really am not known for being risk averse. And so I guess it was my, I was 16 to my 17th birthday night and I didn't have a driver's license, but driving a friend driving a car and we were really reckless and it was a storm and we wiped out in the water the puddles hit some grass, ended up hitting kind of a footbridge, but flipping and landing upside down in basically a canal and underwater. And, you know, we all made it out alive, which is pretty amazing. Scarred up, you know, I have a scar on my face. I have a scar on my hand. It's not necessarily that noticeable, but it's definitely a mark. And after that, my parents said, you need to go to college.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my god, hilarious. I'm so reckless. It was so reckless. My parents used to say stop diving off the high board without checking if there's water in the pool. And yeah, I had no health problems as a child, but yet I was in the hospital. I can't even mention how many times from completely insane reckless accidents, breaking my nose, dislocating my finger, doing something crazy. The worst was skateboarding at around, I guess, 11 and hanging on to the back of a passing car and hitting a brake on the road and landing on my head and experiencing amnesia, which is a pretty peculiar experience and going into a coma. So that was the big one. But by far, but it wasn't the first or the last. I remember my father being, he was so devastated. And just, can you please stop? Like you can't do this to us.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thanks so much for having me. And I have to say, hearing that bio makes it sound like it was smooth sailing, which is what we do when we edit our bios. I would love to have a bio that included all our failures.”
2020-07-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #445: Janna Levin on Extra Dimensions, Time Travel, and How to Overcome Boots in the Face · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT