power the mind," from the 14th annual book festival here in washington d.c. [inaudible conversations] >> all right. [cheers and applause] wow. the science room rocking it tonight -- today at the convention center. unbelievable. well, we're here to hear dr. michio kaku who is just amazing. i love this guy. [applause] just a footnote, i'm joel from the washington post. [laughter] i assume you knew. [laughter] but i write, i love the big cosmic questions, and there's no one better at asking and answering the big cosmic, i amazing questions than dr. kaku. he is just a genius at it. he's the co-founder of

stringfield theory, he's written multiple bestsellers. he refers to them as new york times best sell ors, but i don't use that term. [laughter] but this book begins, the first line -- his new book is "the future of the mind," is the name of the book. and the first line is: the two greatest mysteries in all of nature are the mind and the universe. so we start from that. and he asks the questions do we have a soul? what happens to us after we die? who am i anyway? where do we fit into this great cosmic scheme? and that's on the fors page. laugh -- on the first page, you know? [laughter] i mean, this is the stuff that people, you know, when you're in college at 3:00 in the morning when you're in the dorm room -- [laughter] you know, and you're staying up all night drinking healthy carrot juice or whatever, right? [laughter] this is what you talk about. and anyway, so he's ash

amazing -- he's an amazing man, and let's hear from him. [cheers and applause] all right. >> well, after such a great introduction, i can't wait to hear the speaker myself. [laughter] first of all, i have a confession to make. sometimes all these accolades can backfire. recently, new york magazine voted me as one of the 100 smartest people in new york. [applause] so i thought, what an honor. however, in all fairness, in all fairness i have to admit that madonna also made that same list -- [laughter] and next year i understand that lady gaga is going to push me off the list entirely. [laughter] now, today i'm going the talk about the future, the future of

your mind. however, making predictions is dangerous. let me quote are from that great philosopher of the western world, yogi berra -- [laughter] yogi berra once said, quote: prediction is awfully hard to do, especially if it's about the future. [laughter] well, i'm a physicist. we can talk about the future of the universe billions of years from now. so let me quote from that other great philosopher, woody allen. [laughter] woody allen once said, quote: eternity is an awful long time, especially toward the end. [laughter] well, you may say to yourself what does the a physicist do anyway? what have you dope for me lately -- done for me hately? well, we physicists invented the transistor. we invented the laser. we helped to construct the first

computers and the internet. we wrote the worldwide web. and along the way don't forget we invented television. we ip evented radio, radar, microwaves, x-ray machines. don't forget, we created the space program and the gps system, and we physicists love to make predictions. when we assembled the internet, one physicist predicted that the internet would become a forum of high culture, high art and high society. [laughter] with, today we -- well, today we know that 5% of the internet is pornography, but that's because teenage boys log on to the internet. ..

and they asked him did you have any last words before we spliced your head off and they said yes. he said god from above shall set me free. all eyes were on the blade. they raised the blade. it came down, switch and stopped before it hit the back of the priest.

the crowd gasped. he had never seen this before. so they said that the priest go because today god has spoken. they put the lawyer on the chopping block and asked him if you have any last words and he said yes he may be justice and mercy shall set me free. they raised the blade and it came down swish. this time the mob went crazy dancing in the streets of pierce people were saying god had spoken. now let's see about the physicist. they put the purpose of this is on the chopping block and asked him do you have any last words and he said yes i have the last word. he said i don't know too much

about god and i know even less about the law that i do know one thing. if you look up at the rope is stuck on the pulley. [laughter] that the physicist is that if you remove the rope it will come down. big mistake. the blade came down and the physicist head came down. sometimes we have to know when to keep your mouth shut. nonetheless, today there are 300 of the world's top scientists i interviewed for bbc television, the science channel about what sits on your shoulder. afterwards i will be signing books.

i will be signing your book and then afterwards you can go to ebay and auction it off and actually make money today. today we are going to talk about the future of your mind. and the previous book i wrote is physics of the future, talking about the next 50 to 100 years. it's often said in the book by -- buying world physicist would never enter the best-selling list. physics of the possible talks about starships and even time travel. what happens if you go backwards in time and need fewer teenage mother before you were born and she falls in love with you? [laughter] [laughter] and fewer teenage mother .-full-stop what with you before you were born, you are in deep

if that happened but today let's talk about the greatest of all ministries what sits on your shoulder? we have learned more to last ten to 15 years than all of human history combined. that's the power of physics. radio allows us to penetrate right into the thinking mind. then we look for echoes off the molecules to give gorgeous pictures ricocheting like a ping-pong ball in sight of the human mind. and believe it or not, your brain only uses 20 watts of power and you have to simulate it with a digital computer would require a computer a city block by a city block and it would consume the energy of a nuclear power plant and it would have to be cooled by a river.

when someone calls you a dim bulb, but as that is a compliment. [laughter] >> how is it possible and what is consciousness anyway? in the history of science, there than 20,000 papers written about consciousness. never in the history of science had so many devoted so much to produce so little. however in my book i actually give you a definition. a metric by which you can measure numerically levels of consciousness. i'm a physicist. we we define it and quantify it and it's all in my book. [laughter] it's the universe and of the mind and some people think i work on that string theory.

what is so strange about strings sex pic if you look at the fundamental dna is a string that allows you to look at vast amounts of information on the dna molecule. into the unit of the thought is also a string. so if you think of that theory it lies at the fundamental of all biological so if you talk about the movies the movies are always a little bit ahead of us and they talk about telepathy, reading minds. did you know that we can do that now in the laboratory clicks they talk about telekinesis, moving objects with the mind. and not only that, but in hollywood movies, they talk about not just to look at the but also uploading memories. we can now do that for the first time in history.

just last year. at wake forest university the first memory was uploaded and we put the memory back into the mouse and he remembered perfectly. last week the united states pentagon announced a 40 million-dollar initiative to record memories for g.i. from iraq and afghanistan. recording memories is going to happen in our lifetime. this is like the matrix. uploading reality. have you ever thought to yourself late at night when you are all by your self have you ever had a thought that maybe you're the only one that's real that life is like the matrix just a movie uploaded into your mind and maybe someone is trying to test you to see whether or not you really are the only one? like me ask you a question have

you ever had a year to five? raise your hand if you ever had that we are softly that night. well, you're crazy. [laughter] you think you are the only one one in the world? that's ridiculous. i am the only one in the world. [laughter] i'm actually in bed right now. i'm actually imagining that i'm here in washington, d.c. at the convention center speaking to an audience. realize that this is now possible. the short-term goal is to do with monkeys and then then alzheimer's patients. the short-term goal is to create a brain pacemaker. that's why the military is dumping $40 million to create a pacemaker for all timers patients. and the president obama

announced a 1 billion-dollar initiative to create a genome project. in the future you have two discs. one is your genome and the other is your connector. a billion dollars being put into the second disc with all of your sensations and memories and thoughts on a second disc. and when you die, the genome lives on. in some sense come into our immortal. but is it really you? to quote president bill clinton it depends on how you define you. [laughter] but nonetheless let's think about what happens when you upload memories. this is the former governor of california. [laughter]

and the memory of being married to sharon stone suddenly uploaded into his mind in the movie total recall. so yes in the conference is conferences if you upload memories of an entire marriage, but in the future it is conceivable that it will upload the memory of a vacation that you never had. with a the mathematics course that you never passed. this is something that is actually potentially real. money is now being dumped into it and the first results coming out of wake forest university and of southern california. how many people here solve the world cup soccer game lacks did you see the opening ceremony clicks the man that was totally paralyzed, equal to plead goes up and kicks the ball in front

of a billion people. that person was paralyzed. he was wearing an exoskeleton designed at duke university and controlled by his brain alone. you know, christopher reeve, the handsome actor that played superman in the movies, he died. but before he died before he died he dreamed of the day that his mind would allow him to bypass the spinal cord so he could walk again. we can now create exoskeletons in the military has over $150 million to create exoskeletons like this for our wounded warriors and his surrogates. that is controlling a robot mentally. this is the future perhaps that the space program. it's too dangerous to put humans into outer space all the time

and then have the robots guided mentally by an astronaut sitting in his hot tub in his living room. [laughter] so you could explore the universe just mentally and if it is a thesis behind avatar. we can do that today. that is telekinesis. the ability to control objects with the mind. we will talk about this in a minute. this is from the movie kerry where a high school kid has been picked on all of these years and has her final revenge by destroying the whole high school class at the senior prom. what is the lesson here? the west end is never bring a telekinetic to the senior prom. [laughter] so, even superman movies have

gotten wind of this resolution. every kid knows that superman's father died when it blew up. every kid knows this. but in the latest movie, his father lives on as a hologram whose memory is invited to computer. a memory that lives on. a personality, memory, sensation. so here is russell crowe, the father of superman living, and this could be the future of the library of congress. when you go to the library of congress you may sit down and have a wonderful conversation with somebody like einstein, something like winston churchill, george washington because all of the memory in sensations have been recorded in there you are talking to a hologram and having a great cup of tea with abraham lincoln. this is possible.

the question of mind without body, they love this concept and believe it or not if you have two discs one with a genome and they live on after you die and in some sense the mind is looking beyond the body, this is the dream of the ancient, the ancients, the science fiction writers and this is now incapable. let's talk about the brain. first of all blood flow can be analyzed on the left is your brain to tell the truth. not much happens but on the right is when you tell a lie. when you tell a lie first you have to know the truth. then you have to create the lie and the cover-up and the consistency with all of the previous lies that you've been telling all these years. as a whole whole better brainpower that lights up like a christmas tree. so there is your brain on the right telling a lie.

what have we learned from these brain scans? the most ancient part is the back of the brain. the brain has evolved from the back to the front. the back of the brain is most developed. when you have a car accident and you have/coming your balance and a sense of territoriality, aggression, simple things like the back of the brain are affected and that grows from infancy to adolescence the central part of the brain develops. the brain of the motions and etiquette and politeness. that is the center of the brain. then finally when you become an adult by the frontal cortex at the front of the brain develops. so we can now test old wives tales by looking at the living brain. what old wives tales has that

their teenage kid suffers from brain damage. it's true. you can show as it develops on the back to the front, teenagers do not have a well formed for tax. it's another old wives tale when a man talks to a pretty girl he starts to act stupid. [laughter] it's true. when a man talks to a pretty girl, blood literally drains from the cortex and he becomes mentally retarded. [laughter] you can measure this but it's absolutely true. all of these old wives tales cannot be systematically analyzed looking at the scans. then we have two hemispheres. the one on the left and the one on the right. normally the hemispheres talk to each other but in epileptic get out of control and have seizures so they have to cut the connection between the left and

the right. the two brains that are now cut begin to create two different personality. it's amazing and documented cases one man comes home and greets his wife and embraces her with the other arm and he spots her in the face. another documented case one man has left her brain was atheist and his right brain was a believer. can you imagine buying and going to heaven with only half of your brain going to have in class right here in washington, d.c. i'm sure they will find some person that has a left brain that is republican and a right brain that is democrat old inside of the same school. he is consulting two different arms. can you imagine them going to the polling booth and the two of them fight over which leverage

to pull. in the 1950s, we had these really horrible looking gadgets placed over the brain that measures radio, electro- magnetic signals and now we do it with implants and headbands. on the upper left you can now see video games mentally. it picks up radio from the brain and it deciphers by a chip and you can play video games by thinking about it. in japan on the upper right, you can buy a headband with two years on it and when you meet somebody that is interesting they go like that. [laughter] then when you talk to someone that is really boring they go like that. so in japan you always know if

you are going to were going to go home alone after a party. and in my class i'm going to make sure that my students wear these helmets so that i know exactly who is going to fail and pass my course. and at the lower left, silicon valley is getting wind of this. they realize they can now -- when you walk into the room you can turn on the light, you can write e-mails, read the e-mails, play video games, operate household appliances and in the future you will be able to drive a car mentally. this is today silicon valley saying well maybe in the future when we perfect this technology the mouse will disappear. madison avenue is getting wind of this and want to make this fashionable at some point even

my colleague has lost control of his fingertips and can only blink. that is has been of communication is blinking. so, my friends hooked him up to a computer. the next time you see him on tv, look at the right glass. he has a chip in it and it picks up radio messages and allows him to type on a laptop computer mentally bypassing his fingers and bypassing any mechanical mode by thinking he's able to type. and we can now use it with her paychecks. the military is very interested. $150 million the pentagon pledged to put a chip right on top of the brain connected to mechanical arms and legs. this man is totally paralyzed.

he cannot scratch his nose. he cannot communicate with his loved ones. he is a prisoner in his own body. at brown university they put a chip in his brain and a laptop computer and he cannot control his wheelchair, operate kitchen appliances and surf the web and play video games. and this person can now operate mechanical arms. she is totally paralyzed. she communicates like stephen does and she can now see herself for the first time in history she can feed herself mentally. and the pentagon as i said has done $150 million in the revolutionary prosthetics program so that injured soldiers can bypass the spinal cord and control the exoskeleton and at the soccer game as i mentioned, a billion people witnessed a

historic event in the power of the mind a person setting off the soccer game this past summer even beyond this, the ability of controlling roadblocks mentally this is japan and in japan this worker puts on a helmet and then he controls the robot here shown on the right mentally controlling a robot. this could be the future of firemen, ambulance workers, emergency workers may eventually control robots that robot that can walk right into a fire into the dangerous environment and do the work they have to do. for example in japan we have a nuclear meltdown three of them simultaneously going on even as we speak.

they still have not yet gotten control. they put him robots. every robot has failed because they are not sophisticated enough. so why not put a robot in that is controlled mentally and this could be the future of your classroom. remember when we were kids and we used to play hooky all the time? even ask can you write a notes seeing johnny is sick on this day? the surrogates would have your video image, the teacher will see your image sitting in your chair and you will see the teacher. this is the future of education. it's in the future wonderful? we will never be up to play hooky ever again. you will never miss a day of class because you or your surrogate is always sitting in your chair taking notes like we

did. this could be the future of the internet. ..

>> and the third person to buy internet contact lendses, vice president joe biden so that he's always on message, as they say. [laughter] so you can see that the potential of this technology is like living in the matrix.

when you walk into a room, you'll see identification of all the objects. if you're in rome and you see nothing but the ruins of the roman empire, you'll see the roman empire resurrected right in your contact lens as you walk through the ruins of rome. and if you're bargaining with the merchants in the bazaar, you'll see subtitles translating italian into english. so in the future, everyone will be connected. this is called -- okay, these are emergency workers of the future surrogates controlled mentally by the mind. so this is the process pebt -- prospect of exso sell tons -- exto skeletons, and then this is the prospect of retrieving memories. last year for the first time in history scientists at wake forest university recorded the world's first memory. they took a mouse.

the mouse had a hip to be campus that was -- hippocampus that was wired up. memories are made through the hippocampus. they tape recorded the impulses across the hippocampus, and then later when the mouse forgot the task, they reinserted the memory into the mouse. bingo. on the first try, the mouse remembered the task. and at mit just a few months later, they duplicated the experiment and uploaded a false memory into a mouse. and last week, last week the united states pentagon announced a $40 million project to create in four years, four years a memory chip, a memory chip for veterans of iraq and afghanistan to enhance their memories. and like i said, in the future you'll be able to relive the vacation you never had. [laughter] and beyond that at berkeley, where i got my ph.d. years

ago, you can now photograph a thought. this was or considered way into science fiction, and now we do it every day. here's how we do it. this picture here shows a brain scan using mri. it converts blood flow into 30,000 dots as you look at a picture. then using mris, we're able to massage this picture, analyze the dots and create an image. so from the brain, from all these 30,000 dots, we create a picture of what you're look at. -- looking at. look at this picture very carefully. you're looking at some of the first photographs of human thought ever photographed in history. you see a picture of steve martin, and next to it is a fuzzy picture reconstructed from the human mind. amazing. if you're looking at the mona lisa, the computer will reconstruct a crude picture of the mona lisa from your blood flow inside the brain.

and then when you fall asleep, it records your memories of your dream. in the future you may wake up, hit a button and see the dream that you had the previous night. and we could also begin to understand things like lucid dreaming. lucid dreaming is something right out of science fiction. it's when you are conscious while you are dreaming. it was once considered a fake, but with blood flow experiments in germany, we proved it's real. you can now control your dream while you are dreaming and prove it using mri flows. how many people, by the way, have ever had an episode of lucid dreaming where you knew you were dreaming while you were dreaming? and raise your hand. hundreds of people have done it. you can train yourself. on the internet, there are ways to train yourself to become a lucid dreamer, and it's true. these are pictures, pictures of

an elephant, pictures of a human, and then on the right is the computer reconstruction of what you're looking at. and the big one is mental illness. why is president barack obama, why is the european union dumping a billion dollars into the brain initiative to solve one of our most ancient diseases, mental illness? millions of americans at some point in their life will suffer some episode of depression, mental illness, anxiety. what is mental illness? well, for example, schizophrenia is when you hear voices. that's called madness, when you hear voices. however, when you put this person in mri scan, you find something interesting. the left part of the brain lights up because that part of the brain talks to it. when you talk to yourself, the left part of the brain generates voices. that's why you talk to yourself. but the front part of your brain is your conscious brain. it knows that the left part of the brain is talking to itself.

in these people when they have an episode of schizophrenia, the left part of their brain lights up without their permission. they are unaware that they are literally talking to themselves, and you see that now for the first time in history looking at blood flow of a schizophrenic mind. and we can now look at joan of arc and many historical figures through this light. it turns out that a certain fraction of people with epileptic legions also -- lesions also suffer from hyperreligiosity. they think they are talking the god. everything that happens is because it was meant to be that way. if somebody falls, it's because it was meant to be that way. we think that joap of arc was -- joan of arc was not schizophrenic, she suffered from hyperreligiosity. and we can actually reduce this with a helmet. we can actually put a helmet that shoots radio into the temporal cortex of the brain and

induce the feeling of being in the presence of god. this is called a god helmet. and we can actually induce this feeling. so scientists -- of course, we like to experiment -- we put an atheist inside the god helmet. [laughter] that atheist was richard dawkins. [laughter] and we put richard dawkins in the god helmet. and after wards we asked him, do you feel the presence of god? he said, no. they put a catholic nun in the god helmet, and the catholicup in, was her belief shake p because you can induce the feeling of god with a switch? and she said, no. she said god made us with a telephone system so that we can communicate with god. you can't win. [laughter] anyway, let me wind up. supergenius is yet one of many things we talk about in the book. some people have had a bullet go through the left temporal lobe.

1% had -- one person had an accident where he injured the left temporal hope hitting his head on the bottom of the pool. afterwards, people emerged as supergeniuses. so tonight when you go home, do not hit the left part of your brain thinking you're going to become einstein, but it has happened in the past. this individual can take one helicopter ride over the harbor in new york and draw the entire, entire skyline of new york city. down to every window. and you can see it at jfk airport. next time you land in terminal one at jfk, look up, and you'll see this huge mural drawn from memory by this individual. and, of course, einstein is the greatest genius of modern times. his brain is still with us today. we have his brain. it is different. not by much, but it is different. it's at princeton hospital. well, i'm sort of running out of

time, so let me just wind up on one note, and if you have further questions, you can read my book. [laughter] when i was a kid growing up, my role model was albert i'm stein. and my -- einstein. and my favorite einstein story is this: when ion stipe was an old man -- einstein was an old man, he was tired of giving the same talk over and and over again. so one day his chauffer came up to him and said, professor, i'm really a part-time actor. i've heard you speak so many times, i've them -- memorized it. so why don't we switch places? i will put on a moustache, i will put on a wig, i will be the great einstein giving the speech, and you can put on my hat, you can put on my uniform and be my chauffer. so they switched places. this went along famously until one day, until one day a mathematician in the back asked a very difficult question, and einstein thought, oh, the game is up. but then the chauffer said, that

question so elementary that even my chauffer here can answer it for you. [laughter] [applause] thank you very much. you've been a great audience. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] >> host: right now we're pleased to be joined by michio kaku. "the future of the mind" is his most recent book.hi here the cover.he now, dr. kaku, you write that we'v e learned more about the human mind in the past 15 years than in all of history. why is that? >> guest: because of advances in civics. why is that? >> advancements in physics, the thinking brain, thoughts ricochet like a ping-pong ball right inside the mind. realize we are entering the golden age of science. things that were once considered impossible, even preposterous, we can